Abstract

A great deal of feminist research challenges the ideal of scientific objectivity and advocates scientific pluralism. Pluralism is often equated with an ?anything goes? attitude that undermines normative epistemology. The perceived tension between pluralism and normativity is a consequence of the rationalist conceptual vocabulary, which defines knowledge in propositional terms. Building on an analogy between scientific knowledge and the familiarity developed through interpersonal relationships, I develop a conception of knowledge that is simultaneously pluralistic and normative