What Is Natural about Epistemology Naturalized?

North American Philosophical Publications

What Is Natural about Epistemology Naturalized?Author(s): Lorraine CodeSource: American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 1-22Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American PhilosophicalPublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009844 .

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American Philosophical Quarterly Volume 33, Number 1, January 1996

WHAT IS NATURAL ABOUT EPISTEMOLOGY NATURALIZED?

Lorraine Code

1. Naturalistic Promise, Emancipatory Hopes

IN aturalized epistemologies open up an

impressive range of resources and possi? bilities' to participants in successor episte

mology projects. The new naturalisms

promise to dissolve many of the prohibitions and exclusions that have held the principal

Anglo-American epistemologies of the

twentieth century at a distance from the very

knowledge they claim to explicate. They shift

epistemology away from idealized abstrac?

tion to establish connections with epistemic

practice that could enable theories of knowl?

edge to engage constructively and critically with everyday cognitive activities. Neither

committed to analyzing what ideal knowers

ought to do nor constrained to devoting their

best efforts to silencing the sceptic, natural? ists assume that knowledge is possible and

seek to understand its real-world (natural) conditions. They abandon any quest for a pri? ori, necessary and sufficient conditions for

knowledge in general, to examine how

epistemic agents actually produce knowl?

edge, variously, within the scope and limits of

human cognitive powers as these powers are

revealed in the same projects of inquiry. In

this essay I ask how epistemologists work?

ing, specifically, from a feminist agenda

might best draw on these resources.

According to Sabina Lovibond, feminists

have good reasons to participate in a natural?

istic revival. Feminist theory, she contends, is

indebted to the efforts of philosophy over the last century and more to "naturalize"

epistemology... to represent the activity we

call "enquiry" as part of the natural history of human beings. For naturalist or materialist

analyses of the institutions of knowledge production

? schools, universities, the wider

"republic of letters" ?have made it possible to expose the unequal part played by differ? ent social groups in determining standards of

judgement. ...They have revealed the ideo?

logical character of value-systems which have passed as objective or universally valid.2

Feminists are engaged, albeit from di? verse theoretical positions, in demonstrat?

ing how epistemologies ? often tacitly

?

carry within them a potential either to sus?

tain a social-political status quo or to pro? mote emancipatory ends. Tracing the effects

of theories of knowledge in the world where

knowledge is sought and made, feminist and

other critiques of epistemology have demon? strated that epistemic agendas and social-po litical commitments are inextricably intertwined and mutually constitutive.3

Naturalistic analyses of institutions and

processes of knowledge-production con?

tribute invaluably to projects of explicating the repressive and/or potentially transfor?

mative consequences of epistemic assump? tions in their trickle-down effects in

everyday knowledge making.4 Although in?

vestigations of the emancipatory potential of theories of knowledge have not been

much in fashion or favor in the heyday of

twentieth-century preoccupations with de?

termining necessary and sufficient condi?

tions for knowledge in general, it is worth

recalling that, historically, such investigations commanded wider respect. For example,

1



2 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Plato's quest for principles of certain

knowledge was animated by his need to en?

sure that the guardians in the Republic would exercise knowledgeable authority; and Bacon believed scientific inquiry would

contribute to securing the best life for hu?

manity.5 Marxist commitments to develop?

ing emancipatory epistemologies that could

shatter the naturalistic illusions of the capi? talist social order are well known.6 And the

early positivists proclaimed the benefits of

scientific knowledge for liberating human?

ity from thralldom to religious or meta?

physical excesses by enhancing standards of

"clarity and responsibility."7 It is this kind

of interest that the new naturalists might be

able to reanimate.

In this essay, then, I endorse Lovibond's

hopes for a naturalistic engagement with

questions about knowledge when the aspi? rations of "the epistemological project" are

under strain from post-modern, post-colo? nial, and post-patriarchal critiques. I offer

some suggestions about how feminists can

make the most of the rich possibilities that

a well conceived (natural historical) natu?

ralism has to offer. Yet I engage critically with naturalism's most successful North

American version ?the line that claims an

originary debt to the work of W.V.O. Quine

?regarding features that, on my reading, limit its promise. My contention will be that

the transformative potential of this strand

of naturalism is thwarted in three principal

ways which are interconnected, mutually informative, and yet separable. First, natu?

ralistic venerations of physical science as

the only "institution of knowledge-produc? tion" that is worthy of analysis tend to gen? erate an excessive and reductive scientism.

Second, Quinean naturalists' consequent reliance on scientific psychology and cogni? tive science as uncontested sources of ex?

emplary knowledge of human cognitive

functioning begs the question about the

epistemic status of psychology itself. Third, naturalism works with contestable repre? sentations of "nature," both physical and

human. I elaborate the first and second set

of issues in the next section of this essay,

and the third in section three. In section

four I sketch out a version of naturalism

that could enable feminists to reclaim the

promise that I, with Lovibond, see in epis?

temology naturalized.

2. Natural Science, Human Subjects

It is impossible in one essay to address the whole vast naturalistic project, whose

literature is proliferating more rapidly than even the most assiduous scholar could read

it.8 Hence I am restricting my analysis to

the line of inquiry that derives from

Quine 's now-landmark claim that "episte? mology, or something like it, simply falls

into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural

phenomenon, viz., a physical human sub?

ject."9 I pick up the Quinean thread where

Hilary Kornblith picks it up in his 1991 es?

say "The Naturalistic Project in Epistemol? ogy: A Progress Report," to identify its two

principal questions as "What is the world

that we may know it? And what are we that we may know the world?"10 Answers to

these questions are to be sought at the

places where the best current theories of

the nature of the world and the best current

psychological theories dovetail. For knowl?

edge about the world, state-of-the-art sci? ence may include chemistry, biology,

physics, and other laboratory sciences. For

the knowledge about "us" that it gleans from scientific psychology, it relies upon a

rejuvenated doctrine of "natural kinds" and assumes that these "kinds" are not dena?

tured when they are studied in a laboratory

setting and so still count as "natural."11 It

studies "how we are adapted to the struc?

ture of the world around us"12 so that it

makes sense for us to rely on the informa?

tion we acquire through our perceptual ap?

paratus and on the conclusions of our

inductive inferences. Science need not ex?

clude mental states and processes from its

ontology, but it tends to assume that they are physically constituted. In psychological as in physical inquiry, it grants pride of

place to prediction, (causal) explanation, and technological application as knowledge

attesting activities.



EPISTEMOLOGY NATURALIZED? / 3

Guided by their commitment to deriving normative recommendations from the

demonstrated scope and limits of human

cognition, naturalists study psychological

experiments that show how people justify their beliefs, generalize to new conclusions, correct perceptual errors, conserve infor?

mation in memory, assimilate testimony, and accommodate or resist novelty, to cite

just a few examples.14 Taking the findings of

such research seriously enables epistemolo

gists to tailor their normative demands to

what people can achieve epistemically, to

how they tend to process evidence and re?

spond to incongruities. Thus, for example, exhortations about how knowers should go about justifying their probablisitic conclu?

sions that extend beyond available evi?

dence may be tempered by readings of

Kahneman and Tversky's experiments that

show, repeatedly, how "people regularly violate [a] basic tenet of probabilistic rea?

soning."15 The aim is not for naturalists to

learn to tolerate this violation, thus turning the "is" into an "ought." It is, rather, to en?

able them to offer manageable guidelines within which to urge improvement, or to be

well placed to assess the extent of epistemic

culpability, say when a subject fails "to re?

cover or activate something from long-term

memory."16 This, then, is the physical hu? man subject who becomes the new

epistemic subject: the human being as proc? essor of knowledge as information, whose

experiential input is quite inadequate to ac?

count for the "torrential output" that

emerges in its knowledge of "the three-di?

mensional external world and its history."17 Because people can survive only to the ex?

tent that they can process the information

available from their environments, under?

standing their information processing ca?

pacities should yield an epistemology more

adequate to human purposes than one that

directs its recommendations toward an

ideal of epistemic perfection that no human

knower could achieve. And naturalism's

commitment to studying how real people perform in experimental situations prompts

Alvin Goldman to commend it for main

taining contact with "epistemic folkways."18 Naturalists show, then, that epistemic in?

junctions are worthless if they require peo?

ple to perform cognitive tasks that their

intellectual or perceptual capacities do not

permit. (Hence it would be ludicrous to re?

quire people to learn to distinguish be?

tween ultra-violet intensities with the

unaided eye.) As Goldman puts the point,

given that "epistemology is in the business

of saying what psychological states a cog nizer should be in in various circumstances, or what states it would be rational or intel?

ligent for him [or her?] to be in, we need as

good a specification as possible of the range of cognitive states open to him."19 Yet natu?

ralists are not thus advocating a static,

purely descriptive ? hence non-normative

? epistemology. They are insisting that nor

mativity is as much a practical as a purely

logical concern, that epistemic imperatives

acquire their force from a demonstrable

congruence between their urgings and the

possibilities that human cognitive equip? ment affords. Naturalism will transform

epistemology's justificatory strategies just as radically as it will restructure its evi?

dence-gathering procedures.20 I discuss Quine-derived naturalism here

not just because of its professional success

in English-language philosophy, but be?

cause, in following this line, feminist

epistemologists have produced some of

their most innovative work. Lynn Nelson has developed subtle readings of Quine as a proto-feminist, as the articulator of a ver?

sion of empiricism that can be critically elaborated to serve feminist ends; and Jane

Duran sees in naturalism a valuable re?

source for developing a feminist epistemol?

ogy.21 Essays by Susan Babbitt, Elizabeth

Potter, and Kathryn Addelson in the 1993

collection Feminist Epistemologies22 all (al? beit variously) claim a debt to naturalistic

epistemology. Yet none of these philoso?

phers adopts naturalism's aims and ideals

uncontested and whole; to varying degrees, they work, at once, in and out of naturalized

epistemology, drawing on its resources even as they criticize its reductive and exclusion




ary features. Their principal challenges to

naturalistic orthodoxy are directed at its

scientistic excesses, which I discuss here, and its epistemic individualism, which fig? ures centrally in the next section of this es?

say.23

The Quinean naturalists have an impres? sive record of scientific and technological successes to cite as evidence when they rep? resent natural science as the best knowl?

edge of how the physical world works that

human beings have produced and when

they read this record of success to show that

scientific method is pretty much in order as

it stands. Kornblith ? I think rightly ? as?

serts that philosophy "does not have the

credentials ...to dictate how science itself

should be carried out."24 But neither does

science have the credentials to dictate how

philosophy ? and hence epistemology

?

should be carried out. I am suggesting that

naturalism escalates into an uncritical scien

tism when it ignores this cautionary point.25 Arthur Danto's definition underscores my claim. Naturalism, he says, is "a species of

philosophical monism according to which

whatever exists or happens is natural in the

sense of being susceptible to explanation

through methods which, although paradig

matically exemplified in the natural sci?

ences, are continuous from domain to

domain of objects and events...." For natu?

ralists, there neither exist nor could exist

"any entities or events which lie, in princi?

ple, beyond the scope of scientific explana? tion."26 It is the "monism" that gives pause,

with its echoes of the old, reductive "unity of science" credo. Thus, although natural?

ism's focus on human cognitive activity in?

deed counts as a radical departure from

older commitments to a decontextualized a

prioricity, its affirmations of the scientificity of all knowledge yield a new a priori which

exerts an equivalently restrictive, reductive

pressure.

There is, moreover, a troubling circularity in the assumption, central to Quinean natu?

ralism, that scientific psychology can yield definitive explanations of natural human

knowledge-making.27 At issue in this in

quiry are, precisely, the scope and limits of

scientific explanation: its capacity to yield these very conclusions. Nor has the debate

between cognitive science and folk psychol? ogy been won, despite the rhetorical strat?

egy cognitive scientists deploy in labelling the opposition with so trivializing a name

that it cannot expect a serious hearing. While the scientific and epistemic status of

scientific psychology remains within the de?

bate, it cannot, without begging the ques?

tion, be enlisted whole to establish

conclusions that serve, rather, to contest its own epistemic warrant.

Feminist and other post-colonial hopes for Quinean naturalism and its progeny are

tempered, then, by their claims to re-colo?

nize the territory, to have at their command

all of the best, and indeed the only, reliable

means of regulating and judging beliefs and

knowledge-claims. They are tempered fur?

ther by naturalistic denigrations of the "na?

tive" practices of the colony with such

derogatory labels as "folkways" and "folk

psychology," the latter, as Jerome Bruner

observes, "coined in derision by the new

cognitive scientists for its hospitality to?

ward such intentional states as beliefs, de?

sires, and meanings..."28 Even psychology's

impressive successes in showing how peo?

ple go about knowing do not show that

epistemology and psychology converge to

the extent that epistemology reduces to psy?

chology. There are too many left-overs.

The temporal and local contingency of its

own hegemony makes it still more difficult

for science to justify arrogating to itself do?

minion over the whole natural history of

human beings. Joseph Rouse, for example, notes that although philosophy has "made

common cause with the sciences" within the

English-speaking world, "relations between

philosophy and the sciences have been

rather different in much of Continental

Europe... [where] the concern has been to

situate the sciences with respect to other so?

cial interests and practices."29 And ongoing

post-Wittgensteinian challenges in Anglo American philosophy to the global preten?

sions of "scientific" social science attest




further to the local contingency of the

status of natural science as the paradig? matic institution of knowledge produc? tion.30 In short, Quinean naturalism keeps too many positivist-empiricist presupposi? tions intact, especially the presuppositions that scientific knowledge alone merits epis

temological attention and that it alone can

provide truly explanatory accounts.

Designating physical and psychological science as the places where natural knowl?

edge-making occurs ignores, and hence ef?

fectively de-naturalizes (both normatively and descriptively), the practices and wis?

doms of extra-scientific, non-mainstream,

marginalized people, practices whose effec?

tiveness is often empirically demonstrable.

Naturopathic medicine, women's tradi?

tional healing practices, Native medicine, the myriad knowledgeable dimensions of

allgemeine Allt?glichkeit, the much-ma?

ligned "folk psychology," and the narrative

knowledge and meaning-making practices that shape and inform human lives, unfet?

tered by the stringent dictates of scientific

instrumental rationality are all excluded

from critical evaluation. Withholding the

(honorific) label "knowledge," a priori, from the workable deliverances of such

practices reaffirms the hegemony of a nar?

rowly conceived science as the arbiter of

what counts as knowledge and of its practi? tioners as paradigmatically worthy know ers. Such exclusions relieve scientific

knowers from any need to reconsider the

theoretical underpinnings of their projects or to engage seriously with knowledge-pro? ducing institutions beyond a narrowly de?

marcated subset, thus truncating the

promise that many feminists, and other

Others, have held out for a naturalistic re?

vival. Because its construction of "the natu?

ral" denigrates the credibility of knowledge that is made in places other than the labo?

ratory and is equally integral to responsible

epistemic conduct, Quinean naturalism nei?

ther exposes what Lovibond calls "the un?

equal part played by different social groups in determining standards of judgement"

nor does it engage with reason "in all its

historical and cultural particularity."

Tom Sorell proposes a corrective that is

consonant with the reservations I have been

voicing about the exclusiveness of Quinean commitments to a particular kind of scien?

tific discipline, informed by a monistically conceived set of theoretical assumptions out of which "science" itself also emerges as a natural kind. Theorists of knowledge, he suggests, could actively acknowledge the

mutual influence of epistemology and psy?

chology, so that epistemology would be

transformed, even radically, by joining forces with scientific psychology, for it

would abandon its commitment to a prioric

ity. Yet its practitioners would acknowledge the limits of psychological explanation, and

would therefore refrain from pushing the re?

ductive claim.31 The appeal of this defla?

tionary position would be that experimental

psychology, judiciously interpreted, would restrain philosophy's speculative excesses,

yet philosophy would maintain vigilance for scientistic excesses, and naturalism

would not need to denature itself in the

process.

Many of the experiments to which the

Quine-line naturalists appeal have what I

am calling a "denaturing" effect in conse?

quence of their implicit adherence to a latter

day methodological solipsism, translated into

self-contained, isolated moments of the one

on-one, observer-observed laboratory ex?

periments. Such experiments preserve a

commitment to the purity of a statistical

formalism that glosses over differences and

specificities within the very natural kinds that are its subjects of study. Here the pre? sumed homogeneity of human beings as

members of a natural kind, manifested in

Quine's observation that "the uniformity of

people's quality spaces virtually assures

that similar presentations will elicit similar

verdicts,"32 erases any possibility of factor?

ing "historical and cultural particularity" into investigations of reason's natural op? erations. Hence what are at first glance the

most promising aspects of the naturalistic

program in the end invite an interpretive wariness, a hermeneutic of suspicion, even

as they bring reason down from its sublime




purity to engage in producing a "natural

history of human beings."

3. What Is Natural?

In a 1994 essay, Sabina Lovibond reaf?

firms her enthusiasm for naturalism, declar?

ing it "indispensable" to twentieth-century

epistemology, which

works with a conception of reason that has been "irrevocably desublimated"... revealed ...in all its historical and cultural particular? ity. Human reason is now understood not as

the sign of our participation in something that goes beyond our merely natural exist? ence... but as one expression of our identity as a natural species whose members are ex?

posed to an enormous variety of environ? mental and social conditions.33

Yet I am suggesting that even when rea?

son and knowledge-production come under

discussion as expressions of our identity as

a natural species, there are choices at work

determining what counts as "our" natural

identity and which of its expressions merit

analysis. The very idea of producing a

"natural history" of human knowledge

seeking is hampered by our remarkable ig? norance, still, of what "we" naturally are: of

where nature begins and where cultural or

other "artificial" accretions end.

Constrained, perhaps, by these impon? derables, epistemology, like philosophy in

general, has been in the business of natural?

izing as it goes. Theories of knowledge, like

metaphysical and moral theories, have

claimed to derive from and pertain to what

human nature is and can permit. Yet their

effects have often been to naturalize the

very attributes and actions that they pur?

port to discover and thence to recommend.

Thus women's rational inferiority has been

naturalized in representations of female na?

ture as more emotional than rational or less

rational than male nature; and hierarchical

social arrangements have been naturalized

in similar assumptions about some people's ?

Blacks', women's, slaves' ? incapacity

for rational self-governance. (Aristotle, whom one could name as the first natural?

ist, was notorious in these respects.)

Quine-derived naturalized epistemology claims to have a rather different agenda. No

longer will it tacitly naturalize as a by-prod? uct of its theoretical hypotheses; rather, it

will base its conclusions on the nature of

human cognitive capacities as these are em?

pirically revealed in the findings of scien?

tific psychology. Yet feminist and

non-white, non-affluent philosophers who

endorse the hopes that I, with Lovibond, have been voicing will observe that the

laboratory, which naturalists who follow the

Quine-line choose as the place where

knowledge is naturally made, has been de?

signed and usually occupied by affluent

white men, with women and other Others

rarely gaining ready access. The labora?

tory's accredited occupants have produced much of the knowledge that naturalizes

women's irrationality along with the cogni? tive inferiority and diminished epistemic authority of other non-standard knowers.

Even as some critics worry, then, that

naturalism eschews normativity, the rheto?

ric of "the natural" claims a proximity to

"the real" that exercises a normative per? suasion of a different ilk, dismissing the

practices of its interrogators as unnatural,

supernatural, "unreal" ?as its patronizing references to "the folk" amply show.34 In

their packaging within the language of

naturalism, these projects locate them?

selves within a discursive, rhetorical space that commands immediate late-twentieth

century (post-modern) attention. Within

this space, "returns to nature" claim to strip away the cultural, theoretical, and political accretions that have impeded philosophical

progress, to return to "the things them?

selves," with the aid of the most sophisti? cated methods of inquiry that humankind

has ever known: the exact and esoteric tech?

niques of physical science and scientific

psychology. Hence "the naturalistic turn"

acquires the aura of a turning away from

rarefied abstractions and toward demon?

strations, at last, of how things really are; and the language of "naturalism" implies that no stipulating has occurred, that phi?

losophers are merely observing what natu




rally reveals itself. In fact, however, rather

than returning to nature, as the rhetoric of

its presentation implies, naturalism partici?

pates in constructing both its subject and its

object. And although any self-declared

naturalism has to begin by choosing what it

will count as natural ? for "nature" is not

simply self-announcing ?

stipulations in

philosophy are rarely innocent or neutral.

The presuppositions and principles of the

stipulative choices on which everything that

follows depends have to be examined for

the inclusions and exclusions they effect.

These, in Quine-derived naturalized episte?

mology, have social-political consequences that invite critical r??valuation; for the

"naturalistic" terminology produces many of the problems I shall address, even as it

generates the enthusiasms that Lovibond

rightly articulates.

Designating its object of study as "a natu?

ral phenomenon... a physical human sub?

ject," whose performance in experimental situations shows that its informational out?

put vastly exceeds its available input, attests

to naturalism's ingrained presuppositions about the kinds of knowledge that count as

revealing what this "natural phenomenon" can do. The designation generates a further

set of assumptions about who or what this

creature is. But how, one wonders, can natu?

ralists justify delimiting conceptions of knowledge and subjectivity as they do?

Why would anyone think that this kind of

knowledge shows what human cognizers are, erasing so many equally plausible op? tions?

Human beings are more ? and other ?

than information processors and problem solvers; nor can all of their natural epistemic

practices be adequately understood as multi?

ples and/or elaborations of these activities.

Arguments to the effect that human sur?

vival attests to the reliability of "our" per?

ceptual-inferential processes can count at

best as the first word, certainly not the

last.35 As long as survival, both qualitative and quantitative, varies so widely across the

human species and as long as possibilities of claiming epistemic authority on the basis

of information processed and inductions

successfully performed are so unevenly dis?

tributed, there is more to be told about who

"we" are. Hence I am suggesting that natu?

ralism cannot deliver on its promise to re?

linquish a prioricity in favor of a return to

natural cognitive activity if it grants uncon

tested pride of place, in its study of natural

knowledge, to behaviors studied in the

laboratory. For, although human beings could not survive were they unable to proc? ess information competently, were this all

that they could do, the quality of their sur?

vival would at best be dubious.

When naturalism represents human sub?

jects as essentially solitary, even if reliable,

processors of information, the contest

ability of its constructs is especially appar? ent. For in individual isolation human

survival would not be possible. The abstract

individual who figures, implicitly, as the

knower is one such construct, a faceless, dis?

passionate, infinitely replicable "individ?

ual" who knows only when he is successful

in suppressing interdependence, affect, and

meaning, and indeed all aspects of his indi?

vidual/^.36 It is neither ideology nor fancy that prompts natural historians (in Lovi?

bond's sense) to emphasize the fundamen?

tal interdependence of human existence, but reasonably invariant features of the bi?

ology of human procreation and matura? tion. Hence individualism sits uneasily with

naturalism. Now, naturalists might maintain that human maturation follows a natural

trajectory away from interdependence, to?

ward autonomy, self-sufficiency, and a fully realized individualism of the sort that femi?

nist and other post-modern thinkers have

discerned in the man of reason whose

works western philosophy has principally studied.37 But such a vision is plausible only if one overlooks the cognitive interdepend? ence that is an inescapable feature of being born a human infant and living in a culture or social group without which an individual,

strictly defined, would be unable even as a

adult to know enough to survive. A project of studying natural knowledge-making has, from the outset, to guard against foreclos




ing on equally natural sources and re?

sources that could enhance its explanatory

potential. There are ways of naturalizing with effects less unnatural than those that

Quine-derived naturalism yields.

Prompting feminist critiques of natural?

ism's individualist assumptions is a conviction

that adequate successor epistemologies must

be able, non-imperialistically, to address is? sues of individual and local specificity, so

cially-culturally produced and situated, a

possibility that abstract individualism disal?

lows.38 Nor do such specificities amount

merely to interchangeable identities into

which anyone could fit at will. The problem with individualism for emancipatory pro?

jects is that it cannot account for how "in?

dividual" options, whether cognitive or

other, are systemically thwarted or en?

hanced in their constitution within diverse,

power-infused social-material situations.

Moreover, an individualist ontology implic?

itly underwrites a methodological solipsism for which knowers are, can, and should be

wholly self-reliant in their information

gathering and corroborating activities.39

Hence individualists can simply assume

that all evidence is equally available to any self-sufficient observer and that any ob? server who fails to take it into account is

epistemically culpable. This too-simple ex?

ample shows how individualism fosters

epistemic assumptions whose (probably un?

intended) effects come out as sexist, racist, or otherwise obstructive of the very self-re?

alization that individualists advocate. In?

deed, the "individual" of individualism is a

mythic construct, a product of the very dis?

course that relies upon and seeks to defend

it.40

There is, moreover, a curious tension in

(Quinean) naturalists' identifying individu? als as biological creatures whose innate

"spacing of qualities," or innate linguistic readiness, demonstrates the universality of

rational processes;41 for the "individuals"

that populate these theories are rarely em?

bodied, except accidentally and inconven?

iently. That same biology is subsequently read out of the picture in justificatory

strategies designed to legitimate universal,

global conclusions that obliterate differ? ences consequent upon embodiment in

variously gendered, aged, colored, or abled

bodies. Paradoxically, then, individualism in

its empiricist/scientific psychology forms

fails, indeed refuses, to individuare. Rather, it reduces and assimilates differences, both

"natural" and social-political, under its uni?

versality and objectivity requirements; and

in so doing it denatures the very natural

kinds to which its best intuitions appeal.

Outlining a "naturalist view of persons"

quite different from Quine-line natural?

ism's solitary information-processor, An?

nette Baier observes:

A naturalist...takes it as obvious that a per? son is, as Montaigne put it, "marvellously corporeal"

... and that a person's ability to

think is affected by genetic inheritance from

parents and is vitally dependent upon the sort of care received in childhood, for exam?

ple in being introduced into a language com?

munity.42

Baier shows throughout her work how

the same tradition that gives rise to

(Quinean) naturalism reads past human in?

terdependence to establish its conclusions.43

Her naturalistic view, which "emphasize [s] the interdependence of persons,"44 shows

that individualism is an incongruous ontol?

ogy for naturalists, unless they mean to

work with so abstracted a view of persons as

to render dubious its claims to be natural.

An ontology like Baier's need not es?

chew possibilities of drawing upon the best

psychology can offer, for there are distin?

guished voices in professional psychology that accord well with hers. To cite just two,

Couze Venn protests against conceiving of

psychology as the science of the individual:

the science whose subject is "the 'rational

man' with no past;" "the 'individual sub?

ject' minus everything that pins down its iden?

tity and its lived experience of social

relations."45 And Jerome Bruner puts the

point more forcefully: "It is man's partici?

pation in culture and the realization of his

mental powers through culture that make it

impossible to construct a human psychol?

ogy on the basis of the individual alone."46




Addressing the individualist implications of many cognitive science programs and of

Chomskyian theses about the universality of innate language-readiness, Bruner cites

primate studies to show that it is "sensitiv?

ity to the requirements of living in groups that provides the criterion for evolutionary selection in high primates."47 His purpose is

neither to discredit Chomskyian linguistics nor to minimize its value as a resource for

understanding the deep structures that en?

able human language development. Yet he

adduces compelling evidence to show that

the "triggering" of an innate mechanism

manifests a complexity of an order quite different from the process Chomsky and his

followers represent, for it depends

not only upon...appropriate exemplars in the

linguistic environment of the child but also

upon the child's "context sensitivity" that can come only from... participation in lan?

guage as an instrument of communication...

triggered by the acts and expressions of oth? ers and by certain basic social contexts in which human beings interact.48

Studying how sociality makes individual?

ity possible opens up ways of addressing the unevenness of survival with which a natural

history must engage. For it is in radically diverse social-material circumstances that

such inequities are produced and mani?

fested.

Bruner, in effect, reclaims a revivified

"folk psychology" from cognitive scientific

dismissals, establishing a place for it within an elaborated "cultural psychology." He

does this not out of nostalgia for a more

romantic conception of human nature, but

because he believes cultural psychology can

avoid some of the most egregious denatur?

ings on which a naturalism that attributes

explanatory power only to cognitive science

depends. Nor does Bruner make monistic, reductive claims for interpretive-cultural

analyses that explicate and situate informa?

tion processing. His is, rather, a plea for an?

alysing context and content together,

recognizing that scientific psychology pro? duces remarkably informative content, yet that its offerings neither arise without con

text nor speak for themselves. The cultural

psychology he advocates is

an interpretive psychology, in much the sense that history and anthropology and lin?

guistics are interpretive disciplines. But that does not mean that it need be unprincipled or without methods, even hard-nosed ones. It seeks out the rules that human beings bring to bear in creating meanings in cultural con?

texts.49

Meaning-making practices, the narratives in which information is embedded, the sto?

ries in which people locate and explicate their experiences, are integral to any ade?

quately naturalized account of cognition. Those stories will be peopled by human ac?

tors as fully as by medium-sized information

generating objects and perceptual-memory stimulants. And, for Bruner, it is only within

communicable narratives exposed to criti?

cal and self-critical discussion that people can negotiate the circumstances that make

laboratory experiments worth doing and

that accord their results a cultural-social

significance.

Psychologists such as Bruner and Venn

explicitly resist framing the options avail?

able to professional psychologists as a

forced choice between (hard, scientific) ex?

perimentation and (soft, folksy) narrative; nor do they advocate supplanting the for?

mer with the latter. The debate is rather be? tween those who believe that what happens in a laboratory is self-justifying, that its

genesis within scientific psychology pro? vides its warrant, and those who, to borrow a phrase from Steve Fuller, see in natural? ism "a call to self-reflection, or reflexiv

ity"50 on the part of knowledge producers, who refuse to exempt any location or insti?

tution of knowledge-production from the

need to account for itself. The reflexivity re?

quirement does not amount to a naive refusal to acknowledge the power of experimenta? tion in going beyond a merely conservative

naturalism and in revealing where the natu?

ralist's "ought" really does imply "can"

(one of naturalism's most significant contri?

butions to "desublimating" reason). But in

its best late-twentieth-century forms the re




flexivity requirement enlists genealogical

techniques to address critically the manifes?

tations of power that shape both experi? mental and narrative knowledge-making. It

insists that the significance of experimental

findings beyond the narrow confines of the

laboratory is rarely self-announcing; that even within the laboratory findings can be

as much a product of the contrived situ?

ation out of which they emerge, as indica?

tive of how things "naturally" are; and that

even the most "sincere" narratives are con

testable, open to critical scrutiny.51 It is to

untangle issues such as these that interpre? tation enters the inquiry.

In a cultural climate where reason is "ir?

revocably desublimated," it is puzzling that

"the naturalistic turn" and "the interpretive turn'52 should amount to turnings away from one another, usually in antagonism.

Collaboratively, combining their resources,

they could issue in impressively re-skilled, re-sensitized ways of understanding and

evaluating knowledge production. Cultural

narrative and interpretation invite scorn

from many science-oriented naturalists, for

they admit of no definitive causal or predic? tive explanations and hence, the charge is,

they yield merely subjective conclusions. Yet interpretation is as "natural" and as

evidence-reliant as the other activities that

naturalists study; and it is just as essential to survival. The fact that people are radi?

cally, ineluctably "located," that they can?

not achieve perfect understanding, makes

of every inquiry, whether scientific or secu?

lar, a reading "from somewhere" whose cir?

cumstances of origin and production are

constitutive of its presuppositions and con?

clusions. The interpretations that "natural?

ize" laboratory life have to be as closely

interrogated as the circumstances that re?

strict the populations within laboratories to

a chosen few. Interpretation thus construed

is a powerful critical tool, an instrument for

change, which uncovers and reveals the

contingency of motivations, power struc?

tures, and extra-scientific assumptions that

are often so embedded in experimental de?

sign and in narrative structures as to seem

merely a matter of course.53

To return to the area of inquiry of most

interest to Quinean naturalists, establishing a commonality of purposes between natu?

ralized epistemology and feminist/post-co? lonial analyses of "desublimated" reason in

action requires strategies for working past

psychology's complicity in the tacitly pro? ductive, politically implicated naturalizing that erases human differences even as it

casts the object of inquiry in its own image. Critical interpretation uncovers this com?

plicity and opens spaces for countering it.

Examples are too numerous to detail here, but the very title of Naomi Weisstein's now

classic article "Psychology Constructs the

Female" heralds her demonstration that

natural (female) human "kinds" are as arte

factual as they are factual.54 In develop? mental psychology, Carol Gilligan's work

engages critically with Lawrence Kohlberg's

precisely at the place where the latter's ef?

fect is to naturalize female moral immatur?

ity because of women's tendency to score

lower than men on the Kohlberg test.55 And

critical readings show that the connections

Philippe Rushton draws between genital and brain size work effectively to produce "natural" differences in Black, Oriental and

white intelligence, at least as persuasively as

they record them.56 In these diverse studies, "nature" emerges as, partially at least, a

product of experimental design, suggesting that, when it notices them, psychology tends

to construct ? not find ? the female, the

Black, or the other Other, as a natural kind.

More commonly, it does not notice them, for the "individual" subjects in most aca?

demic psychology are gender-, class-, race-,

and ethnicity-neutral, surely an odd way of

viewing a species so (naturally) diverse as

the human species. Psychology is not the only scientific dis?

cipline that studies the physical human sub?

ject as a natural species. Biology has at least

as strong a claim to this description, and

hence to inclusion among inquiries that

contribute to the production of a natural

history of human beings. Yet feminist cri?

tiques have shown that biology is no more

innocent than psychology of the charge that




it constructs and thus denatures subjects who are the objects of its inquiry.57 Biolo?

gist Karen Messing's studies of women's oc?

cupational health provide instructive

examples. Her work reveals a persistent (establishment) preference for "controlled

studies...in situations which bear little re?

semblance to real life;"58 for studies of non

human cells or cells in culture, rather than

of live human subjects; and for laboratory rather than field (i.e., workplace) studies.

Messing and her associates have discerned

patterns familiar to feminist and other post colonial science critics: women's dizziness,

nausea, and headaches after prolonged ex?

posure to toxic solvents or pesticides repre? sented as "mass psychogenic illness;"

restrictive, "universal" definitions of occu?

pational impacts on health that read past effects specific to female workers, such as

menstrual abnormalities and pregnancy-as? sociated problems; statistical procedures that conceal class- or sex-biased assump? tions "which increase the suffering of work?

ers;" sampling procedures that eliminate

women "to make samples uniform;"59 and

techniques and presuppositions that sustain

representations of women as "physically, mentally and emotionally 'the weaker

sex'"60 Messing shows how company inter? ests in denigrating worker credibility have

generated an "image of workers as lazy ma?

lingerers coddled by their colluding physi? cians [that is] cited to block compensation to injured workers who stay out 'too

long'."61 Add a refusal to accept self-re?

ported experiences of workplace events as

evidence, and the capacity of (Quine's) in? nate "standard of similarity" to underwrite the explanatory force of natural kinds is re?

vealed as highly dubious.62 "Objective" sci? ence often masks pertinent variations

within natural kinds, fails to address human

suffering, and ignores the systemic effects of the social-institutional power structures

that provide its own warrant.

These examples from psychology and bi?

ology, areas that have especially interested

(Quinean) naturalists, count as minimal il?

lustrations of the denaturing that natural?

ism accomplishes. Feminists have examined

and detailed other denaturings too numer?

ous to list,63 presenting incontestable re?

minders that the procedural rationality that

naturalism analyzes is ? to recall Lovibond ?

just one "expression of our identity." Helen Verran's detailed documentation of

the logic in Australian Aboriginal mappings of the world that contests the hegemony of

western presuppositions about the natural order of things is but one example from a

long line of anthropological research that

exposes western knowledge as just one ex?

pression of the "cultural particularity" of

natural reason.64 Amy Mullin's study of

feminist art and aesthetics as culturally un?

settling, yet indisputably cognitive, engage? ments with the world underscores my claim

that other kinds of knowledge-making are

just as natural, hence that science has to

make good its claim to count as the natural

site.65 Theorists need interpretive-genea?

logical, natural-historical analyses if they are to achieve a just evaluation of the place

? and the naturalness ? of naturalism.

In summary, then, in its scientistic mani?

festations, naturalism denatures itself in lo?

cating itself within a laboratory, assuming that knowledge-making activities there are

paradigmatic of natural knowledge-mak?

ing; in working with an abstract individual?

ism that blocks its engagement with human

differences, both diachronic and syn? chronie; in restricting itself to one kind of

knowledge, thus distancing itself from the

meaning-making and interpretive activities

that are just as natural as information-proc?

essing; and in separating "the natural" from

Nature, both in the subject and in the object of knowledge. In the next section I propose a different regional mapping, where Quine line naturalism will occupy a, but not the

central place; and where it is as important for a naturalist to understand that place and

its surroundings as to develop a picture of

what goes on within it.

4. Nature Reclaimed:

Ecology and Epistemology

In the revisioned naturalism I am advo?

cating, the guiding model of epistemic nor




mativity is an ecological model of recipro?

cally sustaining and critically interrogating

practices of engaged inquiry. On this model,

relationships within and among institutions

of knowledge production ? their effects

within social-political structures and the ef?

fects of social-political structures within

them, their inter-workings, their negotiated,

dialogical character, and their social-envi?

ronmental implications ? have to be ana?

lyzed as meticulously as their separate

self-consistency and internal coherence.

Unlike the individual subject whose

epistemic processes are flattened in a me?

chanical, input-output modelling, the eco?

logical subject is ? like Baier's ?

"marvellously corporeal" and fundamen?

tally interdependent, active, resistant and

reactive, accountable; created out of social?

ity and itself creative of the forms of so?

ciality in which it participates. Sociality is

the (mutable) frame within which seem?

ingly isolated experiences and experimen? tal performances contribute to the

ongoing realization (or deterioration) of

subjectivities.66 An ecological model for explicating

knowledge and subjectivity builds on the mutual relations of organisms with one an?

other. Moreover, their environment is con?

ceived not merely as the physical environ?

ment, nor just the present one, but as the

complex network of relations within which

an organism strives to realize its potential, be those relations social, historical, mate?

rial, geographical, cultural, racial, institu?

tional, or other. An organism at any moment in its natural history exhibits its

state of accommodation both of, and to, such relations; yet not passively, for ecology

emphasizes the participation of organisms, whose choices are relationally structured, and who themselves shape social-environ?

mental relations. The agency of ecological

subjects figures centrally in evaluations of

their epistemic activities, as do the develop? mental processes that foster or circum?

scribe agency. Ecological analyses examine

the implications, for organisms, of living in

certain environments and work to develop

strategies for producing environments that

are exploitative neither of the habitat nor

other inhabitants.

An ecologically modelled epistemology will evaluate the potential of cognitive

practices for creating environments where

people can live well. It works with a concep? tion of materially situated subjectivity, for

which embodied locatedness and interde?

pendence are integral to the very possibility of knowledge and action.67 Picking up a

Piagetian line that is fruitfully pursued in Bruner's work, an ecological naturalism

learns equally from developmental studies

of human cognition and from its adult

manifestations. The persistent individual?

ism even of such projects as Goldman's, with its later evolution into a social theory, is sustained by its concentration on experi?

ments whose subjects are adult, hence

seemingly well individuated, human be?

ings.68 (They are also presumptively male, and members of the dominant, "normal," social group.) Critical developmental

analyses sensitive to how individual/ry is

variously and unevenly fostered and/or

thwarted in diverse social arrangments

promise results more cognizant of the inter?

play between independence and interde?

pendence in the production of cognitive agency. Refusing to treat knowledge as in?

formation gained in isolation and articu?

lated in monologic statements, an ecological model takes its point of departure from the

(natural) dependence of knowledge pro? duction upon human interaction, as much

in adult lives as in infancy and childhood.69

This model is by no means anti-scientific, for it must draw on the best available scien?

tific and social scientific evidence to deter?

mine how survival can be ensured and

enhanced, not just quantitatively, but quali?

tatively; not by requiring epistemology to

"fall into place as a chapter" of ecological science, but by learning, analogically, from

the science of ecology. It establishes its

(contestable) conception of "best avail?

able" evidence in self-critical reflexivity,

through which locally, environmentally in?

formed studies of disciplines, their subject




matters, and their interdisciplinary rela?

tions with one another and within "the

world" generate an ongoing skeptical suspi? cion of presumptions to theoretical hegem?

ony. Although this version of naturalism

counts state-of-the-art natural and psycho?

logical science among its principal re?

sources, it rejects their claims to joint

occupancy of the position of master meta

narrative. It is less sanguine than many Quinean naturalists about the before-the

fact reliability of "our" capacities to gener? alize the relevant features of natural kinds

"against the background of the environ?

ments in which they operate."70 For it is

wary of the power-infused tendencies of ra?

cial/gender/class stereotypes and of essen

tialized conceptions of "science" and

"nature" to take on self-fulfilling, self-per?

petuating qualities.

Ecology (literally) succeeds only if it is well informed by state-of-the-art natural

science; yet it fails if it assumes that state

of-the-art science merits uncontested li? cence to intervene in nature wherever it

pleases. Ecology (metaphorically) draws

disciplinary conclusions together, maps their interrelations, their impoverishing and

mutually sustaining effects within estab? lished and putative locations of knowledge

production, and in the social-political natural world where the effects of institu? tional knowledge are enacted ? for better or worse. The ecological human subject is

made by and makes its relations in reci?

procity with other subjects and with its

(multiple, diverse) environments. Yet this model is not self-evidently benign in the sense of generating a natural, unimpeded unfolding of fully realizable epistemic po? tential. For ecosystems are as often com?

petitive and as unsentimentally destructive of their less viable members as they are co?

operative and mutually sustaining. So if work within the model is to avoid replicat? ing the exclusions endemic to traditional

epistemologies, its adherents will have to derive moral-political-epistemological guidelines for regulating and adjudicating competing claims for cognitive and

epistemic authority.

The most delicate tasks in making such a

model epistemologically workable are, first, that of achieving an appropriate balance

between literal and metaphorical readings of the governing concept

? ecology ?so as

to benefit from ecological science without

running aground on details of analogy/

disanalogy with specific ecological events; and second, that of developing an adequate

moral epistemology within which to ad?

dress conflicts between mutually inconsis?

tent survival and flourishing claims. I

cannot engage in either task adequately in

the space available here, but some prelimi?

nary observations will clarify the issues.

Ecology talk has an immediate late-twenti?

eth-century appeal in an era where "right

thinking people" are horrified by the destruction of natural and social environments

and repelled by the imperialism, both local and

global, that accompanies and/or promotes it.

The protective, nurturant aspects of ecology seem to promise a better future. Yet that

very appeal is often counteracted by ecol?

ogy's cloying aura, its coziness, its flavor of

too-goodness, its sometime rhetoric of un?

remitting sentimentality, of a naive, depoli ticized, even narcissistic closeness to nature, and of forced identifications of women and

nature.71 Thus its potential has to be elabo?

rated with care. Nonetheless, I am claiming that an ecologically modelled naturalism can offer a better mapping of the epistemic terrain than the scientism into which other

versions of naturalism risk solidifying: nor

can I think of a model better suited to ad?

dress the complex interrelations that char?

acterize the late-twentieth-century world. I am not, however, just recommending a dif?

ferent, aesthetically more pleasing vocabu?

lary: a way of talking about "the same

things," with a grammar and semantics that are perfectly in order as they stand. Eco?

logical thinking will not yield what Robyn Ferrell has aptly called a "poet's utopia," such as Richard Rorty's free-play of the

ironic, liberal imagination promises.72 Eco?

systems ? both metaphorical and literal ?

are as cruel as they are kind; as unpre? dictable and overwhelming as they are




orderly and nurturant. Epistemologically, their transformative, emancipatory poten? tial can be realized only by active partici?

pants within them who are prepared to take on the burdens as well as the blessings of

place, materiality, and history; and to work

within the locational possibilities, both

found and made, of their being in the world.

The ecological subject, who is but a dis?

tant relative of the abstract liberal individ?

ual, denies that a view from nowhere is

desirable or possible. She is self-critically

cognizant of being part of the world, both

social and natural, in which her knowings,

feelings and actings always produce effects, be they positive, negative, or indifferent.

For this subject, human and social-natural

interdependence are given, to be cultivated,

elaborated, evaluated; their joys to be cele?

brated, their sorrows and errors to be ac?

knowledged. They are neither to be

repudiated nor transcended in illusory ges? tures of an impossible self-sufficiency, nor

elaborated into a romanticized immersion

of self in nature or in Others. Acknow?

ledging the partiality of their knowings and

self-knowings, and their potential effects

(however small, however local), ecological

subjects are well placed to "own" their ac?

tivities and to be responsible for them.73

The normative possibilities of this model

are instrumental, deriving as they do from

a hypothetical imperative to the effect that

epistemic activity be appraised ? in its

form and content ? according to its success

in promoting ecologically sustaining com?

munities, committed to fostering ecological

viability within the "natural" world.74 Ap?

praisals of ecological goals and of episte?

mologies that can promote them and are

modelled upon them will proceed in con?

cert, dialectically, integrating epistemology with moral-political-historical-anthropo?

logical debate.75 Yet even crossing these

boundaries does not turn epistemology into

a chapter of ecological science; and single observational 5-knows-that-p claims may be neutral in this regard, with no immediate

ecological import either way.

Consider Ursula Franklin's "impact stud?

ies."76 During their summer jobs, however

menial, however "non-scientific," engineer?

ing students were to record the impact of

their work on the immediate environment, an exercise designed to teach them that

whatever they did, from house painting, to

child minding, to table serving, would pro? duce effects they would not have thought to

notice. At issue were not simple empirical claims of the 5-knows-that-p variety: Sara

knows that paint is messy, that children

need good food, that coffee needs to be

served hot. Hence the point is not that such

claims take on direct ecological signifi? cance. But only by discerning their impact,

which extends well beyond one's first imag?

inings, can evaluations within a larger eco?

logical network be conducted. Franklin's

purpose was to show that there is no knowl?

edge, and no knowledge-informed practice, that is without consequences, and hence

none that should escape critical scrutiny.

Bioregional narratives, introduced into

environmental ethics by Jim Cheney, afford a point of entry into ecological thinking.

They capture the import of Franklin's stud?

ies, catch something of the cultural-narra?

tive recommendations that Bruner

advances, and resonate with a critique of

"monoculture" that is pivotal to the

ecofeminist work of Vandana Shiva. In de?

veloping an ethics of accountability, Cheney

suggests, "narrative is the key... but it is nar?

rative grounded in geography rather than

in a linear, essentialized narrative self."77 A

bioregional narrative maps local ecological relations to set out the conditions for mu?

tually sustaining lives within a specific lo?

cality ? be it an institution, a geographical

region, an urban environment, a commu?

nity, society, state, or the interrelations

among them, separately traced and charac?

terized. Appropriately elaborated, it can

become a chapter in the "natural history of

human beings" that Lovibond advocates. Its

strength is in the detail of its contextual

sensitivity: its capacity to offer genealogical

(i.e., power-focused) analyses of local

knowledge-making and knowledge-circu




lating conditions. Its weakness is in its pro?

pensity to remain only locally pertinent; to

represent a regional ecosystem as closed,

harmonized, static. Hence it cannot be jus? tified merely internally, but will have to ad?

dress its interconnections with the power saturated systems of the wider world.

Shiva produces one such narrative in her

analysis of the impact on rural Indian agri? culture of western-style "development."

Monocultural agriculture operates from the

principle that land is most productive when

it is cultivated to produce only one large

crop. According to the rhetoric of develop? ment, Shiva observes, "natural forests re?

main unproductive till they are developed into monoculture plantations of commer?

cial species."78 Yet a genealogical charting of the interconnections of ideology, people,

political power structures, and land man?

agement reveals that monoculture operates

reductively, coercively, as a leveller that de?

pletes the land's resources and its inhabi?

tants' self-reliance at one stroke. Possibilities

of local and diverse production are erased

as populations producing a single crop are

forced to rely on other monocultural popu? lations, often located at a distance, for all

other nutritional needs. Shiva details the

achievements of women's cultures in India

in contesting the dominance of monocultu?

ral practices by reclaiming the potential of

agricultural diversity to foster self-sustain?

ing communities.

Now critics might object that Shiva's is

just that romanticized yearning, against which I have cautioned, for practices that are no longer viable in late twentieth-cen?

tury mass societies. Although I disagree, my

purpose is not to argue the point but to pro?

pose an analogy with the ecological model

of knowledge I have been gesturing to?

wards. My contention is that the dominant

epistemological model, drawn from the suc?

cesses of physical and psychological science,

produces an epistemological monoculture in

Anglo-American philosophy ? and in

judgments about knowledge in everyday life ? whose consequences are to suppress and denigrate ways of knowing that depart

from the stringent dictates of scientific

knowledge-making. By contrast, contex?

tual, multifacted analyses of knowledge

production and circulation within social

(i.e., regional) contexts, tracing the interests

and power structures that they enlist and

address, should be able to produce ecologi? cal mappings within which to articulate nu

anced appraisals of the myriad human and

(other) environmental implications of all

knowledge-gathering. Bioregional narra?

tives would map these enhancing and im?

peding activities, critically, to derive

normative conclusions that can translate

from one region to another, in discussion

and negotiation, not without remainder, but

as instructively in their disanalogies as in

the analogies they successfully establish.

Michel Foucault's analyses of "local knowl?

edges" fit this description in some re?

spects.79 Patricia Williams's separate yet interconnected mappings of the effects of

systemic racism produce another narrative

of this sort: specific to the (regional) expe? riences of a professional Black woman in

the United States, yet translatable by analogy to racism and democratic accountability in

ever-widening circles of relevance.80 Bruno

Latour also speaks in favor of just such nar?

ratives (borrowing an ecological metaphor from Michel Serres): "the only way to re?

spect the heterogeneity and the locality is... to do a lot of philosophy. But philosophy is

not unifying factors... [it] is a protection

against the hegemony of the present sci?

ences."81 In bioregional narratives, epis? temic issues intersect with issues of respon?

sibility and agency, with the uneven distri?

bution of cognitive resources in late

twentieth century societies, and with the

moral-political effects of institutional

knowledge-production. A bioregional nar?

rative refuses the reductivism of global, to?

talizing theory while producing moral

epistemic analyses of specific, local epistemic resources.

The aim of this naturalism will be, amid

the instabilities of the post-modern world, to articulate guidelines for adjudicating re?

sponsibility claims. Its analyses will focus as




closely on how people know one another ?

both in everyday and in social scientific contexts ? as on how they know "facts"

about the natural world.82 It will examine

social structures of expertise and authority, and intersubjective negotiations that as?

sume ? and often presume ? to know

other persons. Such interactions make

knowledge possible; yet they are primary sites of empowerment and disempower

ment in patriarchal, racist, and other hier?

archically ordered societies. And the

knowledge they assume as their starting

point is often obscured by stereotyped so?

cial identities posing as accurate knowledge of human natural kinds.

With its recognition of the inherent so?

ciality of human life, and thus of knowledge construction, as well as its recognition of

the constitutive effects of material, social,

cognitive and political circumstances in re?

alizations of subjectivity, an ecological model opens up rhetorical/discursive spaces from which theorists can engage with social

and global issues as fully as with questions about the "nature" of knowledge. With its

emphasis on the implicit and explicit work?

ings of power within institutions of knowl?

edge-production, the model contests

assumptions of pure rationality and the

"natural" emergence of truth to work to?

ward understanding the "artefactual" di?

mensions of reason, knowledge, subjectivity and nature. Conceived as interactive, finely differentiated, interpretive analyses in

which no one can take on all of the perti? nent issues, these projects could issue in col?

laborative enterprises where philosophers would work together, and in concert with

other inquirers, for more equitably achieved

human survival.

The question remains, can naturalism

proceed normatively, and not merely de?

scriptively, as some critics allege? I have

two responses. First, even if it does come

out, for now, as primarily descriptive, it will

not be purely descriptive, if my arguments have any cogency. For descriptions are al?

ways value-laden. They are products of lo?

cation and choice; they begin (and end)

within theoretical presuppositions and

background assumptions that are always contestable, even though they may afford

nodal points at which action is possible. It

is not as though good descriptions are easily achieved, nor are they final. Articulating

good, plausible descriptions and circulating them well are among the most difficult

tasks, and once inserted into the public do?

main they become catalysts of ongoing de?

liberation. If it should turn out that

epistemology has systematically misde

scribed all but a select part of cognitive ac?

tivity, then better descriptions are crucial to

ongoing survival. A second, related re?

sponse, centers on an ambiguity in the sense

of "description" that evidently prompts worries about naturalism's "mere descrip tiveness;" worries that naturalists violate

prohibitions against deriving is from ought. Such pitfalls need to be distinguished from the working hypotheticals that naturalists

establish, appealing to consequential pat? terns in the natural (and human-natural)

world: "If you want to succeed in doing X, then you [had] best do Y."83 For Bruner, narrative descriptions are always norma?

tive; it is impossible to "argue any of these

interpretations without taking a moral stance

and a rhetorical posture."84 An ecology modelled epistemology brings such a moral

stance directly into its epistemic delibera?

tions, insisting on the obligation to answer

for oneself, to maintain skepticism about

overweening authority, and to work toward

better ways of establishing community. Part of the answer to my question "what

is natural about epistemology naturalized?" can be found, then, in ecological thinking.

Naturalistic projects can contribute to

emancipatory epistemological agendas to

the extent that they are prepared to exam?

ine the constructed dimensions both of na?

ture and of scientific knowledge, and to

assess the ecological effects of those con?

structs. Hence they need to engage ques? tions of historical, cultural, gendered

epistemic specificity as constitutive features

of "science as an institution or process in

the world."85 Naturalized epistemology is




natural in its positioning as one episode ?albeit a major one ? in a natural history

of human beings. Its provenance and effects

are as significant as its remarkable predic

tive and explanatory powers, powers whose

pretensions to global dominance need to be

curbed in the interests of respectful coexis?

tence.86

York University Received July 17,1995

NOTES

1. Representative examples of feminist work in epistemology are Linda Alcoff & Elizabeth Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies (New York: Routledge, 1993); Louise Antony & Charlotte Witt, eds., A

Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); and Kathleen Lennon & Margaret Whitford, eds., Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in

Epistemology (London: Routledge, 1994).

2. Sabina Lovibond, "Feminism and Postmodernism." In the New Left Review, No. 178. Novem? ber/December 1989, (5-28), pp. 12-13.

3. A now-classic elaboration of such alignments is Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature

(Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1983).

4. The work of Michel Foucault is especially pertinent in this regard. See especially his Power/Knowl?

edge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980). Edited by Colin Gordon. Translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, & Kate Soper.

5. Mary Tiles & Jim Tiles argue that it is only at certain periods, hence only as a matter of historical

contingency, that theoretical separations have been maintained between knowledge and social-po? litical-moral concerns. See their An Introduction to Historical Epistemology: The Authority of

Knowledge (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993).

6. For a reading of the feminist potential of Marxist theory, see Nancy Hartsock, "The Feminist

Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism." In Sandra

Harding & Merrill Hintikka, eds., Discovering Reality (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983).

7. Rudolph Carnap, "Autobiography," in P. Schilpp, The Philosophy of Rudolph Carnap (LaSalle,IL: Open Court, 1963), p. 21; quoted in Tom Sorell, Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation With Science (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 8. Sorell discusses how this interest in. the beneficial character of science evolved into a less desirable "scientism."

8. See for example the extensive bibliographies in the Second Edition of Hilary Kornblith, ed.,

Naturalizing Epistemology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994); and in Werner Callebaut, Taking the Naturalistic Turn, or How Real Philosophy of Science Is Done (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1993). 9. W. V. O. Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized." (Reprinted from W. V. O. Quine, Ontological Relativ?

ity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.) In Kornblith, Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 25.

10. Hilary Kornblith, "The Naturalistic Project in Epistemology: A Progress Report," APA Pacific Division paper, Los Angeles, May 1990. Kornblith poses the questions differently in his Introduction to Naturalizing Epistemology. There he asks: "1. How ought we to arrive at our beliefs? 2. How do we arrive at our beliefs? 3. Are the processes by which we do arrive at our beliefs the ones by which we

ought to arrive at our beliefs?" (p. 1). And he states the tasks of naturalized epistemology rather

differently in his "Naturalism: Both Metaphysical and Epistemological," in Peter French, Theodore E. Uehling, and Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XIX, Philo?

sophical Naturalism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). He writes: "We must now

try to explain how creatures with the faculties cognitive science tells us we have could come to understand the kind of world which the sciences generally tell us that we inhabit" (p. 43). I opt for the 1990 formulation in appreciation of its more secular tone.




11. Quine observes: "For surely there is nothing more basic to thought and language than our sense of similarity; our sorting of things into kinds" (W. V. O. Quine, "Natural Kinds," in Kornblith, ed.,

Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 58). 12. Kornblith, "The Naturalistic Project in Epistemology," ms. p. 15.

13. Other versions of naturalism grant to other sciences the privileged place that Quineans accord to scientific psychology. Evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cognitive sociology, genetic epistemology, history of science, and ethnomethodology are the most prominent contenders. See in this regard James Maffie, "Recent Work On Naturalized Epistemology," American Philosophical Quarterly,vol. 27 (1990). Here I draw on his note #7, p. 290.

14. These examples come from articles in Kornblith, Naturalizing Epistemology, from Alvin Gold? man's Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); and from Calle baut, The Naturalistic Turn.

15. The Kahneman and Tversky studies figure prominently in Hilary Kornblith's essays, "The Laws of Thought," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 52 (1992); and "Naturalism: Both

Metaphysical and Epistemological;" and in Alvin Goldman's "Epistemic Folkways and Scientific

Epistemology;" and Stephen Stich's "Could Man Be an Irrational Animal? Some Notes on the

Epistemology of Rationality," both in Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology. 16. Alvin Goldman, cites experiments that reveal the workings of long-term memory in his "Epistemic

Folkways and Scientific Epistemology." In Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 310.

17. Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized," p. 25.

18. Alvin Goldman "Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology." In Kornblith, ed., Naturaliz?

ing Epistemology. 19. Alvin Goldman, "Epistemology and the Psychology of Belief." The Monist vol. 61 (1978), p. 525, italics in original. 20. Jaegwon Kim charges Quinean naturalists with setting aside "the entire framework of justifica? tion-centered epistemology... to put in its place a purely descriptive, causal-nomological science of human cognition." (Jaegwon Kim, "What Is "Naturalized Epistemology'?" In Kornblith, ed., Natu?

ralizing Epistemology, p. 40). On my reading, by contrast, naturalism secularizes justification with

reference, also, to its pragmatic dimensions; it does not eschew it.

21. In Lynn Hankinson Nelson, Who Knows. From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); and "Epistemological Communities," in Alcoff & Potter, eds. Femi? nist Epistemologies. I discuss Nelson's rereading of Quinean naturalism in "Critiques of Pure

Reason," in my Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on (Gendered) Locations (New York: Routledge, 1995.) And see Jane Duran, Toward a Feminist Epistemology (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990). 22. See Elizabeth Potter, "Gender and Epistemic Negotiation;" Susan Babbitt, "Feminism and

Objective Interests: The Role of Transformation Experiences in Rational Deliberation;" and

Kathryn Pyne Addelson, "Knowers/Doers and Their Moral Problems," in Alcoff & Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies.

23. Louise Antony also affirms the radical feminist import of Quinean naturalism; but she is committed to an epistemological individualism and a degree of scientism that separate her analysis from those I mention here. See Louise Antony, "Quine As Feminist: The Radical Import of Natural? ized Epistemology," in Antony & Witt, eds., A Mind of One's Own; and "Individualism, Ideology, and the Nature of Feminist Epistemology," APA Central Division paper, Kansas City, May 1994.

24. Kornblith, "Naturalism: Both Metaphysical and Epistemological," ms. p. 50. Indeed, most phi? losophers

? and I among them ? do not have the credentials even to endorse Kornblith's statement

with much confidence.

25. Tom Sorell characterizes "scientism" as "the belief that science, especially natural science, is much the most valuable part of human learning ...because it is much the most authoritative, or

serious, or beneficial" and that "science is the only valuable part of human learning, or... that it is

always good for subjects that do not belong to science to be placed on a scientific footing." Tom

Sorell, Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 1,

emphasis in original.




26. See Arthur Danto, "Naturalism," in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 5:448. Cited in Werner Callebaut, Taking the Naturalistic Turn, pp. 1-2.

27. Michael Friedman, for example, takes note of this circularity, yet he writes: "although the

justification we obtain by deriving the reliability of scientific method from general facts about the actual world is undoubtedly circular, it is not necessarily viciously circular." Michael Friedman, "Truth and Confirmation," in Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 177. Vicious or not, its

circularity obliges it to offer extra-epistemological reasons why epistemologists might claim the

convergence with psychology that naturalists require. 28. Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 36, my emphasis. 29. Joseph Rouse, Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. viii-ix. And see also Tiles & Tiles, An Introduction to Historical

Epistemology. 30. The outlines of these debates are set out in Bryan Wilson, ed., Rationality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970) and Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes, eds., Rationality and Relativism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982). For more recent contributions, see Paul Rabinow & William M. Sullivan, eds.

Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and David R. Hiley, James F. Bohman & Richard Shusterman, eds., The Interpretive Turn: Philosophy, Science, Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). 31. Sorell's view entails that "epistemology and empirical psychology can influence one another, but it stops short of implying that epistemology contains or is contained by empirical psychology, and carries no suggestion that work on any unresolved issue from traditional epistemology should be

stopped," Scientism, p. 139.

32. Quine, "Natural Kinds," p. 65.

33. Sabina Lovibond, "The End of Morality?" in Lennon & Whitford, eds., Knowing the Difference, p. 72.

34. Tiles and Tiles observe that "Science disputes the cognitive credentials of its critics, encouraging skepticism with respect to their methods and claims. Environmentalists, humanists and feminists seek to limit the scope of the authority of science, examining its methods and arguing that it really cannot claim decisive authority in matters social and environmental." An Introduction to Historical

Epistemology, p. 206.

35. I refer to Quine 's pronouncement: "Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a

pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind." Quine, "Natural Kinds," in Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 66.

36. My point is not to ignore recent departures from individualism in "socialized" theories, particularly in naturalized philosophy of science. See, for example, Stephen Downes, "Socializing Naturalized Philoso?

phy of Science," Philosophy of Science, vol. 60 (1993); Lynn Hankinson Nelson, "A Feminist Natural? ized Philosophy of Science," Synthese, vol. 104 (1995); Miriam Solomon, "Social Empiricism" (Nous, vol. 28 (1994); and David Stump, "Naturalized Philosophy of Science with a Plurality of Methods," Philosophy of Science, vol. 59 (1992). My concern is with naturalism's individualist articulations, apparent in the essays in Naturalizing Epistemology, and in Alvin Goldman's claims that "individ? ual" epistemology "needs help from the cognitive sciences" in Epistemology and Cognition (Cam? bridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), and his assertion that knowledge "is the property of individual minds" (p. 1). Although Goldman's 1986 book is presented as part of a project that will go on to "socialize" epistemology, the assumption that individuals are prior to sociality, to which this

ordering attests, implies an ontology of separate individuals who are only derivatively social.

37. The now-classic text on this subject is Genevi?ve Lloyd's The Man of Reason: "Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy, Second Edition (London: Routledge, 1993). 38. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter observe: "The authors in this collection who agree that

epistemology should be naturalized disagree with malestream naturalization programs in two im?

portant ways. Nelson, Addleson, and Potter reject the assumption of epistemological individualism that the individual is the primary epistemic agent of knowledge. It follows that the use of sciences such as neurophysiology to study individual human brains or evolutionary biology to study the evolution of human individuals puts the epistemological cart before the horse." (The second dis




agreement is with the reduction of epistemology to science). "Introduction: When Feminisms Inter? sect Epistemology," in Alcoff & Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 10-11.

39. James Maffie observes that both Goldman and J. Angelo Corlett "favor an information-process? ing approach to human cognition which is solipsistic, i.e. which seeks to understand cognition

without reference to states external to the mind-brain of the cognizer. "

James Maffie, "What is Social About Social Epistemics?" in Social Epistemology, vol. 5 (1991), p. 106. Contra this approach, Maffie

argues, convincingly, that "the native vs. acquired distinction lacks both epistemic significance and

conceptual precision" (p. 101). 40. In his provocative reading of the features - both positive and negative

- of psychology experi? ments, Steve Fuller remarks that "the institution of experiments in psychology... exaggerated the

foregrounding effects of ordinary vision by physically isolating the organism in the artificially sparse setting of the laboratory." In his "Epistemology Radically Naturalized: Recovering the Normative, the Experimental, and the Social," in Ronald N. Giere, ed., Cognitive Models of Science (Minneapo? lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 436. Analytic epistemologists, Fuller notes, "form a

close-knit subculture who, through frequent written and oral rehearsals of the test cases for knowl?

edge, prime each other's intuitions into mutual conformity," p. 441.

41. Quine refers to an "innate spacing of qualities" in "Natural Kinds," pp. 64 and 67, claiming that "A standard of similarity is in some sense innate," p. 63. The theory of innate linguistic readiness is due to Noam Chomsky. See his Cartesian Linguistics (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) and Aspects

of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965). (Stephen Stich, it should be noted, parts company with other naturalists on this issue, arguing that it is "extremely plausible that there are

substantial individual differences in cognitive competence." "Could Man Be an Irrational Animal?" in Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 353.) 42. Annette Baier, "A Naturalist View of Persons," Proceedings and Addresses of the American

Philosophical Association, Vol. 65, #3, November 1991, p. 7.

43. See especially Annette Baier, "Cartesian Persons," in her Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985). 44. "A Naturalist View..." p. 5.

45. Couze Venn, "The Subject of Psychology," in Julian Henriques, Wendy Hollway, Cathy Urwin, Couze Venn & Valerie Walkerdine, Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjec? tivity. (London: Methuen, 1984, pp. 140,141.) See also Wendy Hollway, Subjectivity and Method in

Psychology: Gender, Meaning and Science (London: Sage Publications, 1989). 46. Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning, p. 12. The extensive bibliographical references in Bruner's text

and in the Changing the Subject collaboration dispel any suspicions that these are isolated voices

speaking out against the hegemony of cognitive science.

47. Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning, p. 73. Bruner cites Roger Lewin, In the Age of Mankind

(Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Books, 1988) in support of this suggestion. 48. Bruner, ibid., p. 73.

49. Bruner,^4cte of Meaning,^. 118.

50. Fuller, "Epistemology Radically Naturalized," p. 431.

51. See in this regard my "Incredulity, Experientialism and the Politics of Knowledge," in Rhetorical

Spaces.

52.1 refer here to the title of Hiley,Bohman, and Shusterman, eds., The Interpretive Turn:Philosophy, Science, Culture.

53. The genealogically-informed interpretation I am advocating has its source in the work of Michel

Foucault. See especially his "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" in Donald F. Bouchard, ed., Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1977). Translated by Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon.

54. Naomi Weisstein, "Psychology Constructs the Female," in Vivian Gornick & Barbara K. Moran,

eds., Woman in Sexist Society (New York: Basic Books, 1971). See M. Crawford and J. Marecek,

"Psychology Reconstructs the Female: 1968-1988," Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 13, pp. 147-65, for the ongoing state of these debates.




55. See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). 56.1 offer one such reading in my Taking Subjectivity Into Account, in Alcoff & Potter, eds., Feminist

Epistemologies, pp. 27-32.

57. A minimal sampling of such critiques would include Ruth Hubbard, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried, eds., Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth (Cambridge, M A: Schenkman, 1982); Janet Sayers, Biological Politics (London: Tavistock, 1982); Lynda Birke, Women, Feminism, and

Biology (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986); Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Ruth Hubbard, The Politics of

Women's Biology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); and Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989). 58. Karen Messing, "Don't Use a Wrench to Peel Potatoes: Biological Science Constructed on Male

Model Systems is a Risk to Women Workers' Health," in Sandra Burt & Lorraine Code, eds.,

Changing Methods: Feminists Transforming Practice (Peterborough, ON & Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 1995), p. 219.

59. Messing, ibid., p. 230.

60./6/d.,p.233.

61. Ibid., p. 242.

62. Consider Quine: "A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. This point is not against empiricism; it is a commonplace of behavioral psychology," "Natural Kinds," in Kornblith, ed.,

Naturalizing Epistemology, p. 63.

63. See Alison Wylie, Kathleen Okruhlik, Leslie Thielen-Wilson, and Sandra Morton, "Philosophical Feminism: A Bibliographic Guide to Critiques of Science," Resources for Feminist Research, vol. 19

(1990), pp. 2-36.

64. Helen Watson-Verran, "Contemporary Aboriginal Life and Some Foundations in Reasoning," Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, 1994. See also her earlier essay on a related topic in Helen Watson, "Investigating the Social Foundations of Mathe?

matics: Natural Number in Culturally Diverse Forms of Life," Social Studies of Science, vol. 20 (1990). 65. Amy Mullin, "Art, Politics, and Knowledge: Feminism, Modernity, and the Separation of

Spheres." CPA Paper, Calgary, June 1994.

66. Ecology-talk is not foreign to more standard forms of naturalism, though it does not function as a guiding, regulative concept. Ronald Giere notes that for Michael Gorman: "A claim is externally valid if it generalizes well to other well-controlled, idealized conditions. A claim is ecologically valid if it generalizes well to natural settings, for example, to the reasoning of scientists in their laborato?

ries." (Ronald N. Giere, "Introduction: Cognitive Models of Science," in Cognitive Models of Science, ibid., p. xxvi.) My resistance to designating the laboratory a natural setting will be clear from what I have said so far. For Steve Fuller, questions of ecological validity arise, rather, with reference to how the "contrived situations" analytic epistemologists study bear upon the "conditions under

which people try to make sense of the world" ("Epistemology Radically Naturalized," p. 442) questions that also arise within the model I am seeking to develop. Although he does not use the

language of ecology, Giere 's discussion of naturalized philosophy of science in Ronald N. Giere, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), esp. pp. 9-18, resonates with the analysis of knowledge I favour, as does James Maffie's position in "Towards an Anthropology of Epistemology," The Philosophical Forum, vol. 26 (1995). Framing the issues

ecologically permits integrating political and epistemological concerns in ways that depart both from Giere's and from Maffie's analyses. 67.1 begin to elaborate such a conception of subjectivity in chapter 3, "Second Persons" of my What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 68. Noteworthy exceptions to this concentration on adult behaviour are Kornblith's appeal to

developmental psychology in his 1990 symposium paper; Ellen Markman's "Natural Kinds," in

Kornblith, ed., Naturalizing Epistemology, and Susan Carey, "The Origin and Evolution of Every? day Concepts," in Giere, ed., Cognitive Models of Science.




69. In this sketch of the model I am quoting, with modifications, from my What Can She Know? pp. 269-70.

70.1 quote Kornblith's Midwest Studies paper (p. 16) where he notes the necessity of evaluating "our inductive inferential habits... against the background of the environments in which they operate...

which are populated by natural kinds."

71. For a provocative discussion of some of these issues, see Michael E. Zimmerman, Contesting Earth 's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Feminist engagement with ecology is often framed within ecofeminist debates. See for example Val Plum wood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993); and Karen J. Warren, ed., Ecological Feminism (London & New York: Routledge, 1994). 72. Robyn Ferrell, "Richard Rorty and the Poet's Utopia," in Rosalyn Diprose and Robin Ferrell, eds., Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces (Sydney: Allen &

Unwin,1991). 73. This description of the ecological subject has affinities with the ethology that, for Gilles Deleuze, informs Spinoza's Ethics. Ethology, Deleuze says, studies "the capacities for affecting and being affected that characterize each thing." It studies "the compositions of relations or capacities between different things... It is ...a matter of sociabilities and communities." In Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San

Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988),pp. 125,126. Genevi?ve Lloyd drew my attention to this discussion.

74. Kornblith observes that epistemic norms that derive from a theory of epistemic virtue or

responsibility (he cites my 1987 book) require an instrumental account of epistemic value. In

"Epistemic Normativity," p. 375, note 11. He is not "convinced that it is possible to give an account of epistemic norms which provides more than this." (p. 359) 75. Writing of a balance that moral-epistemological debates must achieve between "reverence" and

"suspicion," Lovibond observes: "the appropriate relation between these two attitudes will be a

mutually correcting or 'dialectical' one; and the balance between them at any given moment will be

the outcome of this continual process of mutual correction..." "The End of Morality?" p. 75.

76. Ursula Franklin, who was University Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto, is now

professor em?rita. I draw this example from her lecture at the University of Guelph in February, 1986.

77. Jim Cheney, "Postmodern Environmental Ethics: Ethics as Bioregional Narrative," in Environ? mental Ethics vol. 11 (1989), p. 126.

78. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: Zed Books, 1989), p. 4.

79. See Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge: Selected Inter? views & Other Writings 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980). 80. See Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1991). 81. Bruno Latour, in section 5.4.2. Irreduction, of Werner Callebaut, Taking the Naturalistic Turn, p. 218. In the conversation cited here, Callebaut is Latour's interlocutor, and it is he who describes the

metaphor as

ecological.

82.1 elaborate the exemplary character of knowing other people in chapter four of What Can She

Know?, and in "Taking Subjectivity Into Account," in Alcoff & Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies.

83.1 owe this formulation to David Hull in his allusion to this ambiguity in section 3.5.2 How to Get

Beyond the Purely Descriptive in Callebaut, ed., Taking the Naturalistic Turn, p. 99.

84. Bruner, Acts of Meaning, p. 60.

85. Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized," p. 26.

86. For extensive and helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper I am grateful to Murray Code, Carmel Forde, Genevi?ve Lloyd, Lynn Hankinson Nelson, Richard Schmitt, James Wong, and an anonymous referee for the American Philosophical Quarterly. Audiences at the Chapel Hill

Colloquium, the American Philosophical Association Central Division (1995), McMaster Univer?

sity, the University of Trondheim, the University of New South Wales, and Macquarie University, and members of the Nordiskt Natverk for Feministisk Epistemologi och Vetenskapsteori offered

valuable criticisms and suggestions.



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What Is Natural about Epistemology Naturalized?