Abstract
Justice matters. Unfortunately, this claim can be difficult to defend in a climate which touts cultural relativism as a corrective for the narrow and exclusionary tendencies of Enlightenment thinking. The solution is a liberatory epistemology. Yet liberatory epistemologies come with certain assumptions. This chapter addresses assumptions concerning reason/rationality and our ability to know. It argues that we need a broad concept of rationality and a willingness to avoid skeptical thinking in the absence of some reason to be skeptical. It also addresses the push toward cultural relativism that arises when diversity becomes the emphasis of epistemology. In the end, we need a liberatory epistemology that can ground our understanding of those with different social realities. This is done through the concept of reasonableness.
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Notes
- 1.
This is cited in Spelman (2007), and I will refer to her argument later.
- 2.
Mills also expresses these same sympathies (2007, 15).
- 3.
Plato was much more conflicted about the relationship of mind and body than was Aristotle. Still, Plato did believe souls were embodied, even if the interaction with the body did not make the soul any better.
- 4.
I will develop this argument more fully in Chapter 4.
- 5.
See Kant (1960, 81).
- 6.
- 7.
For a more developed argument see Heikes (2016).
- 8.
This is similar to the approach taken by Lynch (2012, 79–108) who insists that skepticism can be overcome by giving practical reasons.
- 9.
I will appeal to both standpoint epistemology and feminist empiricism throughout as I find these views mutually reinforcing in significant ways. Ultimately, my sympathies lie with feminist empiricism, but that is an argument for another time.
- 10.
It doesn’t help that feminists and postmodernists have gone out of their way to deny metanarratives .
- 11.
This is one reason Heidegger invokes the pre-Socratics and tells us Plato led us down the wrong path.
- 12.
See Mills (2002, 14).
- 13.
Aristotle may be the bigger culprit here, but Plato is not entirely innocent. In the case of women, Plato is an almost singular exception to a highly misogynistic tradition as he at least allows, “there is no pursuit … that belongs to a woman because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally share in all pursuits and men in all” (1961, 455d–e). Naturally, Plato can’t help but add to the end of the last sentence, “yet for all this woman is weaker than the man.”
- 14.
This is a point that even Descartes starts with in his Discourse on Method. See Descartes (1985, 111).
- 15.
For more on the Platonic and Cartesian roots of the problem see Heikes (2016, 155–169).
- 16.
As philosophy has turned away from its modern roots, many philosophers, feminist included, have emphasized a return to narrative. For an example of how narrative is used in contemporary philosophy see Toulmin (2001, 1–13).
- 17.
See Eze (2007, 172).
- 18.
For more on the force of the desire to hold onto a God’s eye perspective , see Putnam (1990, 3–18).
- 19.
See Kant (1929, A121–A122).
- 20.
In all fairness to Rorty , he never wanted to make this claim. Quite the contrary, he was concerned with making the world and better place, and he thought his view contributed to that goal.
- 21.
For more on “The Standard View” see Le Morvan and Peels (2016).
- 22.
For more on the role of epistemology in the theoretical grounding of racism and sexism see Heikes (2016, 45–97).
- 23.
The question Mills does not ask, and the question that will matter greatly to my argument here, is: can those with power ever genuinely understand those who are oppressed? And, if such understanding is even possible, what would it look like? For more on these questions see Debes (2018).
- 24.
See McWhorter (2005, 546–547).
- 25.
- 26.
An example I will discuss later involves citation rates for the journal of the African-American National Medical Association. Basically, it is not cited much in mainstream bioethics journals. See Hoberman (2016, 15).
Evidence also suggests women are published in top philosophical journals at rates well below their representation in the discipline and that the top 1% of cited articles by men are cited far more often than the top 1% of cited articles by women. See Healy (2015).
- 27.
For an account of this history see Zagzebski (2001, 235–251).
- 28.
For more on this see Elgin (2007, 34–35).
- 29.
This raises an issue about whether we can be willfully ignorant in translating others. We can, of course, be so, but I argue that we have a moral obligation to not be so.
- 30.
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Heikes, D.K. (2019). Moral Awakenings. In: Towards a Liberatory Epistemology. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16485-0_1
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