Knowledge and Freedom

by Clinton Christensen
Published 11/30/2023

How do we know what we know? 

Seeking to induce my 9th and 10th grade students to consider this fundamental question of epistemology, I recently asked them to respond to the following journal prompt: “Describe an occasion where you believed something that you later found out isn’t true. What was the belief, and how did you come to learn it is false?”

Befitting the season, the most popular response was students’ erstwhile belief in Santa Claus. The legend of ‘ol Saint Nick was most often dispelled by finding presents in a closet or by older siblings spilling the beans, but a few students’ responses evinced a deeper understanding. Absent the direct evidence of hidden presents or the authority of an older child, these students used reason to understand why Santa Claus cannot exist. After all, they wrote, it is impossible for one person to visit the homes of more than a billion children in a single night, flying reindeer or no.

These students’ eminently sensible responses suggest a budding Scientific World View–a view rooted in the premise that, “only possible things are possible.” Deriving its, always tentative, conclusions from reason, evidence, and logic, the Scientific World View is the antidote to humans’ default and long-standing Dogmatic World View, which claims certainty, is faith-based, and is bolstered not by facts but by authority. 

Today, the conflict between these mutually exclusive world views is evident in how we answer the question posed above: how do we know what we know? Is it by way of “lived experience” or by using reason, evidence, and logic? The former answer is endorsed by proponents of “standpoint epistemology”–the latter endorsed and defended by Jonathan Rauch in his 2021 book, The Constitution of Knowledge.¹ Though these are not the only responses to the epistemic question, comparing and contrasting them sheds light on the sometimes obscure relationship between theories of knowledge and political freedom. 

Standpoint epistemology “argues that knowledge stems from social position.” It “stresses that knowledge is always socially situated… [and] one’s social positions shape what one can know.”

It “denies that traditional science is objective” and claims that scientific research and theory ignore “marginalized” “ways of thinking,” especially those attributed to women or non-European ethnicities.² 

Notwithstanding the noble intention of amplifying the voices of groups historically underrepresented in mainstream science, standpoint epistemology has concerning implications when put into practice. By denying the existence of shared, objective reality, it implies that each person inhabits a unique version of reality. Necessarily then, according to standpoint theorists, facts and knowledge are not “out there” in the world, waiting to be discovered through inquiry but, instead, are only “in here,” unique to a person's mind. There is not one, universal scientific method; there are potentially infinite “ways of knowing,” each with a hypothetically equal claim to authority and respect. There is no shared, objective truth, there is only “my truth” or “your truth.” If taken to an extreme, standpoint epistemology can slide into solipsism–the belief that one’s mind is the only thing sure to exist.

In contrast, The Constitution of Knowledge claims that truth is objective, social, and verifiable. It is what the “reality-based community”–first and foremost, the sciences, but also professional journalists, government agencies and regulators, and lawyers and judges–has determined is best supported by reason, evidence, and logic. Truth is not idiosyncratically locked away in each of our minds but publicly available to any with the aptitude and inclination to use the tools of science to verify it for themselves. 

Rauch describes two “rules for reality” that form the basis of the Constitution of Knowledge: 

1) The fallibilist rule: No one gets the final say. You may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be [falsified], in principle, and only insofar as it withstands attempts to [falsify] it.

2) The empirical rule: No one has personal authority. You may claim that a statement has been established as knowledge only insofar as the method used to check it gives the same result regardless of the identity of the checker, and regardless of the source of the statement.³

Note how these rules directly contradict the claims of standpoint epistemology. “Ways of knowing” do not count as such unless they can be falsified. One’s “lived experience” imbues no special privilege. The conceit of individually revealed truth is juxtaposed with the democratic, egalitarian constitution of knowledge. 

To understand why this distinction is so important, let us join my students in considering the question of Santa Claus. A supporter of standpoint epistemology would have no grounds on which to reject a student’s sincere belief in the jolly, white-bearded legend. After all, a student may have the lived experience of the sudden appearance of presents. Indeed, since it rejects the empirical rule, standpoint epistemology has no firm ground to reject belief/dogma of any kind. Further, the evidence of presents found in closets or the logical impossibility of delivering billions of them can be dismissed as just “one way of knowing,” with a wave of the rhetorical hand.

The atomized, potentially solipsistic conception of reality that emerges from the application of standpoint epistemology is concerning. For, undermining a shared conception of reality undermines positive collective action. But the long-term outcome is even insidious. Inevitably, some standpoints, some lived experiences, are valued more than others, and the favored opinions, masquerading as knowledge, harden into dogmas. When these dogmas are enforced by powerful institutions and the state, the result is tyranny.

As such, the Constitution of Knowledge is a bulwark not only against ignorance but, crucially, against the tyranny of zealous dogmatics. Objective, shared, verifiable knowledge is the spring from which human freedom flows. More succinctly, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.”⁴

Clinton Christensen
Social Studies Teacher
Dohn Community High School
@AD_Ultman