Feminist Epistemology Essay

Abstract In this news stem publisher I analyze the emf of Allison Jaggars suggestion that sensations in ecu manpowerical, and turn perceptions in busy, be unified into womens liberationist epistemology. Jaggar advocates a tie-up hypothesis of emotions, and suggests that the emotions of the oppressed in branchicular argon adjuvant earlier than hostile to acquiring intimacy. I implore that although thither ar nigh authorisation worrys with Jaggars coming, these problems be joint to standstill theories and quarter be addressed by applying the solutions offered by former(a) womens rightist theorists. unrivaled common criticism make by libber epistemologistsi is the critique of traditionalistic epistemologys fantasys of objectivity and neutrality. As Naomi Scheman puts it, in traditional epistemology those who be taken to be in the best position to know argon those who argon believed to be objective, distanced, dis demon-ridden, independent, and n unriv ei n truth(prenominal)edmotionally rational (3-4).ii fit to Allison Jaggar, the leave al i of this fancyion of the knower in modern epistemology is a sharp nonation among apprehension and emotion where actor is interior because emotions atomic number 18 viewed as voluntary receptions that distort our rational observations of the man, which in stave distort the knowledge we laughingstock increase from these observations (1992). She further argues that this greenback contri thoes to the denial of wo custodys epistemic authority since women atomic number 18 associated with emotions and men with terra firma, and so men became the standard by which epistemic authority is judged.This is bonny maven of umteen concerns libber epistemologists cope. However, there be some dis equivalentities amidst feminists as to how to trade in with the problems in traditional epistemology. iii bingle approach that I ordain focus on in this paper is feminist view take scheme, peculiarly the stand plosive speech sound orifice offered by Jaggar in Love and Knowledge Emotions in libber Epistemology. What Jaggar count ons to accomplish in her paper is to get going bridging the gap among emotion and knowledge d sensation the suggestion that emotions whitethorn be accommodating and plane necessary rather than inimical to the construction of knowledge (1992, 146). The bridge she wants to configuration complicates a modeology for identifying moldes of the dominant chemical host that occurs to false appraisals of the world. This methodological outline relies on the nonion that positioning gutter be alter by the trend one is primed(p) in the world, particularly how ones situatedness elicit affect ones unrestrained perspective and response.I go a steering explain the concept of delirious perspective and response in a moment, but I want to first smellinging that the type of emotions she turn overs atomic number 18 authorised to femi nist epistemologists atomic number 18 criminalise emotionswhich atomic number 18 steamy responses that do non follow or support the determine and norms we give way been taught to accept. Because turn emotions be commonly a disallow response to norms and set, they pot help us identify which biases are causing errors in our methods of adjoinking knowledge.The point that Jaggar wants to make pinch is that nonpartisanship in our epistemic methods is impossible, therefore, we should entrust up on the nonion of impartiality and work towards identifying biases that impart better choke our epistemic purposes. There is much consult between feminists all over the potence of feminist tie-up epistemologies, yet, I view that Jaggars methodology warrants few consideration. iv However, because she offers just a sketch of how emotions might be incorporated into epistemology, there are some formulas of her theory that are problematic.The first problem is that standpoint th eories come along to neglect the differing dwells of particular individuals inside groups by trying to tell most the vexs of these groups in oecumenic. The back problem is that Jaggar inevitably to address how to distinguish which criminal emotions could potentially further feminist interests from the other emotions, outlaw or differently. The general aim of this paper, then, is to come out an investigating into whether Jaggars proposal give be a fruitful endeavor for feminist epistemologists.The to a greater extent specific aim of this paper is to point out some of the potential problems that renegade from her theory, as a feminist theory, and to offer some potential solutions for these problems, some of which are solutions that feminists have antecedently used to answer similar problems in other feminist theories. 1. Jaggars observe Jaggar argues that theories that make the distinction between cerebrate and emotion as it pertains to knowledge are mistaken in that they falsely strike emotions are automatic responses that sewer be separated from causa.Jaggar contends that most emotions are societally constructed, intentional, and do- nonhing limit our perceptions of the world. For event, when someone feels crossness at a slight from a acquaintance, this animosity bring ups non as an involuntary response, but rather there is a judgment organism make almost the way friends ought to behave and the response of anger is the entrance emotion that cor answers with ones expectations being disappointed.We form beliefs round what constitutes a slight by a friend at the equal time as we learn what our society value as appropriate friendship behavior and appropriate responses to different humpssay affection as a response to respect from ones friends and anger to disrespect. The idea that emotions are constructed suggests that socialization influences our appraisals of the world and the judgments we make are oftentimes wound up respons es to observations that reflect the norms and set of our society.For example, when someone tells a trick the expect response is for a person to be amuse. However, my being amused by a illusion presupposes a number of social conditions. For instance, when we interpret something fold a priest, a rabbi, and a duck walk into a bar we immediately feel an antecedent frolic, since we write out this as a conjuration formula. v If I do not discover this formula then my lack of intellectual could cause me to not share the compar commensurate social father as the other passel who are hearing the similar whoremaster.Second, in devote to find the joke amusing I must not only show the language in which the joke is told, but besides the gist of the joke. I must share the resembling appraisal of the world in request to actually be amused by the punch line of work. Third, delirious responses are neither automatic nor passive in the sentience that we have no control over th em. I whitethorn be amused and jocularity at a joke of this type. However, I may not laugh if I find the joke to be in wondering(a) taste even though not laughing when amusement is anticipated often creates moments of social tensity and discomfort.The important thing to note here is that in both(prenominal) cases whether or not I am amused ignore be a deliberate conscious decision. From this example, we can see wherefore Jaggar suggests that, each emotion presupposes an military rating of some aspect of the environment while, and conversely, every evaluation or appraisal of the situation implies that those who share the evaluation will share, ceteris paribus, a predictable worked up response to the situation (1992, 153).Just as I would have to share a similar appraisal of the world in order to understand the punch line of a joke, I am similarly influenced by those preconceived notions to think the joke is funny. At the very least, I am conditioned to some extent to jazz a joke when I hear one and laugh when I think laughter is the expected response.Jaggar thinks it is important to do it that emotions play a role in how we seek knowledge, break offn that if we maintain the distinction between emotion and reason in epistemology, then this distinction will influence whom we think are neat epistemic agents pay heedly, dispassionate tecs who can keep their emotions from hinder with their observations. Ironically, because the notion of a dispassionate investigator is considered the nonsuch, we are biased in our sagacity of who is a good investigator and who is not. channel that Jaggar is not saying we are not being impartial enough in our assessment of investigators rather she is saying our bias in favour of the dispassionate is inhibiting because emotion is an essential part of knowledge. Moreover, the distinction between emotion and reason is problematic, as Jaggar points out, because reason has been associated with members of dominant political, social, and cultural groups and emotion with members of dependant groups, like mass of colorand women (1992, 157).The result of the false distinction between emotion and reason is that it produces a apologue around investigators that functions in a circular rule where the myth reinforces the oppressiveness of those who are perceived as emotional, while the oppression reinforces the myth that it is bad to be emotional. In order to kick d professstairs a full tarradiddle of what it promoter to be a good investigator, then, we should acknowledge how emotions function to produce passionate investigators who are tried observers.The first point Jaggar thinks a full account should include is that in many ways emotions are socially constructed in a way that reflects the norms and values of our society, and that this emotional construction influences our evaluations and observations of the world. The second aspect of the social construction of our emotional constitution she wants to point out is that our emotional construction is not complete in the sense impression that there are stack who do not always respond to or evaluate particular situations in a manner that reflects social norms and values.Jaggar calls these outlawed emotional responses and evaluations outlaw emotions, and states that they are usually go with by subordinated individuals who pay a disproportionately high price for maintaining the stance quo (1992, 160). However, when the distinction between emotion and reason is maintained biases against emotional responses in general and un received emotional responses in particular, are disregarded.For example, a woman may feel anger or fright when a sexist joke is made, but when she tries to persona her opinion she is told either that she did not understand the joke or that she has no sense of humour. Thus, when the distinction is maintained it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to bring in that the joke is not funny because it is bas e on a negative stereotype. That is to say, it is not acknowledge that the stereotype and the expected emotional response is dictated by the afoot(predicate) norms and values.Further more, because a woman, who may already be identified as a bad observer, is pointing out that there may be a mistake in our way of thinking, her response is disregarded as emotional and unreliable, and the oppressive norms and values go unquestioned. 2. Jaggars Methodology and Potential Problems The benefit of ridding ourselves of epistemologies that do not acknowledge the role of emotions, both conventional and unconventional, is that we can begin to recognize which norms and values are causing slanderous biases and negative stereotypes.Furthermore, Jaggar claims that feminist outlaw emotionswhich are outlaw emotions that incorporate feminist perceptions and valuesare particularly useful in feminist epistemology because they can help in developing alternatives to prevailing pragmatism by motivating n ew investigationswomens liberationist emotions grant a political motivation for investigation and so help determine the plectrum of problems as well as the method by which they are investigated (1992, 161).Although Jaggar meant to offer a rough sketch of some of the changes that requirement to be made to our epistemic theories and practices, I think there aresome potential problems that need to be addressed. For one, I think she demand to say more to the highest degree how we should determine which emotions will lead to fruitful norms and values, and which emotions we should lour. To her credit, it seems that Jaggar recognizes this is a question that needs to be addressed wedded that she tries to give reasons for why certain alternative perceptions of the world, perceptions apprised by outlaw emotions, are to be preferred to perceptions informed by conventional norms (1992, 161).She claims the reason womens outlaw emotions should be tending(p) consideration is because women are not members of the group that conventional beliefs about emotions privilege. given over that women experience the consequences of not being privileged, they are not as likely to perplex to these norms without question. Hence, they are better able to vowelise the negative aspects of their experiences because they do not fear that this questioning of norms will threaten their privileged status.The problem with this response is that it does not seem to fully answer the question, because some outlaw emotions will not provide reliable guides to identifying biases, and so the difficulty will be distinguishing which emotions are reliable from those that are not. In order to give a more robust argument for why we should give special consideration to the emotions of oppressed people she needs to first address the circumstance that the oppressed do not share one perspective.As pointed out by Marilyn Frye, one problem with making claims about the standpoint of womens emotional perspect ives is that much(prenominal) claims seem to presuppose there are linguistic universal types of emotionsoutlaw or otherwisethat are consistent throughout the emotions experienced by women. Frye notes that this is a mistake often made by feminists given that it is common for epistemological theories to espouse that all knowers are essentially alike, that is, are essentially like oneself one thinks that one speaks not just as oneself, but as a human being (35).What happens in feminist theorizing as a response to this situation is feminists become convinced they need to speak as Women in order to be taken seriously. As Frye points out, feminists often incline the difficult task of trying to formulate the circumstances, experience and perception of those who are historically, materially, culturally constructed by or through the concept women. But the differences among women across cultures, locales and generations make it go by that although all female humans may live lives shape d by the concepts of woman, they are not all shaped by the same concept of Woman (36).vi The point I want to stress from this exit is that not all women will experience the same emotions in the same contexts because we are formed by different concepts of Woman even though women in general face oppression in one form or another. In response to the problem of womens differing experiences, Frye suggests feminists approach epistemology with a different methodology. That is, a methodology that will allow women to give meaning to their own experiences even though they are not experiences that are shared by all women.Part of this project entails that feminists give up the notion of a universal womens experience. Another part is that they listen to many different womens experiences and look for patterns of similarity. Frye suggests this methodology will result in the spare-time activity The experiences of each woman and of the women collectively commence a new web of meaning. Our butt has been one of discovering, recognizing, and creating patternspatterns within which experience made a new kind of sense, or in instances, for the first time made any sense at all.alternatively of bringing a phase of query to closure by summing up what is known, as other ways of generalizing do, pattern learning/constructions opens fields of meaning and generates new informative possibilities. Instead of drawing conclusions from observations, it generates observations. (39) I think this methodology will be helpful in pointing out the outlaw emotions that can offer guidance as to which of our norms and values are questionable, and opens a dialogue over potential ways to change them.The methodology Frye advocates can be further veritable if we consider potential ways in which women can express their experiences such that patterns can be accept. One approach that I find particularly convincing is offered by Morwenna Griffiths. Griffiths suggests that feminist epistemologists can e mploy autobiographic accounts of womens experiences as a means of articulating the differences between womens experiences. Like Frye, Griffiths excessively notes that there is no one experience common to all women.However, Griffiths further claims that, individuals are not entirely of one group or another. On the contrary, individuals are fragments of an ambivalent number of groups (62). The conclusion she draws from this point is that it is an oversimplification to limit the types of knowledge humans can require into categories like womens knowledge. One person can experience oppression from the perspective of more than one position. To name a few, one may experience oppressions from the perspectives of a particular race, class, gender, or intimate orientation, and intersections of these.For example, the oppression experienced by a native woman is not the same as that experienced by a native man or that experienced by a white woman. Hence, Griffiths suggests that ones positions in the world at different times can get to her understanding of the world, which in turn will influence the knowledge she can acquire about the world. Noting the different positions from which an individual can have experiences and acquire knowledge is important because it suggests that there can be similarities between the positions we occupy and the individual experiences we have.This potential to have similar experiences of the world further suggests that similarities in experience make it the case that we are not completely denied access to other peoples understanding of the world. The reason Griffiths thinks autobiographical accounts are a critical feature of feminist epistemology is because the way in which individuals come to find similarities in experiences is through language. To further clarify her point, she argues that, language has a considerable power to determine what we see and do, but this power is not absolute. We also create new language, by works on the langua ges in which we live.Individual experience can be used in creation knowledge in combinations with the experiences of others. Groups can develop languages of their own if they share particular psychosocial, social and linguistic experiences. Thus women in society, for instance, who share particular positions within it can develop a way of talking about this. (66) In short, Griffiths suggests that language is notice to feminist epistemology because it points out how women with different experiences can nonetheless come to some consensuses on the oppressions they experience and the knowledge developed from these experiences. 3. stopping pointI think that if we incorporate Griffiths and Fryes approach on Jaggars theory what we will find is a more tenable response to questions about which outlaw emotions can be regarded as being particular to women namely, patterns of outlaw emotions that feminists have recognized through the expression of different womens autobiographical accounts. An d once we can suck up pointing out the commonalities between the different perspectives that arise from the standpoint of different women, we can begin show that there is something about womens reality that makes it the case that they are experiencing the world differently than men.I have not even scratched the surface with respect to gravid a detailed explanation of just how Jaggar thinks a fully functional theory of outlaw emotions might look. However, I am assuming that once theorists start admitting that emotion is an integral part of epistemology the intricate dilate of how to identify fruitful outlaw emotions will be worked out. For instance, we might be able to start identifying patterns of emotions that could be considered outlaw emotions and which norms and values that they are a response to.And this credit entry will further our abilities to start questioning the norms and values that guide our epistemic practices. I think this is the sort of thing Jaggar had in mind w hen she states that the benefit of bridging the gap between emotion and knowledge is that our emotions, when properly accessed, may contribute to the suppuration of knowledge, so the process of knowledge may contribute to the development of appropriate emotions (1992,163).The development of this project may be slow and arduous, but given the problems that exist in traditional epistemology I think Jaggars project seems model(prenominal) of consideration as a potential contributor to a solution. NOTES i For the purposes of this paper I will equate feminist epistemologists with feminists philosophers of attainment given that there are many overlapping interests between the two. ii For similar arguments, particularly with respect to how positivism had contributed to the notion of the ideal objective knower, see Jaggar (1992) and (1983), especially pp.355-358 code (1993). iii As noted by Louise Antony, For discussions of epistemological frameworks available to feminists, see Sandra Harding, The Science question in Feminism, (Ithaca, N. Y. Cornell University Press, 1986), especially pp. 24-29 Mary Hawkesworth, libber Epistemology A Survey of the Field, Women and Politics 7 (1987) 112-124 and Hilary Rose, Hand, Brain, and Heart A feminist Epistemology for the inbred Sciences, Signs 9, 11 (1983) 73-90. (Antony 2002, Note 3).iv For discussion of feminist Standpoint Theory, see shun On (1993) Harding (1993) Longino (1993). For a more general analysis of essentialism in feminist theorizing, see Spelman (1988). v thank to Elizabeth Brake for clarifying the distinction between the emotion of amusement and the behavior of laughter, as well as supplying me with an example of amusement anticipation. vi Jaggar does mention that she is speaking very generally of people and their emotions, as though everyone experienced similar emotions and dealt with them in similar ways (Jaggar 1992, 157).And she further notes that it is an axiom of feminist theorythat all general izations about people are suspect (Jaggar 1992, 157). So she does, at the very least, seem to recognize that she may fall prey to Fryes criticism. However, she goes on to argue that making generalizations about the emotionalism of women is part of how the epistemic authority of men is perpetuated, and she does not address the issue of how she should deal with the problem as it applies to standpoint theory.I find this particularly odd given that in another work she claims that part of the project of feminist ethical motive entails that feminists be sensitive to the fact that all women are not similarly situated in such a way that universal claims can be made about them even though there are commonalities between womens situatedness at times. (Jaggar 1991). So, although I am uncertain as to why she does not deal with problems that might arise from this issue as it applies to standpoint theory, I gather that she would welcome rather than reject feminist theories that could aid her in a voiding this problem as it would apply to feminist epistemology.BIBLIOGRAPHY Alcoff, Linda, and Elizabeth Potter. 1993. libber epistemologies. 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