Jeff Engelhardt (Dickinson College), "Nonideal Theory and Content Externalism"

Oxford University Press, 2024

By Jeff Engelhardt

Is your theory distorted by oppression? In my new book from Oxford University Press, I give an argument that suggests it probably is. The book is called Nonideal Theory and Content Externalism, and you can buy it here: Nonideal Theory and Content Externalism (oup.com)

Obviously, I don’t argue that it’s likely that your theory, for each of you reading this, is distorted by oppression. I argue that for any theory, if it makes assumptions about social structures, social institutions, social relations, social attitudes, and so on—if the theory adopts a model of a social world, then there’s reason to think that that theory is systematically inaccurate, and this is so thanks to oppression. I’ll give a rough overview of the argument in this blog post. If the argument succeeds, then for any given theory that makes the relevant assumptions, there’s defeasible reason to suppose that it’s distorted by oppression.

Overall, the book develops a novel account of the ideal/nonideal distinction, focusing especially on philosophy of mind and language, and then it argues that two versions of content externalism are ideal (in my sense) in ways that make them systematically inaccurate. Along the way, I make points about epistemic oppression, conceptual engineering, and the meanings of race and gender terms. If you want to see a more detailed version of the argument in this post, or if you want to see how content externalism illustrates the argument’s conclusion, or if you want to know how any of this bears on conceptual engineering or the ideal/nonideal distinction, please read the book.

The argument turns on something like these two claims.

1. [Systemic oppression] Systemic oppression has systematically influenced social structures, social institutions, social relations, social behaviors, social attitudes, and so on.

2. [Systematic ignorance] Systemic oppression has systematically brought it about that people are ignorant of systemic oppression and its effects.

I think both claims are established in the extensive scholarly literature on oppression. Many others have argued for the first, and I take it for granted in the book; I’ll take it as granted here too. The second tends to be less familiar, but claims like it are frequently defended in the literature on epistemologies of ignorance.

To get a sense for why some people think it’s true, consider recent efforts in at least 16 US state legislatures to prohibit schools from teaching accurate histories of US racial oppression. (Flaherty 2021) Think of the way European colonization has historically been taught in the US educational system. (Mills 2007, 27) Think of legislative efforts to prevent teachers and students from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation at school. (Cabrera 2020) Think of governmental efforts around the world to cut funding for Women’s and Gender Studies departments. (Redden 2018, Greenberg 2020) Think of the destruction of Belgian state archives regarding the deaths of millions of Congolese or the disappearance of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s official records on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. (Mills 2007, 29, 32) It could be a coincidence that so many different governments, institutions, and people have tried to keep children and adults from knowing the facts and horrors of systemic oppression, but that looks less and less plausible as the examples pile up. Alternatively, it could be that this sort of ignorance is produced systematically by systemic oppression. It could be that systemic oppression maintains itself, so to speak, by convincing us that it doesn’t exist. If so, then the second claim should be true.

Suppose that both claims hold. The first tells us that systemic oppression has systematically shaped just about everything social—structures, institutions, relations, behaviors, attitudes. The second tells us that, as a rule, people don’t know that.

Now take some theory that adopts a social model or makes assumptions about how things are socially. If it’s true that people tend to be ignorant of systemic oppression, then absent reasons to the contrary, we should expect that the people who developed the theory didn’t know about how oppression influences social institutions, behaviors, attitudes, etc. So, prima facie, we should expect that the theory’s model fails to represent its target phenomena as though they’ve been systematically influenced by oppression—it fails to represent a systematic influence on the phenomena it models. Prima facie, if a theory’s model is systematically inaccurate, then this will have a systematic effect on the theory’s descriptions, explanations, and predictions. Presumably, those descriptions, explanations, and predictions will be systematically inaccurate.

So: if a theory adopts a model of a social attitudes, institutions, behaviors, then there’s reason to think the theory is systematically inaccurate.

That’s roughly the argument. You may be thinking now that the conclusion doesn’t apply to some theory you like because as far as you know, oppression isn’t relevant to what that theory aims to describe, explain, or predict. If that’s what you’re thinking, then unless you’re already pretty well-versed in the scholarly literature on oppression, I hope you’ll hesitate a moment. Oppression is sneaky, and if you don’t know the literature on it already, you may be surprised at the multifarious ways it affects us. It may seem like oppression isn’t relevant to content externalism, for instance, but I argue in the book that oppression systematically influences semantic deference, empirical research, and more—contrary to what most versions of externalism assume. To put it another way: If you don’t already know the literature on oppression, you’re probably not in a good epistemic position to decide whether it’s relevant to what your theory aims to describe, explain, or predict.

If you want to check whether a given theory is systematically inaccurate because it misrepresents oppression, you’ll have to reflect on what the theory assumes about our social world, and you’ll have to make your way through relevant literature on oppression to see if it contradicts any of those assumptions. If you want an example, you can read the book to see how I ‘checked’ content externalism and found it systematically distorted by oppression.  

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References

Cabrera, Cristian Gonzalez. (2020, May). Supreme court strikes down bigotry in Brazil’s schools. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/19/supremecourt-strikes-down-bigotry-brazils-schools

Flaherty, Colleen. (2021, June). Legislating against critical race theory. Inside Higher Ed. Legislating against critical race theory, with curricular implications in some states (insidehighered.com)

Greenberg, Susan H. (2022, March). Wyoming senate votes to defund gender and women’s studies. Inside Higher Ed. Wyoming Senate Votes to Defund Gender and Women’s Studies (insidehighered.com)  

Mills, C. (2007). White ignorance. In N. Tuana & S. Sullivan (Eds.), Race and epistemologies of ignorance (pp. 11–38). Albany, NY: SUNY Press

Redden, Elizabeth. (2018, December 4). Global attack on gender studies. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/05/gender-studies-scholars-sayfield-coming-under-attack-many-countries-around-globe