1. See, e. g., Richards, Janet Radcliffe, The Sceptical Feminist (1980;second edition, 1994), Penguin, Ch 1, passim.Google Scholar

2. Grosz, Elizabeth, Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason, in Alcoff, Linda and Potter, Elizabeth (eds.). Feminist Epistemologia, Routledge, 1993, at 209.Google Scholar

3. See, e.g., in Alcoff, and Potter, , op. cit., Introduction, at 13Google Scholar: “For feminists, the purpose of epistemology is not only to satisfy intellectual curiosity, but also to contribute to an emancipatory goal: the expansion of democracy in the production of knowledge.”

For convenience, most of the illustrative quotations in this paper will come from the Alcoff and Potter anthology. This seems a pretty comprehensive and representative collection, but it is important to stress that, as will appear, nothing in the argument presented here depends on whether or not this is so.

4. See, e.g., Potter, Elizabeth, Gender and Epistemic NegotiationGoogle Scholar, Alcoff, and Potter, . 172Google Scholar: “… claims put forward by feminist scholars that gender strongly intersects the production of much of our knowledge.…”

5. Grosz, , op. cit., at 187Google Scholar: “… if the body is an unacknowledged or an inadequately acknowledged condition of knowledges, and if the body is always sexually specific, concretely ‘sexed,’ this implies that the hegemony over knowledges that masculinity has thus far accomplished can be subverted, upset, or transformed through women's assertion of a ‘right to know’ independent of and autonomous from the methods and presumptions regulating the prevailing (patriarchal) forms of knowledge.”

This passage is perhaps as a good an illustration as any of the general point about uncharted seas. Readers of P. G. Wodehouse may find themselves reminded of Bertie Wooster's encounter with the improving literature prescribed by one of his passing fiancées: “I opened it [Types of Ethical Theory] and I give you my honest word this was what hit me……” (From Jeeves Takes Charge in P.G. Wodehouse.Jeeves Omnibus (Jenkins, Herbert, 1931).Google Scholar

6. See, e.g., in Nelson, Lynn Hankinson, Epistemolegical CommunitiesGoogle Scholar, in Alcoff, and Potter, , at 122Google Scholar:“.… for more than a decade feminists have argued that a commitment to epistemological individualism would preclude reasonable explanations of feminist knowledge; such explanations.… would need to incorporate the historically specific social and political relationships and situations, including gender and political advocacy, that have made feminist knowledge possible.”

7. I do not want to concede at any point that there really is any such thing as “standard” epistemology, let alone that it has the kinds of characteristic that are sometimes claimed by feminist epistemologists, but for the limited purposes of this essay, and for the sake of argument, it will do no harm here to allow the point to pass.

8. Alcoff, and Potter, , Introduction, at 13.Google Scholar To people who accept this myth, they say, “feminist work in philosophy is scandalous primarily because it is unashamedly a political intervention.”

9. Mill, J. S.. The Subjection of Women, 1869; ed. Okin, Susan M.. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. 1988, at 23–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. See, e.g., Traditional Spheres and Traditionalist Logic, in Krabbe, Erik C. W., Dalitz, Renée José, and Smit, Pier A. (eds.). Empirical Logic and Public Debate, Essays in Honour of Else M Basth, Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993, at 319–338Google Scholar (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 35); reprinted in Richards. The Sceptical Feminist (second edition), op. cit. (2nd edition) at 358 ff. passim.

11. There is no space to deal here with feminist challenges to logic, but the broad conclusions of this article will be seen to apply to those as well. There will also be no further discussion of feminism and ethics in the main article, but for everything that is said here about epistemology, arguments about moral and other value judgments run in parallel (see coda).

12. Goldberg, P. (1968) Are women prejudiced against women?. Transaction. 5, no. 5, at 28–30Google Scholar, quoted in Oakley, Ann, Subject Women, Martin Robertson, Oxford (1981), at 126.Google Scholar

13. See, e.g., The Missing Halt (Kelly, Alison, ed.) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981, passim.Google Scholar

14. Alcoff, and Potter, , op. cit., at 2–3.Google Scholar

15. Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Sélincourt (Burn, A. R., ed.) Penguin 1972, at 283–4.Google Scholar

16. Many feminists have taken up (without her full concurrence) Evelyn Fox Keller's work on Barabara McClintock, whose ‘feel for the organism’ they claim as exemplifying women's approach to science, and as having been resisted by the scientific establishment. There are many possible grounds for controversy here, about whether the approach really is specifically female and whether it was really rejected by the establishment (see, e.g., Keller, Fox, The Gender/Science System, Hypatia 2 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but even if the claims were right that would show the need for changes in standards only at an intermediate level, themselves justifiable in terms of more fundamental ideas about the nature of scientific success.

17. This is what seems to be going on. for instance, where Lorraine Code (in Taking Subjectivity into Account, Alcoff, and Potter, , 15ffGoogle Scholar) is criticizing what she calls “S-knows-that-p” epistemologies, and in doing so mentions a sociologist's claims to have proved scientifically (and therefore to know) that orientals as a group are more intelligent, more family-oriented, more law-abiding and less sexually promiscuous than whites, and that whites are superior to blacks in all the same respects (p. 27). She gives reasons for doubting this claim, and then goes on to say:

.… the “Science has proved” … rhetoric derives from the sociopolitical influence of the philosophies of science that incorporate and are underwritten by S-knows-that-p epistemologies……The implicit claim is that empirical inquiry is not only a neutral and impersonal process but also an inexorable one; it is compelling, even coercive, in what it turns up to the extent that a rational inquirer cannot withhold assent But nobody I have ever heard of holds epistemological views according to which if someone claims that science has proved this or that, a rational inquirer cannot withhold assent That is what the claimant wants us to think, of course, but as rational inquirers we can, and frequently do, distinguish between S's claiming to know that something has been proved and S's actually knowing it; and we typically challenge the claim—within the framework of familiar epistemology—precisely by casting doubt on the first-order knowledge claims produced as evidence. The fact that claimed proofs can be mistaken—which no non-lunatic epistemology could possibly deny—does not even begin to show that there is something fundamentally flawed about traditional epistemological ideas of prepositional knowledge.

A more general indication that confusions of level may be a source of problems is the huge range of topics typically raised in feminist writings about feminist science and epistemology, which may have just about anything to do with women—or some individual woman—and any aspect of science or its applications, or anything whatever to do with knowledge. This does not matter in itself, of course, but it does matter that there is usually no systematic discussion of how the different kinds and levels of discussion relate to each other. I have often been struck in practice, for instance, by the way feminists who are (quite reasonably) angry about the male takeover of obstetrics describe the insensitive use of gadgets as “subjecting women to male science”, then go on to take this as indicating some kind of global, woman-oppressing maleness of every aspect of the scientific enterprise. (See also the problems raised in note 26. below.)

18. Alcoff, and Potter, at 2.Google Scholar

19. Id. at 11.

20. Id. at 13–14.

21. Id. at 3. Notice that this is one step further on than usual. Many epistemologies concern the idea of a politics ot knowledge; the idea that there is a politics of epistemology suggests that there are political reasons for the adopting of one epistemology rather than another.

22. Id. at 13.

23. Id. at 14.

24. Code, Lorraine, supra note 17, at 23.Google Scholar

25. Note in passing, though I shall not go into them, the problems inherent in using empirical evidence based on the assumptions of one epistemology as part of the argument for establishing a quite different one. which may well undermine them. There is no difficulty in accepting that a feminist may gradually change the epistemology she started with, but she cannot do so and keep earlier conclusions that were actually based on the rejected epistemology.

26. There is a real problem about the idea that it is epistemological standards, rather than particular first-order beliefs, that underlie the rejection of women's knowledge claims, which is difficult to explain because any case that fulfils the conditions seems bound to look absurd.

Consider again, for instance, the familiar feminist idea that much traditional knowledge of midwives has been dismissed as nonsense because it conflicts with established scientific views. Suppose that in some such case, careful, feminist-inspired study revealed that a particular group of midwives had more success, in terms of well-being of mothers and their children, than some corresponding group of male doctors who based their practice on current scientific theories. Individual doctors or the scientific community might, perhaps, go on insisting that the midwives were simply ignorant and should be disregarded; but no standard epistemology would support such an attitude. Any reasonable scientist would take the midwives' success as evidence that they were on to something (though they might well be wrong about what it was) and that there must therefore be some inadequacy in the scientific theory. Such a case would therefore show no need for revisionary epistemology, but only for changes in ideas about which first-order claims to use as the standard for judging others.

To find a case that required genuine epistemological change to turn the midwives' ignorance into knowledge, it would be necessary to move to something much more bizarre, and postulate a situation where their practices were not only at odds with received scientific theory, but also less successful than those of the doctors, resulting in worse statistics of of maternal and child welfare (because if they were successful, ordinary epistemology would admit that they were raising problems for the received theory), and where feminists would argue that we must change epistemological standards until these practices were counted as demonstrating knowledge. It is difficult to imagine either what such standards would be, or that any feminist would want to recommend any such thing. And unless the traditional feminist can be brought to understand how a change in epistemology might result in changes in the assessment of women's knowledge claims, she obviously cannot be persuaded to make the change for that reason.

Similar problems arise with feminist ideas about the need for radical change in fundamental approaches to science, to accommodate women's ways of setting about understanding the world. There is no problem in principle with the supposition that women might have systematically different ways of doing things, or that these ways might be systematically more successful than men's (though I know of no serious evidence that either of these is actually true), but to the extent that this is what is claimed by feminists, it does not call for any changes in fundamental conceptions of science. If women were successful in this way, ordinary standards of scientific success (such as reaching successful theories more quickly than men) would show lliis to be so (see above, p. 376). To show that more fundamental changes were needed in the criteria for scientific success it would be necessary to imagine women's being unsucccessful by current standards—having theories which tests kept showing were getting nowhere, making predictions that were usually unfulfilled, and so on—and then saying that scientific standards should be changed to count this as good science. It is, again, difficult to imagine either what such standards would be, or that any feminist would recommend them.

All this provides further reason for suspecting that many feminist claims about the need for epistemological change may really be about the need for change in the first-order beliefs that provide intermediate standards for judgment.

27. And, furthermore, a pragmatically self-refuting one. If we can tell what is going to benefit women we must think we know something about how the world works, and therefore must presuppose an epistemology other than the one we are supposed to be defending.

28. Or perhaps (though this possibility has not been discussed here) to depend on traditional epistemological claims that contradict the conclusion.

29. In fact it would be stretching things a bit to count this as part of feminist politics, since it would be for the benefit of anyone who was disadvantaged by the present sort This aspect of the arbitrariness of counting a particular kind of epistemology as feminist is in effect noted by Alcoff and Potter (p. 4), though differently expressed and understood. There is no sign of their being aware of the other problems involved in claiming particular theories as feminist.

30. This is, however, probably much less likely than in the case of first-order inquiries.

31. See the beginning of § 4.

32. It may be objected that “feminist” can legitimately be used to mean (more or less) “done in a characteristically female way,” and that in this sense of the word it is not arbitrary to claim particular approaches as feminist. This point is discussed in the Coda.

33. Randi, James, The Truth About Uri Geller, Prometheus Hooks, Buffalo, NY, 1982.Google Scholar

34. Mill, , op. cit., 44.Google Scholar

35. It would be irrelevant here to ask, rhetorically, “by whose standards?,” or otherwise raise questions about the standards of logic and scientific method being used. This argument is neutral between different possible standards. Resolve the fundamental problems of these matters any way you please, even reaching conclusions that are skeptical or relativist, and the argument about feminism goes through in the same way: until you understand how to apply whatever standards you do accept, you cannot see whether the treatment of women is wrong by those standards. (And anyone who does go for relativism or radical skepticism, or anything else too far from familiar standards, is likely to run into difficulties in finding anything wrong with the situation of women or anything else.)

36. There may of course be continuing anomalous treatment of women in such departments, and an unwillingness to address woman-connected anomalies, which are a continuing cause for feminist concern. But that must not be confused with there being anything essentially patriarchal about particular theories.

37. See, e.g., note 17, above, but there are innumerable examples. If feminists think the rest of the world goes around with epistemology like this it is no wonder they think change is needed—though of course even if it is, that does not mean that it is needed for feminist reasons.

38. This point is addressed and specifically denied by Patricia Smith in the introduction to her anthology Feminist Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press. 1993). at 8–9:Google Scholar

The acceptance of diversity within feminism has led some critics (and even some feminists) to contend that there is therefore no common feminist perpecdve …Feminism can be reduced to those theories that inform its many facets. Liberal feminism is reducible to liberalism; postmodern feminism is reducible to postmodernism; and so on. Thus, it is claimed, feminism provides no new idea no new theory. It is simply the application of old theories to the particular problems of women's oppression.

Smith says this position is mistaken for various reasons, claiming first that even if it were true of some views, such as liberal feminism, it could not be true of radical feminism, whose centerpiece is “the structure of gender or sexual identity itself.” This idea she claims as the “core insight” that “now informs all other feminist theories,” and says:

Radical feminism starts with the idea of sexism as gender, the idea that gender is socially constructed within a hierarchy that embodies male domination and female subodination. Everything else flows from that One may agree or disagree with this idea, but it cannot be reduced to another theory.

Not only can it be so reduced, however; it must be. This idea must depend first on an epistemology and science that support the factual claim about the “construction of gender”; and second on a set of values according to which the particular kind of domination involved is wrong.

Radical feminists do typically believe that the oppression of women is the most fundamental kind of oppression, irreducible to any other, and they may also claim that all other oppressions flow from this one, or (differently) that only through the removal of the oppression of women can other oppressions be removed. But the claim that the oppression of women is irreducible to any other oppression (which, incidentally, seems to me true, although that is not to say anything either about the construction of gender or about causal connections with other types of oppression) is quite different from the claim that the theory that the oppression of women is irreducible to any other oppression is itself irreducible to any other theory.

39. See, e.g. “Masculine Jurisprudence and Feminist Theory,” in West, Robin, Jurisprudence and GenderGoogle Scholar, in Smith, , op.cit., p. 493 ff.Google Scholar

40. This is in practice a symbiotic relationship. The more it is stressed that women's and men's ideas are different, the more it seems necessary to have a higher-level theory that stresses the equality or greater importance of women's; the more such theories become entrenched, the more is claimed about sex differences. This matter is much too complicated for full discussion here.

41. Background ideas that would have this effect could take different forms. They could be positive ideas about morality that would show women's ideas as equal to or better than men's, or, perhaps, they could take some relativistic form that made different groups' ideas equal whatever their content Some of the confusions in this area seem to arise from uncertainty about whether women's ways of doing things are being claimed as simply better than men's, or whether the idea is more that the world ought to be adapted to women's ways of doing things, whatever those are.

42. Supra, 500–501.Google Scholar

43. There could in principle, of course, be yet other meanings of “feminist” in these contexts, but it is hard to imagine what they might be. It is obviously no good proposing “accepted by feminists,” for instance, since that is also question-begging.