From Standpoint Epistemology to Epistemic Oppression

Hypatia 34 (4):598-618 (2019)
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Abstract

Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge‐acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend.This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression.

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Briana Toole
Claremont McKenna College

Citations of this work

Hostile Epistemology.C. Thi Nguyen - 2023 - Social Philosophy Today 39:9-32.
Transparency is Surveillance.C. Thi Nguyen - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (2):331-361.
What is White Ignorance?Annette Martín - 2021 - Philosophical Quarterly 71 (4):pqaa073.

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