Is Inclusion an Epistemic Virtue?

Harvey Siegel
University of Miami

Howe argues, persuasively in my view, that inclusion is to be valued on both moral and epistemic grounds. Like him, I restrict my discussion to the relevant epistemological issue: in what sense, if any, is inclusion an epistemic virtue?. While we are mainly agreed on this question, we disagree on the related question of the relation between epistemic and moral virtue.

How is (isn't) inclusion an epistemic virtue? In my earlier paper,^[1] I argued that it is not a criterion by which to evaluate epistemic worthiness. We cannot say of a candidate belief/hypothesis/theory that it is true (false), or more (less) probable, or enjoys a higher- (lower-) than-otherwise justificatory status, because it was generated in inclusive (exclusive) circumstances. Beliefs/claims generated by inclusive conversations (or which are inclusive in content) can nevertheless be false, unjustified, or otherwise epistemically defective; similarly, exclusive conversations can yield theories (possibly also exclusive in content) which are true, justified, or otherwise epistemically meritorious. But inclusion may well be an epistemological (methodological) virtue in the sense that the more voices and perspectives are included in theorizing, the more likely it is that epistemically worthy beliefs/hypotheses/theories will be generated and accepted. Howe agrees with both these claims concerning the senses in which inclusion is/isn't an epistemic virtue. He nevertheless regards my account of inclusion, as primarily a moral rather than an epistemic virtue, as problematic. Among his criticisms are these:

(1) The moral/epistemic distinction I draw is untenable. Howe finds the distinction problematic; given cognitivism in ethics, "the epistemic and the moral are intermingled." This fails successfully to challenge the distinction. It is incorrect that "[t]he possibility that escapes Siegel is that inclusion might be both a moral and an epistemic virtue." Indeed, in my paper I endorsed inclusion's being both a moral and an epistemic virtue in the second (methodological) sense noted. I did not presuppose, and don't believe, that a given virtue cannot be both. I argued only that inclusion isn't an epistemological virtue in the first sense. The thesis that inclusion cannot be both a moral and an epistemic virtue is, as Howe suggests, false.

(2) Inclusion is just like other "methodological canons": they increase "credence," but don't guarantee truth. I agree that neither inclusion nor any other methodological canon guarantees truth. But other such canons do guarantee increased epistemic worthiness; inclusion does not. Howe's worry here depends upon conflating the two senses of "epistemic virtue" delineated above.^[2] The satisfaction of the other methodological canons enhances epistemic virtue in the first sense; inclusion does not. This is the relevant difference between them.

(3) Inclusion is a requirement of good science, and so an epistemic virtue, when sampling among diverse groups of people in social science research. I confess some surprise that Howe thinks I would disagree here, since I explicitly claim that in social science cases of this sort, unbiased (inclusive) sampling is required for good science. But this reply is too superficial.

(4) Howe's deeper point. As Howe presents the previous objection, it appears to concern sampling. Howe suggests, however, that it is more than this, since he predicts that I "might (likely would) contend that, epistemologically (versus morally) speaking, the requirement for social scientists to include a diversity of human beings in their samples is really no different from the requirement for geologists to include a diversity of rocks in theirs." His deeper point emerges when we ask: in what way are the two cases different? The difference, Howe insists, is that people know things. In particular, they know about their own lives, beliefs, interests, etc. Consequently, including diverse persons in samples has an epistemic significance which the fair sampling of rocks does not. Interpretivist social scientists, in particular, couldn't successfully study those outside their own scholarly communities without engaging those outsiders' perspectives - so doing is a necessary condition of their knowing and knowing about them. This is not a point about sampling; it concerns the requirements of genuine knowledge of others that it is one task of social science research to seek. Howe concludes that "Siegel's blanket claim that inclusion is not an epistemic good is mistaken" because inclusion is a prerequisite of such knowledge.

Does this fact differentiate the social science case from the geology case? Howe argues that it does, and that that differentiation ultimately undermines the moral/epistemic distinction:

if the social science case were faithfully modeled on the geology case, then, contra Siegel, there would be no moral requirement whatsoever to include a diversity of persons in the conduct of social science; the reason for including them, like the reason for including a diversity of rocks, would be exclusively epistemic....There is a moral obligation to include people because they know things and have interests associated with these things.

So on Howe's view the moral requirement to include diverse persons depends upon the fact that they know things; without such knowledge, there would be no such moral requirement.

This view faces two objections. First, the point is limited, since it extends only to the inclusion of diverse persons in social science samples; it says nothing about the need to include diverse persons and perspectives within the community of social science inquirers, or indeed within any other community of inquirers/social beings. Moreover, Howe's remarks are limited to the context of interpretive social science. This context, while undeniably broad and important, is far narrower than the whole of science - let alone the whole of knowledge and social practice - which entirety is the domain concerning which advocates of inclusion advocate it.

The more fundamental difficulty is that Howe's view makes knowledge a prerequisite for the moral requirement to include: if persons don't have the relevant knowledge, there is no moral reason to include them. But think of all the persons who don't have what Howe considers to be the requisite knowledge: those who suffer from "false consciousness" (Howe's example), young children, the severely cognitively challenged, or simply those many (most?) of us who are arguably mistaken about our own interests. Is there no moral requirement to include such people and/or their perspectives, either in samples in interpretive research, in conversations concerning which they have an interest or stake, or in theories which refer to all persons? This is not only mistaken; it is pernicious. The moral obligation to include does not depend upon the knowledge of the included, any more than any other moral obligation or right. Does your right to be treated fairly before the law, or in the workplace, depend upon what you know? Does my university's obligation to ensure the safety of women on campus depend upon what they know? Clearly not. Similarly, the obligation to include, and the concomitant right to be included, are not dependent upon having knowledge.

Howe notes that on my view the obligation to include is not dependent on the knowledge candidates for inclusion might have. How, then, can it be legitimate to exclude on grounds of lack of expertise, as I argued in my 1995 essay? The answer is given there: excluding someone from a "theoretical" conversation on grounds of lack of relevant expertise does not fail to treat that person with respect.

What follows concerning the social science and geology cases? In both, inclusion is required in the interests of fair sampling; it is required in the former case also because of the relevance of the perspectives of the included to the aims of the inquiry. However, independently of these epistemic considerations, inclusion of diverse persons/perspectives is also morally required in all cases in which exclusion constitutes a lack of respect for the excluded. What matters, from the moral point of view, is not what persons know, but whether excluding them fails to treat them with respect.

Howe's fundamental claim is that "[t]here is a moral obligation to include people because they know things and have interests associated with those things - things that the traditional powers that be don't (and can't) know so long as they conduct inquiry in a way that keeps them insulated." In reply, I have made two points: making the moral obligation to include dependent upon knowledge greatly limits the domain to which the obligation applies; and conceiving of moral obligation in this way is inconsistent with our ordinary understanding of the requirements of morality, upon which understanding the advocacy of inclusion depends. The moral requirement to treat people with respect, from which the obligation to include flows, in no way depends upon what they believe or know.

---

[1] Harvey Siegel, "What Price Inclusion?" in Philosophy of Education 1995, ed. Alven Neiman (Urbana: Philosophy of Education Society, 1996), 1-22.

[2] It depends also on failing to distinguish between inclusion's guaranteeing truth and its guaranteeing enhanced probative status. Inclusion guarantees neither; other methodological canons guarantee the latter.