Can Standpoint Epistemology Avoid Inconsistency, Circularity, and Unnecessariness? A Comment on Ashton?s Remarks about Epistemic Privilege

CORMICK, CLAUDIO

Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective

Social Epistemology

Año: 2022

2471-9560

In two provocative and interesting articles (Ashton 2019, 2020),1 Natalie Ashton argues that standpoint epistemologies, though are not presented by their own authors as cases of epistemic relativism, are in fact relativistic, in a sense she reconstructs on the basis of a proposal advanced by Martin Kusch. As is known, standpoint epistemologies declare that knowledge (or justified belief) is somehow dependent on a given ?standpoint? but that these standpoints can themselves be ranked, which dispels the threat of relativism: not all standpoints have the same epistemic value, and therefore not ?anything goes?. However, Ashton retorts, this very ranking of standpoints must itself be dependent on a standpoint. In this text, I will try to discuss whether this assimilation of standpoint theory to relativism (as the sole alternative to inconsistency) is inevitable