ABSTRACT
David Danks aims to face up to two threats to perspectivism in Chapter 7. The first is the risk of collapsing into an “unsafe” relativism, where knowledge claims might be group specific. The second is that perspectivism may seem too “insubstantial” to be informative. Danks argues that perspectivism can be safe and substantial by identifying two sources of perspectives: concepts and goals. Insofar as concepts and goals are shared, a collapse into relativism is avoided. And as they are grounded in features of human cognition, concepts and goals make perspectivism substantive. Danks’s version of perspectivism, notably, is not just a view of science, since concepts and goals are part of our everyday perspectivism; it is a perspectivism of everyday lives and scientific lives alike.
