![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7All of the following information can be found on pages 174-179 of William F Lawhead's THE PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNEY, AN INTERACTIVE APPROACH, FIFTH EDITION (McGraw-Hill NY, 2011); I've rearranged it, a bit, to put the counter arguments directly after the assumptions.
"1. The Generic Humanity Assumption: There is one universal human nature. Epistemology, therefore, is the attempt to describe the cognitive structures common to all individuals…
…Feminists claim that this tendency to make male perspectives the norm infects most traditional theories of knowledge. Feminist philosopher Lorraine Code makes this charge, for example, against a contemporary work on rationality by a male philosopher. She notes that “Richard Foley appeals repeatedly to the epistemic judgments of people who are ‘like the rest of us.’” The problem is, Code says, “nowhere does he address the question of who ‘we’ are.” She suggests that the standard knowers referred to by “we” in the coded language of epistemology are tacitly assumed to be people just like the author: “an adult (but not old ), white, reasonably affluent (latterly middle-class) educated man of status, property, and publicly acceptable accomplishments.” By contrast, knowers who do not fit this description (women) and whose perspectives, experiences, approaches to knowledge, and standards of rationality do not fit the preferred model are considered to be outsiders, and their viewpoints are dismissed as irredeemably subjective, irregular, or irrational…
2. The View from Nowhere Assumption: The particular identity of a knower (including gender, race, class, and historical circumstances) is irrelevant to the production and assessment of that person’s knowledge claims…
…Traditional epistemology has supposed that the ideal knower will look at reality free of any particular perspective or historical background and will carry out the project of knowing without any individual interests, engagements, or concerns… However, most feminists think that the assumption is incoherent and that all knowers (feminist or nonfeminist, female or male) always approach the world from within some particular context, whether this context is defined by conceptual scheme, language, culture, gender, or whatever. According to this more expanded critique, the “view from nowhere” assumption is not just alien to women’s approaches, but is an incorrect description of human knowledge in general...
…Accordingly, Code argues for an epistemology that takes subjectivity into account (including gender) without sliding into an “anything goes” subjectivism:
3. The Pure, Impersonal Reason Assumption: (This view of rationality results from the view from nowhere assumption.) The ideal of rationality is that of pure objectivity, untainted by subjectivity or the emotions and interests of the knower…
…Feminist epistemologists frequently refer to the bipolar thinking by means of which traditional epistemologists posit strict dichotomies such as reason vs. emotion, objective vs. subjective, mind vs. body, logic vs. intuition, or intellect vs. imagination. They have two criticisms of this approach. First, the paired concepts in each case are not mutually exclusive dichotomies as has been supposed...Second, when epistemologists assert or assume these dichotomies, they place high priority on the first member of the pair, assuming that it describes the ideal knower, while they devalue the second member of the pair. Furthermore, the preferred alternative (such as objectivity) is taken to describe the male approach and the second (subjectivity) is assumed to be a stereotypically female trait. Feminists claim, however, that the psychological assumptions and value choices inherent in this approach are rarely questioned...
…Although some feminists applaud [attempts] to highlight the positive features of women’s distinctive ways of knowing, others are concerned that this form of essentialism will reinforce the stereotypes that have been used in the past to marginalize women. These concerns are expressed by Code:
4. The Robinson Crusoe Assumption:* The acquisition of knowledge is primarily a project of isolated individuals, and this knowledge is independent of any social context and free of political implications…
…The best example of this assumption is Descartes, who thought he could suspend all his former beliefs as he searched for the grounds of certainty within the confines of his own mind. Descartes was able to maintain his self-image of being a completely independent and autonomous thinker because the 17th-century philosophical and cultural assumptions that permeated every step of his thinking remained completely invisible to him. In contrast, Code stresses that “knowledge production is a social practice of embodied, gendered, historically, racially, and culturally located knowers whose products bear the marks of their makers and whose stories need, therefore, to be told.”...
…To paraphrase poet John Donne, “No knower is an island.” Our knowledge is initially transmitted to us by our culture, and our further search for knowledge is carried out within a community that informs our endeavors and to which we are responsible...
…If it is the community of knowers that not only transmits knowledge but brings it to birth, then the more diverse that group of knowers is, the more likely it is that their multiple perspectives will prevent the quest for knowledge from following well-established ruts in the road while ignoring other possible alternatives…"
"1. The Generic Humanity Assumption: There is one universal human nature. Epistemology, therefore, is the attempt to describe the cognitive structures common to all individuals…
…Feminists claim that this tendency to make male perspectives the norm infects most traditional theories of knowledge. Feminist philosopher Lorraine Code makes this charge, for example, against a contemporary work on rationality by a male philosopher. She notes that “Richard Foley appeals repeatedly to the epistemic judgments of people who are ‘like the rest of us.’” The problem is, Code says, “nowhere does he address the question of who ‘we’ are.” She suggests that the standard knowers referred to by “we” in the coded language of epistemology are tacitly assumed to be people just like the author: “an adult (but not old ), white, reasonably affluent (latterly middle-class) educated man of status, property, and publicly acceptable accomplishments.” By contrast, knowers who do not fit this description (women) and whose perspectives, experiences, approaches to knowledge, and standards of rationality do not fit the preferred model are considered to be outsiders, and their viewpoints are dismissed as irredeemably subjective, irregular, or irrational…
2. The View from Nowhere Assumption: The particular identity of a knower (including gender, race, class, and historical circumstances) is irrelevant to the production and assessment of that person’s knowledge claims…
…Traditional epistemology has supposed that the ideal knower will look at reality free of any particular perspective or historical background and will carry out the project of knowing without any individual interests, engagements, or concerns… However, most feminists think that the assumption is incoherent and that all knowers (feminist or nonfeminist, female or male) always approach the world from within some particular context, whether this context is defined by conceptual scheme, language, culture, gender, or whatever. According to this more expanded critique, the “view from nowhere” assumption is not just alien to women’s approaches, but is an incorrect description of human knowledge in general...
…Accordingly, Code argues for an epistemology that takes subjectivity into account (including gender) without sliding into an “anything goes” subjectivism:
Knowledge is at once subjective and objective: subjective because it is marked, as product, by the processes of its construction by specifically located subjects; objective in that the constructive process is constrained by a reality that is recalcitrant to inattentive or whimsical structurings.…
3. The Pure, Impersonal Reason Assumption: (This view of rationality results from the view from nowhere assumption.) The ideal of rationality is that of pure objectivity, untainted by subjectivity or the emotions and interests of the knower…
…Feminist epistemologists frequently refer to the bipolar thinking by means of which traditional epistemologists posit strict dichotomies such as reason vs. emotion, objective vs. subjective, mind vs. body, logic vs. intuition, or intellect vs. imagination. They have two criticisms of this approach. First, the paired concepts in each case are not mutually exclusive dichotomies as has been supposed...Second, when epistemologists assert or assume these dichotomies, they place high priority on the first member of the pair, assuming that it describes the ideal knower, while they devalue the second member of the pair. Furthermore, the preferred alternative (such as objectivity) is taken to describe the male approach and the second (subjectivity) is assumed to be a stereotypically female trait. Feminists claim, however, that the psychological assumptions and value choices inherent in this approach are rarely questioned...
…Although some feminists applaud [attempts] to highlight the positive features of women’s distinctive ways of knowing, others are concerned that this form of essentialism will reinforce the stereotypes that have been used in the past to marginalize women. These concerns are expressed by Code:
There is a persistent tension in feminist thought between a laudable wish to celebrate
“feminine” values as tools for the creation of a better social order and a fear of endorsing
those same values as instruments of women’s continued oppression.
4. The Robinson Crusoe Assumption:* The acquisition of knowledge is primarily a project of isolated individuals, and this knowledge is independent of any social context and free of political implications…
…The best example of this assumption is Descartes, who thought he could suspend all his former beliefs as he searched for the grounds of certainty within the confines of his own mind. Descartes was able to maintain his self-image of being a completely independent and autonomous thinker because the 17th-century philosophical and cultural assumptions that permeated every step of his thinking remained completely invisible to him. In contrast, Code stresses that “knowledge production is a social practice of embodied, gendered, historically, racially, and culturally located knowers whose products bear the marks of their makers and whose stories need, therefore, to be told.”...
…To paraphrase poet John Donne, “No knower is an island.” Our knowledge is initially transmitted to us by our culture, and our further search for knowledge is carried out within a community that informs our endeavors and to which we are responsible...
…If it is the community of knowers that not only transmits knowledge but brings it to birth, then the more diverse that group of knowers is, the more likely it is that their multiple perspectives will prevent the quest for knowledge from following well-established ruts in the road while ignoring other possible alternatives…"
