Feminist Epistemology Essay

Abstract In this paper I analyze the potential of Allison Jaggars suggestion that sensations in ecumenic, and illegalize feelings in percenticular, be compoundd into womens liberationist epistemology. Jaggar advocates a rack theory of emotions, and suggests that the emotions of the suppress in expositicular be helpful quite than inimical to acquiring cognition. I argue that although in that respect atomic number 18 some potential problems with Jaggars approach, these problems argon coarse to stand brain theories and fire be addressed by applying the solutions crannyed by rising(prenominal) womens rightist theorists.One crude criticism make by libber epistemologistsi is the critique of traditional epistemologys depressions of objectivity and neutrality. As Naomi Scheman puts it, in traditional epistemology those who are taken to be in the best position to know are those who are believed to be objective, distanced, dispassionate, independent, and n nonpareil motion eithery rational (3-4).ii According to Allison Jaggar, the result of this conception of the knower in modernistic epistemology is a sharp greenback between cerebrate and emotion where crusade is privileged because emotions are viewed as un get bulge outed chemical reactions that distort our rational observations of the world, which in turn distort the knowledge we burn d witness gain from these observations (1992). She get ahead argues that this distinction contri howeveres to the denial of womens epistemic authority since women are associated with emotions and men with soil, and so men became the standard by which epistemic authority is judged.This is vertical angiotensin converting enzyme of many concerns womens liberationist epistemologists share. However, there are many dis exchangeableities between libbers as to how to muckle with the problems in traditional epistemology. iii One approach that I pass on focus on in this paper is feminist standpoint theory, areaicularly the standpoint theory offered by Jaggar in Love and Knowledge Emotions in Feminist Epistemology. What Jaggar purports to accomplish in her paper is to begin bridging the gap between emotion and knowledge th jolting the suggestion that emotions whitethorn be helpful and sluice demand rather than inimical to the construction of knowledge (1992, 146). The bridge she motives to build includes a methodology for identifying biases of the dominant group that leads to false appraisals of the world. This methodology relies on the nonion that perspective can be altered by the demeanor one is situated in the world, particularly how ones situatedness can displace ones steamy perspective and repartee.I pass on justify the concept of turned on(p) perspective and rejoinder in a moment, only if I want to firstborn none that the type of emotions she presupposes are measurable to feminist epistemologists are criminal emotionswhich are emotional responses that do not follow or support the set and norms we have been taught to accept. Because outlaw emotions are usually a negative response to norms and determine, they can help us identify which biases are causation errors in our methods of try outking knowledge.The point that Jaggar wants to define clear is that impartiality in our epistemic methods is impossible, therefore, we should throw up on the notion of impartiality and work towards identifying biases that provide better guide our epistemic endeavors. There is much debate between feminists all over the potential of feminist standpoint epistemologies, yet, I deliberate that Jaggars methodology warrants some comity. iv However, because she offers just a sketch of how emotions might be incorporated into epistemology, there are some aspects of her theory that are problematic.The first problem is that standpoint theories appear to neglect the differing fancys of particular souls within groups by trying to spill virtually the fea tures of these groups in general. The second problem is that Jaggar needs to address how to distinguish which outlaw emotions could potentially unless feminist interests from the other emotions, outlaw or otherwise. The general aim of this paper, then, is to initiate an investigation into whether Jaggars proposal testament be a fruitful endeavor for feminist epistemologists.The more(prenominal) specific aim of this paper is to point out some of the potential problems that arise from her theory, as a feminist theory, and to offer some potential solutions for these problems, some of which are solutions that feminists have previously used to answer similar problems in other feminist theories. 1. Jaggars View Jaggar argues that theories that make the distinction between reason and emotion as it pertains to knowledge are mistaken in that they wrong assume emotions are involuntary responses that can be separated from reason.Jaggar contends that nigh emotions are tenderly constructed , intentional, and can influence our learnings of the world. For example, when someone feels anger at a tenuous from a friend, this anger arises not as an involuntary response, but rather there is a judgment being made about the way friends ought to behave and the response of anger is the appropriate emotion that corresponds with ones expectations being disappointed.We form beliefs about what constitutes a slight by a friend at the same(p) time as we learn what our society values as appropriate friendship air and appropriate responses to variant nonplusssay affection as a response to respect from ones friends and anger to disrespect. The idea that emotions are constructed suggests that acculturation influences our appraisals of the world and the judgments we make are much emotional responses to observations that reflect the norms and values of our society.For example, when someone tells a deception the expected response is for a person to be amused. However, my being amused by a joke presupposes a number of social conditions. For instance, when we hear something like a priest, a rabbi, and a duck walk into a bar we immediately feel an pr stillient amusement, since we recognize this as a joke formula. v If I do not recognize this formula then my lack of assureing could cause me to not share the same social experience as the other volume who are hearing the same joke.Second, in order to buy the farm out the joke amusing I mustiness not only understand the linguistic process in which the joke is told, but also the content of the joke. I must share the same appraisal of the world in order to real be amused by the punch line. Third, emotional responses are neither automatic nor passive in the sense that we have no book over them. I may be amused and laugh at a joke of this type. However, I may not laugh if I find the joke to be in bad taste even though not laughing when amusement is anticipated often creates moments of social tension and discomfo rt.The entailmentant thing to note here is that in two drives whether or not I am amused can be a deliberate conscious decision. From this example, we can see why Jaggar suggests that, any emotion presupposes an valuation of some aspect of the environment while, and conversely, every evaluation or appraisal of the situation implies that those who share the evaluation will share, ceteris paribus, a predictable emotional response to the situation (1992, 153).Just as I would have to share a similar appraisal of the world in order to understand the punch line of a joke, I am also influenced by those preconceived notions to think the joke is funny. At the very least, I am conditioned to some extent to recognize a joke when I hear one and laugh when I think laughter is the expected response.Jaggar thinks it is important to recognize that emotions play a character reference in how we seek knowledge, given that if we maintain the distinction between emotion and reason in epistemology, then this distinction will influence whom we think are good epistemic agents namely, dispassionate investigators who can keep their emotions from fussy with their observations. Ironically, because the notion of a dispassionate investigator is considered the ideal, we are biased in our perspicacity of who is a good investigator and who is not. position that Jaggar is not verbalise we are not being impartial enough in our assessment of investigators rather she is saying our bias in favour of the dispassionate is inhibiting because emotion is an essential part of knowledge. Moreover, the distinction between emotion and reason is problematic, as Jaggar points out, because reason has been associated with members of dominant political, social, and cultural groups and emotion with members of subordinate groups, like population of colorand women (1992, 157).The result of the false distinction between emotion and reason is that it produces a myth about investigators that functions in a circular invention where the myth reinforces the oppression of those who are perceived as emotional, while the oppression reinforces the myth that it is bad to be emotional. In order to give a full account of what it means to be a good investigator, then, we should let in how emotions function to produce passionate investigators who are reliable observers.The first point Jaggar thinks a full account should include is that in many slipway emotions are socially constructed in a way that reflects the norms and values of our society, and that this emotional construction influences our evaluations and observations of the world. The second aspect of the social construction of our emotional piece of music she wants to point out is that our emotional construction is not complete in the sense that there are people who do not unceasingly respond to or evaluate particular situations in a fashion that reflects social norms and values.Jaggar calls these unconventional emotional responses and evaluations outlaw emotions, and states that they are usually undergo by subordinated individuals who pay a disproportionately high price for maintaining the stead quo (1992, 160). However, when the distinction between emotion and reason is maintained biases against emotional responses in general and unconventional emotional responses in particular, are forgotten.For example, a cleaning lady may feel anger or fear when a male chauvinist joke is made, but when she tries to voice her opinion she is told either that she did not understand the joke or that she has no sense of humour. Thus, when the distinction is maintained it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to realize that the joke is not funny because it is based on a negative stereotype. That is to say, it is not acknowledge that the stereotype and the expected emotional response is dictated by the current norms and values.Furthermore, because a woman, who may already be identified as a bad observer, is pointing out tha t there may be a mistake in our way of thinking, her response is disregarded as emotional and unreliable, and the oppressive norms and values go unquestioned. 2. Jaggars methodological analysis and Potential Problems The benefit of ridding ourselves of epistemologies that do not acknowledge the role of emotions, two conventional and unconventional, is that we can begin to recognize which norms and values are causing harmful biases and negative stereotypes.Furthermore, Jaggar claims that feminist outlaw emotionswhich are outlaw emotions that incorporate feminist perceptions and valuesare particularly useful in feminist epistemology because they can help in break awaying alternatives to prevailing reality by motivating new investigationsFeminist emotions provide a political need for investigation and so help limit the selection of problems as swell up as the method by which they are investigated (1992, 161).Although Jaggar meant to offer a rough sketch of some of the changes that need to be made to our epistemic theories and practices, I think there aresome potential problems that need to be addressed. For one, I think she needs to say more about how we should determine which emotions will lead to fruitful norms and values, and which emotions we should pass up. To her credit, it seems that Jaggar recognizes this is a question that needs to be addressed given that she tries to give reasons for why certain alternative perceptions of the world, perceptions apprised by outlaw emotions, are to be preferred to perceptions informed by conventional norms (1992, 161).She claims the reason womens outlaw emotions should be given stipulation is because women are not members of the group that conventional beliefs about emotions privilege. Given that women experience the consequences of not being privileged, they are not as likely to stick about to these norms without question. Hence, they are better able to articulate the negative aspects of their experiences becaus e they do not fear that this questioning of norms will threaten their privileged status.The problem with this response is that it does not seem to fully answer the question, because some outlaw emotions will not provide reliable guides to identifying biases, and so the difficulty will be distinguishing which emotions are reliable from those that are not. In order to give a more robust argument for why we should give special term to the emotions of oppressed people she needs to first address the fact that the oppressed do not share one perspective.As pointed out by Marilyn Frye, one problem with making claims about the standpoint of womens emotional perspectives is that such claims seem to presuppose there are familiar types of emotionsoutlaw or otherwisethat are consistent by dint ofout the emotions experient by women. Frye notes that this is a mistake often made by feminists given that it is common for epistemological theories to espouse that all knowers are essentially alike, that is, are essentially like oneself one thinks that one speaks not just as oneself, but as a human being (35).What happens in feminist theorizing as a response to this attitude is feminists become convinced they need to speak as Women in order to be taken seriously. As Frye points out, feminists often face the difficult task of trying to articulate the circumstances, experience and perception of those who are historically, materially, culturally constructed by or through the concept women. merely the differences among women across cultures, locales and generations make it clear that although all female humans may live lives molded by the concepts of adult female, they are not all shaped by the same concept of Woman (36).vi The point I want to stress from this passage is that not all women will experience the same emotions in the same contexts because we are formed by different concepts of Woman even though women in general face oppression in one form or another. In response to the problem of womens differing experiences, Frye suggests feminists approach epistemology with a different methodology. That is, a methodology that will get out women to give meaning to their own experiences even though they are not experiences that are shared by all women.Part of this ramble entails that feminists give up the notion of a universal womens experience. Another part is that they listen to many different womens experiences and look for patterns of similarity. Frye suggests this methodology will result in the following The experiences of each woman and of the women collectively consecrate a new web of meaning. Our process has been one of discovering, recognizing, and creating patternspatterns within which experience made a new kind of sense, or in instances, for the first time made any sense at all.Instead of bring a phase of enquiry to closure by summing up what is known, as other ways of generalizing do, pattern recognition/constructions opens fields of meaning an d generates new interpretive possibilities. Instead of drawing conclusions from observations, it generates observations. (39) I think this methodology will be helpful in pointing out the outlaw emotions that can offer guidance as to which of our norms and values are questionable, and opens a dialogue over potential ways to change them.The methodology Frye advocates can be further developed if we consider potential ways in which women can convey their experiences such that patterns can be recognized. One approach that I find particularly convincing is offered by Morwenna Griffiths. Griffiths suggests that feminist epistemologists can employ autobiographical accounts of womens experiences as a means of articulating the differences between womens experiences. kindred Frye, Griffiths also notes that there is no one experience common to all women.However, Griffiths further claims that, individuals are not entirely of one group or another. On the contrary, individuals are fragments of a n incertain number of groups (62). The conclusion she draws from this point is that it is an simplism to limit the types of knowledge humans can acquire into categories like womens knowledge. One person can experience oppression from the perspective of more than one position. To name a few, one may experience oppressions from the perspectives of a particular race, class, gender, or sexual orientation, and intersections of these.For example, the oppression experienced by a native woman is not the same as that experienced by a native man or that experienced by a white woman. Hence, Griffiths suggests that ones positions in the world at different times can contribute to her apprehensiveness of the world, which in turn will influence the knowledge she can acquire about the world. Noting the different positions from which an individual can have experiences and acquire knowledge is important because it suggests that there can be similarities between the positions we occupy and the indi vidual experiences we have.This potential to have similar experiences of the world further suggests that similarities in experience make it the case that we are not completely denied access to other peoples understanding of the world. The reason Griffiths thinks autobiographical accounts are a crucial feature of feminist epistemology is because the way in which individuals come to find similarities in experiences is through language. To further clarify her point, she argues that, language has a considerable power to determine what we see and do, but this power is not absolute. We also create new language, by working on the languages in which we live.Individual experience can be used in creation knowledge in combinations with the experiences of others. Groups can develop languages of their own if they share particular psychosocial, social and linguistic experiences. Thus women in society, for instance, who share particular positions within it can develop a way of talking about this. (66) In short, Griffiths suggests that language is key to feminist epistemology because it points out how women with different experiences can nonetheless come to some consensuses on the oppressions they experience and the knowledge developed from these experiences. 3. ConclusionI think that if we incorporate Griffiths and Fryes approach on Jaggars theory what we will find is a more tenable response to questions about which outlaw emotions can be regarded as being particular to women namely, patterns of outlaw emotions that feminists have recognized through the expression of different womens autobiographical accounts. And once we can arising pointing out the commonalities between the different perspectives that arise from the standpoint of different women, we can begin show that there is something about womens reality that makes it the case that they are experiencing the world differently than men.I have not even scratched the surface with respect to giving a detailed explanation o f scarcely how Jaggar thinks a fully functional theory of outlaw emotions might look. However, I am assuming that once theorists start admitting that emotion is an integral part of epistemology the intricate details of how to identify fruitful outlaw emotions will be worked out. For instance, we might be able to start identifying patterns of emotions that could be considered outlaw emotions and which norms and values that they are a response to.And this recognition will further our abilities to start questioning the norms and values that guide our epistemic practices. I think this is the take of thing Jaggar had in mind when she states that the benefit of bridging the gap between emotion and knowledge is that our emotions, when properly accessed, may contribute to the development of knowledge, so the growing of knowledge may contribute to the development of appropriate emotions (1992,163).The development of this project may be slow and arduous, but given the problems that exist i n traditional epistemology I think Jaggars project seems worthy of consideration as a potential contributor to a solution. NOTES i For the purposes of this paper I will equate feminist epistemologists with feminists philosophers of science given that there are many overlapping interests between the two. ii For similar arguments, particularly with respect to how profitableness had contributed to the notion of the ideal objective knower, see Jaggar (1992) and (1983), especially pp.355-358 Code (1993). iii As noted by Louise Antony, For discussions of epistemological frameworks available to feminists, see Sandra Harding, The Science oppugn in Feminism, (Ithaca, N. Y. Cornell University conspire, 1986), especially pp. 24-29 Mary Hawkesworth, Feminist Epistemology A Survey of the Field, Women and government activity 7 (1987) 112-124 and Hilary Rose, Hand, Brain, and Heart A feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences, Signs 9, 11 (1983) 73-90. (Antony 2002, Note 3).iv For discu ssion of Feminist Standpoint Theory, see Bar On (1993) Harding (1993) Longino (1993). For a more general analysis of essentialism in feminist theorizing, see Spelman (1988). v convey to Elizabeth Brake for clarifying the distinction between the emotion of amusement and the appearance of laughter, as well as supplying me with an example of amusement anticipation. vi Jaggar does follow that she is speaking very generally of people and their emotions, as though everyone experienced similar emotions and dealt with them in similar ways (Jaggar 1992, 157).And she further notes that it is an axiom of feminist theorythat all generalizations about people are suspect (Jaggar 1992, 157). So she does, at the very least, seem to recognize that she may fall guttle to Fryes criticism. However, she goes on to argue that making generalizations about the emotionality of women is part of how the epistemic authority of men is perpetuated, and she does not address the discern of how she should deal with the problem as it applies to standpoint theory.I find this particularly shady given that in another work she claims that part of the project of feminist ethics entails that feminists be sensitive to the fact that all women are not similarly situated in such a way that universal claims can be made about them even though there are commonalities between womens situatedness at times. (Jaggar 1991). So, although I am uncertain as to why she does not deal with problems that might arise from this issue as it applies to standpoint theory, I gather that she would welcome rather than reject feminist theories that could aid her in avoiding this problem as it would apply to feminist epistemology.BIBLIOGRAPHY Alcoff, Linda, and Elizabeth putter. 1993. 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