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Home , Feminist epistemology, Sandra Harding

Published online by the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC)

The Nature of : Toward an Ecofeminist Chloe Wall Philosophy and Religion University of Alberta, Augustana Campus Camrose, Alberta, Canada, T4V 2R3

Epistemology is the field of philosophy that concerns itself with knowledge: what do we know? How do we know what we know? How do we obtain knowledge? What makes some knowledge better than other knowledge? Traditionally, like many other academic fields, epistemology has been male-dominated, which in turn has emphasized and privileged impersonal theoretical and scientific (or “masculine”) knowledge. , in response, “studies the various influences of norms and conceptions of and gendered interests and on the production of knowledge.”1 Feminist epistemology argues that all knowledge is situated, as opposed to the traditional understanding that there is such a thing as universal knowledge, and that that type of knowledge is ideal. What I am going to do in this paper is evaluate the claims made by traditional and feminist epistemologists in an effort to bring me to my final goal, which is laying down the foundation of an ecofeminist epistemology. To achieve this goal, I will evaluate the concepts of reason, , and values, as well as the condition of knowers in social, political, and natural situations. Traditional epistemology defines knowledge as justified true , but this definition (known as the JTB definition) is at best problematic and at worst, insufficient and exclusive. There are problems associated with this definition for each of its constituent terms. For example, by what processes are beliefs justified? What qualities allow a belief to be justified? When is justification sufficient? What if a belief is justified but untrue? Does it still count as knowledge? What if I know about something but don’t believe it? Is it still knowledge if I do not accept it? Traditional epistemology also places a high emphasis on objectivity as being absolutely essential to the ideal kind of knowledge that it pursues. The epistemologist Thomas Nagel argues that self- transcendence – essentially, being outside oneself – is the ultimate goal of epistemology if one wants to avoid the very real threat of being reduced to – that is, knowing only that you know nothing. He writes that “a self-transcendent conception should ideally explain the following four things: (1) what the world is like; (2) what we are like; (3) why the world appears to beings like us in certain respects as it is and in certain respects as it isn’t; (4) how beings like us can arrive at such a conception.”2 An objective view of the world is the best view of the world, and it is also through objectivity that we can obtain the best knowledge about the way the world is. This theory is problematic for many reasons, but I will return to it later in this paper. Nagel’s theory of the “view from nowhere” relies on the idea that the mind transcends the body. But what if the mind does not exist separately from the body? What if the mind is deeply dependent on the body? George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher,

Metamorphosis, Fall 2012 Page 1 put forward the thesis in their book Philosophy in the Flesh that the mind is embodied; that “the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment.”3 This idea is a direct challenge to traditional epistemology, with the assertion that “reason, arising from the body, doesn’t transcend the body.”4 We simply cannot dissociate physical, personal experiences from rational thought, because the nature of our physical experiences is what shapes the patterns and structures of our thought. According to Lakoff and Johnson, “reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.”5 It is not only knowledge that cannot be abstracted; reason itself is deeply dependent on the body. Echoes of common physical experiences run rampant through our structures of thought, in our categories, and our metaphors, to name a few. As long as we rely on these embodied ideas, any subsequent thought will necessarily also be embodied. Lakoff and Johnson’s thesis, however, does have some somewhat unnerving implications. If the body is where the mind takes root, then those who have better bodies also have better minds. Furthermore, if reason is what makes us human, then those with better minds, who are more rational, are more human. So, if better bodies mean better minds, and better minds mean better humans, then those with better bodies are more human. This notion is, obviously, quite the affront to our post-Enlightenment sensibilities, and has dangerous ramifications if pursued in practice. (One extreme scenario might involve the systematic enslavement or extermination of all people who do not meet the necessary “humanness” criteria, whatever that criteria might be.) What we would see is the dehumanization of all those who are not human enough, reducing them into the position we currently assign animals. Lakoff and Johnson, however, undercut this notion. Reason is, to them, evolutionary, and understanding that “utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.”6 (I shall return to this point later, but for now I would like to continue to discuss the rest of Lakoff and Johnson’s concept of reason.) Lakoff and Johnson further argue that there is constantly a cognitive unconscious at work in our minds, but because it is unconscious, we cannot even begin to understand it. It underlies and makes sense of everything we . “The term cognitive unconscious accurately describes all unconscious mental operations concerned with conceptual systems, meaning, inference, and language.”7 Because these operations exist at an unconscious level, “we can have no direct conscious awareness of most of what goes on in our minds. The idea that pure philosophical reflection can plumb the depths of human understanding is an illusion. Traditional methods of alone, even phenomenological introspection, cannot come close to allowing us to know our own minds.”8 Ultimately, Thomas Nagel’s “view from nowhere” is an elaborate fantasy. There cannot be a view from nowhere because bodies cannot be nowhere, and therefore neither can minds be nowhere. There simply is no abstract, disembodied, universal, objective view, and even if there were, we could not know it. What, then, is the alternative? If we are to shed entirely the notion of universal, disembodied knowledge and reason, then what remains is local, situated knowledge. This is not to say, however, that in the absence of universal knowledge we must settle for situated knowledge, which might be construed as being simply a matter of opinion. Rather, situated

Metamorphosis, Fall 2012 Page 2 knowledge can in fact withstand tests of knowledge evaluation that universal knowledge cannot, and can do so more self-reflectively and authentically. For example, in traditional epistemology, the principle that objectivity is integral to knowledge is upheld, and it is endorsed as being value- free, neutral, and definitive. According to the feminist philosopher , however, even the knowledge we laud as “objective” is incredibly value-laden. If the natural and social sciences are supposed to be value-free, why is there “a rampant sexist and androcentric bias […] in the dominant scientific (and popular) descriptions and explanations of nature and social life? […] How should one explain the surprising fact that politically guided research projects have been able to produce less partial and distorted results of research than those supposedly guided by the goal of value-?”9 For example, Lorraine Code points out that “Cynthia Russet documents the intellectual climate of the nineteenth century, when claims for racial and sexual equality were threatening upheavals in the social order. She notes that there was a concerted effort just at that time among scientists to produce studies that would demonstrate the ‘natural’ sources of racial and sexual inequality. Given its aptness to the climate of the times, it is hard to believe that this research was ‘dislocated,’ prompted by a disinterested spirit of objective, neutral fact-finding.”10 Science, which we take as our paradigm for knowledge, is always socially interested and initiated. Sandra Harding argues that our traditional notion of objectivity is insufficient even for the goals it purports to accomplish. It does not effectively discard all values, and worse, the values that make it through the net are invisible. This brings me to an evaluation of epistemology in conjunction with ethics. Because the JTB definition of knowledge tries (unsuccessfully) to strip knowledge down to absolute bare essentials, it ignores the role of relationships in the production of knowledge. Specifically, as the philosopher John Hardwig points out, “epistemologists have not noticed the climate of trust that is required […] to support much of our knowledge.”11 He adds that the idea of trust being crucial to knowledge seems paradoxical: “Trust, in order to be trust, must be at least partially blind. And how can knowledge be blind?”12 However, trust in the honesty and credibility of other theorists, researchers, and scientists is vital to the advancement and production of knowledge. Without trust, Hardwig argues, we cannot know anything. As children, we trust the epistemic authority of our parents. In school, we trust our teachers. In university, we trust our professors. As researchers, we trust the writings of other researchers. These patterns continue in every relationship that influences how we produce knowledge, as long as we continue to produce it. Knowledge is always embedded in complex and boundless webs of trust; without trust, knowledge caves in on itself. In fact, Hardwig argues, people who trust are better knowers. When knowledge is reduced to the strength of a relationship dependent on trust, ethics becomes absolutely inseparable from epistemology. It is at this point that I would like to introduce the ecofeminist perspective that I promised at the beginning of this paper. If what lies at the heart of epistemology is not a magical formula of empirical evidence, objectivity, and fact, but ethics, then I cannot construct an ecofeminist epistemology without first considering ecofeminist ethics. is a social, political, theoretical, personal and spiritual movement that denounces the parallel oppressions of nature and women, seeks to overcome patriarchal structures that perpetrate and perpetuate such oppression, and sees both women and nature as sentient, dignified, thinking beings worth of respect and consideration, and strives to move women and nature into roles of agency in social institutions. Karen J. Warren, an ecofeminist philosopher, outlines eight boundary conditions through which “ecofeminism provides the framework for a distinctively feminist and

Metamorphosis, Fall 2012 Page 3 environmental ethic.”13 Understanding the boundary conditions that she sets out for an ecofeminist ethic and developing an epistemological theory in accordance with those conditions is of utmost importance. “First,” Warren says, “ecofeminism is quintessentially anti-naturist. [It rejects] any way of thinking about or acting toward nonhuman nature that reflects a logic, values, or attitude of domination.”14 Just as feminist epistemologists argue that the androcentric and sexist bias in the social sciences and biology must be overcome, an ecofeminist epistemology must argue that anthropocentric biases in technology and environmental sciences must also be expunged from the discipline. Second, according to Warren, “[ecofeminism] involves a shift from a conception of ethics as primarily a matter of rights, rules, or principles predetermined and applied in specific cases to entities viewed as competitors in the contest of moral standing, to a conception of ethics as growing out of […] ‘defining relationships’.”15 Ecofeminist epistemological values need to incorporate and emphasize the importance of non-hierarchical relationships. Where a claim to knowledge is understood as a claim to power, an epistemic relationship based on mutual respect and cherishing of the unique knowledge others hold, changes the way power relationships are constructed. Epistemology therefore has political implications: if knowers share knowledge with integrity, knowing that their knowledge will shape others’ knowledge, the production of knowledge can be ameliorated. Embracing trust leads to better knowledge. Furthermore, Warren’s third boundary condition is that “ecofeminism is structurally pluralistic in that it presupposes and maintains difference – difference among humans as well as between humans and at least some elements of nonhuman nature.”16 As I mentioned earlier, Lakoff and Johnson theorize that reason is an evolutionary trait, and therefore is “not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.”17 If we assume that other beings in the world also have a sort of rationality, the community of knowers is suddenly expanded and the type of knowledge that is introduced to the field shifts. An ecofeminist epistemology must value practical and individual experiential knowledge, including the experiences of anything with a body…which is to say, all things. The fourth boundary condition that Warren lays out is that “ecofeminism reconceives theory as theory in process.”18 In contrast to traditional epistemology, which seeks universal, timeless, and objective knowledge, an ecofeminist ethic values (rather than deplores) narrative for its malleability and because it ensures that “the content of the ethic […] may/will change over time, as the historical and material realities of women’s lives change and as more is learned about women-nature connections and the destruction of the nonhuman world.”19 If this sort of ethic informs an ecofeminist epistemology, then that epistemology must also value the changeability of knowledge and the importance of first-person narrative in the construction and production of that knowledge. Knowledge that is not obtained in a laboratory is still valid; personal experience is essential to producing good knowledge that accurately reflects the world as it appears to different people in different situations. Fifth, Warren says, “ecofeminism is inclusivist. It emerges from the voices of women who experience the harmful domination of nature and the way that domination is tied to their domination as women.”20 Ecofeminist epistemology, then, must also include these voices, while still introducing and maintaining difference and diversity with respect to the rest of the voices

Metamorphosis, Fall 2012 Page 4 that make up an ecofeminist epistemology. I argue, however, that an ecofeminist epistemology must also take into account the voices of other types of knowers. As I mentioned earlier, as can be inferred from Lakoff and Johnson, if reason is embodied, then anything with a body is also rational. We must therefore accept all bodied subjects as knowers. Ecofeminism seeks to reconcile the culture/nature divide and therefore if I am important, so are dogs, trees, spiders, sharks, and penguins. Taken into an epistemological context, the individual experiences of these bodied subjects are just as important as my own. How do we overcome the “language barrier” without entering into roles of arrogance, wherein we assume we know all there is to know about nature and that we can speak for these bodied subjects? Assuming we can speak for them, and that it is indeed our duty to do so, reeks more than a little bit of the White Man’s Burden and subscribes to exactly the same logic of domination that ecofeminism seeks to overcome. It is the same logic that initially allowed primatologists to take the male of the species as the standard and see females as deviations from the norm.21 We cannot assume that human experiences are reflective of all knowers’ experiences, but at the same time, fully accessing non-human experiences and incorporating them into bodies of knowledge remains a challenge. The sixth point that Warren brings up is one that I have already addressed. She says that “ecofeminism makes no attempt to provide an ‘objective’ point of view”22 and fully recognizes the circumstantial rootedness of the twin dominations of women and nature. Similarly, an ecofeminist epistemology must recognize the circumstantialities of knowledge, not just in terms of women and nature, but of all knowledge. Objectivity is an illusion and ecofeminist epistemology embraces subjectivity as being integral to the body of knowledge we construct. In an assertion that might be the most direct affront to the conceptual framework of traditional epistemology, Warren highlights that “ecofeminism makes a central place for values of care, love, friendship, trust, and appropriate reciprocity – values that presuppose that our relationships to others are central to our understanding of who we are.”23 According to ecofeminist ethics, relationships are at the heart of ethical behaviour. If we consider what Hardwig says about trust in this light, suddenly the value of relationships in knowledge production becomes clear. If I, as a knower, am aware that the knowledge I help to produce will have an impact on the kind and the quality of knowledge that someone else is able to produce, then if I am behaving in an ethical way and valuing both our relationship and the importance of producing good knowledge, then I myself will be driven to seek out better knowledge. The recognition of the gravity of values like trust and the role it plays in knowledge production is, in fact, not an inhibition to the production of knowledge, but an improvement to it. In contrast to Thomas Nagel’s “view from nowhere,” what I propose ecofeminist epistemology must ultimately embrace is “a view from now-here.” This view not only accepts but welcomes as knowledge personal experience as it is temporally situated, as the product of a multiplicity of events that precede and shape it. It also recognizes knowledge as being socially and geographically situated, and therefore somewhat specific to a knower in a particular social position in a particular culture. I also emphasize that it is not the view from now-here, but a view from now-here. Since the circumstances that constitute “now” and “here” will vary amongst every single knower, there are many views that all come together to weave a tapestry of knowledge. The diversity in the collection of threads enhances and enriches our understanding of the world, ourselves, and other knowers. The infinitude of this tapestry even given finite knowledge from finite minds means that the tapestry is ever-changing, has always been a work in

Metamorphosis, Fall 2012 Page 5 progress, and will never be complete as long as personal experiences continue to be woven into it. The variability of experiences does not devalue the tapestry, but enriches it. As Yann Martel wrote in his semiautobiographical novel Beatrice and Virgil, “Stories identify, unify, give meaning to. Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.” Hearing, valuing, and learning from others’ stories is ultimately how knowledge is constructed within an ecofeminist framework.

1 Anderson, Elizabeth, “Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense,” Knowledge & Inquiry: Readings in Epistemology, ed. K. Brad Wray (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002) 312. 2 Nagel, Thomas, “Knowledge,” Knowledge & Inquiry: Readings in Epistemology, ed. K. Brad Wray (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002) 212. 3 Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999) 4. 4 Lakoff and Johnson 5. 5 Lakoff and Johnson 4. 6 Lakoff and Johnson 4. 7 Lakoff and Johnson 12. 8 Lakoff and Johnson 12. 9 Harding, Sandra, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is ‘Strong Objectivity’?” Knowledge & Inquiry: Readings in Epistemology, ed. K. Brad Wray (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002) 352. 10 Code, Lorraine, “Taking Subjectivity Into Account,” Feminist , ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York : Routledge, 1993) 29. 11 Hardwig, John, “The Role of Trust in Knowledge,” Knowledge & Inquiry: Readings in Epistemology, ed. K. Brad Wray (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002) 405. 12 Hardwig 405. 13 Warren, Karen J., “The Power and the Promise of Ecological ,” Readings in Ecology and , ed. Mary Heather MacKinnon and Moni McIntyre (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1995) 185. 14 Warren 186. 15 Warren 186. 16 Warren 186. 17 Lakoff and Johnson 4. 18 Warren 186. 19 Warren 186-187. 20 Warren 187. 21 Anderson 337-338. 22 Warren 187. 23 Warren 187.

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