Next, Antony identifies The Bias Paradox. Antony contends that feminist epistemologists (broadly conceived) typically hold two claims that are in tension with one another: 1) that the ruling class (male) biases that exist within traditional epistemology are objectionable, and 2) that a complete absence of bias is also objectionable. (This is the claim that the traditional conception of impartiality ought to be rejected.) An interesting first question is whether these two claims really are paradoxical when taken together. They certainly are not logically inconsistent. And, I would argue that in order to motivate and explicate the tension one must add the claim that 3) the legitimacy of biases must be rationally established, (that is, that an alternative set of biases cannot be legitimately established through the use of force, for example.)

Antony claims that a desideratum for an acceptable feminist epistemological theory is whether or not that theory can solve the bias paradox. A feminist epistemology is acceptable only if it solves the bias paradox. In order to solve the bias paradox, a theory would have to do two things: 1) it must examine the actual reasoning of actual cognizers ("No theory that abjures empirical study of the cognizer, or of the actual processes by which knowledge develops is ever going to yield insight on this question. p 189.) She says, that is, that an adequate response to the bias paradox must include a descriptive element. In addition, however, an adequate solution to the bias paradox must also, 2), "be able to make normative distinctions among various processes of belief-fixation." It is with regard to the second condition that Antony claims Quinian Naturalized Epistemology will provide assistance. Her central conclusion, then, is that Quinian Naturalized Epistemology provides the resources to solve the bias paradox.

In Section II of the paper, Antony argues against both various alternative feminist positions and also against certain elements of traditional epistemology. One of her main points is that most feminist criticisms of traditional epistemology attempt to hold a rationalist conception of the mind in conjunction with an empiricist epistemology. We will not focus our attention on these arguments. Instead, we will examine Antony's claim that Quinian Naturalized Empiricism can solve The Bias Paradox.

Antony identifies what she calls The Dragnet Theory. The Dragnet Theory is a conjunction of two claims: 1) Empiricist Foundationalism: the claim that knowledge rests on a set of basic beliefs (beliefs that are non-inferentially justified but capable of providing inferential justification to other beliefs) which are SENSORY beliefs -- that is, beliefs gotten from sense experience; and 2) The claim that there is a strong distinction between The Context of Discovery and The Context of Justification (and fact/value, observation/theory). (She claims that 2 follows from 1.) According to Antony, there are three basic consequences that follow from the Dragnet Theory: a) the dragnet theory suggests that inferential beliefs, while still justified, are of less epistemic VALUE than basic or foundational beliefs (To "actually see" or "directly observe" is better. than to infer" p 205.); b) the dragnet theory suggests that any acceptable belief is one for which an inferential justification can be, at least in principle, PROVIDED. That is, in the ABSENCE of such a justification, a belief is epistemologically UNACCEPTABLE. This means that beliefs based on hunches, for example, are epistemologically suspect. And c) The Dragnet Theory will suggest that scientific practice is "mechanical" -- involves only inference and observation, for example. Antony argues that The Dragnet Theory is the epistemological view that feminists have an interest in rejecting. And Antony ALSO rejects The Dragnet Theory on the grounds that it is both false and politically pernicious. (We will not look at the specific arguments she provides in support of these two claims.) Antony argues that we ought to replace The Dragnet Theory with Naturalized Epistemology.

In order to begin to understand how Naturalized Epistemology can help us, we must see clearly the difference between it and The Dragnet Theory. Antony claims that The Dragnet Theory must regard its own claims (the meta-epistemological theses 1 and 2 above) as outside the edifice of knowledge, in some sense. The two claims function as constraints on knowledge that are OUTSIDE of knowledge itself, or so Antony argues. They are EXTERNAL criteria on a theory of knowledge. Quine rejects this picture. According to him, ALL propositions (or beliefs) are on the same epistemological par; the meta-epistemological propositions, the basic beliefs, and any other "inferential" beliefs are all EQUALLY subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation. On this view, the legitimacy of meta-epistemological theses is, itself, an empirical matter. But, of course, Naturalized Epistemology can only be an acceptable FEMINIST position, if it can solve The Bias Paradox.

".[A] naturalized approach to knowledge provides us with empirical grounds for rejecting pure neutrality as an epistemic ideal. ." A naturalized approach allows us to legitimately reject the claim that impartiality is desirable, because by requiring that ALL claims are equally subject to evaluation it eschews the existence of a set of impartial or "epistemically privileged" set of epistemic standards. On the other hand, according to Antony, it also allows us to distinguish good from bad biases on empirical grounds: "We must treat the goodness or badness of particular biases as an empirical question. . A naturalistic study of knowledge tell us biases are good when and to the extent that they facilitate the gathering of knowledge -- that is, when they lead us to the truth, p215." Thus, according to Antony, biases are good insofar as they are USEFUL in arriving at truth. Male biases are, according to this view, BAD because they obscure the truth. [The Dragnet Theory which encodes male biases, for example, obscures the truth -- the argument for this occurs on pages 206 - 208.] While other biases may not be bad in this way; that is, they may be truth-conducive. One way to think about this is to imagine the Jury Example that we discussed at the beginning of class.

One thing you might think about in connection with this claim is: what are the relevant standards of truth-conducivity, according to the feminist naturalist epistemologist?

The traditional Western conception of knowledge as justified, true belief is at least as old as Plato. It appears, for example, in Plato's Theaetetus. Socrates and Theaetetus discuss, though in the end do not endorse, this conception of knowledge:
Theaetetus, 200, D -- 202 C (excerpts), translation by Harold Fowler, Loeb Classical Library edition.

Socrates: To begin, then, at the beginning once more, what shall we say knowledge is? For surely we are not going to give it up yet, are we?
Theaetetus: Not by any means, unless, that is, you give it up.
Socrates: Tell us, then, what definition will make us contradict ourselves least. . Theaetetus: That knowledge is true opinion; for true opinion is surely free from error and all its results are fine and good. .
Socrates: But, my fried, if true opinion and knowledge were the same thing in law courts, the best of judges could never have true opinion without knowledge; in fact, however, it appears that the two are different.
Theaetetus: Oh yes, I remember now, Socrates, having heard someone make the distinction, but I had forgotten it. He said that knowledge was true opinion accompanied by reason, but that unreasoning true opinion was outside of the sphere of knowledge; and matters of which there is not a rational explanation are unknowable -- yes, that is what he called them -- and those of which there is are knowable.
Socrates: . When therefore a man acquires without reasoning the true opinion about anything, his mind has truth about it, but has no knowledge; for he who cannot give and receive a rational explanation of a thing is without knowledge of it; but when he has acquired also a rational explanation of he may possibly have become all that I have said and may now be perfect in knowledge.
Theaetetus: That was it exactly.
Socrates: Are you satisfied, then, and do you state it in this way, that true opinion accompanied by reason is knowledge?
Theaetetus: Precisely.

The traditional conception of knowledge as justified, true belief applies to propositional knowledge as opposed to the kind of knowledge we have when we know how to ride a bike, or to knit, or to ski. Propositions are variously described as the contents of beliefs, as the statements that are expressed by sentences, and as the bearers of truth and falsity. The following sentences express propositions: "My Mom loves me," "Oxygen is dephlogisticated air," "Beaucoup de the'ories sont intenables." We can often identify propositions because they are frequently introduced by "that" clauses in reports of or attributions of belief. She believes that Green Bay won the Super Bowl, that her dog has fleas, that the moon is made of green cheese. Propositions can be either true or false. This is what it means to say that propositions are the bearers of truth or falsity. The proposition expressed by the sentence "Los Pakers son victoriosos" is false; the proposition expressed by the sentence "the Bronco's won the Super Bowl" is true, for example.

The following is a schematic formulation of the traditional conception of propositional knowledge -- of what it is for a person (a subject), S, to know a proposition, P:

Initially, it was thought that knowledge could be defined as justified, true belief. If this were true, then it would be impossible for there to be a case of justified, true belief that did not constitute knowledge. That is, if knowledge is defined as justified, true belief, then if S believed that P, if P were true, and if S's belief that P were justified, then that would be enough (or sufficient) for S's knowing that P. But Edmund Gettier, in a celebrated paper, showed that there could be cases in which S believed that P, P was true, and S's belief that P was justified, but yet S did not know that P. He provided a counterexample to the claim that knowledge could be defined as justified, true belief by showing that justified, true belief is not sufficient for knowledge.

As a result of the Gettier problem, most traditional epistemologists claim only to have identified three necessary conditions for knowledge. Traditional epistemologists typically no longer claim to have provided a definition of knowledge, and the traditional formulation has been emended to the weaker claim that S's knowing that P implies that S believes that P, that p is true, and that S's belief that P is justified. (An interesting question is whether or not S knows that P entials that S believes that P, that P is true, and that S's belief that P is justified.) Accordingly, the traditional schema has been emended as follows:

While many, if not most -- though by no means all -- traditional epistemologists agree that knowledge implies justified, true belief, they disagree widely as to how we ought to understand the third condition on knowledge: the justification condition. One of the most important claims made by traditional epistemologists is that the only kind of justification relevant to knowledge is epistemic justification. Epistemic justification is to be contrasted with prudential justification and, perhaps, with moral justification. Unlike prudential or pragmatic justification, epistemic justification is uniquely linked to truth or likelihood of truth. The main focuses of recent traditional epistemology (and, indeed, virtually the sole focus of epistemology in the 1980's) has been on providing an adequate theory of epistemic justification. There are four main traditional theories of epistemic justification: foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and contextualism. We'll examine each one briefly.

Feminist Empiricism
Feminist empiricists argue that sexist and andocentric biases can be eliminated by stricter adherence to existing epistemological methods. Only "bad epistemology" is responsible for the retention of biases in theories of knowledge. Feminist empiricism is a conservative point of view that argues that existing epistemological methodologies are flawed only insofar as gender (race, class, etc.) bias is allowed to infect the construction of epistemological theories. Feminist empiricists argue that once these biases are eliminated (in part by the presence of more white women and people of color in epistemology), epistemology will be "righted" and will thus constitute a stable and rationally adequate enterprise. Feminist empiricists typically reject the claim that the enterprise of epistemology and philosophy, more generally, is intrinsically gender-biased or masculinist.

Standpoint Feminism
Standpoint feminists typically argue that not just opinions but a culture's best beliefs -- what it calls 'knowledge' -- are socially constructed. "The distinctive features of women's situation in a gender-stratified society are being used as resources in the new feminist research. It is these distinctive resources which are not used by conventional [epistemologists] that enable feminism to produce empirically more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations than does conventional research." (Sandra Harding, Whose Science, Whose Knowledge, p. 119) Standpoint feminists argue that all knowledge claims are "biased" insofar as those claims reflect the particular "perspective" or "standpoint" that the person or group making the knowledge claim embodies. But, standpoint feminists claim, the standpoint or perspective that women (as a social group) embody or occupy can be the source of epistemological information that is MORE empirically adequate, or more likely to be true (they claim both) than the information generated by the individuals who have traditionally been the producers of information or knowledge. Standpoint feminists, therefore, retain the claim that at least some epistemological claims are empirically adequate and more likely to be true and that at least some theories are better than others.

Postmodern Feminism
It is notoriously difficulty adequately to characterize postmodern feminism. Postmodern feminism typically rejects the very notion that an epistemological claim could be empirically adequate or true because the concepts of an independently existing world waiting to be explored and the idea that a statement could accurately describe or fail to accurately describe such a world are anathema. Instead, postmodern feminists (at least under one description) would argue that the statements and theories of epistemology are just like the statements found in any other "text" and are, therefore, no more or less meaningful and no more or less informative or authoritative (likely to be true) than the statements made in any other "discourse."