Should women’s different reasoning grant them cognitive privilege?

Even if this is correct, however, this does not imply that we should change the truth-idealization. It has, first, to be argued that the female way of knowing produces more objective knowledge. Harding’s argument is inconclusive on this point. Even if it could be argued that women reason with more concern for context, why should contextual reasoning make women’s theories more genuine? What does it mean more precisely to reason with concern for context, and what does it mean, precisely, when confronted by different kinds of claims?

Initially, Harding’s idea of reasoning with concern for context is linked to how we should approach moral and ethical claims. She refers to Gilligan’s analysis of “moral reasoning” and Ruddick’s “maternal thinking” of “responsibility” (ibid.). The prescription to have a concern for context when we reason about morality and ethics, would, however, have implications for our approach to inquiry in so far as morality and ethics are involved when we make inquiries – but would not necessarily have implications for how genuine inquirers should approach truth-claims. Harding thinks that it has, however. She refers in this connection to among

267 “Mary Belenky and her colleagues, in investigating developmental patterns in women’s thinking about reason and knowledge, have pointed to gender bias in philosophic and scientific ideals and suggested its origins in gendered experience” (Harding 1991: 118).

others Jane Flax and Mary Belenky who argue that “women’s ways of knowing exhibit more generally the concern for context that Gilligan sees in moral knowledge”, and that this is connected with men’s and women’s different “personality structures” (ibid.): Women’s ways of knowing “produce empirically more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations” (op.cit.: 119).

Harding does not explicate what reasoning with concern for context might mean in empirical discourse, however. Moreover, she does not specify how reasoning with concern for context in empirical discourse might differ from reasoning in the domain of morality and ethics. This is linked to a general failure in her approach: She does not link her philosophy of inquiry to reflections on the different claims involved in inquiry. This is why, when she talks of objectivity, she sometimes seems to refer to empirical truth,²⁶⁸ and at other times, to the validity of claims more generally. I wish to concentrate on what reasoning with concern for context might mean in empirical discourse. This is clearly Harding’s basic concern: She wants to add something to epistemology in the spirit of the feminist interventions which have taken place in moral philosophy which stress the concern for context.

Reasoning with concern for context in empirical discourse could mean, for example:

i) That we should investigate theories (claims in the context of other claims), not singular claims.

ii) That we should avoid idealizations.

iii) That we should avoid abstraction.

iv) That explanans cannot or should not refer to causal laws or mechanisms.

v) That there is a need for discretion and good contexual judgment when approaching particular cases.

If we by reasoning with concern for context mean i), not even Haack would disagree that we are dealing with the thinking that produces maximal objectivity. Contextual reasoning in this sense is precisely what genuine inquiry should be about; to assess claims in connection with other claims is a core idea of her crossword puzzle model of inquiry. Moreover, even Haack would not deny that we should avoid idealizations (ii), as in the sense discussed by Onora

268 This is why I have so far, in this spirit, interpreted Harding’s ideal of objectivity as a challenge to the truth-idealization.

O’Neill,²⁶⁹ i.e. idealizations as “abstractions” that are not “abstractions from empirical truth”

(2000: 72). O’Neill exemplifies her notion of an idealization with the model of “Rational Economic Man”, relying, she says, on “an instrumental account of rationality and a preference-based conception of action” (op.cit.: 71, 73). This is in accordance with what I argued in Chapter 2: that rational-choice theory²⁷⁰ is not a valid empirical theory, assessed according to, for example, Haack’s foundherentist criteria. This is to say that the model of human action on which Haack herself relies is an idealization incompatible with her own criteria for genuine inquiry, criteria which are contextual in the sense that idealizations would be considered pseudo-theories and not allowed for.

As for iii), we cannot avoid abstraction altogether: Any conceptualization involves abstraction on some level.²⁷¹ In O’Neill’s words: We cannot avoid reasoning that “brackets certain predicates that obtain”, even if we can and should avoid idealization; reasoning that “denies those predicates (asserts their absence) or asserts that absent predicates obtain” (op.cit.: 68).

Does Harding argue that explanans cannot or should not refer to causal laws or mechanisms (i.e. iv)?²⁷² Sometimes it seems as though she does.²⁷³ However, her argument that women have a peculiar concern for context in their reasoning because of a certain personality structure, is presented, in fact, in terms of a causal model: “Different infantile experiences […] lead” to women’s and men’s fundamentally different relationship to “self” (my emphasis, Harding 1991: 121).²⁷⁴ As for v), even Haack acknowledges the need for discretion or good contextual judgment, even in the context of justification.

Hence, Harding’s claim that reasoning with concern for context is what produces maximal objectivity, is either uncontroversial (i), ii) and v), in the sense that even Haack would accept

269 O’Neill introduces the distinction between idealization and abstraction in a discussion of moral reasoning.

The point also has relevance here, however.

270 At least not as the theory is presented by Haack.

271 See point 6) above, where Harding discusses how women’s activities mediate the divisions and separations in contemporary Western cultures. This might mean that women rely on fewer divisions or separations or avoid them altogether, or that women would construct different divisions or separations. The first interpretation relies on an impossible presupposition that abstraction can be avoided. The latter interpretation is an empirical question.

272 And are there differences between the natural, social and human sciences on this point? Part II (“Explanation, Prediction, and Laws”) and III (“Interpretation and Meaning”) in Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (1995) give an overview of this classic debate among philosophers of science. Anderson doubts that feminist standpoint epistemologists consider it relevant to apply the standpoint approach in the natural sciences (2004: 6).

Harding makes, however, no such reservations.

273 Consider for example the chapter “Why Physics is a Bad Model for Physics” in Harding (1991: 77-104).

274 A critical reflection on the role of causal mechanisms in object relations is found in Gilje and Grimen (1993:

253).

it, and in the sense that it is compatible with the truth-idealization as I spelled it out in Chapter 2, or it is inconsistent (iv), or it presupposes what is impossible (iii). It therefore seems either misleading to say that concern for context is a different mode of reasoning (if this is understood as in i), ii) and v), or it is a different mode of reasoning that is flawed (if ‘concern for context’ is understood as in iii) and iv).

Now, what Harding might be saying, is rather that women do i), ii) and v) better than men;

they are better at avoiding idealization, they use good judgment better, and they are better at connecting the assessment of singular claims with the assessment of other singular claims (in Haack’s terms: they take better care of the ‘coherentist’ aspect of genuine inquiry). Initially, such claim are dubious because not all women are in women’s situation (defined according to Harding’s 1) to 8) list). They are, however, also dubious because the causal mechanisms between being in this situation – if it indeed could be argued that many if not all women were in it – and a particular contextual rationality are only vaguely explicated. Hence, Haack’s statement that Harding’s notion of “thinking like a woman” reminds her of “old, sexist stereotypes”, is not completely irrelevant (Haack 1998: 125): The idea that women think differently, and do it with more concern for context could be mistaken for a patriarchal caricature.

4.2.5 From unequal cognitive authority to unequal intellectual authority Even if giving some people (for example women) greater cognitive authority in some cases is compatible with granting everyone equal intellectual authority, this is only so under certain conditions. One condition for compatibility between unequal cognitive authority (in some cases) and equal intellectual authority, is that one does not in fact argue against granting everyone equal intellectual authority, and thus against the norm of equal respect. One cannot accuse Harding of doing this. She does, however, tend to instrumentalize the relationship between inquiry and morality. Harding argues that “research directed by maximally liberatory social interests and values tends to be better equipped to identify partial claims and distorting evidence”; “[…] to produce empirically more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations” (Harding 1991: 119, 148): Certain liberating interests and values (i.e. taking women’s standpoint) are presented as functional for the aim of making theories more objective and less partial, whereas it is simply presupposed that these interests and values are justified from a moral point of view (ibid.). However, interests and values that are

truth-functional, are not necessarily compatible with what justice requires, i.e. that they are compatible, cannot be presupposed; it must be argued.²⁷⁵

Moreover, to say that female truth-seekers are generally epistemologically privileged relative to male, i.e. to say that there are always cognitive inequalities between women and men, is incompatible with granting everyone equal intellectual authority (and if one argues that everyone is equal in intellectual authority, one contradicts oneself if one upholds the standpoint approach to issues of truth). Certainly, one might imagine more or less drastic implications drawn from Harding’s claim that women, because of their social situation, produce more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations than men, i.e. more or less radical transformations of the truth-idealization. The implication could be that what we should strive to approximate in our investigations, is an ideal communication community consisting only of women, because theories proposed by men (and by women who, for one reason or another, are not in women’s situation) are always less genuine. This would be to argue for unequal cognitive authority and unequal intellectual authority; men would not be considered among reason-givers and reason-takers. Harding does, however, clearly consider men among reason-givers and reason-takers. She stresses that also male inquirers can think from women’s lives (op.cit.: 62, 67, 68).

A less drastic option would be to include men (and women who, for one reason or another, are not in women’s situation) in the ideal communication community, but to consider the epistemological privilege of women (in women’s situation) an additional criterion of truth-indicativeness, in addition to other criteria, such as Haack’s foundherentist criteria. Let us say, in addition to criteria of supportiveness, independent security and comprehensiveness,²⁷⁶ there was a fourth criterion: It is a truth-indication that a theory is compatible with the claims made by women (whatever they were). Also, this more moderate reconstruction of the truth-idealization would, however, be incompatible with granting everyone equal intellectual authority. Men would also be considered reason-givers and reason-takers, but of a secondary sort: Adding the fourth criterion would make it defensible to replace a theory more warranted

275 Harding also tends to instrumentalize the other way around: We should make our theories more objective and less partial because objective theories are functional for liberation, not because significant truth is the sole aim of inquiry. It is illustrative in this connection that Harding refers to feminist standpoint epistemology – and other feminist epistemologies (feminist empiricism and feminist postmodernism) as different “justificatory strategies […] likely to appeal to different audiences” (my emphasis, Harding 1991: 136). This notion of theoretical justification is similar to Richard Rorty’s notion of “justification is relative to audience”, which I question in Chapter 7. See also Chapter 2.

276 See the outline of foundherentism in Chapter 1.

according to the first three criteria with a theory somewhat less warranted according to the three first criteria, but fulfilling the fourth criterion (women preferred it, for whatever reason).

There is thus a moral problem connected with this move. In addition there is, as suggested, an epistemological problem:²⁷⁷ Why does women’s situation make them privileged reasoners in all cases? Why is adding this fourth criterion generally truth-functional, i.e. what is the epistemological justification for transforming the truth-idealization?

To consider women’s epistemological privilege as a more or less well-founded hypothesis to be scrutinized by men and women as equal reason-givers and reason-takers, is to subscribe to a norm of equal intellectual authority. This would imply, however, that women’s privilege would not in fact be considered as general; the privilege would be granted if there were good enough reasons to do so, and would not imply any reconstruction of the truth-idealization.

The prescription would, rather, be in accordance with the truth-idealization as elaborated in Chapter 2, and it is unclear why one would refer to it as a precription of an alternative (feminist standpoint) epistemology.