Epistemic Insecurity: A Critique

Abstract

The chapter argues that conceptualization of epistemic insecurity in both philosophy and the social sciences is bound up with the wider status of epistemology. Mostly in the social sciences, epistemology is diminished and given the form it is assumed to take in philosophy it is also widely opposed. This cannot obtain in the inter-disciplinary paradigm of critical theory, whose very essence is an explicit emancipatory interest in revealing and correcting social injustice. For the specific theme of this chapter, the concept of epistemic insecurity requires acknowledging epistemic security as a cognitive frame and validity standard. Epistemic security and insecurity can both be mutually interdependent or opposed. They are revealed to be conceptually and practically interdependent in that the validity standard and normative goal of epistemic security are essential to grasping epistemic insecurity. They are opposed when consideration of epistemic insecurity reveals social injustice of various kinds in the specification and institutionalization of forms of epistemic security. The chapter proposes that epistemic insecurity in critical theory, including its dialectical positioning in relation to epistemic security, requires an expanded radical ontology that fully embraces epistemic processes for its adequate conceptualization. The essay, following this goal, uses a critical, triadic, semiotic perspective ultimately derived from Peirce, articulated here as a critical cognitive sociology, both to elucidate this ontology and to open the way to utilizing it in societal analysis.