A non-epistemological history of historical epistemology Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9501-5 Authors W. R. Albury, School of Humanities, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

There has been much discussion about whether traditional epistemology's doxastic attitudes are reducible to degrees of belief. In this paper I argue that what I call the Straightforward Reduction - the reduction of all three of believing p, disbelieving p, and suspending judgment about p, ~p to precise degrees of belief for p, ~p that ought to obey the standard axioms of the probability calculus - cannot succeed. By focusing on suspension of judgment (agnosticism) rather than belief, we can see (...) why the Straightforward Reduction is bound to fail. I argue that, in general, suspending about p is not just a matter of having some specified standard credence for p, and in the end I suggest some ways to extend the arguments that will put pressure on other credence-theoretic accounts of belief and suspension of judgment as well. (shrink)

From Knowledge to Wisdom argues that there is an urgent need, for both intellectual and humanitarian reasons, to bring about a revolution in science and the humanities. The outcome would be a kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to create a better world. Instead of giving priority to solving problems of knowledge, as at present, academia would devote itself to helping us solve our immense, current global problems – climate change, war, poverty, population growth, pollution (...) of sea, earth and air, destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, injustice, tyranny, proliferation of armaments, conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear, depletion of natural resources. The basic intellectual aim of inquiry would be to seek and promote wisdom – wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. This second edition has been revised throughout, has additional material, a new introduction and three new chapters. (shrink)

Some philosophers have tried to establish a connection between the normativity of instrumental rationality and the paradox presented by Lewis Carroll in his 1895 paper “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.” I here examine and argue against accounts of this connection presented by Peter Railton and James Dreier before presenting my own account and discussing its implications for instrumentalism (the view that all there is to practical rationality is instrumental rationality). In my view, the potential for a Carroll-style regress just (...) shows us that since instrumental rationality involves a higher-order commitment to combine our willing an end with our taking the necessary means, it therefore cannot, on pain of regress, itself be added as a conjunct to one of the elements to be combined. This view does not support instrumentalism. (shrink)

What role, if any, does formal logic play in characterizing epistemically rational belief? Traditionally, belief is seen in a binary way - either one believes a proposition, or one doesn't. Given this picture, it is attractive to impose certain deductive constraints on rational belief: that one's beliefs be logically consistent, and that one believe the logical consequences of one's beliefs. A less popular picture sees belief as a graded phenomenon.

In §201 of Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein puts forward his famous “rule-following paradox.” The paradox is how can one follow in accord with a rule – the applications of which are potentially infinite – when the instances from which one learns the rule and the instances in which one displays that one has learned the rule are only finite? How can one be certain of rule-following at all? In Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke concedes the skeptical position (...) that there are no facts that we follow a rule but that there are still conditions under which we are warranted in asserting of others that they are following a rule. In this paper, I explain why Kripke’s solution to the rule-following paradox fails. I then offer an alternative. (shrink)

Fitch’s argument purports to show that for any unknown truth, p , there is an unknowable truth, namely, that p is true and unknown; for a contradiction follows from the assumption that it is possible to know that p is true and unknown. In earlier work I argued that there is a sense in which it is possible to know that p is true and unknown, from a counterfactual perspective; that is, there can be possible, non-actual knowledge, of the actual (...) situation, that in that situation, p is true and unknown. Here I further elaborate that claim and respond to objections by Williamson, who argued that there cannot be non-trivial knowledge of this kind. I give conditions which suffice for such non-trivial counterfactual knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that it is not ideally rational to believe that some of one's current beliefs are false, despite the impressive inductive evidence concerning others and our former selves. One's own current beliefs represent a commitment which would be undermined by taking some of them to be false. The nature of this commitment is examined in the light of Nagel's distinction between subjective and objective points of view. Finally, I suggest how we might acknowledge our fallibility consistently with this special (...) attitude to our own beliefs. (shrink)

I shall argue in this paper that it should. To begin with, I shall defend (CP) against several criticisms that have been launched against it. These criticisms are of two kinds, which I shall call internal and external respectively. Internal objections are that a theory that includes (CP) fails to give an account of what it is rational to believe that is satisfactory by its own standards. In particular, since almost everyone agrees that belief in a contradiction is not rational, (...) (CP) is criticized on the grounds that it would imply that beliefs in some contradictions are rational. External objections maintain that the degree of idealization in a theory including (CP) is so great as to make it irrelevant to various real-world phenomena to which a theory of rational belief should be relevant.2. (shrink)

Consider the following sentences: The neighbouring sentence is not true. The neighbouring sentence is not true. Call these the no-no sentences. Symmetry considerations dictate that the no-no sentences must both possess the same truth-value. Suppose they are both true. Given Tarski’s truth-schema—if a sentence S says that p then S is true iff p—and given what they say, they are both not true. Contradiction! Conclude: they are not both true. Suppose they are both false. Given Tarski’s falsity-schema—if a sentence S (...) says that p then S is false iff not-p—and given what they say, they are both true, and so not false. Contradiction! Conclude: they are not both false. Thus, despite their symmetry, the no-no sentences must differ in truth-value. Such is the no-no paradox.[1] Sorensen (2001, 2005a, 2005b) has argued that: (1) The no-no paradox is not a version of the liar but rather a cousin of the truth-teller paradox. (2) Even so, the no-no paradox is more paradoxical than the truth-teller. (3) The no-no and truth-teller sentences have groundless truthvalues—they are bivalent but give rise to “truthmaker gaps”. (4) It is metaphysically impossible to know these truth-values. (5) A truthmaker gap response to the no-no paradox provides reason to accept a version of epistemicism. In this paper it is shown that a truthmaker gap solution to the no-no and truth-teller paradoxes runs afoul of the dunno-dunno paradox, the strengthened no-no paradox, and the strengthened truth-teller paradox. In consequence, the no-no paradox is best seen as a form of the liar paradox. As such, it cannot provide a case for epistemicism. (shrink)

The lottery paradox can be solved if epistemic justification is assumed to be a species of permissibility. Given this assumption, the starting point of the paradox can be formulated as the claim that, for each lottery ticket, I am permitted to believe that it will lose. This claim is ambiguous between two readings, depending on the scope of ‘permitted’. On one reading, the claim is false; on another, it is true, but, owing to the general failure of permissibility to agglomerate, (...) does not generate the paradox. The solution generalizes to formulations of the paradox in terms of rational acceptability and doxastic rationality. (shrink)

This paper provides a new solution to the epistemic paradox of belief-instability, a problem of rational choice which has recently received considerable attention (versions of the problem have been discussed by — among others — Tyler Burge, Earl Conee, and Roy Sorensen). The problem involves an ideally rational agent who has good reason to believe the truth of something of the form:[Ap] p if and only if it is not the case that I accept or believe p.

The knowability paradox threatens metaphysical or semantical antirealism, the view that truth is epistemic, by revealing an awful consequence of the claim [i] that all truths are knowable. Various attempts have been made to find a way out of the paradox.

This book thus provides a thorough investigation of the literature on the paradox, and also proposes a solution to the deeper of the two problems raised by ...

Abstract: I argue that the solution to the Red Hat Problem, a puzzle derived from interactive epistemic logic, requires S5. Interactive epis- temic logic is set out in formal terms, and an attempt to solve the red hat puzzle is made in K, K, and K, each of which fails, showing that a stronger system, K is required.

Many epistemologists have responded to the lottery paradox by proposing formal rules according to which high probability defeasibly warrants acceptance. Douven and Williamson ([2006]) present an ingenious argument purporting to show that such rules invariably trivialise, in that they reduce to the claim that a probability of 1 warrants acceptance. Douven and Williamson’s argument does, however, rest upon significant assumptions—among them a relatively strong structural assumption to the effect that the underlying probability space is both finite and uniform . In (...) this article, I will show that something very like Douven and Williamson’s argument can in fact survive with much weaker structural assumptions—and, in particular, can apply to infinite probability spaces. (shrink)

According to a captivating picture, epistemic justification is essentially a matter of epistemic or evidential likelihood. While certain problems for this view are well known, it is motivated by a very natural thought – if justification can fall short of epistemic certainty, then what else could it possibly be? In this paper I shall develop an alternative way of thinking about epistemic justification. On this conception, the difference between justification and likelihood turns out to be akin to the more widely (...) recognised difference between ceteris paribus laws and brute statistical generalisations. I go on to discuss, in light of this suggestion, issues such as classical and lottery-driven scepticism as well as the lottery and preface paradoxes. (shrink)

This paper argues that AI follows classical versions of epistemology in assuming that the identity of the knowing subject is not important. In other words this serves to `delete the subject''. This disguises an implicit hierarchy of knowers involved in the representation of knowledge in AI which privileges the perspective of those who design and build the systems over alternative perspectives. The privileged position reflects Western, professional masculinity. Alternative perspectives, denied a voice, belong to less powerful groups including women. Feminist (...) epistemology can be used to approach this from new directions, in particular, to show how women''s knowledge may be left out of consideration by AI''s focus on masculine subjects. The paper uncovers the tacitly assumed Western professional male subjects in two flagship AI systems, Cyc and Soar. (shrink)

This was published in Cultural Critique (Winter 1991-92), pp. 5-32; revised and reprinted in Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity edited by Judith Roof and Robyn Wiegman, University of Illinois Press, 1996; and in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds edited by Susan Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, (New York: New York University Press, 1994); and also in Racism and Sexism: Differences and Connections eds. David Blumenfeld and Linda Bell, Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science studies the ways in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification. It identifies ways in which dominant conceptions and practices of knowledge attribution, acquisition, and justification systematically disadvantage women and other subordinated groups, and strives to reform these conceptions and practices so that they serve the interests of these groups. Various practitioners of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science argue that dominant (...) knowledge practices disadvantage women by (1) excluding them from inquiry, (2) denying them epistemic authority, (3) denigrating their “feminine” cognitive styles and modes of knowledge, (4) producing theories of women that represent them as inferior, deviant, or significant only in the ways they serve male interests, (5) producing theories of social phenomena that render women's activities and interests, or gendered power relations, invisible, and (6) producing knowledge (science and technology) that is not useful for people in subordinate positions, or that reinforces gender and other social hierarchies. Feminist epistemologists trace these failures to flawed conceptions of knowledge, knowers, objectivity, and scientific methodology. They offer diverse accounts of how to overcome these failures. They also aim to (1) explain why the entry of women and feminist scholars into different academic disciplines, especially in biology and the social sciences, has generated new questions, theories, and methods, (2) show how gender has played a.. (shrink)

The logical empiricists often appear as a foil for feminist theories. Their emphasis on the individualistic nature of knowledge and on the value-neutrality of science seems directly opposed to most feminist concerns. However, several recent works have highlighted aspects of Carnap's views that make him seem like much less of a straightforwardly positivist thinker. Certain of these aspects lend themselves to feminist concerns much more than the stereotypical picture would imply.

In this paper I explore some possible reasons why white feminists philosophers have failed to engage the radical work being done by non-Western women, U.S. women of color and scholars of color outside of the discipline. -/- Feminism and academic philosophy have had lots to say to one another. Yet part of what marks feminist philosophy as philosophy is our engagement with the intellectual traditions of the white forefathers. I’m not uncomfortable with these projects: Aristotle, Foucault, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin, (...) and countless others have provided us with some very powerful conceptual tools.. However, as Sandra Harding observes, conventional standards for what counts as “good science” (or in this case “good philosophy”) always bear the imprint of their creators. So, I think about whether the tools my discipline hands me ever serve as strategies for exclusion. -/- My conversation begins with intersectionality, which for feminists working outside of philosophy, is a predictable point of departure; but as a white feminist philosopher I have specific reasons for starting here. The fact that intersectionality is, at once, such a widely recognized strategy for making visible women of color’s issues and concerns in academic and policy discussions, and so neglected by philosophers is telling. I want to invite philosophers to think more seriously about intersectionality and other pluralist approaches as strategies for calling attention to whiteness of philosophy in general and feminist philosophy in particular. I want us to consider what feminist philosophy would be like if women of color’s writing, experiences, and communities drove philosophical inquiry. -/- Since most philosophers are unfamiliar with intersectional methodologies, I begin with a basic explanation of the foundational claims of this approach. Next, I explore some reasons why white feminists working in philosophy may be resistant to this method. I identify both disciplinary and personal reasons for this hesitancy and argue that intersectionality serves as a useful strategic tool for examining white authority in the emergent feminist canon. Finally, I explore the role intersectional thinking might play in creating a feminist critical race philosophy by outlining four projects that I think will challenge and enrich feminist work in the discipline. (shrink)

I want to explore strategic expressions of ignorance against the background of Charles W. Mills's account of epistemologies of ignorance in The Racial Contract (1997). My project has two interrelated goals. I want to show how Mills's discussion is restricted by his decision to frame ignorance within the language and logic of social contract theory. And, I want to explain why Maria Lugones's work on purity is useful in reframing ignorance in ways that both expand our understandings of ignorance and (...) reveal its strategic uses. I begin with Mills's account of the Racial Contract, and explain how it prescribes for its signatories an epistemology of ignorance, which Mills characterizes as an inverted epistemology. I briefly outline his program for undoing white ignorance and indicate that retooling white ignorance is more complex than his characterization suggests. Making this argument requires an abrupt shift from the white-created frameworks of social contract theory to Lugones's system of thinking rooted in the lives of people of color. So, the next section outlines Lugones's distinction between the logic of purity and the logic of curdling and explains its usefulness in addressing ignorance. With both accounts firmly in place the third section demonstrates how the Racial Contract produces at least two expressions of ignorance and explains how the logic of purity underlying the Contract shapes each expression in ways that limit possibilities for resistance. I don't mean to suggest that the social contract theory's love of purity invalidates Mills's work, only that this framework limits prospects for long-term change by neglecting the relationship between white ignorance and non-white resistance. The final sections explain how people of color use ignorance strategically to their advantage , and argue that examining ignorance through a curdled lens not only makes strategic ignorance visible, but also points to alternatives for retooling white ignorance. (shrink)

This essay explores how the social location of white traitorous identities might be understood. I begin by examining some of the problematic implications of Sandra Harding's standpoint framework description of race traitors as 'becoming marginal.' I argue that the location of white traitors might be better understood in terms of their 'decentering the center.' I distinguish between 'privilege-cognizant' and 'privilege-evasive' white scripts. Drawing on the work of Marilyn Frye and Anne Braden, I offer an account of the contrasting perceptions and (...) behaviors of white who animate one type of script and those who struggle to forge the other type. I use Maria Lugones account of identity and notions of 'world travel' and 'loving perception' and Aristotle's virtue theory to explicate the ways whites, and white feminists in particular, might cultivate a traitorous character conducive to an antiracist politics. (shrink)

Sara Ruddick's contemporary philosophical account of mothering reconsiders the maternal arguments used in the women's peace movements of the earlier part of this century. The culmination of this project is her 1989 book, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Ruddick's project is ground-breaking work in both academic philosophy and feminist theory. -/- In this chapter, I first look at the relationship between the two basic components of Ruddick's argument in Maternal Thinking: the "practicalist conception of truth" (PCT) and feminist (...) standpoint theory (FST). I argue that Ruddick is never clear about the exact relation between the two components. These tensions point to a deeper problem in Ruddick's discussion of the critical power of maternal thinking. -/- The diversity of maternal practices presents a genuine challenge to Ruddick’s account. I argue that neither of the components she explores can adequately ground a feminist peace politics without first answering the question of who speaks for mothers. While I can suggest ways to make Ruddick's argument consistent, she still faces-despite her claims of universality- the deeper problem of reconciling her account of maternal practice with the genuine diversity of actual maternal practices. (shrink)

There have been many calls recently for philosophers to rethink what philosophy is and how it should be practiced. Among the most vocal critics is an influential group of feminist philosophers who argue that since current philosophical activity is based primarily on a conception of reason that is both inherently inadequate and oppressive to women, it is imperative that our understanding of the nature and practice of philosophy be significantly modified. I argue that this criticism is fundamentally misguided. Specifically, it (...) seems to me that while philosophers may at times need to rethink the role of the traditional philosophical method of inquiry in the context of general societal debate and rethink the techniques used to help others understand and apply this methodology, this method of inquiry, itself, is not in need of abandonment or major modification. (shrink)

: Feminist art epistemologies (FAEs) greatly aid the understanding of feminist art, particularly when they serve to illuminate the hidden meanings of an artist's intent. The success of parodic imagery produced by feminist artists (feminist visual parodies, FVPs) necessarily depends upon a viewer's recognition of the original work of art created by a male artist and the realization of the parodist's intent to ridicule and satirize. As Brand shows in this essay, such recognition and realization constitute the knowledge of a (...) well-(in)formed FAE. Without it, misinterpretation is possible and viewers fail to experience and enjoy a full and rewarding encounter with a provocative and subversive work of art. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay explores the relation between feminist epistemology and the problem of philosophical skepticism. Even though feminist epistemology has not typically focused on skepticism as a problem, I argue that a feminist contextualist epistemology may solve many of the difficulties facing recent contextualist responses to skepticism. Philosophical skepticism appears to succeed in casting doubt on the very possibility of knowledge by shifting our attention to abnormal contexts. I argue that this shift in context constitutes an attempt to exercise unearned (...) social and epistemic power and that it should be resisted on epistemic and pragmatic grounds. I conclude that skepticism is a problem that feminists can and should take up as they address the social aspects of traditional epistemological problems. (shrink)

In this ground breaking new book, Kirsten Campbell takes up the debate, but instead of asking what feminist politics is or should be, she examines how feminism changes the ways we understand ourselves and others. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a starting point, Campbell examines contemporary feminism's turn to accounts of feminist "knowing" to create new conceptions of the political, before going on to develop a theory of that feminist knowing as political practice in itself.

I describe two concepts of epistemic injustice. The first of these concepts is explained through a critique of Alvin Goldman's veritistic social epistemology. The second is closely based on Miranda Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice. I argue that there is a tension between these two forms of epistemic injustice and tentatively suggest some ways of resolving the tension.

In this essay I take issue with entrenched conceptions of individual autonomy for how they block understandings of the implications of rape in patriarchal cultures both 'at home' and in situations of armed conflict. I focus on human vulnerability as it manifests in sedimented assumptions about violence against women as endemic to male-female relations, thwarting possibilities of knowing the specific harms particular acts of rape enact well enough to render intelligible their far-reaching social-political-moral implications. Taking my point of departure from (...) Debra Bergoffen's call for 'a new epistemology of rape', I consider what such a call can amount to within an instituted social imaginary where male domination and female subordination are taken for granted—naturalized. (shrink)

Here I discuss some epistemological questions posed by projects of attempting to think globally, in light of the impossibility of affirming universal sameness. I illustrate one strategy for embarking on such a project, ecologically, in a reading of an essay by Chandra Talpade Mohanty. And I conclude by suggesting that the North/South border between Canada and the U.S.A. generates underacknowledged issues of cultural alterity.

CHAPTER ONE Is the Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant? The Question A question that focuses on the knower, as the title of this chapter does, ...

: Drawing primarily from the work of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler, the author suggests that a postmodern approach to identity can be used to challenge the essentialism that pervades both feminist empiricism and standpoint theory, and thus move feminist psychology in a more emancipatory direction. A major premise of this paper is that an engagement with postmodernism redirects our attention to symbolic constructions of femininity and to the sociopolitical grounding of experience.

This paper examines some recent trends in feminist epistemology. It argues that theories that make a priori claims to the effect that the structure of our body of knowledge must encode a masculine bias are both philosophically problematic and politically counterproductive, and it recommends a feminist methodology free from such general theoretical claims as best suited for the promotion of productive feminist thought and action.

Feminist philosophy of science has been criticized on several counts. On the one hand, it is claimed that it results in relativism of the worst sort since the political commitment to feminism is prima facie incompatible with scientific objectivity. On the other hand, when critics acknowledge that there may be some value in work that feminists have done, they comment that there is nothing particularly feminist about their accounts. I argue that both criticisms can be addressed through a better understanding (...) of the current work in feminist epistemology. I offer an examination of standpoint theory as an illustration. Harding and Wylie have suggested ways in which the objectivity question can be addressed. These two accounts, together with a third approach, ‘model-based objectivity’, indicate there is a clear sense in which we can understand how standpoint theory both contributes to a better understanding of scientific knowledge and can provide a feminist epistemology. (shrink)

In Science as Social Knowledge, Helen Longino offers a contextual analysis of evidential relevance. She claims that this "contextual empiricism" reconciles the objectivity of science with the claim that science is socially constructed. I argue that while her account does offer key insights into the role that values play in science, her claim that science is nonetheless objective is problematic.

This paper argues that the concept of care is significant not only for ethics, but for epistemology as well. After elucidating caring as a five-step dyadic relation, I go on to show its epistemic significance within the general framework of virtue epistemology as developed by Ernest Sosa, Alvin Goldman, and Linda Zagzebski. The notions of "care-knowing" and "care-based epistemology" emerge from construing caring (respectively) as a reliabilist and responsibilist virtue.

Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges. Ultimately, I illustrate that by focusing on the ways in which (...) hearers fail to meet speaker dependency in a linguistic exchange, efforts can be made to demarcate the different types of silencing people face when attempting to testify from oppressed positions in society. (shrink)

Lines of argument to support the notion that global bioethics can use work from feminist epistemology are set out, and much of the support for such contentions comes from specific cases of ethical issues in indigenous cultures. Theorists such as Kuhse, Arizpe, Egnor and Bumiller are cited, and it is concluded that local feminist epistemologies often conflict with standard ethical views, but that the failure to incorporate feminist thought undercuts hopes to establish a viable bioethics on an international scale.

Recent work in naturalised epistemology has focused almost exclusively on the intersection of cognitive psychology and theory of knowledge; work from sociolinguistics is just now beginning to gain ground. At the same time, feminist epistemologies have striven to articulate the precise paths of connectedness and relatedness that gynocentric theory standardly postulates as being characteristic of female ways of knowing. This paper attempts to articulate the intersection of sociolinguistically naturalised epistemology and feminist theory of knowledge. A model of gynocentrically centred justification (...) is presented, and it is concluded that the intersection of these areas is a rich and rewarding one. (shrink)

Jane Duran's Worlds of Knowing begins to fill an enormous gap in the literature of feminist epistemology: a wide-ranging, cross-cultural primer on worldviews and epistemologies of various cultures and their appropriations by indigenous feminist movements in those cultures. It is the much needed epistemological counterpart to work on cross-cultural feminist social and political philosophy. This project is absolutely breath-taking in scope, yet a manageable read for anyone with some background in feminist theory, history, or anthropology. Duran draws many comparisons and (...) connections to Western philosophical and feminist ideas, yet avoids facile or imperialistic over-universalization. Her book is powerful, comprehensive, and brave. It will prove an enormously useful resource for scholars in women's studies, philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, and history. (shrink)

Challenging Situatedness contends that the production of knowledge is just that—a production, and one fraught with intrinsic and often unconscious biases. In fact, to assume that scientific research is inherently objective, neutral, and therefore genderless can, quite literally, be harmful to one's health. The contributors to this volume instead argue for a situated knowledge, a research model that acknowledges different cultural realities and actively articulates context-rich ways of knowing. Drawing on international research studies—from Cameroon, Ghana, India, and Sweden, among others— (...) Challenging Situatedness is a vital exploration of feminist theory in practice. (shrink)

Feminist critiques of the social sciences are based on the assumption that because the social sciences were developed for the most part by white, middle-class, Western men, the perspectives of women were ignored. This book offers an approach for integrating gender-related content into the social work curriculum. The distinguished contributors discuss the shortcoming of dominant knowledge, address the pressing need for a gender-integrated curriculum, consider the pedagogies consistent with the implementation of an integrate curriculum, address specific areas in social work (...) education, assessing content, and assumptions, and discuss strategic issues for the implementation of curricular knowledge. (shrink)

This paper is situated in the context of feminist poststructuralist debates around identity. In it, I argue that anti-essentialist accounts of identity, while they may displace, or at least call into question, the foundations of subjectivity, are no less likely to invoke a series of presuppositions with respect to the self than those who seek to maintain them in some form. In particular, these presuppositions often cohere around the materiality of the body. And yet, paradoxically, this accent on materiality refers (...) to a very particular kind of body - one that seems to have very little relation to the biological body. Using psychopharmacology as an example, I suggest that the Gilles Deleuze's ethology offers one way through which both to engage seriously with the 'biological' body while at the same time resisting either an essentialist or biological determinist position. (shrink)

Helen Longino argues that the way to ensure scientific knowledge is objective is to have a diversity of scientific investigators. This is the best example of recent feminist arguments which hold that the real value of diversity is epistemic, and not political, but it only partly succeeds. In the end, Longino's objectivity amounts to intersubjective agreement about contextually based standards, and while her account gives us a good reason for wanting diversity in our scientific communities, this reason turns out to (...) be political. (shrink)

: This essay explores the epistemological significance of the kinds of beliefs that grow out of traumatic experiences, such as the rape survivor's belief that she is never safe. On current theories of justification, beliefs like this one are generally dismissed due to either insufficient evidence or insufficient propositional content. Here, Freedman distinguishes two discrete sides of the aftermath of psychic trauma, the shattered self and the shattered worldview. This move enables us to see these beliefs as beliefs; in other (...) words, as having cognitive content. Freedman argues that what we then need is a theory of justification that allows us to handpick reliable sources of information on sexual violence, and give credibility where deemed appropriate. She advances a mix of reliabilism and coherentism that privileges feminism. On this account, the evidence for the class of beliefs in question will depend on an act of sexual violence (or testimony, or statistics) to the extent that the act is a reliable indication of the prevalence of sexual violence against women. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Our understanding of social experiences is central to our social understanding more generally. But this sphere of epistemic practice can be structurally prejudiced by unequal relations of power, so that some groups suff er a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice—hermeneutical injustice. I aim to achieve a clear conception of this epistemicethical phenomenon, so that we have a workable definition and a proper understanding of the wrong that it inflicts.

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression. (...) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

I address motivations that feminist philosophers have for being concerned about the "maleness" of philosophy and the "problem of difference" within feminist theory. An appropriate motivation for caring about both sets of issues is the desire not to oppress others. In order to be able to understand this motivation and to act on it, we need to retain gender as an analytical category.

This second edition of Women, Knowledge and Reality continues to exhibit the ways in which feminist philosophers enrich and challenge philosophy. Essays by twenty-five feminist philosophers, seventeen of them new to the second edition, address fundamental issues in philosophical and feminist methods, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophies of science, language, religion and mind/body. This second edition expands the perspectives of women of color, of postmodernism and French feminism, and focuses on the most recent controversies in feminist theory and philosophy. The (...) chapters are organized by traditional fields of philosophy, and include introductions which contrast the ideas of feminist thinkers with traditional philosophers. The collected essays illustrate both the depth and breadth of feminist critiques and the range of contemporary feminist theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

This paper aims to understand the relationship between ignorance and vulnerability by drawing on recent work on the epistemology of ignorance. After elaborating how we might understand the importance of human vulnerability, I develop the claim that ignorance of vulnerability is produced through the pursuit of an ideal of invulnerability that involves both ethical and epistemological closure. The ignorance of vulnerability that is a prerequisite for such invulnerability is, I contend, a pervasive form of ignorance that underlies and grounds other (...) oppressive forms of ignorance. Thus, undoing such forms of ignorance requires working toward a particular form of vulnerability: epistemic vulnerability. (shrink)

: Feminist epistemologists have found the atomistic view of knowers provided by classical epistemology woefully inadequate. An obvious alternative for feminists is Lynn Hankinson Nelson's suggestion that it is communities that know. However, I argue that Nelson's view is problematic for feminists, and I offer instead a conception of knowers as "individuals-in-communities." This conception is preferable, given the premises and goals of feminist epistemologists, because it emphasizes the relations between knowers and their communities and the relevance of these relations for (...) epistemic assessments. Furthermore, it provides a sense of epistemic agents as active reflective inquirers, capable of transforming and improving knowledge-seeking practices. (shrink)

More than one philosopher has expressed puzzlement at the very idea of feminist epistemology. Metaphysics and epistemology, sometimes called the 'core' areas of philosophy, are supposed to be immune to questions of value and justice. Nevertheless, many philosophers have raised epistemological questions starting from feminist-motivated moral and political concerns. The field is burgeoning; a search of the Philosopher's Index reveals that although nothing was published before 1981 that was categorized as both feminist and epistemology, soon after, the rate of publication (...) in feminist epistemology rose to between 15 and 25 articles per year.1 At the same time, social epistemology was also beginning to grow as a separate identifiable field of inquiry. (shrink)

: Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud provided powerful accounts of systematic interested ignorance. Fifty years ago, Anglo-American philosophies of science stigmatized Marx's and Freud's analyses as models of irrationality. They remain disvalued today, at a time when virtually all other humanities and social science disciplines have returned to extract valuable insights from them. Here the argument is that there are reasons distinctive to philosophy why such theories were especially disvalued then and why they remain so today. However, there are even (...) better reasons today for philosophy to break from this history and find more fruitful ways to engage with systematic interested ignorance. (shrink)

: Feminist standpoint theory remains highly controversial: it is widely advocated, used to guide research and justify its results, and yet is also vigorously denounced. This essay argues that three such sites of controversy reveal the value of engaging with standpoint theory as a way of reflecting on and debating some of the most anxiety-producing issues in contemporary Western intellectual and political life. Engaging with standpoint theory enables a socially relevant philosophy of science.

This collection of essays, first published two decades ago, presents central feminist critiques and analyses of natural and social sciences and their philosophies. Unfortunately, in spite of the brilliant body of research and scholarship in these fields in subsequent decades, the insights of these essays remain as timely now as they were then: philosophy and the sciences still presume kinds of social innocence to which they are not entitled. The essays focus on Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx; on (...) the 'adversary method' model of philosophic reasoning; on principles of individuation on philosophical ontology and philosophy of language; on individualistic assumptions in psychology; functionalism in sociological and biological theory; evolutionary theory; the methodology of political science; and conceptions of objective inquiry in the sciences. In taking insights of both Liberal and Marxian women's movements into the purportedly most abstract and value-free areas of Western thought, these essays chart sexist and androcentric assumptions, claims and practices in the cognitive, technical cores of Western sciences and their philosophies. They begin to identify the distinctive aspects of women's experiences and locations in male-supremacist social structures which can provide resources needed for the creation of post-androcentric thinking in research, scholarship, and public policy. Such uses of feminist insights remain controversial today, and even among some feminists. These authors were all junior researchers and scholars two decades ago; today many are among the most distinguished senior scholars in their fields. Their work here provides a splendid opportunity for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy and the social sciences to explore some of the most intriguing and controversial challenges to disciplinary projects and to public policy today. (shrink)

: This essay is an examination of stupid knowing, an attempt to catalog a particular species of knowing, and to understand when, how, and why the label "stupid" gets applied to marginalized groups of knowers. Heldke examines the ways the defining processes work and the conditions that make them possible, by considering one group of people who get defined as stupid: rural people. In part, the author intends her identification and categorization of stupid knowing to support the work of theorists (...) of resistance who have identified ways that those marginalized as stupid knowers use the cloak of their purported stupidity in the aid of their resistance. Heldke also hopes to add to the existing critique of the hierarchies of knowing an understanding of one particular way one form of knowledge is devalued: stupidification. Why are some forms of knowledge actually regarded as leaving one incapable of other forms of rational thought? (shrink)

Helen Longino's account of objectivity has been highly regarded by both feminist and mainstream philosophers of science. However, I have encountered three feminist philosophers who have all offered one especially compelling feminist critique of Longino's view: far from vindicating or privileging the work of feminist scientists, Longino's account actually requires the active cultivation of anti-feminist and misogynist scientists to balance out the possibility of feminist bias. I call this objection the Nazi problem, for the particular version that claims that her (...) view requires even the active cultivation of Nazi scientists in objective inquiry. In this paper I consider one response to the Nazi problem, which I call the good faith argument. I show that the good faith argument itself is just as objectionable, on feminist grounds, as the Nazi problem it is meant to address. (shrink)

: Although political values guide people who take advice from standpoint epistemologies in deciding whether to reveal secrets used to resist oppression, these decisions can also be understood and evaluated in purely cognitive or epistemological terms. When political considerations direct us to preserve a secret, the cognitive value progressively diminishes because the view of the world projected by the secret is increasingly vulnerable.

Despite the National Science Foundation's recent clarification of the Broader Impacts Criterion used in grant evaluation, it is not clear that this criterion is being understood or applied consistently by grant writers or reviewers. In particular, there is still confusion about how to interpret the requirement for broadening the participation of under-represented groups in science and scepticism about the value of doing so. Much of this stems from uncertainty about why the participation of under-represented groups is desirable or beneficial in (...) the first place. This paper distinguishes three different rationales for the importance of diversity in science and draws out the implications for the kind of diversity that is desirable, as well as how the diversity requirement of the Broader Impacts Criterion should be applied and weighed against other criteria in reviewing particular grants. I argue that there are epistemic, as well as social, benefits to diversity that can help promote scientific progress. (shrink)

Over the past twenty-five years, numerous articles in Hypatia have clarified, revised, and defended increasingly more nuanced views of both feminist empiricism and standpoint feminism. Feminist empiricists have argued that scientific knowledge is contextual and socially situated (Longino 1990; Nelson 1990; Anderson 1995), and standpoint feminists have begun to endorse virtues of theory choice that have been traditionally empiricist (Wylie 2003). In fact, it is unclear whether substantive differences remain. I demonstrate that current versions of feminist empiricism and standpoint feminism (...) now have much in common but that key differences remain. Specifically, they make competing claims about what is required for increasing scientific objectivity. They disagree about 1) the kind of diversity within scientific communities that is epistemically beneficial and 2) the role that ethical and political values can play. In these two respects, feminist empiricists have much to gain from the resources provided by standpoint theory. As a result, the views would be best merged into “feminist standpoint empiricism.”. (shrink)

An empirically sensitive formulation of the norms of transformative criticism must recognize that even public and shared standards of evaluation can be implemented in ways that unintentionally perpetuate and reproduce forms of social bias that are epistemically detrimental. Helen Longino's theory can explain and redress such social bias by treating peer evaluations as hypotheses based on data and by requiring a kind of perspectival diversity that bears, not on the content of the community's knowledge claims, but on the beliefs and (...) norms of the culture of the knowledge community itself. To illustrate how socializing cognition can bias evaluations, we focus on peer-review practices, with some discussion of peer-review practices in philosophy. Data include responses to surveys by editors from general philosophy journals, as well as analyses of reviews and editorial decisions for the 2007 Cognitive Science Society Conference. (shrink)