The premise of this paper is that the language of science, like language in general, is neither asexual nor neutral. The essay demonstrates the various ways in which the non-neutrality of the subject of science is expressed and proposes that there is a need to analyze the laws that determine the acceptability of language and discourse in order to interpret their connection to a sexed logic.
The Language of Man
This paper enumerates Irigaray’s main arguments and thoughts regarding the gendered nature of language and “the logos”.
The Liberation Argument for Inconsistent Mathematics
Val Plumwood charged classical logic not only with the invalidity of some of its laws, but also with the support of systemic oppression through naturalization of the logical structure of dualisms. In this paper I show that the latter charge – unlike the former – can be carried over to classical mathematics, and I propose a new conception of inconsistent mathematics – queer incomaths – as a liberatory activity meant to undermine said naturalization.
De-centering and Genderqueering Val Plumwood’s Feminist Logic
The strongest and, until recently, least-explored approach to feminist logic holds that some formal logics have structural features that perpetuate sexism and oppression, whereas other logics are helpful for resisting and opposing these social phenomena. Our choice of logics may not be purely formal on this view: for example, some logics are preferrable to others on the grounds of feminist commitments. This strong account of feminist logic was first articulated by Val Plumwood. We will critically engage salient features of her view, especially her critique of classical logic and the centering and dominating functions she believes classical negation has. We will see that her understanding of classical negation captures neither the development of Intersectional Feminism, nor the position the concept of centering holds in transformative justice. However, Plumwood’s critique of classical negation does lead us to a deeper insight regarding which logics to apply in social justice contexts. Robin Dembroff’s analysis of genderqueer as a critical gender kind helps us delineate a non-classical context in which a four-valued logic, such as FDE, can structurally account for the critical feature of this gender kind in a way classical logic cannot. We will also observe how four-valued logics precisely capture the destabilization of, and resistance to, the exclusive and exhaustive gender binary categories Dembroff describes.
Activist Epistemology
I propose a model on which epistemic frameworks are understood in terms of not only beliefs, but also sets of evidential support relations. We are generally responsive to multiple frameworks, some more compatible than others.The model allows for prioritizing certain frameworks by drawing on van Benthem and Pacuit’s work on logics for evidence-based belief. This prioritization allows us to capture the idea that some epistemic frameworks are “held come what may” with nuance and complexity.
The Logical Syntax of Prejudice: Oppression and the Constitutive A Priori
I argue that a thoroughgoing naturalized epistemology can easily underestimate the extent to which certain background assumptions will infl uence arguments. Instead, then, I suggest that we can borrow a conceptual tool from neo-Kantian philosophy of science, namely the constitutive a priori. This idea originates in neo-Kantian philosophers who understood, in light of Einsteinian physics, that Kantian views about the a priority of space were untenable. Frameworks that adopt some version of a constitutive a priori take certain propositions to play the role of a priori principles, without granting them the universality or necessity that such principles traditionally hold. I will argue that thinking of certain views or values as having the status of constitutive a priori principles can help us understand what would be required for an epistemic agent to change them, and thus illustrate the extent to which they are resistant to being dislodged by evidence.
Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic
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.
Social Spheres: Logic, Ranking, and Subordination
This paper uses logic – a formal language with models and a consequence relation – to think about the social and political topics of subordination and subordinative speech. I take subordination to be a matter of three things: i) ranking one person or a group of people below others, ii) depriving the lower-ranked of rights, and iii) permitting others to discriminate against them. Subordinative speech is speech – utterances in contexts – which subordinates. Section 1 introduces the topic of subordination using examples from the 1979 novel Kindred by Octavia Butler. Section 2 uses these examples to clarify and illustrate the definitions of subordination and subordinative speech. Sections 3 and 4 then develop a way of modeling subordination using a system of social spheres, an adaptation of (Lewis, 1973)’s approach to modeling the relation of comparative similarity on worlds for counterfactuals. Section 4 looks at three possible applications for this work: giving truth-conditions for social quantifiers, identifying fallacies involving such expressions, and explaining the pragmatics of subordinative speech. The last section anticipates objections and raises further questions.
Circles of Reason: Some Feminist Reflections on Reason and Rationality
Rationality and reason are topics so fraught for feminists that any useful reflection on them requires some prior exploration of the difficulties they have caused. One of those difficulties for feminists and, I suspect, for others in the margins of modernity, is the rhetoric of reason – the ways reason is bandied about as a qualification differentially bestowed on different types of person. Rhetorically, it functions in different ways depending on whether it is being denied or affirmed. In this paper, I want to explore these rhetorics of reason as they are considered in the work of two feminist philosophers. I shall draw on their work for some suggestions about how to think about rationality, and begin to use those suggestions to develop a constructive account that withstands the rhetorical temptations.
Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic
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.