Zetetic and epistemic deference in standpoint epistemology

Abstract

The Advantage Thesis is the centerpiece of standpoint epistemology. According to this thesis, standpoint occupants—those who bear a particular sort of epistemically fruitful relationship to marginalized social locations—have an epistemic advantage over those who do not, at least when it comes to questions concerning those social locations. Given this thesis, a question immediately arises: How should non-occupants respond? A common answer is epistemic deference. Non-occupants ought to defer to standpoint occupants when inquiring on relevant matters. Recently, however, the idea that standpoint epistemology calls for deference has been challenged. Opponents argue that epistemic deference is incurious, cowardly, or potentially harmful. But these worries are misplaced. They rest on three missteps: (1) conflating social and epistemic deference, (2) conflating settling p with settling why p, and (3) presupposing a maximalist conception of epistemic deference. Maximalism, however, falls short as a general account of epistemic deference, independent of the concerns of standpoint epistemology. Drawing on alternative accounts of deference in the literature, I show that epistemic deference is not inimical, but rather essential to the practices of inquiry that standpoint epistemologists recommend. After introducing and defending the term "zetetic deference" for the central feature of these practices, I show that epistemic deference is an essential component of them. In sum, epistemic deference is part, parcel, and prerequisite of the particular sort of courageous, inclusive inquiry standpoint theorists envision.