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Methodological Issues in the Construction of Gender as a Meaningful Variable in Scientific Studies of Cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Phyllis Rooney
Phyllis Rooney*
Affiliation:
Oakland University
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Extract

There are many reasons why my “special science,” psychology—and more specifically cognitive psychology—lends itself to particularly fruitful feminist philosophical analysis. Many central questions in feminist philosophy of science and feminist science studies are well illuminated there, especially those that are reflected in specific methodological issues. For example, in feminist science critiques tensions have arisen about the role of empiricism: many stress the importance of paying careful attention to certain strictures of empiricist methodology (close attention to accuracy in data collection, hypothesis formation, replication of “findings” about sex differences, and so on), yet concerns have also been raised about empiricism as an overall feminist epistemological framework—specifically, concerns about whether such a framework can adequately entertain the most transformative feminist political projects. I think such tensions in feminist science criticism are best addressed by paying close attention to their deployment in particular working contexts of feminist science.

Type
Part IV. Feminist Perspectives on Special Sciences
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 109 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am grateful to my fellow symposiasts Lynn Hankinson Nelson, Jack Nelson, and Elizabeth Potter for their encouragement with this project, and also to Abigail Stewart and Rhoda Unger for their encouragement and guidance in my exploration of the literature in feminist psychology.

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