Truth and Affordances

Abstract

The notion of living in a post-truth world compels many who speak of truth in a commonsense way to use the term “objective truth.” In various theoretical psychologies, by contrast, favor continues to be given to the affordances alleged to inhere in locally relativized psychological truths, over the epistemic violence observed in claims to objective psychological knowledge. Despite this sanguine view of epistemic relativity, it, too, has conduced to epistemic violence throughout history, resulting in the further oppression of othered peoples, by way of objectively false assertions cunningly disguised as objective truth. I analyze ways in which such typical relativist assertions as “Proposition X is true for some but not for all” creates epistemic muddles obscured by “prepositional attitudes.” Particular attention is given to ways in which (a) the “true-for” relativist/nonobjectivist epistemology that many theorists advocate depends on the non(true-for)relativist knowledge they reject, and (b) objectively false claims about othered peoples may have mislead progressively-minded scholars into believing that the cause of epistemic violence lies in an objectivist epistemology, a belief that keeps hidden from them the social-justice affordances that inhere in that very epistemology.

Notes

1 Teo (2008) adds, “The negative impact can range from misrepresentations and distortions, to a neglect of the voices of the ‘Other,’ to statements of inferiority, and to the recommendations of adverse practices or infringements concerning the ‘Other’” (p. 57).

2 See Tissaw and Osbeck (2007) for traditional definitions of “mainstream” psychology, and challenges to that definition.

3 See the Taskforce on Indigenous Psychology (www.indigenouspsychology.org) for names of charter members and mission statements of that movement, which shares concerns about epistemic violence with critical psychology.

4 For historical treatment of objectivity in psychology, see Morawski (2005) and Teo (2015b).

5 See Thrift and Sugarman (2019) for historical overview of diverse conceptualizations of social justice, with suggestion for ways to litigate these competing meanings. Also see Arfken and Yen (2014).

6 As Gergen (1985) put it, “[U]nlike the moral relativism of the empiricist tradition, constructionism reasserts the relevance of moral criteria for scientific practice. To the extent that psychological theory (and related practices) enter into the life of the culture, sustaining certain patterns of conduct and destroying others, such work must be evaluated in terms of good and ill. The practitioner can no longer justify any socially reprehensible conclusion on the grounds of being a ‘victim of the facts’; he or she must confront the pragmatic implications of such conclusions within society more generally” (p. 273). See Held (1998).

7 To state the obvious, many different truths about the same object can co-exist logically, so long as they are not contradictory statements.

8 More recently we see this in the work of indigenous psychologists, including those who work within a critical psychology tradition (see Held, 2019; Teo, 2018; and note 3).

9 Michael Yudell (2014) made a similar point about Blacks, among others: “While ideas about biological distinctiveness were part of the racial lexicon since the early 19^th century, eugenics offered a scientific explanation for racial difference. Eugenicists correlated certain negative and deviant social behaviors—including criminality, insanity, and feeblemindedness . . . with particular ethnic and racial populations, and claimed these behaviors to be inherited via the gene. . . . [These] ideas about racial difference [were applied in the early 20^th century] to immigration, reproductive, and racial policies” (pp. 13–14).

10 Signaling benign intentions, Rushton and Jensen conclude that denying their findings is “likely to be injurious both to unique individuals and to the complex structure of societies” (p. 285). I leave it to the reader to evaluate that assertion in the context of their research questions/program.

11 Teo (2015b) reviews four forms of objectivity analyzed by Daston and Galison (2007), and sees mainstream psychology as situated, at least rhetorically, in the problematic “mechanical” form of objectivity that dominated 19^th and 20^th century science.

12 Depression appears in scare quotes to indicate that I do not here endorse any universally held diagnostic criteria of depression—or even the belief that depression, however defined, appears (as a malady) in all cultures. Rather, “depression” serves as a stand-in for any and all states deemed worthy of treatment intervention within any given culture.

13 In Held, (2019) I gave examples of research in mainstream psychological science and experimental philosophy, in which factors that contribute to processes of othering are empirically demonstrated, including processes of essentialization that escalate racist othering (e.g., Cimpian, Brandone, & Gelman, 2010; Gelman, 2003; Leslie, 2017; Rothschild & Keefer, 2017; Shulman & Glasgow, 2010; Williams & Eberhard, 2008). Findings such as these could be used to inform educational and other socioeconomic policies that advance progressive interests.