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)

This paper explores how the social and affective lives of people with marginalized social identities are particularly affected by digital influences. Specifically, the paper examines whether and how social media enables LGBTQ+ people to experience feelings of belonging. It does so by drawing on literature from digital epistemology and phenomenology of the digital, and by presenting and analyzing the results of a qualitative study consisting of 25 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. The interviews were conducted to explore the social media experiences (...) of LGBTQ+ people through an empirical framework informed by both phenomenology and social epistemology, particularly feminist standpoint theory. The paper emphasizes the importance of positionality and the epistemic value of research that centers marginalized perspectives and employs an anti-oppressive research approach, and focuses on understanding the digital experiences of LGBTQ+ people from within their marginalized perspective. (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)

There are different ways to study feminism. One of the ways is to study it by analyzing the waves of feminism. Though there are differences of opinion on how many waves of feminism have been so far, we would like to hold on to the generally accepted view that there are four waves of feminism so far and we try to research into one of the hallmarks of the fourth wave feminism, feminist hashtag. Though some people consider hashtags momentary and (...) frenzy, it’s a platform for feminist epistemology and feminist policy making. Moreover, it assists the development of social epistemology and reconsiders the notion of objectivity. The representative slogans of the first three waves of feminism were like the precursors of hashtags and the spokeswomen of the first three waves of feminism present the necessity of space for writing. The fourth-wave feminists make use of cyberspace as a space for addressing feminist concerns through hashtags. However, we recognize certain similarities of concerns in all the waves of feminism. The analysis of two epistemological theses, i.e., situated knowledge thesis and epistemic advantage thesis on developing the theme of how hashtags assist in knowledge production. The idea of situated knowledge explains how experiences specific to oppressed members of groups can serve as the basis of the development of important insights. Hashtags could be considered as a new way of understanding the links between gender and knowledge. Feminist slogans and hashtags are also media of testimonial exchange. When the issues of differential credulity and credibility arise the tenet of situated knowing comes to the aid of the feminist thinker. Building up the climate of trust generates knowledge of the forces and dynamics of the oppressed. Trust helps to overcome identity prejudice and testimonial injustice. Feminist policies make women visible in feminist public policies. Responsible interventions into epistemic practices by public policy-making can help move society in the direction of social justice. Hashtag testimony leads to consciousness-raising and protest movements which in turn leads to the public reasoning and policy that empowers women. The reflections of Miranda Fricker are of great advantage in disclosing feminist epistemology that revolves around feminist hashtags. Her doctrines enrich the feminist hashtags with new insights and new directions. A study on the epistemological relevance of hashtag feminism enhances the development of social epistemology. It invites our attention to re-reflect on the concept of objectivity and empowers feminist movements and women. (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)

In this paper I examine unjust deficits of criticism, or what I call cases of “critical injustice.” In paradigm cases of testimonial injustice, prejudice leads one person to give insufficient credibility to another. In paradigm cases critical injustice, prejudice leads one person to offer insufficient criticism of another. Here I articulate the concept of critical injustice and give an explanation of why it is a species of injustice. I also describe a non-prejudicial species of critical injustice and discuss a possible (...) tension between the goal of preventing testimonial injustice and the goal of preventing critical injustice. (shrink)

Within the last decade, burgeoning interest in the intersection of epistemology and social issues has generated a new set of research questions. These questions range from the relevance of social identity, to peer disagreement, to debates on the significance of moral considerations to epistemic evaluations, to discussions of our epistemic practices and how those practices exclude certain agents and certain bodies of knowledge. Central in this new and emerging body of work is the realization that epistemology has more to do (...) than simply answer questions about what knowledge consists in; it must also acknowledge that our answers to these questions might be influenced by features we have previously failed to make space for. It is in this respect that we are witnessing a renewed interest in a theoretical approach long consigned to the margins of epistemology – that of standpoint epistemology. (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)

In this dissertation, I aim to develop and defend a novel, pragmatist approach to foundational questions about meaning, especially the meaning of deontic moral vocabulary. Drawing from expressivists and inferentialists, I argue that meaning is best explained by the various kinds of norms that govern the use of a vocabulary. Along with inferential norms, I argue we must extend our account to discursive norms that govern normative statuses required to felicitously utter certain speech-acts—norms of authority—and the transitions in normative statuses (...) affected by speech-acts—pragmatic norms. These structural discursive norms differentiate discursive practices and account for distinctive features such as objectivity and motivational import that some have and others lack. The structure exhibited by a practice is then explained in terms of its utility, making it possible to see how different discursive practices are answerable to the different needs and purposes of the discursive beings who use them. I call the resulting explanatory framework a pragmatic analysis of linguistic meaning (PALM). -/- Turning my attention to moral “ought,” I argue that the structural discursive norms of moral discourse differentiate it from other objective discourses, like empirical discourse, on the one hand, and from other normative discourses, like prudential discourse, on the other. Drawing on work in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, I complete the PALM with an account of moral discourse a meta-normative practice with a metacoordinative function. Its utility for the discursive beings who use it lies in its enabling them to remedy certain tensions and instabilities that arise in their other coordinative, normative practices in a way that minimizes the risk of domination by alpha-type freeriders, the fracturing of social groups, and individual defection from cooperative endeavors. -/- In the final two chapters, I leverage the account to defend a pragmatist-friendly notion of objectivity in terms of a structure of distributed epistemic authority according to which no claim within a practice is ultimately authoritative or immune from challenge and to reconcile this sense of objectivity with a persistent pressure toward a kind of relativism that restricts the standing to make moral claims to members of the relevant communities. (shrink)

Epistemic dependence refers to our social mechanisms of reliance in practices of knowledge production. Epistemic oppression concerns persistent and unwarranted exclusions from those practices. This article examines the relationship between these two frameworks and demonstrates that attending to their relationship is a fruitful practice for applied epistemology. Paying attention to relations of epistemic dependence and how exclusive they are can help us track epistemically oppressive practices. In order to show this, I introduce a taxonomy of epistemic dependence. I argue that (...) this particular taxonomy is useful for tracking epistemically oppressive practices in institutional contexts. This is because, first, the forms of epistemic dependence in this taxonomy yield, what I call, diagnostic questions. These are questions that help us track how relations of epistemic dependence could become exclusive and that thus help reveal epistemic oppression in institutional contexts. Second, the forms of epistemic dependence in the taxonomy are interrelated. Paying attention not just to each of three forms of epistemic dependence but also to the way in which they are interrelated is useful for illuminating epistemically oppressive practices. I conclude by demonstrating how the diagnostic questions can be used in analyses of concrete institutional practices in asylum law and higher education. (shrink)

This chapter has four central aims. First, in §1, I distinguish two ideas within epistemology that sometimes travel under the name ‘contextualism’ — the ‘situational contextualist’ idea that an individual’s context, especially their social context, can make for a difference in what they know, and the ‘linguistic contextualist’ idea that discourse using the word ‘knows’ and its cognates is context-sensitive, expressing dif- ferent contents in different conversational contexts. -/- Second, in §2, I situate contextualism with respect to several influential ideas (...) in feminist epistemology. These ideas are thoroughgoingly contextualist in the situational sense; I’ll explore the prospects for linguistic contextualist analogues or implementations of them. Simple connections between these feminist ideas and linguistic contextualism will prove elusive, but more subtle ones are possible, and sometimes attractive. -/- §3 considers the degree to which contextual epistemic parameters are determined interpersonally, as opposed to individualistically. Should contextualists hold that speakers can individually determine the contextual parameters that influence the truth- conditions of their utterances? Or are they fixed at a broader social level? I’ll rehearse some influential reasons to opt for the latter, more social, form of contextualism. -/- In §4 I discuss the practical and moral significance of speakers’ choices of epistemic parameters, given contextualism. For example, I’ll consider how standards-raising can be used to discredit evidential sources, with an eye towards the social and moral consequences of such moves. (shrink)

Standpoint epistemology, the view that social identity is relevant to knowledge-acquisition, has been consigned to the margins of mainstream philosophy. In part, this is because the principles of standpoint epistemology are taken to be in opposition to those which guide traditional epistemology. One goal of this paper is to tease out the characterization of traditional epistemology that is at odds with standpoint epistemology. The characterization of traditional epistemology that I put forth is one which endorses the thesis of intellectualism, the (...) view that knowledge does not depend on non-epistemic features. I then suggest that two further components – the atomistic view of knowers and aperspectivalism – can be usefully interpreted as supporting features of intellectualism. A further goal of this paper is to show that we ought to resist this characterization of traditional epistemology. I use pragmatic encroachment as a dialectical tool to motivate the denial of intellectualism, and consequently, the denial of both supporting components. I then attempt to show how it is possible to have a view, similar to pragmatic encroachment, that takes social identity, rather than stakes, to be the feature that makes a difference to what a person is in a position to know. (shrink)

Epistemic paternalism is the practice of interfering with someone’s inquiry, without their consent, for their own epistemic good. In this chapter, I explore the relationship between epistemic paternalism and two other epistemological theses: epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology. I argue that examining this relationship is fruitful because it sheds light on a series of cases in which epistemic paternalism is unjustified and brings out notable similarities between epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology.

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)

Research on healthcare disparities outside the field of epistemology tend to miss the true origins of oppressions imposed on marginalized individuals by the U.S healthcare system. This happens because of the false belief that these oppressions are reducible to social or political oppressions. By employing the perspective of a standpoint epistemologist, we can better identify the origins of these oppressions and subsequently consider more appropriate solutions. The standpoint epistemologist’s perspective provides an intuitive case for the role individuals’ schemas play in (...) the evaluation of what healthcare professionals know; situates medical knowledge within epistemology, leading us to the determination of the system’s recalcitrance; and lastly, provides us with new and appropriate diagnostic tools for addressing these distinctively epistemic oppressions. The standpoint epistemologist’s perspective is our only saving grace, because when we fail to consider medical knowledge as an epistemological system, we fail to understand the origins of these healthcare oppressions altogether. (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)

This thesis provides three core arguments. The first core argument is a criticism of ‘identity’ views of metaphysics, in particular Haslangerian social constructivist metaphysics. Having made this criticism, I argue in favour of using the notion of ‘habitus’ from Bourdieu to account for the functional signature traditionally associated with identity, and apply this way of thinking about social metaphysics to social class. The second core argument applies social constructivist metaphysics to the issue of situated knowledge. I argue that we can (...) conceive of much of situated knowledge as being knowledge-how, rather than propositional knowledge. I do this by arguing that only knowledge-how can justify the social epistemic norms that are ascribed to situated knowledge. The third core argument applies this view of situated knowledge to political philosophy. I argue against the interpretation of my previous arguments as supporting epistocracy, and in doing so combine Thomas Christiano's instrumentalist argument for democracy with the demographic argument against epistocracy, creating a new 'demographic instrumentalist' argument for democracy. The sum of these three core arguments is an argument for the importance of maintaining a diverse set of decision-makers in political decision making. (shrink)

Wem wird geglaubt und wem nicht? Wessen Wissen wird weitergegeben und wessen nicht? Wer hat eine Stimme und wer nicht? Theorien der epistemischen Ungerechtigkeit befassen sich mit dem breiten Feld der ungerechten oder unfairen Behandlung, die mit Fragen des Wissens, Verstehens und Kommunizierens zusammenhängen, wie z.B. die Möglichkeit, vom Wissen oder von kommunikativen Praktiken ausgeschlossen zu werden oder zum Schweigen gebracht zu werden, aber auch Kontexte, in denen die Bedeutungen mancher systematisch verzerrt oder falsch gehört und falsch dargestellt werden, in (...) denen manchen misstraut wird oder es an epistemischer Handlungsfähigkeit mangelt. In diesem Buch wird eine Übersicht über die breite Debatte epistemischer Ungerechtigkeit, epistemischer Unterdrückung und epistemischer Gewalt gegeben, in dem unterschiedliche Theorien, die sich auf der Schnittstelle von Gerechtigkeitstheorie und epistemischen Fragen befinden, systematisch und kritisch diskutiert sowie theoretische Vorgänger dieser Theorien beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

In the 1940s, Gilbert Ryle argued for anti-intellectualism about know how. More recently, new intellectualists have challenged the canonical status of Ryle's arguments, and in the ensuing debate Ryleans appear to be on their back foot. However, contributors on both sides of the debate tend to ignore or misconstrue Ryle's own positive account of know how. In this paper, I develop two aspects of Ryle's positive account that have been overlooked. For Ryle, S knows how to Φ iff (1) S (...) is able to reliably live up to the norms for Φ-ing, and (2) S Φ’s responsibly. In the first half of the paper, I argue that the two conditions rule out the various counter-examples to the simple ability view attributed to Ryle. In the second half of the paper, I argue that Ryle's second condition provides us with an account of warrant related to know how. (shrink)

This article has two aims: to bring Judith Butler and Wilfrid Sellars into conversation; and to argue that Butler's poststructuralist critique of feminist identity politics has metaphilosophical potential, given her pragmatic parallel with Sellars's critique of conceptual analyses of knowledge. With regard to, I argue that Butler's objections to the definitional practice constitutive of certain ways of construing feminism is comparable to Sellars's critique of the analytical project geared toward providing definitions of knowledge. Specifically, I propose that moving away from (...) a definition of woman to what one may call poststructuralist sites of woman parallels moving away from a definition of knowledge to a pragmatic account of knowledge as a recognizable standing in the normative space of reasons. With regard to, I argue that the important parallels between Butler's poststructuralist feminism and Sellars's antirepresentationalist normative pragmatism about knowledge enable one to think of her poststructuralist feminism as mapping out pragmatic cognitive strategies and visions for doing philosophy. This article starts a conversation between two philosophers whom the literature has yet to fully introduce to each other. (shrink)

Hermeneutical injustice occurs when there is a gap in the interpretive resources available to members of a society due to the marginalization of members of a social group from sense‐making practices. In this paper, I address two questions about hermeneutical injustice that are undertheorized in the recent literature: (1) what do we mean when we say that someone lacks the interpretive resources for making sense of an experience? and (2) how do marginalized individuals develop interpretive resources? In response to (1), (...) I argue that to lack interpretive resources is to lack conceptual skill or know how. In response to (2), I draw on resources from Gilbert Ryle and Andy Clark and provide a model of how marginalized individuals develop new conceptual skills by naming their shared experience and using it as a tool for scaffolding each other's conceptual performance. At the same time, I draw on the work of Gaile Pohlhaus and Kristie Dotson to show how these practices succeed only through the redistribution of epistemic power across differently situated social groups. (shrink)

According to relational views of autonomy, some social relations or forms of dependence are necessary for autonomous agency. Recent relational theorists have primarily focused on autonomy of action or practical autonomy, and the result has been a shift away from individualistic conceptions of autonomy in the practical realm. Despite these trends, individualistic conceptions are still the default when it comes to autonomy of belief or intellectual autonomy. In this paper, I argue for a relational account of intellectual autonomy. Specifically, I (...) claim that intellectual autonomy requires a sense of one’s standing as an equal member of the epistemic community. (shrink)