Standpoint Epistemology (SE) is an increasingly popular feminist epistemological framework that argues that one's position in a social system, and it's resultant hierarchy, determines one's knowledge of the world. Additionally, this claim is accompanied by the notion of 'strong objectivity' with states that marginalised people possess a standpoint that is more objective than those who possess the dominant standpoint because the marginalised can observe the dominant standpoint without possessing it themselves. They are said to have 'double-vision' that enables them to both see the world from their perspective whilst also seeing truths that the dominant standpoint holders are unable or unwilling to see. For example, bell hooks, an African-American feminist thinker writes:
Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out...we understood both.
This provides a challenge to the traditional account of knowledge (TAK) that attempts to provide
abstract and universal descriptions of knowledge that are applicable to all.
TAK states that in order for one to have knowledge of a particular proposition three conditions must be satisfied: the proposition must be true, one must believe the proposition, and one must have justification for believing the proposition. In short, knowledge is justified true belief, and who you are, what era you are in, or where you are situated in the social hierarchy are all irrelevant to truth-value of one's knowledge claims.
SE rejects the claim that social and historical factors are irrelevant to questions of knowledge, and emphasise the empiricist commitments to experience and observation in the pursuit of knowledge. In addition, following Quine and his criticisms of analytic/synthetic distinction, they also stress that observation is theory-laden and that those theories themselves are artifacts of our making.
According to SE, there is no neutral vantage point from which one can 'get at' the world in an unbaised way. Given that bias is inherent to epistemology, the marginalised are said to be epistemically privileged since they are equipped with the aforementioned 'double-vision', and this privilege is said to accrue to those who exist at the margins of society - becoming something akin to 'expert testimony'. For instance, a middle-class Black man would see the world from a different standpoint than a middle-class White man, and a middle-class Black woman would see the world differently, still. Given that the Black woman is Black and a woman, and that black people and women are marginalised, the Black woman would be equipped with a more objective standpoint than her counterparts.
There are numerous criticisms of SE. First, it is claimed that it results in relativism of the worst sort since the political commitment to feminism, or femininity itself, is incompatible with scientific objectivity because the scientific enterprise is defined as masculine, rational, and unemotional. Relatedly, though SE attempts to thwart claims of essentialism, it, in fact, traffics in essentialism as it automatically groups women together under the rubric of 'strong objectivity' just because they are women. Finally, that the notions of non-neutral standpoints and epistemic privilege are in tension with one another. If there is no neutral standpoint, then one is left with a mish-mash of 'multiple and incompatible knowledge positions'.
There is another issue: ontological subjectivity.
SE makes the mistake of asserting that particular epistemological values accrue to particular ontological subjectivities. However, ontological subjectivity does not necessarily entail any particular epistemological value. This demarcation is illustrated in the following quote from John Searle in 'The Construction of Social Reality':
"I now have a pain in my lower back." That statement is completely objective in the sense that it is made true by the existence of an actual fact and is not dependent on any stance, attitudes, or opinions of observers. However, the phenomenon itself, the actual pain itself, has a subjective mode of existence, and it is in that sense which I am saying that consciousness is subjective.
In order for pain to exist, it must be someone's pain. This is because pain is a state of consciousness, and consciousness, by virtue of being ontologically subjective, is always a consciousness of something to someone.
The problem with SE's insistence on experience is that it has been known for centuries how experience, and our interpretations of it, can lead us astray and can be a rather unreliable vehicle in the search for truth. Just as one’s experiences with pain do not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the physiological, let alone the political or cultural aspects of the pain, one’s experiences of acting with a sort of 'double-vision' within an oppressive society does not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the political or cultural arrangements of that society. What it can provide is ontologically subjective knowledge with political import: identifying and making explicit the essence of a group's shared experience can raise consciousness, and validate one's socio-political project, however, this would rely on some form of essentialism (strategic or otherwise), and that bullet may just have to be bitten for the SE theorist or activist.
At best, SE points out that myriad points of view ought to be considered in social and political analysis, but it is wrong when it mistakes such points of view as 'expert testimony' and holds that they're anything more than data points that must be further evaluated.
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