User:Yangyuzhong/Feminist epistemology

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Feminist epistemology emphasizes how important ethical and political values are in shaping epistemic practices, and interpretations of evidence. Feminist epistemology has been in existence for over 25 years. It studies how gender influences our understanding of knowledge, its justification and its inquiry; it describes how the acquisition, justification and attribution disadvantage women and members of other marginalized groups, and attempts to bring changes that serve their interests. Feminist epistemology is derived from the terms feminism and epistemology. Feminism is concerned with the abolition of gender and sex inequalities while epistemology is the inquiry into knowledge's meaning. Scientists of feminist epistemology claim that some theories of knowledge discriminate against women by pdisbarring them from inquiry, unfairly criticizing their cognitive styles, and producing theories of women and social phenomena that reinforce gender hierarchies and represent women as inferior. The easy and uncontroversial point is that much of what has been recognised as knowledge and passed on in academic and industrial circles has been produced by men. Consequently their experiences and concerns have served to determine its direction. According to feminist epistemologists, these failures in dominant knowledge result from faulty scientific methodologies and  knowledge conceptions. Therefore, feminist epistemologists attempt to propagate theories that aid liberation and egalitarian causes and protect these endeavors as advances in knowledge.

The English feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker has argued that in addition to social or political injustices, there can be epistemic injustices in two forms: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice consists in prejudices that cause one to "give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker's word": Fricker gives the example of a woman who due to her gender is not believed in a business meeting. She may make a good case, but prejudice causes the listeners to believe her arguments to be less competent or sincere and thus less believable. In this kind of case, Fricker argues that as well as there being an injustice caused by possible outcomes (such as the speaker missing a promotion at work), there is a testimonial injustice: "a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower". The virtue of testimonial justice involves an agent’s reflexive critical social awareness. Such an awareness allows a hearer to account for the likely impact of the identity power relation that mediates between himself and the speaker on his spontaneous perception, essentially correcting for the problems that can result in transactions of testimonial injustice.

Two paradoxes[edit]

There are two central paradoxes with feminist empiricism

The paradox of bias Many feminist empiricists advocate for exposing the androcentric and sexist biases in scientific research, namely that people have a bias towards gender difference and sexuality. However, while feminist empiricists would claim that the feminist inquiry helps the development of science, their own perspective adopts certain biases about gender and science.

The paradox of bias emerges from arguments that revise or reject conceptions of impartiality and objectivity in research. This bias lies between feminist empiricism's two main commitments. First, feminist empiricism is committed to the feminist project. In other words, feminists are determined to expose, subvert and overcome all forms of oppression. In the context of feminist epistemology, the consequence of this outcome is that feminists constantly attack impartiality as a disguise of the subjective interests of the powerful in society. The second commitment is to empiricism, where feminists pledge allegiance to the methods and tools of analytical philosophy. While analytic philosophy requires a commitment to subjectivity, empiricism requires partakers to endorse impartiality. Therefore, there is a paradox of bias that confronts both empiricism and epistemological views that attempt to balance subjectivism and objectivism in knowledge acquisition.

Simply stated, the paradox of bias is the existing tension between feminists who criticize male bias for lacking impartiality and feminists who reject the impartiality ideal. The latter claim that objectivity and neutrality are unattainable, which becomes problematic when claiming the objectivity of their viewpoints. According to Andrew, all epistemological views are biased. Besides, it is difficult to distinguish between various subjective principles without biased or partial evaluation standards. Therefore, it becomes difficult to conceptualize and evaluate bias while rejecting impartiality. Anthony makes several claims in formulating the paradox of bias. First, he asserts that impartiality is not a tenable epistemic practice ideal. Secondly, he states that the untenable state of impartiality means that all epistemic practices have an inherent bias. Thirdly, it is impossible to develop impartial criteria for assessing the epistemic value of biases if all practices are biased. Lastly, all biases are equal since there are no unbiased criteria for evaluating practices. These claims suggest that people should either endorse objectivity or stop distinguishing between good and biases.

The paradox of social construction Many critics of feminist science argue that science is generally influences by political and social factors. These critics advance sexist and androcentric theories due to the influence of sexist values in society. This implies the existence of social biases in feminist science, which may be eliminated through the adoption of individual epistemology. Nonetheless, many feminists believe in the openness of scientific practices to diverse social influences, resulting in the paradox of social construction.^{[clarification needed]}

Criticism of empiricism theory: It is the most criticized theory by others, for its assumptions that transhistorical subject of knowledge exists outside of social determination (Harding 1990). Also feminist empiricism theory states that science will correct all the biases and errors in theories about women and other groups by itself. According to Harding, this criticism stems from the perception that it is sufficient to eliminate sexist bias without altering traditional scientific methods further. Feminist empiricism has also been criticized for ignoring the role of feminist political activity as a vital source of evidence and hypotheses to challenge androcentric and sexist theories. This criticism applies especially to the development of oppositional consciousness as an element of feminist political activity.

Post-modernism[edit]

Postmodernism is inspired by postmodernist and postculturalist theorists such as Lyotard and Foucalt, who question universality and objectivity as ways to transcend situatedness. In other words, postmodernism focuses partiality, locality and contestability of worldviews. By delegitimizing dominant ideas, postmodernism allows for imagination that was previously obscured. Post-modern thought marks a feminist group shift away from dominant, positivistic ideals of objectivity and universal understanding. Instead, it acknowledges a diversity of unique human perspectives, none of which can claim absolute knowledge authority. Post-Modern feminism has thus been critiqued for having a relativist-stance, where ongoing power relations between key identities have been often neglected attention. It is possible to see this political stance in direct opposition to the “emancipatory aspirations” of women. However, Saba Mahmood would argue this critique is in some ways oppositional to global understandings of female desire, where the idea of ‘freedom’ is an essential, conditionally oppressive component to western feminism which may wrongly assume that women of eastern countries dominated by male power are victims needing to be liberated. As such, feminist postmodernism opposes traditional theories that justify sexist practices. Such theories perpetrate the ideas that the differences between men and women are natural, or that women have innate characteristics that justify their inferior position in society. For instance, while essentialism claims that gender identity is universal, feminist postmodernism suggests that these theories exclude marginalized groups such as lesbians and women of color. Such exclusions reproduce power relations as the heterosexual white middle-class women are assumed to represent all women.

Donna Haraway, a post-modern feminist, shows how post-modern feminism recognizes positivism as an inherently oppressive ideology, where science's rhetoric of truth was used to undermine marginalized people's agency and delegitimize ‘embodied’ accounts of truth. Furthermore, they argue that ‘objectivity’ is an external, disembodied point of view left only to privileged (unmarked bodies), because marginalized (marked bodies) cannot have perspectives dissociated from ‘who they are’. Despite post-modern relativist criticism, this theory resists relativism in firmly recognizing power relations in that objectivity is a privilege of unmarked bodies. Haraway's theory of “situated knowledges” holds true to post-modern ideology, where knowledge should be placed in context; this creates a more limited range of knowledge than theoretical “objectivity”, but is richer in allowing for exchange of understanding between individual experiences. Positivism inherently gives way to authoritarian positions of knowledge which hinder discussion and render limited understanding of the world. Both positivist science and relativism have been recognized as contrary to post-modern feminist thought, since both minimize the significance of context (geographic, demographic, power) on knowledge claims.

Criticism of postmodernism: Feminist postmodernism has been criticized on the basis of its rejection of the woman as a category of study and its fragmentation of perspectives. They claim that although women experience sexism differently, it is still a common characteristic among them (MacKinnon 2000). While differences exist between different classes of women, different modes of sexism may be accommodated through an intersectional approach. The postmodernism theory dissolves all groups, and supports the ideas that knowledge from any source is better than no knowledge at all (Bordo 1990).

Feminist science: bias as resource[edit]

Research bias is partial or limiting but not wrong if it has some empirical success and keeps off error. Such bias may be considered acceptable and suitable to serve as a basis for epistemic inquiry. They help in gaining more understanding of the world by producing new hypotheses, methods, and concepts, thus serving as epistemic resources. According to feminist philosophers, research should not be dominated by few limiting biases that exclude other generative standpoints, which would result in wider conceptions of research subjects.

Proponents of feminist science claim that scientific studies informed by feminist values are founded on sound biases that are generative limiting. This paints a pluralistic picture of science, where it appears to be disunified due to the presence of diverse structures that are not encompassed in any single theory. In other words, allowing communities to freely explore their interests reveals multiple structures and patterns. In opposing this view, some scientists claim that feminist science should follow specific methodologies and ontologies. However, this view has been opposed by supporters of pluralism, who argue that there are no unique methods for feminist science. They also claim that sticking to specific methods tends to favor certain representation types, which may also reinforce sexism.