How ordinary is ordinary experience?

language in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science

Sharon Rider

pp. 121-144

in: Martin Gustafsson, Lars Hertzberg (eds), The practice of language, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

A common theme in recent feminist philosophy is the need to rethink and re-evaluate traditional philosophical commonplaces. One questions the legitimacy of classical and fundamental theoretical distinctions (between the public and the private, for example). One attempts to reformulate classical philosophical questions in terms of what we may call "real life" (by noticing, for example, that the notion of contractual agreement is misplaced in descriptions of certain vital but often disregarded human relationships, such as between mother and child). One challenges fundamental assumptions as to what constitutes good method and convincing results (that reference to the "genetic fallacy" has general applicability as refutation, for example). Above all, one scrutinizes the language in which such notions are formulated and the arguments made in their name.¹