: This project draws on scholarship of feminist and womanist scholars, and on results of interviews with scientists currently involved in molecular genetics. With reference to Margaret Urban Walker's "practices of moral responsibility," the social practices of molecular geneticists are explored, and strategies identified through which scientists negotiate their moral responsibilities. The implications of this work for scientists and for feminists are discussed.

This project draws on scholarship of feminist and womanist scholars, and on results of interviews with scientists currently involved in molecular genetics. With reference to Margaret Urban Walker's “practices of moral responsibility,” the social practices of molecular geneticists are exphred, and strategies identified through which scientists negotiate their moral responsibilities. The implications of this work for scientists and for feminists are discussed.

This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

Ecophilosophy is an attempt to render a new philosophy of nature, generated by the need to liberate nature from the inherently domineering disposition of humankind. Although I am sympathetic to this effort, I believe that the current ambiguity of its content carries with it the potentiality for new forms of oppression. I argue that ecophilosophy suffers from a kind of Habermasian self-deception, taking on a vague concept of nature that deceptively appears to do the philosophical work of healing the epistemological (...) gap between nature and humans. My reconstruction unifies this loosely-defined vision along the lines of an equivocal use of two key concepts, the domination of nature and nature itself, revealing the potentially subversive character of its implicitly universalist philosophy of nature. ;Ecophilosophers, rather than distinguishing themselves, fail to improve upon Francis Bacon's suggestion that attention to nature will liberate us. Their satisfaction with ecological solutions indicates that they miss the essential ideological consequence of the modern project: the domination by some humans over others has been covered over by a self-deceptive belief in the liberating character of scientific methodology. By arguing for the emancipatory capacity of ecology, they get themselves into a Marcusian-like bind, advocating this new science while at the same time rejecting scientific rationality as a pivotal component of their notion of the domination of nature. Because of this they are forced to argue that ecology is qualitatively different, offering a new kind of rationality that contains the necessary ingredients for radically changing society. ;Ecophilosophers must reconsider the epistemologically naive and ideologically negative repercussions of this position as I demonstrate with an analysis of the potentially repressive relationships that exist between fourth world cultures and the environmental community. I conclude by subjecting the Habermasian, universalist framework to revision as indicated by the possibilities of a new eco-vision, emerging from the contextual episteme of a reworked ecofeminist perspective. (shrink)