This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

The essays in this interdisciplinary collection share the conviction that modern western paradigms of knowledge and reality are gender-biased.

Reviewed Work: Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition" by Charles Taylor, Amy Gutmann, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, Susan Wolf.

Neoliberal globalization has deepened the impoverishment and marginalization of many women. This system is maintained by the debt supposedly owed by many poor nations in the global South to a few rich nations in the global North, because the obligation to service the debt traps the people of the South within an economic order that severely disadvantages them. I offer several reasons for thinking that many of these alleged debt obligations are not morally binding, especially on Southern women.

The “social licence to operate” has been invoked in science policy discussions including the 2007 Universal Ethical Code for scientists issued by the UK Government Office for Science. Drawing from sociological research on social licence and STS interventions in science policy, the authors explore the relevance of expectations of a social licence for scientific research and scientific contributions to public decision-making, and what might be involved in seeking to create one. The process of seeking a social licence is not the (...) same as trying to create public or community acceptance for a project whose boundaries and aims have already been fully defined prior to engagement. Such attempts to “capture” the public might be successful from time to time but their legitimacy is open to question especially where their engagement with alternative research futures is “thin”. Contrasting a national dialogue on stem cells with the early history of research into bioenergy, we argue that social licence activities need t.. (shrink)

This article evaluates the oversight of drugs and medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration using an integration of public policy, law, and bioethics approaches and employing multiple assessment criteria, including economic, social, safety, and technological. Throughout, assessments employing both the multiple criteria and a method of expert elicitation are combined with the existing literature, case law, and regulations providing an integrative historical case study approach. The goal is to provide useful information from multiple disciplines and perspectives to (...) guide discussions regarding appropriate oversight frameworks for nanobiotechnology applications under the FDA’s purview. (shrink)

Written by leading scholars in feminist theory, Feminist Frameworks was one of the first anthologies in its field and, in the third edition, remains on the cutting edge. Comprehensive, the book covers current issues, problems, theory, and historical texts regarding the oppression of women. With the third edition comes a new section, "Why Theory?" in Part II, explaining the value of feminist theory. Also, the emerging areas of multicultural feminism and global feminism are covered in Part IV. Introductions to each (...) major theme expose students to the readings in a meaningful context. (shrink)

Is globalization good for women? The answer to this question obviously depends on what one means by "globalization" and by "good" and which "women" one has in mind. After explaining briefly what I mean by "globalization" and "good" and indicating which women I have in mind, I intend to argue that globalization, as we currently know it, is not good for most women. However, I'll suggest that the badness of the present situation is not due to globalization as such, but (...) rather to its specific neoliberal mode of organization. I'll identify some of the questions that globalization urgently raises for political philosophy and end by sketching one vision of an alternative form of globalization that could be very good for women-as well as for children and men. (shrink)

We report on the deliberations of an interdisciplinary group of experts in science, law, and philosophy who convened to discuss novel ethical and policy challenges in stem cell research. In this report we discuss the ethical and policy implications of safety concerns in the transition from basic laboratory research to clinical applications of cell-based therapies derived from stem cells. Although many features of this transition from lab to clinic are common to other therapies, three aspects of stem cell biology pose (...) unique challenges. First, tension regarding the use of human embryos may complicate the scientific development of safe and effective cell lines. Second, because human stem cells were not developed in the laboratory until 1998, few safety questions relating to human applications have been addressed in animal research. Third, preclinical and clinical testing of biologic agents, particularly those as inherently complex as mammalian cells, present formidable challenges, such as the need to develop suitable standardized assays and the difficulty of selecting appropriate patient populations for early phase trials. We recommend that scientists, policy makers, and the public discuss these issues responsibly, and further, that a national advisory committee to oversee human trials of cell therapies be established. **NB we did not reccommend a NAC, we think it might be appropriate**. (shrink)

This chapter compares the philosophical methods used respectively by John Rawls and Iris Marion Young. Rawls’s theory is ideal in several interrelated methodological respects: he emphasizes principle over practice; he relies on a fictional reasoning process; and his theory is designed for an imagined world that lacks many problematic aspects of the real world. Young’s method, which she characterizes as critical theory, is non-ideal in all the respects that Rawls’s method is ideal. Young emphasizes practice; she respects the reasoning of (...) actual people; and she directly addresses existing injustices. If Young has been able to develop philosophical ideals of justice that are more comprehensive, relevant, and substantively acceptable than Rawls’s, I suggest that one reason may be the non-ideal aspects of her methodology. In the end, however, Young’s philosophical contributions cannot be attributed only to her method; they are also the product of her unique political passion and creative imagination. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

En las tres últimas décadas del siglo XX, muchos filósofos analíticos han abordado cuestiones de ética práctica, ampliando radicalmente el campo de la filosofía moral más allá de los temas metaéticos que habían sido su foco principal durante la mayor parte del siglo. Sin embargo, abordar este tipo de controversias prácticas rápidamente hizo surgir la cuestión de cómo justificar las afirmaciones morales normativas. Muchos filósofos analíticos se basaron en el intuicionismo, que tiene un linaje muy antiguo dentro de la filosofía (...) moral anglófona. Este artículo evalúa tres formas en las que los filósofos analíticos del siglo XX recurrieron a las intuiciones para apoyar o rebatir las afirmaciones morales. Argumentamos que esos métodos fracasaron en su objetivo de promover un conocimiento moral digno de confianza porque se basaron en supuestos que, cuando se presumen en contextos de injusticia epistémica estructural, son sistemáticamente engañosos. A pesar de que las intuiciones se encuentran entre las fuentes de conocimiento en las que los agentes morales deben confiar, la epistemología moral debe prestar especial atención a los procesos sociales a través de los cuales se recogen, refinan y evalúan las intuiciones y otras formas de evidencia. Producir un conocimiento moral digno de confianza requiere procesos de razonamiento democráticos que sean sensibles a la omnipresencia de la injusticia epistémica y la dominación, así como desarrollar estrategias para contrarrestarlas. (shrink)

This article reflects critically on the methodology of one feminist research project which is ongoing as we write. The project is titled “Assessing Development: Designing Better Indices of Poverty and Gender Equity” and its aim is to develop a better standard or metric for measuring poverty across the world. The authors of this article are among several philosophers on the research team, which also includes scholars from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology and economics. This article begin by explaining why a (...) new and better poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. It then describes our methodological goals and strategies and summarizes our research findings, showing how they diverge from standard assessments as a result the feminist methods we used. We conclude with some methodological lessons we learned and questions that we think remain to be addressed. (shrink)

An essay on the article "Reason and Feeling in Thinking about Justice," by Susan Moller Okin is presented. It offers a history of the original position in philosophical reasoning for explaining a sense of justice and examines feminist criticisms against such thinking for failure to appreciate differences and otherness while focused on universality and impartiality. The author relates the choice feminist theories on ethic of sympathy or care for others in place of an ethic of justice in general.

This paper contrasts two prominent positions in contemporary Western feminist discourse about prostitution. The first is radical feminism, which emerged in the early 1970s; the second is libertarian feminism, which emerged in the late 1980s. The paper analyses the underlying assumptions and public policy recommendation of each position; it argues that each illuminates important aspects of the situations of some prostitutes but ignores or denies others. An approach to prostitution capable of providing an adequate guide to public policy must be (...) less dogmatic or “essentialist” than either radical or libertarian feminism; it should investigate how the sex trade operates in specific locations and the varying meanings it has in different cultural, contexts. Such investigations must be feminist not only in their commitment to ending the subordination of women but also in their respect for choices made by women who already must often endure not only exploitation but also stigmatization, discrimination and exclusion. In this paper, I sketch two prominent positions in contemporary Western feminist discourse about prostitution, discuss the strengths and inadequacies of each, and conclude by indicating an approach—as opposed to a substantive analysis—that I find more promising. (shrink)

Traditional conceptions of citizenship have privileged individuals' relationships to the state. However, recent emphasis on civil society as a terrain of democratic empowerment suggests a shift in our ideas about what citizens properly do and the arenas in which they do it. I argue that it would be a mistake to privilege activism in civil society over traditional state-centered political activity and I contend that democratic citizenship may – and must – be performed in multiple arenas. Feminists need enriched understandings (...) of citizenship that recognize the indispensability of both national and transnational civil society but still maintain a strong focus on the state. (shrink)

In This Incredible Need to Believe, philosopher Julia Kristeva identifies the present as a time of crisis identified with ‘ideality’; historically significant cultural idealizations are failing us, leading to social and cultural breakdown, which Kristeva believes is not being addressed in ‘secular’ western societies. Remarkably, she defends the universal significance of what she defines as ‘belief’, revisiting earlier work on language, literature and the unconscious, against the background of a recent revival of interest in ‘religion’. In an introductory way, this (...) article outlines ways in which Kristeva’s analysis can help feminist readers to take bearings at this time. (shrink)

This article addresses what appears to be a retrenchment into narrower forms of identification and an increased suspicion of difference in the context of educational policy in the UK – especially in relation to ‘Religious Education’. The adoption of standardized management protocols – ‘managerialism’ – across most if not all policy contexts including public educational spaces reduces spaces for encountering or addressing genuine difference and for discovering something new and creative. A theory of the ‘feminization of religion’ associated historically with (...) Barbara Welter, provides some useful insights as to why this might be, suggesting that those in British society who would prefer to see greater separation from ‘religion’ in ‘secular’ schools may well also be caught up in forms of gender stereotyping. (shrink)

Feminism is still often dismissed as an outmoded or discredited concept, out of touch with the feelings and desires of real women and men or antithetical to any proper vision of Christianity. So for the feminist theologian it is as important as ever to find ways of discriminating between truth and falsity and of discerning a future path. In this piece I try to articulate one possible feminist approach using insights from the work of philosophers Deleuze and Guattari—particularly on assemblages—and (...) from the work of poet and theorist, Adrienne Rich, on revisioning. It is my sense that these tools may be able to help provide feminist theologians with the support we undoubtedly need if we are genuinely to be able to acknowledge the weight of our pasts and the risk of our futures without becoming overwhelmed or immobilized in a context which remains decidedly challenging. (shrink)

Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However, this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to systematically contrast it with other theories.

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip (...) alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world. (shrink)

What did Leibniz have to contribute to the philosophy of mind? To judge from textbooks in the philosophy of mind, and even Leibniz commentaries, the answer is: not much. That may be because Leibniz’s philosophy of mind looks roughly like a Cartesian philosophy of mind. Like Descartes and his followers, Leibniz claims that the mind is immaterial and immortal; that it is a thinking thing ; that it is a different kind of thing from body and obeys its own laws; (...) and that it comes stocked with innate truth-tracking intellectual ideas and an epistemically troubling habit of forming confused sensory ideas on the occasion of external corporeal events. Nothing is new. Of course, Leibniz adds unconscious perceptions to the mind in the form of his famous petites perceptions, and he offers a unique solution to the problem of mind-body interaction in the form of his infamous pre-established harmony. In the overall scheme of things, however, these look like minor alterations in a philosophy of mind that the Cartesians had been advocating for some fifty years. Or so it appears. (shrink)

This paper argues that Spinoza does not take extension in space to be a fundamental property of physical things. This means that when Spinoza calls either substance or a mode “an Extended thing”, he does not mean that it is a thing extended in three dimensions. The argument proceeds by showing, first, that Spinoza does not associate extension in space with substance, and second, that finite bodies, or physical things, are not understood through the intellect when they are conceived as (...) extended in space. I conclude by articulating some suggestions about where we should go from here in trying to understand Spinoza’s account of the attribute of extension and of the physical world. (shrink)

Alison Bailey’s The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance examines how whiteness misshapes our humanity, measuring the weight of whiteness in terms of its costs and losses to collective humanity. People of color feel the weight of whiteness daily. The resistant habits of whiteness and its attendant privileges, however, make it difficult for white people to feel the damage. White people are more comfortable thinking about white supremacy in terms of what privilege does for (...) them, rather than feeling what it does to them. The first half of the book focuses on the overexposed side of white privilege, the side that works to make the invisible and intangible structures of power more visible and tangible. Bailey discusses the importance of understanding privileges intersectionally, the ignorance-preserving habits of “white talk,” and how privilege and ignorance circulate in educational settings. The second part invites white readers to explore the underexposed side of white dominance, the weightless side that they would rather not feel. The final chapters are powerfully autobiographical. Bailey engages readers with a deeply personal account of what it means to hold space with the painful weight of whiteness in her own life. She also offers a moving account of medicinal genealogies, which helps to engage the weight she inherits from her settler colonial ancestors. The book illustrates how the gravitational pull of white ignorance and comfort are stronger than the clean pain required for collective liberation. The stakes are high: Failure to hold the weight of whiteness ensures that white people will continue to blow the weight of historical trauma through communities of color. -/- All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. -/- -/- . (shrink)

I argue that explanation should be thought of as the phenomenological mark of the operation of a particular kind of cognitive system, the theory-formation system. The theory-formation system operates most clearly in children and scientists but is also part of our everyday cognition. The system is devoted to uncovering the underlying causal structure of the world. Since this process often involves active intervention in the world, in the case of systematic experiment in scientists, and play in children, the cognitive system (...) is accompanied by a theory drive, a motivational system that impels us to interpret new evidence in terms of existing theories and change our theories in the light of new evidence. What we usually think of as explanation is the phenomenological state that accompanies the satisfaction of this drive. However, the relation between the phenomenology and the cognitive system is contingent, as in similar cases of sexual and visual phenomenology. Distinctive explanatory phenomenology may also help us to identify when the theory-formation system is operating. (shrink)