Epistemic Meaninglessness and Powerlessness:
A Realist Argument for Universal Basic Income
Louise Clark-Vaillant 12607444
Supervisor: Dr. Annette Freyberg-Inan Second Reader: Dr. Enzo Rossi
June 2020
Master Thesis Political Science - Political Theory University of Amsterdam
Abstract
In recent decades, Universal Basic Income (UBI) has evolved from a pipe dream to an increasingly realistic policy option with growing popularity. This thesis defends a novel realist theoretical argument for the policy based on epistemic foundations. The investigation begins with the observation that political disaffection among socio-economically disadvantaged groups in democracies takes its origin in an epistemic fact. In making groups oblivious to the fact that their interests might be unserved, political disaffection serves as an insidious cover for latent political conflicts. By unpacking the political implications of this phenomenon through a deployment of the theory of realism, it will be seen that this poses a fundamental threat for the political legitimacy of today’s democracies. The latter is construed as conditional upon citizens’ epistemic capacity, where ‘epistemic capacity’ refers to the ability to make sense of one’s social experience. These theoretical underpinnings then allow me to sketch out a realist account of the main social mechanisms at play in hindering disadvantaged groups’ epistemic capacity. It will be argued that these groups experience a sense of both meaninglessness and powerlessness in socio-political realms that hamper their epistemic capacity. Consequently, the main argument of this thesis is that UBI can foster these groups’ epistemic empowerment by impacting on their meaninglessness and powerlessness.
Keywords: universal basic income; UBI; epistemic capacity; powerlessness; meaninglessness; political legitimacy; political disaffection
Table of Contents
Abstract ...1
Table of Contents ...2
Chapter 1: Introduction ...3
Chapter 2: Realism ...11
2.1 Realism Taking Issue with Moralism ...11
2.2 The Realist ‘Internalist’ Conception of Political Legitimacy ...15
Chapter 3: Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups’ Epistemic Disadvantage ...22
3.1 “Epistemic Capacity”: A Working Conceptualisation ...22
3.1.1 Definition(s) ...22
3.1.2 Two Variables: Meaninglessness & Powerlessness ...25
3.2 Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups’ Hindered Epistemic Capacity ...28
3.2.1 The Cognitive/Meaninglessness Dimension ...28
3.2.1.1 The Psychology of Scarcity ...28
3.2.1.2 Education ...30
3.2.1.3 Time ...31
3.2.2 The Powerlessness/Hermeneutical Dimension ...33
Chapter 4: Universal Basic Income ...41
4.1 What is an Epistemically Empowering UBI? ...41
4.1.1 The Discussion around UBI ...41
4.1.2 Which Form(s) Can an Epistemically Empowering UBI Take? ...43
4.2 How UBI Fosters Epistemic Empowerment ...47
4.2.1 How UBI Reduces Meaninglessness ...47
4.2.1.1 Economic Security or How to De-Tax Mental Bandwidth ...48
4.2.1.2 Longer, Better Education ...49
4.2.1.3 More Free Time: More ‘Schole’ ...50
4.2.1.4 Triple Improvement of the Cognitive/Meaninglessness Dimension ...50
4.2.2 How UBI Reduces Powerlessness ...53
4.2.2.1 Structuring Collective Knowledge in the Workplace: The Voice Option ...53
4.2.2.2 UBI & Political Efficacy: Structuring Collective Knowledge in the Public Sphere 57 .. Chapter 5: Conclusion ...66
References ...68
Chapter 1: Introduction
In his paper “Political Disaffection as an Outcome of Institutional Practices?” (2006), Claus Offe delivers a powerful breakdown of the concept of political disaffection in today’s democracies. It refers, he says, to the situation in which “people dissociate themselves from a polity or political community that they experience as being strange, boring, incomprehensible, hostile, or inaccessible” (ibid.: 25). Offe pits it against its antonym, which he says is passion: political disaffection corresponds to the negative feelings associated with an emotional disinvestment from one’s political community. He integrates the concept into the 18th century philosophical triptych ‘interest-reason-passion’ to spell out what he says are the three main “capacities” in political life. Namely: “the pursuit of interest, the ability to form and to accept rational argument, and the emotional attachment to the political community” (ibid.: 24). Thus, where the infringement of interests corresponds to the sense of
dissatisfaction; and where the lack of critical scrutiny on the part of the citizens of “good and valid
reasons” for justifying a political order refers to illegitimacy; the emotional dissociation between citizens and their political community coincides with the sense of disaffection (ibid.: 25).
Interestingly, the ‘interest’ (dissatisfaction) and ‘critical scrutiny’ (illegitimacy) components are the only two items of the three that call for articulated knowledge — be it to be able to pursue and defend one's interests or to be able to form or accept an argument. This is why, if we pay attention, we can discern an epistemic component running along Offe’s conceptualisation as a watermark. In that sense, I think his account of political disaffection encapsulates a crucial insight. That is, there is a fundamental epistemic dimension at work in the attitude of political disaffection. Thus, building on Offe’s analytical framework, I re-conceptualise the notion of political disaffection as the failure of a citizen to use knowledge in order to articulate a grievance into a political demand informed by the understanding of one’s interests and aimed at assessing the reasons given by a political regime to justify its power. In positive terms, this means that, when politically engaged, the articulation of a potentially effective political demand is conditional upon a prior understanding of one’s own interests and of one’s political structure’s legitimation stories.
To fully grasp the epistemic dimension at play in defending one's interests, it is useful to elaborate a bit on this notion. As Offe stresses, “[c]itizens are tied to the policy outcomes of particular governments by their (material as well as ideal) interests and how they perceive them to be affected by a particular set of policies or a party in government” (ibid.: 25, emphasis original). In other words, being able to defend one's interests means being able to perceive how a set of policies may or may not infringe upon them. Here the notion of perception is important in that it captures a certain ambiguity: perception is subjective and therefore enabled and yet limited by one’s own knowledge. This implies that one may not be fully aware of one’s interests. Steven Lukes notes “that interests might be unarticulated or
unobservable, and above all, […] people might actually be mistaken about, or unaware of, their own interests” (2005: 19). Thus, the epistemic issue at stake in this observation is that political disagreement or decisions can be unconsciously shaped and recreated in such a way that they are not deliberately chosen by particular individuals. This leads to a second point, that is, one’s perception of interests may hinder a person’s epistemic capacity in assessing the reasons given by a political order to justify its power.
The lack of conscientious critical scrutiny of legitimation stories points at the second fundamental epistemic dimension in political disaffection, i.e. being unable to articulate an assessment of these legitimation stories. The qualm here being that political disaffection ushers in potential “latent
conflict[s]” (Lukes, 2005: 28, emphasis original). A latent conflict is defined by Lukes as the
“contradiction between the interests of those exercising power and the real interests of those they exclude” (ibid., emphasis original). The risk inherent when political disaffection covers latent conflict is that citizens’ “widespread apathy” may be taken as a “sign of strength of democracy”, rather than a “weakness” (Offe, 2006: 30, emphasis original). This disengagement may be seen as an “indicator[s] of consent and diffuse support for the regime” (ibid.), while it may in fact only mean that citizens’ epistemic capacity has been, somehow, impeded. The problem being that if power structures contribute to hindering rather than encouraging individuals’ epistemic reflection and discussion of their interests, citizens “thereby somehow cease to be citizens” (ibid.: 39, emphasis original), and rather become subjects submitted to a self-attributing and self-assigning power. As Lukes eloquently puts it:
is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial? To assume that the absence of grievance equals genuine consensus is simply to rule out the possibility of false or manipulated consensus by definitional fiat. (2005: 28)
Therefore, this bespeaks of a profound ambiguity between absence of visible political demands and broad political support. For that reason, Offe maintains that democratic legitimacy cannot be narrowed down to “citizens’ positive attitude towards democratic institutions”, but should rather be epistemically buoyed by the “arguments and reasons given for, and accepted as effectively supporting and validating, the democratic regime form and its institutions” (2006: 26, emphasis original). This is why, he argues, it is so important to examine the way through which people arrive at having their attitudes (ibid.: 27). The
mere fact of their political inactivity cannot and must not be equated with silent support, insofar as citizens’ beliefs or perceptions may have been shaped in the first place. The more these beliefs are nurtured by a power that thrives on the lack of conviction of its citizens in demanding more — whether because they see no alternatives or because it would simply be foolish to be more idealistic — the more the epistemic soundness of the reasons given by a political structure to justify its power is eroded. Thus, the more a state seeks to be politically legitimate, the more citizens' beliefs about legitimacy must be epistemically sound.
Furthermore, another interesting point about political disaffection is to consider who, more specifically, are those disaffected citizens. Empirical evidence has shown that individuals with low socio-economic backgrounds massively figure among them (Kroh & Könnecke, 2014; Solt, 2008; Anderson & Beramendi, 2008; Lijphart, 1997). For example, Martin Kroh & Christian Könnecke observe that low participation rates are not correlated with job losses or drops in earnings per se, but rather, are constant and consistent with the low socio-economic backgrounds of these groups. It was formerly more common to think, particularly in the 1970s, that socio-economic dissatisfaction would lead to political action. Since then, there have been many compelling accounts supporting the reality of this odd 1
couple of socio-economic disadvantage and political disengagement. One of the most prominent has been the resource theory (Brady, Verba, Schlozman, 1995). Its advocates postulate that engaging in politics requires resources (money, time, education, civic skills etc.), which disadvantaged groups lack, thus explaining their low political engagement. Another line of work has demonstrated a correlation between political disengagement and socio-psychological impacts of feeling relative deprivation (Rosenstone, 1982). This theory shows that the importance of monetary concerns within these groups absorbs their attention, steering it away from politics. A third important account has been the relative power theory. Its main contention is that inequalities in the distribution of resources have a negative effect on political activity, especially among the poorest groups, due to its repercussions for the relative distribution of power (Gaventa, 1980; Lukes, 2005). Honing in on several teachings of these theories, my intention is to shed light on their epistemic ramifications.
Accordingly, the main aim of this thesis will be twofold. The first aim (in the chronological sense) will be to provide an epistemic account for socio-economically disadvantaged groups’ political disaffection in democracies. The second will be to offer a remedy for this epistemic political disaffection. Under 2
the label ‘socio-economically disadvantaged’, I include groups below or very close to the poverty line, people in long-term unemployment, precarious groups, as well as homeless people. In regard to the first objective, my main argument will be that disadvantaged groups’ socio-economic backgrounds
See Gurr (1970).
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I focus on democracies because non-democratic regimes engage in distinct political practices that multiply in very different
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largely contribute to their hindered epistemic capacity. By “epistemic capacity”, I mean the ability to make
sense of one's social experience. In keeping with Offe’s triplet, ‘social experience’ refers to the social
conditions and interactions that relate to and may impact on one’s socio-political interests; and ‘making sense’ implies being able to defend one's interests in an informed manner, i.e. using evidence-based knowledge. My claim will be that their inferior socio-economic condition hinder these citizens’ epistemic capacity in two ways: first (i) by restricting their access to evidence-based knowledge, and second (ii) by preventing them from understanding their real socio-political interests. Some have pointed to a fundamental paradox between the requirements of political citizenship (voting, deliberating, judging public policies) and the practical restrictions imposed by an asymmetrical ‘socio-economic citizenship’ (Wagner, 2011: 26). Rather, I contend that the paradox lies between political citizenship and the epistemic restriction induced by scarcity of socio-economic resources. In other words, my postulate is that accounting for the lack of socio-economic resources is politically relevant because it restricts their access to the epistemic resources necessary to pursue their political prerogatives.
Since I will identify their lack of socio-economic resources as the source of their epistemic hindrance, my second objective will be to advocate for a public policy that can remedy this lack. This leads me to the second and most important aim of this thesis. I will argue that the public policy of Universal Basic Income (henceforth ‘UBI’) is a good remedy for their situation. As will become clear, UBI is an individual cash transfer granted to all members of a society, without means-testing or a work requirement. I will recommend UBI as a powerful tool of defence for disadvantaged groups against the barriers that contribute to their epistemic inhibition. The underlying rationale is that the implementation of a UBI will usher in radical shifts in structural power relations in favour of these groups. I will argue that the UBI can do so by (i) restoring their access to epistemic resources; and (ii) enabling them to participate more in the structuring of collective knowledge. Consequently, my main research question will be the following:
‘How would UBI foster socio-economically disadvantaged groups epistemic empowerment?’ In order to be able to respond adequately to this question, I will set myself two more research sub-questions. Given my epistemological approach, the first sub-question will be: ‘How does the lack of socio-economic resources of disadvantaged groups hinder their epistemic capacity?’.
The second research sub-question deals with the political implications of the epistemic hindrance of these groups. As mentioned, the issue at stake in people’s epistemic inhibition is the question of political legitimacy. In other words, the potentiality of latent conflicts as a result of their hindered epistemic capacity, if mistaken for silent support, places in jeopardy the epistemic soundness of the
legitimacy of democratic states. To support this point, I will deploy the realist approach in political theory. As I will explain in the first chapter, realist theory first erupted as a countermovement to the liberal approach in political theory. Proponents of realism maintain that political theory cannot adequately account for political processes if it does so in moral terms, insofar as the ethical and political spheres distinguish themselves (Rossi & Sleat, 2014). It therefore aims to re-conceptualise political notions and their corollaries — in particular the notion of legitimacy — in non-moral terms, as falling under a distinctively political normativity (ibid.). Realist theory will allow me to show how political legitimacy is conditional upon the capacity of citizens to articulate informed political demands when they find the legitimation stories of their political structure dubious. Accordingly, my second research sub-question will be: ‘How does realist theory show that political legitimacy is conditional upon the epistemic capacity of citizens?’.
The realist theory will allow me to pose the first premise of my argument but will also be my theoretical approach. Consequently, I will endeavour to give a realist account of disadvantaged groups’ epistemic capacity as well as of the UBI. In particular, this means that I will refrain from any moral commitment in order to better highlight how (i) the epistemic hindrance of these groups poses a problem for political legitimacy and (ii) how the UBI can be a real policy solution to this problem. I will also conduct an in-depth analysis of the literature of social epistemology as well as of the political theory of the UBI, which will constitute the two main theoretical bodies alongside the literature of realism. My approach will therefore be mainly theoretical, although I will also make use of empirical evidence to buttress some of my points.
I consider my realist approach as being one of my main contributions to the academic literature on UBI. Only one realist argument for the UBI has been developed so far, that of Aleksander Masternak in his Master thesis: “A Realist Conception of Universal Basic Income” (2017). Masternak’s argument and mine have in common the realist project to refrain from moral commitments. However, Masternak’s conception focused on the importance of order, security and stability for legitimacy. In a related but somewhat different way, I will home in more on facts pertaining to power relations and belief formation (see Rossi, 2019 for these distinctions within realism). There lies what I believe to be my second contribution to the academic literature on UBI. Indeed, only one research on the potential epistemic effects of the UBI has been published: that of Lisa Herzog, in her article “Basic Income and the Ideal of Epistemic Equality” (2016). The gist of her argument is that the UBI could introduce greater epistemic equality within organisations, since workers will be more inclined to speak out and share knowledge or information with their peers. The reason for this is that the UBI could function as an economic cushion, without which workers are usually discouraged from voicing their opinions out of fear of being without income if they are laid off for speaking out. However Herzog’s approach
differs from mine in that she adopts a moral approach, her end-goal being to explore different ways of achieving a moral ideal of ‘epistemic equality’ within organisations. 3
Two core concepts will be articulated along the thesis, they are: meaninglessness and powerlessness. To unpack them, I will draw on the work of the sociologist Melvin Seeman. He defines ‘meaninglessness' as the situation in which an “individual is unclear as to what he ought to believe —when the individual's minimal
standards for clarity in decision-making are not met” (1959: 786, emphasis original). ‘Powerlessness’ describes
“the expectancy or probability held by the individual that his own behavior cannot determine the occurrence of the
outcomes, or reinforcements, he seeks” (ibid.: 784, emphasis original). I will use these two concepts as two
variables to assess the effects of UBI on epistemic capacity. Indeed, as I will argue, the low socio-economic status of disadvantaged groups causes them to experience a sense of meaninglessness and powerlessness, which largely impedes their epistemic capacity. The objective will therefore consist in examining what could be the positive effects of the UBI on these two variables, thus enabling an epistemic empowerment of these groups. These variables will be spelled out in Chapter 3. To unfold my reasoning, this thesis will be structured around three chapters, each seeking to answer one of the research questions.
In, Chapter 2, I will answer the second sub-question, namely: ‘How does realist theory show that political legitimacy is conditional upon the epistemic capacity of citizens?’. To that end, I will first review the main debates in the realist theory. Then, I will argue that a legitimate political process is contingent on the ability of citizens to contest a state’s legitimation stories. In turn, I will show that this ability to contest is itself dependent on the ability of citizens to make sense of their social situation — i.e. their epistemic capacity. The aim of this chapter is thus twofold: (i) it constitutes the first premise of my argument; and (ii) it will enable me to establish the theoretical underpinnings of my realist theoretical approach.
Chapter 3 will respond to the first sub-question, that is: ’How does the lack of socio-economic resources of disadvantaged groups hinder their epistemic capacity?’. My line of inquiry will consist in a thorough analysis of the social mechanisms that contribute to their epistemic hindrance. I will first offer a working conceptualisation of the notion of epistemic capacity. In particular, I will break it down into two variables: meaninglessness and powerlessness. This will allow me to highlight two dimensions. The first corresponds to the cognitive/meaninglessness dimension. The second refers to the powerlessness/hermeneutical dimension. Regarding the first dimension, my claim will be that economic insecurity and the restricted access to education and leisure time of these groups largely contribute to hampering their cognitive capacities, and thus contribute to their sense of
Her argument further differs in that she maintains that an epistemic argument for the UBI is weaker than for other
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meaninglessness. With regard to the second dimension, I will argue that their low social status usually comes with a sense of powerlessness, which leads them to be hermeneutically disadvantaged. This hermeneutical disadvantage refers to the difficulty for these groups to make sense of their social experience due to gaps in the collectively shared hermeneutical resources in society. Falling back on Miranda Fricker (2007: 147-175), I will substantiate this by showing that these hermeneutical gaps are, in the first place, created because powerless groups are prevented from participating in the structuring of collective epistemic resources. The upshot being that collective epistemic resources fail to reflect their social experiences. On this occasion, I will also respond to a potential objection. That is, if there is a gap in the hermeneutical resources collectively shared by a society, then other better-off social groups could also be said to be epistemically hindered and this could also jeopardise the epistemic soundness of political legitimacy.
Chapter 4 will endeavour to address my main research question by introducing the policy of UBI as a remedy to the problems outlined in Chapter 2. I will start by reviewing the discussions around UBI, so as to determine the most appropriate form of UBI for the epistemic project of this thesis. However, I will not consider the feasibility and affordability of financing the UBI. These are economic considerations, on which I consider that I have nothing to offer. My approach is rather to consider the post-implementation effects of UBI. Such a choice may seem surprising given my realist approach. However, as I will argue in Chapter 1, realist theory does not necessarily take into account factors pertaining to feasibility (this is more a task for non-ideal theory) . After offering a brief historical and 4
theoretical overview of the policy, I will set out that the UBI helps to remove the socio-epistemic barriers of disadvantaged groups. I will use the analytical framework of the two variables of meaninglessness and powerlessness to illustrate this. I will first show that the UBI, by ensuring their economic security and giving them greater access to education and leisure time, enables them to improve their cognitive capacities and thus to reduces their meaninglessness. Finally, I will argue that by decreasing their powerlessness, the UBI would enable these groups to participate more actively in the structuring of collective knowledge. The expected result of this is that they will ultimately be able to make better sense of their social experiences.
Finally, Chapter 5 will conclude by summarising the arguments and discussing possible avenues for further research.
With this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that the public policy of UBI, if implemented under certain conditions, could have repercussions far beyond the socio-economic realm. The arguments in favour of the UBI are extensive. Some have already touched upon the implications that its implementation may
According to Ingrid Robeyns, the two main tasks of ideal theory are: “first, to enable us to make comparisons between
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different social states and evaluate which one is more just than the other […] and second, to guide our actions in order to move closer towards the ideals of society” (2008a: 347).
have for political participation. Nonetheless, no strong case has been made so far to shed light on its potential epistemic ramifications. Thus, my end-goal is to connect both these political and epistemic dimensions to show that, by modifying structural and individual settings, the UBI can strengthen the capacity of disadvantaged groups to articulate political demands. If this is the case, we will know that the UBI is one of the solutions that could contribute effectively to remedying the massive and growing citizen disengagement from democratic politics of the past few decades (Hay, 2007).
Chapter 2: Realism
In this chapter, I argue that political legitimacy is conditional upon citizens’ epistemic capacity. To unfold this reasoning, I shall deploy a realist approach to political legitimacy. I will first set out the main definitional features and debates of the realist movement. Then, I will take a closer look at the realist “internalist conception of legitimacy” (Hall, 2013: 469) and discuss how it is conditional upon citizens’ epistemic capacity.
2.1 Realism Taking Issue with Moralism
To gain a clear picture of the political theory of realism, it must be stressed that it first developed negatively, i.e. as a critical force. It constituted itself as a countermovement to political liberal theory, best known through the writings of Immanuel Kant, Alexis de Tocqueville, James and John Stuart Mill (father and son) or, more recently, John Rawls. Political liberals seek to legitimise politics as a means of operationalising justice. What is just is legitimate, and therefore what is just must be identified. In this definitional quest for justice, liberals adopted an individualistic lens on political cooperation. They envisage the latter as a means and expression of a pluralist vision that allows for tolerance and diversity among individuals’ cultural and religious views. Although theorised in various forms, the essence of the liberal thesis is to hold that, if individuals behave ‘reasonably’ (where reasonableness stands for acting in accordance with a given moral universal), they will be able to live their lives according to an ideal of justice. By reaching a moral consensus on a set of fundamental values, the political system will in turn, legitimise itself. In one pithy formulation, within liberalism, “justice becomes in essence a condition of its legitimacy” (Horton, 2012: 134-135).
Realists take issue with liberalism’s insistence on the necessity to form consensus on a set of fundamental moral values. Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss are the two most influential thinkers who have contributed to bringing realism to the fore in political theory. Their main critique is that politics cannot be legitimated through a moral or ethical consensus insofar as ethics has its own normative sphere, distinctively separate from the political sphere. The problem is that “[i]f we continue to think that politics is a form of ‘applied ethics’ then the problems that we encounter in making sense of morality are only going to replicate themselves at the level of politics” (Hall & Sleat, 2017: 280). Acknowledging that individuals cannot reach consensus about their own moral codes (as expressed in religious, cultural or ethical disputes), enables us to appreciate the inapplicability of moral standards as a means of regulating the political arena. Raymond Geuss, in his article “Liberalism and its Discontents” (2002), points to three difficulties with the liberal consensus-building project (ibid.: 328-329) which, to my mind, encapsulate well the concerns of realism with regard to liberalism. First,
he stresses that it is not obvious that societies that have not reached a moral consensus cannot establish real political relations (ibid.: 328). Second, he questions the liberal stance that consensus is achievable ‘in principle’. Something that can be done ‘in principle’ may have no political value, as it may still be very unlikely to be workable in practice (ibid.: 329). Finally, he claims that obtaining consensus is not always desirable in politics (ibid.). In the remainder of this sub-section, I shall show how realism impugns and reshapes these affirmations while advancing a new theory of legitimacy. Where liberalism suggests building consensus, realism proposes to regulate conflicts.
The debate around realism was rekindled in 2010 with William Galston's paper: “Realism in Political Theory”. His paper sparked a flood of discussions and reflections based on the writings of Williams and Geuss. These writings put forward a series of methodological insights on the realist approach. They emphasise that the opposition of realism to liberalism is in fact more of a methodological resistance to the approach of “political moralism” (as Williams formulates it, 2005: 1) than to liberal values per se. Liberalism can therefore be seen as one of the expressions of political moralism (henceforth ‘PM’). PM refers to the view that the moral principles that regulate our private lives should also regiment political life. Crudely, it means that the moral rules according to which we behave towards each other in our private circles can and must also be those according to which we behave towards the rest of our fellow citizens in the public sphere. In his famous piece “Realism and Moralism in Political Theory” (2005), Williams splits PM into two separate models: the ‘enactment model’ and the ‘structural model’. In the former, politics is enacted or operationalised through the implementation of previously formulated moral ideals in human institutions (ibid.: 1). In the latter, politics is seen as framed by morality, which comes as a bulwark to ensure that political power is exercised ‘fairly’ — referring to PM in its Rawlsian form (ibid.). In both cases, politics is seen as applied ethics. Politics is devised as a means of enacting, concretising, applying or operationalising the content of moral ideals (justice, freedom, equality) in our real-world institutions. Either way, morality is thus prior to politics (in the conceptual rather than temporal sense), and this is precisely what realism takes issue with.
Therefore, realists seek to recast the normative relationship between politics and ethics (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 690). They posit that ethics is a product continuously shaped and reshaped by history. People’s mores evolve over time and what was viewed as fair a a few decades ago (if we think e.g. of women's right to vote) may no longer be so. In this sense, there is no higher moral order but there are only situated moral orders. There is no such thing as a pure moral theory since we cannot “study th[e] subject-matter” of ethics “without constantly locating it within the rest of human life, and without unceasingly reflecting on the relations one's claims have with history, sociology, ethnology, psychology and economics” (Geuss, 2008: 7). Thus, by indulging in moral idealising abstraction, claim the realists, political theory “fails […] to take seriously enough the peculiarities of the political and in doing so is unable to appreciate the complexity of the causal and normative relationship between morality and
politics” (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 690). The idea is that political life has its own distinctive set of issues, the specificities of which cannot be addressed by an ‘ethics-first’ approach (Geuss, 2008: 9). Thus, one must seek to give full autonomy to political thought (Williams, 2005: 3; Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 690-691). In other words, the debate centres on whether moral normativity can be eliminated from political theory (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 690).
To explain how realism endeavours to give full autonomy to political normativity, I will outline four ways in which realists say PM fails to deal properly with political issues. I will also try to show how, with respect to each of these ways, realism overhauls the normative relationship between morality and politics. First, PM “operates with an idealised moral psychology” which is only weakly motivational for political agents (Hall, 2015: 3). Secondly, PM erroneously reduces politics to matters of personal morality (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 691). Thirdly, PM appeals to abstract moral theorising whereas realism favours ‘contextuality’ (Sleat, 2014; Rossi & Sleat, 2014). Finally, PM can smuggle ideology into political theory (Prinz & Rossi, 2017; Rossi, 2019). All four points are closely related but freestanding. I cannot do justice to the complexity of each argument and will therefore try to distill the main points.
First of all, moralism is based on an idealised moral psychology, according to which individuals would be able to reach a moral consensus provided they behave rationally. This idea can be traced back to the Kantian and neo-Kantian approaches that postulate a rational and optimistic human nature (the concept of “autonomy” in Kant’s case). Individuals, if acting rationally, would coalesce around a same set of moral norms, which would then regulate their political constitution. The underlying idea (or hope) is that individuals will be motivated by their moral standards to act ‘rationally’. Realists concur that morality is likely to influence personal behaviour, but stress that this does not mean “that it can purport to guide political behaviour in the same way in which it guides personal conduct nor that it always provide a suitable blueprint for action in a sphere that is constituted by disagreement, contestation, and coercion” (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 691). The argument is that morality is a weak motivating force to steer politics (Geuss, 2008: 9-10), for two main reasons. First, because people are fundamentally divided on moral issues, and even more so on the moral “rationality” they should adopt. Second, because political judgment requires taking into account empirical circumstances, such as external pressures or practical ends, that are distinctively political and that may require acting against moral norms (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 694). Thus, the realist approach favours looking at individuals’ “real motivation” (Geuss, 2008: 9), i.e., not how they could ideally behave, but rather how they are actually
likely to behave in real-world social settings. To do so, realists advocate examining the historical, cultural
and social circumstances of political communities in order to understand the specificities of each, in which the behaviour of individuals inevitably differs.
Secondly, moralism reduces politics to matters of personal morality, holding that there are “overarching principles that span across” both moral and political realms (Rossi, 2019: 640). Taking up the Hobbesian thought, realists flatly dispute this point, arguing that if ethics “could effectively regulate behaviour in political communities as it does among (say) friends and acquaintances, we would not require politics” (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 691; Rossi, 2019: 640). They support this point by placing conflict at the heart of their reflection. They stress that the most intricate political issues are precisely problematic because they are “in part constituted by the absence of high levels of moral agreement and compliance” (Jubb, 2019: 364). As Williams aptly said, “political difference is the essence of politics” (2005: 78). A fortiori, conflicts are not solely moral, but may also be deep-seated disagreements over the most fundamental political principles themselves (Sleat, 2010: 491). Although realists may differ on the way to deal with conflict, they concur in saying that moralism turns the problem upside down when it seeks to reach a moral consensus, since it assumes away an unavoidable feature of political reality (Sleat, 2010: 491). Therefore, morality is said to “misunderstand[s] the nature of distinctively political goods” (Hall, 2015: 2), like order, security, stability, equality or political freedom. 5
Realists aim to re-conceptualise these notions under terms that take into account the initial conflictual situation (Rossi & Sleat, 2014).
Third, where moralism elaborates abstract moral theories, realism grounds its argument in the reality of the social context. The emphasis on contextualism carries over into two different positions. On the one hand, a “rejection of ambitious attempts to formulate grand theories from which to derive prescriptions for any possible political scenario and in reference to which we can judge political behaviour” and, on the other, the adoption of “a normativity that is appropriately sensitive to the specific conditions under which political decisions are taken and agents act” (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 694). This means that realists will inevitably emphasise the necessity of drawing on empirical evidence of historical, cultural and sociological realities to undertake any particular argument (Geuss, 2008: 13-14; Hall, 2015: 4). This aims to build a sound theoretical framework that can take into account the varying and unexpected circumstances of political life and inform us on how to deal with them — circumstances that theoretical models cannot, by definition, account for (ibid.: 16).
As a sub-point of this last argument, I would like to clarify another important definitional aspect of realism, that is, realism’s relationship to ideal and non-ideal theories. This point is subject to debate, as some realist positions tend to accentuate the identification of realism with non-ideal theory (see Valentini, 2012), while others clearly differentiate them (Prinz & Rossi, 2017: 350; Hall, 2015: 2; Rossi, 2019: 639-643). The latter claim that confusing realism with non-ideal theory equates to confusing the source of normativity (realism/moralism) with consideration of feasibility constraints (non-ideal
Edward Hall (2015) made a case for a realist conception of freedom. Robert Jubb (2015) gave an account of a realist
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theory/ideal theory). To put it differently, realism is sensitive’ (where moralism is ‘fact-insensitive’ (Hall, 2015: 2), but this does not mean that these facts are necessarily facts about feasibility (Rossi, 2019: 643). On the one hand, non-ideal theory is about balancing normative aspirations and feasibility constraints (Prinz & Rossi: 350). On the other hand, realism focuses on facts about individuals’ “actual motivations” and problems of “collective action” (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 690). This does not necessarily amount to lowering normative aspirations (Prinz & Rossi 2017: 350; Hall, 2015: 10). Therefore, realist arguments may incorporate feasibility constraints, but they may also be ignored; or, if they are taken into account, may not be the central concern. In accordance with this position, I will not consider the feasibility constraints of the form of UBI that I will be advocating. Such considerations are beyond the scope of this thesis, as its objective is to explore the post-implementation epistemic effects of the policy.
Finally, if moral standards are used to deal with political problems, morality (or PM) provides insidious means for smuggling ideological beliefs into politics. Here, ideology must be understood as a “set of beliefs, attitudes, preferences that are distorted as a result of the operation of specific relations of power; the distortion will characteristically take the form of presenting these beliefs, desires, etc., as inherently connected with some universal interest, when in fact they are subservient to particular interests” (Geuss, 2008: 52). Therefore, ideology is problematic for politics insofar as it “can be used indirectly to shape opinions, attitudes, and desires, and thus to manufacture what looks like ‘consent’” (ibid.: 51). In this sense, political theory can be either a backdoor way of hiding one's ideology, or a critique of ideology (Geuss, 2008: 50). Realism — in its radical version — embraces the latter position. Political moralists have often decried realism as carrying a great risk of bias towards the status quo due to its concern with sticking to the facts (Prinz & Rossi, 2017: 348-350). To the contrary, realists hold that by being “internal to the political context without being internal to the ideology that underpins that context” (i.e. without relying on moral considerations), realism is in fact more capable of providing genuine critiques of non-transparent claims to power (ibid.: 349; Geuss, 2017: 238).
2.2 The Realist ‘Internalist’ Conception of Political Legitimacy
As intimated, the major enterprise of moralism is to give substance to the notion of justice, to give it a content, a definition. Realism impugns this framing: it maintains that it does not satisfactorily capture the distinctiveness of political issues insofar as it distorts their specificities by mingling them with ethical questions. In particular, realists’ main thrust is to shift the cursor from justice to legitimacy (Rossi & Sleat, 2014: 692). Their starting point is conflict: whenever there is a conflict, there is a need for an authority to adjudicate it, and when “such an authoritative source deploys coercion, questions of its legitimacy arise” (Hall, 2015: 5). Thus, realists are committed to settling the question of who has
legitimacy in resolving such conflict. The main initiative in shifting the focus towards legitimacy is that of Bernard Williams. His theory of legitimacy provides an “explorative exercise into how one may criticise a set of political practices or institutions while remaining committed to evaluating them with standards internal to political practices themselves” (Prinz & Rossi, 2017: 352). The expression “exploratory exercise” is enlightening since it suggests that Williams' approach is a methodology that is repeatable and applicable to any political structure. Williams does not seek to investigate whether a 6
structure is legitimate using codes, norms, or standards that would be universally set. On the contrary, he argues that it is necessary to examine the judgments (whether political, moral, economic, etc.) of the members of the community itself in order to assess whether, from the inside, these members find the legitimation stories of a state acceptable. Hence the notion of internalism. I shall attempt to show that it has important implications, especially for how to determine what is meant by ‘an acceptable legitimation story’.
Williams' theory can be broken down into three phases, which correspond to the three core concepts of his demonstration. The first step in Williams’ theory is what he calls the “first political question” (henceforth ‘FPQ’), which he defines, in keeping with Hobbes, as “the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation” (Williams, 2005: 3). It is first, because it is a precondition to answer all other political questions (ibid.). It is a necessary condition for a political structure to be legitimate. However, and this time unlike Hobbes, it is not a sufficient condition for a state to be legitimate (ibid.). In other words, answering the FPQ does lead to creating a political order,
but one that is not necessarily acceptable to its members. It is notable here that the satisfaction of the FPQ
spawns stability in the strict sense of the term, without resorting to pre-political moral commitments (Jubb & Rossi, 2015: 3). It therefore constitutes the fundamental premise of a distinctively political normativity.
The second stage, Williams says, consists in finding a solution to the FPQ that is “acceptable” to political subjects (Williams, 2005: 4). Finding an acceptable solution, he says, equates to meeting what he terms the “Basic Legitimation Demand” (henceforth ‘BLD’). Thus, satisfying the BLD is what converts an illegitimate (‘ILLEG’) state into a legitimate (‘LEG’) state (ibid.). Which leads me to the third stage and third concept: to meet the BLD, the state must provide a story that provides a justification for its power. This legitimation story must “make sense” (henceforth ‘MS’) to all its subjects, so that the state be perceived as an “authoritative order” that “goes beyond the assertion of power” (ibid.: 10-11). Williams states:
Although Williams focuses his attention on the form of the state, his methodology can be said to apply to various types of
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By doing this, A claims that his actions transcend the conditions of warfare, and this gives rise to a demand for justification of what A does. When A is the state, these claims constitute its claim of authority over B. So we have a sense in which the BLD itself requires a legitimation to be given to every subject. (2005: 6).
It is important here to note that “MS is a category of historical understanding […] a hermeneutical category” (ibid.: 11, emphasis added). This means that it is neither merely descriptive nor normative (ibid.). It is not merely descriptive since it necessarily entails an evaluative judgment on the legitimacy of the structure. Nor is it normative, as the analysis of the legitimacy of a state is not meant to guide our behaviour — but, again, is only an evaluative exercise. Williams points out that the only instance in which the “MS” category can be normative (in its prescriptive variant) is when we perform this exercise for ourselves (ibid.).
Many lessons can be drawn from this picture offered by Williams. One of them is that Williams' concept of legitimacy is inherently contextualist (Rossi & Sleat, 2014). “The legitimation of political power is always a contextual question regarding what stands in need of justification, to whom, and what reasons are going to be normatively salient in those conditions” (ibid.: 5-6). This means that the reasons that are comprised in the legitimation story given by a state always MS in light of historical and cultural circumstances (Williams, 2005: 11). As Williams stresses, the category of “making sense” is hermeneutical because it relies on contextual interpretations embedded in a certain temporal and locational framework. A BLD only MS to a group of individuals as they relate to their immediate environment, to their “now and around here” (ibid.: 8). It is on this basis that Matt Sleat was able to argue that Williams's theory is not so much a rejection of liberal legitimacy, but a “corrective to liberalism's own understanding about the nature of its account of legitimacy” (2010: 493). To incorporate the contextuality of the legitimacy of liberal states into the methodology for thinking about their legitimacy, Williams famously spelled out the formula: “LEG + Modernity = Liberalism” (Williams, 2005: 9).
Thus, the context-bound hermeneutical category of MS inevitably makes the BLD a non-moral category. Indeed, the distinction between politics and sheer domination does not involve any moral commitment to be conceptually operational (Jubb & Rossi, 2015: 3). Morality is not prior to politics insofar as meeting the BLD “is a claim that is inherent in there being such a thing as politics: in particular because it is inherent in there being first a political question” (Williams, 2005: 5). For this reason, legitimacy and its related norms, such as order and stability, gain a fully distinctive political normativity in that they are completely unencumbered by moral considerations. Thus, through this
forceful reshuffle, Williams completely reshapes the normative relationship between morality and politics and thus treats legitimacy as a stand-alone political question.
As Edward Hall points out, one can see an “internalist conception” of legitimacy being sketched out (2013: 469). Here ‘internalist' means that the validity criterion of legitimacy is not to be found in some external moral ideal but within the very context that is being considered. More precisely, it is to be found “in the opinion of the citizens over whom political power is exercised. Legitimacy is […] conferred by subjects.” (ibid.). A political analyst, be s/he a philosopher or a theorist, will be free to discourse as much as s/he wishes on the moral values that he or she considers that a legitimate state must fulfil. The ultimate decision on whether a power is deemed acceptable is always, in the first and last resort, that of the citizens who are subjected to that power. That being said, it remains to be seen what exactly is meant by a power being deemed acceptable. Does this mean that any claim of lack of insufficient justification or of sufficient justification is necessarily genuine? Indeed, it begs the question: how is it possible to identify a genuine call for justification when it arises? (Williams, 2005: 6; Hall, 2013: 468). Williams asserts that a call for justification is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for a genuine demand to exist (Williams, 2005: 6). He writes:
It is not sufficient, because anyone who feels he has a grievance can raise a demand, and there is always some place for grievance. It is also not a necessary condition, because people can be drilled by coercive power itself into accepting its exercise. (2005: 6).
To substantiate this reasoning, Williams resorts to what he calls the “critical theory principle” (henceforth ‘CTP’). He defines it as follows: “the acceptance of a justification does not count if the acceptance itself is produced by the coercive power which is supposedly being justified" (ibid.). This notion takes its cue from Frankfurt School critical theory, well known by Theodor Adorno’s and Jürgen Habermas’ pens, and its tradition of immanent critique. This principle 7
makes it possible to distinguish a legitimation story that is genuinely acceptable from one that has been accepted as a result of previous unconscious shaping of citizens' beliefs. Thus, it provides a good illustration of how one can point to “internalised coercion” while remaining committed to realist requirements (Prinz & Rossi, 2017: 353). While providing an enlightening account of legitimacy, Williams also stresses a fundamentally opaque issue. Namely, the only safeguard against illegitimate coercion (the citizens' opinion) simultaneously serves as a wonderful potential Trojan horse for the latter.
See Prinz & Rossi, 2017; Geuss, 1981: 55-65 for more on this point.
Before considering this further, two points must be made at this juncture. First, as Matt Sleat has pointed out, Williams’ account enables us to see how the concept of legitimacy is not an “all-or-nothing assessment” (2014: 326). He shows that the difference between legitimate and illegitimate power is not rigid. Legitimacy is a process that works by degrees. This means that regimes can be “more or less legitimate depending on how congruent they are with the beliefs of those over whom they rule.” (ibid.). “After all, every political regime is a mixture, to various degrees, of legitimated and imperfectly legitimated political relationships” (ibid.: 329). This makes Williams' concept of legitimacy a kind of measurement tool that sets thresholds on a continuum, according to which political relations tend to be assessed more or less as relations of sheer power. It constitutes a convenient litmus test for whoever claims to have power over others. Secondly, and relatedly, Williams’ account of legitimacy allows us to consider it as an ongoing process rather than a definite event. Realist internalist theory of legitimacy does not set out a definite social contract in time. Rather, it poses that legitimacy must be continuously discussed as long as a state seeks to enforce power. It is a “ongoing process through which legitimacy is affirmed or denied” (Horton, 2012: 144). Couched in Williams’ terms this means that the BLDs must repeat themselves over time, as long as deemed necessary by the citizens of a state (even though, again, this does not mean that all demands will be genuine (Williams, 2005: 6). Over time and in the course of social, economic and technological developments, a state attempts to establish and re-establish its power, which will be continually reassessed for what it is and, above all, what it is becoming. It is also in this sense, it seems to me, that the realist focus on the notions of political conflict and disagreement takes on its full meaning. The legitimacy of a political structure and the justification for it is renewed through the conflicts that either achieve it or repudiate it.
To come back to the CTP, as Williams stressed, “the difficulty with it, of making good on claims of false consciousness and the like, lies in deciding what counts as having been “produced by” coercive power” (2005: 6). In other words, something must be known in order to differentiate what the citizens came to believe ‘autonomously' (if such a thing is possible) and what they might have been dragged into thinking. This is why the difference “between acceptable and unacceptable legitimation stories is not moral but epistemic” (Rossi, 2019: 642). Thus, the only bulwark for citizens to withstand against the manufacturing of their own consent is to be aware, as much as possible, of their socio-political interests. Indeed, if they want to make sense of the legitimation stories, without being “drilled into” making sense of them in a way in which they would not if some outside forces were not to shape their minds into doing so, they need to understand and/or to know something about their interests. As Galston stresses: “The more [civic] knowledge we have, the better we can understand the impact of public policies on our interests, and the more effectively we can promote our interests in the political process” (2001: 223).
On that point, Steven Lukes, although not a realist theorist, provides very interesting insights by 8
showing that individuals’ lack of understanding or awareness of their interests leaves the door open for power to exert itself without prior validation, insidiously. In his book Power: A Radical View (2005) he puts forward what he dubs a “three-dimensional view of power”. He essentially takes up previous analyses of power and takes them further. He argues that a comprehensive analysis of power must be able to illuminate the fact that people's opinions can be unconsciously structurally and culturally shaped, recreated and reinforced through systemic biases. As mentioned earlier, Lukes argues that the lack of awareness of individuals’ interests may ends up generating latent conflict, i.e. conflicts that are prevented from arising. He writes: “A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants” (ibid.: 27). Where previous analyses of power tended to define interests either as “policy preferences exhibited by the behaviour of all citizens” or merely “preferences exhibited by the behaviour”, he shows that interest may not be so easily identified, in that individuals' behaviour may actually not express their “real” interests (ibid.: 28). Consistently with the realist notion of legitimacy, no exterior moral criterion can purports to judge where citizens’ interests lie, only the latter can decide for themselves. This is why he distinguishes subjective interests (expressed by one’s behaviour) and real interests, i.e., the interests that could potentially be articulated by citizens if they were not drilled into thinking differently (ibid.: 28). Positing that citizens are drilled into thinking differently, nonetheless, demands an analysis to show how individuals may have been brought to do so, something I will attempt to show in the next chapter.
Thus, Lukes’ conception is particularly instructive regarding the realist internalist theory of legitimacy since he shows that the validity criterion of a state's legitimation story relies on the epistemic capacity of individuals to know or understand their socio-political interests. If one is epistemically hindered in understanding what is at stake for her/him in a state’s legitimation stories, then s/he may be hindered in politically contesting what s/he would would have deemed contestable. Indeed, “[t]he most effective and insidious use of power is to prevent such conflict from arising in the first place” (Lukes, 2005: 27). For that reason, I contend that individuals’ epistemic capacity is a necessary condition for political legitimacy. But here again, it is only a measuring tool in the sense that awareness of one’s interests requires a great deal of introspection (whether about one's own social and political leeway, or about the real intentions of a regime) which is not always entirely achievable in view of the limited information to which citizens have access. So I am not claiming that everyone should always be perfectly aware of their own interests. Rather, in accordance with the ‘degree-nature’ of legitimacy, I contend that the more citizens are aware of their interests and therefore capable of contesting what they deem contestable, the more we can say that the legitimacy of a state is epistemically sound. Or couched in negative terms, the less citizens are understanding their interests, the less a state can be said to be
Lukes provides a non-moral account of power, which allows it to fit well within a realist analytical framework.
epistemically sound. Moreover, and in keeping with the ‘ongoing-nature’ process of legitimacy, this capacity for contestation must be sustained over time. That is, if political support has been given once, no matter how wide it may have been, it must be renewed each and every time the state enforces power on its citizens.
Consequently, in the next chapter, I will argue that the fact that large sections of the socio-economically disadvantaged populations struggle to make sense of their interests poses a direct threat to the legitimacy of democracies. For that reason, I endorse Miranda Fricker's point when she says that “epistemic justice” is a necessary condition for individuals’ ability for contestation (Fricker, 2012: 1324). Although she formulates her point in moral terms, her remark, when stripped of its moral content, becomes highly relevant to our case. Indeed, the problem is not so much that people’s epistemic obstruction is unfair, but that it prevents them from being able to contest in the political space. In her analysis, she argues that the lack of intelligibility that an individual may experience relative to her/his social situation (the hermeneutical disadvantage that I will discuss later) can act as a major barrier to articulating and exposing the grievance that s/he considers to be experiencing. This is why, I contend, a tool for reinforcing the epistemic capacity of disadvantaged groups is called for. On that matter, I will advocate for the UBI as one effective solution. But before showing the merits of the UBI, I shall first make explicit how exactly these groups are epistemically hindered. Let me turn to the third chapter.
Chapter 3: Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups’ Epistemic Disadvantage 3.1 “Epistemic Capacity”: A Working Conceptualisation
3.1.1 Definition(s)
Understanding how the epistemic capacity of socio-economically disadvantaged groups is hindered in today’s democracies obviously hinges on a prior appreciation of what is meant by the concept of ‘epistemic capacity’. In keeping with my theoretical approach, I shall endeavour to give a realist account of the concept. I deliberately chose capacity rather than agency, as the concept of ‘epistemic agency’ refers to an already-existing body of literature which essentially approaches the concept from a perspective of pure individual ‘rationality’ and truth formation, from which I aim to distance myself. I seek to employ a more structural lens to home in on how social conditions affect socio-economically disadvantaged groups’ knowledge and understanding. Accordingly, I will draw primarily on the insights of social epistemology, as well as cognitive and social psychology.
I define the concept of ‘epistemic capacity’ as the ability to make sense of one's social experience. Where ‘social experience’ refers to the social conditions and interactions that relate to and may impact on one’s socio-political interests; and ‘making sense’ implies being able to defend one's interests in an informed manner, i.e. using evidence-based knowledge. Although my concept is broader, here, I take my cue from Miranda Fricker's political analysis of what she describes as the “hermeneutical 9
disadvantage” (2007: 152). She defines it as what “renders [one] unable to make sense of [one’s] ongoing mistreatment, and this in turn prevents [one] from protesting it, let alone securing effective measures to stop it” (ibid.: 151). Her definition clearly chimes with the insights of the previous chapter. Nonetheless, her conception of hermeneutical capacity does not exhaustively capture what I understand by epistemic capacity. The reason for this is simple: She excludes from her discussion the ‘epistemic goods’ of information and education, whereas I aim to incorporate them into my own. Fricker excludes them because, she argues, their effects are only incidentally epistemic, since the question of access to these goods boils down to questions of redistribution of wealth (ibid.: 1). Contrastingly, she seeks to investigate issues of “epistemic injustice” that are “distinctively epistemic in kind” (ibid.). That is, the situations in which a “harm” is done to someone “specifically in [her/his] capacity as a knower”, i.e. when someone is hindered in an attempt of “conveying knowledge to others by telling them, and
In her book Epistemic Injustice, Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007) Fricker explores both the political and ethical aspects of
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epistemic practices. Given my realist approach, I will exclude myself from her moral commitments and will attempt to focus only on her political implications, as I shall make explicit below.
making sense of our own social experiences” (ibid.). My understanding of epistemic capacity 10
integrates both distinctive and non-distinctive epistemic considerations.
The rationale for this choice is that it seems to me that issues of accessibility to the epistemic resources provided by education and information also play an important role in the ability of individuals to make sense of their social experience. I agree with Fricker that these two resources are not distinctively epistemic in the sense that their distribution can be reduced to social questions of distribution of wealth. However, I contend that they still provide crucial means for making sense of one’s social experience since one's social experience is necessarily embedded in a broader socio-political environment, for which education and information are valuable sources of knowledge. For instance, basic knowledge of history or of the latest public policies in one's society can only contribute positively to understanding one's social experience as part of a broader social structure. As David Coady points out, factual ignorance or error can, for example, have the disastrous consequence “[a]t a collective level”, of leading one to “vot[e] in ways that are contrary to [one’s] interests because [one] has been fed falsehoods or had truths withheld” (ibid.: 111). Consequently, the question of access to education and information entails, perhaps indirectly, but not incidentally, to my mind, important epistemic considerations. Henceforth, I will refer to this question of the distribution of epistemic resources of education and information as ‘the cognitive dimension’, since its implications can be reduced to factual empirical knowledge: knowledge derived from education, from various sources of information, as well as the mental capacities to process the associated content.
Nevertheless, this cognitive dimension is grossly insufficient to fully grasp what epistemic capacity consists of. There is a second dimension that, in line with Fricker’s arguments, is hermeneutical. It corresponds to one’s faculty of being able to make sense of one’s social situation thanks to collective shared understandings. By ‘collective shared understandings’ I mean the interpretations of social facts widely shared in a community. In this case, therefore, social understanding works through the use of
conceptual interpretations rather than merely factual information. Put differently, in this hermeneutical
dimension, understanding one’s social situation corresponds to the possibility of using collectively shared epistemic resources to “apply a certain meaning to (one’s) situation” (Grondin, 2002: 38), “in
terms [one] can follow and hope to communicate” (ibid.: 43, emphasis added). It pertains to a “practical or
applicative understanding” (ibid.).
According to Fricker, difficulty of understanding one’s social situation can be due to a bias in collectively shared hermeneutical resources. She writes:
This definition in fact includes two different epistemic disadvantages that Fricker discusses: the hermeneutical one, which
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refers to being able to make sense of one’s social experience; and the testimonial disadvantage, which focuses on discriminatory practices within communicative practices. Fricker’s testimonial disadvantage is less relevant for my point here, although I will touch upon it later on.
