Dowling College PHL003 Spring 2003

Lorraine Code: The Sex of the Knower

Feminist philosopher

http://www.yorku.ca/wsyork/faculty/code.html

http://femrhet.cla.umn.edu/Code.htm

Epistemology: the study of knowledge

When does a subject S know a fact p?

What counts as knowledge?

Descartes wanted certainty. S only knows p if he is certain of it.

Today, we have looser conditions on knowledge. We don’t require certainty. Knowledge is justified true belief.

People assume we can achieve an objective, ahistorical and circumstantially neutral set of standards, according to Code.

Epistemology would be able to tell us what counts as knowledge – even for people in the past and in other cultures.

It is also assumed that it makes no difference who the subject S is. We would apply the same standards to everybody. This is very egalitarian.

Code calls into question whether philosophers have been as egalitarian as they think they have.

Descartes started building up his body of knowledge from the assumption that the only thing he knew was that he existed as a mental object – a mind. This approach is highly individualistic – it does not suppose that knowledge starts as a social enterprise.

Code wants to say that this is a problematic starting place for epistemology, because it cuts off important other possible starting assumptions. Most philosophers since Descartes have shared his initial method.

She mentions Rationalists and Empiricists.

· The Rationalists were Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. Plato can be seen as the first rationalist. They assume we can understand the world by the light of pure reason and that our senses tend to be unreliable guides to the truth. We find truth by pure thinking, without relying too much on our senses.

· The Empiricists are Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. They assume that knowledge must start from the senses. We build up all our knowledge from empirical investigation, guided by our intellects. Aristotle was a kind of empiricist.

Code is saying that both traditions assume individual knowledge as the paradigm for all knowledge. Individual knowledge is one person knowing facts on his own.

She wants to argue that social knowledge is an important kind of knowledge. Knowledge had by a society as a whole.

She also claims that philosophers have implicitly assumed that only men can have real knowledge.

It has been assumed that knowledge is objective, and that since women tend to be more emotional and subjective, they can’t have knowledge.

Are there differences between males and females?

She seems to think there may be. Sex organs. Strength. Men tend to be larger and stronger. Emotionally. Men cry less.

Many of the differences are socially imposed. Eg. It may be due to differences in upbringing that men cry less. Boys play with guns, girls play with dolls.

Can we distinguish “natural” differences from “socially imposed” ones?

Code raises the possibility that the whole distinction between natural and socialized differences is problematic.

Philosophers have tended to group philosophy with science as gender neutral. They have tended to downplay the role of emotions and subjective feelings in knowledge. She seems to be suggesting that an egalitarian theory of knowledge would give a greater role to subjectivity and emotion. Maybe also it should give a greater role to the community of knowers.

To assess her view, we might consider examples where emotions and subjectivity seem relevant to our understanding of the world. E.g. emotions might be relevant to our understanding morality.