To save myself from re-typing, I’ll quote another excerpt from the same paper:
[tab]Instead of reasoning in a detached manner based solely on empirical evidence in order to arrive at the truth, knowledge, for Nelson, is grounded in an epistemic community and situated within a web of the beliefs and theories of that community. Such knowledge is always thus contextual with respect to its community. With Nelson, there is a shift from the kind of prescriptive epistemology of the traditional account to a descriptive naturalized epistemology understood as a kind of sociology of science. The traditional account tells us how we ought to attain knowledge, while Nelson’s concern is with how we actually do come to make knowledge claims. The actuality, Nelson claims, is far from the traditional picture of independent and disinterested reasoning up to metaphysically real truths. Instead, she holds that knowledge is attained communally, and that knowers come to know things based on a socially determined set of criteria. The resultant knowledge claims are inextricable from their respective epistemic communities.
By situating knowledge within a community of beliefs and theories, Nelson is displacing the idea that knowledge is unchanging and fixed across knowers, which is central to the ontological tyranny. In essence, Nelson is replacing the objectivity of the ontological tyranny with a kind of social subjectivity, wherein knowledge claims are products of scientific communities, many of which are at odds with each other. She holds that scientific knowledge is “generated within social experiences, relations, traditions, and historically and culturally specific ways of organizing social life” (40). Consequently, knowledge cannot be produced by an individual. It is, on the contrary, necessarily social. Nelson maintains that knowledge is a product of perspective, and perspective relies upon a “host of categories, social relations, practices, experiences, and assumptions” (40). All of which, for Nelson, are social concepts. Thus, Nelson is also removing the idea of truth – as it is understood by the traditional account – from the scientific enterprise. Indeed, as Potter declares, Nelson is “denying the general picture according to which autonomous individuals can produce knowledge” (49).
To clarify her approach, Nelson entertains the common criticism that if knowledge is produced communally, then we have no objective standards by which to declare one community right and another wrong. This challenge is an accusation of relativism, which Nelson refutes with the observation that regardless of the disagreement between two epistemic communities, they are not incommensurably different. This is to say that scientific communities agree and overlap on many grounds, such as which epistemic principles are important and necessary for good science. Quine, however, is more concerned with relativism not between epistemic communities, but rather between the theories they produce. Quine observes that Nelson allows for two incommensurable theories, born of two separate epistemic communities. These theories can both provide coherent accounts of empirical data, but since they rely upon different background knowledge and assumptions and are shaped by different values, they do not agree with each other. We are therefore underdetermined, for Quine, in which to accept and which to reject. To this challenge, Nelson argues that the purpose of science is instrumental; we practice science to help us explain and predict our experiences in the world, to negotiate our way through the world and be better prepared to face its obstacles. Thus, for Nelson, if two differing theories are both adequate in explaining observable phenomenon and predicting experience, then we need not concern ourselves with the question of which theory is false. Indeed, a given theory is valid not because of its truth, but because it is able “to make sense of what we experience and to predict our experience” (37). If the value of science is instrumental, and both theories satisfy our needs equally, then the idea that they can both exist is not necessarily a problem.
In summary, Nelson’s challenge to the ontological tyranny and her alternative holistic account brings with it considerable implications for objectivity and knowledge. First, that knowledge is produced not by individual scientists, but instead by communities consisting of a web of theories, background beliefs and assumptions that all colour and shape the resultant production of knowledge. Second, that knowledge is therefore not separable from knower, that knowledge claims are inextricably bound to the communities from which they emerge. Thus, knowledge is not objective, but rather socially subjective. Third, that truth does not play as big a role in the scientific enterprise as the traditional account purports. Rather, science aims at explanatory power; it seeks the most efficient way to account for observable data. Indeed, Nelson’s holistic account problematizes the notion of scientific truth. Last, Nelson’s approach replaces the traditional conception of science as the best way to access the objective truths of nature, with the view that science derives its value from its instrumental usefulness. That good science is empirically adequate and useful in helping us navigate our way through the world, and that two incommensurable theories can both be valid if they are both adequate in accounting for observable data and their ability to aid us significantly in our experiences.[/tab]
I fully concede to you here. In some instances, it may be beneficial to appropriate “the weapon”; I think you’re right in point out that an out-of-hand rejection betrays the moral will-to-truth at all costs.