I'm not familiar with those phrases exactly, but reflexivity basically means self-reference, so "auto-referential" and "reflexive" are basically synonyms. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, so epistemic reflexivity would be about knowing what you know (as in, you can know that you don't know something, etc; "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", and so on). The problem thereof would then be the question of how we can know what we do or don't know.

Not sure what minimalist and maximalist mean in this context, sounds like it's in reference to someone's specific theorizing about this problem.

Thank you.

I assume this is the paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5731606/

Every ontology that a social scientist adopts has an auto-referential import for the epistemic status of the impersonal knowing subject. More simply put, general ideas about the ordinary knowledgeability of social agents impinge back upon the one who offers these ideas – for that person is a socio-cultural agent as well. This means that, in the case of the philosophy of the human sciences, there is a need for metaphysical reflection which moves further than reflecting on an ontological scheme – that is, a need for reflection on the fact that the sociologist, as a knowing subject, is existentially related to her or his partial or greater object

One implication – and a useful example – of this problematic is that relativist theories, which deny or suspend the possibility of (fallible) reflection, face this auto-referential problem. As Lawson nicely puts it:

The denial of the possibility of knowledge may seem a wild and anarchistic claim, but it is at first sight intelligible and logically unremarkable. But matters cannot be left there. This denial involves a reflexive problem, which appears trivial but which cannot be eradicated with the ease that one might expect: if it is not possible to provide knowledge, then how are we to regard the text of the philosopher that asserts this very point? Since it is evidently paradoxical to claim to know that knowledge is not possible, philosophers who have wished to make this type of claim have usually engaged in the more wide-ranging attempt to alter the nature of their text in order to avoid a self-contradictory stance. (H. Lawson, 1985: 14)

Following the same line of thought, deterministic social ontologies, which deprive social individuals of their creative agency, are similarly problematic. For ‘just as the sceptic or relativist seems, in asserting his thesis, to be making the sort of knowledge claim his thesis excludes, so also the determinist is said to be doing something in asserting determinism which this very thesis excludes’ (Boyle, 1987: 193). And in attacking sociological relativism and social determinism, I intend to propose an epistemic criterion in response to this auto-referential problem of epistemic reflexivity.

The problem is described in this quote, basically it is the problem of how to take into account the influence of the theorizer on what he/she theorizes: the scientist sees the world through his/her eyes, experiences, beliefs, and doesn't see the world independently of that, so what is the domain of validity of his/her conclusions?


Regarding minimalist and maximalist reflexivity, the following passage offers some clarification (emphasis mine):

Accordingly, for Lynch (2000), general philosophical and epistemological problems like the theory-ladenness of observation, the under-determination of theory choice by evidence, or the omnipresent problem of how descriptions correspond to their objects, are classic and important, but bear no special, either positive or negative, epistemic implications for specific local scientific engagement. For this reason, scientists should ignore this general and abstract philosophical problematic and focus on the specific issues arising from their particular research programs. For reflexivity cannot offer anything more than what every effort to attack objective truths offers, so there is no particular benefit to being radically reflexive unless something worthwhile emerges from it (Lynch, 2000: 42). Consequently, it is pointless to require that, every time a scientist makes a statement, he or she should list all the presuppositions and contingent conditions which influenced his or her research, thus pre-emptively replying to every possible imaginary critique regarding the uncertainty connected with these conditions. After all, ‘a project that deconstructs objective claims should be no more or less problematic, in principle, than the claims it seeks to deconstruct’ (ibid.).

Hence, for Lynch, the limit to the number of meta-theoretical ‘confessions’ necessary in order for one to be reflexive is social, and there is no single way of being reflexive.

Within this framework, Lynch suggests ‘an alternative, ethnomethodological conception of reflexivity that does not privilege a theoretical or methodological standpoint by contrasting it to an unreflexive counterpart’ (Lynch, 2000: 26), and which underlines the ordinary and uninteresting character of the constitutive reflexivity of accounts, that is, of the uninterested reflexive uses of ordinary language and common-sense knowledge. This constitutes a minimalistic attitude towards self-reflection, the ordinariness of which implies that its epistemic virtues are not certain and determinate. It is in this sense that Pollner complains that ‘from Lynch’s perspective, the analyst is deprived of any analytic vantage point. It is the move from referential to endogenous reflexivity’ (Pollner, 2012: 17).

Yet, in this article, I would like to argue against this minimal ethnomethodological form of self-reflection and thus claim that there are various forms and degrees of self-reflection, which are always relative to each specific society, group, class, etc. Indeed, Archer (2007: 49) is right that it is unintelligible to conceive of a society with such a level of socio-cultural cohesion that agents do not need to reflect on the content of action. And, indeed, this is somehow an ordinary socio-cultural phenomenon. However, Lynch (2000) does not leave theoretical space for such a variety of levels and degrees of self-reflection. Thus, what Lynch is implicitly against is the presupposition of the self-reflective knowing subject (reflecting on her or his own ontological presuppositions), which constitutes a sub-class of the general presupposition of the general, omnipresent and ordinary notion of self-reflective subjectivity.

Again, both ordinary self-reflection and its radical maximalistic version of the knowing subject should be distinguished from epistemic reflexivity, which is an auto-referential property of social ontological schemes.

Basically the author distinguishes between various degrees of self-reflection (not to be confused with epistemic reflexivity).

Maximalist self-reflection would be to self-reflect on all presuppositions and contingent conditions which possibly influenced your conclusions, which would be extremely impractical (you would have to consider the possible influence of your mood, the time of day, the weather, your memories, your past experiences, all your beliefs, ..., on your conclusions).

Whereas minimalist self-reflection is the opposite end of the spectrum, where one would not particularly attempt to self-reflect beyond what one is naturally inclined to do, so for instance you would carry out research which would naturally involve some self-reflection, but you would not reflect about the importance or extent of that self-reflection and its influence on your results.

The author argues that there are various degrees of self-reflection in between, for instance you could reflect on the influence on your results of the society/group/class you belong to. Maybe another scientist belonging to a different society/group/class would reach different conclusions from you while carrying out similar research, because both of you wouldn't have self-reflected on the influence of your society/group/class in shaping your presuppositions and beliefs and thus your conclusions. Whereas if that other scientist and you would both have self-reflected on the influence of your society/group/class on your thought process and implicit beliefs, you two might have reached the same conclusions.

In a nutshell maximalist self-reflection is impractical, and minimalist self-reflection is imprecise (leads to conclusions that have a limited and unknown domain of validity). The more you self-reflect on the possible variables that influence your conclusions, the more you know the limits of their domain of validity and the greater that domain of validity, but you can't reach the state of self-reflection on all possible variables which would yield conclusions of certain universal validity, unless you somehow had access to universal truths.

The author gives an account of theory-building, but that account is based on presuppositions as well, his conclusions about self-reflection depend on his own presuppositions so they don't necessarily have to be seen as universal truths. He makes a model of model-making, but one could make a model of modeling model-making, and so on and so forth in an infinite regress. In order to reach universal truth one has to see it, otherwise it seems one can't reach it through reason and logic. But partial knowledge is still useful to reach some goals, for instance regarding the various degrees of self-reflection, we've seen that two people who disagree with each other can end up agreeing by carrying out more profound self-reflection, thus increased self-reflection can be seen as a way for people to unite. I realize this is going further than the question of your thread but I feel it is interesting and important to point out. Cheers