Knowledge as Power: The Impact of Normativity on Epistemology

Catherine Myser (2003) contends that if we "operate in a race-and power-evasive manner in our construction of bioethical theories, knowledge, methods, and policies, we risk reproducing white privilege and supremacy in our own cultural practice." Myser's article presents only a part of the problem by focusing on bioethics. Her arguments are also pertinent, although more elusive, when applied to propagating and accepting any knowledge as normative in the United States. My commentary will explore the historical relevance of the Enlightenment on modern epistemology, the constraints imposed by normative methodologies, and the relationship between power, knowledge, and normativity. I conclude by expanding Myser's proposal for bioethicists to become self-reflective regarding the normativity of "whiteness" to include the normativity of "acceptable" knowledge.

Myser describes whiteness as a "marker of location or position within a social, and here racial, hierarchy—to which privilege and power attach and from which they are wielded." Although whiteness may be a misleading term for those not engaged in scholarly ethnicity work, it possesses specific uniformity. Myser reminds us that theory is always written from somewhere, and epistemological theories of knowledge are no different. Modern epistemology is deeply rooted in the ideologies of Descartes, the Enlightenment, and the "age of reason." The Enlightenment grounded ideals of knowledge in objectivity and value neutrality suited to the notion that one can achieve a "view from nowhere" by exercising reason autonomously, thus transcending particularity and contingency (Code 1993). The paradox of presuming objectivity and value neutrality via a "view from nowhere" obscures who is generating knowledge and by which methodologies. The standard epistemological paradigm "S-knows-that-p" presumes S's normality and apolitical status without explaining the context or presuppositions imposed by S.

The Enlightenment, in addition to biasing philosophers with positivist-empiricist methodologies, also made explicit the presumption that all views must be free of prejudice. In promoting this ideology, thinkers of the Enlightenment prescribed a significant prejudice of their own—a prejudice that denies more traditional, pre- Enlightenment, pre-reason-based means of acquiring knowledge. "Detached knowers" deny a historical construction of a priori knowledge. Presuming reason to be free from prejudice ignores history and conceals the notion that "history does not belong to us; we belong to it" (Gadamer 1989).

Epistemology has a specific normative function to provide justification for claims made in philosophy. We do not typically attribute knowledge to others unless they have followed one of the accredited routes to knowledge (Ayer 1956). Epistemology concerns what people "ought to think;" hence, the normativity of central epistemological thought is fundamental. Mainstream Anglo-American epistemology is deeply rooted in the "S-knows-that-p" paradigm, which implicitly and explicitly benefits the predominance of scientific knowledge. Perfect procedural epistemologies, which encompass this paradigm, specify that

Facts are independent of what we think about them.... Our beliefs and theories are right only if faithful to the facts.... We are willing ruthlessly to restrict candidates for knowledge, forswear modes of justification, reorder epistemic priorities, and revise cognitive values, if by doing so we can achieve certainty. Security against error is a prize worth considerable epistemic sacrifice. (Elgin 1996)

Perfect procedural epistemologies presume that reason can arrive at certainty and rule out uncertainty. According to Elgin, certainty is the "linchpin" in this methodology for conceiving knowledge. Scofield (2000) warns of the dangers inherent in this epistemic sacrifice, and instead suggests that by admitting conflicting ethical opinions have equal validity, we must face our personal discomfort with Uncertainty.¹

I contend that "knowers" presently avoid their discomfort with Uncertainty in order to maintain social structures as they are. Knowledge is instrumental to power, and epistemic practices present significant means whereby institutions award power through privileged social positions. Code succinctly questions whose interests are served by the epistemological paradigm "S-knows-that-p" and whose are neglected or suppressed. Knowledge imparts power, but power is also fundamental to that...