The manuscript explores the plausibility of care-based epistemology in a comparative key. Investigating the epistemic virtue of care-giving, the work weaves together insights from care ethics, virtue epistemology and a particular reading of the Mah=abh=arata which, left to themselves, do not appear compatible with one another. Drawing on these traditions, the work goes on to provide a feminist vision of search for truth that is consistent with both ethical relations and interventions for justice.

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 as a reliabilist and responsibilist virtue.

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.

It is a privilege to have such extensive engagement with one's work as in the responses of Linda Alcoff, Eva Kittay, Keya Maitra, and Nilanjan Das. I am sincerely thankful for the intellectual generosity and thoughtfulness of their critiques. Before responding to their specific concerns, however, I lay out the general argument of Caring to Know in broad strokes to serve as the common backdrop to their comments.The central idea of Caring to Know is that notions of 'knowing well' are (...) intertwined with ideas of 'living well,' and so epistemology is linked with ethics and politics, and epistemic normativity is reconfigured to involve goodness and justice. Of course, reference to moral concepts when delineating epistemic... (shrink)

The feminist significance of the Goddess Kali lies in an indigenous worshipful attitude of “Kali-bhakti” rather than in the mere image of the Goddess. The peculiar mother-child motif at the core of the poet Ramprasad Sen's Kali-bhakti represents, I argue, not only a dramatic reconstruction of femininity but of selfhood in general. The spiritual goal of a devotee here involves a deconstruction of “master identity” necessary also for ethico-political struggles for justice.

: The feminist significance of the Goddess Kali lies in an indigenous worshipful attitude of "Kali-bhakti" rather than in the mere image of the Goddess. The peculiar mother-child motif at the core of the poet Ramprasad Sen's Kali-bhakti represents, I argue, not only a dramatic reconstruction of femininity but of selfhood in general. The spiritual goal of a devotee here involves a deconstruction of "master identity" necessary also for ethico-political struggles for justice.

Makes a case for redirecting epistemology by basing it on a virtue approach and the method of care. According to virtue epistemology, what confers epistemic value are properties of the epistemic subject: his or her epistemic character, belief‐forming habits, and cognitive dispositions. The method of care is a complex, interactive process of acquiring justified beliefs or knowledge, a process that integrates the subject into a social and ethical context. Starting out with a discussion of knowledge of other minds, the writer (...) moves on to an examination of the role the knowing self plays within the kind of epistemology she wishes to advocate. One important element of that kind of epistemology is epistemic responsibility, understood not as epistemic duty fulfillment but instead as the endeavor to cultivate and reinforce attitudes that are deemed admirable in the epistemic community. (shrink)

Alessandra Tanesini’s The Mismeasure of the Self can be read as promoting non-ideal theory in epistemology. Tanesini articulates the virtue of intellectual humility in close connection with the human vices of superiority and inferiority. I begin by showing how her novel analysis that situates humility in a cluster of differently-functioning ‘attitudes’ enriches both the positive motivational resources and the pitfalls that a knower must negotiate. The proximity of virtues and vices in the conceptual map that constitutes humility, explains feminist claims (...) of how subjects who are harmed as knowers can still flourish and even resist their cognitive marginalization. I then move on to critiquing Tanesini’s understanding of intellectual humility because it fails to be a truly ‘liberatory virtue.’ I suggest alternative ways of connecting intellectual humility to shame and hope that still remain true to Tanesini’s broader ethical context but make it potent for social justice. In spite of mindfulness of social context, Tanesini works with an epistemic selfhood bleached out of its historical and social embeddedness and hence, whose self-knowledge through humility does not involve the knowledge of the world and of others. Such an intellectual humility, I argue, cannot be justice-conducive. (shrink)

Many thanks to Mark Siderits for extended conversations and comments. Also to Arindam Chakrabarti.

This is a comment on Minds Without Fear.

The Mahabharata, one of the major epics of India, is a sourcebook complete by itself as well as an open text constantly under construction. This volume looks at transactions between its modern discourses and ancient vocabulary. Located amid conversations between these two conceptual worlds, the volume grapples with the epic's problematisation of dharma or righteousness, and consequently, of the ideal person and the good life through a cluster of issues surrounding the concept of agency and action. Drawing on several interdisciplinary (...) approaches, the essays reflect on a range of issues in the Mahabharata, including those of duty, motivation, freedom, selfhood, choice, autonomy, and justice, both in the context of philosophical debates and their ethical and political ramifications for contemporary times. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers engaged with philosophy, literature, religion, history, politics, culture, gender, South Asian studies, and Indology. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in South Asian epics and the Mahabharata. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to defend the justifiability of our belief that there is an external world. I begin by investigating what such a claim means and how it fits in with a common sense "realism." The idea put forth is that the latter asserts not only that there is an external world but also what there is in it. So, the bare assertion about the existence of the external world is only a part of common sense. However, I claim that (...) even such a 'mitigated realism' can be interesting and indicate how Putnam's internal realism amounts to just this. ;I then discuss "epistemological arguments" against realism so defined. These are arguments that begin with the epistemological theses and conclude the denial of realism--a strategy found even in the classic idealist Bishop Berkeley. The steps from such epistemic premises to a metaphysical conclusion are spelled out and the general conception of the epistemological project that underlies and warrants such an inference is explored. What emerges is that to be relevant for metaphysics, epistemic debates must be both non-question-begging and epistemic justifiability must be defined in terms of truth-conduciveness. A model of how epistemology can incorporate these features is suggested. ;The last part of the discussion aims at rejecting the epistemic premises of such anti-realist arguments. This amounts to claiming that an external world is both believable and justified. The arguments of Donald Davidson and Laurence Bonjour claiming to establish this are discussed and criticised. A final vindication, however, is given by reformulating Hilary Putnam's brains-in-a-vat argument. What emerges from the discussion is that just as metaphysics cannot be done in isolation from epistemology, epistemology too cannot be done independently of a theory of intentionality and belief. (shrink)

In this paper I compare two very different deployments of love in ethics. Swami Vivekananda's concept of ethical love ties into the project of constructing an alternative masculinity for a colonized people; while feminist care ethics uses love to escape the perceived masculinity of traditional ethical theory. Using Kenneth Goodpaster's distinction between ‘framework questions’ and ‘application questions,’ I try to show that love in Practical Vedanta addresses the former while feminist care ethics concerns itself with the latter. Even though this (...) difference, I suggest, could be a function of their varying historical-political contexts, the two issues need to be taken together for a more complete understanding of the ethical subject. (shrink)

The dialogue between Pūjanī and Brahmadatta is a lesser known episode in the Mahābhārata. This paper explores how Pūjanī’s voice is relevant when rethinking autonomy for feminist relational selves. I first unravel the different ‘stories’ that can be told through this single but multi-layered narrative. Then, by re-arranging their insights and using the idea of ‘normative authority’ proposed by Catriona Mackenzie, I piece together a picture of autonomy foregrounding dependence on others and volatile emotionality––both of which are generally thought to (...) be opposed to ‘being in control’ or being autonomous. This emerging picture of self-governance indicates how even selves constituted by relationships to others can exit relational situations that are or become harmful. I also show that the episode leaves behind ‘internalist’ conceptions of autonomy for more capacious notions of self-determination that incorporate the importance of structural changes for agentive freedom. This goes beyond the insights of the Mahābhārata in a self-reflexive move built into the story itself. (shrink)

Adopting the framework of Anglo Analytic Virtue Epistemology, I ask of the Sanskrit epic, the Mahrata, the question: What sort of character or must a have? Then, inspired by broadly feminist sensibilities, I raise the concern whether dispositions for knowing the world can be associated with motivations to rectify injustices in that world just knower.virtues of truth’ in the epic to see whether they can establish a connection between knowing and justice.

I examine the kind of alliances and ironic crossing of borders that constitute an ecofeminist subjectivity by appeal to a postcolonial literary imagination and ahistorical philosophical argumentation. I link the theoretical insights of a modern short story “Bestiality” with a concept of “congenital debt” found in the ancient Vedic corpus to suggest a notion of ecological selfhood that transforms into the idea of a “gift community” to encompass nonhumans as well as people on the fringes of society, but without the (...) usual problems associated with such a two-pronged extensionism. (shrink)

I examine the kind of alliances and ironic crossing of borders that constitute an ecofeminist subjectivity by appeal to a postcolonial literary imagination and ahistorical philosophical argumentation. I link the theoretical insights of a modern short story “Bestiality” with a concept of “congenital debt” found in the ancient Vedic corpus to suggest a notion of ecological selfhood that transforms into the idea of a “gift community” to encompass nonhumans as well as people on the fringes of society, but without the (...) usual problems associated with such a two-pronged extensionism. (shrink)