The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy

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RATIONALITY AND OBJECTIVITY IN FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY

Phyllis Rooney

Starting Places

Although the concept of knowledge is usually taken to be the central concept in epistemology (theory of knowledge), the concepts rationality and objectivity are also very prominent. These three concepts, along with the concept of truth, have regularly been understood in terms of each other. “Knowledge” is usually taken to mean “objective knowledge” or “objective truth,” and attaining knowledge typically requires the proper exercise of reason or rationality.

Despite such general acknowledgements, philosophers have regularly disagreed about more precise definitions or characterizations of these concepts. In particular, the history of Western philosophy reveals a range of conceptions of rationality and objectivity. In spite of these differences, a particular historical pattern is of special interest to feminist philosophers. Rationality and objectivity as epistemic (knowledge-related) ideals were regularly assumed to be exhibited only or primarily by men and, often too, only by men of “higher” races and classes. This politically problematic history, which regularly reflected and contributed to systems of injustice, marks an important starting place for feminist reflections in epistemology and philosophy of science.

The histories of the “gendering” of rationality and objectivity were clearly linked though not identical. In her influential work, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy, Genevieve Lloyd documents “the implicit maleness” of ideals of reason in that history—a maleness that, she argues, “is no superficial linguistic bias . . . [but is something that] lies deep in our philosophical tradition” (1993 [1984]: xviii). Women were regularly thought to be less rational than men—a view that still prevails in many places. Hegel’s claim has a familiar ring in the history of philosophy:

[women] are not made for activities which demand a universal faculty [reason] such as the more advanced sciences, philosophy, and certain forms of artistic production. Women may have happy ideas, taste, and elegance, but they cannot attain to the ideal [of reason].

(quoted in Bell 1983: 269)

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In addition, gender metaphors were often used to portray the rational faculty in humans as that which requires the exclusion or control of emotion, passion, or instinct which were metaphorically or symbolically cast as “feminine” (Rooney 1991). So, for example, the first-century Alexandrian philosopher Philo stated: “So too with the two ingredients which constitute our life-principle, the rational and the irrational; the rational which belongs to mind and reason is of the masculine gender, the irrational, the province of sense, is of the feminine” (quoted in Lloyd 1993: 27).

The historical association of objectivity with masculinity has played out somewhat differently, in part because that concept has had a more recent history closely linked with the development of modern empirical science since the seventeenth century. Scientific knowledge ideally aims to be objective, the result of careful, unbiased observations of the world. In their detailed history of the concept, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison argue that our familiar understanding of it (“[t]o be objective is to aspire to knowledge that bears no trace of the knower—knowledge unmarked by prejudice or skill, fantasy or judgment, wishing or striving”) only emerged in the mid-nineteenth century (Daston and Galison 2007: 17).

We should note, however, that forerunners of the concept—typically expressed as requirements about proper scientific method or about the proper stance or demeanor of the scientist in relation to the objects of study in scientific inquiry—also had clear gender connotations. Elizabeth Potter observes that prominent seventeenth-century scientist Robert Boyle (of “Boyle’s Law of Gases”) was quite insistent that only gentlemen of the upper classes had the qualities needed to properly conduct and record scientific experiments—or even to witness and report them. The men who wrote laboratory reports were to be “sober and modest men” who adopted a plain “masculine style” of writing without any flowery “feminine” style of eloquence that would be distracting (Potter 2001: 10–11). In a related vein, Evelyn Fox Keller documents how Francis Bacon (also a prominent theorist of early modern science) celebrated the birth of modern science as a “masculine birth,” and metaphorically depicted scientific inquiry in terms of a “chaste and lawful marriage between [male] Mind and [female] Nature” (Keller 1985: 33–42).

In sum, conceptions and valuations of both rationality and objectivity regularly associated both concepts with men, or with “masculine” traits, abilities, or symbols. Familiar philosophical contrasts or dichotomies (reason versus emotion, objectivity versus subjectivity, and mind versus body or nature) thus acquired gender associations that both reflected and reinforced sexist cultural assumptions. In other words, the association of some capacity, element, or symbol with women or “the feminine” was deemed sufficient—typically without any argument—to mark that capacity or element as something that was antithetical to or disruptive of reason, higher intellectual functioning, and proper objective knowledge. Feminist rethinking in epistemology includes critical reassessments of the role of these gender-inflected dichotomies in philosophical and in broader cultural understandings of rationality, objectivity, and knowledge.

Gender, however, was not the only social or cultural differentiation that figured into philosophical associations with epistemic ideals. As Potter notes regarding Boyle’s comments about the “sober and modest men” who would be scientists, these men were to have a certain class status. Philosophers also regularly associated “savages” or “primitive people” with inferior intellectual capacities, in statements that often reflected prejudices about racial and ethnic differences. Kant, for instance, asserted, “so fundamental is the difference between [the black and white] races of man . . . it appears to be as great in regard to mental capacities as in color” (quoted in Mills 1997: 70). Thus, it would be a mistake to assume that gender is the only category of social or cultural differentiation that figures into feminist critiques. It is now more accurate to say that a starting point for feminist epistemology is not gender per se, but social injustice or, more specifically, forms of social injustice that were reinforced by historical assessments of intellectual and epistemic status (Medina 2013). Gender is sometimes a useful category of analysis (especially when philosophers made gender a notable marker of epistemic status), but we should also keep in mind that gender is a social division that intersects with race, class, or other social divisions, and these can mitigate or exacerbate the epistemic fallout of gender associations.

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There is little doubt that the long-term practical and political impact of these cultural associations with rationality and objectivity has been significant. Those deemed intellectually inferior were, for centuries, excluded from educational institutions and other venues of public influence and action. These exclusions have begun to be addressed only relatively recently. What also needs to be addressed, feminist philosophers argue, is the theoretical impact of these historical associations, that is, their impact on philosophical theorizing about rationality and objectivity. Following Lloyd’s lead, many feminist discussions start with a historical focus, with an examination of the role of problematic cultural associations in the work of particular prominent philosophers. Feminist work on Descartes provides a helpful illustration of what feminist historical reassessments involve.

Lloyd notes that Descartes conceived of reason as involving a precise method of thinking using “rules for the direction of mind,” a method that, with sufficient time and energy, anyone could master—“even women” (Lloyd 1993: 44). Yet, she continues, despite his egalitarian intentions, Descartes’ reliance on a mind–body split (with reason allied with mind, and the body considered a significant source of deception and illusion) reinforced a distinction that already had a gender history, and “reinforced already existing distinctions between male and female roles” (Lloyd 1993: 39–50). Margaret Atherton, on the other hand, argues specifically for the feminist value of Descartes’ conception. She observes that his view of “universal reason” was championed by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century feminists who used it to argue for women’s equal access to education (Atherton 2002).

These feminist assessments of Descartes’s reason are not necessarily in conflict, of course (and they are not the only such assessments). A given philosopher’s view of reason is likely to have various components, some more attuned to progressive political concerns than others. But perhaps more to the point, differing feminist assessments of key conceptions of rationality and objectivity appear to be at odds with one another only if we expect a feminist analysis to take one form. As we will see, feminist work in this area yields a rich variety of approaches, discussions, and insights that help us to think about these central concepts in important new ways.

My emphasis here on historical starting places is designed to counter common misunderstandings of feminist work in epistemology and philosophy of science. First, feminist work is often mistakenly identified with fixed assertions or claims to which all feminists assent. Feminists are certainly in agreement about the importance of particular questions (such as those noted above), but it is the developments generated by differences and debates in answering these questions that more accurately define the field. Second, feminists are sometimes characterized as newly claiming that reason and objectivity are “male.” To the contrary, they are simply pointing out that philosophers often theorized or characterized these concepts as “male” in the ways outlined above. Third (and following on the previous point), feminists are sometimes portrayed as uniformly rejecting reason and objectivity as “male” concepts. While there are differing views about the extent to which these concepts need to be revamped (Alcoff 1995), feminist critiques typically go hand in hand with the understanding that the concepts are important enough to merit better analysis and theorizing, that is, free of limiting historical connotations. Fourth, some have challenged the very idea of “feminist” work in epistemology and philosophy of science, arguing that feminists are introducing “politics” into areas where political “biases” or “agendas” do not properly belong. However, insofar as feminist interventions in these areas are “political” interventions, they are what I call corrective political interventions. The original political interventions were the automatic, unreflective sexist, racist, and similarly problematic political assumptions (interventions) that were accepted for centuries, interventions that now warrant focused feminist and social justice critique. Granting that political intrusions into philosophy may sometimes be problematic, it is not clear that feminist interventions are the more problematic ones in this context.

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Feminist work on rationality and objectivity goes beyond critiques of traditional conceptions. By highlighting the concrete significance of these concepts across a range of real-world knowledge projects and situations, this work provides new and expanded understandings of these central concepts. We will focus on objectivity in the following section, and on rationality in the third section.

Objectivity Naturalized, Situated

Feminist examinations of what had been forwarded as “objective” scientific knowledge about sex differences (in the biological and social sciences especially) have served to bring the theory and practice of objectivity into productive feminist focus. For example, Anne Fausto-Sterling characterizes as “biological storytelling” the plethora of theories, dating from the late nineteenth century, which purported to explain why women were intellectually inferior to men. When neuroanatomists were convinced that the frontal lobe in the brain was linked with intelligence, they found “that this lobe was visibly larger and more developed in males.” However, she continues, “when the parietal lobe rather than the frontal lobe gained precedence as the seat of the intellect,” studies began to appear that found that the parietal, not the frontal lobe, was somewhat smaller in women (Fausto-Sterling 1992: 37–38). More recent theories have linked gender differences in cognitive abilities with differences in the functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain. Yet, as Ruth Bleier documents, efforts to find sex differences in specialization between the two hemispheres, have regularly started “with the very questionable assumption that there are true, probably ‘innate’ sex differences in verbal and spatial abilities” (1984: 92). Other feminist critiques have drawn attention, not just to sexism, but to androcentrism, the idea that males and their activities have been the primary agents of biological and cultural change and evolution. In challenging this view (often linked with the “man-the-hunter” hypothesis in anthropological theories), Helen Longino argues that the available fossil data also support an alternative “woman-the-gatherer” hypothesis that locates the pivotal role of the development of tool use with women’s activities (1990: 104–111). Background cultural values and assumptions linked to androcentrism, Longino maintains, have long contributed to the acceptance of the “man-the-hunter” hypothesis as the standard hypothesis.

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Two important features of feminist philosophical work on objectivity emerge from these and many similar examinations across different sciences. First, this work has been and continues to be notably naturalized, that is, it recommends that philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity (and related epistemic concepts) take into account the ways in which scientific projects and theories actually, “naturally” develop. This has also ensured that this area of research continues to be noticeably interdisciplinary: feminist scholars in many sciences and in philosophy have contributed to developments in the field. A second important feature of feminist work is a prominent focus on the social identity or location of scientists—their gender, race, political sensitivities, among other identifying criteria. Many feminist reassessments (such as those noted above) suggest, in Sandra Harding’s words, that “women (or feminists, whether men or women) as a group are more likely to produce unbiased and objective results than are men (or nonfeminists) as a group” (Harding 1986: 25). In her examination of the sociological significance of Black feminist thought, Patricia Hill Collins similarly documents the anomalies and distortions in knowledge about Black women that had taken root in sociological theory. She argues that (newly admitted) “outsiders” in sociology, like herself, are often able to detect “patterns [in thinking] that may be more difficult for established sociological insiders to see” (Collins 1991: 53).

This attention to the social identity of scientists puts pressure on a central tenet of traditional conceptions of objectivity—that objective knowledge “bears no trace of the knower.” Feminists, in general, do not suggest that this attention warrants a rejection of the ideal of objectivity, but they do argue that the concept needs specific refinements. I outline some of these refinements in relation to three (related) topics and developments in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science: standpoint epistemology, the significance of epistemic communities, and the role of values in science.

A recurring idea in work by Harding, Collins, and others, is that those on the margins or in subdominant social locations may have an “epistemic advantage” in certain situations. That is, they may be able to see, understand, or know aspects of reality better than traditional “insiders” do; thus they may be in a position to develop less partial, more objective knowledge in pertinent areas. This is a key idea explored in (feminist) standpoint epistemology. There is now general agreement that epistemic advantage does not automatically accrue to specific social locations, that is, “that those who occupy particular standpoints (usually subdominant, oppressed, marginal standpoints) automatically know more, or know better, by virtue of their social, political location” (Wylie 2004: 341). Epistemically significant standpoints are achieved through critical, conscious reflection on social locations with respect to power structures that play a role in the production of knowledge (Wylie 2004; Intemann 2010). Justice-oriented political sensibilities can often serve to enhance such critical reflection. Harding has drawn from developments in standpoint epistemology to argue for a feminist-inspired conception of “strong objectivity.” Drawing on the perspectives and insights of those with marginal “standpoints” contributes, she maintains, to the production of less false or “less partial and distorted” knowledge about human lives (Harding 1993). Alison Wylie also underscores the importance of standpoint theory for “reframing ideals of objectivity,” and (stressing a naturalistic focus) she maintains that such ideals cannot be determined in advance of careful study of actual epistemic practices in many areas of knowledge as they unfold in “socially and politically structured fields of engagement” (Wylie 2004: 349).

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Some theorists have pursued epistemological issues relating to social identity with an explicit focus on scientific communities, their composition and structure. They note that specific assumptions (incorporating limited views of race or gender, for instance) could operate “invisibly” in science for so long because they were shared by all members of the scientific communities in question (Longino 1990; Nelson 1990). Objectivity in science is enhanced by having more diverse communities, but also communities that promote practices of fair and equitable epistemic interaction. Such interaction helps to eliminate individual errors and biases, thus, Longino maintains, the “objectivity of scientific inquiry is a consequence of this inquiry’s being a social, and not an individual, enterprise” (Longino 1990: 67). Feminist work in many sciences points to the need for enhanced standards and practices of peer review and critical engagement (including equality of intellectual authority for those who had been marginalized) if objectivity is to be improved or secured (Longino 1996). This attention to social-epistemic interactions among scientists is especially prominent in what is now called social epistemology (Solomon 2001: Grasswick 2013).

This emphasis on the epistemic structure of communities upends a view of objectivity as something that is simply a property of individual knowers who can “detach” from their subjective interests and preferences in making judgments. Feminists point out that “objectivity” has, in fact, included a variety of meanings attached to different features or stages of inquiry (Lloyd 1995; Douglas 2004; Anderson 2015). Sometimes “objective” is applied to methods—as in the applications of objective methods. Often “objectivity” has meant “value-freedom,” in that objective knowledge does not reflect the moral or political values of a particular culture or community. The role of values in science has also been important in feminist work, particularly since feminists, while being critical of sexist and racist values that have influenced theories of human difference, also argue that values linked to social justice movements, values promoting human equality and respect, can have a positive epistemic impact on scientific development. This work includes analyses of the role of different kinds of values in many stages of scientific inquiry: in the questions and problems that scientists engage, in the design of experiments, in the selection and interpretation of data, in the hypotheses and theories developed to explain the data, and in the dissemination and use of the theoretical and practical products of scientific inquiry (Anderson 1995; Longino 1996; Crasnow 2004; Douglas 2009; Rolin 2015).

Feminist work clearly challenges simplistic conceptions of objectivity rooted in the gender-inflected objectivity versus subjectivity dichotomy (and its extension in the objectivity versus relativism dichotomy). Lorraine Code challenges this dichotomy by arguing that “often, objectivity requires taking subjectivity into account” (Code 1991: 31). In addition to criteria of evidence and justification, she maintains, an account of objectivity also requires taking into account “the ‘nature’ of inquirers, their interests in the inquiry, their emotional involvement and background assumptions . . . their material, historical, and cultural circumstances” (Code 1993: 26). Donna Haraway argues that feminist attention to “situated knowledges” challenges the idea of a “disembodied scientific objectivity,” and she seeks a “doctrine of embodied objectivity that accommodates paradoxical and critical feminist science projects” (Haraway 1988: 576, 581). Her account does not recommend relativism, the view that all claims and accounts are equally valuable or true: such an “‘equality’ of positioning [in relativism] is a denial of responsibility and critical inquiry” (Haraway 1988: 584).

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Rationality Situated, Naturalized

Rationality is, at bottom, about reasoning. Different types or forms of reasoning are suitable for different situations. Moral and political situations typically invite forms of practical reasoning. Arithmetical reasoning is appropriate when doing arithmetical computations. In logic we distinguish between deductive reasoning (when, in arguments, we draw conclusions that aim to follow necessarily from the premises), and inductive reasoning (where the conclusion aims to follow, not necessarily, but with good probability from the premises). Different forms of statistical reasoning (which includes formalizations of specific forms of inductive reasoning) are appropriate in different areas of inquiry, and different statistical methods applied to a given data set yield different results, depending on the features of the situation that inquirers think are most important. Complex reasoning contexts (in science, for example) incorporate many of these specific forms of reasoning.

This proliferation of forms of reasoning raises questions about the possibility of formulating a single or unitary concept or theory of reason or rationality—a point I will return to in the following section. Whether or not we consider such a concept or theory desirable or even possible, we can still value philosophical work that seeks to clarify what specific forms of reasoning or rationality involve, what each purports to accomplish or elucidate. Feminist reflections are very relevant here. I outline what feminist engagement means for three philosophical projects concerning rationality (and these are not the only such projects): moral reasoning, rationality naturalized, and logic and rational argumentation. A feminist critical focus includes assessing whether traditional associations of rationality with masculinity have influenced the selection of situations and practices of reasoning that were thought to best exemplify rationality. A recurring theme in feminist work is the claim that the activities and practices of autonomous, relatively privileged men in public settings have framed many accounts of rationality. Such is the case, some feminists argue, for characterizations of the ideally rational agent in standard accounts of rational choice theory (debated by Anderson 2002 and Cudd 2002).

One of the most significant debates about possible gender differences in reasoning resulted from empirical studies that suggested that women are more likely to adopt “care reasoning” in deliberations about moral dilemmas and choices, while men are more likely to exhibit “justice reasoning” (Gilligan 1987: 22). Care reasoners purportedly pay significant attention to relationships and contextual details of moral situations, while justice reasoners appeal more to universal rules and principles concerning fairness and rights among autonomous individuals. Subsequent empirical studies raised doubts about the significance of the gender correlation with the care and justice “voices,” and some theorists questioned the role of gender stereotyping in the researchers’ assessment and interpretation of differences. The debate, however, has sparked significant discussion among feminist moral philosophers about the “maleness” of much traditional moral philosophy (Kittay and Meyers 1987).

Many feminists note that philosophers’ accounts of moral deliberation and action regularly tracked the traditional roles and activities of influential men in public settings. Accounts of moral rationality often represented ideal moral reasoners as autonomous, independent agents acting on principles of impartiality, fairness, and equality. Feminist moral theorists have argued that traditional theories are inadequate when it comes to formulating moral deliberation and action in relationships of dependency and partiality such as the relationships that women have traditionally had in their care of dependent others, or that women and men have in close familial and friendship relationships. Some have also paid particular attention to the role of moral emotions such as compassion and empathy in moral reasoning. In addition, traditional accounts of moral rationality typically presuppose forms of (moral) selfhood and agency that, feminists have argued, give little or no attention to the lives and experiences of those who experience systemic social injustice. In sum, feminists argue, accounts of moral rationality need to be appropriately modified and expanded to take into account the many different moral situations that people inhabit in worlds of social and political complexity (Baier 1986; Jaggar 1989; Held 1990; Walker 2007).

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In naturalized epistemology, accounts of “rationality naturalized” incorporate cognitive scientific findings about how we humans actually (“naturally”) reason when we, for instance, assess evidence to arrive at beliefs and judgements (traditionally captured in understandings of theoretical reason), or when we make decisions about how to act (as captured in understandings of practical reason). In other words, naturalist epistemologists maintain, normative claims about how we ought to reason should take account of descriptive claims about how we do reason in various contexts. The many cognitive sciences provide rich ground for (naturalized) epistemological and feminist reflection. Two particular areas of cognitive scientific study—in neuroscience and in the social psychological study of cognition—are of special interest in feminist considerations about rationality.

By the 1990s feminist epistemological critiques contributed to growing interest in the “cognitive role” of emotions, the idea that “appropriate emotions are indispensable to reliable knowledge” (Jaggar 1996: 182). Neuroscientific findings support such moves challenging the reason versus emotion dichotomy. In particular, the new “brain science of emotion” led one prominent neuroscientist interested in “the neural underpinnings of reason” to conclude that “certain aspects of the process of emotion and feeling are indispensable for rationality” (Damasio 2005 [1994]: xv, xvii). Yet neuroscientific studies of sex differences in the brain still reveal the lingering effects of the long association of women with emotion and men with rationality and cognitive control. Robyn Bluhm argues that neuroscientists still rely on gender stereotypes in their research, on “the common idea that women are more emotional than men . . . [and that] women are less able to cognitively control their natural emotional responses” (Bluhm 2013: 870, 880). More generally, feminist examinations of neuroscientific work on sex differences in the brain has inspired some scholars to use the term “neurosexism” (Fine 2010: 155–175), a term that inspires its own particular form of feminism, “neurofeminism” (Bluhm et al. 2012).

Findings from social psychology help to uncover some of the lingering cognitive effects of the long historical association of rationality and objectivity with men of particular races and classes. Researchers have documented the operation of “stereotype threat,” when subjects perform less well in situations where negative stereotypes about their group have prevailed—for instance, women’s stereotypical inferiority in mathematics (Fine 2010; Banaji and Greenwald 2013). Similar research has also uncovered the role of “implicit bias” in the judgments we all make about people’s authority, credibility, and competence, based on their group identity—even when we have explicit egalitarian beliefs. For instance, reviewers rate identical CVs somewhat lower when they carry a female instead of a male name. In effect, systematic social injustices have impaired our capacity to make fair (rational) judgements about those who have long been associated with inferior intellectual abilities (Banaji and Greenwald 2013; Saul 2013). This involves what is now called “epistemic injustice . . . [which is] a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (Fricker 2007: 20). As all of this work advocates, when we take specific steps to counter both explicit and implicit biases we are also taking important steps in improving our reasoning and knowing in situations involving interpersonal interactions and judgments.

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As noted above, different forms of rational argumentation are captured in different logical systems; thus, deductive and inductive logic formalize rules of deductive and inductive reasoning respectively. Some feminist critiques have focused on logic as a whole, on the limitations of abstract formal logical systems when we need to reason about the practical realities of different forms of injustice (Nye 1990). Val Plumwood, on the other hand, recognizes “the plurality of logical systems” that correspond to “different forms of rationality,” and argues that feminist concerns should be directed to the privileging of some forms of rationality (and logic) over others in the conceptual structures of Western thought (Plumwood 2002). There are many ways in which one might abstract from and reason about particular contexts. Thus, not unlike the situation with moral reasoning discussed above, we need to pay particular attention to which aspects of social and political contexts a given system of logic reveals and articulates, and which aspects are rendered invisible or “illogical” by that same system (Falmagne and Hass 2002).

Many forms of logic present argumentation as a monological process, as something engaged in by individuals making inferences from premises to conclusions. However, argumentation more broadly understood also includes a dialogical model: as in debates, it involves two or more people exchanging arguments and responses to arguments. This form of argumentation is a central focus in “informal logic,” which examines “everyday” processes of disagreement and debate and recommends normative procedures for rational resolution. Feminist projects aimed at developing models of reasoning that address social and political change draw productively from developments in this fields (Rooney and Hundleby 2010). Yet feminist examinations are also critical of models of argumentation that limit the possibilities for new insights and understandings across differences, especially across social differences that underwrite specific forms of injustice. I have argued that findings about explicit and implicit biases need to be taken into account in our (normative) accounts of good argumentative exchange (Rooney 2012). In particular, I maintain that some forms of adversarial argumentation can effectively silence or misrepresent the contributions of those who belong to marginalized subgroups, especially when they seek to address concerns that are of special significance for their subgroup.

Wherefore Concepts, Ideals, and Theories?

In the previous sections we have examined how feminist critiques and developments add important new dimensions to our understandings of two central epistemic concepts. So where does that leave us with respect to developing specific feminism-informed unitary definitions and theories of rationality and objectivity? Can we think of these concepts as ideals that lend themselves to precise philosophical characterizations—as many philosophers have traditionally thought?

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Toward the end of her work examining the “maleness” of historical conceptions of reason, Lloyd is somewhat optimistic about salvaging something “of the ideal of a Reason which knows no sex . . . ; [though] if there is a Reason genuinely common to all, it is something to be achieved in the future . . .” (Lloyd 1993: 107). Others have questioned the projection of reason or rationality as a singular concept, and on feminist grounds (Le Doeuff 1990). The portrayal of rationality as a specific distinct, measurable trait or ability (rather than as something like an umbrella term covering a range of reasoning capacities, processes, and activities) was, it seems, required in order to readily claim that some people had distinctly more of it than others (Rooney 1995). What if we no longer make such ready assessments? In a related vein, Catharine MacKinnon has questioned the “the stance of ‘objectivity’” as a stance that claims an authoritative (objective) knowledge position that resists acknowledgement of social positioning with respect to knowledge assertions. It (as a concept) can thus function politically as a stance that resists or silences challenges to authoritative positions (MacKinnon 1989).

And yet, as we have seen above, the concepts rationality, objectivity, and knowledge do carry significant epistemic, social, and cultural valence, and feminists have drawn on them to advance key new understandings of the importance of better knowledge and better knowing in a variety of contexts. We saw that objectivity has been a central focus in feminist analyses of scientific knowledge: taking the concept seriously as a regulative ideal has enabled feminists to develop important insights into the many factors that go into producing good or better science (Harding 2015). Taking account of this work, Naomi Scheman asks what it is about objectivity that makes its preservation so important (Scheman 2001: 23). Despite critics of feminist work who erroneously portray feminists as endangering objectivity, feminist work, she continues, “is better understood as an attempt to save objectivity by understandings why it matters.” Objectivity matters as a form of trustworthiness, she contends, since “objective judgments are judgments we can rationally trust” (Scheman 2001: 23, 26).

In a work on “the virtue of feminist rationality,” Deborah Heikes argues for “a feminist theory of rationality” that takes account of feminist concerns (2012: 1). She draws attention to central feminist practices of presenting reasons and arguments about the injustices of oppression and the need for change. These practices, she maintains, capture an essential feature of rationality that grounds a feminist theory of rationality. However, as we saw in the previous section, even when we take argumentation as a central practice of human reasoning, we can still critique, from a feminist perspective, the limitations of traditional understandings of rational argumentation. Heikes grants that “reason is not so much a thing or an object as it is an activity,” and “[i]ts basic function is to guide our responses to the world around [us] whether that world be material, social, or emotional” (2012: 4).

In taking up questions about what a feminist analysis, concept, or theory of rationality or objectivity might involve, it is helpful to consider Sally Haslanger’s (1999) analogous question about what a feminist analysis or theory of knowledge ought to involve. She maintains that an epistemological analysis of knowledge as a normative concept (as concerned fundamentally with questions about how we ought to reason and form beliefs) necessitates examining why we need the concept at all, why the concept is valuable for creatures like us who value certain kinds of moral/autonomous agency. She maintains that when such considerations are in place, “an adequate definition of knowledge will depend on an account of what is cognitively valuable for beings like us, which raises moral and political issues on which feminists have much to contribute” (Haslanger 1999: 473).

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To the extent that traditions and conceptions of rationality and objectivity incorporated and reinforced specific forms of injustice, they are concepts that many of us find less than trustworthy, action-guiding, or valuable. When, guided by feminist and other justice-oriented epistemological work, we uncover and uproot these lingering injustices in their many forms, we are taking important steps toward establishing these concepts as normatively significant in improving our many and varied epistemic practices in our many and varied worlds of thought and action.

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank Ann Garry, Ami Harbin, Joyce Havstad, and Mark Navin for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.