However the problem here is both reifying the idea of cognitive authority as something which really exists, as well as the traditional male-female binary. There is no authentic intervention to be made on the malestream terrain of Reason. Thus writers such as Wollstonecraft , Mill , and Eisenstein struggle with how to incorporate women as a group into the liberal ideal of traditional epistemology which simultaneously champions an atomistic, anonymous subject and rejects knowing subjects who are not part of a select group. Code identifies some epistemological consequences of cognitive autonomy. The third consequence is the problem of subject-object relations.
Vision is used here as a tool of control, and to exert power over that which is seen.
In this model, it is only important to see and observe, not listen to, engage with, or understand. This concept can be expanded into the idea of the body, including all other senses, as a mediator or translator of the world, not unlike Heidegger's Dasein who operates by interacting with things in the environment and being in the world. Code draws on some feminist theorists of science, such as Rachel Carson, to propose an alternative methodology for knowing that does not require controlling that which is known, but rather letting it speak for itself and on its own terms. Instead of extrapolating from objects to people and relationships, it makes more sense to go in the other direction, from the knowledge necessary for good personal relationships applied to objects. Yet this is not to say that all experiences are unproblematic.