Diversity Reading List

Publisher's Note: Sandra Harding here develops further the themes first addressed in her widely influential book, The Science Question in Feminism, and conducts a compelling analysis of feminist theories on the philosophical problem of how we know what we know. Following a strong narrative line, Harding sets out her arguments in highly readable prose. In Part 1, she discusses issues that will interest anyone concerned with the social bases of scientific knowledge. In Part 2, she modifies some of her views and then pursues the many issues raised by the feminist position which holds that women's social experience provides a unique vantage point for discovering masculine bias and and questioning conventional claims about nature and social life. In Part 3, Harding looks at the insights that people of color, male feminists, lesbians, and others can bring to these controversies, and concludes by outlining a feminist approach to science in which these insights are central. "Women and men cannot understand or explain the world we live in or the real choices we have," she writes, "as long as the sciences describe and explain the world primarily from the perspectives of the lives of the dominant groups." Harding's is a richly informed, radical voice that boldly confronts issues of crucial importance to the future of many academic disciplines. Her book will amply reward readers looking to achieve a more fruitful understanding of the relations between feminism, science, and social life.

Abstract: Many have argued that unified theories ought to be pursued wherever possible. We deny this on the basis of social-epistemological and game-theoretic considerations. Consequently, those seeking a more ubiquitous role for unification must either attend to the scientific community's social structure in greater detail than has been the case, and/or radically revise their conception of unification.

Abstract:
This essay examines the ubiquitous presence of Venus in the archive of Atlantic slavery and wrestles with the impossibility of discovering anything about her that hasn't already been stated. As an emblematic figure of the enslaved woman in the Atlantic world, Venus makes plain the convergence of terror and pleasure in the libidinal economy of slavery and, as well, the intimacy of history with the scandal and excess of literature. In writing at the limit of the unspeakable and the unknown, the essay mimes the violence of the archive and attempts to redress it by describing as fully as possible the conditions that determine the appearance of Venus and that dictate her silence.

Abstract:

Can there be a feminist logic? By most accounts the answer would be no. What l find remarkable is the great difference in the justifications provided for this conclusion. The impossibility of feminist logic is defended, on the one hand, on the grounds that logic itself is most fundamentally a form of domination and so is inimical to feminist aims. Other philosophers, while also defending the impossibility of feminist logic, do so from the conviction that it is feminist theory rather than logic that is the problem. For these thinkers, feminism cannot make any interesting or important contribution to logic because feminist theory is fundamentally shallow or misguided. In this paper I will argue that both positions are mistaken: Logic is neither as totalizing as the one side believes nor is feminist theory as inconsequential for logic as the other pole would have it. In the course of these arguments, I describe the work of several feminist logicians, showing the possibility and value of feminist approaches to logic.

From the Introduction: "Marjorie Hass addresses the limitations of logical concepts, including negation, by illuminating the ongoing critique of these terms in the work of Luce Irigaray. In Hass’s view, Irigaray’s work calls the neutrality of logic into question, suggesting that the standard formalism is capable of expressing only distorted and partial interpretations of negation, identity, and generality. More specifically, in Irigaray’s work, standard symbolic logic is shown to be unable to represent the form of difference proper to sexual difference, the form of identity proper to feminine identity, and the form of generality proper to a feminine generic. Hass interprets and evaluates Irigaray’s critique of logic, arguing that many of Irigaray’s readers have misunderstood its nature and force."

Abstract:

Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent, and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. Hass shows that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is crucial in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by overzealous "abstraction." But Hass argues that abstraction is not problematic; instead, it is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. Although she rejects Nye's form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more that is worthwhile in the criticisms of logic advanced by Luce lrigaray and Val Plumwood. These thinkers call for feminist alternatives to what has come to be standard deductive logic - and interestingly enough, their call is echoed in other contemporary criticisms from within the field of logic itself, for example, from intuitionist or entailment logics. The logical schemes envisaged by lrigaray and Plumwood would encompass more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyse reality and diverse experiences. Hass argues that, in Aristotle's case, we can glimpse something of such an alternative by looking to his account of negation, which is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary formal systems.

Abstract:
Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent, and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. Hass shows that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is crucial in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by overzealous "abstraction." But Hass argues that abstraction is not problematic; instead, it is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. Although she rejects Nye's form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more that is worthwhile in the criticisms of logic advanced by Luce lrigaray and Val Plumwood. These thinkers call for feminist alternatives to what has come to be standard deductive logic - and interestingly enough, their call is echoed in other contemporary criticisms from within the field of logic itself, for example, from intuitionist or entailment logics. The logical schemes envisaged by lrigaray and Plumwood would encompass more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyse reality and diverse experiences. Hass argues that, in Aristotle's case, we can glimpse something of such an alternative by looking to his account of negation, which is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary formal systems.

Abstract: This chapter investigates what we disagree about when we disagree about logic, on the assumption that judgments of logical validity are normative. If logic is normative, then the popular anti-realist thesis that there are no normative facts or properties generalizes—it entails that there are no logical facts or properties. When faced with this anti-realism, it is tempting to endorse a pluralist thesis, according to which two people who disagree about the validity of an argument can both say something true. This chapter explores the limitations of three prominent forms of pluralism: contextualism, relativism, and expressivism. It argues that none of these forms of pluralism gives an adequate account of what we disagree about when we disagree about logic.

Introduction: Though it is hardly uncontroversial, the thesis that logic is normative enjoys widespread agreement—probably just about as much agreement as one is ever likely to find in philosophy. There is far less agreement, however, on what exactly this thesis amounts to. To begin with, proponents of the
thesis can’t seem to agree on whether the normative authority of logic is robust or weak. If logic is robustly normative, it has a normative authority that is independent of our attitudes or conventions; if it is weakly normative, it has a normative au- thority that is entirely dependent on our attitudes or conventions. This fundamental disagreement about the normative authority of logic seems to leave little room for any point of agreement among the proponents of the thesis. Furthermore, some opponents of the thesis allow that logic is “entangled” with the normative to the extent that it has normative consequences that are instrumental to the achievement of our wider goals (Russell 2017). This makes it difficult to discern any daylight between the views of those who hold that logic is not normative and those who hold that it is only weakly so. In the next section, I will argue that the thesis that unites the proponents and excludes the opponents is that logical statements and the judgments they can be used to express—such as those concerning logical validity or logical entailment—are normative statements and judgments, in the sense that they analytically, semantically, or conceptually have normative consequences. In section 3, I will critically assess whether logical statements and judgments are indeed normative in this sense. I will consider the prospects of various accounts of what the normative consequences of logical statements or judgments might be, and find them all to be wanting. This, I claim, gives us good reason to deny that logic is normative.

Abstract:

Abstract: In this paper, I take issue with a core commitment of logical conventionalism: that we impose a logic on ourselves by adopting general linguistic conventions governing our use of logical terms, thereby determining the meanings of the logical constants and which of our inferences are valid. Drawing on Kripke’s ‘adoption problem’, I argue that general logical principles cannot be adopted, either explicitly or implicitly. I go on to argue that the meanings of our logical terms, and the validity of our inferences, cannot depend on our adoption of logico-linguistic conventions.