IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY

Author(s): Helen E. Longino

Source: The Monist , OCTOBER 1994, Vol. 77, No. 4, Feminist Epistemology: For and
Against (OCTOBER 1994), pp. 472-485
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903405

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY

The proposal of anything like a feminist epistemology has, I think, two

sources. Feminist scholars have demonstrated how the scientific cards have been
stacked against women for centuries. Given that the sciences are taken as the
epitome of knowledge and rationality in modern Western societies, the game
looks desperate unless some ways of knowing different from those that have val
idated misogyny and gynephobia can be found. Can we know the world without
hating ourselves? This is one of the questions at the core of discussions of
feminist epistemology. It has spinoffs, e.g., can we know the world in ways that
will permit women (and children) as well as men to thrive? Can we know the
world without hating any human group? and so on. Now, these questions might
be answered in a way that does not require any rethinking of fundamental philo
sophical issues. Some philosophers might argue that sexism in the sciences from
Aristotle to human sociobiology results from a masculinist blinding that impedes
the normal workings of the human cognitive apparatus. Unblinded, that apparatus
produces real knowledge rather than ideology. Or: that was then, this is now. This
somewhat overestimates the progress made in the sciences in the last 20 years,
but can be read as a promissory note.
The second source of the proposal for feminist epistemology foils this
response. This source lies within philosophy itself. The new fallibilism and anti
foundationalism insist that, whatever grounds for knowledge we have, they are
not sufficient to warrant the assertion of claims beyond doubt. May this not leave
room for some explicitly feminist considerations in the production of knowledge?
The particular philosophical argument most conducive to this thought is the un
derdetermination argument. I shall discuss one version of this argument below.
Additionally, naturalism in epistemology opens the way to feminist epistemolo
gy. Naturalism acknowledges, at least in principle, the relevance of empirical
facts?psychological, sociological?about human knowers to the philosophical
discussion of knowledge. And both psychology and sociology have a fair amount
to say about gender and gender difference. But what would or should feminist
epistemology be?

"In Search of Feminist Epistemology" by Helen E. Longino,

The Monist, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 472-485. Copyright ? 1994, THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois 61301.

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 473

II

Would a feminist epistemology be a brief for a distinctive female way of

knowing? Many of those hostile to the notion of feminist epistemology seem to
think it would be such a brief, deserving, therefore, at best casual dismissal. But
what might be meant by this proposal in the first place? There are experiences
which can only be had by women (or those who are female in the requisite way),
e.g., childbirth or painless monthly bleeding, and hence can be objects of experi
ential knowledge only for women. The notion of some kind of distinctive female
knowledge is, therefore, not entirely baseless. But it may not get us very far philo
sophically. Women (some women) can have access to some truths that men can't
have, but this may just be a version of the claim that each of us has a distinctive
mode of access to her or his bodily experiences.1 More tantalizing is the possi
bility of knowing the common world differently. Feminist work in psychology
and in sociology has been read as making such suggestions of gender-determined
epistemic access. But does it really do so? The title of the book, Women's Ways
of Knowing, certainly suggests a kind of cognitive separatism.2 The authors, psy
chologists, studied the learning experiences of several groups of women: students
in several types of college and secondary school and clients in three different
types of family service agencies. They discovered, or revealed, that many women
suffer from a grave lack of self-confidence which interferes with their capacity to
learn, particularly in competitively structured pedagogies. They offer illustrations
of teaching that takes this into account and is thus more successful at developing
skills and communicating information. In addition, they describe five different
"epistemological perspectives" which their subjects adopted. To describe one of
these they introduced the notion of "connected knowing," which they character
ized as knowing in a context of (acknowledged) relationship with the
person/object known. "Connected knowing" is distinguished from "separate
knowing" which is characterized by affective distance from the known, permit
ting analysis and evaluation. These sound suspiciously similar to the concepts
introduced in Carol Gilligan's work on moral reasoning and the authors ac
knowledge Gilligan's influence.3 The chapters on the ways of knowing recount
their subjects' experiences as learners and inquirers, focusing on the ways their
socialization as women affected their adoption of and movement among the
various epistemological perspectives. The authors, however, make no claims that
there are ways of knowing unique to women, nor do they attempt to sort out
which of the epistemological perspectives they discuss is better from an episte
mological point of view (although they do evince a preference for what they call
the "constructed knowledge" perspective). This book is valuable for opening a
door on the diversity of ways in which humans apprehend their worlds, and for

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474 HELEN E. LONGINO

promoting sensitivity to the ways in which women have been cognitively disen
franchised. And the kind of inquiry the authors conduct could well inform
philosophical inquiry into the nature and possibility of knowledge. But it is not
yet epistemology.4
The work of the sociologist Dorothy Smith has also been labelled feminist
epistemology.5 Smith is one of several feminist theorists using the notion of a
standpoint. A standpoint is a perspective afforded by social location. As we are all
socially located we all have standpoints; our beliefs about the world are
developed from and reflect these standpoints. Two standpoints are of particular
interest to Smith: that of rulers and that of women. Smith argues that the de
scriptive categories of sociology are congealed relations of ruling, that is, that
sociology (or mainstream sociology) simply projects the categories of a bureau
cratic elite onto a population, thus understanding it through a lens shaped by
asymmetric power relations. Since those power relations shape the sociologist's
perception, they are invisible to and in the sociologist's analysis. The female so
ciologist, argues Smith, is in a position to expose the power laden character of
sociological categories, because she encounters them simultaneously as subject
and as object. She can become aware of the gap between the description of herself
she finds in the sociology she participates in producing and the understanding of
her own experience as a woman. The critical perspective that results is what
Smith calls a "bifurcated consciousness" and it requires a deliberate claiming of
one's experience as a woman (rather than the repudiation or suppression of that
experience that many professional women have had to perform in order to carry
on as professionals or the spontaneous expression in cognition of the perspective
of the subordinated). Occupying the standpoint of women makes possible an
analysis of the ideological character of purportedly neutral analytic concepts. So,
here is an example of an author claiming some sort of privilege or unique
epistemic access, if not for the "feminine," at least for critically self-conscious
female experience. But while it might apply to other disciplines similarly con
structed, it is nevertheless a rather limited claim of privilege. Smith does not
claim a vantage point on the world, but on a particular discipline's construal of
the social world. While challenging the neutrality of sociology, she makes no
claims about mainstream epistemology. Of course, as is the case with Women's
Ways of Knowing, there is much one can learn about the study of society that one
might usefully take into account when reflecting critically on mainstream as
sumptions about knowledge, but this, too, is not yet a feminist epistemology.
If we were to extend Smith's views about standpoints into a theory of
knowledge that treats women or women's experiences as somehow paradigmatic
or as the basis for a new model for knowledge we would be disappointed, in just
the same way we are disappointed in the search for feminist science. There isn't

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 475

enough uniformity in women's experience or among women to extract the sort of

description that might generate a new account of knowledge (whether to join or
to replace existing accounts). Thus, even if such an account were to be proposed
it would immediately be shown to be wanting by including too narrow a range.
If we set aside gender as a source of an alternative form of knowledge or of
epistemic access, is the door then closed on feminist epistemology? In "Can
There Be a Feminist Science?" I suggested we think not about a feminist science,
but about doing science as a feminist.6 This means eschewing any search for
feminist first principles and instead approaching the many activities that consti
tute science practice with a feminist sensibility. Different activities and different
sciences would be affected differently by different aspects of such a sensibility.
This is a recommendation I would like to extend to epistemology as well. To do
epistemology as a feminist is to engage the questions of epistemology with an
awareness of the ways in which participation in socially-sanctioned knowledge
production has been circumscribed, of the ways in which epistemological
concepts like rationality and objectivity have been defined using notions of mas
culinity (and vice-versa), of the ways in which women have been derided as
knowers, and of the need for alternative theoretical approaches to satisfy feminist
cognitive goals. It is to ask how epistemology has participated in or sanctioned
these disbursements of privilege and opprobrium and to ask whether the efforts
to exclude women from knowledge generating activity has not also resulted in the
exclusion from the analysis of knowledge of traits and capacities assigned to
women (a shrinking of the conception of knowledge). What is important for the
feminine or the female here is the perspective it affords on the construction of the
concept of knowledge and the window it opens on alternatives. But it functions
as an object of reflection, not as a subject position. Under the description I've just
given, many different projects will count as feminist epistemology. I would like
to offer an example of how one might do epistemology as a feminist by drawing
on feminist thinking in and about the sciences.

Ill

Underdetermination arguments are arguments to the conclusion that data

serving as evidence for hypotheses or theories are not sufficient to support a hy
pothesis or theory to the exclusion of alternatives. Various considerations feature
in the premises of such arguments. In general, they involve the observation that
the kinds of phenomena described in reports of observation and experiment are
different from the phenomena postulated in the hypotheses supported by such
reports. For example, correlations are different from the causal relations postu

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476 HELEN E. LONGINO

lated in hypotheses those correlations are used to support. What links states of
affairs in evidential relations with hypotheses are background assumptions about
the kinds of connection obtaining between kinds of state, event or process. To the
extent they have evidential support it must be different from the support for the
original hypotheses. To avoid an infinite regress, if one accepts some form of un
derdetermination argument, one must appeal to factors other than logic and
observational and experimental data as grounds of hypothesis choice. One may
do this from a naturalistic or a normative perspective, that is, either by appealing
to factors scientists do take into account or to factors they ought to take into
account. (Or, like Bas van Fraassen, one may claim that since observational data
are the only legitimate grounds, any choice between empirically equivalent hy
potheses is pragmatic.) In practice, the naturalist and normative perspectives are
not always distinct, factors cited as the ones scientists do take into account being
treated also as factors that they ought to take into account.
Thomas Kuhn offered a representative selection in his essay, "Objectivity,
Values and Theory Choice": accuracy, consistency (internal and external),
breadth of scope, simplicity, fruitfulness.7 Most of these are accepted as features
of a theory enhancing the likelihood of its truth, or as features which count when
choosing between rival theories. I find it instructive to contrast this with a list of
theoretical virtues drawn from the writing of feminists. Here one finds empirical
adequacy (a.k.a. accuracy), but also novelty, ontological heterogeneity, com
plexity of interaction, applicability to human needs, diffusion or decentralization
of power. There are undoubtedly others, but (as Kuhn said about his list) to pur
sue the discussion of epistemology, this list is enough.
I have never seen these six virtues presented together. They are generally
invoked, explicitly or implicitly, singly, and they are deployed in particular
arguments with particular ends. To draw them out of context, as I'm doing, is,
therefore, to flirt with foundationalism. As will become clear below, I intend to
steer clear of that particular shoal. Let me begin my discussion by offering some
interpretation of these standards based on the contexts in which they've been
deployed. Then I shall offer some reflections on their status.8
1) Empirical adequacy. Empirical adequacy generally means agreement of
the observational claims of a theory or model with observational and experimen
tal data. A good deal of feminist effort has gone into discrediting research
programs that purport to show a biological etiology for differences ascribed on
the basis of sex. The (feminist) scientists involved in this effort?scientists such
as Ruth Bleier, Anne Fausto Sterling, Richard Lewontin, Ruth Doell?have con
centrated on showing that such research fails minimal standards of empirical
adequacy, either through faulty research design or improper statistical methodol
ogy. The standard of empirical adequacy is one shared with race- and class-sen

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 477

siti ve research communities as well as with most mainstream communities.

Empirical adequacy is not a sufficient criterion of theory and hypothesis choice.
So, other values come into play in theory, hypothesis and model assessment.
2) Novelty. Several thinkers have endorsed the novelty of a model or theory
as a value. Sandra Harding seems to have done so explicitly in her earlier book,
when she calls both for "successor science" and for "deconstructing the assump
tions upon which are grounded anything that resembles the science we know."9
And she has interpreted Donna Haraway as supporting "an epistemology that
justifies knowledge claims only insofar as they arise from enthusiastic violation
of the founding taboos of Western humanism."10 Without going that far, certainly
one can read Haraway's invocation of the visions of certain science-fiction
writers as an appeal for or endorsement of a departure from entrenched as
sumptions, for the sake of a new framework (or new frameworks). Nothing less,
she suggests, will be appropriate for the new circumstances of 21st-century life.11
Treating novelty as a virtue reflects a doubt that mainstream theoretical frame
works are adequate to the problems confronting us, as well as a suspicion of any
frameworks developed in the exclusionary context of modern European and
American science. It may be that this criterion is appropriate only so long as
feminism has oppositional status. I'm not sure about this, partly because I'm not
sure that feminism has any status apart from an oppositional one.
3) Ontological heterogeneity. This criterion is found in two quite different
sorts of discussion in the feminist literature on the sciences. Feminists writing
about biology have urged that we take account of individual difference among the
individuals and samples that constitute the objects of study.12 Although she was
not herself a feminist, Barbara McClintock's attention to the individual kernels of
a cob of corn (which helped her to recognize an underlying pattern of mutability)
has been taken as a paradigm of what a feminist attitude to nature ought to be.
Primatologist Jeanne Altman has insisted on methods of observation that de
scriptively preserve the differences among the primates and groups of primates
that she studies.13 Other feminists in science as well have rejected ontological ho
mogeneity and have taken heterogeneity as a value. I think this is connected to
the second discussion I draw on here: the rejection of theories of inferiority.
Theories of inferiority are supported in part by an intolerance of heterogeneity.
Difference must be ordered, one type chosen as the standard, and all others seen
as failed or incomplete versions. Theories of inferiority which take the white
middle class male (or the free male citizen) as the standard grant ontological
priority to that type. Difference is then treated as a departure from, a failure fully
to meet, the standard, rather than simply difference. Ontological heterogeneity
permits equal standing for different types, and mandates investigation of the
details of such difference. Difference is resource, not failure. Nowhere is this

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478 HELEN E. LONGINO

more dramatically endorsed than in Donna Haraway's intrepid embrace of arti

factualism and of science fiction, which she lauds for their diffractive
possibilities, the rejection of purity, or ontological homogeneity, and the insis
tence on the specific and local in all its heterogeneity.14
4) Complexity of relationship. Many feminist scientists have taken complex
interaction as a fundamental principle of explanation. Evelyn Keller's account of
the work of Barbara McClintock15 and her defense of an interactionist perspec
tive in Reflections on Gender and Science16 may provide the best known
example, but scientists from icons like Ruth Bleier and Anne Fausto Sterling to
much less well known practitioners have eschewed single-factor causal models
for models that incorporate dynamic interaction, models in which no factor can
be described as dominant or controlling and that describe processes in which all
active factors influence the others. This perspective has been employed in areas
ranging from neuroscience to cell biochemistry by scientists self-consciously
practicing science as feminists as well as, of course, by non-feminists. It has also
been endorsed in texts devoted mainly to reflections about the sciences. The ra
tionales offered for embracing this criterion have ranged from a metaphysical
certainty that this is the way the world is to the notion that the criterion expresses
a female quality of apprehension. Some rationales are less antecedently problem
atic than others. In particular, one might note that replacing simple models of
single-factor control in social contexts with more complex models of social in
teraction makes visible the role of gender in the structure of social institutions and
the role of private, domestic (traditionally, women's) work in maintaining the
activity and institutions of the "public" sphere.
5) Applicability to current human needs. Many, but not all feminists in the
sciences have stressed the potential role of scientific understanding in improving
the material conditions of human life, or alleviating some of its misery. Scientific
inquiry directed at reducing hunger (by improving techniques of sustainable agri
culture, soil preservation, etc.), promoting health, assisting the infirm, protecting
or reversing the destruction of the environment, is valued over knowledge
pursued either for political domination, i.e., science for "defense," or for knowl
edge's sake. As expressed in feminist contexts, this is not just a call for more
applied science, but for research that can be directed towards meeting the human
and social needs traditionally ministered to by women. This virtue is endorsed in
conjunction with the final one I will mention.
6) Diffusion of power. This criterion is the practical version of the fourth
criterion, the one favoring models that incorporate interactive rather than domi
nant-subordinate relationships in explanatory models. This one gives preference
to research programs that do not require arcane expertise, expensive equipment,
or that otherwise limit access to utilization and participation. This feature has

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 479

emerged as a value in a number of different contexts. Feminists in engineering

and in economics have condemned requirements of mathematical achievement
far beyond what is required for successfully engaging in these fields. Other femi
nists, such as Hilary Rose and Ruth Ginzburg, have urged a revamping of
traditional distinctions to include widely distributed practices such as midwifery
as scientific practices.17 They urge that such practices be used as models for femi
nist science practice. Feminist health professionals urge a preference for medical
practices and procedures that empower the individual woman either to make
decisions about her health or to retain control over her own body. And ecofemi
nists and feminists in developing regions urge the development of technologies
that are accessible and that can be locally implemented.18 Some implementations
of computer technology are valued for their ability to connect many different and
highly specific sites in widely spread, potentially global communication
networks. Other implementations, for example, the centralization of power made
possible by computer monitoring of job performance and other functions are
more problematic from the perspective of this standard. Diffusion or decentraliza
tion of power interprets the above cited elements of the applicability criterion as
knowledge of soil conservation, intensive small scale sustainable agriculture,
promoting health by preventive measures such as improved hygiene rather than
high-tech interventive measures available only to the few, protection of the envi
ronment by conservation and widely dispersed renewable energy technologies.
The various proponents of these standards have had different ideas about
how they work or ought to work in inquiry. If we treat them as components of a
community set of public standards as suggested in n. 8, we take them as criteria
to be applied to the assessment of theories, guiding theory acceptance and rejec
tion (or perhaps in the case of the last two, what Allen Franklin calls theory
pursuit). They are subject to the limitations noted by Kuhn, i.e., they require
further interpretation to be applied in a given research context, they are not si
multaneously maximally satisfiable, and they are not subject to hierarchical
ordering or algorithmic application.

IV

Merely to list these standards or theoretical virtues is not yet to engage in

epistemology. But it is to provide material for philosophical work. This work can
include a number of different sorts of reflection. One involves thinking about the
interrelation of the standards listed: do they require further interpretation in order
to be adequate to feminist purposes? Are some components of others? Is there
more than one set? If so, what are the relations between them? Do the values and

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480 HELEN E. LONGINO

standards proposed do the job they are required to do, are they sufficient for the
accomplishment of recognized feminist goals with respect to the sciences? Are
there additional constraints on scientific practice that should be articulated? How
do they get exemplified in particular research programs? How do these or other
identified feminist values get implemented in the laboratory? In the discursive in
teractions among scientists thinking of themselves as feminists? What relation do
they bear to virtues, goals, and standards advanced in other oppositional scientif
ic communities?
You might well say?what's specifically feminist or gendered about these
standards? Empirical adequacy, as observed above, is a staple of most philoso
phers of science, even if we wouldn't all gloss it in the same way. The advocacy
of ontological heterogeneity is a staple of many Marxists; the advocacy of models
of genuine interaction a theme of radical environmentalists and ecologists, and so
on. This question belongs to a species of question sometimes asked with the sub
textual intention of showing the irrelevancy of gender or of feminism to science.
But I shall take it charitably, as a genuine puzzlement, a puzzlement that I think
can be removed by thinking not about the content of the standards, but about their
grounds. I do not have the space to discuss the grounds of each of these standards,
and will limit myself to the following brief remarks.
At first glance, it looks as though one might be able to distinguish categories
of standard and hence decide which are properly cognitive and which social and
practical. This would then be a basis for isolating the purely cognitive element
proper to all science. If the basis for such classification is the grounds for
adopting the standards, however, this project cannot succeed. One of the interest
ing features of the particular standards I have articulated is that it is possible to
offer various grounds in their support. All have some social theoretical grounds,
but also either cognitive, aesthetic, or practical grounds.
Take, for example, the criterion of ontological heterogeneity. It has epis
temic grounds: a community characterized by diversity is more epistemically
reliable. It also has social grounds: explanatory models that preserve ontological
heterogeneity may naturalize heterogeneity in the social world, just as models
that feature ontological homogeneity naturalize social homogeneity. In similar
vein models of single-factor control may be used to naturalize social relations of
domination while models of complex interaction may be used to naturalize social
relations of mutuality. This, in turn, if one adopts the social approach to knowl
edge, is important to the structure of an epistemic community.19 Or take empirical
adequacy. It has epistemic grounds: we wouldn't want to adopt a theory unless
there were substantial agreement between the observational and experimental
claims of the theory and observational and experimental results, because such
agreement assures us that at least those parts of the theory are correct. But there

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 481

are practical and social grounds as well. Unless there is such agreement, action
taken on the basis of the theory is not likely to achieve its aims. Moreover, the
demand for such agreement is, in certain contexts, the demand to take one's own
and the experience of others relevantly similar to one's own seriously (in devel
oping risk estimates or social policy), that is, it is to make a political demand.
This variety in their grounds means that the standards themselves can't be
dichotomized into cognitive or social. More to the point, one of the effects they
all have in one way or another is to prevent gender from being disappeared. The
disappearing of gender is the erasure from inquiry of a gradient of power that
keeps women in a position of subordination. Whatever other grounds can be
offered for them, their role in making gender a relevant axis of investigation gives
them their status as feminist.
This feature of the standards should be evident from the contexts from which
I have drawn them. And it suggests to me what we might call a bottom line re
quirement of feminist knowers on cognitive standards: namely that they reveal or
prevent the disappearing of gender. Because "gender" is a contested term in
feminist theory, and because feminist knowers want to know not only about the
social category, but about those whose activities have been hidden by mainstream
accounts of the social and natural world, I would expand this statement to read:
that they reveal or prevent the disappearing of the experience and activities of
women and/or that they reveal or prevent the disappearing of gender. To say that
this is a bottom line requirement for feminist knowers does not mean that making
women and gender visible is all they do or that satisfying this requirement is the
only reason for adopting them. It only means that this is the reason for feminist
inquirers to adopt them.
If we take this requirement as a bottom line, two consequences ensue. First,
we have a basis for critique of the standards as I articulated them a moment ago.
Secondly, and relatedly, we become committed to a sort of bootstrapping provi
sionalism. I will say something briefly about each of these consequences.
To have a basis for critique of any set of standards is to have grounds by
reference to which we may refine or modify them. I will show how I think such
critique might go in the case of one of the standards mentioned above. The
criterion of empirical adequacy begs the question with which data the observa
tional elements of a model or theory ought to be in agreement. One of the
critiques of modern experimental methods is that they involve what Ruth
Hubbard calls "context stripping." When we detach a factor from the contexts in
which it naturally occurs, we are hoping to achieve understanding of that factor's
precise contribution to some process. But by taking it out of its natural context we
deprive ourselves of understanding how its operation is affected by factors in the
context from which it has been removed. This is, of course, a crucial aspect of ex

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 482 HELEN E. LONGINO

perimental method. I suspect that it's not (or not always) the decontextualization
that is to be deplored, but the concomitant devaluation as unimportant or
ephemeral of what remains. The decontextualization of experimental variables is
analogous to the way in which activity in the public domain of modern industrial
societies is analytically detached from the material conditions of its possibility in
the private domain. Resistance to the constant marginalization of domestic (and
female) activity has made feminists sensitive to the processes of exclusion and
devaluation. These are problematic not only in our understandings of the social
world but also in our understanding of the natural world. The failure to attend
fully to the interactions of the social group, including its females, in studying the
males of a species has led to distorted accounts of the structure of animal
societies. In toxicity studies, the focus on a single chemical's toxic properties fails
to inform us how its activities modified, canceled or magnified by interaction
with other elements in its natural environments. Focus on gene action has blinded
us to the ways in which the genes must be activated by other elements in the cell.
These models may well be empirically adequate in relation to data generated in
laboratory experiments, but not in relation to potential data excluded by a partic
ular experimental set-up.
Such reflections could be the basis for an elaboration of empirical adequacy
that requires either an explicit inclusion of context (or enabling material condi
tions, etc.) in the data, or an acknowledgement of the decontextualization that has
made a certain set of data possible. How best to express this understanding
remains an issue for further investigation. I think, however, that what I have said
shows how the requirement of revealing women's activity and experience and/or
gender can ground refinement and modification of criteria adopted in feminist
epistemic communities. Of course, it could also legitimate wholesale replacement
of one or more criteria if the conditions under which they advance this require
ment change. The relation between what I have called "bottom line" requirements
and the criteria that satisfy them is even more complex than this discussion
indicates, which leads me to take up the second consequence.
We may, by producing knowledge in the evaluative context of a given set of
criteria or standards, discover their inadequacies and the need for new ones. We
cannot wait for the arrival of the perfect world (which would generate the best
epistemic criteria) to produce knowledge because we need knowledge (or if not
knowledge, the best accounts of the world we can get with the resources avail
able to us) in order to create at least a different and better world. We need some
sense of the relationships between the various elements of the world in order to
make certain interventions rather than others and for this we need some standards
of model choice now. We need some standards now, but we must be ready to
modify or discard them if conditions change so as to make the standards counter

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 483

productive. This extends to the "bottom line" requirement itself. That is, new
empirical information produced by the application of standards satisfying it may
lead us to rethink the categories of "gender" and of "woman" altogether or to
broaden our cognitive goals.20 And certainly success in satisfying the bottom-line
requirement might ultimately obviate the need to specify it as a cognitive goal
defining a particular knowledge-producing community.
So, rather than leading us in the direction of foundationalism, these reflec
tions lead us in the direction of epistemic provisionalism. At any given time, we
need some criteria to guide our inquiry, but they are always subject to revision in
light of information generated by their application or of other criteria or values
made salient by changed circumstances. And, so we find ourselves once again in
Otto Neurath's leaky boat in the middle of the ocean. But this is not such a bad
place to be. Our company includes all those others who abjure fixed foundations,
but recognize the need for criteria, however temporary, in the sea of competing
claims on our doxastic allegiance.

Conclusion
Feminists are as concerned as anyone with the distinction between knowl
edge and opinion and differences between well- and poorly-grounded beliefs. To
reflect philosophically on these matters in critical awareness of women's histori
cal cognitive disfranchisement and with a view to feminist cognitive objectives is
to do epistemology as a feminist. If, as I suggested, we understand feminist epis
temology as practice rather than content, it may well be appropriate to take issue
with some analysis produced by the practice, but it is hard to see how one could
be for or against feminist epistemology except insofar as one is for or against
feminism.

Helen E. Longino
Rice University and
University of Minnesota

NOTES

1. There may well be more to this differential access that would be relevant to episte
mology. I suspect that what more would depend on general views of the role of experience
in knowledge.
2. Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Goldberg, Nancy Rule Goldberger, Jill
Mattuck Tarule, Women's Ways of Knowing (New York: Basic Books, 1986).

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 484 HELEN E. LONGINO

3. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1982).
4. For further discussion, see Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 251-62.
5. Dorothy Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology
(Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1987) and The Conceptual Practices of
Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press,
1990).
6. Helen E. Longino, "Can There Be a Feminist Science?" Hypatia: Journal of
Feminist Philosophy 2, no. 3 (1987): 51-64.
7. Thomas Kuhn, "Objectivity, Values, and Theory Choice" in The Essential Tension
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
8. In Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)
I developed one form of underdetermination argument and argued for a view I called con
textual empiricism and extended into a thesis about the social character of scientific
knowledge. The latter means that certain features of community structure are important to
the knowledge-productive capacity of a community. I have proposed the following as
criteria of knowledge-productive capacity:
a) avenues for the expression and diffusion of criticism;
b) uptake of, or response to, criticism;
c) public standards by reference to which theories, etc., are assessed;
d) equality of intellectual authority
The theoretical virtues listed, whether feminist or the standard, Kuhnian set, are among the
public standards in c) which vary from community to community, and which constitute
criteria to which community members appeal in endorsing or criticizing features or
products of scientific practice.
9. Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1986).
10. Harding, p. 193.
11. Donna Haraway, "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappro
priate/d Others" in Cultural Studies, ed. by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula
Treichler, (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992).
12. See Ruth Bleier, Science and Gender (Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1983);
Evelyn F. Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1985); Anne Fausto Sterling, Myths of Gender (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1985).
13. Jeanne Altmann, "Observational Study of Behavior: Sampling Methods," Behav
iour 49: 227-67.
14. See the essays in Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (New York, NY:
Routledge, 1991).
15. Evelyn F. Keller, A Feeling for the Organism (San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman
and Company, 1983).
16. Cited inn. 11 above.
17. Hilary Rose, "Hand, Brain, and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural
Sciences," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 9, no. 1 (1983): 73-90; Ruth
Ginzberg, "Uncovering Gynecentric Science" Hypatia: Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2,
no. 3 (1987): 89-106.
18. Gita Sen and Caren Grown, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions (New
York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1987).

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 IN SEARCH OF FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY 485

19. See . 8, above.

20. This has already happened. One of the key advances in recent feminist theorizing
has been the recognition of the diversity of gender relations and of women's experiences?
diversity owing to the interactions of race, class, nationality, and environment with gender
as determinants of social structure and institutions. This has prompted an abandonment of
unitary analyses of 'gender', 'woman', and 'female' on the part of a good number of
feminist scholars. Since no definitions have replaced the unitary ones, these scholars
eschew the unmodified use of these concepts. This acknowledgement of diversity can be
read as an application of the criterion of ontological heterogeneity (and debate about the
unitary or fragmented character of gender, a debate about the applicability of the criterion
in this case). Thus, the bottom line requirement itself must be either reformulated or
replaced, as a consequence of applying one of the standards it grounded.

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