What Can Be Known?
Limits and Humility
There is a mythologized view of the individual intellectual who can determine everything about the world by thinking about it that exists in the cultural milieu that I find myself situated in. This is an idea that is present in all types of discourse, and needs to be thoroughly challenged.
Production of Knowledge
Especially in the sciences, there can be a view that truth is truth is truth. If you determine something to be true (via the scientific or another method), it is true for all people in all times. The problem is that this is just not correct. Often, unknown to ourselves, we are blind to our own biases and how our place in the social order affects how we think and process. Who we are, where we live, and how we relate to positions of power all change how it is we come into and interact with knowledge.
We are not brains in vats contemplating the world. We are full-fledged human beings with emotions and thoughts with a past, who grow up and are socialized around other people who have their own stories. We have family histories, and live under governmental structures and organizations of the economy. The world existed before us, and the world will continue to exist after us. Our interactions with people and social structures all change how we think, and along with brain chemistry we gain all sorts of cognitive biases throughout living. These are unavoidable, and an attempt to rid yourself of all biases can end up with a blindness to what you don’t know is there. Instead, we should understand that we do have biases which are unavoidable and choose to have good biases rather than bad ones. In the recent past, phrenology was considered a serious science where scientists showed empirically how white people were the smartest race and why men were rationally superior to women. This idea of a hierarchy of racial intelligence and of men as “rational” and women as “emotional” are unfortunately still present today. The issue was not simply that the scientific method used was flawed, although it was, but that the scientists thought they were unbiased in their methods and uncovering the truth about the world when they were really just showing the racist and misogynistic beliefs they held.
The hard work of uncovering and eliminating biases is important, but it is more important that we remove bad biases. Just because you are biased does not mean you are wrong. Being committed to the equality of all human beings and working for justice for marginalized communities even if you are personally unable to engage with a fascist in a rhetorical debate is a good bias. Someone might have a slew of numbers to show that people of colour are more violent than white people, and appeal to cultural norms to argue how it’s so obvious that men are smarter than women — but you can just reject them outright because of a biased commitment to equality and justice.
Privilege Obscures Knowledge
Another part to this conversation is that one’s social position in life affects not just biases, but what it is they come to know. A person of colour may experience an increased friction when interacting with the legal system or security personnel because of racial prejudices. However, a white person would be completely unaware of such things because they don’t encounter this friction. If an individual exists at the margins of a society, they uniquely have an insight that those at the centre cannot because it is not experientially available to them.
For one to have a social privilege means that society is constructed to impede people who exist as the other. Privilege is not, as it can be misunderstood, that those who are part of a special class necessarily gain something, but rather that those who are not part of that class experience additional barriers. This can be complicated when we think about those in the class of the ultra-wealthy who do genuinely gain things inaccessible to those outside of that class. When it comes to race, however, it is clearer to see why privilege means those not in the centre experience additional barriers. An Arabic person may be “randomly” selected (all the time) by airport security for additional security checks. A black person might be “randomly” pulled over by the cops, and face increased scrutiny. White people do not experience this excessive friction, and hence have a privilege socially. The first third of the movie Get Out show really clearly how Chris is accustomed to the racial agitation he undergoes, and Rose being confused of what is happening since she has not seen this before.
Therefore, it is important when we come to know things that we must have the humility to recognize that we are not omniscient and that the experience of others may provide them with a perspective that you cannot know. When we try to reason out how the world is, it is important then that we talk to and incorporate the perspectives of many people across the board and that we make a special effort to listen to the concerns and perspectives of those who are marginalized in that sphere. As a man, it would be illegitimate for me to speak at length about the effects of sexism and how misogyny operates today if I have not talked with women and taken what they have said seriously — especially if it challenges what I previously believed. A final word of this is that the perspectives we do seek out should be ones that are socially aware of their position. Just because someone has a social position means that they are politically aware. There were Jews who supported Hitler, and would chant ironically “down with us” before the building of the concentration camps.
Thinking about complex issues is… complex. We are not God, and should remind ourselves of that. We are full of biases, and there is much we don’t know. Know your biases, know your privilege, and learn in humility.
