Feminism 's Expansion And Revision Of Quinn' S Naturalization Epistemology

In the late 1960s, there appeared a trend of thought--naturalized epistemology in the western philosophy. The work of Willard van Orman Quine, who is the preeminent American philosopher and logician, Naturalized Epistemology is the representative. Quine suggests that, to explain the rationality of science, the epistemology should make use of the scientific discovery and methods from the inside of the natural science rather than from the outside. Thus, epistemology is not from the outside of or outmatch the natural science, but is from the inside of the natural science. It is to be "the part of the psychology as well as the part of natural science". Soon afterwards, feminist was gradually interested in Quine’s naturalized epistemology and began their studies in the 1970s.Feminism develops a new feminist epistemology naturalized by analyzing Quine’s naturalized epistemology. They on the one hand, insist on feminism method, and on the other hand, they try to combine naturalized epistemology with moral epistemology. They put forwards a feminism naturalized moral epistemology by emphasizing the importance of naturalized moral to understand the natural world, forming a naturalized feminist ethics with the nature of skepticism, and asking for the combination of ethical concept and ideal develop with the empirical science such as psychology and economics. This new thought attempts to break up the mythology of traditional epistemology including objectivity, reason and neutrality. What’s more, the new though will go beyond the dichotomy between fact and value, or experience and reason. Meanwhile, such attempt has made great contribution to both Quine’s naturalized epistemology and feminist epistemology.The thesis consists of four parts:The first part introduces the early feminist Louise Antony and Lynn Hankinson Nelson’s approval and recognition of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. The second part describes the feminist’s criticism of Quine’s vision of naturalized epistemology. In their points of view, to some degree, the naturalized epistemology is not so naturalized that it cannot be combined with the feminist epistemology completely. The third part analyzes the feminist’s development of naturalized epistemology. Richmond Campbell develops a feminist epistemology naturalized to defend the feminist and explains the logical structure of it, and then proposes a kind of feminist normative realism. Lynn Nelson develops a feminist naturalized philosophy of science which proposes a philosophical system for science. In her system, the three methodology principles echo to Quine’s holism and the feminist scientific study. The fourth part carries on a overall evaluation of the attitudes and standpoints of the feminist’s analyzing the naturalized epistemology.