Building on academic epistemology

October 6, 2014

 Here's the link to an article that prompted this comment:  The Unlevel Knowing Field: An Engagement with Dotson’s Third-Order Epistemic Oppression, Alison Bailey.
---------------------------------

When I started to read this article, I was preparing to attempt a technical critique of the conceptual approach as uni-dimensional, that of high power being the unstated characteristic of those who oppress those with less.  I was assuming good faith by the writer, that this bias was an error that I may presume to influence.

Among the references was # 5 described in the text as :  Or, consider columnist George Will’s recent claim that women cry rape so that they get “special privileged survivor status.”[5]
These cases illustrate how the epistemic agency of knowers is compromised by a credibility deficit.  If we think about epistemic credibility as a resource, then it is a resource that is unevenly distributed along gendered and racialized lines.

I double checked the article and while this paraphrase may be the writers conclusion, but it was not what the article said.  The quote, meaning exact phrase as written, does not exist in the article.  This is not an error, but rather evidence that rather than an epistemic community following precise norms of discourse, there is an ideological element  that allows breaches of such clear academic norms as precision of quotations as long as it is advances the consensus of the group.

The quote reflected an article focusing on the individual woman, while the actual  article was focused on a movement codified by federal law, translated into university regulations. (the extensive comments were balanced and analytical) It happened to have great validity in my view, and yet was so demeaned by the this writer, Dr. Baily, that she felt safe to debase Mr. Will's precise criticism as being a slur on the weaker gender.  Ironically, among the readership of this article only someone outside of academia, myself, bothered to note the inaccurate quotation.

The distortion of this article is that it is based on a proffered truism that epistemic knowledge is an accretion provided by formal education so that the apex must be of those with certification of having mastered this at the highest level.  It ignores the possibility that a bi-product of such advanced knowledge may be a worldview that like all such "true believing" communities is defined by a self interest that may transcend the pecuniary.  The writer and the readers of this academic site are comfortable in a distortion of George Will's article, since he is among the group that is not respected, Thus confirmation bias is built into the dialog, when the actual words of the enemy do not suffice, no one of the "true believers" will challenge a minor distortion of a quotation.  The message in a given article by "the enemy" is comfortably used to solidity one's membership in a value system that is assumed to be  "progressive" tacitly understood as moving to an idealized perfection that is only impeded by conservatives. 

Epistemic "blindness" is universal, and not a product of "oppression" which is a value laden concept that implies a movement of good against evil, and erroneously exclusively equates the "power to oppress" as being such "evil."  I conclude with my own hyperbole, which is that the world view of this article contains a fatal flaw, one that is no more enlightened than that which underlies the most "regressive" movements in the history of civilization.  As a most relevant example, while this "enlightened progressivism" currently espouses the celebration of same gender sexuality, it ignores serious investigation of the underlying reasons why other subcultures, African American men for instance and Muslim cultures for another, find it abhorrent.  The reality that for the male of the species sexuality has a large element of expression of dominance, with concomitant oppression of the more subordinate, and that this is hard wired into our primate brain is not evaluated, much less acknowledged. .  The tools of sociology, ethology and neuroscience that could investigate and possibly support this view are quietly suppressed to the point that this conversation does not even exist.  Thus, a perfect example epistemic blindness among the academic social and power elite.  

Academic evaluation of how we know, how we think, "epistemology" -- is worthy endeavor that deserves society's support as a vital function that has been entrusted in the institution of academia.  This should impart an obligation to its avatars to be alert to their own biases, and then to transcend them. Just as "Nature abhors a vacuum," "Humans abhor isolation from a community"  and doing violence to reason is a small price for us to pay to avoid this fate. If every social science is to become simply another cult masked in the very pseudo-precision of its arcane terminology, the loss will be much greater than to its practitioners, but to us all.