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Yes, feminist philosophy of science does address things that aren't typically found in non-feminist works, even those written by women. In particular, "situate

by jdp23 11y ago

Yes, feminist philosophy of science does address things that aren't typically found in non-feminist works, even those written by women. In particular, "situated knowledge" -- knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of the subject -- plays a very big role, and for example leads to a lot of interesting questions about "objectivity". There are a couple of excellent page on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, one on Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science [1] and another on Feminist Perspectives on Science [2]. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ [2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-science/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-science/

joepvd 11y ago
I guess any philosopher of science systematically call into question objectivity, and in recent times will have to come to terms with "situated knowledge" one way or the other. If feminism is defined with these terms, why would e.g. Latour not qualify as feminist?
- jdp23 11y ago
  Good question ... I didn't mean to reduce feminist philosophy of science only to that, although it's a key element. The most important aspect of feminist philosophy of science is that it looks at things through a gender lens, and Latour explicitly rejects that. From "... That Damned Elusive Bruno Latour": [1] "The social sciences have no 'out there' or 'up there' to serve as a foundation," Latour once told an interviewer. For that reason, Latour objects to feminist critics of science (who elevate gender to a transcendant principle), Marxist critics of science (who do the same with economics), and Foucauldian critics of science (who repeat the process with power). They, in turn, object to him. The British feminist epistemologist Hillary Rose, for instance, in a review of Science in Action, wrote: "By cutting himself adrift from those who point to the dominant interests which science serves and to the masculine composition of its workforce and its knowledge, [Latour] sidesteps the crucial challenge.... Unless feminism engages in a rather sharp struggle for social and conceptual space, both networks and analysis are likely to remain integral to masculinist hegemony.'' http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9410/latour.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9410/latour.html
vlehto 11y ago
This stuff seems very gender studies specific? Not that there is anything wrong with that.
- jdp23 11y ago
  Well, it is called feminist philosophy of science :) But while it comes from a gender perspective, feminist standpoint theory and situated knowledges are more general, really looking at the interaction between dominant and marginalized groups. "Starting from Marginalized Lives", an interview with Sandra Harding, has some good perspectives on this. http://jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol15.2/hirsch-starting.pdf http://jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol15.2/hirsch-starting...
sklogic 11y ago
> knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of the subject I.e., a typical postmodernism. Not anywhere near any real science.
- joepvd 11y ago
  The problem here, is that when one wants to understand how scientific progress is made, the particular perspoectives of the subjects (a.k.a. current implicit and explicit understandings of scientists) is the matter for research. Postmodernism has its place, also in 'real' science.
  - sklogic 11y ago
    > when one wants to understand how scientific progress is made Kuhn covered it in full. Nothing more to be said on this subject. > the particular perspoectives of the subjects Which is perfectly covered by well-grounded, tested and entirely scientific anthropology methods. No postmodernism whatsoever. > Postmodernism has its place, also in 'real' science. Postmodernism goes much further than simply acknowledging that a personal perspective may affect a pace of knowledge acquisition (but not the final outcome of it). Postmodernism introduces an outrageous idea that a personal perspective is just as valuable as an objective knowledge, and some (with the so called feminists being among the worst) even go further and ditch the objective knowledge altogether.
    - christudor 11y ago
      > Kuhn covered it in full. Nothing more to be said on this subject. The book was a classic when it came out, but there have been some fairly strong critiques in the past fifty years or so. In fact, the most recent edition of the book includes a 'Postscript' written in 1969, in which Kuhne tries to answer some of the most pertinent criticisms of his theory. There are also alternative theories to all this, or at least different perspectives one can take. Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations is a good example.
gone35 11y ago
Ahh, the soft bigotry of different expectations. From your [1]: The masculine cognitive style is abstract, theoretical, disembodied, emotionally detached, analytical, deductive, quantitative, atomistic, and oriented toward values of control or domination. The feminine cognitive style is concrete, practical, embodied, emotionally engaged, synthetic, intuitive, qualitative, relational, and oriented toward values of care. Do you really think this line of thought is somehow "progressive" and "empowering" for us women??
- jdp23 11y ago
  No, I don't see that particular line of thought as progressive and empowering for women in today's world. However, the quotes you choose are from a section that notes that "Various feminist standpoint theories ground the claim to epistemic privilege in different features of women's social situation" -- and in a paragraph starting with "Some early versions of standpoint theory (including Flax 1983, Hartsock 1987, Rose 1987, and Smith 1974) accept feminist object relations theory ..." So I'd caution against rejecting the whole discipline based on early views from a handful of a few people.
  - gone35 11y ago
    No, I don't see that particular line of thought as progressive and empowering for women in today's world. So you reject Standpoint Theory. I guess we agree about that. Yet you also (seem to) accept the notion of "situated knowledge". But, without any recourse to Standpoint Theory to be able to privilege any claim over another, that necessarily commits you to relativism --and a rather extreme form, at that. So you either reject the very notion of "situated knowledge" (and thus a great deal of feminist epistemology), become an extreme relativist, or accept Standpoint Theory. I, for one, reject relativism --so that commits me to reject "situated knowledge"-based feminist epistemology (i.e. pretty much the whole discipline).
    - jdp23 11y ago
      I'm not sure how you got from me saying "there are a lot of different sources of standpoint theory" and "I disagree with a line of thought stated by some early standpoint early theoreticians" and "don't reject the whole discipline based on some early work" to thinking I reject standpoint theory. How many times in this thread have I linked to and quoted Sandra Harding?
yummyfajitas 11y ago
If I can summarize, the main distinction between feminist philosophy and normal epistemology is that feminists don't seem to believe in objective reality. Most standard epistemologies believe there is an objective reality X, and we humans can make observations o(X) and then infer facts about X. E.g., a Bayesian will then use Bayes rule to compute P(X | o(X) ) = P( o(X) | X) P(X) / P(o(X)). From what I can tell, feminists epistemologists reject this idea. They are generally insufficiently formal for me to figure out what they replace it with. For the most part, they don't seem to actually include objective reality (X in my notation) as a variable at all. They discuss whether certain views are gendered, but the correctness of those views plays a minimal role in the theory. This of course sounds pretty crazy if you apply it to chemistry or physics, so for the most part these theories are simply not applied in those cases.
- jdp23 11y ago
  For feminist philosophers of science like Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding, it's not about rejecting objectivity, but rather about looking at how different perspectives influence what we mean by "objectivity". Ssndra Harding discusses this in various places, such as her essay "What is Strong Objectivity". For example, think about a medical study where subjects are primarily male. Do the results in fact represent "objective reality" for the general population? Or, using your Bayesian example, consider fields that are disproportionately male, and there are gender differences in the observations o(X) that people make. Do the "facts" that are inferred represent "objective reality"?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Your examples are not philosophical at all. Sampling error and parameterized observations are both well known problems in statistics. At my company, we are putting various checks in to mitigate sampling error, e.g. flagging A/B tests as potentially erroneous when they terminate at non-integer numbers of weeks. Are we somehow doing feminist philosophy? In your example of gender differences in observations, the correct solution is to parameterize the gender of the observer. I.e., you'd have o_m(X) and o_f(X). This is no different from parameterizing the time since a visitor hit a website in a conversion experiment - a visitor failing to convert after 3 seconds gives you different information than a visitor failing to convert after 3 days. (In this case you'd have o_t(X) instead of o(X).) The facts that are inferred do, in fact, represent objective reality. They just may not provide a lot of information on it.

by jdp23 11y ago

joepvd 11y ago

I guess any philosopher of science systematically call into question objectivity, and in recent times will have to come to terms with "situated knowledge" one way or the other. If feminism is defined with these terms, why would e.g. Latour not qualify as feminist?

jdp23 11y ago
Good question ... I didn't mean to reduce feminist philosophy of science only to that, although it's a key element. The most important aspect of feminist philosophy of science is that it looks at things through a gender lens, and Latour explicitly rejects that. From "... That Damned Elusive Bruno Latour": [1] "The social sciences have no 'out there' or 'up there' to serve as a foundation," Latour once told an interviewer. For that reason, Latour objects to feminist critics of science (who elevate gender to a transcendant principle), Marxist critics of science (who do the same with economics), and Foucauldian critics of science (who repeat the process with power). They, in turn, object to him. The British feminist epistemologist Hillary Rose, for instance, in a review of Science in Action, wrote: "By cutting himself adrift from those who point to the dominant interests which science serves and to the masculine composition of its workforce and its knowledge, [Latour] sidesteps the crucial challenge.... Unless feminism engages in a rather sharp struggle for social and conceptual space, both networks and analysis are likely to remain integral to masculinist hegemony.'' http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9410/latour.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9410/latour.html

vlehto 11y ago

This stuff seems very gender studies specific? Not that there is anything wrong with that.

jdp23 11y ago
Well, it is called feminist philosophy of science :) But while it comes from a gender perspective, feminist standpoint theory and situated knowledges are more general, really looking at the interaction between dominant and marginalized groups. "Starting from Marginalized Lives", an interview with Sandra Harding, has some good perspectives on this. http://jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol15.2/hirsch-starting.pdf http://jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol15.2/hirsch-starting...

sklogic 11y ago

> knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of the subject I.e., a typical postmodernism. Not anywhere near any real science.

joepvd 11y ago
The problem here, is that when one wants to understand how scientific progress is made, the particular perspoectives of the subjects (a.k.a. current implicit and explicit understandings of scientists) is the matter for research. Postmodernism has its place, also in 'real' science.
- sklogic 11y ago
  > when one wants to understand how scientific progress is made Kuhn covered it in full. Nothing more to be said on this subject. > the particular perspoectives of the subjects Which is perfectly covered by well-grounded, tested and entirely scientific anthropology methods. No postmodernism whatsoever. > Postmodernism has its place, also in 'real' science. Postmodernism goes much further than simply acknowledging that a personal perspective may affect a pace of knowledge acquisition (but not the final outcome of it). Postmodernism introduces an outrageous idea that a personal perspective is just as valuable as an objective knowledge, and some (with the so called feminists being among the worst) even go further and ditch the objective knowledge altogether.
  - christudor 11y ago
    > Kuhn covered it in full. Nothing more to be said on this subject. The book was a classic when it came out, but there have been some fairly strong critiques in the past fifty years or so. In fact, the most recent edition of the book includes a 'Postscript' written in 1969, in which Kuhne tries to answer some of the most pertinent criticisms of his theory. There are also alternative theories to all this, or at least different perspectives one can take. Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations is a good example.

gone35 11y ago

Ahh, the soft bigotry of different expectations. From your [1]: The masculine cognitive style is abstract, theoretical, disembodied, emotionally detached, analytical, deductive, quantitative, atomistic, and oriented toward values of control or domination. The feminine cognitive style is concrete, practical, embodied, emotionally engaged, synthetic, intuitive, qualitative, relational, and oriented toward values of care. Do you really think this line of thought is somehow "progressive" and "empowering" for us women??

jdp23 11y ago
No, I don't see that particular line of thought as progressive and empowering for women in today's world. However, the quotes you choose are from a section that notes that "Various feminist standpoint theories ground the claim to epistemic privilege in different features of women's social situation" -- and in a paragraph starting with "Some early versions of standpoint theory (including Flax 1983, Hartsock 1987, Rose 1987, and Smith 1974) accept feminist object relations theory ..." So I'd caution against rejecting the whole discipline based on early views from a handful of a few people.
- gone35 11y ago
  No, I don't see that particular line of thought as progressive and empowering for women in today's world. So you reject Standpoint Theory. I guess we agree about that. Yet you also (seem to) accept the notion of "situated knowledge". But, without any recourse to Standpoint Theory to be able to privilege any claim over another, that necessarily commits you to relativism --and a rather extreme form, at that. So you either reject the very notion of "situated knowledge" (and thus a great deal of feminist epistemology), become an extreme relativist, or accept Standpoint Theory. I, for one, reject relativism --so that commits me to reject "situated knowledge"-based feminist epistemology (i.e. pretty much the whole discipline).
  - jdp23 11y ago
    I'm not sure how you got from me saying "there are a lot of different sources of standpoint theory" and "I disagree with a line of thought stated by some early standpoint early theoreticians" and "don't reject the whole discipline based on some early work" to thinking I reject standpoint theory. How many times in this thread have I linked to and quoted Sandra Harding?

yummyfajitas 11y ago

If I can summarize, the main distinction between feminist philosophy and normal epistemology is that feminists don't seem to believe in objective reality. Most standard epistemologies believe there is an objective reality X, and we humans can make observations o(X) and then infer facts about X. E.g., a Bayesian will then use Bayes rule to compute P(X | o(X) ) = P( o(X) | X) P(X) / P(o(X)). From what I can tell, feminists epistemologists reject this idea. They are generally insufficiently formal for me to figure out what they replace it with. For the most part, they don't seem to actually include objective reality (X in my notation) as a variable at all. They discuss whether certain views are gendered, but the correctness of those views plays a minimal role in the theory. This of course sounds pretty crazy if you apply it to chemistry or physics, so for the most part these theories are simply not applied in those cases.

jdp23 11y ago
For feminist philosophers of science like Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding, it's not about rejecting objectivity, but rather about looking at how different perspectives influence what we mean by "objectivity". Ssndra Harding discusses this in various places, such as her essay "What is Strong Objectivity". For example, think about a medical study where subjects are primarily male. Do the results in fact represent "objective reality" for the general population? Or, using your Bayesian example, consider fields that are disproportionately male, and there are gender differences in the observations o(X) that people make. Do the "facts" that are inferred represent "objective reality"?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Your examples are not philosophical at all. Sampling error and parameterized observations are both well known problems in statistics. At my company, we are putting various checks in to mitigate sampling error, e.g. flagging A/B tests as potentially erroneous when they terminate at non-integer numbers of weeks. Are we somehow doing feminist philosophy? In your example of gender differences in observations, the correct solution is to parameterize the gender of the observer. I.e., you'd have o_m(X) and o_f(X). This is no different from parameterizing the time since a visitor hit a website in a conversion experiment - a visitor failing to convert after 3 seconds gives you different information than a visitor failing to convert after 3 days. (In this case you'd have o_t(X) instead of o(X).) The facts that are inferred do, in fact, represent objective reality. They just may not provide a lot of information on it.