Determining Personal Falsity: A Gadamerian Critique of the Enlightenment
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Abstract
This paper attempts to develop a criterion for determining when one’s own opinion is incorrect. I first establish a Gadamerian critique of Enlightenment objectivism, and continue by stating that neither radical objectivism nor radical relativism is an applicable standard within epistemology. There must be both some valid and some invalid opinions. In dialogue with Georgia Warnke, the discussion of right and wrong perception is based on the minimums of immediate illegitimizing of certain prejudices: part-whole incongruity and dogmatic opinions.
Further, in conjunction with María Lugones’s theory of “world-travelling”, I state that one is unable to adequately dismiss an individual’s opinion on a phenomenon until they have “travelled” to the individual’s “world” and experienced the phenomenon through that individual’s personal epistemology. To get a proper and best-as-possible understanding of someone’s stance, especially a stance that opposes one’s own, one must address or interrogate the prejudices that are tied to the stance itself, and meaningfully investigating another person’s prejudices/perceptions requires travelling to their world. As this is incredibly difficult to do and requires high amounts of time and epistemic/hermeneutic labour, it becomes more efficient to be reflexive for only oneself than for others. I develop a criterion to determine such personal falsity, where, first, building off Vrinda Dalmiya and Linda Alcoff, one must determine either propositional/theoretical or practical/educational expertise in the individual with the opposing opinion to one’s own. An expert’s differing stance is merely a signal to continue with research into the relevant inquiry. One must maintain the belief that opinions necessitate their own change, and expertise does not always stem from those with the most prestige behind their name. Humility is the crucial factor in the opinion-changing process that stands as the fountainhead of good knowledge.
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