Toole-Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology

Received: 25 July 2022 Revised: 23 September 2022 Accepted: 1 October 2022
DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12885
ARTICLE
Objectivity in feminist epistemology
Briana Toole
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont,

California, USA Abstract
It used to be that the touchstone of objectivity was the
Correspondence
elimination of subjective features, like our values, biases,
Briana Toole, Claremont McKenna College,
Claremont, CA 91711-4025, USA. assumptions, and so on. Part of what motivates this narrow
Email: btoole@cmc.edu
conception of objectivity is the thought that objective real-
Funding information ity is the way that it is regardless of our relationship to it, and
Gould Center at Claremont McKenna College that our ability to accurately describe or depict this reality is
distorted by this relationship. But what if that understand-
[Corrections added on 30 October 2022, after
first online publication: Section headings has ing is wrong, and removing these features takes us farther
been updated]
away from truth and knowledge, rather than closer to them?
This is the claim I advance. In this article, I trace this narrow
conception to its political origins, and advance a broader
understanding of objectivity that reimagines a new use for,
rather than ignoring entirely, features that are thought to be
subjective.
1 | INTRODUCTION
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming
the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish
swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is
water?" —David Foster Wallace (2008)
Over a period of two decades and some thousand letters, philosopher and astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de
Peiresc coordinated scholars from Syria to Quebec in an observation of the 1635 lunar eclipse. The aim? To more
precisely measure longitude, a study which requires the “simultaneous observation [of] people in at least two differ-
ent locations watching some fixed phenomenon in the sky and marking precisely when they had each seen it.” As
author Gal Beckerman observes, what afforded this revolution was a simple innovation, the post, which sped up the
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2 of 13 TOOLE
otherwise “slow accretion of knowledge that comes from the friction of two people trading ideas and observations”
(Beckerman, 2022, p. 15).
This ‘orchestra of observation’, which put various actors in conversation with each other to contribute to a singu-
lar goal, is a remarkable model and inspiring example of the social nature of knowledge. To say that knowledge is
something arrived at via “conversation as a conduit” is perhaps uncontroversial. But knowledge is social in other ways,
as well. As feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science have observed, social values play a role in knowledge
acquisition, informing what we take to be a ‘good’ explanation of some data, shaping which explanations we enter-
tain at all, and determining what research questions we take to be worthy of investigation.
The role of social values in scientific research, in particular, and knowledge-acquisition, more broadly, raises
interesting and important questions about the nature of knowledge, and in particular about objectivity. This is espe-
cially so as explanations are only considered ‘good’ to the extent that they accurately capture facts about the natural
world. The governing ideal for achieving this, objectivity, tells us that our explanations accurately capture facts about
the world to the extent that the processes by which we generate those explanations are “free of personal, social, and
cultural values” (Longino, 1990, p. 4). Thus, there is a clear tension between the conception of science and knowledge
as social, on the one hand, and our operative ideals (of objectivity) that tell us that science and knowledge should be
free of the social.
Yet, despite the fact that objectivity is an ideal thought to govern inquiry, there is a good deal of ambiguity
regarding the term, as it used variously to pick out a property of beliefs, methods, individuals, or more. Thus, in any
conversation on this subject it is important to distinguish between what might be picked out by the term. I begin
here with a quick survey of various candidates for objectivity before centering in on the conception of objectivity
that is my focus. My concern has largely to do with that characterization of objectivity, identified above, that denies
any role to social values in the acquisition of knowledge. As I've suggested, such an ideal is in tension with much of
how knowledge is actually produced. As such, I hope to provide some insight into our commitment to the ideal by
considering its political significance. I'll ultimately use this analysis to motivate a revised characterization of objec-
tivity. I thus round out this essay with a discussion of alternative approaches to objectivity, developed by feminist
epistemologies, that accommodate the social nature of inquiry.
2 | SURVEY OF OBJECTIVITY
Though we have some folk sense of objectivity as a regulative ideal for inquiry, that ideal is ambiguous. Sometimes
objectivity is meant to pick out a feature of reality, capturing mind-independent facts about the world; at other times,
it seems to describe an epistemic ideal that guides inquiry, one which suggests that we must set aside our own values
and desires in the assessment of the object of inquiry; and yet, it might also describe the methods we use to measure
how closely our epistemic ideals bring us to capturing these mind-independent truths. My goal here is to disentangle
some of the different threads that run together when we are discussing this ideal, so as to determine what the word
‘objectivity’ could usefully mean. 1 To begin, I propose distinguishing between at least three threads that appear in
the literature:
Methodology: A method is objective to the extent that it relies upon “nonarbitrary and nonsubjective criteria for
developing, accepting, and rejecting’ claims” (Longino, 1990, p. 62).
Epistemology: An epistemic ideal that holds that the content of one's claim, or one's knowledge of the world, is objective
to the extent that it “can be justified in terms that are accessible to any rational agent” (Haslanger, 2017, p. 279).
Ontology: A feature of reality according to which “what is ‘out there’” is “independent of us” (Haslanger, 2017, p. 279)
If we think that there is such a thing as objective truth (objective reality, out there, independent of us), then we
want to be able to acquire knowledge of it (objective knowledge), and so we need objective methods that will enable
that goal.
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One method, commonly thought to secure objective knowledge of objective truth, is what is sometimes called
the ‘view from nowhere’. The motives for adopting a ‘view from nowhere’ have largely to do with the assumption that
this is the perspective from which objective truths are accessible. Aperspectival objectivity is the epistemic ideal that
is meant to help guide us towards this view. Presumably, one's beliefs capture objective truths to the extent that
one abides by this ideal in arriving at those beliefs. Thus, aperspectival objectivity is understood to secure ontological
objectivity, the mind-independent truths that are the aim of inquiry.
A visual metaphor may help to make clear the distinctions and relationship between these three conceptions
of objectivity. Think of the standpoint made possible by a “view from nowhere” as comparable to the view made
available from the summit of a tall mountain, a standpoint that permits the viewer a 360° view of everything around
them. The things seen from this standpoint and made visible from this point-of-view are what we might think of as
ontologically objective. Of course, it may not be possible to achieve this standpoint, to reach the summit, but we can
still assess how close the view we arrive at is to the view that would be made possible from this perspective. Aper-
spectival objectivity allows us to determine how close we are to arriving at the views one would reach from a ‘view
from nowhere’. It does so by eliminating those influences that are perspectival and thus might remove us from the
centerless perspective called for by the ‘view from nowhere’.
I suggest, then, that we can understand the ‘view from nowhere’ as describing the relationship between aper-
spectival objectivity and ontological objectivity. The ‘view from nowhere’ prescribes a method according to which
we are best able to grasp mind-independent truths by engaging in a sort of epistemic detachment. This epistemic
detachment demands that one removes one's self, as the subject, from the object of inquiry, so as not to distort
understanding of that object, or to arrive an understanding of that object that reflects one's own positioning. Thus,
according to a ‘view from nowhere’, one can acquire mind-independent truths to the extent that one can engage in
the epistemic detachment demanded by aperspectival objectivity.
In this sense, aperspectival objectivity both represents an attempt to cultivate, as best as possible, a ‘view
from nowhere’, as well as a regulative ideal that is meant to ensure the universal accessibility of knowledge claims
by imposing a demand that one's beliefs “transcend our particular viewpoint” (Nagel, 1986, p. 5). The idea here is
twofold: first, S's knowledge of some proposition, P, counts as objective knowledge to the extent that “[S's] justification
for [P] is independent of the contingencies of [S's] personal character and context” (Kukla, 2006, p. 81); and 2) S is
more likely to get at the truth about the independent reality of P to the extent that S's belief that P is aperspectivally
acquired. 2 To some extent, this idea is expressed in the work of Lorraine Daston (1992) and Quill Kukla (2006), both of
whom suggest, in their own analysis of the relationship between aperspectival objectivity and ontological objectivity,
that the former is thought to be a precondition for the latter. Thus, as a method, the ‘view from nowhere’ prescribes
aperspectival objectivity as an ideal that, by eliminating the arbitrary and subjectivity influences of the “claimant's
personal character and context”, ensures that an inquirer may arrive at a point-of-view from which objective reality is
made ‘visible’, in a manner of speaking.
In one sense, then, aperspectival objectivity is thought to secure truth because it moves us towards that stand-
point (the ‘view from nowhere’) from which truth is accessible. In another sense, aperspectival objectivity is thought
to secure truth because it requires the elimination of individual idiosyncrasies that might otherwise distort our ability
to reason with respect to P. The term ‘idiosyncrasies’ here is meant to capture all manner of sins, but a brief look at the
literature will suggest that roughly, in order to know P one must distance themselves from the personal, the political,
the private, the partial (Antony, 2006; Daston, 1992). Presumably, if contingent, idiosyncratic features of a knower
made a difference to what they knew, then the claims they arrived at would violate the demands of aperspectival
objectivity and, as such, those claims would be not be universally accessible. It would then follow that those claims
— the justification for which is not universally accessible — do not constitute objective knowledge 3 and therefore do
not pick out objective reality.
As the discussion above has hopefully made clear, objective knowledge has a privileged status — e.g., science —
that knowledge which makes reference to the ‘personal, political, private, and partial’, lacks, largely because objective
knowledge is thought to pick out objective reality. Thus, if we're on the search for that characterization of objectivity
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that denies that there is any social character to knowledge, we need look no further. To tease out some of the
concerns of this characterization, we should begin by looking at the implications of this constraint on knowledge and
the political significance of such a constraint. Doing so will make clear why we ought to be wary of such a character-
ization of objectivity and provides fruitful motivations for an alternative approach.
In offering a critique of this characterization of objectivity, my target is two-fold. I'll argue that both the ‘view
from nowhere’, and aperspectival objectivity, as a process that allows one to hew as closely as possible to the objec-
tive standpoint this view prescribes, offer ideals that are untenable for epistemic agents, and thus undermine the
epistemic project. In what follows, I aim to show that the method prescribed by ‘a view from nowhere’ is faulty, and
makes acquiring objective truths less likely, as it deprives us of the very resources required for knowing.
3 | THE POLITICAL POWER OF OBJECTIVITY
As I suggested above, aperspectival objectivity is the benchmark by which we evaluate claims to determine if they
constitute knowledge. By adopting this standard, we further commit ourselves to the following:
(1) That at least some epistemic agents can occupy an objective stance (what I have called the ‘view from nowhere’)
and thus satisfy the conditions for aperspectival objectivity, and
(2) That any claims that rely on or involve justification which is not aperspectival do not constitute objective knowl-
edge and therefore do not pick out objective reality.
In a discussion of American jurisprudence, legal scholar Patricia J. Williams observes that ‘theoretical legal under-
standing’ is characterized by a commitment to the existence of “transcendent, contextual, universal legal truths or
pure procedures”, and “the existence of objective, ‘unmediated’ voices by which those transcendent, universal truths
find their expression” (Williams, 1991, p. 9). Epistemology, like law, is guided by similar such principles. Helen Longino,
for instance, observes that while ‘objectivity’ sometimes picks out methods, and at other times a property of reality, it
is also “ascribed variously to beliefs [and] individuals” (Longino, 1990, p. 62). Thus, assuming that we do have at least
some objective knowledge of objective reality, we must also assume that there are at least some epistemic agents
who succeed in distancing themselves from their own perspective and satisfy the standards imposed by aperspectival
objectivity.
Moreover, if aperspectival objectivity (objective knowledge) is a precondition for ontological objectivity (objec-
tive reality) it also follows that claims that are subjective in nature do not constitute objective knowledge and, there-
fore, do not pick out features of objective reality. This follows from demands regarding the universal accessibility of
justification of one's knowledge claims. As Sandra Harding observes in her critique of objectivity “in order to achieve
the status of knowledge, beliefs are supposed to break free of—to transcend—their original ties to local, historical
interests, values, and agendas” (Harding, 1992b, p. 438). 4 Consider, then, that if P is a fact about objective reality,
then (according to the epistemic ideal that aperspectival objectivity prescribes) any rational agent, regardless of their
values, biases, and so on, should be able to access the truth about P. 5 Thus, if P is such that only some knowers have
access to it, those without such access might take themselves to have good reason for believing that P does not pick
out a feature of objective reality.
Jointly, these implications lead feminist epistemologists to the claim that objectivity so conceived may actually
lead to less knowledge rather than more. Why might this be?
As historian of science Naomi Oreskes observes, “All science exists in a context”, and the same can be said of
knowledge, more broadly (Oreskes & Conway, 2019, p. 70). Thomas Kuhn (1962) famously wrote that observation is
theory laden. Sharon Crasnow expands on this idea, suggesting that evidence for a theory is only evidence relative
to the contextual values against which that theory is then evaluated (Crasnow, 2013, p. 415). Longino holds a similar
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view, writing that because evidence underdetermines theory, contextual values must play a role in determining which
theory to accept.
Still further, the evaluation of evidence — even the recognition of evidence as evidence — requires a context, an
epistemic backdrop against which to make sense of that information. The world does not ‘give’ raw, unfiltered data
that we can mechanically assess divested of our individual biases and values. Rather, what information is ‘given’ or
made available to us, as inquirers, is given from a particular situation. As Kuhn goes on to say, facts and observations
only become meaningful within a context of theory that can give sense to that information.
Consequently, our observations will likely be laden with the values of the community. As an example, Longino
claims that the observations of a sexist/racist community will reflect the racism/sexism of that community
(Longino, 1990, p. 11). Thus, as some feminist epistemologists (Antony, 2006) have argued, the issue isn't that values
play a role when they should not, but rather that we need to determine which values should play a role. 6
It is also the case that the ‘view from nowhere’, which requires for its achievement that one engage in aperspec-
tival abstraction, prescribes an ideal that is not achievable for creatures such as ourselves. This inability to achieve a
‘view from nowhere’ has largely to do with our embodiment, and the fact that our embodied perspective is necessarily
situated, and therefore necessarily perspective-laden. Consider, for instance, the relationship between perception and
cognition. As Linda Alcoff, surveying Merleau-Ponty, observes:
The cogito is founded on percipio, it is both undetachable from bodily experience and incapable of
achieving absoluteness or permanence. In other words, because knowledge is based in bodily percep-
tual experience, cognition is incapable of total closure or complete comprehensiveness because of our
concrete, situated, and dynamic embodiment.
(Alcoff, 1999: 83, italics in original)
Alcoff clarifies the motivations for this understanding of perception, writing that “it is only because being is
always being in the world, and not apart or over the world, that we can know the world. But it is also because being
is always being in the world that our knowledge is forever partial, revisable, incomplete” (ibid, italics mine). Thus, it
is not the case that any individual can, in fact, occupy an objective stance or take a ‘view from nowhere’, as doing so
would eliminate the very features that are required for knowing (and would thus undermine our ability to acquire
knowledge).
However, that we remain committed to this ideal, despite the fact that it is not achievable for creatures such as
ourselves, suggests that we should look elsewhere for motivations for remaining so committed. I suggest the moti-
vations are largely political, as objectivity plays an important role in stabilizing the knowledge of dominant epistemic
frameworks and paradigms. This is due in part to the fact that, as Antony writes, “…there is a general and uncritical
belief that the ideal is actually satisfied by at least some individuals and institutions…” (Antony, 2006, p. 59). The
individuals who are ‘generally and uncritically’ thought to satisfy this ideal tend to be those in the dominant classes
who “accept the ideological consensus, either by dint of occupying the upper strata themselves, or by having been
educated in accordance with the prevailing ideology” (bid. 70). Consequently, Antony writes, “views consistent with
the ideology will come to dominate or completely exclude alternatives.” (ibid). Thus, under the guise of objectivity, the
fact that the body of knowledge produced by the dominant classes is itself situated and, therefore, also partial and
incomplete, is disappeared. A consequence of this is that knowledge that conflicts with operative theory or paradigms
(and so those theories that are in tension with the status quo) are likely to be dismissed as inaccurate and biased.
This leads me to the second concern: that any claims that rely on or involve justification which is not aperspec-
tival do not constitute knowledge. This means that any claims that appeal to or rely on social (or other contextual)
factors will be discounted as scientific knowledge or knowledge of objective reality. This is entailed by the view that a
claim is objective (and therefore qualifies as objective knowledge) to the extent that it is free of the influence of social
features, a view which may itself be motivated by the assumption that objective knowledge is more likely to capture
objective reality. 7 After all, it is because knowledge about atoms was arrived at via a process of objectivity inquiry
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that we take knowledge of atoms to be objective knowledge. Moreover, we believe that this objective knowledge
accurately captures objective reality - that is, we take it that there are, in fact, atoms.
Part of what motivates this view is the thought that objective reality is the way that it is regardless of our rela-
tionship to it, and that our ability to accurately describe or depict this reality is distorted by this relationship. As such,
to the extent that we wish to accurately capture facts about reality we must eliminate those features that might
impair our ability to do so. The problem with this, of course, is how broadly or narrowly we are understanding ‘social
features’.
Certain schools of thought - among them feminist empiricism, naturalized epistemology, and feminist standpoint
theorists - already make space for the role of social features in the acquisition of knowledge. The former two schools
suggest that there is a causal history to beliefs, a history that can account for our arriving at the beliefs that we do
and that is informed by social and contextual features, like one's location within a socially, politically, or epistemically
oppressive system (Antony, 2006; Quine, 1969). This context is laden with a “particular set of assumptions, including
assumptions about the aim of research, appropriate methodology, and criteria” that in turn inform theory choice
(Intemann, 2010, p. 780). The latter schools argues that certain social features (like aspects of one's social identity)
do, in fact, make a difference to what we know, as “different bodies are subjected to different material conditions and
forces that can give rise to different experiences and thus different evidence and beliefs” (bid. 785). In short, what
naturalized epistemologists, feminist empiricists, and standpoint epistemologists argue is that nearly all knowledge is
social, in that it is the result of a causal history that is socially informed, and in that it is produced by people who are
embodied and therefore necessarily situated. Thus, my fear that in remaining committed to this impossible ideal we
are led to produce less knowledge rather than more.
If, as I have suggested, objectivity - as it currently conceived - leads to less knowledge rather than more, what
explains our ongoing commitment to it? To answer this question, we need to consider the political power of objec-
tivity. As Antony writes, while ‘objectivity’ affords the dominant “the power to create ‘facts’” it also “becomes the
power to stigmatize as 'opinion,' and hence as 'bias,' any seriously divergent point of view” (Antony, 2006, p. 74). Thus,
when a policy that is thought to be derived from or supported by the ‘objective facts’ is disputed, challengers may
be accused of being “guilty of intolerance, dogmatism, or ideological excess” (Code, 1993, p. 28). In short, as Lorraine
Code argues, ‘objectivity’ can be utilized to “[erect] a screen, a blind, behind which the researcher… can abdicate
accountability to anything but ‘the facts’ and can present himself as a neutral”, all while disappearing the values,
biases, and idiosyncrasies that might have produced this research (bid. 27-28).
We are often unaware of what features, social or otherwise, are influencing our belief. Like the two fish in the
David Foster Wallace inscription that opens this article, we are often unaware of the ‘water’ that we swim in. Part of
the efficacy and utility of the assumptions (‘water’) that we rely on is that we don't notice them. This fact, together
with the epistemic power of the socially powerful - the “authority for [their] claim(s) that is grounded in a, presumably,
stronger relationship to some privileged value and/or variable, e.g., truth” (Dotson, 2018, p. 139) — means that their
operative assumptions, biases, and values are (incorrectly) presumed to be universal, and unduly influence what we
consider to be objective. 8
In short, social features are already influencing what we take to be objective, but the features are often not
understood as social, at all. Hence my earlier claim that the problem in suggesting that we eliminate social features
lies in how we are understanding social features, and which features we are considering to be ‘social’. There is, then,
a clear sense in which objectivity functions as a safeguard for social and political power, certifying “as value-neutral,
normal, natural, and therefore not political at all the existing scientific policies and practices through which powerful
groups can gain the information and explanations that they need to advance their priorities” (Harding, 1992a, p. 568).
Portraying dominant located stances as value-neural and objective thus provides them with an additional layer of
justification, immunizing those stances, and the ‘knowledge’ they produce, from critique.
Thus, as feminist philosophers of science and other feminist epistemologists have observed, we need a revised
conception of objectivity. First and foremost, we need an account that does not feign to be a ‘politically neutral’
option but that acknowledges the influences of power structures on our conception of what constitutes objective
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knowledge. Moreover, we need an account that will allow us to draw out these influences. We need as well an account
that acknowledges the limitations of epistemic agents - our embodied situatedness and the context-dependency of
our observations - and accommodates these limitations. As such, I turn now to feminist accounts of objectivity that
seek to capture, rather than dismiss or ignore, the social character of knowledge (and the social processes by which
knowledge is achieved).
4 | THE FEMINIST TAKE ON OBJECTIVITY
Despite the criticisms lodged above, some conception of objectivity should play a role in guiding inquiry. After all, as
Sharon Crasnow writes, one reason to think of objectivity in terms of value-neutrality is that inquiry that is value-free
“promises to eliminate the evils of ideology” (Crasnow, 2013, p. 413). However, as I've suggested, the notion of
objectivity itself is not value-free. Consequently, a commitment to this ideal not only does not eliminate the ‘evils of
ideology’, but disguises those evils and masks, or misrepresents them as objective. Thus, we need a new conception
of objectivity, one that does not disguise the subjective as objective, but allows us to attend to the influence of
subjective features on knowledge-production.
The challenge for achieving objectivity now turns not on our ability to abstract away from our values and biases,
but, rather, to attend to the ways in which those features in fact influence (and sometimes, distort) inquiry. The
strategy best suited to this goal will be one that allows us to render the familiar alien (Mills, 1988, p. 246), so that we
come to see that what we take to be standard background assumptions, hardly worthy of our notice, are not shared
across individuals or communities.
To this end, feminist epistemologists suggest that objectivity should be characterized by a process of community
inquiry that engages a number of different points of view. Such a process allows inquirers to draw out the idiosyn-
cratic features of members of that community that might be shaping inquiry and which might otherwise go unnoticed
by members of that community. Thus, on this view, objectivity is a characteristic of communities, not individuals. This
is the claim that feminist epistemologists seek to motivate and defend. Two themes guide feminist epistemologists
to this view.
The first is the notion of ‘strong objectivity’, which characterizes objectivity as achieved when the subject of
knowledge (the inquirer, S) is subjected to the same critical plane as the object of knowledge. As Harding writes, “the
subject of knowledge—the individual and the historically located social community whose unexamined beliefs its
members are likely to hold 'unknowingly' – must be interrogated, as well, when we're considering whether a belief is
objective” (Harding, 1992b, p. 458). Thus, on Harding's view, the objectivity of a belief is secured to the extent that
we consider the positionality of the inquirer (i.e., their situated perspective) and the extent to which this positionally
bears on the belief(s) at which they arrive.
Harding's ‘strong objectivity’ is informed by her view that “[starting] thought from marginalized lives,” can reveal
the sexist, racist, and other problematic values that shape and guide research (Harding, 1992b: 438, 440). With the
help of those at the margins, we can “systematically identify and eliminate from the results of research those social
values, interests, and agendas that are shared by the entire scientific community”, which existing methods for secur-
ing objectivity cannot successfully identify because they are the ‘dominant ideas of the age’ (Harding, 1992b, p. 440).
Yet, ‘strong objectivity’ by itself, will not secure objective truth. Any individual inquirer within a homogenous
community is still unlikely to notice the water they swim in — the taken-for-granted values and assumptions that
guided their inquiry. Thus, it is necessary for the achievement of strong objectivity that the inquirer be placed within
a community that is heterogenous, one that includes members who may not share the taken-for-granted assumptions
that may have shaped inquiry. This leads me to the second theme that guides feminist epistemology.
Feminist epistemologists hold that objectivity is achieved within a community of inquirers through a process
of intersubjective criticism. On Longino's account, for instance, “knowledge is produced collectively through the
clashing and meshing of a variety of points of view” (Longino, 1990, p. 69), as it is this ‘clashing and meshing’ that
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can expose the assumptions, biases, and other social features that shape inquiry (bid. 75). Louise Antony echoes this
sentiment, writing that “[o]bjectivity… is a social virtue —it emerges only out of a healthy interchange among a host
of single ‘sides’” (Antony, 2006, p. 75).
Jointly, these two themes re-characterize objectivity in two important ways. First, feminist epistemologists deny
that objective truth is only accessible via a ‘view from nowhere’, and instead suggest that these truths can be accessed
by taking what I will call a ‘view from many places’. 9 This in turn leads them to re-characterize what is required for
achieving this stance. Where the ‘view from nowhere’ demands aperspectival objectivity, the ‘view from many places’
requires perspectival suppleness, the “ability to assume myriad other points of view rather than the total escape from
perspective implied by the ‘view from nowhere’” (Daston, 1992, p. 604).
Return to the visual metaphor I offered in section 1. While no one individual may reach the summit, or achieve
the ‘view from nowhere’, we might still arrive at objective truths by amassing the perspectives of those positioned at
various locations around the mountain. Thus, feminist epistemologists deny that we need to engage in aperspectival
inquiry in order to attain a standpoint (i.e., the ‘view from nowhere’) from which truth is made available. Instead, the
perspective from which truth is made available is one which draws on the information made available from the many
places which inquirers stand, information which is necessarily contextual (in that inquirers are historically and socially
located), and therefore necessarily perspectival.
A ‘view from many places’ acknowledges the limitations of individual perspectives, but insists that an objective
view of the world is one which brings into contact with each other the diverse epistemic habits, patterns of cognition,
and body of conceptual resources of a diverse body of knowers. The hope is that by bringing these into conversation
with each other, we can draw out the influence of our limited perspective and come to attend to features of the world
that our perspective restricts our ability to see and engage. As such, it offers us a more complete or total picture of
the world than does a centerless ‘view from nowhere’ (which is emptied of the very features required for knowing).
Objectivity, understood as perspectival abstraction, can at best offer, as I've argued above, a view that is partial and
political, a picture that is incomplete, and one that reflects the point-of-view of those in power.
The two themes that guide feminist epistemology on objectivity propose that inquirers use each other as a
form of checks and balance against which to evaluate beliefs. Strong objectivity, coupled with a community practice,
demands that we subject our beliefs to other viewpoints, a process that can reveal both the background assumptions
we are operating with, as well as the assumptions taken on by other perspectives. Thus, I suggest that perspectival
suppleness is better equipped – than is an aperspectival approach – to enable us to arrive at beliefs that eliminate
the ills of ideology than does taking (or attempting to take and failing) a ‘view from nowhere’. This is true for several
reasons. First, using each other as a set of checks and balances allows us to draw out the entrenched ideologies
embedded in our knowledge practices, ideologies which might otherwise go unnoticed and that might be rejected in
other epistemic communities. Moreover, such a process guards against stagnation by drawing attention to the inade-
quacy of our operative epistemic and scientific framework, raising to our attention gaps that might be present in our
conceptual resources (the tools we use for attending to and making sense of the world).
This culminates in a more robust epistemic framework, one that envelops a wider range of conceptual resources,
answerable to a greater number of contexts, that can then be used to make sense of and evaluate claims. A ‘view from
many places’ is thus more likely, than is a ‘view from nowhere’, to secure truth, the ultimate aim of objectivity. In part,
this is because the former is more epistemically robust than the latter. A ‘view from many places’ requires that a belief,
in order to be considered ‘objective’, is answerable to different contexts, contexts which are informed by different
assumptions. Thus, any belief that survives, or updates in response to, the scrutiny of a number of different epistemic
communities is more likely to capture facts that accurately describe the world. Thus, we can understand ‘objectivity’
as characterizing any belief that is likely to survive the scrutiny of multiple epistemic communities deploying different
values, biases, and assumptions.
It thus follows that objectivity is not a binary value - it is not the case that a belief either is or is not objective -
but a spectrum, a matter of degree. As such, it is possible for a belief to be more or less objective, to the extent that
is has been subjected to and survived the scrutiny of other communities. 10 Here an example may help to illustrate
TOOLE 9 of 13
why objectivity, conceived in terms of perspectival suppleness, will generate “better, more objective knowledge”
(Kukla, 2006, p. 81).
The ‘marshmallow test’, initially devised in 1972 by researchers at Stanford University, concluded that willpower
- understood in this experiment in terms of delayed gratification, measured by the ability to withstand the temptation
to eat one marshmallow now for the promise of two marshmallows later - correlates with future success (Mischel
et al., 1988). This study, conducted on Black and white children, further concluded that Black people are impulsive
- as they were more likely, than were white children, to opt for one marshmallow now - and that this explains lack
of success later in life. However, as Lorraine Code observes of research conducted during this period, “there was a
concerted effort…to produce studies that would demonstrate the ‘natural’ sources of racial and sexual inequality”
(Code, 1993, p. 29). As such, it is difficult to conceive of this particular research program being chosen, or the “data”
being gathered and interpreted, independent of these debates.
Notably, when the study was conducted again, this time absent a context shaped by a commitment to biological
determinism, researchers realized that 1) the socio-economic status of the child participants may have impacted
the experiment and 2) that distrust of the white researchers by Black participants may have impacted their
decision-making (Benjamin et al., 2020; Intemann, 2009). In short, additional researchers from different backgrounds
and communities, operating with different values and assumptions, were able to draw attention to the manner in
which the social and scientific context of the time shaped the results that were produced. Consequently, submitting
past results to scrutiny by researchers operating with different assumptions about the test groups/subjects and in a
more egalitarian (or minimally, less racist) context, produced “better, more objective knowledge” regarding the rela-
tionship between delayed gratification and long-term success (Kukla, 2006, p. 81). This is due in no small part to the
fact that the new researchers identified and isolated variables, like socioeconomic status and racial relationships, that
would have distorted the data but that would have been unidentifiable to the initial researchers who were operating
in a context that led them to overlook or dismiss the relevance of these variables.
Consider, then, that while it may be true that Black participants in this study displayed behavior that was easily
classified in terms of impulsivity, a fact that was then used to explain why Black people are less successful in the
long term, this is but a partial truth, and is incomplete without the added data that the socioeconomic status of Black
people is what accounts for their alleged impulsivity. Thus, while the initial claims may have been objective in that, to
some extent, they reflected reality, the additional claim regarding socioeconomic status is more objective because it
offers a more total and complete account than did the initial observations.
Let me return now to the distinction between objectivity as it applies to methodology, epistemology, and ontol-
ogy. I must say how we should now understand these with the insights of feminist epistemology in mind. Recall that
I began with a method - the ‘view from nowhere’ - which suggests that one is able to acquire truths about the world
to the extent that one's inquiry is done aperspectivally. Here I have instead proposed an alternative method, what
I have been calling the ‘view from many places’, which instead suggests that perspectival suppleness is required in
order to acquire truths about the world. The latter method is superior, I argue, in that it acknowledges that whether
justification is accessible to a particular agent will depend on how that agent is situated, the context in which that
agent is located, and other such features. As such, a belief is justified to the extent that is subjected to, and survives
scrutiny from other epistemic contexts. This alternative method calls for an alternative process by which to secure
objectivity, what I have been calling perspectival suppleness. Rather than engaging in perspective abstraction, as is
called for the by the ‘view from nowhere’, perspectival suppleness demands that we consider how multiple inquirers,
from a diverse range of epistemic contexts, might evaluate the subject of inquiry.
This in turn leads to a new understanding of what objectivity calls for. Rather than thinking that objectivity
involves ‘stepping back’, under a feminist conception objectivity involves — to reclaim a phrase from Sheryl Sandberg
— ‘leaning in’. That is to say, objectivity need not be thought of as involving or requiring impartiality or neutrality,
centerlessness or perspective-lessness; objectivity instead involves acknowledging and attending to how our posi-
tion, relative to the object of inquiry, shapes our understanding of that object. It involves, moreover, taking into
account how those who are positioned differently will understand that object, as well.
10 of 13 TOOLE
Thus, we must re-define the two primary categories of analysis offered earlier in section 1. I propose the follow-
ing revisions:
Methodology: An objective method is one that draws out the subjective influences (context, values, biases, and
assumptions) of the subject of inquiry and investigates the impact of those features on how that subject under-
stands the object of inquiry (‘strong objectivity’) and subjects that object to the scrutiny of a heterogenous
community of inquirers (community practice).
This will, in turn, impact how we understand objectivity as a regulative ideal for belief. Aperspectival objec-
tivity demands that justification for one's belief be accessible to any rational agent in the same epistemic position.
However, given the limitations of one's context and the varied influences on belief, what justifies S's belief in P
may not be accessible to some other agent, T. Consider again the marshmallow test — what justifies the conclusion
reached in later studies may well have not been accessible to early researchers given the pervasive influence of
biological determinism that was operative at the time.
Consequently, feminist epistemologies deny that aperspectival objectivity is a precondition for ontological objec-
tivity. It is thus possible for an epistemic agent to have justification that other agents lack and, moreover, it is possible
for this justification to secure ontologically objective truth. Thus, whether a belief is objective will not depend on the
accessibility of one's justification, but rather how closely that belief is to the view one would have were one to take
the ‘view from many places’. It is in this respect that a belief can be ‘more or less objective’.
5 | CONCLUDING REMARKS
According to the ‘view from nowhere’, truth can only be acquired from a standpoint emptied of those features
thought to distort our access to it. This view of objectivity is one that denies the fullness, richness, and relevance of
our social lives to how we engage with the world. It thus prescribes an ideal that is untenable for creatures such as
ourselves, an ideal that leads us further from our goal, rather than closer to it.
Feminist epistemologists instead embrace the fact that the production of knowledge, and the ideals that guide
knowledge-production, are distinctly social in nature. This is so in several respects. First, the method of acquiring
objectivity cannot be one that relies on “nonarbitrary and nonsubjective criteria for developing, accepting, and reject-
ing claims” because our evaluation of claims will always be context-dependent, and we “cannot always be aware of
the multitude of background assumptions being relied upon in any given research context” (Intemann, 2010, p. 255).
Thus, in the pursuit of objectivity, the method we rely on must be one that draws out these influences on belief. For
this reason, feminists recommend what I have called the ‘view from many places’, as it enables the constructive and
critical dialogue required for achieving objectivity.
According to feminist conceptions, idiosyncratic influences on knowledge cannot be eliminated if they are undis-
coverable, and they are unlikely to be discoverable within a homogenous community comprised of like-minded indi-
viduals. To adopt a ‘view from many places’, however, makes possible the detection and elimination of such features,
as it disrupts processes of inquiry that consist only of like-minded individuals who may share conceptual schemas,
social assumptions, and values. This disruption occurs by putting potentially conflicting perspectives in touch with
each other, so that we may draw out and identify which features of those perspectives are at work in shaping inquiry.
The acquisition of objective knowledge requires an ‘orchestra of observation’ from observers who are differ-
ently situated, whose assumptions may be informed by different contexts, who deploy different (or more nuanced)
epistemic resources, and so on. One player alone can perhaps produce a pretty melody, but an orchestra of players
working in concert together can produce a symphony, a triumph of sound. The process of acquiring knowledge is
no different. One inquirer working alone may arrive at a pretty truth, but that ‘truth’ is likely to be a mere reflection
TOOLE 11 of 13
of the world relative to his own standing in it. An ‘orchestra of inquirers’, however, working together can secure a
composition of perspectives, each of which contribute some small part to acquiring the truth.
ACKNOWLE DG E ME NT
I'd like to thank audiences at the 2022 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, Boston University, the Ideal and
Non-Ideal Epistemology series, and the University of Southern California for helpful feedback. I'd also like to thank
my research assistant at Claremont McKenna College, Caroline McGinnis. Funded in part by the Gould Center at
Claremont McKenna College.
O RC ID
Briana Toole https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8004-3478
EN D NOTE S
1
See also Steinberger (2015, esp. Chapter 1) for an analysis of various conceptions of objectivity.
2
Observe, however, that objective knowledge is distinct from knowledge of objective reality. Sally Haslanger draws out this
point through example. If one knows God via Divine Revelation, then one has knowledge of a fact about objective reality
(that God exists) but that knowledge is not objective knowledge, as the justification (divine revelation) is not universally
accessible. Thus, it is possible to have non-objective (subjective) knowledge that captures objective reality, and it is possi-
ble to have objective knowledge that fails to capture objective reality.
3
Contrast objective knowledge – knowledge which is acquired by engaging in aperspectival abstraction – with subjective
knowledge, which usually refers to knowledge of one's own subjective states. Knowledge that one has a headache is
subjective knowledge, because the justification for one's belief that one has a headache – the first-personal experience of
having the headache – is not justification that can be universally accessed.
4
Arguably, as Harding puts the point, socially situated beliefs not only do not count as objective knowledge, they do not
count as knowledge, at all, but mere opinions. (Harding, 1992b, p. 438)
5
Of course, as I've argued elsewhere, ideology may distort one's ability to reason with respect to P such that those who
are not in the grips of such ideology can come to know facts about P that those who are in the grips of ideology cannot
(Toole, 2021; Toole, forthcoming).
6
Antony, for instance, distinguishes between values that are salutary and those that are pernicious.
7
However, keep in mind, as mentioned in footnote 1 above, that 1) not all objective knowledge will be understood as
knowledge of objective reality, and 2) not all knowledge of objective reality will be objective knowledge. As an illustration
of the former, the research by Philipe Rushton on the relationship between intelligence and genitalia size was regarded as
having been objectively produced and was, therefore, considered to be objective knowledge. Though we were, of course,
ultimately wrong in that assessment, one might understand this as knowledge that was produced by objective measures
but failed to pick out objective reality. As an illustration of the latter, consider knowledge via Divine Revelation.
8
Note, for instance, Paul Taylor's claim that what is taken as the ‘objective’ view of social relations tends to reflect the white
gaze (2016: 40). Feminist scholars (Harding, 2015, p. 29, discussing MacKinnon, 1983) have made similar claims, noting
that the objective view reflects the male gaze.
9
I believe this captures roughly the same notion that Amartya Sen has in mind by “trans-positional” assessment, which he
argues involves “drawing on but going beyond different positional observations” (Sen, 1993, p. 130).
10
This is consistent with the standpoint literature, which suggests that marginalized perspectives lead to ‘better, more
objective’ knowledge, in part because those who sit at the social margins are forced (in virtue of their vulnerability to those
with social power) to engage with and interpret the world from multiple perspectives. Thus, there is already a notion,
operative in the literature, that those with more robust perspectives are more likely to arrive at ‘better, more objective’
beliefs.
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AUT HOR BI OGRAPHY
Briana Toole is an assistant professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. Her research interests are in
epistemology, philosophy of race and gender, and social and political philosophy. Briana's research investigates
the role of traditional assumptions regarding knowledge production in reproducing oppression. For the past few
years, she has been working to motivate and revitalize a thesis consigned to the margins of philosophy, stand-
point epistemology, the view that non-epistemic features (like one's social identity) make a difference to what one
is in a position to know. Her current work examines how responses to resistance movements serve to re-position
the state as the arbiter of when resistance is permitted and how it can be performed, which she argues gener-
TOOLE 13 of 13
ates a paradox for resistance. Her work has appeared in Hypatia, Episteme, and Analysis. She is the founder and
director of Corrupt the Youth, a program that brings philosophy to high school-aged populations that have been
historically excluded from the academy.
How to cite this article: Toole, B. (2022). Objectivity in feminist epistemology. Philosophy Compass, 17(11),
e12885. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12885

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Received: 25 July 2022 Revised: 23 September 2022 Accepted: 1 October 2022

Objectivity in feminist epistemology

Claremont McKenna College, Claremont,

Philosophy Compass. 2022;17:e12885. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/phc3 1 of 13

3 | THE POLITICAL POWER OF OBJECTIVITY

4 | THE FEMINIST TAKE ON OBJECTIVITY

AUT HOR BI OGRAPHY

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