There are a number of research fields that exhibit a special connection to some particular activist movement. Typically in these cases, we observe a remarkable degree of personnel overlap between the movements and the scientific communities. I have two primary aims. First, I shall explore the reasons why there are such close entanglements between some research fields and some activist movements. I argue that both scientists and activists have specific epistemic interests that help explain why both practices tend to intersect (...) functionally. Second, I shall evaluate these entanglements from an epistemological point of view. Drawing on a conception of science that has science consisting of two essential tasks—asking significant questions and adequately answering them—, I argue that activists’ contribution to science is ambivalent with regard to the first task because they can help to overcome the unjust distribution of resources, but they can also be the source of new inequalities. Regarding the second task, I similarly suggest that activists can serve a useful purpose in science, since they tend to exhibit certain epistemically valuable properties and can help compensate for what I call collective biases, although in certain situations they tend to reinforce collective biases. (shrink)

On Susan Haack's relationship to contemporary academic feminism; and contemporary academic feminism's relationship to Susan Haack.

Religion can be politicized to become a murderous ideology and ideology can be interpreted messianically to become a virtual religion. With the caveat that a religio-ideological capitalism pertains only to a minority of conservative Americans and that most Americans are not ideological, ideological capitalism has had an inordinate influence on America’s social-political praxis. This praxis has suffered from the ideology where “ideology” denotes inter alia: 1) a system of belief whose believers are intolerant of anything less than fervent adherence to (...) the cause, 2) treat that cause as overriding common civility, 3) view civility itself as a reward for backing the ideology, 4) suppress or ignore evidence against the ideological belief, and 5) try to silence the disbelief expressed in open societies, where suppression is limited, by schemes ranging from deception and ad hominem attacks to manipulating public officials. These tactics are not characteristic of, or encouraged by, the theological doctrines of the major religions in America such as Judaism and Judeo-Christianity that forthrightly admit of faith. Faith-based religions are the only antidote prima facie to the fatal hubris of a corporate ideology that is morphing pragmatism into a relativistic post-modern constructionism for marketing, packaging and reinventing America. (shrink)