All philosophy is ethnographic
If you ever get the chance to read Origins of Totalitarianism one of the first things that strikes you is how ethnographic Arendt’s writing is. Her core philosophy is deeply rooted in her lived experiences, an exile forced out by hate. Thomas Hobbes’ writing is rooted in the same exiled experience, though he is diametrically opposite to Arendt in preferring authoritarian order over liberal freedom. Plato, Descartes, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Anscombe, indeed any philosopher you care to name root their philosophy in their personal perception of the world, it is inescapable. For every attempt at objectivity ultimately it is the subjectivity of their map of the world that directs them. I find this fascinating, not at all a problem, rather something you must click into in order to appreciate their writing.
My research is rooted in attempting to square rights and perception, hence my joy at reading Wittgenstein and Anscombe. In the age of AI and machine learning I believe it is imperative that we interrogate the assumptions we make about philosophy, especially moral philosophy, as the objectivity we assume is baked into those algorithms is the ethnographic experiences of the coders. Indeed, in the last decade there has been an upswell of concern over whose perspective we encode into the normative understanding of the world. Meredith Whitaker, Catherine D’Ignazio, and Laruen Klein amongst others…
