The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy

Social inequality and cultural diversity are inescapable features of our world. Their conceptual richness and variety of perspectives provide valuable resources for moral thinking but they also complicate moral reasoning, especially reasoning among members of differently situated social groups. When cultural values are diverse, different groups may prioritize similar values differently, the values of one culture may not have obvious correlates in another, and different forms of reasoning may be taken as authoritative. Inequality may allow members of powerful social groups to repress the moral views of the less powerful by ignoring, dismissing, or silencing them.

Many inter-group disputes concern gender norms. Examples include: female genital cutting, abortion, marriage equality, and legislation that requires or bans women’s veiling. In order to address such disputes equitably, Western philosophers have proposed a variety of methodological models. Feminist philosophers have criticized many of these models because they are too easily used to justify the oppression of women or render invisible moral issues that are especially significant in the lives of women. In the longer work from which this article is drawn, we build on these criticisms. We examine several popular models of moral justification and find that, in contexts of diversity and inequality, they often facilitate epistemic and moral injustice, allowing members of more powerful groups to rationalize proposals that favor their own partial interests. We, along with many other feminist philosophers, tried initially to fix or tweak existing models to make them less gender biased and more likely to yield warranted moral outcomes (Okin 1989; Benhabib 1992; Jaggar 1995; Mills 1994). Yet the revised models failed to escape the problems of their originals, remaining insufficiently responsive to the ways in which differences in situation and social identity markers such as race, ethnicity, class, and global positioning influence credibility judgments about who and what may count as reasonable. This chapter offers one illustration of how this can happen and uses it to motivate our proposal for an alternative mission and method for moral epistemology.

Our alternative proposal rejects the epistemological assumption that there exists a single, one-size-fits-all model of moral justification capable of reliably yielding warranted moral conclusions in all contexts. The approach we advocate is inspired by previous feminist work and suggests one direction for pushing that work further toward realizing the goals of epistemic justice in the practice of moral justification.

Epistemic injustice occurs when processes of knowledge production are influenced by social power in ways unfair to some inquirers. Philosophers, including many feminists, have long reflected on the relations between power and knowledge but the term “epistemic injustice” recently gained currency in Western analytic philosophy with the publication of Miranda Fricker’s influential book, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007; Collins 2000; Mills 1994).

Fricker identifies two main forms of epistemic injustice, testimonial and hermeneutic. Testimonial injustice occurs when hearers assess knowledge claims wrongly because they hold unjust prejudices, either positive or negative, about the credibility of those putting forward the claims. Negatively prejudiced listeners often hold some wrongful stereotype or “identity prejudice” about the epistemic capacity of a group to which the individual belongs. Positive epistemic prejudice allows the claims of some speakers to be accorded more weight than the speakers’ credentials deserve. Not all prejudices are overt or explicit; some stereotypes affect people’s perceptions without their conscious awareness and they are called implicit biases. Implicit biases may not be easily accessible through introspection and sometimes are outside people’s intentional control.

Hermeneutic injustice occurs when the available linguistic resources are inadequate for communicating what a speaker wishes to convey. Feminists of the 1960s and 1970s famously used the practice of consciousness-raising to develop a new vocabulary for expressing previously unarticulated wrongs, such as date rape, sexual harassment, and hostile work environments. Canadian aboriginal people have contended that “A distinct category of Aboriginal property rights demands the willingness and capacity to comprehend and evaluate an altogether different (alterior) concept of property” (Means 2003: 224). They have argued in Canada’s Supreme Court “for the right to present various sacred ‘texts’; oral history, totems, and other ‘expressive discourses’” (Means 2003: 223).

The harms resulting from epistemic injustice fall disproportionately, though not exclusively, on those with less power. When testimonial or hermeneutical injustice hinder people in voicing or even articulating their moral perspectives, those people are wronged in their distinctively human capacities as givers of knowledge, reasoners, or subjects of social understanding. They are epistemically marginalized, excluded from trustful conversation, and may lose faith in their own epistemic capacities (Fricker 2007).

As well as harming particular individuals, epistemic injustice tends to produce untrustworthy outcomes. Knowledge claims produced via unjust processes are more likely to be biased, incomplete, misleading, or distorting. Epistemic injustice in moral discourse typically results in moral conclusions that obscure social injustice, sometimes by promoting systematic ignorance. For instance, those who are more powerful may dismiss reports of wrongs committed against those less powerful or they may frame moral wrongs in misleading ways that blame bad luck or individual perpetrators while ignoring systemic factors.

We wish to develop an approach to moral reasoning that is less susceptible to epistemic injustice than many familiar philosophical approaches. Our approach invokes the ideal of epistemic democracy, which has gained considerable traction in feminist philosophy since 1990 (Longino 1990; 2002; Anderson 1995; 2010: 89–111). We think that this can provide valuable guidance for moral epistemology but we regard it as a thin and contestable ideal that must be specified differently in different contexts. In particular, we think that the frequent formulation of “universal participation on terms of equality of inquirers” (Anderson 2012: 172) may not always ensure epistemic justice among people reasoning together in contexts of diversity and inequality.

One way in which “formal” epistemic democracy may be less than just is by refusing to take account of legitimate differences in people’s moral competence or expertise. For instance, some cultural or religious communities regard the words of particular community members as having extra moral weight, perhaps in virtue of their having privileged access to divine meaning or the wisdom of the ancestors. In other contexts, some individuals have specialized or deeper knowledge of salient hermeneutical resources, such as sacred texts or cultural traditions. Some individuals have firsthand experience of various kinds of oppression (Thomas 1992–1993). Because moral expertise is typically limited to specific domains, epistemic justice requires that moral experts receive due deference when they speak about the areas in which they are experts. We advocate a version of epistemic democracy that we call “inclusive.” Although it requires universal participation, it is nonetheless open to the possibilities of differing moral expertise in some domains and consequent legitimate differences in epistemic authority for some individuals in some contexts.

Our conception of inclusive epistemic democracy is specified in terms of four conditions. In contexts of diversity and inequality, we think that the best chance of reaching reliable and authoritative moral conclusions is gained by relying on models and practices of moral reasoning that are able to meet the following conditions:

• Plausibility. To justify a normative conclusion is to explain convincingly why it has moral authority. All disputants must recognize the reasoning practice as capable of conferring moral authority on the conclusions reached.

• Usability. Everyone involved in a particular dispute must be able to utilize the justificatory practices employed. This does not mean that everyone must be able to participate as a formal equal; instead, people must be able to participate in a way that accords with whatever strategies of moral justification their communities regard as authoritative. Our interpretation of “usability” may seem to open the door to injustice, but our first and third conditions are designed to block this door.

• Non-abuse of power and vulnerability. No reasoning practice is epistemically inclusive if it relies on abusing power or vulnerability. In contexts of moral reasoning, there are innumerable ways short of overt physical coercion in which some disputants make their own views appear unduly credible while taking advantage of others’ vulnerability to discredit them. Abuse can include misrepresentation or selective presentation of evidence, distortion, intimidation, logical trickery, mystification, ridicule, disregard, and refusal to understand. It also occurs when some disputants insist on a particular style of argumentation in which others are unskilled or uncomfortable or on using a vocabulary that does not fit well with the moral concepts of some disputants or is inadequate to express their perspectives.

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• Practical feasibility. Finally, no model or practice of moral justification is inclusive in a given context if it prescribes a course of action that is not feasible or realistically possible for some people in the situation. As Onora O’Neill writes, “Proposals for action will . . . not be reasoned unless they are not only intelligible, but real possibilities for those who are to be offered reasons for certain recommendations or prescriptions, warnings or proscriptions” (1996: 57–58).

Even when our four conditions are accepted in principle, it is always possible for people to disagree about how to apply them in specific contexts. None of our conditions can be deployed mechanically, and, as we invoke them to assess the use of particular reasoning strategies, we offer arguments about what should count in particular contexts as plausibility, usability, power abuse, and practical feasibility.

Our larger work examines several methodological models of moral justification, such as intuitionism, original position thinking, discourse ethics, and communitarianism. Here we sketch two examples of the method of appealing to universal principles.

Moral universalism is the idea that there exist substantive moral values, norms or principles valid in all times and places. Universal values and norms seem especially promising as courts of appeal for disputes among different communities or among diverse members of one community. One example of a principle asserted to be universally valid is the “moral law” or Categorical Imperative proposed by Immanuel Kant (1785). Moral agents checking whether a particular action they contemplate accords with the Categorical Imperative should ask themselves whether or not their maxim, or reason for action in that case, could be universalized or whether it would produce any contradictions or irrationalities if everyone acted on the same maxim in similar cases. The Principle of Utility is another example of a moral principle claimed to hold universally. Proposed by British utilitarians in the nineteenth century, the principle states that an action or practice is morally right when it leads to the greatest possible balance of good over bad consequences. Different utilitarian philosophers characterize good and bad consequences differently but, regardless of how they define the good, all utilitarians regard the Principle of Utility as morally supreme.

Although these two supposedly universal principles present famously sharp contrasts to each other, they also resemble each other in significant ways. Both insist that all persons have equal moral weight and that moral reasoning should be impartial; both focus on assessing specific actions or practices, as opposed to qualities of character; and both purport to provide a single standard of morality that enables moral agents to determine objectively what is right and wrong. Both assume that practical moral reasoning has a deductive structure, in which general moral principles are applied to specific situations.

Adjudicating cross-cultural disputes by invoking supposedly universal moral principles raises several problems. One concerns the justification of the principles themselves. The moral core of each principle is controversial in Western societies, let alone beyond them, in part because each principle appears to mandate some actions that are morally wrong. One famous problem for Kantian theory is posed by the hypothetical murderer at the door who is seeking someone hidden in the house. According to Kant’s exposition of the Categorical Imperative, lying is never permissible even though telling the truth to the potential killer is likely to enable murder. The Principle of Utility also justifies many morally problematic actions, such as killing one person to save others or torturing someone in hope of extracting information about a ticking time bomb.

A second cluster of problems concerns the formulation, interpretation and application of the principles. Formulating them can be controversial. For instance, as Henry Sidgwick noticed (1962 [1907]) and as Derek Parfit among others has elaborated (1984), increasing the numbers of human (or sentient) beings might maximize the total utility in the world but at the cost of decreasing each individual’s utility. Moreover, even when their formulation is agreed, the principles are extremely general and vague, so that appealing to them in particular situations leaves enormous scope for further dispute.

Partly because of these difficulties, recent efforts to address intercultural disputes often appeal to principles that are political rather than moral. Political principles may appear more plausible than moral principles, in part because they are taken to be universal in a sense that is more constrained. Rather than being considered timeless or holding in all possible moral worlds, most contemporary political principles are designed for the existing world at the present time. Although they have far-reaching implications for individual conduct, they are designed to apply in the first instance to legislation and social practices. Their justifications are more explicit than the rationales for supposedly ultimate moral principles and they are open in theory to revision or amendment. Finally, these political principles promise to reduce indeterminacy because they do not attempt to define moral rightness and wrongness in terms of a single broad principle but instead offer longer and more specific lists.

The most familiar example of political universalism is the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This is the basis not only of a cosmopolitan or global morality but an international law above national law. A second example of political universalism is the idea of capabilities, developed originally by Amartya Sen (1984). Sen intended the capabilities as a global standard of human well-being and he defined them as socially available opportunities for valuable functioning. Sen has resisted offering a comprehensive list of capabilities, but Martha Nussbaum has developed an explicit list that purports to provide a universal standard for assessing local ways of life and thus offers a concrete alternative to cultural relativism (Nussbaum 2000: 13).

Unfortunately for those hoping to adjudicate inter-group disputes by reference to universal political principles, such principles are assailed by the same problems of justification and interpretation that beset universal moral principles. Neither moral nor political universalism is able to meet our adequacy conditions.

Plausibility. First, problems with justification. The human rights accepted across the world are justified by explicit political consensus but real world consensus is always shaped by the context in which it occurs. Some countries have ratified human rights with many reservations and many countries that have ratified them are not democratic, so that their governments may not reflect the views of their citizenry. Moreover, many civil society groups believe that currently recognized rights need to be supplemented and there is constant political pressure to reinterpret and expand them. For instance, lively controversy currently exists over whether the right to sex equality should include sexuality and abortion. Whether or not revisions to rights are accepted depends on the outcome of political contests in which the views of small groups may well go unheard. Attempting to resolve cross-cultural disputes by appealing to human rights that are themselves contested begs crucial questions at issue.

Nussbaum uses four methods to legitimate her list of capabilities but all have been subjected to various criticisms. The methods that Nussbaum invokes are: (1) The Aristotelian approach of critically refining eudoxa or reputable beliefs; (2) the narrative method; (3) morally constrained proceduralism; (4) the non-platonic substantive good method. All these methods have been challenged by, respectively (Ackerly 2000; Okin 2003; Robeyns 2005; Jaggar 2006). Underlying many particular criticisms of Nussbaum’s methods is the larger thought that no political ideals are legitimate or authoritative if they are not justified through processes of public reason, which is not the case for the capabilities (Robeyns 2005; Jaggar 2006).

Usability. As we noted earlier, general ideals and principles are inevitably indeterminate and although indeterminacy can be reduced by producing relatively specific lists of human rights and capabilities, it cannot be eliminated. Neither of the two lists we have given as examples offers a priority ranking among its items; human rights are said to be indivisible and Nussbaum denies that capabilities can be traded off against each other. Furthermore, even quite specific items on any list must be interpreted in particular situations and increasing specificity to reduce indeterminacy heightens the risk of tendentiousness. The method of invoking universal principles as guides to action always struggles with a dilemma between appealing to principles that are, on the one hand, so broad or general that they are too vague to provide specific guidance or, on the other hand, so narrow that they are applicable only to a limited range of situations and may even appear arbitrary or ad hoc.

Non-Abusiveness. Universal principles always require interpretation in particular contexts, which often provide opportunities for the abuse of power and vulnerability. For instance, items on the lists may be spelled out in ways that repress the moral views of less powerful groups. In the following section, we illustrate how this can occur by showing how the principle of women’s human rights has been deployed in oppressive and disrespectful ways against some communities, particularly in Africa (Nnaemeka 2005).

Practical Feasibility. Whether or not the use of a model or practice of moral justification prescribes a course of action that is feasible or realistically possible for everyone in that situation can be determined only in particular contexts. In the next section, we describe one case study where the use of this model failed to meet our condition of practical feasibility.

Case Study: Is Female Genital Cutting (FGC) as Practiced by the Maasai a Violation of Women’s Human Rights?

Over the past three decades, eradicating a cluster of practices known as female genital cutting (FGC) has been a high priority on the moral agenda of many women’s human rights and development organizations. These organizations argue that FGC is morally wrong and that the international community has a moral responsibility to support eradication efforts or even spearhead them. We call this influential line of thinking the Women’s Human Rights Approach (WHR). WHR has come under criticism from some scholars and activists who study or work in communities where FGC is practiced. Their shared line of critique is that WHR generates misleading, and even morally mistaken, conclusions about why these practices are wrong, who is responsible for the harm, and how to address the harm. The critics offer an alternative moral evaluation of FGC that relies on a different method of justification. Both “sides” of this dispute use human rights as moral standards to evaluate FGC and both find moral fault with FGC. However, each uses a distinct practice of moral justification in which human rights function very differently, generating divergent grounds for their respective assessments.

WHR asserts that what it calls female genital mutilation is an act of violence against women, which violates their human rights (United Nations 2015). It also states that this violence is rooted in historically unjust power relations between men and women, which derive essentially from certain traditional or customary practices (United Nations 2015). The method of moral justification WHR uses deductively applies a very specific interpretation of women’s rights women’s human rights which is assumed to apply in all global contexts to concrete cases in order to demonstrate to doubters that particular instantiations of FGC violate women’s human rights.

The specific interpretation of the WHR standard already defines which social practices are morally wrong and provides an account of why they are wrong, so that anyone using the standard starts her moral evaluation with a prefabricated moral frame that foregrounds gender and culture. When the standard is applied in particular cases, it is assumed that other contextual information has no moral salience. For example, FGC as practiced among the Maasai in Kenya is very different from FGC as practiced among Muslims in Indonesia but, when using the WHR approach, a person enters both contexts already knowing that these practices are wrong, and knowing why they are wrong (i.e., all instances of FGC reflect and reinforce culturally specific gender relations premised on male domination and female subordination). Contextual details are used to recruit evidence showing how a particular practice is indeed an instance of FGC, but not to revise the standard or determine its meaning.

The critics of WHR whose approach we favor do not deny that many practices of FGC are in some sense harmful nor do they reject women’s human rights as important moral tools. Rather, they object to the moral reasoning used by WHR advocates and the way that WHR advocates frame the issue and characterize moral agency. Taken collectively, the work of these critics offers a sustained argument that WHR systematically conceals features of the social and historical contexts in which FGC occurs that are highly relevant for an adequate moral evaluation of these practices. It offers an alternative moral analysis of FGC as practiced in specific communities through the frame of colonial history. We call this a postcolonial analysis approach (PCA).

PCA begins by looking at a specific practice of FGC among a particular group of people within a specified historical time frame. The scholars whose work we highlight focus on understanding the evolving cultural and moral significance of FGC among Maasai communities of Tanzania and Kenya from the pre-colonial period of the late nineteenth century through the period of formal colonization by the British from 1920–1961. For the Maasai, FGC initiates the social transition of a girl into womanhood. In the period prior to formal colonization, social responsibilities associated with Maasai womanhood included a significant amount of economic and political authority. For example, Maasai wives had authority to initiate and testify at judicial proceedings and they participated in dispute resolution both within and between homesteads. They were also the primary economic agents in a barter economy trading surplus milk and hides in exchange for other important goods. During and after formal colonization by the British, however, Maasai gender relations shifted dramatically.

At least three colonial policies significantly altered Maasai gender relations. First, the policy of indirect rule required identifying a central Maasai authority to act as an intermediary between the Maasai and the British. In implementing this policy, British authorities assumed that male elders were already “the” political leaders, thereby extending the authority of select male elders over both women and junior men, strengthening and consolidating their power. Second, needing to create a cash economy in order to produce tax revenue for the crown, the British also transformed a previously female-based barter economy into a newly male-dominated cash economy. Livestock was now to be bought and sold on the market for cash and colonial authorities assumed that males were the “owners” of cattle. So Maasai men were integrated into the new economy as buyers and sellers of livestock, while Maasai women were dispossessed from their previously shared cattle rights and now struggled to gain access to cash “indirectly through gifts from men or the sale of cattle by their sons or husbands (Hodgson 1999: 57).” The third policy, which followed directly from the second, was to implement a new system of taxation. This system designated male elders as “tax payers” and “heads of household,” who were now required to pay a “plural wives” tax for “dependent” women living on their homestead (Hodgson 1999: 58).

These policies reflected a British gender ideology that was deeply patriarchal. Their combined effect was severe political and economic disempowerment and symbolic devaluation of Maasai women. Foregrounding colonial history reveals that contemporary Maasai gender relations, which today are identified as “authentically” and deeply embedded in Maasai culture, are really a “co-invention” by British colonial authorities and opportunistic Maasai in a fairly recent struggle for power.

Where WHR concludes that the harmful gender relations supporting Maasai FGC derive from cultural patterns that belong essentially to the Maasai (see IRIN 2005), PCA argues that this claim is false. Physical harms or risks associated with Maasai FGC likely have always been present, but PCA suggests that the practice becomes a tool of male domination only in the context of the colonial encounter. The harmful gender relations that today give symbolic meaning to Maasai FGC derive from cultural patterns, but these resulted from a forced blend of British gender ideology with pre-existing Maasai social categories.

PCA relies on an alternative practice of moral justification, although advocates of this approach do not make it explicit. PCA uses women’s human rights as one important moral tool in an empirically informed reflective equilibrium which takes human rights as moral standards that need interpreting in light of particular cases rather than just being implemented in a deductive manner. Contextual details have salience in shaping the moral assessment of the situation and the interpretation of women’s human rights and not just in persuading doubters or tailoring eradication efforts. In this case, PCA uses historical details to generate a more transparent moral analysis of contemporary practices of FGC among the Maasai based on a more comprehensive account of the human rights abuses Maasai women have suffered, which includes the abuse of colonial experience (see Walker 2002 on transparency in moral life).

We use our four conditions for inclusive epistemic democracy—plausibility, usability, non-abuse of social power or vulnerability, and feasibility—to argue that PCA is more likely than WHR to yield authoritative moral conclusions about FGC in this situation.

Plausibility. WHR and PCA both appeal to human rights, but in this case we think that, PCA enables a more plausible way of using human rights as tools of moral assessment than WHR does. WHR assumes that “the” answer to “the” problem exists already in the form of a universal principle of women’s human rights that is already formulated at the appropriate level of abstraction for application in all contexts; it is not too thin and not too thick. By contrast, PCA assumes that the relevant standard or principle and the appropriate level of interpretation for it, will emerge as the “wrong” comes into clearer focus. Using PCA does not preclude questioning the universal validity of the human rights framework, but opens the possibility that more than one human rights principle may be morally relevant here and assumes that human rights principles always need interpreting in a way appropriate to the facts and the context. Interpreting human rights in light of the details of a particular practice of FGC in a specific place is more likely to be able to link the moral authority of the conclusion with the reasoning that generates that conclusion, to tell a more plausible story about the variety of rights violations involved in this case, and to offer a more plausible interpretation of those violations that is likely to seem less arbitrary or baffling to those most directly impacted.

Usability. This condition requires that all those affected be able to participate in moral reasoning; this may require, for example, that participants utilize particular rituals or forms of speech. In this case, most Maasai people who are directly affected are not actually using either reasoning strategy, which is a significant weakness of both approaches. However, in our view, PCA has greater potential than WHR to better satisfy the usability condition in situations like this one. The WHR strategy does not make room for cultural standards or contextual details to interpret or reinterpret the meaning of rights, but only to tailor eradication efforts. Moreover, Maasai opposition to moral arguments supported by WHR reasoning suggests that the reasoning being offered is not plausible to many Maasai. One reason for this may be that the WHR reasoning strategy is not usable by them in the sense of broadly conforming to internal cultural standards. PCA leaves open the possibility for Maasai standards of justification to be used because the reasoning strategy of PCA encourages its users to continually seek out new information from the particular social context under scrutiny, and so it can incorporate Maasai moral perspectives in order to interpret, revise, or broaden human rights principles.

Non-Abuse of Power or Vulnerability. In this case, we think that WHR is lends itself more readily to abusing power and vulnerability than does PCA. WHR as used in this case brings under moral scrutiny the least powerful while shielding the most powerful from scrutiny. WHR also makes its own moral framework appear incontrovertible while too easily lending itself to discrediting anyone who uses an alternative framework. In our assessment, WHR is more susceptible to power abuse in this context for at least three reasons. First, it relies on a static and oversimplified notion of culture in a context in which cultural interventions are not innocent but track global power relations both historically and at present. Second, it also tends to assign “culture” to those with the least global power while simultaneously making dominant global perspectives appear cultureless, which they are not. Finally, WHR foregrounds gender but places gender relations in a historical vacuum, and so obscures the complex web of historical interactions among nations and cultures that have produced the specific gender relations within Maasai communities that are today the object of global moral criticism. The epistemic stance enabled by WHR is eerily similar to the perspective of British colonizers who perceived gender and culture in the Maasai practices that were exotic or foreign to them, but failed to see their own policies as gendered and instead regarded them as natural. Although PCA is certainly not immune from being used in abusive ways, it enables corrigibility and discourages dogmatism. PCA’s insistence on seeking out empirical information relevant to understanding the contemporary social meaning of Maasai FGC and the conditions that enable its continuance, as well as PCA’s ability to incorporate Maasai perspectives, make this reasoning strategy less apt to be used abusively than WHR in this situation.

Feasibility. Maasai are reported as very resistant to eradication efforts justified using WHR reasoning. These efforts include state prohibition of FGC coupled with NGO and religious organization interventions that advocate cultural change. In our view, this resistance provides prima facie evidence that the moral conclusions defended by WHR are not feasible to many Maasai. The conclusions may seem arbitrary, baffling, or suspicious given previously devastating interventions premised on cultural change. The interventions might also be materially or existentially devastating for many Maasai given the real limitations of their situation and the complicated links between Maasai FGC and social life. In our view, PCA is likely more capable of delivering more feasible recommendations than WHR because people using PCA are less rigidly committed to prejudging cases, and instead try to seek out all morally salient information including alternative moral perspectives. This means that PCA-derived solutions are likely to be premised on more nuanced assessments of the risks and benefits of eradication efforts in particular situations and to find solutions that are more likely to be real possibilities for people in the contexts they actually live in.

Many philosophers have assumed that moral justification can be pared down to a single reasoning practice or set of practices, which can be used to justify moral claims in any context. They therefore take the mission of moral epistemology to be discovering or constructing a single, multi-purpose model of moral justification (Walker 2002: ch. 1–2). Philosophers have typically pursued this mission using “armchair” philosophical methods. They imagine what moral reasoning should be like either by constructing fictitious models of justification or by conceptualizing the logical constraints of moral reasoning under ideal conditions. In our view, the fruits of this philosophical labor as well as this way of laboring—i.e., of doing moral epistemology—are inadequate for understanding how justified moral claims can be established in situations of cultural diversity and power inequality. We have come to believe that no single method or model of moral rationality can yield substantive and authoritative normative conclusions in all circumstances. On our view, reasoning strategies must fit the context in which they are used.

A model of moral justification developed under the controlled conditions of the philosopher’s imagination and relying on his or her acknowledged or unacknowledged assumptions may or may not be capable of justifying moral claims under the conditions of real life. This may not be because the model has been applied incorrectly or unfairly, but because it has been developed assuming a context with one set of features and then prescribed for all contexts, are very unlike that assumed in the philosopher’s imagination. For example, the controlled conditions of philosophical imagination have tended to assume conditions in which interlocutors exchanging reasons have equal social power, and so philosophers have developed models of moral justification based on this assumption. Yet a model of moral justification designed for conditions of social equality may be ineffective in situations where people have unequal social power, and may even be harmful if the model obscures or makes it easy to rationalize power abuse.

These considerations suggest two points about moral epistemology. First, moral epistemology should adopt a more modest mission. A single, multi-purpose model of reasoning might be suitable for a world in which diversity and inequality were not ubiquitous. However, in our world, to prescribe for all contexts a single practice of justification that has been developed under the controlled conditions of the philosopher’s imagination may at best be ineffective and at worst epistemically unjust in situations that do not match these conditions. Certain features of the context partially determine which reasoning practices are capable of justifying moral claims in that context.

Second, the study of moral justification needs to be much more empirically grounded (Walker 2002). In order to understand which reasoning practices are capable of justifying moral claims in different types of contexts, we need to study empirically the relationships between reasoning practices and the contexts in which they work well. Features of a context that influence the adequacy of a method of moral justification include social relations of power and vulnerability among interlocutors as well as particular moral vocabularies and styles of reasoning that are available, meaningful, and usable to and by various parties. Many areas of contemporary philosophy have recently seen a methodological turn toward more empirically informed research. This turn is often called a move toward naturalizing methodology because philosophers are attempting to make their research more continuous with results from empirical science. Our proposal shares in the naturalizing spirit of these developments, but suggests a new and distinct method for doing empirically grounded—naturalized—moral epistemology.

Specifically, we propose that philosophers investigate case studies of real world moral disputes in which people lack shared cultural assumptions and/or are unequal in social power rather than relying exclusively or too heavily on thought experiments about what philosophers imagine these situations to be like. Case studies always focus on what is being studied in relation to its environment, which makes this a promising method for investigating relationships between reasoning practices and their contexts of use (Flyvbjerg 2011: 301). Working through case studies may enable philosophers to understand better how various features of the context operate either to support or undermine reasoning that is plausible, usable, power sensitive, and capable of delivering feasible conclusions.

Our main point is not the uncontroversial claim that empirical information is required at the stage of applying philosophical models of moral and political justification; instead, we propose that the development of the models be empirically informed. This means that those developing models of moral justification must incorporate multidisciplinary scholarship at all stages. Identifying case studies of successful reasoning practices requires collaborating with scholars from many disciplines, and with moral reasoners who are not academics.

Finally, philosophers working collaboratively to develop new philosophical models of justification must reflect continually on our specific identities and situations. Who are we? For whom are we philosophizing? What are our credentials and authority? This kind of reflexivity will help us stay modest and humble, to remember that, if our conceptions of justification are useful at all, they are useful only for particular contexts, not for all times and places. Moral justification, like justice, cannot be viewed sub specie aeternitatis.

This paper draws on a book project tentatively titled, Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. Our work on this project has been supported over several years by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 179566/V20. Parts of this work are published in Jaggar and Tobin 2013 and Tobin and Jaggar 2013.

Feminism, philosophy, and culture in Africa (Chapter 4); epistemic injustice, ignorance, and trans experience (Chapter 22); women, gender, and philosophies of global development (Chapter 34); feminist metaethics (Chapter 42); feminist ethics of care (Chapter 43); Confucianism and care ethics (Chapter 44); multicultural and postcolonial feminisms (Chapter 47); neoliberalism, global justice, and transnational feminisms (Chapter 48).

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