EMILY C. R. TILTON
I’m an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. My research is primarily in feminist philosophy and epistemology.
My main project right now is an attempt to bridge feminist epistemology and “purist” epistemology. Purist epistemologists conceive of objectivity as an ideal of neutrality. The intuition underlying this conception of objectivity is simple: if we’re to engage in objective inquiry, we must try to sideline our prejudices, values, and politics, lest these factors taint inquiry and unduly influence our results. Feminist epistemologists typically condemn purist frameworks as inimical to feminist aims. They argue that these frameworks are divorced from the ineliminably social and value-laden nature of our epistemic practices and, therefore, abstract away precisely those features that are needed to explain how power shapes knowledge. I disagree:
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My paper "Impurist Epistemology and the Social Turn" (2025) identifies several confusions in the feminist and social epistemology literatures that that have caused people to unfairly discount the prospects of a socially-engaged purist epistemology.
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Another paper (currently under review; email me for a draft) argues that many feminist epistemologists have embraced impurist frameworks because they lack faith that the evidence will bear out their feminist commitments. I don't think that all impurist feminist epistemology is like this, but I think this kind of reasoning is common among feminist moral encroachment theorists and some feminists who endorse social construction about knowledge.
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My paper "Moorean Skepticism" defends the Cartesian requirement for neutral grounds as a requirement that is rooted in humility and, more importantly, a refusal to give up on others.
I’m also interested in consent. My published work (with Jonathan Ichikawa) concerns how, and when, deception invalidates consent. More broadly, though, I am interested in the role consent ought to play in our theorizing about sexual ethics, and how we can strike the right balance between respecting individual autonomy and avoiding an implausibly individualistic perspective where people owe nothing to their sexual partners and look out only for themselves. ​​
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If you'd like to contact me, my email address is emily.tilton.11@gmail.com.