Alison Assiter

Feminist Epistemology and Value

This article discusses and develops some recent debates in feminist epistemology, by outlining the concept of an ‘emancipatory value’. It outlines the optimum conditions that a ‘community’ of knowers must satisfy in order that its members have the best chance of producing knowledge claims. The article thus covers general ground in epistemology. The article also argues that one of the conditions that any ‘emancipatory community’ must satisfy is that its underlying values should not oppress women. It is related to feminist debates, therefore, in two ways: first, it develops its arguments by drawing on those debates; and second, after developing the general concepts of emancipatory value and epistemic community, it argues that feminist values are one set of emancipatory values to which an epistemic community should pay regard.

Human Needs: A Realist Perspective

Abstract This article argues for a realist conception of human needs. By ‘realist’ we mean that certain fundamental needs are categorically distinct from consumer wants, holding independently of peoples subjective beliefs as objective life requirements. These basic needs, we contend, are baseline measures of social justice in the sense that no society that does not prioritise their satisfaction can be legitimate. The paper concludes with a comprehensive response to seven core objections to our position.

The Feminine Subject

Anthias, F. 2013. ‘Hierarchies of social location, class and intersectionality: towards a translocational frame’. International Sociology 28(1): 121–37. Archer, M. 2000. Being Human: The Problem of Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowleg, L. 2008. ‘When black + lesbian + woman ≠ black lesbian woman: the methodological challenges of qualitative and quantitative intersectionality research’. Sex Roles 59(5–6): 312–25. Crenshaw, K. 1989. ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’. University of Chicago Legal Forum 140: 139–67. Fricker, M. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gunnarsson, L. 2011. ‘In defence of the category ‘woman’’. Feminist Theory 12(1): 23–37. Gunnarsson, L. 2015. ‘Why we keep separating the ‘inseparable’: dialecticizing intersectionality’. European Journal of Women’s Studies (forthcoming). [online] Available at: <https://www.academia.edu/10955190/ Why_we_keep_separating_the_inseparable_Dialecticizing_intersectionality> Accessed 24 Feb 2016. May, V. 2015. Pursing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. New York: Routledge. McCall, L. 2005. ‘The complexity of intersectionality’. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30(3): 1771–800. Mutch, A. 2004. ‘Constraints on the internal conversation: margaret archer and the structural shaping of thought’. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 34(4): 429–45. Nash, J. 2015. ‘Feminist originalism: Intersectionality and the politics of reading’. Feminist Theory. [online] Available at: <http://fty.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/12/24/1464700115620864.abstract> Accessed 21 March 2016. Porpora, D. 1998. ‘Four concepts of social structure’. In Critical Realism: Essential Readings, eds M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier, T. Lawson and A. Norrie, 356–82. New York, NY: Routledge.

DEBATE: Response to McWherter

Abstract This contribution to a debate with Dustin McWherter evaluates his claim that Kant is a ‘non-ontologist’ or an ‘anti-ontologist’ and challenges one specific consequence which McWherter argues follows from this attribution to Kant. I argue that, while it is true that Kant restricts the domain of ‘objects’ or ‘appearances’ as he calls them to what is knowable, this does not make him an ‘anti-ontologist’.

SPECULATIVE AND CRITICAL REALISM

Abstract This is a contribution to the debate on speculative realism deriving from the book The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, eds Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman (Melbourne: re.press, 2011). It is also in part a response to Fabio Gironi’s review article on the subject, ‘Between naturalism and rationalism: a new realist landscape’ (Journal of Critical Realism 11(3) 2012: 361–87).

Informed Consent: Is it Sacrosanct?

Following Alder Hey and the earlier and much more extreme practices at Nuremberg, legislation has been developed governing the practice of medical ethics and research involving human participants more generally. In the medical context, relevant legislation includes GMC guidance, which states that disclosure of identifiable patient information without consent, for research purposes, is not acceptable unless it is justified in the public interest. There is a presumption, in other words, in favour of the view that patient consent ought to be obtained before any piece of research is conducted. The Data Protection Act, furthermore, requires informed consent to be given before any use of identifiable personal data is made for any purpose. Moreover, ensuring that the informed consent of participants is gained is common practice on most research ethics committees. I argue, in this paper, that applying the principle of ‘informed consent’ too mechanistically in the research ethics context risks undermining the very principle it is designed to support – the principle of autonomy. This issue has been much discussed in medical ethics but not so much, so far, in the research ethics context. It will be argued that a more discerning and a less rigid and mechanistic approach, applied by research ethics committees, may help ensure that ethical issues are properly considered.

The Concept of Anxiety and Kant

In this chapter, I will outline the beginnings of Kierkegaard’s or Haufniensis’ solution to a problem faced by Kant—the problem of how it is possible freely to do wrong. Kant has difficulty, as many have suggested, explaining the possibility of freely doing wrong, for he frequently argues that freedom and the moral law reciprocally imply one another (See Alison Assiter, “Kant and Kierkegaard on Freedom and Evil,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 72 (July 2013): 275–296 for some discussion of attempts to solve this problem for Kant).I will suggest that Kierkegaard, or Haufniensis, in The Concept of Anxiety offers an approach to freedom that does not lead to Kant’s problem but that maintains Kant’s conception of freedom. The Concept of Anxiety displays the influence of Schelling. In The Concept of Axiety, Haufniensis refers to Schelling a number of times. I would like to look, in this chapter, at The Concept of Axiety and the story of Adam and Eve.

Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics and Art

decisive siding on one term of a dualism precisely misses the point that Simondon’s notion of individuation resides between determinism and contingency and thus progress should also be understood as such. Combes is far more sympathetic to the subtleties of Simondon’s method and thus manages to better describe what in his work is so original and powerful. Despite the differences of the two books, these two translations are a welcome addition to the literature on Simondon in English and thus both translators must be congratulated on their good work.

Needs and the Imagination

Many of us would emphasise the satisfaction of our own desires, whatever they may be, over the satisfaction of the basic needs of any other. This can be illustrated in a range of ways: how many wealthy middle class people in the ‘North’ would willingly sacrifice that bottle of Merlot, to give something to a ‘beggar’ who needs food? Perhaps it is quite appropriate that such people should not do so, since it is unlikely, it has been argued, that such an attitude of individual sacrifice will solve any of the problems of a radically class divided world. It is also, it has been argued elsewhere (Soper, 1993) an approach that smacks of a certain kind of puritanism, in its refusal to recognise individual desires. However, I don’t think that we need be puritans in order to adopt a process of changing the attitudes of each one of us. The process of doing that, can, I think, usefully be illustrated by Lara’s notion of the politics of recognition, and by Cornell’s categories for properly understanding the Other.

Common Human Nature: An Empty Concept?

Many have urged, as we have seen in the opening chapter, in the contemporary world, that we must focus on our differences; that we must beware of false generalisation, and that we must emphasise our multicultural and plural nature (see e.g. Parekh, 2000; Rawls, 1973; Kymlica, 1989; Fraser and Nicholson, 1990). If we do not do this, it is argued, we run the risk of falsely generalising features of what happens to be our own experience onto others who are radically different from ourselves.