Emily Tilton

An emerging narrative links the rise of social epistemology with the decline of a purist epistemological orthodoxy. The thought that motivates this narrative is that impurist epistemologies make space for social, moral, and pragmatic considerations, whereas purist epistemologies did not, which transforms epistemology from something that was once overly idealized and abstract into something that makes meaningful contact with the social realities of knowledge. Despite the intuitive appeal of this narrative, I argue that it owes its plausibility to a lack of conceptual clarity. When we more clearly articulate the contours of the purist orthodoxy, we see that (i) different varieties of impurism make space for social, moral, and pragmatic considerations in importantly different ways, which complicates how this set of views hangs together, and (ii) even the strictest of purists can attend to social, moral, and pragmatic factors in the sense necessary for producing socially engaged epistemology.

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible but politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on.