Event Title
The cross-boundary issues of feminist philosophy of science: Community relations as an epistemic issue
Start Date
27-6-2010 1:00 PM
End Date
27-6-2010 2:30 PM
Description
This presentation is part of the Communities and Institutions: Negotiating Differences track.
Feminist philosophers of science have been important players in the development of communal accounts of scientific knowledge and its objectivity. In many cases, their work has focused on resolving traditional problems within philosophy of science, offering communal accounts as ways of resolving these problems. Lynn Nelson’s view of communities as epistemological agents, intended as an extension of Quinean holistic theory of evidence, is employed to negotiate a route between objectivism and relativism (1990, 1993). Helen Longino’s “critical contextual empiricism” develops out of a concern with how to close the underdetermination gap (1990, 2002). Miriam Solomon’s “social empiricism” strives to rescue the rationality and progressiveness of science, by taking the demands of rationality out of the minds of individuals and analyzing rationality at the communal level instead (2001). Core questions in philosophy of science—theory choice, the rationality of science, and the progressiveness of science—both motivate these social accounts, and become the centralizing theme for the content of the social theories developed.
The focus of many of these communal accounts has been the internal relations of scientific communities. For example, Longino, explains the objectivity and success of science by placing normative requirements on the organization and structure of the interactions within a community. Scientific knowledge is objective to the extent it results from community interactions satisfying her four criteria of publicly recognized forums for criticism, uptake of criticism, a set of public standards, and tempered equality (2002, 129-31). Longino explains both how science works, and the success of science, by appealing to norms that must “apply to social practices and processes of cognition” (2002, 129). That is, they apply at the level of the community. It is communities that generate knowledge (though individuals can know it after the fact).
While theorists such as Longino, Nelson and Solomon are aware of the overlapping and dynamic nature of the boundaries of epistemic communities, their accounts generally focus on the requirements and social relations internal to the boundaries of the particular scientific community engaged in knowledge production. Less attention has been devoted to the epistemic ramifications of relations between communities, whether relations between multiple scientific communities, or between scientific and lay communities. These are what I call the cross-boundary issues of feminist philosophy of science. In this paper, I argue that feminist philosophers of science must take up such cross-boundary issues, if they are to be able to explain how science can serve the interests of women. In short, as feminist philosophers of science, they need to be concerned with how science can be a trustworthy source of knowledge for women in particular and marginalized groups in general. For my purposes it will be less important to actually define the particular boundaries of communities than to show how, wherever we define the boundaries of epistemic communities, it will still be epistemologically important to consider the interrelations between communities.
I begin by noting how the internal accounts of communities that feminist philosophers of science have put forth are connected to epistemic reasons for increasing diversity within scientific communities. Not only can increased representation of marginalized groups in scientific communities increase the diversity of perspectives that are made available in the scientific production of knowledge, but assuming that scientists have at least some degree of influence over the direction of their research, increasing diversity can result in directing research towards results of particular interest to marginal groups. This in part addresses feminist demands that we consider the question knowledge for whom? (Harding 1991, Code 1991), rejecting the assumption that all forms of knowledge will always serve everyone’s interests equally well.
But I then argue that even an increase in diversity within scientific communities will not mitigate the need to analyze the relations between scientific communities and those outside of science. I build on Naomi Scheman’s (2001) argument that it is rational for marginalized groups to distrust both the institutions and results of science given science’s history of inequities and mistreatment. As Scheman writes, “Those who are concerned (as, for example, scientists should be) that the results of science be not just true but justifiably believed to be true by the lay public as well as by other scientists need to be concerned about the systematic complicities with unjust privilege that systematically undermine the trustworthiness of the institutions on which such justified belief depends” (2001, 36-7). While Scheman argues that as a matter of objectivity, science needs to be concerned with rationally grounding trust of those outside its institutions, my argument focuses more on the need to earn the trust of marginalized groups if scientific communities are going to be successful at producing knowledge that can serve the interests of these marginalized groups. To reiterate, explaining how science can provide a trustworthy source of knowledge that can serve the interests of marginalized groups such as women is a crucial task for feminist philosophy of science. Increasing diversity within a scientific community will be one part of this solution, but only a part. Community outreach at both the stage of the generation of research questions and the stage of the communication of research results is crucial to the monumental task of building trustworthy relations between these communities. This outreach must be sensitive to difference in social location. Additionally, I argue that the line of reasoning captured in Scheman offers the insight that communication of research results itself has epistemic implications (it is not just a matter of circulating knowledge) in its potential for helping to build the trustworthy relations necessary for future knowledge production of a kind that can serve the interests of the marginalized.
The cross-boundary issues of feminist philosophy of science: Community relations as an epistemic issue
This presentation is part of the Communities and Institutions: Negotiating Differences track.
Feminist philosophers of science have been important players in the development of communal accounts of scientific knowledge and its objectivity. In many cases, their work has focused on resolving traditional problems within philosophy of science, offering communal accounts as ways of resolving these problems. Lynn Nelson’s view of communities as epistemological agents, intended as an extension of Quinean holistic theory of evidence, is employed to negotiate a route between objectivism and relativism (1990, 1993). Helen Longino’s “critical contextual empiricism” develops out of a concern with how to close the underdetermination gap (1990, 2002). Miriam Solomon’s “social empiricism” strives to rescue the rationality and progressiveness of science, by taking the demands of rationality out of the minds of individuals and analyzing rationality at the communal level instead (2001). Core questions in philosophy of science—theory choice, the rationality of science, and the progressiveness of science—both motivate these social accounts, and become the centralizing theme for the content of the social theories developed.
The focus of many of these communal accounts has been the internal relations of scientific communities. For example, Longino, explains the objectivity and success of science by placing normative requirements on the organization and structure of the interactions within a community. Scientific knowledge is objective to the extent it results from community interactions satisfying her four criteria of publicly recognized forums for criticism, uptake of criticism, a set of public standards, and tempered equality (2002, 129-31). Longino explains both how science works, and the success of science, by appealing to norms that must “apply to social practices and processes of cognition” (2002, 129). That is, they apply at the level of the community. It is communities that generate knowledge (though individuals can know it after the fact).
While theorists such as Longino, Nelson and Solomon are aware of the overlapping and dynamic nature of the boundaries of epistemic communities, their accounts generally focus on the requirements and social relations internal to the boundaries of the particular scientific community engaged in knowledge production. Less attention has been devoted to the epistemic ramifications of relations between communities, whether relations between multiple scientific communities, or between scientific and lay communities. These are what I call the cross-boundary issues of feminist philosophy of science. In this paper, I argue that feminist philosophers of science must take up such cross-boundary issues, if they are to be able to explain how science can serve the interests of women. In short, as feminist philosophers of science, they need to be concerned with how science can be a trustworthy source of knowledge for women in particular and marginalized groups in general. For my purposes it will be less important to actually define the particular boundaries of communities than to show how, wherever we define the boundaries of epistemic communities, it will still be epistemologically important to consider the interrelations between communities.
I begin by noting how the internal accounts of communities that feminist philosophers of science have put forth are connected to epistemic reasons for increasing diversity within scientific communities. Not only can increased representation of marginalized groups in scientific communities increase the diversity of perspectives that are made available in the scientific production of knowledge, but assuming that scientists have at least some degree of influence over the direction of their research, increasing diversity can result in directing research towards results of particular interest to marginal groups. This in part addresses feminist demands that we consider the question knowledge for whom? (Harding 1991, Code 1991), rejecting the assumption that all forms of knowledge will always serve everyone’s interests equally well.
But I then argue that even an increase in diversity within scientific communities will not mitigate the need to analyze the relations between scientific communities and those outside of science. I build on Naomi Scheman’s (2001) argument that it is rational for marginalized groups to distrust both the institutions and results of science given science’s history of inequities and mistreatment. As Scheman writes, “Those who are concerned (as, for example, scientists should be) that the results of science be not just true but justifiably believed to be true by the lay public as well as by other scientists need to be concerned about the systematic complicities with unjust privilege that systematically undermine the trustworthiness of the institutions on which such justified belief depends” (2001, 36-7). While Scheman argues that as a matter of objectivity, science needs to be concerned with rationally grounding trust of those outside its institutions, my argument focuses more on the need to earn the trust of marginalized groups if scientific communities are going to be successful at producing knowledge that can serve the interests of these marginalized groups. To reiterate, explaining how science can provide a trustworthy source of knowledge that can serve the interests of marginalized groups such as women is a crucial task for feminist philosophy of science. Increasing diversity within a scientific community will be one part of this solution, but only a part. Community outreach at both the stage of the generation of research questions and the stage of the communication of research results is crucial to the monumental task of building trustworthy relations between these communities. This outreach must be sensitive to difference in social location. Additionally, I argue that the line of reasoning captured in Scheman offers the insight that communication of research results itself has epistemic implications (it is not just a matter of circulating knowledge) in its potential for helping to build the trustworthy relations necessary for future knowledge production of a kind that can serve the interests of the marginalized.