Mills, C.W. (1988). "Alternative Epistemologies". Social Theory and Practice, 14(3), 237-263.
Mills is arguing for the validity of alternative epistemologies that are associated with socially subordinated groups that historically have been the subjects of oppression from some kind of dominant group.
E.g. =
- a Marxist version of an alternative epistemology stresses epistemological advantages of the working class
- other socially subordinated groups include racial minorities or women
Mill’s notion of social subordination is strongly tied to the idea of epistemic advantage, i.e. they have ways of knowing that aren’t used by the dominant groups.
Bases for Epistemic advantages
Biology
Mills mentions the idea that there are biological bases for the advantage of subordinated groups. The biological differentiation between members of subordinated vs dominant groups include various differences in cognitive ability.
E.g. =
- biological processes like pregnancy, mensuration, nursing, etc. provide women with distinctive experiences and associated kinds of knowledge that are unavailable to men.
- some race theories maintain that there are characteristically black modes of cognition that are unavailable to white oppressors
Mills believes that biology as a basis is controversial at best for alternative epistemology.
- the science may be inconclusive or problematic
- making a convincing case that there’s a biological basis specific to the socially subordinated group means appealing to standard scientific norms or standard scientific kinds of argument, which can be somewhat paradoxical
social causation
Mills’ view is that the social positioning of socially subordinated groups produces the epistemic advantage.
This idea is derived from Marxism and is a core idea of Marxist philosophy that ” … social causation can have both positive and negative effects epistemically”
In the case of negative epistemic effects, the capitalist class suffer from illusions about the world, seeing their entitlement and authority in the system as natural and deserved. This illusion is caused by their class location, which shields them from the injustice their power depends on. There are also positive effects, such as the working class is in a position to see through and unmask the illusion of the ruling class, as a result of their distinctive experience of oppression under capitalism. In this sense, the working class, on a Marxist view, has an epistemic advantage over the dominant capitalist class. Similarly, women have the capacity to see through the illusions perpetuated by patriarchy as they suffer under it, and racial minorities and colonized people can see through the illusions perpetuated by white colonizers.
“This, then, is the central idea that has to be defended if the project of alternative epistemologies is to get off the ground: the social causation can be epistemologically beneficial. The next step is to clarify precisely what social characteristic is supposed to produce this superior insight.”
Why does social positioning lead to epistemic advantage?
Mills highlights three possibilities to account for the epistemic advantage in terms of social positioning
The first possibility is oppression i.e. does the oppression of a subordinated group by a dominant group (or hegemonic group as Mills calls it) lead to epistemic advantage? Mills thinks that this too simplistic, and that mere experience of oppression doesn’t lead to much advantage, as “suffering itself is not necessarily cognitively illuminating.” He also notes that oppressed people can often show a tendency to believe in the systems that oppresses them. So, oppression doesn’t necessarily lead to any special insight regarding the realities of a social situation, or any epistemic advantage.
The second possibility is universality. This idea comes from Marx that in the context of mature capitalism, the epistemic standpoint of the working class amounted to a kind of universal experience. Mills argues that the universality of the working class standpoint seems to be arbitrary and exclusive, especially when historically, socialism itself was not innocent of racism and sexism.
The final possibility is differential experience. This Mills thinks is the most plausible explanation of the epistemic advantages of subordinated groups.
Mills quotes Bhikhu Parekh to characterize what he means by differential experience =
“To be a member of society is to occupy a prestructured social space and to find oneself already related to others in a certain manner…. Since [one’s] relations with other positions are objectively structured in a determinate manner, so are one’s social experiences… Since [one’s] social experiences are structured, [one’s] forms of thought, the categories in terms of which one perceives and interprets the social world, are also structured.”
Elster’s argument against Marxist alternative epistemology view
Elster argues that all people living under capitalism, regardless of their class, are equally vulnerable to the ideological illusions the system produces. On his reading, capitalism generates distorted beliefs but these distortions affect capitalists and workers alike, and so the working class has no epistemic advantage.
Mills pushes back against this interpretation. He argues that Elster ignores the role of differential experience, which is central to Marx’s account of ideology and knowledge. Marx holds that although everyone encounters certain shared illusions in the market (the appearance that buyer and seller meet as equals), workers also undergo a class-specific, “particular” set of experiences, such as the experience of economic constraint and exploitation. Workers directly confront the fact that they are compelled to sell their labour because capitalists control the means of production. This lived reality undermines the illusion of free and voluntary participation in the economic system.
Because capitalists do not experience this constraint—they do not have their survival tied to labouring under someone else’s authority—they are far less positioned to recognize the illusions. For Mills, this shows that subordinated groups can develop an epistemic advantage.
Mills extends this point beyond class. Women’s experience at work, on dates, and on the streets can allow them to realize the omnipresent threat of rape by men and how that plays a major role in determining their behavior. Similarly, Black communities’ encounters with housing discrimination, labour market exclusion, and policing reveal the ongoing persistence of white racism, which white people frequently deny.
In general, Mills argues that subordinate groups’ concrete experiences generate forms of knowledge unavailable within dominant group standpoints. This is what he means when he calls for “alternative epistemologies”: ways of knowing grounded in the lived realities of groups whose social position exposes structures of power that dominant groups fail to see.
Role of standpoint theory and naturalized epistemology
Mills’ account of alternative epistemologies based on differential experience is a form of standpoint theory in a broad sense, as it emphasizes that knowledge is socially situated and that certain standpoints reveal features of the world others miss. Longino-on-feminist-epistemology rejects traditional versions of standpoint theory that treat the experience of subordinated groups as sufficiently uniform to generate a single standpoint. Her worry is the essentialism and over-generalization involved in assuming a stable, group-wide epistemic position. Mills avoids this concern by denying that subordinated groups share a single homogenous standpoint, and instead argues that they are often “in a better cognitive positions to form true beliefs about the mechanisms of oppression … than hegemonic groups.” In other words, alternative epistemology doesn’t require overall commonality of experience within a subordinated group, but only a degree of commonality that differentiates the epistemic resources of oppressed groups from those of hegemonic groups.
Mills also extends naturalized epistemology of explaining knowledge through empirical facts about human cognition to include the social and political structures among the causal factors that shape cognition. Mills argues that subordinated groups may develop cognitive advantages in seeing the mechanisms of oppression. Mills’ view, however, keeps the normative aspect that some naturalized epistemology rejects, as he maintains the claim that some standpoints are epistemically superior and have a better chance of forming true beliefs.
challenge of objectivity
A potential challenge is that the nature of alternative epistemologies threatens to collapse it into a “relativistic pluralism”, as Mills calls it. Because from any given standpoint, even a hegemonic one, the world is experience differently. What allows us to judge either for or against a standpoint’s objective adequacy? Also, individuals are often members of more than one group, and so ”… those who are oppressed in one context may be oppressors in another.”
This leads to potentially individualistic relativism = the view that truths and standards are relative to each individual and that there are no universal or objective truths
Mills instead argues that the value of alternative epistemologies is not in treating any single standpoint as fully authoritative or universally accurate, but in seeing how each newly articulated standpoint corrects the limitations of the previous ones. This produces a progressive, cumulative movement towards greater objectivity.
“What is needed is a synthesis of the alternative epistemologies that recognizes both the multiplicity and the unity, the experiential subjectivity and the causal objectivity of hierarchical class-, gender-, and race divided society.”
complementary and opposition to Mainstream epistemology
Mills’ discussion often describes alternative epistemology as being deliberately opposed to mainstream epistemology.
On advocating for alternative epistemology, Mills sees mainstream epistemology as a kind of sterile academic exercise that doesn’t have much to do with the real world in which people live. In fact, it can be argued that the problems of epistemology only occur because of the privileged universalization of the experience and outlook of the dominating sector (largely white, male, and propertied). Thus, on this view, mainstream epistemology is at best, academic and abstract, and ay worst, a symptom of the social bias that alternative epistemology tends to diagnose.
However, Mills’ view of alternative epistemology also sees it ultimately as complimentary to mainstream epistemology. He notes that there is a common “universal” zone that makes mainstream epistemology possible in the first place and that it would be absurd to say that there is no overlap at all between the experiences of different groups. Hence, alternative epistemologies should not be a replacement to mainstream epistemology, but instead should, more accurately, start where mainstream epistemology leaves off.