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Contingent Natures and Virtuous Knowers: Could Epistemology be ‘Gendered’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rebecca Kukla  and
Laura Ruetsche
Rebecca Kukla
Affiliation:
Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, CanadaK1S 5B6
Laura Ruetsche
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA15260-6299, USA
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Extract

When Sandra Harding called for an epistemology of science whose systematic attention to the gendered Status of epistemic agents renders it ‘less partial and distorted’ than ‘traditional’ epistemologies, some commentators recoiled in horror. Propelled by ‘a mad form of the genetic fallacy’ they said, she descends ‘the slide to an arational account of science.’ On a less melodramatic reading, feminist epistemologies such as Harding's advocate not irrationalism, but senses of rationality more expanded than those which they associate with ‘traditional’ epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2002 , pp. 389 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2002

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References

1 S. Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1991), 1

2 B. Gross, ‘What Could a Feminist Science Be?’ Monist 77 (1994) 434-44, at 441

3 C. Pinnick, ‘Feminist Epistemology: Implications for Philosophy of Science,’ Philosophy of Science 61 (1994) 646-57, at 650

3 J. Earman, Bayes or Bust: A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1992), 204. This Bayesian subspecies of traditionalism is well-represented in prominent journals — although not all traditionalists are Bayesians, and much of mainstream epistemology falls outside of the genus of ‘traditional’ epistemology as we have defined the term.

5 E.g., S. Haack, ‘Science as Social — Yes and No,’ in Feminism, Science, and Philosophy of Science, L.H. Nelson and J. Nelson, eds. (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996)

6 J. McDowell, ‘Virtue and Reason,’ Monist 62 (1976) 331-50

7 Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, H. Rackham, trans. (London: Heinemann 1956), II.1

8 Haack might be an example of a traditionalist of this stripe.

9 Many thanks to Mark Lance, whose comments on an earlier version of this paper directly inspired the writing of this paragraph.

10 W. Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1997), 18

11 Sellars himself does not offer an explicit opinion on this issue in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. However, one might find reason in that text to think that he would be suspicious of the possibility that the second nature capacity to perceive could vary from person to person. He claims, ‘there is an important sense in which one has no concept pertaining to the observable properties of physical objects in Space and Time unless one has them all — and indeed … a great deal more besides’ (ibid., §19). This appears to imply that our habits of response do not get to count as recognitional capacities at all until we have developed all of the conceptual apparatus concerning the observable, spatio-temporal world that anyone who counts as an ep istemi c agent res p o nsive to the s p atio -tempora l w o r ld must hav e. On the oth e r hand, in Science and Metaphysics (134), his account seems to push in the opposite direction, as he speaks there of more and less adequate conceptual frameworks. Where Sellars leaves wiggle room in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is in how much is covered by the ‘great deal more’ that we need to have in order to have any concepts at all, and whether the concepts that can vary from person to person, falling outside of this ‘great deal more,’ can be among those whose grasp is integral to our capacity to recognize perceivable properties. For our purposes, it is sufficient to point out that there is no immediately obvious reason why we would each need an identical, complete repertoire of concepts and recognitional skills in order to count as concept-users and recognizers.

12 Many thanks to Maggie Airncliffe for suggesting this line of argument.

13 Cut-and-dried examples of such differences are of course hard to find, as any examples will be subject to competing interpretations and would require enormous amounts of detailed empirical study before they could be definitively compelling. But for a prima facie suggestive example from actual scientific practice, compare Donna Haraway's descriptions of the field experiences of a woman primatologist and of one of her male counterparts: Devore [one of Sherwood Washburn's male students] literally saw a male-centered baboon troupe structure, containing a core of allied dominant males immensely attractive to females and children. Jay [one of ‘‘Washburn's daughters’’] explicitly saw the infant as a key centre of attention in langur troop structure … she literally, physically saw what almost could not figure in her major conclusions because another story ordered what counted as ‘ultimate explanation.’ (D.J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women [New York: Routledge 1991], 95, 96) Devore's observations are observations to which the concept ‘dominant male’ applies and which support the hypothesis that male dominance hierarchies are the key to primate social organization. Jay's observations neither conform to nor confirm this ‘baboon model’: ‘[H]er langurs failed to act like good baboons, but still had very stable groups’ (ibid., 95). While Devore and Jay were observing different troops of primates, analyses given by Haraway and other feminist primatologists suggest that the difference between the scientists’ observational categories is inflected by their gender and not just by the objective differences between the primates. In that era (the late 50s and early 60s), the standard methodology for fieldwork was the methodology of ‘opportunistic sampling,’ of watching the transactions as they present themselves, without regard to whether the set of transactions observed is representative of the full scope of primate activities. See S. Hrdy, ‘Empathy, Polyandry and the Myth of the Coy Female,’ in Feminine Approaches to Science, R. Bleier, ed. (New York: Pergamon 1986). Paying different sorts of attention, different opportunistic samples will mark different aspects of primate life. Under ‘standard conditions,’ swashbuckling primatologists might notice copulations and altercations, gather those observations under the concept of male dominance, and use those observations to warrant hypotheses about male dominance hierarchies; under ‘standard conditions,’ politicized woman primatologists might notice female mating strategies, which observations warrant hypotheses about primate social life according significant agency to troop members who are not dominant males, thereby denaturing (rather than instantiating) the male dominance concept. Standard conditions, one might argue, differ for the two groups because patterns of engagement and attention that affect what one ‘spontaneously’ observes — and notice that the background that conditions opportunistic sampling includes received explanatory strategies — differ for them. Observing the same apes, the suggestion runs, different observers see different things, take different concepts to apply, and are warranted in drawing different conclusions.

14 S. Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986), 26

15 Unlike some people, we do not have the ability to perceive that a symphony is in D minor, but we can have good reasons to believe it to be so. For instance, we might look up what key it is in, or alternatively, we might find out that the entire community of music experts (or even just one trustworthy, sincere, music-knowledgeable friend) claims to be able to perceive it to be in D minor.

16 Donald Davidson appears to hold a view much like this one; it follows from his brand of interpretivism and lies at the root of his denial of the possibility of alternative conceptual schemes. See ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Science,’ in D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon 1984).

17 This suggestion seems to have resonance with the actual experience of feminists who study knowledge. Male interlocutors often challenge their feminist friends to hand them that crucial fact or argument that will prove that standard epistemology is biased; they rarely come away satisfied. But often, repeated contact with feminists’ discomforts, critiques, reorientations of the issue during debate, redirection of the conversation, etc., eventually convince all sorts of people that there is something to what these feminists are on about after all. Such reorientations of vision — reorientations that do not seem to be the product of direct argument — seem excellent contenders for being understood in terms of changes in second nature.

18 W. Sellars, Science and Metaphysics (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview 1992), 134

19 M. Lance, ‘Rationality, Oppression, and Taking Others to Heart: Comments on Kukla, Ruetsche, Cudd, Haraldsson, and Glaister,’ presented at the memorial symposium in honor of Tamara Horowitz at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, New York, 2000

20 Our fourth position, which does challenge traditional epistemology, is not clearly more or less ‘radical’ than our first and second positions, which do not. We need not try to perform this commensuration, for if the fourth position is right, then no adjudication among distinct standpoints would ever be necessary, even though traditional epistemology would be incomplete.

21 Such as the ‘laboratory style.’ See I. Hacking, ‘‘‘Style’’ for Historians and Philosophers,’ Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 23 (1992) 1-20.

22 Ibid., 13, and I. Hacking, ‘The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences,’ in Science as Practice and Culture, A. Pickering, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992)

23 Such a move, which gives a special epistemic privilege to marginalized social positions, obviously has its roots in Marx's attribution to the working class of the potential to see through false consciousness. It has been developed into an analogous move with respect to gender by several feminist theorists in varying ways. Some famous examples include Nancy Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited (Boulder, CO: Westview 1998); bell hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (Boston: South End 1984); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1985); and Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press 1983).

24 An earlier draft of this paper was presented as part of the memorial session in honor of Tamara Horowitz, at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association (New York, December 2000). We would like to thank the session organizers, particularly Mark Lance, for giving us an opportunity to work together on a contribution to it. More importantly, we would like to thank Tamara Horowitz, who inspired us to think about the issues we discuss here, and who by her words, deeds, and vivid example, encouraged us to pursue lives in philosophy.