Knowledge in Question
In What Knowledge Is And What It Ought To Be, Sally Haslanger questions the state of the epistemological project and its operations in everyday practices. In consideration of how knowledge and knowledge attribution actually work in everyday life, Haslanger offers feminist philosophy as a means to understand such dynamics, and as a potential foundation for conceiving of what our values in knowledge ought to be, rather than merely defining the what they already are. Haslanger shows how feminist philosophy can reveal the limitations of reigning concepts of knowledge, and suggests that there is space to reestablish sets of cognitive values in order to better “organize ourselves and our cognitive activities within
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communities …show more content…
Such divides have only increased in the time since Haslanger’s paper was published.
This drives Haslanger’s question of what sort of cognitive values we should hold - if we accept that autonomous agency is the goal. It then becomes clear that social influence on belief formation and knowledge attribution must be taken into account if a larger project of autonomy is to be pursued, as the effort is futile if an increase of autonomy in one social sphere creates a decrease in another- as this would defy any sense of a collective epistemology for “beings like us”. And so there must be an balance of epistemic concern across concepts of the social and the individual- as Haslanger states: “not only are we dependent on others for what we know, but our epistemic interdependence is a good thing; but at the same time we should be attentive to the value of epistemic autonomy” (474). This interaction between interdependence and autonomy points to new conceptual complexities, as at no point does Haslanger suggest a epistemic homogeneity, but instead calls for a pluralism regarding cognitive
In What Knowledge Is And What It Ought To Be, Sally Haslanger questions the state of the epistemological project and its operations in everyday practices. In consideration of how knowledge and knowledge attribution actually work in everyday life, Haslanger offers feminist philosophy as a means to understand such dynamics, and as a potential foundation for conceiving of what our values in knowledge ought to be, rather than merely defining the what they already are. Haslanger shows how feminist philosophy can reveal the limitations of reigning concepts of knowledge, and suggests that there is space to reestablish sets of cognitive values in order to better “organize ourselves and our cognitive activities within
1
communities …show more content…
Such divides have only increased in the time since Haslanger’s paper was published.
This drives Haslanger’s question of what sort of cognitive values we should hold - if we accept that autonomous agency is the goal. It then becomes clear that social influence on belief formation and knowledge attribution must be taken into account if a larger project of autonomy is to be pursued, as the effort is futile if an increase of autonomy in one social sphere creates a decrease in another- as this would defy any sense of a collective epistemology for “beings like us”. And so there must be an balance of epistemic concern across concepts of the social and the individual- as Haslanger states: “not only are we dependent on others for what we know, but our epistemic interdependence is a good thing; but at the same time we should be attentive to the value of epistemic autonomy” (474). This interaction between interdependence and autonomy points to new conceptual complexities, as at no point does Haslanger suggest a epistemic homogeneity, but instead calls for a pluralism regarding cognitive