On the Independence of the Social and Situated Dimension of Scientific Knowledge from the Notion of Standpoint

The main problem addressed in this paper concerns the notion of standpoint and its relationship to different gendered ways of knowing. On the one hand, we recognise that feminist standpoint epistemologies have some merits that cannot be disregarded; in particular, they rightly stress the importance of the social and situated dimensions of knowledge. On the other hand, we would like to prove that the very notion of standpoint inevitably yields essentialism, with awkward and unwelcome consequences for both epistemology and the philosophy of science. This discussion is closely linked to the idea of a specifically feminine way of knowing. On this point, we believe that deciding whether there is a gendered way of knowing is a purely scientific matter, not a philosophical one. Thus, our aim is to show that it is unnecessary to advocate a feminist standpoint epistemology to defend the social and situated dimension of knowledge. In fact, the notion of situated knowledge is independent from the notion of standpoint, because the latter involves additional features such as epistemic asymmetry, reliability, privilege, and advantage.