The limitations of being 'post'-epistemological; The inevitability of judgement

There's a lot of talk lately about being 'post-epistemological' or about displacing epistemology with ontology -- or even with ethics.  While I agree that the flaws and limitations of epistemology (and epistemologists) are many and sundry that doesn't mean that we can do without it (or them) -- quite the contrary.

Without epistemology, research is impossible.  Imagine two (admittedly cartoonish) characters that you might meet in the course of fieldwork:

Person 1: *hands clenched and trembling, voice quaking* 'I was there, I saw it with my own two eyes, the image is burned into my mind; it was like this: ...'

Person 2: *hands casually flopping about, voice carefree* 'Oh, I met some bloke down the pub who said that his sister's husband's, cousin was there; he said that she said he said that he was too drunk to stand up at the time but apparently it was like this: ...'

If you don't accord the first of these greater evidential significance then your fieldwork is plainly little more than a bad joke.  And to accord differential significance is to make an epistemological decision about preferred modes of evidence collection and inference from that evidence.  Such a decision not only judges the veritability of a given account, it also draws a line around the research project, delimiting it; without such a line there is no way of ending a project since it must include everything.  The line makes the research possible.

One might object thus: 'Of course I prioritise 1 over 2 but not because of any judgement of any veridical judgement but for ethical reasons; person 1 is clearly deeply affected by the experience and, thus, deserves to be taken seriously for moral reasons; person 2 is clearly unaffected and so has no real claim to the situation.'  This is a perfectly acceptable and even admirable criterion for deciding who to believe but, frankly, I think that to say that this is the only criterion one is employing in such a situation is a lie.  Ethics may reinforce and justify or even primarily motivate the decision to take 1 seriously and 2 not but to pretend that there has been no judgement vis-a-vis the cogency and reliability of the evidence in these two accounts is absurd.  I simply don't believe anyone who could say that they prefer 1 over 2 entirely on ethical and not at all on epistemological grounds.

For all the sins it is associated with, epistemology is not a dirty word.  Not talking about criteria of validity doesn't mean you've transcended epistemology, only that you've failed to declare it; that you're hiding it, denying it, repressing it.  Cognition itself is inconceivable without constant judgements with regard to the conditions of valid knowledge.  Epistemology, as a knowledge practice, merely raises such judgements to an abstract, formal level -- as does ontology with questions of existence.

Evidentialism vs. empiricism; Philosophy as an anthropological phenomenon

The other day I wrote that the world needs a concept of 'evidentialism' to supplant the perennial argument between rationalism and empiricism; it needs it because of the confusion between critical mindedness and plain, nasty and (dare I say it?) irrational cynicism.

Of course, when a lot of people say 'empiricism' they mean something a lot like 'evidentialism.'  Scientific empiricism is generally understood to involve the priority of experiment and the collection of evidence over abstract, a priori reasoning.  To this extent, 'evidentialism' is a superfluous coinage.  However, in stricter, more philosophical terms, the word 'empiricism' pertains to experience (and hence to a subject), rather than to evidence as such.  Evidence is the thing experienced but it is a secondary term -- something that enters into the equation once the grounds of experience have been established -- and it is these grounds that are the problem, not the evidence itself.

It is in this that empiricism and its other are all too similar; both empiricism and rationalism locate the problematique of knowledge in the subject -- in the mind that knows (or does not know).  And, as Latour, William James and others have argued, once the gap between mind and world is set out as something to be bridged it never goes away; the question of access, of the salto mortale, forever dominates the whole conversation.

The grounds of knowledge, as sociologists have demonstrated time and again, are in epistemic practices not abstract subjectivities.  These processes necessarily involve subjectivities, rationalities, modes of experience and so on but they are reducible to none of these and no one kind of subjectivity, rationality, etc. is germane to all epistemic situations.  Moreover, none of these things can be privileged more than the *evidence* itself. 

If we embrace evidentialism rather than 'empiricism' the experiencing subject is no longer primary and subject/object relations become but one consideration among many.  The processes highlighted by the notion of evidence involve both experiences and rationalities but also artifacts.  Evidentialism is, therefore, a social, practical, processual but also materialist concept.

Instead of subjectivities the artifacts and the processes by which they become artifacts -- i.e. items of evidence -- become primary and we begin from a real, worldly process rather than abstract subjectivity.  Understood in this way, experiences and rationalities are elements of epistemic processes; they are not the grounds of the epistemic in general.

But isn't this sociology of knowledge rather than epistemology?  Isn't this just turning a philosophical problem into a sociological one?  Yes and no; I think we need to think about philosophy itself slightly differently.

If knowledge is a worldly and practically, incrementally produced kind of entity then philosophy that is unrooted from the actual processes by which it is produced is a waste of time; it simply won't get us any closer to understanding what knowledge is or how it can be improved.  The philosopher as 'the critic of abstractions' (as Whitehead puts it) is not above or beyond the grubby complexities of evidence and sociology but, instead, embodies a set of critical capacities necessary for the proper execution of intellectual tasks.  This philosopher is a kind of critical subjectivity that any individual researcher should be able to embody and articulate in the course of research, to some degree.  In this sense 'we are all philosophers' -- although we're not all equally good at it.

Conceived in this way, philosophy is an anthropological phenomenon.  Philosophers as professional individuals simply embody these capacities full-time and (sometimes) get paid for it -- but they don't own any of it.  Individual philosophers most fully experience the mode of rationality particular to philosophy -- consequently they are its principle vehicles in the world.  Experience and reason are thus fully part of the process.

The pertinence of philosophy, thus conceived, to knowledge is that it is a form of rationality intrinsic to the academic or intellectual epistemic process, taken abstractly; it does not comment on the epistemic process from afar but, if it's doing its job, provides some of the tools by which it can occur at all.

That's a slightly jumbled and very schematic sketch of an idea, but I think it makes some sense (or at least it does to me).

Whither Epistemology?

I think the world needs a proper concept of evidentialism -- knowledge grounded in neither reason nor experience per se but rather evidence.  The whole never-ending palaver over rationalism and empiricism makes the question of knowledge far too abstract when it is, as sociologists of science have amply demonstrated, the most concrete of things.

Evidentialism is not contrary to critique -- in fact, critique is its condition of possibility since what constitutes evidence in any given situation must be open to question.  But evidentialism cannot be reduced to critique since it must, by definition, bring more to the table than argument itself -- it must bring something of the world with it.

There is a difference, I believe, between sharp, acute critical mindedness and plain, old, nasty cynicism.  I think Latour is right in that in the age of 'cynical reason' (in Sloterdijk's phrase) or after the 'miniaturisation of critique' (in Latour's phrase) we need to find a way to trust and build institutions again (see chapter 1 of his new Modes book for a discussion of institutions in this sense).

I think that one of the institutions we need to build is a reformed, evidentialist epistemology.

The Cancer of 'Values'; Or, you can't hang your 'values' on a peg

Another interesting post at Duck of Minerva, this time on science and 'values' in human rights scholarship:

Questions of personal biases and valid science permeate all facets of science; of course, we as social scientists face these questions all the time in our research.  Do personal biases get in the way of our science?  Is there any way around our personal biases?

I’m a firm believer that the process of science allows us to eliminate many of the potential biases that we carry around with us. ...

My somewhat Latourian take on this issue would be this: Of course science allows people to get around their personal biases; that's the whole point of science as a formal, social, discursive, argumentative, agonistic, critical, collective process.  Without this science has nothing.  However, scientists can only 'get around' their own biases by making their experiments and reasoning public and having others reproduce their experiments and reasoning.

But let's define 'bias' broadly.  Is assay result X the product of a hitherto undiscovered protein or a contaminated batch of enzymes?  Contamination is a 'bias' to the experiment in that it is an unwanted variable intruding upon the artificially purified experimental design.  The scientist can take many steps to check, doublecheck and crosscheck their results but ultimately the only thing that will establish result X as a fact rather than an artifact is the experiment's successful reproduction by other scientists in other labs around the world.  An individual scientist's personal preferences on the outcome of an experiment may prove to be an extraneous variable intruding upon the experimental design, that is to be determined.  However, the way they overcome this is not by being 'value neutral' in their own minds as such, it is by designing their experiment as best they can and then submitting the whole process to critical peer review, which may or may not validate their claims.

No individual scientist can or should ever be 'value neutral' -- if they didn't care about the outcome of the experiment why would they bother doing it?  The only 'neutrality' science can have emerges in its sociality, in its practices of argumentation -- in being validated by numerous different values.  It isn't about 'checking your biases at the door' so much a not letting them intrude into your experimental design.  'Values' are not an item of clothing that you can arbitrarily hang up on a clothes peg -- that's a very poor metaphor, albeit a common one.  Being 'scientific' is better described, I think as an ongoing process of drafting, redrafting and self-critique prior to the social critique of peer review.  If your conclusions are based on nothing more than your own wishes and wants then your arguments will be undone as easily as pointing out a batch of contaminated enzymes.  If the argument draws upon no more support than empty rhetoric then it'll be quickly exposed as hot air.  A strong argument requires more evidential and rational support than a statement of desires.  Scientists needn't transcend their values, they need only produce an argument that is stronger than the values that inspired it.

Human rights research has precious little in common with molecular biology and it can never follow the same scientific practices or adhere to the same standards (nor should it want to) but it can follow a similar process: produce arguments that are stronger than the values they are inspired by; produce arguments that can be validated by a wide range of value orientations.

So, no, a cancer researcher needn't have any specific value orientation in the sense of being 'pro-' or 'anti-' cancer (though one would hope that it is not the former!) but nor can or should any researcher be 'value neutral' -- our values get us out of bed in the morning.  Wanting to produce objective knowledge about cancer: that's a value in and of itself.

David Campbell on 'the retreat from reality' / The need for political epistemology

David Campbell has very nice, thought provoking piece on the right-wing disregard for science and evidence generally, particularly in the cases of climate change and gun violence.  He concludes with the following:

Of course, there is – especially for those of us with post-structuralist philosophical commitments – no easily discernible, singular, uncontested reality. There are no facts beyond dispute or arguments immune from contestation. No group has privileged access to the truth. Reality has to be narrated and narratives are inherently constructed. But some stories have more support than others, and the “concordance of evidence” favours some positions over others. When anyone flies in the face of such evidence it’s time to get angry and insist that we won’t stand for such BS.

I have a few comments as I think this raises a whole load of really interesting questions:

While it's true that a nuanced, epistemologically relativist social theory of knowledge does not preclude the kind of hearty, thorough evidentialism that we so desperately need -- no part of scepticism or constructivism necessitates cynicism or nihilism -- I don't see much in the poststructuralist canon (as I understand it) that provides the theoretical resources for such a discussion.  The very notion of evidential 'support' is not a positive concept that I've encountered in poststructuralist writing.  Indeed, the very notion implies the kind of epistemological commitments that such writings go out of their way to avoid.  That isn't to say that poststructuralist writings do not deploy evidence; of course they do, your own work included.  But the theory with which this evidence is articulated tends to be stuck in a critical, narrowly relativist register of admitting that its own account is one theory among many and that it is just 'keeping the discussion going' in Rortyean fashion.  Consequently, such accounts generally claim no greater epistemic authority than being one legitimate voice within the discussion.

In my view, saying that "some stories have more support than others, and the 'concordance of evidence' favours some positions over others" goes beyond merely 'keeping the conversation going' -- it takes us into the realm of epistemology proper and a step or two outside the comfort zone of any acknowledged 'poststructuralist' theory that I've ever read.  This argument does not, of course, invalidate anything but, if it is correct, it imparts a theoretical burden -- it demands that we acknowledge the inadequacy of what we had previously relied upon and endeavour to go beyond it.

Essentially what you seem to be calling for is what Latour (who isn't generally understood to be a 'poststructuralist', although his thought is certainly related) calls 'political epistemology.'  All epistemology, for Latour, is political because epistemology isn't just about how or why we believe what we do -- it's not a neutral theory about the basic mechanics of knowledge; rather, it's about what we should believe and how we can make others believe what we think is right (in every sense of the word).  The most obvious kind of political epistemology is the 'demarcation criteria' of scientistic philosophers of science -- of what gets to count as science (and thus be valid) and what doesn't (and what is consequently invalid).  But it runs far deeper than that.

As I see it, you can't have 'evidentialism' without a discussion of what does and (importantly) does not count as evidence and this requires active endorsement of particular standards -- a political epistemology or 'political metrology,' if you will.  It requires the progressive institution of a collective epistemological reality.  This reality is inevitably contested -- indeed, scepticism and contestation are its very conditions of possibility -- but it must also be built up, endorsed, promoted, reinforced, rationalised, validated -- not just cut down, scrutinised, picked apart and deconstructed.  It must be active -- in that it creates, circulates and promotes new ideas and instruments -- and not just reactive -- in the sense of picking up on existing discourses and subjecting them to scrutiny.  And this brings us to perhaps the biggest challenge for poststructuralism: the need to interrogate the purposes and the limitations of 'critique' and 'critical theory' in general -- of the need for something besides and beyond (or in addition to) these practices.

Latour's new book, coming out in English soon, on 'modes of existence' talks about the need to rediscover trust in institutions, such as science.  That is basically the issue: evidentialism requires a kind of epistemic institutionalism, a collective epistemological project based not just on scepticism but also on trust, on belief.  This institution needn't be 'scientific' but it needs to be definite and exclusive.  It needn't dispense with 'anything goes' as such but it needs to recognise that such epistemic anarchism is but an initial step, logically prior to a more formal sorting process that includes and excludes, legitimating some knowledge claims and delegitimating others.  It can no longer be enough to just 'keep the conversation going' by adding one more voice to the mix.  That plays straight into the hands of the climate denialists and the gun fetishists, etc. who relish, embelish, exaggerate and exploit epistemic division and uncertainty so as to extract political advantages.  Unvarnished epistemological relativism -- in the sense of rendering all knowledge claims formally equal -- is incapable of issuing the necessary clarion call for 'evidence' because what evidence is requires a definite idea of what it is not, which implies an exclusionary distinction.

So, perhaps it's time to reconsider those fusty old epistemology-obsessed modernists who undoubtedly gave us the wrong answers but were nevertheless asking the right questions...  They were wrong in arguing that epistemological validity -- i.e. 'Truth' -- was singular, universal and transcendent but they were right in understanding the political need for socially validating some knowledge claims over others.  They were wrong in making the validation criteria -- 'Reason, Science,' etc. -- abstract and accessible only to the elites but they were right in understanding that such epistemological criteria are politically indispensible.

We live in an age of 'cynical reason,' as Sloterdijk put it; or, in Latour's words, we live in an age where critique has been 'miniaturised' -- that is, perfected, instrumentalised and woven into the fabric of everyday life such that we scarcely even notice it.  The tools and techniques that were constructed for the struggle against power have been internalised by the powerful and turned against resistance itself, hitting it square in its very conditions of possibility.  For both these guys this political fact indicates the inadequacy of poststructuralist theory, as received.  I tend to agree.

I know that David has been over similar ground in his arguments in print with Colin Wight et al.  As I recall he argued then that epistemic validation should be found in ethics rather than epistemology, strictly speaking.  I'll shut up now since this is already more essay than comment, but I think it suffices to say that I don't think that 'ethics' alone does the job.  The concept of political epistemology seems to me to be a more fruitful avenue, precisely because neither half of the phrase is reducible to the other -- it must be both political and epistemology.  If 'evidence' is to have meaningful, positive political force within a poststructuralist understanding of the world, something like Latour's 'institutions' (or perhaps Badiou's 'Truths') are called for.  I see room for them within poststructuralism in general but it is just that -- room, empty space yet to be filled.