Zetetic standpoint epistemology

A central claim of standpoint theory is that the oppressed have an epistemic advantage over the dominant with respect to the workings of oppression. This ‘epistemic advantage thesis’ ranges over issues like whether some event or action is an instance of oppression, what it is like to be oppressed, what the causes of oppression are, and ways to resist oppression. Reasons to think the oppressed have such an advantage include that they tend to have: more informative experiences of oppression (e.g. Mills 1998), greater incentives to learn about and criticize oppression (e.g. Jaggar 1983), and access to networks of other oppressed people who are themselves epistemically advantaged with respect to oppression (e.g. Dror 2023).

From the epistemic advantage thesis, some standpoint theorists derive a methodological claim: given the oppressed are epistemically advantaged with respect to the workings of oppression, inquiry into oppression should start from the lives of the oppressed. This move from epistemology to methodology can seem as recommending a norm for scientific inquiry (e.g. Wylie 2004). But another way to think about it is as recommending a ‘zetetic norm’: a norm of inquiry that binds anyone curious enough to inquire about the workings of oppression.

Inquiry has distinct stages. On one possible carving (from Friedman, forthcoming), we first decide what questions to put on our research agenda, we then choose and apply methods for investigating a particular question that’s on our research agenda, and we finally close the question. We think there is a good case to be made that we can derive not just a norm of inquiry from the epistemic advantage thesis, but several norms, which each attach to the different stages. Here we will focus on the norms that attach to the second stage – the active investigation of questions.

When investigating a question— like whether some action is a microaggression—we must decide where to gather evidence from. Suppose that all we know about potential informants is their social location: whether they are members of an oppressed group or of a dominant group. We could gather our evidence from a member of the oppressed, from the dominant, by randomly sampling from a population, or by some other method. Here, the reasons mentioned earlier that support the epistemic advantage thesis give us reason to seek evidence from the oppressed. The oppressed tend to have more experiences of oppression (e.g. of past instances of microaggressions), better incentives (e.g. to point out when something is a microaggression), and a more reliable network (e.g. of others who have also suffered microaggressions). These, in turn, give them an advantage in selecting the right answer to a particular question about oppression (e.g. about whether an action was indeed a microaggression). So, when we can only discern whether someone is a member of the oppressed or the dominant, we should seek evidence from the oppressed. In terms of expected accuracy, this strategy does better than the alternatives (like seeking out evidence from the dominant, or random selection).

Yet notice that this is a ‘contingent tendency’ for advantage. As recent authors have convincingly argued (Tilton, forthcoming; Dror, 2023), the social location of being oppressed is only imperfectly correlated with epistemic advantage. It’s not that all and only the members of the oppressed have these advantages: some of the oppressed don’t have these advantages, perhaps due to false consciousness or to educational disadvantages imposed by oppression. Some of the dominant do have epistemic advantages, because they worked hard to seek out testimony, and acquire conceptual resources from those more in the know.

We think this qualification—of seeing social location as only imperfectly correlated with epistemic advantage—has significant implications for methods of inquiry. In particular, when we can discern what experiences, incentives, or networks the agents have, such information will supersede mere information about social location, and possibly change recommendations about who to seek evidence from. For example, consider the case where we only know that two agents belong to a minority race in a society. With just this information, we should be indifferent about who to seek out evidence from, when it comes to investigating oppression. But suppose we also learn one has suffered the effects of present discrimination and historical injustice, while the other has miraculously avoided it, despite being of the minority race.[1] This information about each agent’s experience greatly (but not completely) supersedes information about their social location,[2] because experiences are more closely tied to epistemic advantages than social location is—social location being a mere proxy for experiences and other factors that ground epistemic advantage. In terms of expected accuracy, then, distinguishing between agents by their experiences will do better than the strategy of distinguishing them only by social location. So, when we have such information, we should distinguish between these two agents on the basis of their differing experiences,[3] prioritising the one who has experience of discrimination and injustice over the one who does not, when seeking out evidence about oppression. More generally, we propose that to the extent that such further information—about experiences, incentives, networks—is available, we should adopt fine-grained methods that distinguish between agents using this information, rather than a coarse-grained method that only looks at social location.

This fine-grained method falls short of justifying complete deference. However, given that the oppressed tend to be more epistemically advantaged than the dominant, this strategy will still instruct us to seek out evidence from the oppressed more often than not, other things being equal. Furthermore, we have only looked at the epistemic grounds for seeking out evidence from the oppressed, and leave open that moral reasons might still justify something closer to full deference.[4]

[1] Also see Táíwò (2020), who distinguishes between elite and non-elite members of the oppressed.

[2] Social location could, however, still stand as a proxy for factors which ground epistemic advantage but which we cannot observe/have no information about.

[3] It might still be, however, that they have roughly similar incentives to understand and criticize oppression, despite having different experiences.

[4] Thanks to Adam Piovarchy and Alessandra Tanesini for their useful comments.

References

Dror, Lidal. (2023). ‘Is there an epistemic advantage to being oppressed?’, Nous, 57 (3):  618 – 640.

Friedman, Jane. (Forthcoming). ‘Zetetic Epistemology’, Towards an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere, B.Reed & A. K. Flowerree (eds.), Routledge.

Jaggar, A. M. (1983). Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Rowman & Littlefield.

Mills, Charles. (1998). Blackness Visible, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi (2021). “Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference.” The Philosopher. November 20, 2021.

https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-the-room-privilege-elite-capture-and-epistemic-deference

Tilton, E. (forthcoming). ‘“That’s Above My Paygrade”: Woke Excuses for Ignorance”, Philosophers Imprint.

Wylie, A. (2004). ‘Why Standpoints Matter. In S. Harding (Ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual & Political Controversies (pp. 339 – 351). London: Routledge.

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