From Epistemic Responsibility to Ecological Thinking: The Importance of Advocacy for Epistemic Community

Catherine Maloney

doi:10.5206/fpq/2016.2.7

Abstract

This is the third paper in the invited collection. Maloney highlights commonalities and divergences between two of Code’s works, Epistemic Responsibility (1987) and Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location (2006), focussing on three concepts: epistemic responsibility, which is central and common across both works; cognitive interdependence which is common to both works, but undergoes a major transformation in Ecological Thinking; and advocacy, which is entirely absent from the discussion in Epistemic Responsibility. Code’s work intersects with aspects of the work of two other thinkers—Miranda Fricker’s hermeneutic injustice and Mikhail Bakhtin’s creative understanding. Advocacy as it emerges in Ecological Thinking must include a dialogical process with the other that leads both to and from greater self-understanding if it is to do the work of destabilizing dominant modes of knowing; further, advocacy is both necessary for, and can only happen within, epistemic community.

Highlights

Lorraine Code’s 1987 book Epistemic Responsibility connects the epistemological realm with the ethical realm and develops the idea that knowing well is possible when knowers are engaged in and can draw on the resources of an epistemic community
Her work has been influential upon ensuing work in feminist epistemology and social epistemology more generally, having helped to open the way for discussions that challenge the notion of value- and context-independent epistemology
I will approach this mini-genealogy by focussing on three concepts: epistemic responsibility, which is central and common across both works; cognitive interdependence which is common to both works, but undergoes a major transformation in Ecological Thinking; and advocacy, which is entirely absent from the discussion in Epistemic Responsibility

Summary

Introduction

Lorraine Code’s 1987 book Epistemic Responsibility connects the epistemological realm with the ethical realm and develops the idea that knowing well is possible when knowers are engaged in and can draw on the resources of an epistemic community. I will conclude that advocacy as it emerges in Ecological Thinking must include a dialogical process with the other that leads both to and from greater self-understanding if it is to do the work of destabilizing dominant modes of knowing; and further, I will conclude that advocacy is both necessary for, and can only happen within, epistemic community.

Results

Conclusion