Situating Feminist Epistemology

Autor(en)
Robert McKenna
Abstrakt

Feminist epistemologies hold that differences in the social locations of inquirers make for epistemic differences, for instance, in the sorts of things that inquirers are justi?ed in believing. In this paper we situate this core idea in feminist epistemologies with respect to debates about social constructivism. We address three questions. First, are feminist epistemologies committed to a form of social constructivism about knowledge? Second, to what extent are they incompatible with traditional epistemological thinking? Third, do the answers to these questions raise serious problems for feminist epistemologies? We argue that some versions of two of the main strands in feminist epistemology - feminist standpoint theory and feminist empiricism - are committed to a form of social constructivism, which requires certain departures from traditional epistemological thinking. But we argue that these departures are less problematic than one might think. Thus, (some) feminist epistemologies provide a plausible way of understanding how (some) knowledge might be socially constructed.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Philosophie
Journal
Episteme. A Journal of Social Epistemology
Band
17
Seiten
28-47
Anzahl der Seiten
20
ISSN
1742-3600
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2018.11
Publikationsdatum
03-2020
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
603113 Philosophie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
History and Philosophy of Science
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/situating-feminist-epistemology(e36610a7-4831-4c51-b06f-b3488cb77894).html