In this anthology, the essays by Lynn Hankinson Nelson, Sharyn Clough, Bjorn Ramberg, Edrie Sobstyl, Hugh Lacey, and Heather Douglas are paired with classic pieces in analytic philosophy (by Quine, Davidson, Sellars, Popper, and Hempel) to demonstrate that feminist epistemology is a dialogue with and within the analytic tradition. The wider historical context for the dialogue is drawn by Steve Gimbel who argues that Hans Reichenbach and Otto Neurath were deeply concerned about social justice. Gimbel's essay, however, leaves unanswered the question of how Reichenbach's and Neurath's socialism is relevant to their epistemology. This question, I think, is crucial for feminist epistemology since there are epistemologists who are feminists but who would reject the very idea of feminist epistemology (Haack Reference Haack1998, 123). In this review I will focus on the essays by Nelson, Clough, Lacey, and Douglas who argue that feminism and other views about social justice are relevant to epistemology because social values can play a role in what by all other criteria counts as methodologically legitimate scientific inquiry.

Both Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Sharyn Clough propose an inclusive, naturalized account of evidence to advance our understanding of the role of social values in scientific inquiry. According to Nelson, we should not erect artificial boundaries between social values and science (55). Clough suggests that we understand social values as elements of evidential reasoning, rather than as non-evidential constraints on reasoning (94). In her essay “A Question of Evidence,” Nelson uses a research program devoted to finding a hormonal basis for alleged sex differences in hemispheric lateralization as a case study to argue for the virtues of an inclusive account of evidence. An inclusive account of evidence, Nelson argues, enables us to understand feminist criticism of the research program as part of an internal debate in science instead of dismissing it or the research program it criticizes as “bad science.”

An inclusive account of evidence, however, seems unsatisfactory to me for several reasons. First, it leaves me puzzled over the question of how we are to assess competing value-laden accounts if we have abandoned the ideal of value-free scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, Nelson does not make explicit the standards on the basis of which she claims that feminist criticism of a research program into a hormonal basis of sex differences has better evidential support than the research program (56). Second, if values are understood as beliefs about what ought to be the case it is not clear to me how social values can function as evidence. At least we would need a more detailed analysis of what it means to say that social values have empirical content, as Clough claims (108). Third, if social values are included in the category of evidence, as Nelson and Clough suggest, we miss the opportunity to make a distinction between those cases of value-laden science where social values fill the gap left by evidence or displace evidence altogether, from other, more interesting cases of value-laden science where social values are encoded in evidence, background assumptions, and cognitive values. Whereas the former cases are often dismissed as wishful thinking, the latter cases deserve more attention than what they have received so far. By insisting on the distinction between social values and evidence as two different kinds of things, we are forced to produce more complex and detailed analyses of where and how social values can enter into evidential reasoning. Such analyses, I think, are needed if we want to move beyond the false alternatives of seeing all cases of value-laden science as either bad or good.

No debate about the role of social values in scientific inquiry seems to avoid contestation over the legacy of the under-determination thesis. In her essay “A Hasty Retreat from Evidence: The Recalcitrance of Relativism in Feminist Epistemology,” Clough accuses Helen Longino of making a relativist use of the under-determination thesis. As I have argued elsewhere, this reading of Longino's argument in Science as Social Knowledge is not accurate (Rolin Reference Rolin2002). Whereas Longino claims that evidential reasoning is contextual in the sense that background assumptions are needed to explain why certain kind of evidence is relevant for a hypothesis or a theory, she is often interpreted to make the stronger claim that evidential reasoning is inevitably or must be laden with contextual values (for a more accurate statement of her view, see Longino Reference Longino1990, 83).

In her essay “Hempelian Insights for Feminism,” Heather Douglas brings welcome clarity and precision to the debate about the relationship between social values and evidence. Douglas suggests that Hempel's analysis of inductive risk helps us understand how ostensibly empirical background assumptions can encode social values. As an example she discusses Camilla Benbow's and Julian Stanley's study on sex differences in mathematical ability. Their study, she argues, is based on the assumption of gender dimorphism, i.e., “that there are two different gender based norms that we should expect for human behavior” (290). Hempel's analysis urges us to consider what would happen if we accepted their scientific findings as reliable and they are not, and what would happen if we rejected their scientific findings and they are right. The sexism encoded in the assumption of gender dimorphism, she argues, is revealed as soon as we realize that girls and women will pay a high price if the findings are wrong and we accept them, whereas both genders will pay a price, but not nearly as serious, if the findings are right and we reject them (292).

In his essay “Where Values Interact with Science,” Hugh Lacey offers an interesting analysis of how social values can enter into scientific inquiry without violating the principle of impartiality which demands that the acceptance of theories and hypotheses be based only on empirical data and cognitive values (233). Lacey suggests that social values can enter into scientific inquiry at the level of strategies, the choice of which is logically prior to theory choice. According to Lacey, “The principal roles of a strategy are to constrain the kinds of theories that may be entertained—and thus to specify the kinds of possibilities that may be explored in the course of inquiry—and to select the appropriate empirical basis for testing theories constrained this way” (230). Lacey argues that the principle of neutrality, which demands that theories may be applied to serve the interests of any value-outlook, cannot be sustained. It is hardly possible to conceive of genetic research as value neutral with respect to its applications when genetically modified seeds function as commodities in the global market dominated by agribusiness.