Feminism was born in controversy and it continues to flourish in controversy. The distinguished contributors to this volume provide an array of perspectives on issues including: universal values, justice and care, a feminist philosophy of science, and the relationship of biology to social theory.

Asian Texts -- Asian Contexts helps bring Asian philosophy and religion into wider classroom consideration by giving nonspecialists entree to primary texts from ...

Klein (philosophy, U. of Northern Florida-Jacksonville) offers an analysis of modern-day feminism and a personal memoir of coming of age and coming to terms with feminism as it relates to university politics and teaching. She presents a critique of contemporary feminism, discussing feminist and nonfeminist philosophy, feminist nonphilosophy, and feminist epistemology and pedagogy. She exposes the dogmas and fallacies of feminism, and argues that feminism is oppressive to women. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

There has been much discussion concerning the consequences of 'going natural', i.e., of replacing a priori epistemology with empirical psychology. Traditionalists claim that a naturalized epistemology is not viable—to eliminate the normative from an account of knowledge is to cease to do epistemology at all. Naturalists claim that a naturalized account is the only viable one—assuming, in step with the urgings of Quine, that there are no standards independent of (and external to) science, science itself must act as the sole (...) epistemic norm. In the wake of the above debate some epistemologists have attempted to argue in favor of, and develop, a middle-ground position— normative naturalism . Such a position is intended to be consistent with the naturalist's intuition that the traditional search for a 'first philosophy'is misguided and consistent with the traditionalist's intuition that a complete elimination of the normative would leave epistemology impotent. In this paper I will examine one argument in favor of a normative naturalism . / will show that such a proposal is inherently problematic and argue that naturalism and normativity are mutually exclusive concepts. Therefore, I suggest that, even in the 'age of cognitive science', epistemologists continue to do traditional epistemology by attempting to develop, a priori , the general criteria for determining the justificatory status of our (scientific) beliefs. (shrink)

Has some of the fruit of feminism begun to rot on the vine? Or is the work of feminist philosophy just beginning? Are we still in thrall to pervasive sexist assumptions at the roots of our thinking and our language? With Marjorie Jolles, Ellen Klein, and Helen Mitchell.