Diversity and the Fate of Objectivity

Abstract

Helen Longino argues that the way to ensure scientific knowledge is objective is to have a diversity of scientific investigators. This is the best example of recent feminist arguments which hold that the real value of diversity is epistemic, and not political, but it only partly succeeds. In the end, Longino’s objectivity amounts to intersubjective agreement about contextually based standards, and while her account gives us a good reason for wanting diversity in our scientific communities, this reason turns out to be political.

Keywords:

• Helen Longino
• Feminist Philosophy
• Objectivity

Notes

[1] This is what Elizabeth Lloyd refers to as the “tyranny of objectivity” (1995, 356).

[2] Despite their recent antagonistic exchange in Philosophy of Science (Kitcher 2002a, 2002b; Longino 2002b, 2002c), Kitcher’s (2001) and Longino’s (2002a) recent work has a lot in common, including a commitment to democracy and the idea that pluralist realism is the best way to achieve this.

[3] The list of supporters of this form of objectivity is too long to detail and dates back at least to the 1920s, when in his The Analysis of Matter Bertrand Russell endorsed this non‐metaphysical sense of objective, which he characterized as “agreeing with the testimony of others” (1927, 150).

[4] For the most part, that is. I will rely on her nuanced distinctions of methodological objectivity shortly.

[5] While Kuhn eschewed what I am calling “methodological objectivity” in Structure, he later argued that the rationality of science could be partially preserved in light of the fact that the history of science presents us with a more or less constant set of objective cognitive values; see Kuhn (1977).

[6] The other conditions are: publicly recognized venues for critical interaction, genuine uptake of criticism, and publicly recognized standards of criticism (Longino 2002a, 129–131).

[7] Many of these are cited by Larry Laudan (1981) in his well‐known argument against convergent realism.

[8] Brown, like Longino, seems to think this diversity is both politically and epistemically fruitful; he claims “pluralism for the sake of epistemology” (Brown 2001, 186).