Code

1. Summary of current ways of thinking in epistemology:

S knows that P

S is the person who is doing the knowing

P is a sentence describing what it is that they know.

Since S and P are variables it is assumed that you can slot in any person for S and any sentence for P

Epistemology traditionally focuses on the ‘knows that’ part of the phrase.

Justified True Belief = knowledge

If any one of these elements is lacking, then all that we have is opinion.

I know that I have four pennies in my pocket.

• If it happens to be true, but I haven’t checked, then I can’t really say that I know it.
• If it is false, but I think that it is true because I put four pennies in my pocket (say there was one already there that I forgot about) then I can’t really say that I know it.
• If I don’t think that is true, but I say it is, and it turns out that it is true, then I can’t really say that I know it.

Justification: the reason for believing something

Descartes--Justification has to do with reason – I think therefore I am is the foundations for all beliefs.

Locke --justification is about the senses, I am justified in saying that I know if I can trace my knowledge back to sense perception.

Truth:

Correspondence – a true belief accurately maps onto or corresponds with the world.

Coherence -- a true belief coheres with the other things that I know.

There is an assumption that knowledge and truth will be knowledge and truth in all times for all people. So it doesn’t matter who the people or what the truth is.

Code questions this assumption.

What are the assumptions that we make about S?

Code finds these assumptions about S in Descartes and claims that they are still common in epistemology

S is a self sufficient and solitary individual

Descartes’ knower is general in having a faculty of reason

There is no relevance either of a knower’s embodiment or his (or) her intersubjective relations.

In Descartes, reason is autonomous in two ways;

1) it is undertaken separately by different individual human beings

2) it is a journey of reason alone

‘All knowers are believed to be alike with respect both to their cognitive capacities and to their methods of achieving knowledge.” 265

Code believes that these assumptions are often false.

Human beings are not self sufficient, we require parents and teachers and people to help us to take care of our physical and psychological needs.

When we start thinking about the different ways that people are trustworthy or credible as knowers, then the particulars of who is S become important.

What are the assumptions that we make about p?

What are the kinds of examples that philophers tend to use when they are talking about knlg?

# of coins in my pocket

the book is blue

do I know that my hand is really here?

Code says, who really cares about these kinds of knowledge?

The thought in epis is that we figure out knowledge by using these simple examples and then expand them to include other kinds of knowledge.

Code points out that these simple examples don’t tell us very much about many of the different kinds of things that we want to know.

She wants to know “what it means to know other people?” and wonders whether or not figuring out what it means to say that I know that I have four coins in my pocket can help me to figure out what it means to know other people.

We have been doing epis about trivial examples for a very long time and haven’t got to what it means to know other people.

Even if we figure out the coins case, it is not clear that we can apply what we learn about that kind of knowing to knowing other people.

Now, is the sex of S important in what we know?

Code focuses our attention on :

• The nature of cognitive agents
• Character, social and material locations
• Interests in inquiry

“These are questions about how credibility is established, about connections between knowledge and power, about the place of knowledge in ethical and aesthetic judgments and about political agendas and the responsibilities of knowers.”

Historically there has been explicit sexism

Philosophers have assumed that S is an able-bodied white male.

Inclusive language fails here; Man often actually meant men

The list of philophers who explicitly argued that women were incapable of knlg is long. There are just a few examples from the text:

Aristotle

Women are like slaves and children in lacking reason

Deliberative capability has no authority

Rousseau

Kierkegaard

Neitzche

Humbolt.

A woman’s sex disqualifies her as a knower

Also, historically knlg has been inaccessible to women for practical reasons – we weren’t allowed to go to school.

NOW

We are now in a position to say that it was wrong for philosophers to be misogynist in the past. Explicit beliefs about women being cognitively deficient are not allowed.

But, are there remaining implicit biases?

Is there some knowledge that is literally inaccessible to members of a particular sex?

Yes, men can’t have first person knlg about giving birth.

But, are there other kinds of knowledge or ways of knowing that are inaccessible to members of a particular sex?

Question:

When a straight couple is having an argument and one says to the other ‘I just can’t talk to you when you get so emotional, be reasonable.” Who is the man and who is the woman?

Question: How common to you think it is that people still use women’s bodies to disqualify them as knowers? Have you ever heard an upset woman described as premenstrual and hence dismissed?

Question: What are some other differences (binaries) that our culture tends to associate with women and men? Rational/emotional, active/ passive, serious /frivolous… In a case of testimony in court, would you be more inclined to believe a rational, active, serious person or an emotional passive and frivolous person?

So, even though, in our culture we cannot say that women are not knowers, there is an implicit connection between values that we see as masculine and values that we see embraced by our ideas of good knowers.

The question that you need to immediately ask is do those differences in values have an impact on whether or not S can know P or on whether we believe that S knows P?

Codes positive position:

Knowledge is relational – as knowers, we are second persons-- this means that we gain our sense of ourselves as individuals, as well as our capacity to know things, from our interactions with other people and these interactions are always embedded in a particular culture that we use to give them meaning.

The main P that she is interested in is “knowing other people”.

Knowing other people should be the standard questions that epistemologists are interested in, not knowing that the cat is on the mat

There are three sources of knowledge

• perception
• memory
• testimony

Testimony is crucial and the source of a huge amount of our knowledge.

Most of what we know, we know because someone has told us.

How do we know when and how to trust a testifier?

There are patterns of power and authority in our culture that systematically influence who we find believable in different situations.

Ex, the black jogger

Ex the rape survivor recognizing an incident as rape, reporting the incident, testifying in court.

Focus epistemology on trust and credibility

The material location of a person has a strong effect on whether or not they are trusted and on whether or not they count as good knowers