Pragmatism and Embodiment as Resources for Feminist Interventions in Science

Clough, Sharyn

doi:10.1163/18758185-90000262

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Even advocates of "value-free" science likely agree that personal commitments play an extrinsic role in science, guiding research programs and practical decisions. 94 Our conclusion is stronger. In our historical moment, anti-racism fosters accuracy for reasons intrinsic to science: distorting forces follow trajectories that anti-racism counteracts.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Truer facts through stronger values: confronting science's sociopolitical realities

Eisenberg-Guyot¹,

Eisenberg‐Guyot²

2020

Preprint

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Recent assaults on science have led scientists to demand a "politics-free/values-free" science that safeguards science against error by grounding it in some politically-neutral class of evidence.Considering racial disparities in lead-poisoning in the US and HIV-transmission in southern Africa, we show the solution is doomed. Politically-charged beliefs about societies and groups are integral to, and ineliminable from, assessments of public-health research. Because politicallycharged beliefs inform those assessments, the assessments' truth affects the research's accuracy.However, research shows that sciences' sociopolitical uses subject politically-charged beliefs to systematic distortion. Since resultant errors are incorporated into our scientific corpus and inform assessments of new hypotheses, scientists need accurate sociopolitical theories of those distorting forces to identify likely errors. Analyzing Black-Panther opposition to violence research, we argue that since our society is structured by racial disparities and science has been distorted to buttress racial inequities, knowledgeable anti-racist scientists are disposed to exert a corrective force on public-health research. They hold accurate politically-charged beliefs about the sociopolitical forces shaping both science and health, and they are committed to eradicating distorting forces. Thus, rather than quarantining politically-charged beliefs, we urge publichealth scientists to sharpen their sociopolitical theories and normative commitments.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Truer facts through stronger values: confronting science's sociopolitical realities

Eisenberg-Guyot¹,

Eisenberg‐Guyot²

2020

Preprint

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“…Also, those who experience embodied knowing (e.g. mothers who choose to birth at home out of trust of their body) are routinely disenfranchised in the scientific community (Clough, 2013). For the women in this study, PRYT provided an avenue to experience embodiment and explore their body's knowing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenomenological Inquiry into Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy

Sneed

Hammer

2018

International Journal of Yoga Therapy

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There is growing recognition within psychology and other disciplines that body experience may be as important as cognitive and emotional experience. However, psychology has few psychotherapeutic interventions to support the integration of mind and body within therapy. Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (PRYT) is a form of mind-body therapy that uses yoga posture, touch, and psychotherapeutic dialogue to facilitate growth and healing. The current study explored the phenomenological experience of four women who each received five PRYT sessions. Research questions posed were: (1) What are the clients' experiences of the phenomena of PRYT? and (2) How does receiving PRYT sessions impact the clients' lives? The following themes emerged from the data as the essence of PRYT sessions: mindfulness, self-awareness, mind-body connection, in vivo experience of new behaviors, client-directed, empowerment, and life changes. These themes show significance in the mind-body connection and that it is important to consider alternative modalities such as PRYT for clients. Each participant noted greater insight into mind-body connection. They noticed the effect of cognition and emotion on the body, observed how the body can be used to improve coping through movement and breathing, and experienced different thoughts and emotions associated with different areas of their bodies. Although these results are not necessarily generalizable, they offer interesting theoretical implications for embodied interventions.

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“…11.Our current scientific communities of knowers do not meet these inclusive criteria, motivating some feminist theorists to make the case for diversity in the composition of research communities on epistemic grounds (for example, see Clough 2013b). …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus non-epistemic values can play more than an instrumental role in scientific reasoning; for instance, by contributing in the interpretation of data and determining when the standard of evidence to support a claim has been met. Instead, the empirical content of social values permits those value judgments to play an intrinsic role in scientific reasoning by serving as evidence in support of a claim in certain decision-making contexts (Anderson 2004;Clough 2003aClough , 2003bClough , 2013aClough , 2013bGoldenberg 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

Whose social values? Evaluating Canada's ‘death of evidence’ controversy

Goldenberg

2015

Can. J. of Philosophy

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With twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of science's unfolding acceptance of the nature of scientific inquiry being value-laden, the persistent worry has been that there are no means for legitimate negotiation of the social or non-epistemic values that enter into science. The rejection of the value-free ideal in science has thereby been coupled with the spectres of indiscriminate relativism and bias in scientific inquiry. I challenge this view in the context of recently expressed concerns regarding Canada's death of evidence controversy. The worry, raised by Stathis Psillos, is that as constructivist accounts of science demoted the previously secure status of evidence for drawing justified conclusions in science, we were left with no rational delineation between the right and wrong values for science. The implication for the death of evidence controversy is that we may have no rational grounds for claiming that the Canadian Government is wrong to interfere with scientific enterprise. But he does offer another avenue for reaching the conclusion that the wrong social values are directing the current stifling of some sectors of Canadian science. Psillos draws from standpoint epistemologies to devise a salient defence of ‘valuing evidence’ as a universalizable social value. That is, government bodies ought to enable scientific research via adequate funding as well as political non-interference. In this paper, I counter that (i) non-epistemic values can be rationally evaluated and that (ii) standpoint epistemology's universalizable standpoint provides an inadequate framework for negotiating social values in science. Regarding (i), I draw from the evidence-based medicine debate in philosophy of medicine and from feminist empiricist investigations into the science–values relationship in order to make the argument for empirically driven value arbitration. If social values can be rationally chosen in the context of justification, then we can have grounds for charging the Canadian leadership with being ‘at war with science’. (ii) I further argue that my recommended empiricist methodology is preferable to Psillos's search for universalizable perspectives for negotiating social values in science because the latter method permits little more than the trivial conclusion that evidence is valuable to science.

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Pragmatism and Embodiment as Resources for Feminist Interventions in Science

Cited by 7 publications

References 10 publications

Truer facts through stronger values: confronting science's sociopolitical realities

Truer facts through stronger values: confronting science's sociopolitical realities

Phenomenological Inquiry into Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy

Whose social values? Evaluating Canada's ‘death of evidence’ controversy

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