Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:50:35.373Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Bias Paradox in Feminist Standpoint Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Abstract

Sandra Harding's feminist standpoint epistemology makes two claims. The thesis of epistemic privilege claims that unprivileged social positions are likely to generate perspectives that are “less partial and less distorted” than perspectives generated by other social positions. The situated knowledge thesis claims that all scientific knowledge is socially situated. The bias paradox is the tension between these two claims. Whereas the thesis of epistemic privilege relies on the assumption that a standard of impartiality enables one to judge some perspectives as better than others, the situated knowledge thesis seems to undermine this assumption by suggesting that all knowledge is partial. I argue that a contextualist theory of epistemic justification provides a solution to the bias paradox. Moreover, contextualism enables me to give empirical content to the thesis of epistemic privilege, thereby making it into a testable hypothesis.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, E. (1995). “Knowledge, human interest, and objectivity in feminist epistemology”. Philosophical Topics 23(2): 2758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, E. (2004). “Uses of value judgments in science: A general argument, with lessons from a case study of feminist research on divorce”. Hypatia 19(1): 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antony, L. (1993). “Quine as feminist: The radical import of naturalized epistemology”. In Antony, L. and Witt, C. (eds.), A mind of one's own: Feminist essays on reason and objectivity, pp. 185225. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Cole, J. R. (1987). Fair Science: Women in the Scientific Community. New York: Columbia University Press (first published in 1979 by the Free Press).Google Scholar
Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hekman, S. (2000). “Truth and method: Feminist standpoint theory revisited”. In Allen, C. and Howard, J. A. (eds.), Provoking feminisms, pp. 934. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Katila, S. and Meriläinen, S. (1999). “A serious researcher or just another nice girl? Doing gender in a male dominated scientific community”. Gender, Work, Organization 6(3): 163–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longino, H. (1990). Science as social knowledge: Values and objectivity in scientific inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longino, H. (1999). “Feminist epistemology”. In Greco, J. and Sosa, E. (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, pp. 327–53. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pinnick, C. (1994). “Feminist epistemology: Implications for philosophy of science”. Philosophy of Science 61: 646–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinnick, C. (2005). “The failed feminist challenge to ‘fundamental epistemology’.” Science & Education 14: 103–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pohlhaus, G. (2002). “Knowing communities: An investigation of Harding's standpoint epistemology.” Social Epistemology 163: 283–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, M. (2001). Problems of knowledge: A critical introduction to epistemology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wylie, A. (2003). “Why standpoint matters”. In Figueroa, R. and Harding, S. (eds.), Science and other cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology, pp. 2648. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar