Cutting-Edge Equivocation: Conceptual Moves and Rhetorical Strategies in Contemporary Anti-Epistemology

We can derive some sense of the way intellectual life is experienced in an era from the recurrence of certain metaphors used to describe its conduct—for example, the frequency with which, in our own time, intellectual projects and achievements are described in terms of navigational finesse: the charting of passages between extremes, the steering of middle courses, the avoidance of the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis. Thus an advertisement for philosopher Susan Haack's book, Evidence and Inquiry, features a statement by Hilary Putnam praising the author for "elaborating and persuasively defending a position . . . which adroitly steers between the Scylla of apriorism and the Charybdis of scientism." ¹ Or again, Image and Logic, by historian of science Peter Galison, is commended by its reviewer, professor of physics Michael Riordan, for "adroitly side-step[ping] one of the most contentious issues at the heart of current science wars[:] . . . whether scientific measurements stand on their own as arbiters of reality, as the positivists insist [o]r, . . . as the relativists counter, . . . predominantly reflect the biases of the culture that constructs them." Riordan concludes the review by applauding Galison for "tak[ing] a mighty stand in the middle of these debates, a richly philosophical voice of moderation with which both extremes must now reckon." ²

There is some question, of course, as to whether Riordan's statement of the issue in the so-called science wars is altogether evenhanded and, relatedly, whether his report of the views of whomever he means by "the relativists" (he alludes in passing to Thomas Kuhn) is accurate. One might also raise the question of how such possible bias on Riordan's part might be measured and, in the case of disagreements on such matters, what would stand as their arbiters. Indeed, each of these questions reflects more general issues—for example, the limits of observational objectivity and the commensurability of varying conceptions of epistemic value and judgment—that are also currently contentious but, with significant rhetorical effect, not acknowledged here as such. In other words, the very terms in which "moderation" is praised promote one side of a conflict (or of several conflicts) over the other(s) and perpetuate dubious conceptions of the issues involved as well as the nature of the alternative positions. In these respects, however, the review is typical of the class of moves and strategies I shall be discussing here.

An especially self-conscious description of navigational finesse occurs on the opening pages of a recently published book, On the Origin of Objects, by philosopher/computational theorist Brian Cantwell Smith, who writes as follows:

This book introduces a new metaphysics—a philosophy of presence—that aims to steer a path between the Scylla of naive realism and the Charybdis of pure constructivism. The goal is to develop an integral account that retains the essential humility underlying each tradition: a form of epistemic deference to the world that underlies realism, and a respect for the constitutive human involvement in the world that underwrites constructivism. . . . the project requires finding . . . a way to feed our undiminished yearning for foundations and grounding, while at the same time avoiding the reductionism and ideological fundamentalism that have so bedeviled prior foundationalist approaches. . . . the proposal shows . . . how an irrevocable commitment to pluralism is compatible with the recognition that not all stories are equally good. ³

As this suggests, however, Cantwell Smith's navigational feat risks becoming not so much a steering-between as a steering-in-two-directions-at-the-same-time, with the alternate perils—of stasis or shipwreck—that such a project evokes. Like Riordan's moderation-praising review of Galison, Cantwell Smith's launching of his extremity-avoiding voyage involves a number of question-begging turns. How general, for example, is the set of people who "yearn"—with or without diminishment—for "foundations and grounding"? And is it "reductionism" and "ideological...