Pragmatist feminists hold some or all the following conceptual commitments, which are rooted in classical pragmatism:

(1) A rejection of foundationalist and essentialist notions of reality and truth, in favor of an understanding of reality as the result of mutually constitutive transactions between agents and their environments and of truth as good knowing that it enables an inquiry to grow

(2) A recognition that chance and uncertainty are parts of one's world, not (necessarily) signs of one's incomplete understanding of that world

(3) A rejection of sharp dichotomies separating theory from practice, self from world, mind from body, fact from value, and reason from emotion

(4) A view of inquiry as experiential and experimental: Inquiry springs from experience, and its findings must have the capacity to improve on experience, for the individual or for society

(5) Respect for the philosophical value of ordinary, everyday experience—including experiences that characterize...