“As an attitude…, epistemic skepticism consists in always second-guessing your own judgments — about yourself, other people and situations; always monitoring those judgments to make sure you’re seeing clearly, have the facts right, aren’t making any unfounded inferences or deceiving yourself, etc. Women are particularly skilled at this because their judgment, credibility and authority start to come under attack during puberty, as part of the process of gender socialization… But the benefit is precisely this self-critical attitude — of careful review of and reflection on the adequacy of one’s own thought processes.”

(Adrian Piper, quoted by Lauren O’Neill-Butler, “Adrian Piper Speaks! For Herself,” NYTimes)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)