RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING

S. Joel Garver

CHAPTER FIVE

The Power of "Truth":
Foucault and Doxastic Practices

Section II: Part D

Foucault's Normative Account

Most of the hard work in outlining Foucault is behind us, since most of Foucault's effort is descriptive. He does, however, make significant normative assumptions throughout his descriptions as well as explicit normative statements in his later work. Before turning to some of the most important aspects of Foucault's normative account, let us review what contribution his descriptive account will yield for epistemic normativity.

Drawing on Foucault's analyses, it seems that he would likely set out a number of criteria that must be met if a belief is to be counted by us as justified (or, more socially, if a statement that is proposed within a discursive formation is to count as justified). First, a belief must be the output of a discursive formation that confers meaning and significance upon it. Therefore, the belief must concern objects and properties that are authorized by the discursive formation. Second, the belief must be held within a subjective position in which it is permitted by the discursive formation for that kind of belief to be held. For instance, a medical diagnostic belief might be held by an individual who legitimately holds the role of a doctor or nurse (perhaps within the appropriate specialty), though not by anyone else (except derivatively). Third, in addition to a legitimate subjective position, the belief must be formed within the various aspects of a discursive formation as is authorized by that formation for the attribution of justification. For example, certain practices in which an appropriate subject moves from certain experience types, using certain concepts, exercising the correct mastery of those concepts, will yield beliefs that can be legitimately taken as justified.

Taken together these criteria provide something of an account of when a discursive formation allows that it is reasonable to take a belief to be justified. Furthermore, these criteria approach practical ascriptions of justification in terms of the beliefs' being the output of an established doxastic practice, properly engaged in, as we have discussed that in previous chapters. After all, Foucault's discursive formations are generally coherent, productive of forms of self-support, engaging wider spheres of practice, deeply ingrained within a social context, and so on. Many of these factors also went into the social establishment of doxastic practices in the last chapters.

This is not all Foucault has to say, however, in respect to normativity. Also, these criteria could still be construed descriptively, as outlining a sociology of knowledge regarding which beliefs come to be taken as justified and why that is so and disregarding whether or not those attributions of justification are reasonable or the social establishment of a certain practice is warranted. Furthermore, discussion of under what conditions a belief actually possesses justification is completely set asid e. Regarding this last

point it seems, in light of Foucault's decentering of the individual subject, that we can say that any account of actual justification proceeding from Foucault's analyses will be externalist in tenor. Regarding the reasonableness of taking a belief to be justified much more is to be said.

Minimally, Foucault supposes that a justification-conferring doxastic practice must function within a coherent and consistent discursive formation in giving rise to beliefs. Part of that consistency is seen in a high degree of consistency between the outputs of the discursive formation as it utilizes that doxastic practice. After all, much of Foucault's critiques turn on forms of inconsistency or contradiction: the doubles in the Order of Things 1973:303-343; proliferation of disciplinary technologies within a rhetoric of liberty and progress in Discipline and Punish 1979; etc. This consistency, however, is wider than just logical consistency between the beliefs produced (no massive and persistent contradictions). It also includes consistency between beliefs and practices and particular sorts of relations to power. In these respects Foucault analysis of "subjugated knowledges" is quite important.

An examination of subjugated knowledges is key to Foucault's account of normativity. As Alcoff notes, throughout his descriptions Foucault's

There is, on Foucault's account, something about "subjugated knowledges" (and what counts as one of those is a question we will have to answer) that places them in a superior position. Thus, Foucault's valorization of subjugated knowledges is, in some sense, a normative one. The issue, however, is whether being a "subjugated knowledge" can count as an epistemic criterion of normativity and, if so, why that is the case.

It is clear that Foucault intends it to be an epistemic criterion. First, since, on his view, "knowledge cannot be disassociated from power...there will be no criterion of belief which has only to do with knowledge and nothing to do with power" (Alcoff 1993:119). Second, Foucault's preference for subjugated knowledges is not merely a matter of their relation to power (and thus mostly political in nature), but rather it is also due to their relation to knowledge, justification, and truth. Foucault

Foucault writes concerning "the inhibiting effect of global, totalitarian theories" by means of which local discourses are "in some sense put into abeyance, or at least curtailed, divided, overthrown, caricatured, theatricalised, or what you will" (1980:81). These are fairly clearly epistemic indictments of discourses which are global, totalitarian, hegemonic, or dominant. Nevertheless, the distinction between such discourses and those which are subjugated, particular, localized, and so on is still unclear. So too is the full epistemic significance of the distinction.

We must not think of the distinction between hegemonic and subjugated discourses (belief-systems, knowledges, etc.) simply in terms of generality. Being hegemonic is not simply a matter a claiming to have a truth that ranges over the entire world and its history. Foucault himself takes his own theories to be subjugated ("the moment at which we risk colonization has not yet arrived" 1980:86) and yet to be perfectly general. He writes,

Further on Foucault comments,

Being hegemonic or subjugated, then, is not simply a matter of generality.

On the contrary, it is an epistemically influential relation to power--how power is utilized, to what ends, and with what effects. Hegemonic discourses use power in such a way that they conceal its use and it is used to the end of distorting, curtailing, caricaturing, suppressing, inhibiting, or otherwise ill-affecting truth and knowledge. Foucault writes, "power is tolerable only on the condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms" (1978:86). This is also clear in Foucault's contention that focussing on subjugated knowledges will expose the mechanisms of power and domination at work in hegemonic discourse.

Thus, it seems, what is epistemically inferior about hegemonic discourses is that they are structured so as to hide, distort, conceal, or mystify their relation to power and the way in which it functions within a discursive formation. That is to say, they attempt to deny any sort of clear and regular access to the means by which they produce discourses taken to count as knowledge. Local or subjugated discourses stand in a different relationship to power. They do not use it to conceal and distort knowledge production. They have a "validity [which] is not dependent on the approval of the established regimes of thought" (1980:81).

What exactly, however, is being hidden or distorted within hegemonic discourses? Several possibilities come to mind, all of which are suggested by Foucault. First, hegemonic discourses hide the way in which they form beliefs in terms of the grounds and practices they utilize in belief-formation. Thus, we might take hegemonic discourses as failing to meet an internalist constraint on the accessibility of grounds. Alston proposes such a constraint because he takes it to be part of our concept of justification that a belief which has justification is the sort of belief that we can question and actively justify. Such justifying would require access to grounds (1989b:236-237).

I find that line of thought unpersuasive, but it does seem to me that those beliefs which we are reasonable to take as justified are also those regarding which we have some access to how they were formed (whether we think of that in terms of grounds or doxastic practices). Since it is practical ascriptions of justification which, I contend, are of primary interest to Foucault, his internalist constraint makes sense. Moreover, Foucault gives us reason to think that if a certain doxastic practice lacks internalist accessibility and, I would add, is not clearly a reliablist mechanism (like fact memory), then there is a reason: namely, power is functioning to distort knowledge and belief-formation.

Second, hegemonic discourses, while lacking accessibility to their grounds and to their belief forming processes, are also apt to produce various kinds of inconsistencies in their outputs. The problem with hegemonic discourses, however, is that they are structured, on Foucault's view, to conceal those inconsistencies. This is another way in which such discourses conceal power. As Foucault writes, the success of dominating power "is proportional it its ability to hide its own mechanisms" (1978 :86).

Part of how hegemonic discourses succeed in this concealment of their use of power is by limiting, in the various ways discussed, what questions may be asked, which lines of research are thought to be valuable, what is considered obvious, who may speak authoritatively on what topics, and so on. By means of hegemonic discourse certain propositional "contents...have been buried and disguised in a functionalist coherence or formal systematisation" (1980:81). Subjugated discourse, on the other hand, allows for questioning, challenge, examination of outputs and results, in ways that a hegemonic discourse will not allow.

We might think of these relations to power in terms of the possession of viable overriding mechanisms. Hegemonic discourses will not as easily allow their outputs to be overridden except in certain limited areas (they must allow some overriding in order to be believable). Subjugated discourses, on the other hand, have clear, well-structured, mechanisms by which inconsistencies, epistemic failures, and the like can be detected.

This brings us to a final issue. Foucault proposes the various problems that can arise in respect to hegemonic discourses. The question remains, however, how we might go about detecting these problems (especially in light of the ability of hegemonic discourses to mask them). Moreover, we are faced with the question as to how these points might be incorporated into a normative account of well-established doxastic practices. Regarding the detection of problems, Foucault offers the following suggestio ns.

First, significant inconsistency in output will be present within epistemically problematic discourses and will serve as an indication of those problems. This inconsistency includes logical contradiction between propositional outputs, but will prove more comprehensive in light of Foucault's analysis of discursive formations. Since discursive formations involve institutions, practices, subjective positions, and the like, we must look for inconsistencies between propositional outputs and what must be supposed as true in order for other aspects of a discursive formation to function, regardless as to whether those suppositions are explicitly made.

For instance, Foucault has argued extensively that a body of "knowledge" arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regarding criminality, guilt, justice, and prisons (1979). On one hand, certain policies were adopted which purportedly treated prisoners more humanely, with more sensitivity and liency, as free moral agents, towards the end of rehabilitation, and so forth. At the same time these very same policies can be shown to encourage and refine criminal activity, to be more intrusive and give greater power to the state (which now has jurisdiction over minds, souls, and moral faculties and not just bodies and actions), and to lead to a proliferation of various technologies that are simultaneously productive and restrictive. While these latter aspects do not come to the surface as beliefs or explicit statements within a discursive formation, they are, nevertheless, true, presupposed by the practices involved in belief and knowledge production, and in tension with the beliefs actually produced. Thus, since these inconsistencies are directly tied to "knowledge" production we may not take the doxastic practices involved to be well-established.

Second, since such inconsistencies may not always be apparent, we might do well to look for forms of resistance to hegemonic discourses in order to detect them. Similarly, these forms of resistance may pose the questions unasked by hegemonic discourses and give access to their practices of belief-formation. Foucault seems to assume (on the basis of his analyses of various institutions) that hegemonic discourse will almost always give rise to subjugated and resistance discourses. He writes,

Focus on these forms of resistance, especially, in our context, as they are involved in belief-formation and knowledge-production, will help reveal the inconsistencies produced by hegemonic discourses and will uncover the practices by which such outputs are formed. Foucault writes that by examining subjugated discourse we will be able "to look for the data and questions in which [hegemonic discourses] are hidden" (1991:151).

It seems, then, drawing on Foucault, that in order for a doxastic practice to be well-established, not only must it meet the criteria given by Alston, but it will also have to meet some further constraints. Let us envision a case in which two competing practices are inconsistent and we must decide which is more well-established. Several criteria come to mind.

First, we must give preference to the practice which does not produce pervasive and massive inconsistencies in its doxastic outputs. Moreover, we will give preference to the practice which does not produce pervasive and massive inconsistencies between its doxastic outputs and what is supposed by the outputs of non-doxastic practices in which it plays an essential role.

Second, the practice to which we give preference must be structured in such a way that there is some general access to the means by which beliefs are formed (grounds, practices, etc.).

Third, we will give preference to the practice that has an extensive and well-structured overrider system.

Fourth, since these matters are not always easily detectable, we will do well to see if any discourses of resistance are emerging in respect to one practice or another or whether the one practice in question is in resistance to the other. Part of what that requires is the use of the other practice or practices (which may be forms of resistance) in order to raise questions so that inconsistencies and grounds can be revealed. The more well-established practice will be the one that survives that sort of challenge more successfully.

An important thing to note here, is that the practice which turns out to be more well-established may not be the one that seems more socially-established, more obvious, more natural, or harder to give up. Rather, the question centers on its relation to power and the effects of that relation (in part, a teleological concern, but that is a topic of the following chapter). All of this has been, it seems, highly theoretical (though it stems from Foucault's analyses of very particular situations). Towards remedying that, let us analyze an example.