I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention to the (...) way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world. (shrink)

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible but (...) politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge‐acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify (...) existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend.This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression. (shrink)

​I use network models to simulate social learning situations in which the dominant group ignores or devalues testimony from the marginalized group. I find that the marginalized group ends up with several epistemic advantages due to testimonial ignoration and devaluation. The results provide one possible explanation for a key claim of standpoint epistemology, the inversion thesis, by casting it as a consequence of another key claim of the theory, the unidirectional failure of testimonial reciprocity. Moreover, the results complicate the understanding (...) and application of previously discovered network epistemology effects, notably the Zollman effect (Zollman 2007, 2010). (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology is committed to the view that some epistemic advantage can be drawn from the position of powerlessness. Call this theepistemic privilege thesis. This thesis stands in need of explication and support. In providing that explication and support, I first distinguish between two readings of the thesis: the thesis that marginalized social locations confer some epistemic advantages (the epistemic advantage thesis) and the thesis that marginalized standpoints generate better, more accurate knowledge (the standpoint thesis). I then develop the former (...) by appealing to the notion of epistemic peers available in the disagreement literature. I next turn to the latter thesis, arguing that consciousness-raising plays an analogous role in the achievement of a standpoint as training does in the achievement of expertise. The upshot of this analysis is that it clarifies that while marginalization is necessary (though not sufficient) for epistemic advantage, it is neither necessary nor sufficient for epistemic privilege. (shrink)

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)

Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a model of both successful integration and integration failures. On the (...) one hand, I argue that cross-cultural recognition of property clusters leads to an ontological overlap that makes knowledge integration often epistemically productive and socially useful. On the other hand, I argue that knowledge integration is limited by ontological divergence. Adequate models of Indigenous knowledge will therefore have to take integration failures seriously and I argue that integration efforts need to be complemented by a political notion of ontological self-determination. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. Its central insight is that epistemic advantage may accrue to those who are oppressed by structures of domination and discounted as knowers. Feminist standpoint theorists hold that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that can make such a difference. In response to two longstanding objections I argue that epistemically consequential standpoints need not be conceptualized in essentialist terms, and that they do not confer automatic or comprehensive epistemic privilege (...) on those who occupy them. Standpoint theory is best construed as conceptual framework for investigating the ways in which socially situated experience and interests make a contingent difference to what we know (well), and to the resources we have for determining which knowledge claims we can trust. I illustrate the advantages of this account in terms of two examples drawn from archaeological sources. (shrink)

What happens when we consider transformative experiences from the perspective of gender transitions? In this paper I suggest that at least two insights emerge. First, trans* persons’ experiences of gender transitions show some limitations to L.A. Paul’s (forthcoming) decision theoretic account of transformative decisions. This will involve exploring some of the phenomenology of coming to know that one is trans, and in coming to decide to transition. Second, what epistemological effects are there to undergoing a transformative experience? By connecting some (...) experiences of gender transitions to feminist standpoint epistemology, I argue that radical changes in one’s identity and social location also radically affects one’s access to knowledge in ways not widely appreciated in contemporary epistemology. (shrink)

Feminist epistemologies hold that differences in the social locations of inquirers make for epistemic differences, for instance, in the sorts of things that inquirers are justified in believing. In this paper we situate this core idea in feminist epistemologies with respect to debates about social constructivism. We address three questions. First, are feminist epistemologies committed to a form of social constructivism about knowledge? Second, to what extent are they incompatible with traditional epistemological thinking? Third, do the answers to these questions (...) raise serious problems for feminist epistemologies? We argue that some versions of two of the main strands in feminist epistemology – feminist standpoint theory and feminist empiricism – are committed to a form of social constructivism, which requires certain departures from traditional epistemological thinking. But we argue that these departures are less problematic than one might think. Thus, (some) feminist epistemologies provide a plausible way of understanding how (some) knowledge might be socially constructed. (shrink)

Since anonymous agents can spread misinformation with impunity, many people advocate for greater accountability for internet speech. This paper provides a veritistic argument that accountability mechanisms can cause significant epistemic problems for internet encyclopedias and social media communities. I show that accountability mechanisms can undermine both the dissemination of true beliefs and the detection of error. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, I suggest alternative mechanisms for increasing the trustworthiness of internet communication.

Feminist philosophy of science appears to present problems for the ideal of value-free science. These difficulties also challenge a traditional understanding of the objectivity of science. However, feminist philosophers of science have good reasons for desiring to retain some concept of objectivity. The present essay considers several recent and influential feminist approaches to the role of social and political values in science, with particular focus on feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint theory. The similarities and difference, as well as the strengths (...) and weaknesses of these approaches are explored. The essay concludes with suggestions for future research in the area of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Feminists note an association of arguing with aggression and masculinity and question the necessity of this connection. Arguing also seems to some to identify a central method of philosophical reasoning, and gendered assumptions and standards would pose problems for the discipline. Can feminine modes of reasoning provide an alternative or supplement? Can overarching epistemological standards account for the benefits of different approaches to arguing? These are some of the prospects for argumentation inside and outside of philosophy that feminists consider. -/- (...) The further concern is that the academic study of argumentation – in philosophy and other disciplines – has failed to account for the type of reasoning needed for social justice movements. What resources for addressing these concerns can be found in informal logic and interdisciplinary argumentation theory? Since part of the perceived problem derives from assuming that arguing is a contest, are more collaborative epistemological frameworks better? Can regular politeness or civility hedge against undesirable tendencies of argumentation? Can “critical thinking” pedagogy involving argument educations answer the needs of social justice? (shrink)

We suggest that philosophical accounts of epistemic effects of diversity have given insufficient attention to the relationship between demographic diversity and information elaboration, the process whereby knowledge dispersed in a group is elicited and examined. We propose an analysis of IE that clarifies hypotheses proposed in the empirical literature and their relationship to philosophical accounts of diversity effects. Philosophical accounts have largely overlooked the possibility that demographic diversity may improve group performance by enhancing IE, and sometimes fail to explore the (...) relationship between diversity and IE altogether. We claim these omissions are significant from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Moreover, we explain how the overlooked explanations suggest that epistemic benefits of diversity can depend on epistemically unjust social dynamics. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the recent explosion of literature on the epistemological role of emotions and other affective states by defending two claims. First, affective states might do more than position us to receive evidence or function as evidence. Affective states might be thought to appraise evidence, in the sense that affective states influence what doxastic state is rational for someone given a body of evidence. The second claim is that affective evidentialism, the view that affective states function rationally in (...) this way, is not just possible but plausible and fruitful. We offer two arguments in favor of affective evidentialism. (shrink)

Can a person privileged in some respect understand what it is like to be disprivileged in that respect? Some say yes; some say no. I argue that both positions are correct, because ‘understand what it is like to be disprivileged’ is ambiguous. Sometimes, it means grasp of the character of particular experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people can achieve this. Sometimes, it means grasp of the general character shared by experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people cannot achieve this. However, there (...) is a general kind of understanding that they can achieve: understanding of why individual experiences have their character, in relation to privilege and disprivilege. This understanding is a skill, not knowledge. It is difficult and discomforting for the privileged to acquire and is easily conflated with knowledge of general experiential character. Distinguishing and characterizing these kinds of understanding clarifies whether, and how, the privileged might understand what it is like to be disprivileged. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of freedom of expression by drawing lessons from the strategic logic of China’s censorship regime. It argues that freedom of expression helps build the common knowledge needed for overcoming coordination problems and is, thus, a source of collective power. However, realizing the full empowering potential of freedom of expression requires supplementing it with (a) public sources of information that are reliable, trusted, and democratically accountable and (b) measures that will provide citizens with equal opportunity to (...) speak and be heard in ways that will enable them to contribute to their society’s stock of common knowledge. (shrink)

It is not unusual to find the content of an epistemic agent’s utterance unwanted and immediately reject such an utterance because it elicits a repulsive reaction in us. What could explain this sort of reaction to a speaker’s utterance? In this paper, I propose an “epistemic disgust” concept to explain this reaction to a speaker’s utterance. Epistemic disgust refers to a phenomenon whereby an epistemic agent is repulsed by a speaker’s utterance either due to the speaker’s personality or the content (...) of the speaker’s utterance, thus causing the agent to reject the speaker’s utterance from contributing to her epistemic system. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance of survey data of scientists’ attitudes about science and values to case studies in philosophy of science. We describe two methodological challenges confronting such case studies: 1) small samples, and 2) potential for bias in selection, emphasis, and interpretation. Examples are given to illustrate that these challenges can arise for case studies in the science and values literature. We propose that these challenges can be mitigated through an approach in which case studies and survey methods (...) are viewed as complementary, and use data from the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative to illustrate this claim. (shrink)

There has been a surge of recent interest in sociocultural diversity in machine learning research. Currently, however, there is a gap between discussions of measures and benefits of diversity in machine learning, on the one hand, and the broader research on the underlying concepts of diversity and the precise mechanisms of its functional benefits, on the other. This gap is problematic because diversity is not a monolithic concept. Rather, different concepts of diversity are based on distinct rationales that should inform (...) how we measure diversity in a given context. Similarly, the lack of specificity about the precise mechanisms underpinning diversity’s potential benefits can result in uninformative generalities, invalid experimental designs, and illicit interpretations of findings. In this work, we draw on research in philosophy, psychology, and social and organizational sciences to make three contributions: First, we introduce a taxonomy of different diversity concepts from philosophy of science, and explicate the distinct epistemic and political rationales underlying these concepts. Second, we provide an overview of mechanisms by which diversity can benefit group performance. Third, we situate these taxonomies of concepts and mechanisms in the lifecycle of sociotechnical machine learning systems and make a case for their usefulness in fair and accountable machine learning. We do so by illustrating how they clarify the discourse around diversity in the context of machine learning systems, promote the formulation of more precise research questions about diversity’s impact, and provide conceptual tools to further advance research and practice. (shrink)

In this introduction to the Topical Collection on Social and Cognitive Diversity in Science, we map the questions that have guided social epistemological approaches to diversity in science. Both social and cognitive diversity of different types is claimed to be epistemically beneficial. The challenge is to understand how an increase in a group’s diversity can bring about epistemic benefits and whether there are limits beyond which diversity can no longer improve a group’s epistemic performance. The contributions to the Topical Collection (...) discuss various proposals to maintain an appropriate amount of cognitive diversity in science, for instance, by recruiting and retaining practitioners from underrepresented social groups, providing incentives for explorative and risky research, encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations and stakeholder participation in research, requiring industry scientists to share their evidence, and developing strategies to encounter politically motivated attempts to manufacture doubt. To be successful, efforts to promote diversity in science should anticipate risks related to institutional interventions, navigate trade-offs between different types of epistemically good outcomes, and identify hidden costs that such policies may cause for various actors. Such efforts need to be assessed not only from an epistemic perspective but also from the point of view of fairness and the political legitimacy of scientific institutions. (shrink)

While much has been said on the connection between dominant rationality standards and systemic oppression, the specific role of logic in supporting epistemic injustice has not received much explicit attention. In this paper I highlight several ways in which it is possible for logic – as a discipline, as a particular system and as a gloss for rational common sense – to be implicated in epistemic injustice. Concrete examples are given for testimonial, content-based, hermeneutical and contributory injustices. I conclude by (...) elaborating on how the need to address these injustices affects the attitudes we should carry toward logic. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology has been linked with increasing calls for deference to the socially marginalized. As we understand it, deference involves recognizing someone else as better positioned than we are, either to investigate or to answer some question, and then accepting their judgment as our own. We connect contemporary calls for deference to old objections that standpoint epistemology wrongly reifies differences between groups. We also argue that while deferential epistemic norms present themselves as a solution to longstanding injustices, habitual deference prevents (...) the socially dominant from developing for themselves the skills necessary to expand their capacity for empathy, to deftly probe for evidence, and to ask critical questions. Consequently, we argue that standpoint epistemology must be understood as calling for inclusion, not deference. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers have discussed the prospects for assessing values empirically, particularly given the ongoing threat of sexism and other oppressive values influencing science and society. Some advocates of such tests now champion a “values as evidence” approach, and they criticize Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism for not holding values to the same level of empirical scrutiny as other claims. In this paper, we defend contextual empiricism by arguing that many of these criticisms are based on mischaracterizations of Longino’s position, overstatements of (...) certain claims, and false dichotomies. Her contextual empiricism not only allows for the empirical support and disconfirmation of values, but Longino explicitly discusses when values can be empirically adjudicated and emphasizes the crucial role of the community for standards of evidence. We support contextual empiricism and elaborate a less direct account of “values as heuristics” by reviewing Longino’s theory of evidence and then using a case study from Elisabeth Lloyd on the biology of female orgasm, demonstrating the disconfirmation of androcentric values in evolutionary science. Within Longino’s and Lloyd’s contextual empiricism, values do not get treated as empirical evidence to be directly assessed by individuals, but rather values are heuristic tools to build models whose use can be validated or invalidated by communities based on their empirical fruitfulness in the logic and pragmatics of research questions in specific historical and cultural contexts. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses the current debates in philosophy of science that focus on the concept of values. In these debates, it is often assumed that all relevant non-epistemic influences on scientific research can be described as values and, consequently, that science carries social legitimacy if the correct values play their proper role in research. I argue that values are _not_ the only relevant non-epistemic influences on research: not unless our definition of values is so broad that it becomes unmanageable. (...) Other factors also affect the authority and social legitimacy of science. I employ political theorist Iris Marion Young’s concepts of social perspectives, opinions and interests to attempt a differentiation of contextual influences relevant to scientific research. While problems arising from these influences may overlap, they often differ in important ways too. As a consequence, I argue that contextual influences cannot be managed jointly but require distinct and complementary strategies. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer some reasons for thinking that knowledge is a social phenomenon. My argument is based on Helen Longino’s work on scientific knowledge, in particular her 2002 book The Fate of Knowledge. Longino’s basic idea is that a scientific hypothesis or theory is justified when it emerges (relatively) unscathed from social interactions between scientists. If we accept – as Longino and many others do – that knowledge requires justification, it follows that scientific knowledge is a social phenomenon. (...) I argue that much the same goes for other forms of empirical knowledge, such as historical knowledge, various forms of collective knowledge and our knowledge of the ‘social world’. But does it go for empirical knowledge in general? I offer some – admittedly far from conclusive – reasons for thinking that it might. I also argue that, even if it doesn’t, we still need to distinguish between two kinds of knowledge, one of which is constitutively social and the other of which isn’t. Scientific knowledge is a paradigm example of the former and simple perceptual knowledge is a paradigm example of the latter. The end result is a form of pluralism about knowledge. (shrink)

A concept of diversity is an understanding of what makes a group diverse that may be applicable in a variety of contexts. We distinguish three diversity concepts, show that each can be found in discussions of diversity in science, and explain how they tend to be associated with distinct epistemic and ethical rationales. Yet philosophical literature on diversity among scientists has given little attention to distinct concepts of diversity. This is significant because the unappreciated existence of multiple diversity concepts can (...) generate unclarity about the meaning of “diversity,” lead to problematic inferences from empirical research, and obscure complex ethical-epistemic questions about how to define diversity in specific cases. We illustrate some ethical-epistemic implications of our proposal by reference to an example of deliberative mini-publics on human tissue biobanking. (shrink)

This paper argues that trustworthiness is an epistemic virtue that promotes objectivity. I show that untrustworthy imposture can be an arrogant act of privilege that silences marginalized voices. But, as epistemologists of ignorance have shown, sometimes trickery and the betrayal of epistemic norms are important resistance strategies. This raises the question: when is betrayal of trust epistemically virtuous? After establishing that trust is central to objectivity, I argue for the following answer: a betrayal is epistemically vicious when it strengthens or (...) promotes oppressive, exclusive networks of trust, and a betrayal is epistemically virtuous when it expands trust networks to involve the oppressed. These criteria correctly account for both the epistemic vice of a recent case of Internet imposture and the epistemic virtue of resistant tricksters. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory and argue that they have more in common than previously thought. We show that both traditions draw on a similar epistemological bedrock, specifically relating to the fragmentation of knowledge in society and the fact that some of this knowledge cannot easily be shared between agents. We go on to investigate how market liberals and standpoint theorists argue with recourse to these similar foundations, and sometimes (...) diverge, primarily because of normative pre-commitments. One conclusion we draw from this is that these similarities suggest that market liberals ought to, by their own epistemological lights, be more attentive towards various problems raised by feminist standpoint theorists, and feminist standpoint theorists ought to be more open to various claims made by market liberals. (shrink)

Feminist theorists have shown that knowledge is embodied in ways that make a difference in science. Intemann properly endorses feminist standpoint theory over Longino’s empiricism, insofar as the former better addresses embodiment. I argue that a pragmatist analysis further improves standpoint theory: Pragmatism avoids the radical subjectivity that otherwise leaves us unable to account for our ability to share scientific knowledge across bodies of different kinds; and it allows us to argue for the inclusion, not just of the knowledge produced (...) from marginalised bodies, but of the marginalised themselves. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new way to understand the integration of facts and values in the concept of mental disorder that has the potential to avoid the flaws of previous hybrid approaches. I import conceptual tools from the account of procedural objectivity defended by Helen Longino to resolve the controversy over the definition of mental disorder. My argument is threefold: I first sketch the history of the debate opposing objectivists and constructivists and focus on the criticisms that (...) led to the emergence of the debate. Second, I offer a reconstruction of the “Natural Function Approach” argument to make explicit an unsound assumption underlying this approach. The reconstruction will allow me to show that the NFO’s argument depends on the ideal of value-free science that I will criticize. Then I propose an alternative ideal for psychiatry: social objectivity. I argue that the concept of mental health should be seen as “socially objective” rather than value-free, moving the debate towards the social procedures by which the definition is produced rather than the normative and factual content of its definition. (shrink)

The assessments issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aim to provide policy-makers with an objective source of information about the various causes of climate change, the projected consequences for the environment and human affairs, and the options for adaptation and mitigation. But what, in this context, is meant by ‘objective’? In practice, in an effort to address internal and external criticisms, the IPCC has regularly revised its methodological procedures; some of these procedures seem to meet the requirements (...) of objectivity, at least as understood in a specific sense, but the relationship between objectivity and value-neutrality requires further investigation. The aim of this paper is to offer an appropriate philosophical account of objectivity, reconcilable with the fact that the IPCC is not value-free. I argue that Sandra Harding’s notion of strong objectivity is particularly well suited to this goal, and I examine the extent to which the current IPCC procedures match her account. (shrink)

I compare two different arguments for the importance of bringing new voices into science: arguments for increasing the representation of women, and arguments for the inclusion of the public, or for “citizen science”. I suggest that in each case, diversifying science can improve the quality of scientific results in three distinct ways: epistemically, ethically, and politically. In the first two respects, the mechanisms are essentially the same. In the third respect, the mechanisms are importantly different. Though this might appear to (...) suggest a broad similarity between the cases, I show that the analysis reveals an important respect in which efforts to include the public are more complex. With citizen science programs, unlike with efforts to bring more women into science, the three types of improvement are often in conflict with one another: improvements along one dimension may come at a cost on another dimension, suggesting difficult trade-offs may need to be made. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of science has witnessed a shift in focus, in that significantly more consideration is given to how scientists employ models. Attending to the role of models in scientific practice leads to new questions about the representational roles of models, the purpose of idealizations, why multiple models are used for the same phenomenon, and many more besides. In this paper, I suggest that these themes resonate with central topics in feminist epistemology, in particular prominent versions of feminist empiricism, and (...) that model-based science and feminist epistemology each has crucial resources to offer the other's project. (shrink)

An intuitive conception of objectivity involves an ideal of neutrality—if we’re to engage in objective inquiry, we must try to sideline our prejudices, values, and politics, lest these factors taint inquiry and unduly influence our results. This intuition underlies various “purist” epistemological frameworks, which grant epistemic significance only to “epistemic factors” like evidence or the truth of a belief. Feminist epistemologists typically condemn purist frameworks as inimical to feminist aims. They argue that purist epistemology is divorced from the ineliminably social (...) and value-laden nature of our epistemic practices, and, moreover, that it abstracts away precisely those features that are needed to explain how power shapes knowledge. As they see it, purist frameworks simply lack the conceptual space needed to ask the right kinds of questions. Thus, they go in for “impurist” frameworks, which grant epistemic significance to “non-epistemic” factors, and so shed the confining constraints of purism. I turn the tables on the impurists—where they have connected purist norms with perniciously disengaged epistemology, I connect impurist norms with a creeping anxiety that is diminishing feminist epistemology’s political possibilities. First, I demonstrate that it’s increasingly common for impurist epistemologists to use moral considerations as a means to bypass the evidence, which betrays a lack of faith that the evidence will bear out feminist commitments. Second, I demonstrate that there is needless pessimism about our capacity to understand, as evidenced by the increasingly widespread idea that privileged social positions place robust limits on what people can know about oppression that they don’t personally experience. In both cases, moral and political considerations are invoked to give the illusion of being socially engaged, while in fact they allow people to give up on the difficult project of figuring things out. An extended case study on rape culture illustrates the stakes of doing inquiry that is only superficially socially engaged; I show that the two anxious traps I’ve identified have prevented contemporary feminist theorists from detecting and rooting out racist distortion in their accounts of rape culture because both traps interfere with a genuinely intersectional approach to feminist theorizing. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory and argue that they have more in common than previously thought. We show that both traditions draw on a similar epistemological bedrock, specifically relating to the fragmentation of knowledge in society and the fact that some of this knowledge cannot easily be shared between agents. We go on to investigate how market liberals and standpoint theorists argue with recourse to these similar foundations, and sometimes (...) diverge, primarily because of normative pre-commitments. One conclusion we draw from this is that these similarities suggest that market liberals ought to, by their own epistemological lights, be more attentive towards various problems raised by feminist standpoint theorists, and feminist standpoint theorists ought to be more open to various claims made by market liberals. (shrink)

Although there is increased recognition of the inevitable--and perhaps sometimes beneficial-- role of values in scientific inquiry, there are also growing concerns about the potential for commercial values to lead to bias. This is particularly evident in biomedical research. There is a concern that conflicts of interest created by commercialization may lead to biased reasoning or methodological choices in testing drugs and medical interventions. In addition, such interests may lead research in directions that are unresponsive to pressing social needs, when (...) it is profitable to do so. Feminist philosophy of science seems particularly well situated to provide resources to help address such concerns because this literature has both 1) theorized about how to minimize biases in science, e.g., sexist or androcentric biases, and 2) generated accounts of objectivity that do not require individual scientists to be value-neutral or disinterested. Two such accounts are assessed in relation to concerns about commercial bias: those offered by feminist empiricism and standpoint feminism. We argue that standpoint feminism is more promising because it has resources to address, not just the epistemological, but also the inescapably ethical dimensions of commercial bias. (shrink)

Este texto es la traducción del capítulo cuarto de The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, editado por Ian James Kidd, José Medina y Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. En él, Miranda Fricker aclara y delimita los conceptos de injusticia hermenéutica y testimonial, proporcionando ejemplos, narrando su genealogía, respondiendo a algunas de las críticas que recibieron estos conceptos, así como estableciendo relaciones de semejanza y contraste con otras concepciones de la justicia y otras ramas de la filosofía.

Feminist epistemology aims to propose epistemic reasons for increasing the representation of women or socially subordinated people in science. This is typically done—albeit often only implicitly—by positing a causal mechanism through which the representation of sociodemographic minorities exerts a positive effect on scientific advancement. Two types of causal theories can be identified. The “epistemic diversity thesis” presents a causal path from sociodemographic diversity to scientific progress mediated by epistemic diversity. The “thesis of epistemic advantage” proposes a causal path from social (...) subjugation to capacity for inquiry. The latter theory is defined with substantial ambiguity in the existing literature, and I present an explicit causal reformulation that disambiguates it. The epistemic diversity thesis focuses on the effect of group composition on collective epistemic performance and is largely silent about what kind of characteristics lead to individual epistemic excellence. On the other hand, the thesis of epistemic advantage seeks to identify sociodemographic background conditions that make certain epistemic agents strictly better knowers or inquirers than others and pays little attention to the synergistic effects of diverse group composition. Such a difference in the causal structure reflects the diverging political characteristics of the two theories. (shrink)

This article examines the business case for diversity, according to which diversity should be promoted because diverse groups outperform nondiverse groups. Philosophers who defend BCD usually...

A small but growing body of philosophically informed survey work calls into question whether the value-free ideal is a dominant viewpoint among scientists. However, the survey instruments in used in these studies have important limitations. Previous work has also made little headway in developing hypotheses that might predict or explain differing views about the value-free ideal among scientists. In this article, we review previous survey work on this topic, describe an improved survey instrument, report results from an initial administration of (...) it that strengthen and refine previous results, and develop two hypotheses that may account for gender effects found in the data. (shrink)

**No longer the current version available on SEP; see revised version by Sharon Crasnow** -/- Feminists have a number of distinct interests in, and perspectives on, science. The tools of science have been a crucial resource for understanding the nature, impact, and prospects for changing gender-based forms of oppression; in this spirit, feminists actively draw on, and contribute to, the research programs of a wide range of sciences. At the same time, feminists have identified the sciences as a source as (...) well as a locus of gender inequalities: the institutions of science have a long tradition of excluding women as practitioners; feminist critics of science find that women and gender (or, more broadly, issues of concern to women and sex/gender minorities) are routinely marginalized as subjects of scientific inquiry, or are treated in ways that reproduce gender-normative stereotypes; and, closing the circle, scientific authority has frequently served to rationalize the kinds of social roles and institutions that feminists call into question. -/- Feminist perspectives on science therefore reflect a broad spectrum of epistemic attitudes toward and appraisals of science. Some urge the reform of gender inequities in the institutions of science and call for attention to neglected questions with the aim of improving the sciences in their own terms; they do not challenge the standards and practices of the sciences they engage. Others pursue jointly critical and constructive programs of research that, to varying degrees, aim at transforming the methodologies, substantive content, framework assumptions, and epistemic ideals that animate the sciences. The content of these perspectives, and the degree to which they generate transformative critique, depends not only on the types of philosophical and political commitments that inform them but also on the nature of the sciences and subject domains on which they bear. Feminist perspectives have had greatest impact on sciences that deal with inherently gendered subjects—the social and human sciences—and, secondarily, on sciences that study subjects characterized in gendered terms, metaphorically or by analogy (projectively gendered subjects), chiefly the biological and life sciences. Feminist perspectives are relevant to sciences that deal with non-gendered subject matters, but perspectives vary substantially in content and in critical import depending on the sciences and the particular research programs they engage. (shrink)