Helen Longino

The proposal of anything like a feminist epistemology has, I think, two sources. Feminist scholars have demonstrated how the scientific cards have been stacked against women for centuries. Given that the sciences are taken as the epitome of knowledge and rationality in modern Western societies, the game looks desperate unless some ways of knowing different from those that have validated misogyny and gynephobia can be found. Can we know the world without hating ourselves? This is one of the questions at the core of discussions of feminist epistemology. It has spinoffs, e.g., can we know the world in ways that will permit women as well as men to thrive? Can we know the world without hating any human group? and so on. Now, these questions might be answered in a way that does not require any rethinking of fundamental philosophical issues. Some philosophers might argue that sexism in the sciences from Aristotle to human sociobiology results from a masculinist blinding that impedes the normal workings of the human cognitive apparatus. Unblinded, that apparatus produces real knowledge rather than ideology. Or: that was then, this is now. This somewhat overestimates the progress made in the sciences in the last 20 years, but can be read as a promissory note.

Feminist scholars advocate the adoption of distinctive values in research. While this constitutes a coherent alternative to the more frequently cited cognitive or scientific values, they cannot be taken to supplant those more orthodox values. Instead, each set might better be understood as a local epistemology guiding research answerable to different cognitive goals. Feminist scholars advocate the adoption of distinctive values in research. While this constitutes a coherent alternative to the more frequently cited cognitive or scientific values, they cannot be taken to supplant those more orthodox values. Instead, each set might better be understood as a local epistemology guiding research answerable to different cognitive goals.

Using the author's social analysis of scientific knowledge, two ways of understanding the importance of gender to the philosophy of science are offered. Given a requirement of openness to multiple critical perspectives, the gender, race and class structure of a scientific community are an important ingredient of its epistemic reliability. Secondly, one can ask whether a gender sensitive scientific community might prefer certain evaluative criteria (or virtues of theory or practice) to others. Six such criteria (several of which are at odds with criteria accepted in mainstream science) are discussed. Their articulation prompts a series of philosophical questions, the answering of which would constitute one program (or more) of a gender sensitive philosophy of science.

Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science? Scientific Pluralism demonstrates the viability of the view that some phenomena require multiple accounts. Pluralists observe that scientists present various—sometimes even incompatible—models of the world and argue that this is due to the complexity of the world and representational limitations. Including investigations in biology, physics, economics, psychology, and mathematics, this work provides an empirical basis for a consistent stance on pluralism and makes the case that it should change the ways that philosophers, historians, and social scientists analyze scientific knowledge. Contributors: John Bell, U of Western Ontario; Michael Dickson, U of South Carolina; Carla Fehr, Iowa State U; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Geoffrey Hellman, U of Minnesota; Alan Richardson, U of British Columbia; C. Wade Savage, U of Minnesota; Esther-Mirjam Sent, U of Nijmegen. Stephen H. Kellert is professor of philosophy at Hamline University and a fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. Helen E. Longino is professor of philosophy at Stanford University. C. Kenneth Waters is associate professor of philosophy and director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.

Rationality and reason are topics so fraught for feminists that any useful reflection on them requires some prior exploration of the difficulties they have caused. One of those difficulties for feminists and, I suspect, for others in the margins of modernity, is the rhetoric of reason – the ways reason is bandied about as a qualification differentially bestowed on different types of person. Rhetorically, it functions in different ways depending on whether it is being denied or affirmed. In this paper, I want to explore these rhetorics of reason as they are considered in the work of two feminist philosophers. I shall draw on their work for some suggestions about how to think about rationality, and begin to use those suggestions to develop a constructive account that withstands the rhetorical temptations

Predictions about the health risks of low level radiation combine two sorts of measures. One estimates the amount and kinds of radiation released into the environment, and the other estimates the adverse health effects. A new field called health physics integrates and applies nuclear physics to cytology to supply both these estimates. It does so by first determining the kinds of effects different types of radiation produce in biological organisms, and second, by monitoring the extent of these effects produced by given levels of exposure. This essay examines the interplay between evidential constraints and external, contextual interests and values in studying the biological hazards of radiation. By analyzing the debate over linear vs. quadratic dose response models, the essay focuses on problems of developing quantitative, rather than qualitative, estimates of the risks of increased cancer incidence in an exposed population.

This paper is a discussion of the nature of inferring and focusses on the relation between reasons for belief and causes of belief. Two standard approaches to the analysis of inference, the epistemological and the psychological, are identified and discussed. While both approaches incorporate insights concerning, inference, counterexamples show that neither provides by itself an adequate account. A third account is developed and recommended on the grounds that it encompasses the essential insights of the rejected analyses while being immune to their counterexamples. On this account coming to believe for a reason is taken to be central to our concept of inferring, but a causal relation holds between taking something to be a reason and belief.