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PARTISAN REVIEW
But these observations about the epistemic interdependence of
knowing subjects and the social character of scientific inquiry, rather than
suggesting the conclusion that knowledge is inherently political, suggest,
on the contrary, that one of the (of course, fallible and imperfect)
mechanisms by means of which bias gets detected and corrected - in sci–
entific theorizing, and, though less systematically, in inquiry generally - is
by means of competition between supporters of rival theories or ap–
proaches.
Another source of the idea that knowledge is inherently political has
been the perception that racist, sexist, etc., ideas have sometimes come to
be accepted, not because they were well-supported by evidence, but be–
cause of unjustifiable prejudices and preconceptions. (Hence the astonish–
ing outbreak of sneer quotes - "knowledge," "fact," "evidence,"
"rationality," and so forth - in recent radical epistemology.) Racist or
sexist ideas have, indeed, sometimes passed for known fact or established
theory; and sometimes, no doubt, at least part of the explanation of
how this came about is that those ideas' being accepted served the inter–
ests of the more powerful race or sex. But the inference from the true
premise that what has passed for known fact or objective evidence is no
such thing, to the conclusion that the notions of knowledge, fact, evi–
dence, etc., are ideological humbug, is manifestly invalid. Indeed, this in–
valid inference - I call it
the "passes for" fallacy
-
is not only fallacious,
but also pragmatically self-defeating. For if, as the conclusion has it, the
notions of knowledge, fact, relevant evidence, and so forth were really
no more than ideological humbug, then the premise, that racist or sexist
theories have sometimes been accepted on inadequate evidence, would
itself be undennined.
In short, one can perfectly well acknowledge the shortcomings of
foundationalism and coherentism, human inquirers' pervasive epistemic
dependence on one another, the social character of scientific inquiry, the
complexity and fallibility of all human cognitive activity, the corruption
of some claims to truth, without being obliged to grant either that epis–
temic standards are community- or culture-relative, or that inquiry is in–
variably political.
One way to put it, using the vocabulary of "objectivity" and its sev–
eral contrasts, would be this: a truth-claim is either true or else false, true
or false objectively, that is, independently of whether you or I or any–
body believes it. But there is of course no guarantee that all truth-claims
are
true .
Standards of evidence are objective, that is, a person is more or
less justified in believing something, and a scientific theory is more or less
warranted, depending on how good his, or the, evidence is - and "how
