Abstract
AbstractIn this paper, we draw attention to the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory and argue that they have more in common than previously thought. We show that both traditions draw on a similar epistemological bedrock, specifically relating to the fragmentation of knowledge in society and the fact that some of this knowledge cannot easily be shared between agents. We go on to investigate how market liberals and standpoint theorists argue with recourse to these similar foundations, and sometimes diverge, primarily because of normative pre-commitments. One conclusion we draw from this is that these similarities suggest that market liberals ought to, by their own epistemological lights, be more attentive towards various problems raised by feminist standpoint theorists, and feminist standpoint theorists ought to be more open to various claims made by market liberals.
Highlights
In this paper, we investigate the similarities between the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory
In 1.1 and 1.2, we introduce market liberalism and standpoint theory
As shown in Hayek’s example of the tin mine, we argued that for market liberalism some knowledge is such that it is factually fragmented in society but could be sharable in principle
Summary
We investigate the similarities between the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory. The focus will be the claims that some knowledge is dispersed in society such that only some agents have access to it, and that this knowledge is hard or impossible to share with others This is an insight that is shared by both market liberals and standpoint theorists. Market liberals hold that individuals have knowledge related to their place and time that is inherently hard to share and that enables a decentralized market to efficiently allocate resource and supports productive innovations. We motivate this paper by drawing on a Hayekian view of dispersed knowledge as a foundation for functioning markets and by drawing on a feminist view of standpoint theory inspired by, for example, Harding and Collins, that discusses the contexts of gender and race. In 3, we draw together these findings and suggest a productive path forward for both market liberals and standpoint theorists by recourse to a number of examples in which we put the above results to work
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