Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science

David Ludwig, Inkeri Koskinen, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli, Luis Reyes-Galindo, David Ludwig, Inkeri Koskinen, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli, Luis Reyes-Galindo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367461379
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000413816
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In bringing together a global community of philosophers, Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science develops novel perspectives on epistemology and philosophy of science by demonstrating how frameworks from academic philosophy (e.g. standpoint theory, social epistemology, feminist philosophy of science) and related fields (e.g. decolonial studies, transdisciplinarity, global history of science) can contribute to critical engagement with global dimensions of knowledge and science.

Global challenges such as climate change, food production, and infectious diseases raise complex questions about scientific knowledge production and its interactions with local knowledge systems and social realities. As academic philosophy provides relatively little reflection on global negotiations of knowledge, many pressing scientific and societal issues remain disconnected from core debates in epistemology and philosophy of science.

This book is an invitation to broaden agendas of academic philosophy by presenting epistemology and philosophy of science as globally engaged fields that address heterogeneous forms of knowledge production and their interactions with local livelihoods, practices, and worldviews. This integrative ambition makes the book equally relevant for philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars who are concerned with methodological and political challenges at the intersection of science and society.

Part I

Rethinking philosophical practices

Chapter 1

Philosophy or philosophies?

Epistemology or epistemologies?

Inkeri Koskinen and David Ludwig

What do we mean when we talk about philosophies or epistemologies in the plural? Are “epistemology” and “philosophy” as coherent projects—in the singular—threatened if we recognize the global diversity of “epistemologies” and “philosophies”? Are the meanings of the terms blurred, or do they lose normative force? Then again, what do we gain by using the plural forms? Is it easier to accept “philosophies” in plural than “epistemologies” in plural? While editing this book, we realized that the answers are not clear and that we disagree: so we decided to write a dialogue.

David:Hi Inkeri, thank you so much for suggesting this dialogue. The global heterogeneity of knowledge systems raises complex meta-philosophical questions. Do “epistemology” and “philosophy” as coherent projects—in the singular—disappear when recognizing the global diversity of “epistemologies” and “philosophies”—in plural? Does it remain important to reflect on the nature of epistemology and philosophy in more general terms? Does aiming for generality entail a projection of contingent Western standards onto “the rest of the world”? It looks like we disagree on how to answer these questions. I’m happy to emphasize plural forms, and it seems to me that the singular creates a risk of policing the boundaries of “epistemology” and “philosophy” that is both theoretically shallow and politically problematic.

Inkeri:Hi David, thank you for agreeing to this dialogue. Our topic is something that has been worrying me for some time, and I’m glad to be able to discuss it here. Indeed, I think that the move from singular to plural forms creates at least as many problems as it solves. Talk about “epistemologies” and “philosophies”—in the plural—has become increasingly popular. I fear this risks broadening or diluting the terms so far that they will hardly have any meaning left—especially “epistemology”—or that they will be reduced to gestures. There are understandable motivations for deconstructing both of these concepts, but there is also the risk that we are left without a clear understanding of what exactly we are claiming when we talk about philosophies and particularly epistemologies.

David:Before we turn to our disagreements, let’s try to clarify our common starting point. I think we both agree that knowledge and expertise are widely distributed across the globe. Sure, professors in Oxford are experts in their domain of inquiry. But the same is true for university lecturers in Kinshasa, Indigenous elders in the Amazon, or union workers in Mumbai. Furthermore, there are issues on diversity that surpass differences in propositional knowledge about the world. Different forms of expertise come with different methodological standards and material practices of producing and validating knowledge: they are also embedded in different ontologies and metaphysical assumptions about how the world works. In this sense, there are many epistemologies and philosophies. Hence the title of our book—Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science.

Inkeri:You are right, expertise does indeed take many forms and can be found all around the globe, and the different forms of expertise come with different epistemic strategies, ontological views, and metaphysical assumptions—we would hardly be collaborating if we disagreed on this. However, I’m not convinced that it follows that we should talk about “philosophies” or “epistemologies” in the plural. As I said, the plural form that I’m really apprehensive about is “epistemologies”. The singular form “epistemology” does not disappear when we use the plural one. What is it of which we have many? Do we in fact have many of them? I worry that by using the plural form in today’s very popular, undefined way, we are evading these questions.

David:To be honest, I’ve been quite happy to evade these questions. It seems to me that the concepts of “epistemology” and “philosophy” are a bit like the concept of “game”. Sure, there are family resemblances between different “games”, but they have no hidden essence to be discovered by philosophers (Wittgenstein 1953). There is a lot to understand about “games” in the plural, but a philosophical debate about the nature of “game” in the singular would be at best boring and at worst deeply confusing. So, why should we be concerned? Why not learn from the fascinating plurality of epistemologies and philosophies without worrying about their nature in singular?

Inkeri:I see, here our views differ somewhat. With regards to philosophy, I have no strong need to argue for the singular form. It is clear that Taoist philosophy is something quite different from philosophical logic (but for Buddhist logic, see Tanaka, Chapter 24), yet both can be called philosophies—like Go and tag are both games. That is why I’m not so worried about “philosophies” in the plural; though I do not see a particular need for the plural form, as we can easily say that Taoist philosophy and philosophical logic are both “philosophy”. But I’m not sure that the same applies to “epistemology”.

David:I’ve been more worried about the singular in “philosophy” than in “epistemology”. So maybe our dialogue will lead to the conclusion that the situation is different. In the case of “philosophy”, I think there is clear evidence that the singular has led not only to theoretically shallow but also politically deeply problematic boundary disputes. The recent history of African philosophy is a striking example, as African philosophers have been under constant pressure to prove that their intellectual traditions count as “proper philosophy”. While a volume on French or German philosophy can immediately start with substantive philosophical issues, volumes on African philosophy have often been started with lengthy discussions on the very existence of African philosophy: from the status of African Indigenous knowledge systems to the legitimacy of calling an African sage a philosopher (see Mosima 2016 for an excellent overview). There is a clear hierarchy built into this setup. While the status of European thought as philosophy is taken for granted, the status of African thought as philosophy has to be proven. Second, this often results in shallow boundary disputes about definitions of the term “philosophy”. Emphasizing philosophies in the plural helps to shift attention to the many relevant contributions of African philosophers on a wide range of topics such as environmental philosophy (Chimakonam 2017; Chimakonam and Uchenna Ogbonnaya Chapter 17) or political theory (Ramose 1999). But even if all of this is true in the case of “philosophy”, you suggest that the situation may be different in the case of “epistemology”?

Inkeri:Yes, I think so. I’m not sure whether the plural form really helps in the boundary disputes about philosophy, as it can easily become just another bone of contention in them, but at least it’s not harmful. In the case of epistemology, I get the uncomfortable feeling that we are turning a useful philosophical notion into an “elevator word”. Hacking (1999, 22–23) describes elevator words as words we use to move the discussion to a “higher” level when discussing our thoughts about the world, and notes that their meanings are “remarkably free-floating”. I fear the plural form, or the way in which it is currently used, is turning “epistemology” into a word that mainly indicates the importance of something. Sometimes it seems to be used almost as an honorary title; which I find unfortunate.

David:Maybe we can tease out this worry a bit more? I have been using the notion of epistemology quite broadly to refer to reflective epistemic practices. People around the world produce knowledge and reflect on the ways they produce knowledge. In this sense, epistemologies in plural seems a rather innocent strategy for acknowledging there is not a singular essence of epistemology, but many different intellectual endeavors that are connected through family resemblances.

Inkeri:We clearly see this differently. I’m certainly not looking for the hidden essence of epistemology, but for me “epistemology” is a word that, though used in different philosophical traditions, tends to have a fairly clear meaning—something along the lines of “theory of knowledge”, or more often “theorizing about knowledge”. It is a much younger term than “philosophy”, coined as recently as in the 19th century; though it was immediately applied to describe other, much earlier, theorizing (Woleński 2004). The plural form has rarely been used; and when used, it has been synonymous with “theories of knowledge” or “epistemological theories”: that is, different and often competing stances in debates about knowledge, belief, epistemic justification, and other related notions. Meanwhile, using it in the undefined way we are talking about here, the one that embraces the plural form, is quite new. And now, “epistemologies” does not appear to simply mean “epistemological theories”. I fear that if we have, first, an established way to use the term where the plural form is quite unnecessary; and secondly, discussions about epistemologies in the plural, without clarity about what exactly is meant, this creates confusion. I think very often much ambiguity could be avoided by talking about “knowledge systems”, instead of epistemologies. But it’s quite clear that many would argue against such a clarificatory move.

David:You’re right that “epistemology” has been historically used mostly in singular. However, talk about “epistemologies” in the plural still seems like an attractive option for challenging some of the more problematic aspects of this history. Mainstream epistemology has been—and often continues to be—rather limited by a universalism (implicit or explicit) that remains ignorant towards the global diversity of epistemic practices; this is expressed through the singular notion of epistemology. Moving from singular to plural seems like a useful rhetorical move in addressing these shortcomings of mainstream epistemology as it has become institutionalize...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Reimagining epistemology and philosophy of science from a global perspective
• Part I Rethinking philosophical practices
• Part II Reconfiguring scientific methods
• Part III Negotiating science in/with society
• Part IV Situating the living world
• Part V Reimagining abstract and physical worlds
• Postscript
• Index