Event Title
Feminist philosophy's dependence on the facts
Start Date
26-6-2010 2:45 PM
End Date
26-6-2010 4:15 PM
Description
This presentation is part of the Facts in Feminist Philosophy track.
Feminist philosophy has always claimed a foundation in the fact of women’s oppression. Because that fact (i.e., that women are oppressed as a group) was not often acknowledged by other philosophers or the outside world, let alone understood in its many nuanced forms, feminist philosophers have long had to document the fact of women’s oppression. Feminists also spend a great deal of time disproving common beliefs and alleged scientific beliefs about women’s nature. Simone de Beauvoir’s classic of feminist philosophy, The Second Sex, for example, includes a long treatise on “Facts and Myths,” which explores women’s oppression and false beliefs about women through historical analysis and economic and psychological theory, and a section on “women’s situation,” which explores several ways in which women are oppressed psychologically and materially. Care ethics began from psychological studies of the ways that caring for intimate others requires different moral and intellectual capacities than does making sure that persons’ rights are being respected. Feminist philosophers of science have looked at ways that androcentric bias has shaped the descriptions of primate behavior to overemphasize male behavior, ignore female behavior when it does not involve males, and misinterpret female behavior when it does. The list of such examples of fact finding and disputation by feminist philosophers in their work as philosophers is long and distinguished.
This crucial dependence on fact, especially, as I will argue, on much disputed facts (or inconvenient truths), has been problematic for feminist philosophy within the discipline of philosophy. Philosophy has been seen by many of the great men of the tradition as an a priori discipline that requires little or no empirical input, and philosophers are rarely trained to either generate or analyze empirical data in a credible, rigorous way. Philosophers often believe that they can ignore the facts or stipulate them as they will, and that what matters are the logical and conceptual moves they make given the facts as they stipulate them. Feminist philosophers who begin with long disputations of the facts are then seen as playing a different game or just not understanding the nature of the philosophical enterprise. Sometimes the judgment is slightly less harsh: feminist philosophy is simply a subspecies of applied philosophy, which is seen as having a similarly unusually close relation to the facts. In any event, feminist philosophy has been relegated to the periphery, and its crucial discoveries and lessons have been ignored or discredited by many in discipline.
This paper aims to characterize the nature of the dependence of feminist philosophy on the facts, and to defend a way of doing philosophy that such dependence suggests. I will argue that some feminist philosophy, like the recent work of experimental philosophy, shows that philosophy needs fact-finding and fact-checking, and that it can even be a data-creating discipline. I will make this argument by appeal to case studies of feminist philosophical work by Susan Okin and Iris Young, among others, as well as through analysis of conceptual arguments made in the philosophy of social science literature on the role of facts and principles in philosophy (e.g., G.A. Cohen’s “Facts and Principles”).
Now, of course, not all feminist philosophy is done well. Some is insufficiently informed by fact, and some relies on bad social or biological science. Also, not every feminist philosophy question is an empirical question. There must be a place for conceptual and normative issues that are neutral with respect to the facts. Thus, characterizing feminist philosophy’s dependence on fact is complicated and requires careful distinctions to be made, for instance, between facts and principles, and facts and values. This paper attempts to tease out some general principles guiding the role of fact in normative philosophy.
My claim about philosophy’s relation to fact also raises the question of how philosophy relates to science on the one hand and public policy on the other. In this paper I address this question and suggest that normative philosophical work is crucially important to both science and public policy, particularly when normative philosophy respects the facts in the ways that I have suggested. The crucial role of normative philosophy in both science and public policy surrounds the identification of the phenomena of interest, which in turn suggest the means of measurement and analysis of data to assess the phenomena. I end the paper with an example from the science and public policy of domestic violence measurement and intervention to illustrate normative philosophy’s role in the debate.
Feminist philosophy's dependence on the facts
This presentation is part of the Facts in Feminist Philosophy track.
Feminist philosophy has always claimed a foundation in the fact of women’s oppression. Because that fact (i.e., that women are oppressed as a group) was not often acknowledged by other philosophers or the outside world, let alone understood in its many nuanced forms, feminist philosophers have long had to document the fact of women’s oppression. Feminists also spend a great deal of time disproving common beliefs and alleged scientific beliefs about women’s nature. Simone de Beauvoir’s classic of feminist philosophy, The Second Sex, for example, includes a long treatise on “Facts and Myths,” which explores women’s oppression and false beliefs about women through historical analysis and economic and psychological theory, and a section on “women’s situation,” which explores several ways in which women are oppressed psychologically and materially. Care ethics began from psychological studies of the ways that caring for intimate others requires different moral and intellectual capacities than does making sure that persons’ rights are being respected. Feminist philosophers of science have looked at ways that androcentric bias has shaped the descriptions of primate behavior to overemphasize male behavior, ignore female behavior when it does not involve males, and misinterpret female behavior when it does. The list of such examples of fact finding and disputation by feminist philosophers in their work as philosophers is long and distinguished.
This crucial dependence on fact, especially, as I will argue, on much disputed facts (or inconvenient truths), has been problematic for feminist philosophy within the discipline of philosophy. Philosophy has been seen by many of the great men of the tradition as an a priori discipline that requires little or no empirical input, and philosophers are rarely trained to either generate or analyze empirical data in a credible, rigorous way. Philosophers often believe that they can ignore the facts or stipulate them as they will, and that what matters are the logical and conceptual moves they make given the facts as they stipulate them. Feminist philosophers who begin with long disputations of the facts are then seen as playing a different game or just not understanding the nature of the philosophical enterprise. Sometimes the judgment is slightly less harsh: feminist philosophy is simply a subspecies of applied philosophy, which is seen as having a similarly unusually close relation to the facts. In any event, feminist philosophy has been relegated to the periphery, and its crucial discoveries and lessons have been ignored or discredited by many in discipline.
This paper aims to characterize the nature of the dependence of feminist philosophy on the facts, and to defend a way of doing philosophy that such dependence suggests. I will argue that some feminist philosophy, like the recent work of experimental philosophy, shows that philosophy needs fact-finding and fact-checking, and that it can even be a data-creating discipline. I will make this argument by appeal to case studies of feminist philosophical work by Susan Okin and Iris Young, among others, as well as through analysis of conceptual arguments made in the philosophy of social science literature on the role of facts and principles in philosophy (e.g., G.A. Cohen’s “Facts and Principles”).
Now, of course, not all feminist philosophy is done well. Some is insufficiently informed by fact, and some relies on bad social or biological science. Also, not every feminist philosophy question is an empirical question. There must be a place for conceptual and normative issues that are neutral with respect to the facts. Thus, characterizing feminist philosophy’s dependence on fact is complicated and requires careful distinctions to be made, for instance, between facts and principles, and facts and values. This paper attempts to tease out some general principles guiding the role of fact in normative philosophy.
My claim about philosophy’s relation to fact also raises the question of how philosophy relates to science on the one hand and public policy on the other. In this paper I address this question and suggest that normative philosophical work is crucially important to both science and public policy, particularly when normative philosophy respects the facts in the ways that I have suggested. The crucial role of normative philosophy in both science and public policy surrounds the identification of the phenomena of interest, which in turn suggest the means of measurement and analysis of data to assess the phenomena. I end the paper with an example from the science and public policy of domestic violence measurement and intervention to illustrate normative philosophy’s role in the debate.