Doubt and denial : epistemic responsibility meets climate change scepticism

The analysis in this essay is indebted to the analysis of climate change scepticism developed in Naomi Oreskes’s and Eric Conway’s Merchants of Doubt where they expose the vested interests that produce a degree of doubt with respect to climate change science. The argument addresses the appeal to an inflated conception of human freedom – Liberty – that is allegedly threatened by injunctions to control pollution in the interests of ecologically conscious behaviour across a range of human practices of consumption. The essay draws on and advocates rethinking issues about epistemic responsibility and testimonial injustice in working toward developing ecologically informed climate change advocacy. El análisis de este ensayo está influenciado por el análisis sobre escepticismo ante el cambio climático desarrollado por Naomi Oreskes y Eric Conway en Merchants of Doubt, donde exponen los intereses creados, que producen un grado de duda en relación a la ciencia del cambio climático. El argumento se refiere a la apelación a una concepción exagerada de la libertad humana - la Libertad - , presuntamente amenazada por medidas cautelares para controlar la contaminación en los intereses de la conducta ecológicamente consciente a través de toda una gama de prácticas humanas de consumo. El ensayo se basa en, y aboga por repensar las cuestiones acerca de la responsabilidad epistémica y defiende replantear las cuestiones acerca de la responsabilidad epistémica e injusticia testimonial en el trabajo hacia el desarrollo ecológicamente informado de la defensa del cambio climático

Relativism or Anti-Anti-Relativism? Epistemological and Rhetorical Moves in Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

International audienceFeminist approaches in epistemology and philosophy of science have frequently been labelled as 'relativist', both by feminist as well as by non-feminist philosophers. Regularly the so labelled distance themselves from even the mere suspicion of relativist tendencies. There is a remarkable discrepancy between an attributed and a self-declared relativism. Taking the self-declared relativism of Lorraine Code as an example, the article argues that it is a case of a rhetorical not epistemological relativism, better termed as anti-anti-relativism, but that there are nevertheless good reasons for feminists to follow Code along that path