In Science as Social Knowledge in 1990 and The Fate of Knowledge in 2002, Helen Longino develops an epistemological theory known as Critical Contextual Empiricism (CCE). Knowledge production, she argues, is an active, value-laden practice, evidence is context dependent and relies on background assumptions, and science is a social inquiry that, under certain conditions, produces social knowledge with contextual objectivity. While Longino’s work has been generally well-received, there have been a number of criticisms of CCE raised in (...) the philosophical literature in recent years. In this paper I outline the key elements of Longino’s theory and propose modifications to the four norms offered by the account. The version of CCE I defend, which draws on lessons learned by medical researchers in recent years, gives principles of epistemic diversity a central role and also provides greater specification of three of the four norms. Further, it offers additional resources for defending CCE against Alvin Goldman’s suggestion that there is a need for a “healthy dogmatism” in science, as well as a concern about “manufactured uncertainty” arising out of recent work by David Michaels. Finally, the modified version proposed here is also well positioned to respond (negatively) to a suggestion from Kristen Intemann that CCE needs to be adapted to incorporate a central insight from feminist standpoint theory. In light of the variety of social pressures influencing contemporary scientific research, and the role of science in shaping public policy, I argue that a rigorous social epistemology such as CCE is indispensable for understanding and assessing contemporary scientific practice. (shrink)

What are philosophers doing when they prescribe a particular epistemology for science? According to science and technology studies, the answer to this question implicates both knowledge and politics, even when the latter is hidden. Exploring this dynamic via a specific case, I argue that Longino’s “critical contextual empiricism” ultimately relies on a form of political liberalism. Her choice to nevertheless foreground epistemological concerns can be clarified by considering historical relationships between science and society, as well as the culture (...) of academic philosophy. This example, I conclude, challenges philosophers of science to consider the political ideals and accountability entailed by their prescribed knowledge practices. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers have discussed the prospects for assessing values empirically, particularly given the ongoing threat of sexism and other oppressive values influencing science and society. Some advocates of such tests now champion a “values as evidence” approach, and they criticize Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism for not holding values to the same level of empirical scrutiny as other claims. In this paper, we defend contextual empiricism by arguing that many of these criticisms are based on mischaracterizations of (...) Longino’s position, overstatements of certain claims, and false dichotomies. Her contextual empiricism not only allows for the empirical support and disconfirmation of values, but Longino explicitly discusses when values can be empirically adjudicated and emphasizes the crucial role of the community for standards of evidence. We support contextual empiricism and elaborate a less direct account of “values as heuristics” by reviewing Longino’s theory of evidence and then using a case study from Elisabeth Lloyd on the biology of female orgasm, demonstrating the disconfirmation of androcentric values in evolutionary science. Within Longino’s and Lloyd’s contextual empiricism, values do not get treated as empirical evidence to be directly assessed by individuals, but rather values are heuristic tools to build models whose use can be validated or invalidated by communities based on their empirical fruitfulness in the logic and pragmatics of research questions in specific historical and cultural contexts. (shrink)

Amending and Defending Critical Contextual Empiricism: Lessons from Medical Research In Science as Social Knowledge (1990) and The Fate of Knowledge (2002), Helen Longino develops a social epistemological theory known as Critical Contextual Empiricism (CCE). While Longino’s work has been generally well-received, there have been a number of criticisms of CCE raised in the philosophical literature in recent years. In this paper I outline the key elements of Longino’s theory and propose several modifications to the four (...) norms offered by the account. The revisions I propose are shaped by a number of developments in the medical context in recent years. The modified norms, which determined whether a particular community produces objective knowledge, are thus: 1. Avenues for Criticism – there must be recognized avenues for criticism, and these avenues must be publicly accessible and require transparent disclosure of all relevant information (including competing interests) from those who present their ideas. It must also be a community requirement that all members present their ideas for critical scrutiny if they wish them to be recognized as knowledge. 2. Responsiveness to Criticism – the community must be responsive to criticism. 3. Shared Public Standards – there must be some shared standards that determine community membership. Outsiders to a particular community are welcome to engage in critical debates as long as they share at least one of the community standards with the target community. 4. Cultivation of Diverse Perspectives – communities must cultivate diverse perspectives, that is, the perspectives of those who express strong dissent. The version of CCE I defend gives the principle of diversity a more central role than the original and provides greater specification of two of the other norms in light of challenges faced by medical researchers in recent years. The medical context provides us with a number of cautionary tales in which knowledge production that appears to meet the original four norms has been seriously compromised by particular social interests. The proposed modifications attempt to address these ‘loopholes’ in a way that is not ad hoc. I argue that the modifications I suggest are in line with the underlying assumptions and goals of CCE. The modified version of CCE also offers resources for defending CCE against the criticisms leveled against it by Miriam Solomon & Alan Richardson, Alvin Goldman and Philip Kitcher as well as one general concern arising out of a recent work by David Michaels. I provide responses to these criticisms in the final section of the paper. Throughout the paper I connect the theoretical work done in social epistemology to the real practice of knowledge-production as is occurs in the medical context. In light of the variety of social pressures influencing contemporary scientific research, and the role of science in shaping public policy, I argue that a rigorous social epistemology such as CCE is indispensable for understanding and assessing contemporary scientific practice. (shrink)

I identify and resolve an internal tension in Critical Contextual Empiricism (CCE) – the normative account of science developed by Helen Longino. CCE includes two seemingly conflicting principles: on one hand, the cognitive goals of epistemic communities should be open to critical discussion (the openness of goals to criticism principle, OGC); on the other hand, criticism must be aligned with the cognitive goals of that community to count as “relevant” and thus require a response (the goal-relativity of response-requiring (...) criticism principle, GRC). The co-existence of OGC and GRC enables one to draw both approving and condemning judgments about a situation in which an epistemic community ignores criticism against its goals. This tension results from conflating two contexts of argumentation that require different regulative standards. In the first-level scientific discussion, GRC is a reasonable principle but OGC is not; in the meta-level discussion about science, the reverse holds. In meta-level discussion, the relevance of criticism can be established by appealing to goals of science that are more general than the goals of a specific epistemic community. To illustrate my revision of CCE, I discuss why feminist economists’ criticism of the narrowness of the goals pursued in mainstream economics is relevant criticism. (shrink)

Helen Longino’s “contextual empiricism” is one of the most sophisticated recent attempts to defend a social theory of science. On this view, objectivity and epistemic acceptability require that research be produced within communities that approximate a Millian marketplace of ideas. I argue, however, that Longino’s embedding of her epistemology within the framework of Mill’s political liberalism implies a conception of individual epistemic agents that is incompatible with her view that scientific knowledge is necessarily social, and I begin to (...) articulate an alternative conception that is better suited to a truly social theory of science. †To contact the author, please write to: School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, 685 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332‐0345; e‐mail: justinbiddle@pubpolicy.gatech.edu. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to uncover some of the limitations that critical contextual empiricism, and in particular Longino's contextualism, faces when trying to provide a normative account of scientific knowledge that is relevant to current scientific research. After presenting the four norms of effective criticism, I show how the norms have limited scope when dealing with cases of current scientific practices. I then present some historical evidence for the claim that the organization of science has changed (...) in recent decades, and I argue that the uncovered limitations emerge from this larger phenomenon. Finally, I conclude by suggesting two ways to overcome the previously uncovered limitations. (shrink)

: A central claim of Longino's contextual empiricism is that scientific inquiry, even when "properly conducted", lacks the capacity to screen out the influence of contextual values on its results. I'll show first that Longino's attack against the epistemic integrity of science suffers from fatal empirical weaknesses. Second I'll explain why Longino's practical proposition for suppressing biases in science, drawn from her contextual empiricism, is too demanding and, therefore, unable to serve its purpose. Finally, drawing (...) on Bourdieu's sociological analysis of scientific communities, I'll sketch an alternative view of scientific practice reconciling a thoroughly social view of science (such as Longino's) with a defense of its epistemic integrity. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have become increasingly concerned with the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. The general aim of the paper is to show that approaches in social epistemology of science fail to take into account important changes that the organization of science has undergone in the past decades. I argue that the social organization of science is an important “social dimension” of scientific knowledge that philosophers need to consider. In order to do so, I focus on Helen Longino’s social epistemology (...) of science as portrayed in her critical contextual empiricism. I show that Longino’s approach has important limitations when trying to implement it as a guide for current research through an evaluation of two of her norms of effective criticism. (shrink)

هدف این پژوهش بررسی معرفت‌شناختی خروجی‏های هوش مصنوعی در برابر پرسش‏های علمی است. با توجه به اینکه در هوش مصنوعی، از اطلاعات و داده‏های متخصصان و دانشمندان برای یادگیری استفاده می‏شود؛ ممکن است این تصور پدید آید که می‏توان خروجی‏های به‌دست‌آمده در برابر پرسش‏های علمی را نوعی گواهی گروهی در نظر گرفت. این پژوهش با استفاده از روش تحلیلی-انتقادی دیدگاه‏های موجود را مورد ارزیابی قرار می‏دهد که در این راستا از رویکرد تجربه‏گراییِ انتقادیِ زمینه‏ایِ هلن لانجینو استفاده ‏شده است. نتایج (...) پژوهش حاضر نشان می‏دهد رویکردهای سنتی و ابزاری امکان بررسی خروجی هوش مصنوعی تحت عنوان گواهی را ندارند. رویکرد شبه-گواهی بر معرفت‏شناسی اجتماعی جریان اصلی متکی است که بررسی‏ها نشان می‏دهد استدلال‏ها و انتقادات این رویکرد بر پایه شناخت روند تولید دانش علمی استوار نیست. دیگر نتایج پژوهش نشان می‏دهند که کماکان خروجی هوش مصنوعی در برابر پرسش‏های علمی را نمی‏توان گواهی گروهی متخصصان دانست و اصطلاح «باور مبتنی بر تکنولوژی» بهتر آن را تبیین می‏کند. (shrink)

Constructive empiricism implies that if van Fraassen does not believe that scientific theories and his positive philosophical theories, including his contextual theory of explanation, are empirically adequate, he cannot accept them, and hence he cannot use them for scientific and philosophical purposes. Moreover, his epistemic colleagues, who embrace epistemic reciprocalism, would not believe that his positive philosophical theories are empirically adequate. This epistemic disadvantage comes with practical disadvantages in a social world.

Inspired by Helen Longino’s ‘critical contextual empiricism’, in this paper I argue that art arises from social epistemic procedures that encompass both aesthetic functions and institutional practices. Within these procedures, aesthetic functions are developed, validated, and enforced through institutional practices, rather than being solely tied to the artistic outcomes of those practices. I call this approach ‘critical contextual aestheticism’.

Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge has a strictly observational basis. Rationalism is the doctrine that least some knowledge has non-observational, purely conceptual basis. In the present work, empiricism is carefully considered and found to have four dire shortcomings: -/- (1) Empiricism cannot account for our knowledge of what doesn't exist, let alone what cannot exist. -/- (2) Empiricism cannot account for our knowledge of dependence-relations, given (1), coupled with the fact that 'P depends on (...) Q' is equivalent with 'not-Q either necessitates or is dispositive of not-P.' -/- (3) Empiricism cannot account for our knowledge of the past, the future, or the possible, given (2), coupled with the fact knowledge of any of these domains requires knowledge of conditional truths (truths of the form "if P, then Q") and therefore of dependence-relations. -/- (4) Empiricism cannot by itself apprise us of any truths, given (3), coupled with the fact that knowledge of conditional truths is necessary to recognize the truths implicit in any body of sensory data. -/- The arguments of key empiricists are closely examined. Special attention is paid to George Berkeley's arguments for idealism ('to be is to be perceive/conceived'). It is shown that, although Berkeley's arguments fail, profound insights are embedded in the very sophisms that vitiate those same arguments, the three most important ones being: -/- (i) That data-modelling and truth-identification at least sometimes coalesce, -/- (ii) That scientific theories are at least sometimes capable of being represented as interpreted formal calculi, and -/- (iii) That when theoretical terms are defined contextually, as opposed to directly, otherwise unintelligible assertions acquire scientific significance. -/- Further, it is shown that, even though Berkeley's arguments for idealism fall through, he himself deserves credit for identifying the principle in terms of which the fallacies in those arguments are to be understood, namely: -/- (*) It is not sensory experience alone that yields awareness of the outside world, but sensory experience coupled with awareness on the subject's part of relational invariances holding among the objects of those awareness. -/- Thus, perceptual knowledge is knowledge of invariances. And, to make a point hinted at in Berkeley's work, knowledge of laws is meta-perceptual knowledge, given that laws of nature are invariances holding among the invariances holding among the objects of perception. (shrink)

Over the past twenty-five years, numerous articles in Hypatia have clarified, revised, and defended increasingly more nuanced views of both feminist empiricism and standpoint feminism. Feminist empiricists have argued that scientific knowledge is contextual and socially situated (Longino 1990; Nelson 1990; Anderson 1995), and standpoint feminists have begun to endorse virtues of theory choice that have been traditionally empiricist (Wylie 2003). In fact, it is unclear whether substantive differences remain. I demonstrate that current versions of feminist empiricism (...) and standpoint feminism now have much in common but that key differences remain. Specifically, they make competing claims about what is required for increasing scientific objectivity. They disagree about 1) the kind of diversity within scientific communities that is epistemically beneficial and 2) the role that ethical and political values can play. In these two respects, feminist empiricists have much to gain from the resources provided by standpoint theory. As a result, the views would be best merged into “feminist standpoint empiricism.”. (shrink)

Bilimsel faaliyetin ve bilimsel bilginin en temel özelliklerinden bir tanesi olarak karşımıza çıkan bilimsel nesnellik bilim felsefesi alanı içerisinde sıklıkla tartışılan bir konu olagelmiştir. Bu doğrultuda, bilimsel nesnelliğin temin edilmesine yönelik çeşitli görüşler ileri sürülmektedir. Genel olarak bilimsel nesnellik bilim insanlarının çalışmalarında olguları doğrudan yansıtması ya da bilim insanlarının çalışmalarını tarafsız bir bakış açısıyla tamamlaması olarak anlaşılmaktadır. Bu görüşlerin bilim felsefesi içerisindeki yansımaları sırasıyla olgulara bağlılık olarak nesnellik ve hiçbir yerden bakış olarak nesnellik isimleriyle olmuştur. Bu bakış açısı, kişisel çıkarların (...) ve değerlerin bilimsel çalışmalardan izole edilmesi sayesinde bilimsel nesnelliğin sağlanabileceğini kabul etmektedir. Diğer bir deyişle, bilimler değerlerden bağımsız olduğu takdirde nesnel olabilmektedirler. Bu görüşe karşı olarak, Helen Longino gibi bilim insanları ise değerleri bilimsel nesnelliğin bir gerekliliği olarak görmektedirler. Bu çalışmada, özellikle değerlerin göz ardı edilmesiyle bilimsel nesnelliğin gerçekleştirilmesinin mümkün olamayacağını vurgulan Helen Longino’nun “bağlamsal deneycilik” olarak bilinen görüşlerine yer verilmektedir. Buna göre Longino, bilimsel araştırmanın toplumsal yönlerini göz önünde bulundurarak değerden bağımsız ideali tamamen reddetmektedir. O değer yüklü bir bilimin hem bilgi kuramsal açıdan hem de nesnellik açısından güvenilir olabileceğini düşünmektedir. -/- Scientific objectivity, which is one of the most basic features of scientific activity and scientific knowledge, is a subject that is frequently discussed in the field of philosophy of science. In this direction, various views are put forward to ensure scientific objectivity. In general, scientific objectivity is understood as scientists reflecting the facts as they are in their studies or scientists completing their studies with an impartial point of view. The reflections of these views in the philosophy of science were respectively called objectivity as faithfulness to facts and objectivity as a view from nowhere. This perspective recognizes that scientific objectivity can be achieved by isolating personal interests and values from scientific studies. In other words, sciences can only be objective if they are value-free. Against this view, scientists such as Helen Longino see values as a necessity of scientific objectivity. In this study, Helen Longino's views known as "contextual empiricism" are included. Accordingly, it is emphasized that it is not possible to realize scientific objectivity by ignoring values. Longino completely rejects the value-free ideal, considering the social aspects of scientific research. She thinks that a value-laden science can be reliable both in terms of epistemology and objectivity. (shrink)

Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki are two of the most prominent Canadian public ‎intellectuals ‎involved in the global warming debate. They both argue that anthropogenic global ‎warming is ‎occurring, warn against its grave consequences, and urge governments and the ‎public to take ‎immediate, decisive, extensive, and profound measures to prevent it. They differ, ‎however, in the ‎reasons and evidence they provide in support of their position. While Suzuki ‎stresses the scientific ‎evidence in favour of the global warming theory and the (...) scientific ‎consensus around it, Atwood is ‎suspicious of the objectivity of science, and draws on an ‎idiosyncratic neo-Malthusian theory of ‎human development. Their implicit views ‎about the cognitive authority of science may be ‎identified with Critical Contextual Empiricism ‎and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology, respectively, ‎both of which face difficulties with ‎providing solid grounds for the position they advocate.‎ ‎. (shrink)

This paper considers Newton’s position on gravity’s cause, both conceptually and historically. With respect to the historical question, I argue that while Newton entertained various hypotheses about gravity’s cause, he never endorsed any of them, and in particular, his lack of confidence in the hypothesis of robust and unmediated distant action by matter is explained by an inclination toward certain metaphysical principles. The conceptual problem about gravity’s cause, which I identified earlier along with a deeper problem about individuating substances, is (...) that a decisive conclusion is impossible unless certain speculative aspects of his empiricism are abandoned. In this paper, I situate those conceptual problems in Newton’s natural philosophy. They arise from ideas that push empiricism to potentially self-defeating limits, revealing the danger of allowing immaterial spirits any place in natural philosophy, especially spatially extended spirits supposed capable of co-occupying place with material bodies. Yet because their source ideas are speculative, Newton’s method ensures that these problems pose no threat to his rational mechanics or the profitable core of his empiricism. They are easily avoided by avoiding their source ideas, and when science emerges from natural philosophy, it does so with an ontology unencumbered by immaterial spirits. (shrink)

This paper examines cases in which an individual’s misunderstanding improves the scientific community’s understanding through “corrective” processes that produce understanding from poor epistemic inputs. To highlight the unique features of valuable misunderstandings and corrective processes, we contrast them with other social-epistemological phenomena including testimonial understanding, collective understanding, Longino’s critical contextual empiricism, and knowledge from falsehoods.

Faced with anti-foundationalist revisionism on part of recent Vienna Circle scholarship, veterans of the struggle against the so-called dogmas of logical empiricism could be forgiven were they to fail to recognize their old adversaries. Clearly everything depends on how the logical empiricists are read: their record does not speak for itself. That already in their day the logical empiricists faced the declaredly friendly fire that nearly sealed their fate suggests, however, that the reconstructive explication and contextualization required be exceedingly (...) subtle. For if that fire really missed its target, then what was missed was something that escaped notice from close quarter. Perhaps no one of the logical empiricists places more challenging demands of this sort on their historiographers than the longest-surviving senior member of the Vienna Circle, Rudolf Carnap. (shrink)

This article aims to challenge the thesis of the craft origins of scientific empiricism by demonstrating how the empirical practices of early experimentalism differed in significant ways from the activities of artisans. Through a phenomenological analysis of instrumental observation and experimental demonstrations, I aim to show how experimentalism privileged modes of experience that were foreign to craft traditions and which facilitated a newfound estrangement of human subjects from the objects of their knowledge. Firstly, we will review concerns surrounding the (...) promotion of optical instruments by early experimentalists to reveal how these technologies were understood not only to amplify the senses but also to obscure contextual and relative qualities available to unaided visual perception. Secondly, we will examine the experimental practices of the early Royal Society, to see how experimental demonstrations were deliberately structured to facilitate experiences of the natural world that were divorced from practical and personal contexts. It is here that the divergence from artisanal epistemology is rendered most apparent. For in contrast to craft practices, which favored forms of experience which were personal and engaged, I will argue that the new scientific practices of the 17th century played a central role in effecting the researcher's transformation into a new kind of epistemological subject – the spectator. (shrink)

Solomon has made the case, in Social Empicism (2001) for socially naturalized analysis of the dynamics of scientific inquiry that takes seriously two critical insights: that scientific rationality is contingent, disunified, and socially emergent; and that scientific progress is often fostered by factors traditionally regarded as compromising sources of bias. While elements of this framework are widely shared, Solomon intends it to be more resolutely social, more thoroughly naturalizing, and more ambitiously normative than other contextualizing epistemologies currently on offer. Four (...) focal issues are addressed in the commentaries that follow: Solomon's characterization of empirical success as a goal of science (Clough); her distinction between empirical and non-empirical decision vectors and the viability of the multivariate analysis she proposes for assessing epistemic fairness in their distribution (Clough; Richardson); the plausibility of her thesis that normatively appropriate consensus is a (rare) limiting case rather than an intrinsically desirable outcome of inquiry (Oreskes; Richardson); and her conviction that a socially naturalized analysis of science can ground norms of scientific rationality (Longino; Oreskes). (shrink)

Summarizes author’s contextual empiricism and uses it to analyze the difference between neuro-endocrinological accounts of presumed behavioral sex differences and neuro-selectionist accounts. Contextual empiricism is a philosophical approach that both shows how feminist critique works in the sciences and makes a contribution to general philosophy of science.

I investigate the reciprocal relationship between social accounts of knowledge production and efforts to increase the representation of women and some minorities in the academy. In particular, I consider the extent to which feminist social epistemologies such as Helen Longino’s critical contextual empiricism can be employed to argue that it is in researchers’ epistemic interests to take active steps to increase gender diversity. As it stands, critical contextual empiricism does not provide enough resources to succeed at (...) this task. However, considering this view through an employment equity lens highlights areas where such theories need to be further developed. I argue that views such as Longino’s ought to attend to nuances of community structure and cultural features that inhibit critical social interactions, if we are to maximize the epistemic as well as the ethical improvements associated with a social approach to knowing. These developments advance these epistemic theories for their own sake. They also help develop these theories into a tool that can be used by those calling for increased diversity in the academy. (shrink)

It's a mistake to afflict upon on our best theories a single, uniform interpretation meant to apply in all circumstance. It's a mistake because it impedes the capacity of those theories to function as science. To refrain from the mistake is to adopt the locavore hypothesis: the same theory can merit different interpretations in different circumstances. Using quantum mechanics as an example, I argue for the locavore hypothesis, and examine its consequences not only for the scientific realism debate but also (...) for our notion of scientific understanding. (shrink)

The value-freedom of scientific knowledge is commonly hold to be a necessary condition for objectivity. Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism aims to overcome this connection. She questions the suitability of the normative ideal of value-freedom and develops an alternative conception of objectivity, which integrates social and epistemic aspects of scientific enquiry. The function of this notion of ‘social objectivity’ is to make value-laden assumptions assessable through a process of criticism, even if there cannot be any guarantee of their elimination. (...) This assessability requires common standards of evaluation, which are threatened by Longino’s rejection of the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive values guiding theory choice. I will argue that in order to resolve this inherent tension, social objectivity has to be understood as based on a procedural epistemology and, differing from Longino’s own approach, must include the normative requirement to strive for consensus instead of allowing for epistemological pluralism. (shrink)

Lloyd analyzes every proposed evolutionary explanation of female orgasm and argues that all but one suffers from serious evidential errors. Lloyd attributes these errors to two main biases: androcentrism and adaptationism. This paper begins by arguing that the explanation Lloyd favors—the by-product account—is guilty of the androcentrism which supposedly implicates the other explanations of female orgasm with numerous evidential discrepancies. This suggests that there is another error afflicting orgasm research in addition to the biases Lloyd identities. I attempt to diagnose (...) and characterize this additional error. In short, I think the error is using an imprecise definition of the trait in question. Further, Lloyd takes her analysis to support Longino’s contextual empiricist model of scientific objectivity. I consider what implications this analysis has for contextual empiricism. Finally, I argue that theorizing about female orgasm should be done from a conceptual engineering approach. (shrink)

In this paper I develop and support a feminist virtue epistemology and bring it into conversation with feminist contextual empiricism and feminist standpoint theory. The virtue theory I develop is centered on the virtue of epistemic trustworthiness, which foregrounds the social/political character of knowledge practices and products, and the differences between epistemic agencies that perpetuate, on the one hand, and displace, on the other hand, normative patterns of unjust epistemic discrimination. I argue that my view answers important questions (...) regarding epistemic agency which both contextual empiricism and standpoint theory leave open, but need to have answered. Feminist virtue epistemology thus emerges as providing an integrative framework for pluralism in feminist epistemology that illuminated connections among theories through engagement with the lived experiences, aspirations, and epistemic work of feminist epistemic agents. (shrink)

InScience as Social Knowledge, Helen Longino offers a contextual analysis of evidential relevance. She claims that this “contextual empiricism” reconciles the objectivity of science with the claim that science is socially constructed. I argue that while her account does offer key insights into the role that values play in science, her claim that science is nonetheless objective is problematic.

I submit that epistemic progress in key areas of contemporary academic philosophy has been compromised by politically correct ideology. First, guided by an evolutionary account of ideology, results from social and cognitive psychology and formal philosophical methods, I expose evidence for political bias in contemporary Western academia and sketch a formalization for the contents of beliefs from the PC worldview taken to be of core importance, the theory of social oppression and the thesis of anthropological mental egalitarianism. Then, aided by (...) discussions from contemporary epistemology on epistemic values, I model the problem of epistemic appraisal using the frameworks of multi-objective optimization theory and multi-criteria decision analysis and apply it to politically correct philosophy. I conclude that philosophy guided by politically correct values is bound to produce constructs that are less truth-conducive and that spurious values which are ideologically motivated should be abandoned. Objections to my framework stemming from contextual empiricism, the feminine voice in ethics and political philosophy are considered. I conclude by prescribing the epistemic value of empirical adequacy, the contextual value of political diversity and the moral virtue of moral courage to reverse unwarranted trends in academic philosophy due to PC ideology. (shrink)

Over the last three decades the role of social values in science has been the topic issue in the disputes of the philosophers of science against the representatives of science studies. Due to the key status of sciences in developed countries and societies it is necessary, so the author, not only to acknowledge, that cognitive and epistemic practices have their social dimensions, but also to make the practices of the research communities themselves open for critical examination from different perspectives. In (...) the paper the author presents her own theory of the critical contextual empiricism, comparing it with the approach of the American philosopher Philip Kitcher. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I investigate the recent debate about the unity, or disunity, of science and I show that some of the claims made on both sides are in need of refinement and defense. My first line of criticism concerns the legitimacy of the use of metaphysical considerations in the debate. I emphasize the often ambiguous status of antireductionist arguments and I contend that such arguments are convincing only as 'temporally qualified' arguments, whose validity depends on our state of knowledge, (...) but not as 'generally valid' arguments, that is, valid in virtue of how the world is. I also challenge the general strategy that consists in deriving metaphysical lessons from the failure of reductionism. I propose in particular an argument against Cartwright's metaphysical contention about the world being 'dappled', drawn from her attack against "horizontal" reductionism. The core of my argument is that the very notion of orderliness must be relativized to the capacities and interests of knowers. ;Another line of criticism concerns pluralist attacks against the epistemic integrity of science, which often go hand in hand with its contextualization. Charges against epistemic integrity have been developed in particular by feminist philosophers of science. I focus on one of the most worked-out and influential of these feminist standpoints: Helen Longino's contextual empiricism. I first challenge Longino's claim that cases of gender-biased science cannot be simply discarded as mere cases of "bad science" . Second, I explain why Longino's proposition for suppressing biases is too demanding and why there are serious grounds to be skeptical about its ability to serve its purpose. Finally, I propose a revised version of feminist empiricism that incorporates some of Longino's insight, and I argue for its superiority in terms of relative efficiency toward the fulfillment of the feminist agenda. ;In the concluding part of my dissertation, I investigate the relevance of the unity/disunity debate to the practice of scientists and to the authority conferred to science in our societies today. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop an engaged understanding of objectivity, or good knowledge practices. I argue that for knowledge practices to be good, they must both be truth-conducive and engaged, that is, explicitly implicated in the critical appraisal of background values and assumptions. I pursue this argument in six stages. First, I consider work in epistemology that countenances a place for values in objectivity. I conclude from this that truth-conduciveness is not sufficient for objectivity, and that a social approach to (...) knowledge is called for. Second, I consider standpoint theory, a prominent feminist approach to objectivity. This allows me to show the possible insights available to marginalized perspectives, while indicating that this will be a component of rather than itself offering an account of objectivity. Third, I consider a more comprehensive approach in Helen Longino's critical contextual empiricism, which locates objectivity in the social features of inquiry. Her approach is promising, but requires the insights of early phenomenology in order to develop that potential. I develop the phenomenological framework in Chapter 4, where I consider Husserlian phenomenology. Fifth, I bring the insights of phenomenology to the challenges presented by critical contextual empiricism, and develop my positive view, critical phenomenological objectivity. On this view, inquiry is objective when individuals and communities foster critical perspectives, seek transformative epistemic experiences, build coalitions, foster diversity, and pursue empirical adequacy. In the final chapter, I consider a case study that enables me to defend the merit and warrant of these features of objectivity. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the recent demands for diversifying economics, often advanced under the rubric of pluralism. The dissertation aims at illuminating questions that are foundational to this debate and thereby promoting the resolution of the disagreements. The focus is on the question of whether economics should be open to a wide range of methodological approaches, theoretical frameworks, schools of thought, and so on, in a way that would make the current relatively uniform mainstream approach to economics one among others. The (...) question is considered from the perspective of empirically informed philosophy of science. This approach combines the traditional tools of philosophy, such as critical examination of arguments and concepts, with a multifaceted understanding of science achieved by drawing on sociological, historical and economic research on science. -/- The dissertation consists of four research articles and an introductory essay. Three of these articles examine three corresponding epistemic benefits that increased diversity of approaches and perspectives may be expected to produce. These benefits are the stimulation of inquiry, the reliability of knowledge produced, and the comprehensiveness of attainable knowledge. Each benefit may be used as a premise in arguing that economics should be more diverse than it currently is. Of these three articles, two use Helen Longino’s Critical Contextual Empiricism as the theoretical framework. The fourth article examines the flipside of the benefits, namely, the various costs that securing the benefits may require or that may emerge as side-effects of diversity. -/- This study finds that all the arguments for pluralism examined face challenges. The most pressing challenge is that these arguments often presuppose views about the goals of economics without explicitly arguing for them. While plurality may have certain effects on the knowledge produced by economics, whether these effects are desirable depends on the kinds of epistemic outputs one thinks economics should deliver. However, there is no universal agreement on this. There is no uncontested Common Good against which to measure what changes are improvements. Arguments which do not confront this reality are unlikely to gain wide support. Thus this study highlights the urgency of openly discussing the research agenda and overall aims of the discipline, and helps articulate the views involved in such a discussion by developing suitable conceptual tools. -/- Nevertheless, the most substantial challenges are only faced by views according to which fundamental reform in economics is needed; economics would plausibly benefit from a moderate shift towards openness to non-mainstream approaches and perspectives. At the end, the desirability of a shift towards more intellectual diversity in economics is a matter of costs and benefits. The more modest variations of pluralism one considers, the more likely it is that the benefits outweigh the costs. (shrink)

I examine how Heather Douglas’ account of values in science applies to the assessment of actual cases of scientific practice. I focus on the case of applied toxicologists’ acceptance of molecular evidence-gathering methods and evidential sources. I demonstrate that a set of social and institutional processes plays a philosophically significant role in changing toxicologists’ inductive risk judgments about different kinds of evidence. I suggest that Douglas’ inductive risk framework can be integrated with a suitable account of evidence, such as Helen (...) Longino’s contextual empiricism, to address the role of social context in the cases like the one examined here. I introduce such an integrated account and show how Longino’s contextual empiricism and inductive risk framework fruitfully complement each other in analyzing the novel aspects of the toxicology case. (shrink)

To make more responsible decisions regarding risk and to understand disagreements and controversies in risk assessments, it is important to know how and where values are infused into risk assessment and how they are embedded in the conclusions. In this article an attempt is made to disentangle the relationship of science and values in decision-making concerning the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment. This exercise in applied philosophy of science is based on Helen Longino's contextual (...) empiricism which attempts to reconcile the objectivity of science with its social and cultural construction. Longino distinguishes different levels of research on which values apparently contextual with respect to a given research program can shape the knowledge emerging from that program. Her scheme is applied for locating and identifying the values that affect environment risk assessments of the field experiments with GMOs. The article concludes with some provisional suggestions for the decision process and the role of scientists in it. (shrink)

In empiricism, there are only two answers for a question: black or white. Yet, subjective meanings of human behaviours and responses toward health and illness cannot be simply explained with black and white. Gray zones are needed because they are characterized by complexity and require a contextual understanding. In this paper, we present and suggest fuzzy logic as an example of theoretical bases that help transcend the conflicts between objectivity and subjectivity, respect gray zones between black and white (...) answers for questions, and provide a contextual understanding of complex nursing phenomenon. A historical review of fuzzy logic is followed by a definition of fuzzy logic. Then, fuzzy logic is discussed in terms of its compatibility with nursing epistemological views and philosophical thoughts. Fuzzy logic agrees with three categories of epistemological views of nursing, including correspondence, coherence and pragmatism. Fuzzy logic also agrees with four major philosophical thoughts in nursing, including postempiricism, pragmatism, feminism, and postmodernism. Based on the discussion, we propose that fuzzy logic be further explored, used and developed in research and practice in the nursing areas/situations/phenomena that are characterized by complexity, ambiguousness, and vagueness. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an appraisal of James Bogen and James Woodward’s distinction between data and phenomena which pursues two objectives. First, I aim to clarify the notion of a scientific phenomenon. Such a clarification is required because despite its intuitive plausibility it is not exactly clear how Bogen and Woodward’s distinction has to be understood. I reject one common interpretation of the distinction, endorsed for example by James McAllister and Bruce Glymour, which identifies phenomena with patterns in data (...) sets. Furthermore, I point out that other interpretations of Bogen and Woodward’s distinction do not specify the relationship between phenomena and theories in a satisfying manner. In order to avoid this problem I propose a contextual understanding of scientific phenomena according to which phenomena are states of affairs which play specific roles in scientific practice and to which we adopt a special epistemic attitude. Second, I evaluate the epistemological significance of Bogen and Woodward’s distinction with respect to the debate between scientific realists and constructive empiricists. Contrary to what Bogen and Woodward claim, I argue that the distinction does not provide a convincing argument against constructive empiricism. (shrink)

According to Husserl, Hume’s empirical method was deeply flawed—like all empiricists, Hume did not, and could not adequately justify his method, much less his findings. Instead, Hume gives us a “circular” and “irrational” “psychological explanation” of “mediate judgments of fact,” i.e. of inductive inferences. Yet Husserl was certain that he could justify both his own method and his own findings with an appeal to the phenomenological, pre-theoretical, pre-naturalistic “epoché”. However, whether or not Husserl’s notion of an epoché is justified, or (...) even viable, is not our focus here. Rather, our issue is with Hume, particularly: How could Hume have responded? In this paper, I show that in Book I of the Treatise, Hume did—however implicitly—appeal to a “pre-theoretical” notion of belief, which meets Husserl’s demands for a pre-theoretical grounding, i.e. a justificatory grounding. And so, his method is, at least in this respect, justified. But this belief is by no means “prenaturalistic.” Rather, it is a function of empirical data. In particular, it is a product of the “constant and coherent” impressions that seem to naturally obtain of experience. As a result, Hume’s method, which, in agreement with Husserl, we may characterize as psychology, does admit of a certain degree of regularity, but an empirical regularity. And according to Hume, contra Husserl’s complaints, this is the best that we can hope for; regularity will have to suffice, not certainty. However, it must be noted up front that this justification is implicit—Hume is not nearly as forthright as he could have been. Thus, making his position more explicit is the task of this paper. I am not presenting my own position, where I offer my own arguments. Instead, I present textual evidence, contextualized with ample explication. It is my hope that by doing so, Hume may more effectively make his case. (shrink)

This essay defines Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophical language criticism as materialistic. It takes up Max Beck’s discussion of Adorno’s critique of German metaphysical jargon in his paper “Jargon, Bullshit, sinnlos”. However, this essay argues for a twofold critique as being constitutive for Adorno’s approach: It is directed not only at Martin Heidegger’s ontological understanding of language but also at Logical Empiricism’s formalistic understanding of it. Beck’s claim of an affinity between the methods of Adorno and the Vienna Circle is (...) therefore questionable. The first part illuminates the philosophical significance of Adorno’s encounters with the Vienna protagonists. The second part discusses the differences between a formalistic and a materialistic approach: instead of excluding metaphysical expressions as meaningless, Adorno contextualizes them historically and socially. Thus Adorno criticizes early analytic philosophy’s reductive treatment of language and its rigorist understanding of enlightenment. The third part connects the critiques of formalism and of jargon by pointing to their own socio-historical embeddedness. Finally, it argues for the contemporary relevance of such twofold critique. (shrink)

A critique of modern empiricism, pressed ploddingly but capably from a renovated pragmatist standpoint. In Part I the author argues that a rigid distinction between the analytic and synthetic is presupposed by empiricism and yet leads to a conventionalism out of touch with experience. Part II attacks various attempts to base knowledge on of perceptual experience. The constructive position developed in Part III stresses the concept of experience as a plurality of contextual happenings, always involving formal and (...) nonformal elements; the formal structure is held to rest on conventions which should remain flexible, varying according to purposes. Though often clumsy, cluttered, and over-abstract, the discussion is informed and perceptive.--L. K. B. (shrink)

This first chapter locates crucial elements of James's notion of truth within James's 'The Will to Believe." James recognizes evidential criteria in the formation of belief, in contrast to a common claim that for him beliefs are generated in an evidential vacuum. Jamess view of evidence in "The Will to Believe" also stands as a pragmatic reappraisal of traditional epistemology, and such criteria are individualistic. But his treatment should not be taken as subjectivist, in the sense that personal whim or (...) desire always override evidential criteria in the formation of belief. Rather, James's view allows him to avoid both subjectivism and traditional evidentialism. The second chapter suggests that "The Will to Believe" also contains a notion of pluralism, which is intimately related to radical empiricism. James develops two levels of pluralism, individualistic and social. Whereas the first chapter concerns inquiry on an individual level, the second locates the individual within society. James's position on pluralism is also discussed briefly in relation to contemporary ethical theory. Perhaps James's most important notion is that of an "intellectual republic." Such a republic would emerge from a productive mediation between the two levels of pluralism outlined in the essay. In closing, it is suggested that the relationship between James and Josiah Royce illustrates James's ideal of such mediation. The third chapter develops notions of social inquiry hinted at by James within the more radically social philosophy of John Dewey. Following a brief discussion of Platonic assumptions regnant in contemporary discussions, Dewey's views are offered as an alternative to some unpalatable consequences of Platonism. A brief discussion of Dewey's metaphysics and epistemology follows; Dewey manages to avoid both Platonism and relativism, while maintaining the stable and precarious elements traditionally associated with either approach. In conclusion, it is suggested that Dewey's use of the stable and precarious constitute a basis for his notion of criticism, where inquiry is viewed not as a bid for ultimate clarity, but rather as a pattern of interrelationships between elements imbedded within context. Since escape from context is impossible, clarity is also contextual. (shrink)

This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of (...) culture, history, economy and society. It is argued that: Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology. (shrink)

This essay tries to develop a thoroughly critical method of evaluating religious beliefs presented to us in classic texts, illustrating this method by critical interpretation of the Dao of the Daodejing and the God of the Gospel of Mark. -/- The essay treats religious beliefs "theologically," that is, as views about what finally matters in life. In its emphasis on critical reason, it departs from the dogmatism usually associated with theology. It is also historicist and pluralist, departing from the usual (...) association of theology with a focus on absolute truths transcending all culture. -/- In the first part, I trace modern difficulties in subjecting religious faith to rational critique, to the cognitive "imperialism" of traditional religious thought -- the tendency of believers to allow their religious beliefs to govern knowledge in many other areas we now recognize as non-religious, due to the modern development of physical and cultural sciences. This tendency has misled modern thinkers into regarding religious claims about literal facts and universal truths as the epistemological basis of religious faith, and therefore the claims that should be the focus of rational critique. I offer instead a pragmatist view, which focuses on the pragmatic implications believers draw from their beliefs, and tries to correlate these implications with contextually conditioned perceptions believers might plausibly have had that might support these implications. -/- The second part of the essay proposes a very revisionist version of Plato’s "Socratic" reasoning, as one way of subjecting theological beliefs to rational critique. This model of Socratic reasoning is broadly empiricist, regarding direct perceptions of what is admirable, illustrated in unproblematic concrete narratives, as the epistemological basis for moral knowledge. Platonic "Ideas" are the result of extracting the essence of what is admirable from these concrete perceptions, and gradually refining them through sustained questioning. This account differs fundamentally from "Platonism" as it is traditionally conceived, especially in that it allows for the existence of a very great many ways of leading a great human life, exemplified today in the many different cultures we have gained an appreciative awareness of. The multiplicity of these different ways prevents any one small set of concepts from being regarded as a singularly and exclusively authoritative norm for judging all people everywhere. At the same time, this approach to moral reasoning avoids nihilist relativism by providing a procedural way of distinguishing rationally between the essence of what is admirable, and mere concrete appearances that often accompany what is admirable, but which can exist separately and so mislead people into a focus on things that do not finally matter. -/- The final part of the article applies this approach to a critical interpretation of the Dao of the Daodejing and the God of the Gospel of Mark. In the case of Dao, for example, we must attend to the way that aphorisms in the Daodejing evoke life experiences in which we ourselves can perceive specific contrasts between what is admirable and what is not. Dao in the Daodejing should then be interpreted, following suggestions given in the Daodejing itself, as a summary reference to this kind of admirability in its most pure form, conceived of in contrast to accompanying appearances. Similarly, in the case of the Gospel of Mark, we must attend to the way that episodes in Mark’s Jesus-story evoke life experiences in which we can perceive specific contrasts between what is admirable and what is not. Mark’s God is a focus for personal commitment to this kind of admirability in its most pure form, conceived of in contrast to accompanying appearances. The historicist character of this critical method is evident in the fact that in the Daodejing the particular contrasts defining what is admirable differ so radically from the particular contrasts defining what devotion to God means in the Gospel of Mark. (shrink)

IS POSTMODERNISM A NEW, perhaps decisive stage that completes the unfinished project of modernity, as Jürgen Habermas and, in some respects, Jean-François Lyotard claim? Or does it intend to break with that project altogether, as Derrida and Rorty maintain? The latter, more radical thesis tends to go hand in hand with the assumption of an essential continuity between modern and premodern thinking. Among those who defend the latter thesis we find Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Rorty. Rorty's position has become somewhat (...) questionable, however, since in the Introduction to his recent Essays on Heidegger and Others he distances himself from the very term "postmodern." "The term," he writes, "has been so over-used that it is causing more trouble than it is worth.... It seems best to think of Heidegger and Derrida simply as post-Nietzschean philosophers--to assign them places in a conversational sequence which runs from Descartes through Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche and beyond rather than to view them as initiating or manifesting a radical departure." This way of contextualizing the so-called postmoderns with the moderns differs from the radical discontinuity Derrida proposes and that Rorty himself formerly appeared to advocate. Western philosophy would then follow a single course from its Greek beginnings to the present with some distinct swerves, of which the so-called postmodern is one, but with no radical interruptions. According to the recent view the ontotheological principles that guided Greek and medieval thought continue to operate in the rationalist and, indirectly, in the empiricist philosophies of the modern age. This essay will argue that there is discontinuity between modern and premodern and continuity between modern and postmodern. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Convergence upon Empiricism in Feminist Accounts of the Justification of Scientific Knowledge Convergence upon Empiricism in Treatments of Contextual Values Bibliography.

Van Fraassen (2007, 2017) consistently uses the English view of rationality to parry criticisms from scientific realists. I assume for the sake of argument that the English view of rationality is tenable, and then argue that it has disastrous implications for van Fraassen’s (1980) contextual theory of explanation, for the empiricist position that T is empirically adequate, and for scientific progress. If you invoke the English view of rationality to rationally disbelieve that your epistemic colleagues’ theories are true, they (...) might, in turn, invoke it to rationally disbelieve that your positive theories are true. (shrink)

While most of healthcare research and practice fully endorses evidence-based healthcare, a minority view borrows popular themes from philosophy of science like underdetermination and value-ladenness to question the legitimacy of the evidence-based movement’s philosophical underpinnings. While the feminist origins go unacknowledged, those critics adopt a feminist reading of the “gap argument” to challenge the perceived objectivism of evidence-based practice. From there, the critics seem to despair over the “subjective elements” that values introduce to clinical reasoning, demonstrating that they do not (...) subscribe to feminist science studies’ normative program——where contextual values can enable good science and justified decisions. In this paper, I investigate why it is that the critics of evidence-based medicine adopt feminist science’s characterization of the problem but resist the productive solutions offered by those same theorists. I suggest that the common feminist empiricist appeal to idealized epistemic communities is impractical for those working within the current biomedical context and instead offer an alternate stream of feminist research into the empirical content of values (found in the work of Elizabeth Anderson and Sharyn Clough) as a more helpful recourse for facilitating the important task of legitimate and justified clinical decision-making. I use a case study on clinical decision-making to illustrate the fruitfulness of the latter feminist empiricist framework. -/- See response by Sharyn Clough: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1aN See reply by Maya Goldenberg: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1oY. (shrink)

In this paper, we intend to offer an interpretation about the explanation of the (relative) idea of pure substance in general on John Locke’s philosophy, from Thomas Reid’s notion of ‘natural suggestion’. To achieve this aim, after contextualizing Locke’s notion of pure substance in general and distinguishing it from the idea of particular substance (section 1), we explicit that Locke’s words about the source of the idea of the former in the mind (either empirical or rational) are ambiguous and inconclusive (...) (section 2). Then, we argue that the parallels between this idea and that of ‘relation’, as well as of ‘power’ do not assist in that answer, due to some problems we identify on them (section 3). Finally, we argue that the Reidian explanation for the source of the idea of ‘mind’, from the notion of ‘natural suggestion’ allows us to i) avoid those problems and ii) inasmuch as, according to this interpretation, the idea of pure substance in general would have an empirical source, Lockian empiricism would remain intact (section 4). (shrink)