Bankrupt from The Get-Go

August 13, 2017 Robert Higgs

In regard to the popular (especially in academia) ideology that the truth of a proposition is solely a matter of the race, sex, class, and gender of the person stating the proposition, do the proponents of this view suppose that every member of such an aggregate (e.g., every black person, every gay person, etc.) holds identical beliefs?

If so, their overarching model of propositional validity is obviously bankrupt from the get-go. Of course, one’s beliefs may be conditioned to some extent by one’s membership in such aggregates, but an insistence that such group membership overwhelms individual, within-group variance of views would appear to be indefensible.

As always, collectivization of individuals along any lines whatsoever poses a great risk of obscuring or distorting what actually matters for action — individual attitudes and beliefs.

Written by Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.