1.4 Escaping women’s standpoint
Hence, Haack concludes that theoretical justification cannot refer to values (6), through an argument based on premises 1) to 5), all considered to be valid premises that ought to be maintained in the interest of genuine inquiry, despite attacks on 1), 2) and 3) from the defenders of a radical sociology of inquiry – because these attacks are all essentially mistaken.
Moreover, Haack’s conclusion (6) implies that attempts to develop democratic epistemologies, such as feminist epistemologies, are unfounded: They all presuppose that values should play a role in justifying theories.
There is, however, nothing particularly feminist about the radical interpretations of science as social,47 dismissals of the doctrine of value-freedom and defenses of democratic epistemologies: “What has science as social to do with feminism? Nothing” (op.cit.: 115).
Indeed, arguments in contemporary debates in favor of a radical sociology of science and democratic epistemologies are prominently defended by those positioning themselves as feminist epistemologists.48 The arguments as such are, however, not feminist in any exclusive sense. In practice there are both radical sociologists and democratic epistemologists who are not feminists, and feminists, like Haack, who do not defend radical sociological approaches and democratic epistemologies; “neither all, nor only, women, or feminists, favor all, or indeed any, of the ideas offered under the rubric feminist epistemology” (ibid.: 124). Besides,
“it is not difficult to think of philosophers, neither female nor feminist, who have subscribed to the thesis of science as social in those radical interpretations” (ibid.: 115).49 More
47 Haack does not intend to say that there is something feminist about the moderate interpretations of science as social. Her main ambition is precisely to disconnect the notion of feminism from any particular epistemological position.
48 Haack’s main targets are Sandra Harding and Helen Longino, to whom she refers systematically. There are, however, several critical references also to other proponents of feminist epistemology (1998: 104-136).
References to proponents of radical sociological approaches that are not primarily known to be feminist epistemologists (even though they might support the claims for some version of a feminist epistemology) are rare, except from the repeated references to Richard Rorty. Bruno Latour and Steve Fuller are however mentioned (op.cit.: 121, n. 17).
49 Even though Haack does not come up with examples in this passage. Elsewhere she mentions, however, Rorty, Latour and Fuller, who are not primarily known to be feminist epistemologists. The moderate interpretation of science as social is also defended by feminists (such as Haack herself) and non-feminists alike: “In the modest
important, feminist arguments in favor of a radical sociology of science and democratic epistemologies are not in principle different from non-feminist arguments. Indeed, the feminist proponents of radically social and democratic epistemologies typically emphasize that science is the product of processes of social negotiation that are crucially gendered, that value-laden views on gender, as a subset of other value-laden views, are inseparable from scientific inquiry, and that epistemologies ought to be democratic also with regard to gender.
However, this is a matter of difference in emphasis, not in principle: To claim that science is a gendered social construction, is simply an elaboration of the general claim that science is a social construction. The arguments for epistemologies to be gender democratic add nothing, in principle, to the arguments for epistemologies to be democratic.50
And even the emphasis on gender is questionable, according to Haack. Obviously, any gender perspective connected to misconceived sociological doctrines and flawed prescriptions for democracy in the context of justification, ought to be dismissed. If, indeed, an emphasis on gender is appropriate, it must be made compatible with a good, sober sociology of science, and avoid the imperialist inclination to turn theoretical justification into an issue of values:
Feminist values should be considered only in the context of discovery and the context of practical application. However, Haack considers feminists’ focus on gender, even in these contexts, as highly exaggerated. Feminists overstate, for example, the problem of sexism in processes of academic recruitment and in funding policies (op.ciit.: 176, 203). Moreover, even moderate feminist sociologists of science tend to exaggerate how bad science is the outcome of sexism. It is the task of a good, sober sociology of science to investigate any lack of correlation between the socially accepted and the well warranted. In some cases, particularly in the human and social sciences, the explanation of mismatch between what is accepted and what is warranted is sexism:
In the social and human sciences, theories about women’s capacities, or incapacities, have sometimes come to be accepted by the relevant scientific subcommunity when they were not well warranted; and the explanation of how this came about would, probably, refer to the prejudices and stereotypes common among scientists as well as in the larger society (original emphasis, op.cit.: 116).
sense spelled out in the first section of this essay, it is true, and epistemologically significant, that science is social. […] Peirce, Polanyi, Quine, Popper, come immediately to mind as philosophers neither female nor feminist who have acknowledged, with varying degrees of detail and subtlety, something along those lines”
(1998: 115).
50 That is: Epistemologies are not democratic if they are not democratic also with respect to gender, in the sense that just prescriptions ought to presuppose “the common humanity of women and men” (1998: 123): There are no morally relevant differences between women and men on the level of “justice and opportunity” (ibid.).
The idea that sexism also infects “the physical sciences” depends, however, on “simple exaggeration about the supposed ubiquity of sexual metaphors in the writings of scientists and philosophers of science” (op.cit.: 117), and on misunderstandings of the cognitive role of metaphors:
It is true that metaphors are not always just decorative, but can be cognitively important. It is true, also, that some cognitively significant metaphors implicitly compare natural with social phenomena […]. But whether a cognitively important metaphor is fruitful, whether it makes us look in the right or in the wrong direction, is independent of the desirability or otherwise of the social phenomenon on which it calls (original emphasis, ibid.).
A scientific theory may be warranted, even though it makes use of “undesirable” sexist metaphors: Sexist metaphors ought to be criticized from an “ethical” or “political”
perspective, but they do not make the theories as such into which they are integrated, unjustified (op.cit.: 119).
However, there are feminist epistemological proposals that do differ from general democratic epistemologies also in principle, proposals claiming that there are distinct women’s ways of knowing that are epistemologically privileged. These feminist “standpoint” epistemologies are not simply yet another group of democratic epistemologies (op.cit.: 116). Haack suggests, rather, that they betray the commitment to equality inherent in democratic epistemological proposals. The claim that “some standpoints, those of oppressed and disadvantaged classes, women among them” are “epistemologically better”, is incompatible with a “democratic thrust” (ibid.). Standpoint epistemologists pay only shallow lip-service to democracy and to
“multiple standpoints” (ibid.). However, feminist standpoint epistemologies do have in common with democratic epistemologies the denial of premises 2) and 3) in Haack’s argument for value-freedom: Whether a theory is justified, and whether a theory is true (if indeed true is regarded as something theories ought to be), depends, according to the feminist standpoint epistemologists, on whether it is the outcome of procedures of inquiry that reflect women’s ways of knowing (ibid.: 126). Haack considers, however, this to be an indefensible epistemological standard: “I do not think that women are capable of revolutionary insights into the theory of knowledge not available, or not easily available to men” (1993: 8). First, she is “not convinced […] that there are any distinctively female ways of knowing” (original emphasis, 1998: 125). There is simply no decisive factual evidence for this claim:
All any human being has to go on, in figuring out how things are, is his or her sensory and introspective experience, and the explanatory theorizing he or she devises to accommodate is;
and differences in cognitive style, like differences in handwriting, seem more individual than gender determined (original emphasis, op.cit.: 126).
To Haack, “reversion to the notion of thinking like a woman is disquietingly reminiscent of old, sexist stereotypes” (op.cit.: 125). Second, she considers feminist standpoint epistemology to be based on the unlikely assumption that “oppressed, disadvantaged, and marginalized people are epistemically privileged by virtue of their oppression and disadvantage” (op.cit.:
126). Apart from the fact that Haack believes many feminists exaggerate the extensiveness and depth of women’s oppression, disadvantage and marginalization; if women were in fact extensively and deeply oppressed, disadvantaged and marginalized, this would not be a “good reason to think it true that oppression confers epistemic privilege,” because “one of the ways in which oppressed people are oppressed is, surely, that their oppressors control the information that reaches them” (ibid.). To be oppressed, disadvantaged and marginalized typically implies that one is deprived of the means to do genuine inquiry, not that one is better equipped. Hence, there is no reason, according to Haack, neither to modify nor replace premises 2) and 3) on the basis of feminist standpoint criticism.