Ethnoepistemology
Originally titled “Ethnoepistemology, my ass!”, written 2 August 2008. Excuse all the cuss words. I’ve cut out a few of the epithets, but I’m preserving the flavor of my diatribe.
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Ethnoepistemology (James Maffie), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
There are often lapses and biases in reference works in the humanities and social science. This entry, however, gets the award for complete load of shit of the day, of mega-diarrhea proportions.
Is there anything lower than anthropologists? Only political scientists. But the new cross-cultural, multicultural philosophy in the age of globalization and postmodernism is down there with the worst of them. This stinking heap of shit combines all of these tendencies, illegitimately, with the tendency in epistemology called naturalized epistemology.
The greatest talent that liberal tolerance possesses is the ability to disguise its covert dogmatic, absolutist premises. It professes a pluralism that in actuality cannot exist.
As a species of naturalized epistemology, ethnoepistemology treats all human epistemological activities as fully natural phenomena to be described, understood, and evaluated from a broadly anthropological and fully a posteriori perspective. In this spirit it examines the entire gamut of human epistemological activities ranging from those of ordinary folk and cognitive specialists (for example, diviners, shamans, priests, magicians, and scientists) to those of epistemologists themselves. Ethnoepistemology includes both domestic and non-domestic epistemological practices, and accordingly regards Western epistemological practices as simply one among many alternative, contingent epistemological projects advanced by and hence available to human beings. In this manner it aims to decenter and provincialize the definitions, aims, assumptions, methods, problems, and claims of Western epistemology.
This is nonsense in multiple ways. First, you either accept these premises or you don’t, and so you can’t treat all world views in a neutral manner. Not all epistemologies in the west or elsewhere are naturalist. Why not put supernatural epistemologies on an equal footing with naturalist epistemologies? What then would be the criteria for having a field of enquiry to be engaged in a disciplined fashion, or in lieu of that, in an academic fashion, spawning journals, books, grad student zombies, and more useless careers? As there is no commonly agreed upon Western epistemology, in or out of academia, what could it mean to relativize western epistemology, esp. since this pseudo-discipline was created by and is only of interest to Western intellectuals and their hangers-on?
Ethnoepistemology rejects what it considers to be the double standard embraced by most Western epistemology that exempts itself from the same kind of anthropological scrutiny that the epistemologies of non-Western cultures receive at the hands of Western ethnographers.
What does anthropological scrutiny of knowledge claims mean? Of what kinds of knowledge claims? Of the character of other societies and cultures and their practices? Of their beliefs pertaining to religion, magic, the supernatural? Of their social theories as compared to ours?
And it also rejects the double standard that characterizes the epistemological activities of non-Western thinkers as mere ethnoepistemologies while characterizing the epistemological activities of Western thinkers as epistemology proper. Ethnoepistemologists argue that there is a dualism that is commonly expressed by the assertion that thinkers in other cultures practice mere “ethnoepistemology” or “ethnophilosophy.” What others do is thereby marginalized as mere anthropological curiosity, and those practicing it are deemed unqualified to participate in the West’s genuinely philosophical conversation. Indeed, the customary use of the terms “ethnophilosophy” and “ethnoepistemology” by Western philosophers is objectionable to ethnoepistemologists because it assumes that Western philosophy is the benchmark by which all other cultures’ philosophies and reflective activities are to be understood and measured, and that Western philosophy is philosophy simpliciter rather than one among many ethnophilosophies.
Again, epistemology with respect to what? The judgment of morals, customs, or human nature is not the same as scientific judgement of the natural world. At stake is the standards by which knowledge claims are judged and the capacity for growth and a critical attitude to knowledge claims and social institutions. All the rest is bullshit.
The more broadly ecumenical and non-ethnocentric use of the term “ethnoepistemology” avoids this shortcoming since it includes all epistemological activities, be they African, East Asian, European, Native American, and so forth. And that is how the term will be used in this article. All epistemological activities are instances of ethnoepistemology in this broad sense; and all ethnoepistemologies are instances of epistemology. Finally, ethnoepistemology reflects critically upon the nature, method(s), aim(s), province and very definition of epistemology itself from the broadly anthropological, fully a posteriori perspective.
There is no such thing as a fully a posteriori perspective, and this set of assumptions is as dogmatic and biased as any. It’s the old problem of relativism tarted up once again. Secondly, not all epistemological activities of any culture are the same. Some activities pertain to technical knowhow, some to religious and supernatural belief systems, some to judgements of social institutions and the character of others.
The conception of ethnoepistemology sketched here thus differs from the dominant conception in contemporary Western academic discourse, which conceives ethnoepistemology as the study of non-Western epistemologies only.
This is just postmodern bullshit combined with identity politics and anthropological slumming.
As a species of naturalized epistemology, ethnoepistemology rejects epistemology as First Philosophy, i.e. epistemology conceived as an autonomous, a priori enterprise prior to and normative for all other inquiry. It rejects, for example, such mainstay principles of traditional Western epistemologyies, which assert that epistemology employs sui generis, a priori methods and evidence; epistemology employs evidential norms and standards epistemologically firmer or higher than those of the sciences; epistemology proceeds from a vantage point making no use of the substantive findings of the sciences; epistemology yields results epistemologically firmer or higher than those of the sciences; and epistemology is epistemologically prior to the sciences.
And who believes in this conception of epistemology anymore?
Ethnoepistemology conceives its own activities as continuous with the sciences. It endeavors to create such continuity by extending the epistemology of the sciences — e.g. their a posteriori evidential practices, styles of reasoning, and modes of explanation — as well as the substantive findings of the sciences into the ethnoepistemological study of epistemology. In short, ethnoepistemology is conducted within the sciences and as part of the sciences.
But this can’t be, because not all cultures adhere to the “scientific method”. Hence this pseudo-discipline cannot actually function if it holds all epistemologies to be equal, a stance that no one who has or ever will exist can practice.
Ethnoepistemology thus adopts a broadly interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates the findings of anthropology of knowledge, cultural anthropology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive psychology, indigenized psychology, the sociology of belief and knowledge, linguistics, history, evolutionary biology, etc., and unifies these under a single umbrella: one aptly characterized as “anthropology.”
Instead of anthropology as umbrella, we need an umbrella to shield us from the shitstorm of anthropology.
In this manner, its approach to human epistemological activities parallels anthropological approaches to other cultural practices such as morality, magic, shamanism, religion, and law. It regards all epistemological activities — ranging from the less reflective and less critical activities of ordinary folk to the more self-conscious, abstract, and reflective activities of epistemologists — as no different in principle from the aforementioned cultural activities. Epistemological activities are simply one among many natural phenomena, simply one among many human endeavors, and as such properly studied by anthropology. Ethnoepistemology thus considers epistemological activities — e.g. epistemological intuitions, judgments, concepts, norms, and goals — as amenable to the same methods of inquiry as employed by the sciences.
Self-contradictory, hypocritical drivel from first word to last.
Consequently, that which instrumentally promotes the epistemic ends of human beings need not be necessarily socially constructed. In other words, ethnoepistemology (and naturalized epistemology generally) remains neutral between un-realist (constructivist) vs. realist theories regarding the ontological status of epistemological properties.
Not even a neutered human being is neutral. It’s curious how the universal postulation of bias becomes a profession of neutrality.
Ethnoepistemology embraces several methodological principles. The first is Reflexivity, which states that its own manner of description, explanation, and evaluation must be in principle applicable to itself. The practice of ethnoepistemology as proposed herein is itself an instance of ethnoepistemological activity and as such amenable to ethnoepistemological investigation.
In other words, ethnoepistemology inherently excludes the all the non-western epistemologies it goes slumming in that don’t practice reflexivity.
The third is Impartiality, that is to say, ethnoepistemology is impartial with respect to true and false belief, justified and unjustified belief, and knowledge and ignorance. Both sides of these dichotomies require explanation. Ethnoepistemology thus rejects the various dualisms commonly assumed by traditional epistemology that contradict these three methodological principles.
There is no such thing as such impartiality, and no possible study of anything that does not attempt to distinguish between truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance. Methinks this pretence is the quintessence of Western liberal ideology, the very thing that inspires all this slumming in other cultures.
First, it studies the epistemic practices of ordinary people, cognitive specialists such as shamans, priests, jurists and scientists, and of philosophers themselves. Philosophical activity does not transcend naturalistic (e.g., sociological, anthropological, etc.) investigation. It is one species of natural activity alongside cooking, childrearing, and counting. Professional academic philosophy, in particular, is no exception and is thus subject to anthropological scrutiny as well. Academic philosophers are simply one among many groups or subcultures alongside Roman Catholic priests, Yakut shamans, Mesoamerican curanderas, and Yoruba onisegun.
You betcha academic philosophy, and anthropology, are subject to scrutiny, including anthropological scrutiny. But if these people were as self-reflexive as they proclaim, they’d be ashamed to show their faces in public. But no, not all cognitive activities are the same. If they were, these swindlers would have no more claim to their jobs than the stinky homeless person picking his dinner out of the trash can next to the subway entrance.
Second, ethnoepistemology studies the epistemological activities of both alien and domestic cultures, and thus incorporates non-domestic and domestic Western anthropology as well as non-domestic and domestic non-Western anthropology. Members of the American Philosophical Association along with the editors and referees of professional journals such as Philosophical Review and Mind are simply one group among many other cultural groups, and as such, are not exempt from anthropological scrutiny. Phenomena for domestic ethnoepistemological research include: (a) professional boundary-work, such as constructing the dominant epistemological canon and tradition, which includes questions such as, who is included in official histories and textbooks of epistemology, who is considered a serious epistemologist, and what is a genuine epistemological problem; and (b) professional gate-keeping activities such as editorial and investigative, and hiring and promotion decisions.
I’ll bet these folks are about as impartial, liberal and tolerant in their hiring and promotion decisions as Joseph Stalin.
Ethnoepistemology thus rejects the tacit dualism and double standard of Western epistemology that exempts domestic (i.e. Western) epistemological practices from the same kind of anthropological scrutiny that the epistemological practices of non-Western cultures are subject to.
I guess the author never heard of Alvin Gouldner, or Pierre Bourdieu, for starters.
Ethnoastronomy, for example, is commonly conceived as the study of non-Western astronomies, but not Western astronomy! Western astronomy is immune to anthropological examination because it is real astronomy, astronomy simpliciter. The same holds for ethnobotany, ethnomusicology, etc.)
Science is not music. And come to think of it, botany is not astronomy. What childish piffle!
What non-Western thinkers do is thereby marginalized as mere anthropological curiosity (e.g. as mythologizing, poetizing, or storytelling), and they are deemed unqualified to participate in the genuinely philosophical discourse of the West. What thinkers in other cultures do is endemic and of local interest only. What they think is not universally relevant since it does not apply to humankind in general or reflect the human condition as such. It is simply assumed that this is not the case with Western philosophers.
Interesting that the author feels qualified to make such blanket assertions.
Indeed, the customary use of the terms “ethnophilosophy” and “ethnoepistemology” by Western philosophers is objectionable, since it assumes that Western philosophy is the standard by which all other cultures’ philosophies and reflective activities are to be understood and measured, and that Western philosophy is philosophy simpliciter rather than one among many ethnophilosophies. (For a recent expression of this view, see Rorty 1991, 1992, 1993.) The more broadly ecumenical and non-ethnocentric use of the term “ethnoepistemology” employed here, however, avoids this shortcoming since it includes all epistemological activities, whether they African, East Asian, European or Latin American. All epistemological activities are instances of ethnoepistemology (in this broad sense); and all ethnoepistemologies are instances of epistemology.
This, however, is a pack of lies. The term “ethnophilosophy” pertaining to African philosophy, was coined by African philosophers like Paulin Hountondji who objected to elevating folk wisdom to the level of a structured conceptual intellectual discipline. Of course there is a history of western philosophers denying philosophical status to Chinese and Indian philosophy, but the latter two are not transcriptions of orally transmitted folk beliefs by tribal sages, but have long literary traditions and multiple competing organized schools of thought. It is quite a dogmatic assertion to state that all epistemological activities are ethnepistemology. Were this so, a naturalized epistemology would be impossible. This would also deny basic rational capacities of individuals to discover anything new not handed down by their forbears.
Finally, the scope of ethnoepistemology is universal in the third sense that it subjects to anthropological scrutiny what Anglo-American analytic epistemologists call normative (or basic) level as well as meta-level epistemological activities.
But this is not universal at all. And what the &#@*#!! does “anthropological scrutiny” mean? How is that different from critical thinking, reasoning, or ideology critique as a general cognitive activity? Making “Ethno” reflexive is liberal guilt turning slumming back on its culture of origin.
How do we avoid ethnocentrically begging the question in favor of our own domestic, meta-epistemological conception of epistemology and against alternative, nonequivalent conceptions advanced by other cultures?
Liberal guilt, like I said. Who gives a #*%! about doing this? This is all pretence.
OK, Husserl, Levinas, and Rorty (see rest of paragraph) had ridiculous provincial notions of non-western cultures–add Hegel and a thousand others into the mix. This, however, is an imbalance to be addressed concretely, something that has nothing to do with tolerance or pluralism.
One leading thick view places decisive weight on the role of truth. Many Western philosophers view correspondence truth as occupying the center stage of Western epistemology’s theories of knowledge and justification since Plato and Aristotle. The most prominent contemporary defender of this view is the North American philosopher Alvin Goldman. Goldman (1999) defends what he calls “veritism, i.e., the thesis that humans across culture and history uniformly seek truth, epistemic notions such as justification and knowledge are properly defined in terms of truth, the aim of cognition from the epistemological point of view is truth, and a single concept of truth is cross-culturally present (viz., correspondence truth). Goldman is not alone in defending veritism, as it represents an enduring view upheld by the majority of twentieth-century Anglo-American epistemologists from William Alston and Roderick Chisholm to Bertrand Russell and Barry Stroud.
According to veritism, those who conceive of knowledge non-veritistically, as well as those who dismiss the importance or even relevance of correspondence truth to epistemological concepts, are simply not doing epistemology.
Sure they’re doing epistemology–obscurantist epistemology. Correspondence theory of truth, though it is the only one worth taking seriously, is hardly the only thing going in western philosophy.
Goldman and others defend veritism in the face of a daunting pantheon of Western philosophers including David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, William James, John Dewey, W.V.O. Quine, Nelson Goodman, and Richard Rorty, who reject the relevance of correspondence truth to epistemology, reject veritistic epistemologies, and propose alternative, non-veritistic epistemologies. What do veritists say about these philosophers? Presumably that they have abandoned epistemology per se in favor of some other activity such as reflecting upon the rightness of belief from the moral or pragmatic point of view (e.g., see Goldman, 1999).
Good for Goldman!
Let’s consider this question from the broader perspective of comparative world philosophy. From this perspective, truth clearly appears to be merely one among many ends governing the regulation of belief (or cognition) and merely one among many ends in terms of which knowledge (or wisdom) is conceived. Non-veritistic cognitive ends include: living a life of balance and beauty; becoming a genuinely human; moral rectitude and purity; promoting social harmony; coexisting in harmony with nature; respect for nature; and conformity with sacred text (to name only a few).
If you think what precedes is awful, here’s where the diarrhea overflows the toilet. Notice how ideologically duplicitous all these non-veritistic ends are, and anyone who knows the history of the civilizations that underwrite the foul superstitions and oppressive doctrines and social institutions will be prepared to deflate all these pretentions. The mountains of lies piled on to peddle traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies in the west–by Westerners with the collusion of their opportunist colleagues in their countries of origin–are so huge it would take an encyclopedia to document them all.
David Hall (2001), David Hall and Roger Ames (1987, 1998), and Chad Hansen (1992), argue that classical, pre-Han Dynasty Taoist and Confucian epistemologies are not concerned with truth, true belief or truthful representation. Rather, they are concerned with identifying the proper path or appropriate model of conduct that enables humans to live the kind of life suitable for human beings. According to Confucianism, for example, the proper life consists of living harmoniously with one’s social surroundings. Correspondence truth plays no role in attaining or maintaining this life. One aims at living a life characterized by authenticity, genuineness, rectitude and wholeness — not knowledge defined as justified true belief. Confucian epistemology seeks to identify the kind of knowledge that is needed for following this path, i.e., knowledge that is performative and participatory rather than representational. Classical Chinese epistemologies seek right or appropriate belief — not true belief. If truth is relevant, it is defined in terms of genuineness or authenticity — not correspondence.
This would in itself be enough to condemn Confucianism, without even knowing how vile and despicable it is from its history. Confucianism like all isms contains a world view, and Confucianism is entirely founded on Chinese feudalism and its hierarchical social institutions. I’ve read Hall and Ames, whose real scholarship is overlaid with an ideological agenda. But all this pimping for Chinese philosophy serves strictly western purposes. (Though now the thoroughly corrupt Chinese mainland can appropriate this obscurantist drivel to prop up its social order as the most ruthless exploiter of labor on the planet.)
Indigenous North American philosophers Vine Deloria, Jr. (DeLoria, Jr. (1994) and DeLoria, et al (eds.), 1999) and Lee Hester (Hester and Cheney 2001), contend that indigenous North American philosophies treat cognitive states as maps rather than as beliefs. Hester claims Native American philosophy does not focus upon belief and as a consequence does not worry about the correspondence-truth of belief. Native Americans focus upon actions and practices, and adopt an attitude of non-belief (i.e., neither belief nor disbelief) towards actions and practices. This attitude is rooted in the idea that one is defined by one’s actions, not one’s beliefs. Adopting the metaphor of “the map and the territory,” Hester maintains Native Americans adopt an agnostic attitude of epistemological humility regarding the correspondence-truth of their map. They are concerned with the utility of their map as a practical action-guide. Knowledge has a practical not theoretical focus; it concerns concrete experiences and narratives of actual lives in the world. Knowledge is not a species of belief.
Which is all nonsense, because they either have objective knowledge or they don’t. They must have had a modicum of same or they couldn’t have lasted thousands of years before the white man came and nearly wiped them out. But they were as superstitious and full of false knowledge claims as the Catholic and Protestant maniacs from Europe who trampled them mercilessly. “Indigenous North American philosophers” are all intellectuals and western-educated and motivated by the same self-deceiving nostalgia that drives westerners who go slumming in non-western cultures. I actually heard a radio speech by a Native American prof. I once met, decades later, who spoke about Native Americans and postmodernism! Academia corrupts everyone it touches.
Jim Cheney (Cheney 1998, Hester and Cheney 2001) argues that Indigenous North American philosophies conceive truth in moral terms such as responsibility, goodness and human well-being. This view of truth is a component of an ethical-epistemological orientation Cheney calls an “epistemology of respect” rather than an “epistemology of control. Truth must responsibly guide action in the sense of promoting the well-being of everyone. It must be rooted in the world of concrete everyday practices and experiences in a way that makes possible human flourishing.
Sounds great on paper. Now where’s the evidence to back up these claims? Imagine if we were to judge Christian civilization by it stated moral goals. Guess how much grasp of reality we’d have.
Willard Gingerich (1987), Miguel Leon-Portilla (1963), and James Maffie (2000b, 2002, 2003) maintain that pre-Hispanic indigenous Nahuatl-speaking philosophers of the High Central Plateau of Mexico conceived knowledge in non-veritistic terms such as balance, well-groundednness, moral uprightness, authenticity, and disclosingness.
Disclosingness? Authenticity? I guess Heidegger was a plagiarist. I’ll bet these folks–and I hope these weren’t the ones practicing human sacrifice–judged truth claims on practical matters as we do: do you know what you’re talking about or are you blowing smoke out your ass?
Correspondence truth played no role in their notions of wisdom, knowledge, proper belief, etc.
But if they did not practice correspondence truth a good percentage of the time, they would have died out thousands of years ago.
Gordon Brotherston (2001) likewise argues that indigenous Amazonian philosophy conceives knowledge pragmatically in terms of the trustworthy, responsible, and careful ordering and arranging of things. It eschews broad, overarching, abstract conceptions of truth such as correspondence between propositions and world.
Most people do not couch how they approach reality in such abstract terms–as propositions. And the same rule goes for what they say as well as what they don’t say: watch what they do.
Furthermore, rather than simply assuming that non-veritist epistemologies mistakenly fail to draw a conceptually necessary or intrinsically rational distinction between the epistemological and the moral or aesthetic points of view, ethnoepistemology’s status as fallible, hypothetical, and a posteriori enterprise commits us to remain open to the possibilities that non-veritistic epistemologies have simply pursued an alternative path of epistemological development (one that may at some level even be incommensurable with the veritistic path), or that non-veritistic epistemologies have simply not committed the mistake of balkanizing the epistemological from the moral or aesthetic — i.e. the mistake of falsely drawing a distinction where there is no distinction to be made. After all, by naturalist lights, whether there is a distinction to be made is a contingent and a posteriori matter.
All this is pretence and false promises. A confused mess. And I thought English professors were incapable of logical reasoning.
The veritist’s putative distinction between these various points of view is not rooted in rationality per se, pre-existing non-natural epistemological reality, or a priori conceptual reality. In this regard, therefore, ethnoepistemologists need to be wary of a yet another version of ethnocentrism, viz., philosophical whiggism or the tendency to treat the claims and distinctions of the Western philosophical present not only as correct but as the inevitable, developmental destiny of all philosophical reflection.
All confused nonsense with a number of tendential assumptions. I should have just said: “a barrel of red herrings.”
Comparative world philosophy clearly supports the idea that there is more than one philosophical (and epistemological) trajectory taken by humankind (see Deutsche and Bontekoe (eds.), 1997; Eze (ed.), 1996; Nuccetelli and Seay (eds.), 2004; Scharfstein, 1998; and Waters (ed.), 2004).
This is a tautological assertion in the case of philosophy, since we know that different philosophies in different parts of the world didn’t take the same course. Proving what?
How shall ethnoepistemology resolve this question? The thin conception of epistemology seems more attractive on several grounds. First, it leaves as open a posteriori question the nature and aims of knowledge and epistemology. Second, it is more inclusive. It recognizes a wider variety of possible answers to our questions concerning the nature and aims of knowledge and epistemology. Third, it achieves this inclusiveness in a manner that simultaneously respects the differences between world epistemologies. That is, it creates a common ground for world philosophers (and philosophies) without making all philosophers (and philosophies) the image of Western philosophers (philosophies). Alternatively put, it does not affirm that the non-Western other is doing epistemology by demanding that the non-Western other do precisely what Western epistemologists do and thus be indistinguishable from Western epistemologists.
Liberal pluralist tolerance is always a fraud. There is no inherent value to respect for difference. Difference is no more an absolute than sameness. And both are irrelevant to the pursuit of truth, that tolerates nothing that gets in its way.
Fourth, it avoids the subtle yet significant error committed by thick accounts such as Goldman’s. Goldman confounds normative and meta-levels of epistemology by construing his normative level definition of knowledge as a meta-epistemological constraint upon the nature of epistemology per se. As we’ve seen, Anglo-American philosophers distinguish meta- and normative levels of epistemological inquiry. Normative-level inquiry pursues such issues as the correct definition (or theory) of knowledge.
I’m not in a position to evaluate this.
Goldman’s normative-level theory of knowledge, for example, defines correspondence truth as a necessary condition knowledge.
What other could there be? Why not just say that having an erection is a necessary condition of having a hard-on?
Meta-epistemological inquiry investigates the semantics, metaphysics, and epistemology of knowledge claims as well as the nature of epistemology itself. Goldman moves illegitimately from the normative level claim that truth is a necessary (defining) condition of knowledge to the logically distinct meta-level claim that truth is a necessary (defining) condition of epistemology proper. This leads Goldman to reject all non-veritistic conceptions of epistemology not on the grounds that they advocate a posteriori false theories of knowledge but on the grounds that they fail ex hypothesi to be epistemology se.
Somebody else will have to unpack this for me.
Fifth, the thin conception leaves open the possibility of relativism concerning definitions of the proper ends of cognition from the epistemological point of view as well as relativism concerning definitions of knowledge, justification, evidence, right (good) belief. Thicker approaches, such as veritism, rule out relativism ex hypothesi; anyone who disagrees is simply not doing epistemology.
Yeah for ruling out relativism!
Lastly, the thin view is less ethnocentric than the thick. While it is true that the thin view requires that others engage in the same kinds of reflective processes that we do on pain of not doing epistemology, it does not require that others arrive at the same substantive conclusions that we do in the way that thicker views require. Indeed, the thin view includes every cognitive practice we might feel inclined to translate/interpret as “epistemology. In addition, it turns out that in most, if not all, cultures, individuals practice epistemology as thinly conceived.
Huh?
In sum, ethnoepistemology strives to conceive epistemology as broadly, ecumenically, and open-endedly as possible without lapsing into triviality.
I’m busting a gut right about now.
First, does epistemology enjoy a metaphysical essence that necessarily distinguishes it from ethics, soccer, cooking, and pragmatics? In brief, it would seem not. Naturalism appears to afford us no such metaphysical underpinnings for human activities and no transcendental assurances concerning the eternal essence of epistemology, the ends of cognition from the epistemological point of view, or epistemology’s distinctness from other human activities such as doing science, playing chess or raising children. There is no pre-existing sui generis epistemological reality for humans to seek to discover through epistemology. Similarly, epistemology (like other human activities) does not appear to qualify as a natural kind like say, H2O, quark, and humanness. Rather, epistemology is a contingent enterprise fashioned by humans and for humans. Our conceptions of knowledge, justification and evidence as well as of epistemology itself are all contingent human fabrications.
Anything we do not found in raw nature is fabrication. And so? What pretentious, confused nonsense.
However, this fact entails neither epistemological relativism nor metaphysical irealism regarding the ontological status of epistemological properties. Whether humankind’s epistemological activities are characterized by unity or relativity remains an open factual question to be settled a posteriori. Similarly, anti-essentialism regarding the essence of the enterprise of epistemology is compatible with realism regarding epistemic properties such as justification.
Liar!
Second, if epistemology is underpinned neither by a metaphysical essence nor by a natural kind, can we maintain that there is a pre-existing fact of the matter whether someone in another culture is really doing epistemology as opposed to something else? Can we maintain that it is precisely such facts that an adequate ethnoepistemology must capture? On the other hand must we deny the existence of such facts and maintain instead that whether or not someone is doing epistemology is ultimately a matter of our translation/interpretation of their behavior? (For relevant discussion, see Quine 1960; Davidson 1984; and Roth 1987).
Huh?
First, assuming we define epistemology as concerned with evaluating whether or not some item qualifies as knowledge, how shall we construe the nature of knowledge: as something psychological, sociological, biological, behavioral, or ecological? Shall we think of knowledge as an entity one apprehends and possesses, as a map one uses, as an appellation bestowed by one’s social peers or as a way of acting in the world? Finally, does the actual practice of epistemology require that one construes knowledge in one of these ways rather than another?Ethnoepistemology ought to remain neutral regarding these questions in order to be as inclusive as possible regarding the variety of possible epistemologies in the world. There appears to be no compelling reason to think that the practice of epistemology proper requires that knowledge be defined as a private, mental entity as opposed to a behavioral or practical disposition; or that it be theorized as an entity to be acquired and possessed as opposed to a way of conducting one’s life, etc.
Notice the difference between the last sentence and the proceeding. Except for “conducting one’s life”, all of the ways of conceiving epistemology names in the last sentence refer to a cognitive relation to the objective world. Neutrality and recognizing epistemological variety are not the same thing. Let’s call every claim to an approach to knowledge and then decide which we think are valid and which to toss over the bridge, as we’ve always done. None of this intrinsically has anything to do with being western, eastern, northern, or southern.
Western epistemology has traditionally focused upon theoretical to the exclusion of practical knowledge. If one agrees and defines the proper concern of epistemological evaluation to be propositional knowledge (or belief), then it would appear to follow that those individuals, groups, and cultures that conceive knowledge (and belief) non-propositionally must a fortiori fail to be doing epistemology. Whatever they are doing, it simply is not epistemology.
Well, the intellectual elite in western as in all other civilizations were distinguished by not doing physical labor. That biased all of them in this way. But note that how sloppy this author is in constructing his paragraphs. “Epistemology” is used in two different ways, as a formal branch of an intellectual set of disciplines, as the process of “knowing” in general which everyone does. Who thinks about knowledge being proposition or not but a selected subset of the intellectual class?
Yet classical Chinese thought (as embodied in pre-Han Taoist and Confucian traditions) focused upon neither propositional (sentential) and theoretical attitudes nor propositional and theoretical (sentential) knowledge. Chinese linguistic theory is pragmatic, not semantic. According to Hansen, it is concerned with the assertability of “words, phrases, sentences, arguments and even whole dialogues” (Hansen 1992:44), rather than the truth of sentences or propositions. Chinese epistemology discusses zhi (knowledge) but interprets zhi non-propositionally.
The grammatical object of zhi (know) is always a noun or phrase, not a subject-predicate sentence. The kind of knowing that makes sense of Chinese views is knowing-how to do something, knowing-to-do something, or knowing-of (about) something (Hansen 1992:44).
According to Roger Ames, zhi is a way of acting in the world; it is “knowing…the ‘way’…” (Ames 1997:259).
I’ve read this Ames. Yeah, OK, knowledge involves doing, unless you’re just sitting on your ass philosophizing. BTW, did Heraclitus ever write that knowledge is propositional?
A host of indigenous North and Mesoamerican philosophies embrace remarkably similar pragmatic accounts of knowledge (and belief) (e.g., see Deloria, et al (eds.), 1999: Hester and Cheney, 2001: Gingerich, 1987: Maffie, 2002: and Waters (ed.), 2004).
What does this mean? What is meant here by “philosophies”? Uncle Jim’s philosophy ain’t propositional, either.
Shall we conclude that East Asian and indigenous North and Mesoamerican philosophers cannot be said to be doing epistemology since they define knowledge in non-propositional, behavioral terms — that is, because they define knowledge incorrectly according to (some) Western philosophies?
Well, you can’t be doing epistemology if you’re not saying something about the nature of knowledge. And if you do, it depends on how far you delve into it. Than again, someone can observe someone else’s knowledge practices and formulate it as an epistemology. This is what Hountonji called ethnophilosophy. But he considered the people listening and writing this stuff down as the philosophers in a sense comparable to what is formally called “philosophy.”
Western epistemologists have commonly defined knowledge in terms of justified true belief, and commonly construed epistemology as being concerned with evaluating the epistemic credentials of belief.
Not all of them. What a bloody fucking bore!
Rodney Needham persuasively argues against the idea that “the institutions of…belief…express a distinct and universal mode of stable experience (Needham 1972:217), and hence the idea that belief is natural kind that cuts across culture. He quotes E.E. Evans-Pritchard as saying, “There is…no word in the Nuer language which could stand for ‘I believe’” (Needham 1972:23); no word with which to express belief. Whatever mental states, cognitive attitudes or sentiments the Nuer adopt towards the existence of, say, their gods or cosmologies, Evans-Pritchard denies they are felicitously translated/interpreted into English as believe. People in other cultures appear to employ different folk psychologies when characterizing their mental states (just as they employ different folk physics when characterizing their environments), and these folk psychologies need not include belief. As a consequence, we should not expect individuals in other cultures to have beliefs. Belief is simply not a useful notion in representing the mental states of individuals in (at least some) other cultures.
Nonsense! What people say is one thing, but paradoxically, if you don’t think that epistemology must be discursive, then watch what people do, and you will see what they believe, or try to convince themselves they believe. I read some decades ago that the Nuer believed that if lightning strikes and kills you, you are favored by the gods. Whether they prefaced their statements by “I believe that”, I wouldn’t know. But I suspect that whatever their story line, they didn’t fight one another for the privilege of being honored by divine electrocution from the sky.
Hallen and Sodipo (1997) contend the most plausible translation/interpretation of Yoruba linguistic behavior containing abstract terms and concepts used in the evaluation and grading of information yields a reading which does not map neatly onto the English terms “belief” and knowledge. The Yoruba’s notions of gbagbo and mo are not logically equivalent to the English notions of belief and knowledge, respectively. Yoruba epistemological concepts and distinctions simply do not map neatly onto Anglo-American epistemological concepts and distinctions. In so arguing, the authors make a strong prima facie case for the non-universality of propositional attitudes as well as the non-universality of epistemological concepts (e.g., the concept of knowledge as justified true belief). Is the Yoruba’s evaluation of information properly characterized as epistemology? Does epistemology cease to exist in a culture wherein there is no belief to evaluate?
The Yoruba have religion, and so they most certainly do have belief to evaluate. Southern rednecks definitely have religion and belief up the wazoo, but they have no epistemology other than the epistemology of paranoid delusion, because learning and evaluating information go against their belief system. Their propostional attitude is: “How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so.” This places them lower than all the rest of the primates.
Chad Hansen argues that classical Chinese does not possess the notion of belief as a propositional or sentential attitude [. . .] The closest counterparts to belief are best understood as “dispositions to use a term of some object” (Hansen 1992:44) rather than as propositional attitudes. Is epistemology possible under these circumstances?
In modern Chinese, surely. As for the history of Chinese thought, I’m guessing the ability to express anything is possible if the interest in developing the terminology to do so is there. The ancient Chinese did argue with one another. I don’t remember much in the way of epistemology at the time the philosophical schools came into being. Maybe with neo-Taoism, neo-Confucianism, and Buddhism? I don’t remember enough to know. But really, is justified true belief all there is to discuss?
Finally, Paul Churchland (1979, 1981), Patricia Churchland (1986, 1987), and Stephen Stich (1983) contend that the notion of belief is a theoretical constituent of Western culture’s folk psychology about what is the nature of mind. Western folk psychology will undoubtedly be supplanted by neuroscience, just as Western folk physics has been supplanted by Western scientific physics. In the process, they predict, the notion of belief will simply be eliminated, tossed into the rubbish bin of outmoded folk theoretical notions alongside unicorns, faeries, and leprechauns.
I suspect this is a pipe dream.
There are no compelling reasons for requiring that individuals have specific cognitive attitudes such as belief in order for there to be epistemology.
There is a difference between people having belief and philosophers defining belief. As for whether belief is dispositional or cognitive, the two questions are not separable, for both actions and claims are evidence of what people believe, i.e. hold to be true or form the basis of their actions. The author repeatedly confuses the formal study of knowing with knowing practices and the claims of others about same.
Ethnoepistemology examines the epistemological activities of three groups of epistemic agents: ordinary folk, cognitive specialists (e.g., scientists and diviners), and epistemologists. In what follows, these are called “the ethnoepistemology of folk epistemology,” “the ethnoepistemology of cognitive specialists,” and “the ethnoepistemology of epistemology,” respectively. The three exist along a continuum since their activities differ in degree, not in kind. They differ in terms of their degree of critical self-reflection, abstraction and generality of theorizing. In one degree or another, and from time to time, ordinary folk as well as cognitive specialists engage in epistemological reflection. Reflection upon the general nature of evidence, justification, and knowledge is by no means the monopoly of professional philosophers (For supporting argument, see Maffie 1995, 1999).
Re last sentence: if we had to rely on professional philosophers, we’d be in deep shit.
Descriptive studies aim to describe and report faithfully the goals, norms and methodologies of various human epistemic activities. Critical studies aim to evaluate and critically reflect upon these practices. They also issue in critical or prescriptive reforming accounts of human epistemic norms, theories, and judgments.
Oh goody, so that means we can drop tolerance after all.
The ethnoepistemology of ordinary folk examines what Goldman (1992) calls the “epistemic folkways” — i.e., the largely pre-reflective, untutored, and uncritical workaday epistemic concepts, intuitions, judgments, and norms of ordinary people.
Well, doesn’t plain old epistemology do that, too?
Descriptive studies aim to describe faithfully the intuitions, judgments, standards, and goals of some particular folk epistemic practice.
Oh, I see. Descartes didn’t do this, did he?
Incidentally, from the perspective of ethnoepistemology, self-proclaimed non-naturalist epistemologists such as Bonjour (1985) and Chisholm (1977) unwittingly practice descriptive or critical domestic ethnoepistemology of their epistemic folkways. After all, they rely upon ordinary intuitions and concepts, common sense judgments, etc., as the raw data for their a priori reflections and theories. Yet as Stephen Stich (1991:209) points out, their studies constitute “a sort of domestic cognitive anthropology which records and formalizes our culture’s commonsense epistemic notions. Moreover, their projects are epistemologically flawed because their use of intuitions, judgments and thought-experiments amounts to little more than an appeal to anecdotal evidence.
Can somebody evaluate this for me?
The ethnoepistemology of cognitive specialists examines the epistemological activities of curers, shamans, diviners, priests, scientists, etc. Cognitive specialists are individuals who cultivate the use of one (or more) specific method or style (e.g., altered states of consciousness, intuition, reason or observation) in the formation and regulation of cognitive attitudes. Trained in a specific cognitive method, they tend to be more self-conscious about their use of evidence, rules of evidence, evidential goals, etc., than most ordinary folk.
Really? Has how does the epistemology of scientists square with the epistemology of shamans and priests?
The ethnoepistemology of epistemologists examines the epistemological activities of epistemologists, i.e., individuals who reflect critically, abstractly, systematically, theoretically, and generally upon the nature, source and limits of knowledge per se — as opposed to the nature, source and limits of knowledge as conceived within the limits of some cognitive practice (e.g., science, religion, etc.). The ethnoepistemology of epistemologists is undoubtedly the most controversial area of ethnoepistemology since it conceives the activity of epistemologists as a straightforward natural phenomenon susceptible to a posteriori examination by cognitive psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists of knowledge, etc. Much like priests and shamans, epistemologists (and philosophers generally) typically maintain their activities and claims reside beyond the limits of naturalistic explanation since they fancy themselves able to transcend the natural realm by dint of special, non-natural cognitive faculties that provide them with privileged access to non-natural metaphysical truths, principles or facts. Ethnoepistemology insists upon studying the activities of philosophers in the same manner as anthropology studies the activities of priests, shamans, and scientists.
If I laugh any harder, I’ll pee in my drawers!
