One other worry I forgot to mention however: I could be totally wrong here, but presumably most applications of this kind of “standpoint epistemology”, in the last ten years, comes from researchers I would suspect of being far-left activists. If so, those people would of course be very eager to interview people they believe in their political worldview to be victims of oppression, i.e. especially black people and women. They would very rarely interview white men or Asians or police officers about their “experiences” or “problems”. This can lead to publication bias, where a lot of “problems” and “experiences” of particular groups get published, but hardly any of other groups which fall outside the concern of the predominant political ideology of those researchers. Then the evidence is biased in virtue of the selection effects at place.
I’m not 100% sure about this, but from what I’ve heard a lot of left-wing academics don’t even try all that hard to reveal black people’s experiences, but instead mainly use black people as a tool to say that right-wingers are bad.
I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but I’d think it is best addressed by doing more to map out different people’s experiences in a publicly accessible way.
That is what I am getting at when I say:
And these principles don’t have to be disempowering. While “shut up and listen” may sound tiring, it is important to remember that going out to find people willing to educate you (possibly in exchange for payment, as in this post) is an active action you can take in order to improve your understanding of your world. Knowledge is power!
One of the benefits of Standpoint Epistemology is that it is very efficient. People naturally observe and remember many of their experiences as they live their life, and it is relatively quick to just ask them about it. This post only took me about a day’s worth of work, and less than $100 worth of money. If scaled up to be more comprehensive, it would presumably take more work, but presumably also be more informative.
My ideal outcome for this post would be if more people went out and mapped more groups’ perspectives of more situations.
Okay, these points seem reasonable.
One other worry I forgot to mention however: I could be totally wrong here, but presumably most applications of this kind of “standpoint epistemology”, in the last ten years, comes from researchers I would suspect of being far-left activists. If so, those people would of course be very eager to interview people they believe in their political worldview to be victims of oppression, i.e. especially black people and women. They would very rarely interview white men or Asians or police officers about their “experiences” or “problems”. This can lead to publication bias, where a lot of “problems” and “experiences” of particular groups get published, but hardly any of other groups which fall outside the concern of the predominant political ideology of those researchers. Then the evidence is biased in virtue of the selection effects at place.
I’m not 100% sure about this, but from what I’ve heard a lot of left-wing academics don’t even try all that hard to reveal black people’s experiences, but instead mainly use black people as a tool to say that right-wingers are bad.
I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but I’d think it is best addressed by doing more to map out different people’s experiences in a publicly accessible way.
That is what I am getting at when I say:
My ideal outcome for this post would be if more people went out and mapped more groups’ perspectives of more situations.