Synaesthesia

I am frankly unable to make sense of what I've heard about it.

What the heck is it? What are the major claims? Who are the founding figures?

AtlanticCitySlave

Easy question. Feminist epistemology is simply this: Whatever a woman claims to know, she does, her justification being that she said so. All husbands are familiar with feminist epistemology.

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: AtlanticCitySlave ]</p>

optimist

Here is an essay I wrote comparing the two of the three major forms of feminist epistemology. The third of feminist epistemology is a type of relativism which I decided not to address. I fear however the third type is the most popular.

I do recommend reading Susan Haack's "Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate" where she attacks the idea of a feminist epistemology. Haack is really great epistemologist. As she herself points out, she is a feminist and she is an epistemologist, but she is not a so-called feminist epistemologist.

____________________________

Sandra Harding's
Standpoint Theory

Perhaps the first thing important to realize about Sandra Harding is that she is not anti-science. This fact is sometimes obscured by her rhetoric and the relativism that is fashionable for the time period she writes. Harding does admit the existence of a real world, and accepts that science, to a great degree of success, tells us definite truths about this real world. Harding concerns are with certain practices of science that she sees as not conducive to the discovery of these truths. Making science more objective is one of her concerns. However, of equal importance to Harding is bringing more attention on how these objective truths are used in society. Before explaining Sandra Harding's contentious position in further detail, feminist standpoint theory, I will first set-up the weaker feminist claim, feminist empiricism, and its fairly uncontroversial suggestions for science reform.

I

Feminist Empiricism
Sandra Harding contrasts the perspectives of feminist empiricism (critiques of "bad science") with her own articulation of a feminist standpoint theory (what she often calls a critique of "science as usual"). Feminist empiricism holds that sexism in science is simply bad science and curable by stronger adherence to the already held norms of the discipline. The problem feminist empiricism addresses is:

The way [the] scientific method in any discipline tries to identify and eliminate social factors is by repeating observations across individuals—you repeat the experiment, having somebody else test out the validity of your claims—but if all the people who are repeating the experiment share the same values, as members of any culture would do, then that method is flawed.

As the scientific method already demands the repetition of observations among independent individuals, the feminist empiricist claim that these independent individuals need to be of different cultural backgrounds in order to eliminate cultural biases is easily acknowledged. It is not a new idea in science; it is a part of science already. However, feminist empiricism claims it has not been kept at the level necessary for objective results to be reached. Feminist empiricists cite examples when, in the social and human sciences, claims that were not well supported by evidence came to be accepted by scientists (most often male scientists and most often in studies involving some gender aspect) because they uncritically took a stereotype about male and female behavior for granted. This is a good argument that gender related studies should have gender diversity in either/both the experimenters or/and the peer reviewers. It seems correct that since women are more likely to notice sexism, they should somehow be involved with studies that are especially prone to being influenced by gender stereotypes. However, as Susan Haack points out, "a commitment to feminism is not a sufficient qualification for this kind of work, and an excessive sensitivity to suspected whiffs of sexism could prove a handicap."
With the better inclusion of women, and other marginalized groups, science will better eliminate the bias shared across the (almost) exclusively white male scientific community. This is not a matter of fairness towards women or any other marginalized group, but of an issue concerning "good science." Moreover, this goal is not solely accomplishable by the addition of marginalized groups into science. With feminist ideals bringing culture to recognize its mistreatment of such marginalized groups as women, even male scientists have become less biased. Feminist empiricism, specifically in the social and biological sciences, demands that a more diverse group of scientists be responsible for collecting and reviewing scientific data.
However, not only does feminist empiricism call for more diversity in the collection and analysis of already posed hypothesizes (context of justification), but feminist empiricism also demands more diversity in the posing of these hypothesizes (context of discovery). It claims social biases held by scientists can lead them not see certain problems or realize possible solutions to be tested. This feminism "seems to suggest strongly that the 'context of discovery' is just as important as the 'context of justification' for eliminating social biases that contribute to partial and distorted explanations and understandings."
Still feminist empiricism leaves "intact much of scientists' and philosopher's conventional understanding of the principles of adequate scientific research." It challenges only the incomplete practice of the established scientific method, and makes the uncontroversial claim that the context of discover deserves more attention than it has traditionally been given.

II

Feminist Standpoint Theory
Feminist standpoint theory is not so much something different from feminist empiricism, but includes it and pushes further in its critique. Harding introduces a distinction between "weak" and "strong" objectivity. The former is the normal standard of objectivity, the one feminist empiricism demands stricter adherence to. Weak objectivity is, when oversimplified, is that which eliminates individual idiosyncrasy by the adherence to certain rules of inquiry and prolonged 'averaging' of viewpoints by communication. By this standard a result is objective, if any honest inquirer would reach the same result when looking into the same question. Feminist standpoint theory however, involves a concept Harding calls strong objectivity; which comes in two parts: strong objectivity more radically extends the idea of diversity in the scientific community, asking not just for the inclusion of marginalized groups, but entirely new and separate communities consisting of these groups. Secondly, strong objectivity includes as apart of a result's objectivity the ethics surrounding how that result might be used in society.

Strong Objectivity: Ethics and Problematics
The mirror science uses to reflect nature is an irregular one, more resembling a funhouse mirror then the simple receiver of information Locke envisioned man to be. It finds itself distorted by the in principle and unavoidable limitations involved with study of an external world. Science accepts these limits, as it must, and pursues the still desirable aim of approximate objectivity. This is the attempt to smooth out the mirror as uniformly as humanly possible, and reflect external reality genuinely as allowed.
Those are the constraints placed on science because of its external subject matter. A further restraint arises due to the finiteness of science's practitioners. Science does not investigate nature simply for the sake of investigating nature; an objective truth is not inherently valuable to know. The truth about how many chairs exist in the state of Texas is insignificant, but still true. The same goes for an endless list of trivial facts that humanity has seen unfit to investigate. In the discovery of truths, they require varying amounts of resources and the vast majority of these truths are far too trivial to warrant their cost. This is a constraint placed on science by our finite resources (time, fuel, etc.), and the infinite subject matter that reality would allow to be reflected in science's mirror.
Weak objectivity concerns itself with the smoothing-out of science's mirror, regardless of what area of reality someone wishes to be reflected. The standards of this objectivity have no concern about how the decision is made to which facts are trivial and which are worth the expenditure our limited resources. However, the decision must be made by someone. Not all of reality can be known, only portions.
Harding takes issue with the traditional lack of concern the standards of science hold to which parts of reality it is used to investigate. One scientist mindset has been that an educated person is more likely to do good than not, and that evil is partly borne of ignorance. While knowledge can be used to do both good and ill, the more a person knows the more likely they will decide to use that knowledge for good. Racism, for example, is a function of ignorance and could not exist in an informed, rational person's mind. Harding rightly claims this viewpoint naive. A racist given the knowledge of how the legal system works will use it to protect themselves from prosecution, not to overcome their racism. Knowledge of the legal system puts more power in the hands of racism, and it is only different types of knowledge that will overcome racism. Not only is some knowledge useless (valueless), but some is actually negative if not coupled with certain other knowledge. Knowledge of the legal system is harmful if not coupled with the understanding of why skin color is not a rational criterion for the subjugation of one race to another.
The other, and more common scientist mindset is, that while knowledge of one field can be harmful if not counter-balanced by knowledge in another, it is not the scientist's job to decide what areas do and do not need more understanding. Science has traditionally only concerned itself with discovering the truths that it has been told to discover, leaving the "which" up to others outside science to decide (politicians, etc.).
Military tacticians are trained in (what else) military tactics. They are not given power over political concerns, nor would such a state of affairs be preferable. It would not be desirable for generals to invade Iraq at their own discretion. Politicians are those trained in international politics and elected by the people to do such international politics; therefore the responsibility falls to them when deciding where the military invades. It is the tactician's sole responsibility to accomplish his job, not decide where his job should be employed. The same has gone for science. The scientist produced an amoral result, others put it to use how it saw fit. The scientist is a tool, which can be used for good or ill. It is not in the scientists power or desirable from their background that they make ethical or political decisions about science. However, Harding argues otherwise.

There is nothing controversial about observing that social interests shape what gets to count as interesting scientific questions. What is controversial here is to claim that science, real science, includes the choice of scientific problems.

In Is Science Multicultural? Harding points out that the peoples who bear the majority of the consequences of scientific decisions do not have a proportionate voice in making those decisions. While the results of science are not democratic (they are up to the totalitarian rule of nature), the problems science attempts and the ways it tries to solve them are open to human decision. Science's problematic should not be left to a literal democracy; no one should support a scientific enterprise based on the flights of fancy that rule the uneducated public, but science should adopt a more "democratic ethic" that takes in account the affect it will have on such those people. Technological development and scientific advancements that only benefit the ruling class of western males should not be the goal of science, like it has historically been. This is because the decisions about which problems are to be addressed by scientists has been considered to be "not science," and therefore the choice is left it to others to settle. By default those others have been the white, first world males. It is not that these men cannot chose to direct science to solve the problems that afflict women or third world peoples, but leaving the decision to such a non-diverse group tends to make such choices rare.
A disease which is communicable in a manner that puts a small number of the first world upper class at risk is much more likely to receive scientific attention than a disease more easily spread among poor nations. A cure for a disease is of primary importance, developing the cure further so it can be afforded by the underprivileged is often an afterthought. Is an expensive cure for cancer that only a few elite can afford really a cure? Cure for whom?
Harding cites historian Robert Proctor in his research of how differing interests and power distribution has shaped what we know and do not know about the causes of cancer. "In spite of the well-known fact that patterns of cancer incidence are highly correlated to levels of carcinogens in the environment," research into the environmental causes of cancer has not been highly funded.

Instead, the majority of research has examined variation in individuals' susceptibility to carcinogens due to their genetic makeup or their 'lifestyles'…. [B]ehind this fact one can observe the reality that environmental research into carcinogens challenges the current and past practices of militaries, multinationals, and governments. The search for the causes of cancer to be found in individuals, their lifestyles, and genetic inheritances, does not have this effect. These three kinds of powerful organizations have kept us ignorant in many other ways [as well.]

Harding is uncontroversially correct when she points out that social factors (i.e. government interests) have greatly affected which truths science has discovered. World War Two greatly advanced the field atomic physics and likewise the Cold War advanced space exploration. However, what is troublesome is Harding's choice usage of the word ignorant. When one area of science benefits from a social interest, another area of science always pays. In the case of cancer research, the government interests brought about much knowledge concerning the relationship between cancer and genetics, but ignorance about its relationship to the environment. For this, Harding attacks these government interests as having kept us ignorant about the environmental factors of cancer. While this is true, covered by Harding's rhetoric is the reality that standpoint theory is not offering the elimination of that ignorance, but simply the redistribution of it.
Science guided by military concerns or guided by Harding's environmental concerns will bring about no less ignorance, only in different areas. Under Harding we will be more ignorant of the genetic links that cause cancer, but less ignorant of the environmental causes. While the fact that Harding's position holds ignorance is not a point against it, Harding often allusions that it is a point against the science guided by the military interests is false. Since it is an unavoidable trait of any problematic, it is not a point against either. William James revealed the fact that, "the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
If both traditional and Harding's problematic involve the same amount of ignorance, what puts standpoint theory above the traditional? Harding says because her distribution of ignorance is based on the "democratic ethic" spoken of above; that the scientific problematic should be set by the interests of humanity, not the military or first world nations alone. The identification of which problems the solution to would best benefit all peoples should part of the scientific method; that the "craft of doing science is to include defensible decisions about which problems to pursue…"

Strong Objectivity: Social Sciences and Physics
The social sciences have long been plagued by biases held by its practitioners leading to incorrect results. As noted when examining feminist empiricism, historically many unsupported conclusions have come to be accepted by social scientists because of stereotypical ideas about male and female behavior taken uncritically. This has the obvious conclusion that in the social sciences, scientists should pay particular attention to the cultural biases a researcher might bring to the study.
The second chapter in Harding's Whose Knowledge? Whose Science? is titled "'Physics' is a bad model for physics." A good model, Harding tells us, is the social sciences. It is hard to understand why this could be, when the subject matter of physics is electrons and not people. There are no male/female fundamental particles. The nihilist (relativist) would answer that electrons, in fact all of reality, are completely socially constructed and so best understood by the study of the society they were constructed. However, Sandra Harding is not a nihilist. The reason the social sciences are a good model for physics is not because of the gender biases infused into physics, but because of the way the social sciences have dealt with the gender biases in itself. Because of its subject matter, the social sciences have become ultra-aware of uncritically accepted stereotypes, whereas the subject matter of physics has lulled it into a false sense of security. It is not the rate at which the force of gravity attracts or the way a radio telescope works that Harding is questioning, it is the uncritical acceptance of concepts like that of "force."
It is not that "force" is a bad concept, but Harding wants to know where did it arise? Why do we avoid theories involving action-at-a-distance or pursue a deterministic explanation of the universe? Harding tells us over and over that not only does "bad science" have social causes, but even our cultures best beliefs are rooted in culture. She cites Joseph Needham's claim that the European concept of a law of nature drew on both Judeo-Christian religions and the centralized royal authority of the time. Yet this idea that the universe was a great empire, ruled by a divine Logos never occurred

within the long and culturally varying history of Chinese science… A common tread in the diverse Chinese traditions was that nature is self-governed, a web of relationships without a weaver, in which humans intervened at their own peril.

This Chinese conception of nature was problematic, as it blocked interest in discovering the precisely formulated abstract laws their European counterparts were after. "There was no confidence that the code of Nature's laws could be unveiled and read, because there was not assurance that a divine being…ever formulated such a code capable of being read." Still, this Christian culture that spurred on the search for scientific "laws" also retarded European astronomy relative to that of the Chinese. "Burdened with the Christian notion that the heavens consisted of crystal spheres," astronomy had a slow growth in Europe. Yet, while Harding feels a "more objective" science would include the study of how these social events made certain scientific discoveries possible, she does not see this as reducing her position to epistemological relativism. In this case the European culture was more conducive to general science, and produced "less false" results in many fields. They were correct in assuming nature, to a large extent, is comprehensible by the notion of physical laws.
Harding calls on the hard sciences to bring attention to their social roots, as the social sciences have. An electron is not gendered, but certain features of the male or female culture might make them more able to "see" the concept of an electron or be interested in the problem of fundamental particles at all. A Chinese research team might allow science to link environments in a more holistic way not obvious to a western researcher. Further examples of cultural influence in "hard science" will be given in the next section.

Strong Objectivity: Cultural Pluralism and "the Others"
Most important to understanding Harding's Standpoint theory, is its origins in Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic and the development of Hegel's insight into the "proletarian standpoint" by Marx, Engels, and Georg Lukacs. Under their guidance the dialectic came to be used in showing how the ruling bourgeoisie are less able to view the world truthfully than an enlightened, class-conscious proletariat might. Harding takes this further, arguing that not it is not just the oppressed proletariat who are epistemologically advantaged, but any oppressed group. She argues that the oppressed, in virtue of their social location, have a different view of the world, and the difference creates an epistemological superiority. The male working class is oppressed, but women are oppressed, lesbians are oppressed, the Third World is oppressed--all by Western (Eurocentric) white, heterosexual men who in large part are the world's dominant group. The view from the top is epistemologically crippling.
While she is claiming a certain epistemological advantage for women, it is important to note that these "advantaged" standpoints are socially created, not biological. Any advantage or disadvantage women have is due not to an essential nature, but to "their social location, their oppression, their roles." Secondly,

Harding does not claim that being oppressed is either necessary or sufficient for producing better science: not necessary because comparatively non-oppressed men can utilize the feminist standpoint and produce better science--J.S. Mill and Stephen J. Gould--and not sufficient because some oppressed women, particularly those who do not have a feminist consciousness, will simply reproduce the science of the dominant class.

No one is born black, chicana, postcolonial, or feminist…. Thus, such standpoints are critically and theoretically constructed discursive positions, not merely perspectives or views that flow from their authors unwittingly because of their biology or [geographical] location.

Thirdly, Harding stresses that standpoints are "prisons" as well as "toolboxes." Ultimately, even the white bourgeoisie hold a standpoint in some ways more advantageous than that of the groups it oppresses--"the Others" as Harding refers to them. "Each standpoint opens some fruitful perspectives while closing off others that might be developed from another standpoint. No perspective is truly universal and identical with nature's order, although all are significantly constrained by it."

This is the most difficult aspect to accept of Harding's standpoint theory. To say that a slave can better "see" the hidden tensions on a plantation is one thing, the same for claiming that a working class male can better "see" the faults of a capitalist society; but to make the sweeping claim that these are analogous to how an oppressed group can better "see" scientific truths in the most abstract of fields (particle physics, etc.) is quite a leap. What cultural factor would make the oppressed steelworker in an epistemological superior position for research into quantum mechanics?
Harding pins more weight on cultural factors than her arguments can hold up. Often her examples are from completely unrelated fields, like Hegel's Master/Slave, Marx's proletariat, or her example about how it took the coming of the feminist standpoint to realize rape could occur inside marriage. However, the most substantial harm is done to her argument by her repeated habit of slipping back into talking about the ethical concerns of science. Over and over she states that culturally different standpoints can do better science, and yet uses examples of how these cultures can better see only how science has been used to oppress them. Most would accept some epistemic advantage for a women in women's studies, a Japanese scientist in a study on Japanese culture, or (as Harding keeps telling us) a member of the Third World in studying the oppressive affects of certain scientific discoveries; but her claim of this advantage for "the Others" in the study of "slime mold," "relativity theory and formal semantics" is suspect.
Harding's lack of support does not make her claim invalid, but she fails to provide enough evidence to show it true. Her constant confusion between the claim that the study of electrons can be bettered by "the Other's" epistemic standpoint with her claim of epistemic advantage for the study of the ethical and social effects of scientific research on electrons; alludes not to just bad style, but to a real confusion in Harding's thought. That "the Others" can bring a "fresh perspective" to abstract sciences, despite those fields non-human subject matter, is a claim barely supported by Harding. The bulk of the evidence which she offers can only apply to the separate standpoint theory claim about "the Others" offering a "fresh perspective" on the ethical affects of abstract sciences.
Sparing the reader a series of analogies from other fields, here is a collection of the few examples Harding actually extracts from the abstract sciences she is attacking. Sandra Harding cites Sharon Traweek's comparative study of Japanese and U.S. high-energy physics as an example of how cultural traditions can lead to accumulation of "at least marginally different" scientific data:

In the United States, people rise through professional careers primarily as individuals. They join a research team for a few years and then advance further by moving to another…. In Japan, workers join a workplace team with which they may stay for the rest of their working lives. This cultural difference in the organization of work would in itself tend to make Japanese experimentalists willing to choose longer-lasting research projects than U.S. experimentalists would favor.

Harding also offers possible differences between female and male researchers: In answering the question, "Are There Gendered Standpoints on Nature?" Harding tells us that Japanese female physicists "tend to retain far stronger links to their former classmates in U.S. and European graduate schools than do their…male peers." She further cites a 1993 report in Science where results seem to show men prefer "highly competitive 'hot topics,' while women tend to take a 'niche approach'" in the choice of research topics.
Another powerful example Harding gives is the Christian/Chinese cultural factors entangled with the European conception of "natural law," which was examined in the preceding section. However, such a controversial case can not be proven by a mere handful of examples and the unsystematic argument given by Harding in her publications. While an exciting and dismaying idea, cultural pluralism in science awaits a better exposition.

III

Summary
- Feminist empiricism holds sexism as bad science, and calls for the inclusion of more women to better achieve the "weak" objectivity science requires.
- Sandra Harding's standpoint theory calls for a stronger form of objectivity which involves the integration of ethical concerns into the scientific method, the subjugation of physics to the social sciences, and for cultural pluralism in the scientific community.
- Standpoint theory is not relativist. Not all standpoints are equal, but there is no one "God's Eye view." It is heavy rooted in Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic, and as in that there are certain epistemic advantages to being both the Master and the Slave.
- The problems science is tasked to solve have traditionally been set by a small segment of society, and so have drastically harmed many who have not been involved in the decision making process. For this reason, the scientific method should "include defensible decisions about which problems to pursue."
- The context of discovery is equally as important as the context of justification, and social studies should be conducted to how discovery has traditionally been done and what conditions are most conducive to discoveries. One step in bettering the context of discovery, Harding tells us, is cultural pluralism and wider inclusion in science.

[ August 14, 2002: Message edited by: optimist ]</p>

Keith Russell

Greetings:

There is an excellent chapter in the book The Flight From Science and Reason on Feminism, which opens with the excellent essay "Why Feminist Epistemology Isn't", by Janet Radcliffe Richards.

The book:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-5174695-2649667" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-5174695-2649667</a>

Keith.