Perspectivism Theory

The claim that “it is all subjective” is almost commonplace among individuals in the 21st century. This claim reinforces the assumption that one's knowledge is self-reflexive; that is that it both affects one's perceptions and talk, and is affected by one's perceptions and talk. This is generally talked about as the “problem of knowledge” or the “epistemic problem” and is referenced by the question, “how do you know what you know?” Often, beliefs are informed by family, friends, science, religion, social connections, and education level, among other things; ultimately, much of what is accepted as knowledge is based on a person's perception about what exists and about what is deemed “true.” Often disagreements between people are explained as the differences between their individual perspectives. The theoretical names of this problem include, among other names, perspectivism theory a term that encompasses multiple philosophical and theoretical concepts.

The rubric of perspectivism theory can be divided into two different epistemological camps: radical perspectivism and perspective realism. Radical perspectivism presumes that either there is nothing “out there” or that the only thing that matters is one's individually constructed meaning of what may or may not be “out there.” Radical perspectivism assumes that meaning, reality, and knowledge are constructed through language and that they have no correspondence to anything that may exist apart from the knower. The Greek sophists introduced radical perspectivism into ancient philosophy, and Frederick Nietzsche popularized it for contemporary philosophy. Robert Scott (1967, 1976) and Barry Brummett (1976) introduced radical perspectivism into the study of human communication with their discussions about rhetoric-as-epistemic and the concept of intersubjectivism. The ancient sophists and Nietzsche argued that humans are essentially solipsistic and cannot know anything other than what is experienced and known in their own head. Scott and Brummett argued that knowledge is based on collective, or intersubjective agreements among individuals who constitute a group. An example of this is a code of professional conduct defined by individuals who are part of that organization. A second view of intersubjectivism is that a power-based definition of knowledge helps to create a group of individuals who reinforce the power structures and its assumptions about knowledge. Thus, a political party's power structure defines what is “real” or “true” and those who adhere to that perspective or to others in that group rally around the group and reinforce its perspective. An underlying assumption for radical perspectivism is that a Nietzschean, “will-to-power” determines what is real rather than anything that may, or may not, exist that is external to the individual or to the intersubjective group.

Perspective realism, on the other hand, assumes that a knowable reality exists apart from the knower, but that humans have a finite understanding of and differing views about that reality. Thus, differences exist because people have differing [Page 642]perspectives on reality rather than that people have different realities. This may sound like semantic games, but the difference between the two statements is significant because the differences are still held together by what is deemed the common ground of the actual, but never fully knowable reality. Perspective realism was introduced into ancient philosophy, it can be argued, by Isocrates and Aristotle and has been explained to a modernist audience by Evander Bradley McGilvary (1956).

...