This post is also available on LessWrong. This post started from a bit of a weird place. I was in a Discord chatroom, and someone started complaining that Standpoint Epistemology had been “taken way past its carrying weight”. I didn’t know much about Standpoint Epistemology, so I asked for various examples and resources about it. The resources she gave me that were written by Standpoint Epistemologists seemed relatively reasonable, and the resources that criticized it seemed to me to either be misrepresenting what Standpoint Epistemologists were saying, or to be criticizing people for something other than excessive Standpoint Epistemology.
>Standpoint Epistemology emphasizes that if someone tells you about something that you haven’t had experience with, you should take this as a learning opportunity, rather than concluding that they must be irrational, biased, or crazy.
Given that rationalists are keen on overcoming biases that affect individuals (usually doing so through agreed-upon processes for analyzing large swathes of data) it would make no sense for rationalists to necessarily treat someone’s individual experience as indicative of anything, especially if you yourself have no experience with the topic, and as such have poorly calibrated priors. On the other hand, if your priors are properly calibrated, than SE seemingly has no use for you. I struggle to see how this has any usefulness for rationalists.
Moreover, in practice, statements’ truth or falsity isn’t dependent on your emotional closeness with the subject matter, but this is how SE is often used, even if that’s not ‘proper.’ With this in mind, it definitely isn’t commensurate with how rationalists conduct themselves and find truth.
Thank you for writing this, I hope it opens a discussion on the topic. I think Standpoint Epistemology really can help by making some biases explicit, and finding uses for that - sometimes there are things we can learn from biased sources only when we know their bias, whereas when the ideal is to be unbiased that doesn't necessarily lead to objectivity - sometimes it just means the bias is hidden.
Of course objectivity is a very good thing, when it can be had, but acknowledging when it's not present and dealing with that is such a strength. Sometimes when we assume we are objective is when we develop some truly absurd blind spots, after all.
>Standpoint Epistemology emphasizes that if someone tells you about something that you haven’t had experience with, you should take this as a learning opportunity, rather than concluding that they must be irrational, biased, or crazy.
Given that rationalists are keen on overcoming biases that affect individuals (usually doing so through agreed-upon processes for analyzing large swathes of data) it would make no sense for rationalists to necessarily treat someone’s individual experience as indicative of anything, especially if you yourself have no experience with the topic, and as such have poorly calibrated priors. On the other hand, if your priors are properly calibrated, than SE seemingly has no use for you. I struggle to see how this has any usefulness for rationalists.
Moreover, in practice, statements’ truth or falsity isn’t dependent on your emotional closeness with the subject matter, but this is how SE is often used, even if that’s not ‘proper.’ With this in mind, it definitely isn’t commensurate with how rationalists conduct themselves and find truth.
Thank you for writing this, I hope it opens a discussion on the topic. I think Standpoint Epistemology really can help by making some biases explicit, and finding uses for that - sometimes there are things we can learn from biased sources only when we know their bias, whereas when the ideal is to be unbiased that doesn't necessarily lead to objectivity - sometimes it just means the bias is hidden.
Of course objectivity is a very good thing, when it can be had, but acknowledging when it's not present and dealing with that is such a strength. Sometimes when we assume we are objective is when we develop some truly absurd blind spots, after all.