MacCumhaill, Clare, Rachael Wiseman. A Female School of Analytic Philosophy? Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch
2018, Women in Parenthesis website
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Added by: Anne-Marie McCallion
Introduction: The history of Analytic Philosophy we are familiar with is a story about men. It begins with Frege, Russell, Moore. Wittgenstein appears twice, once as the author of the Tractatus and then again later as the author of the Philosophical Investigations. Between Wittgenstein’s first and second appearance are Carnap and Ayer and the all-male Vienna Circle. Then come the post-second-world war Ordinary Language Philosophers – Ryle, and Austin. After that Strawson and Grice, Quine and Davidson.
The male dominance is not just in the names of the ‘star’ players. Michael Beaney’s 2013 Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy begins by listing the 150 most important analytic philosophers. 146 of them are men. For women who wish to join in this conversation, the odds seem formidably against one.
Today we will be speaking about two of the four women who warrant an entry in Beaney’s list – Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot. We will be talking about them alongside two other women Iris Murdoch and Mary Midgley. We think they should also be in the top 150, but our broader aims are more ambitious than increasing the proportion of important women from 2.7% to 4%.
Comment: This text offers a very accessible introduction to the work of the Wartime Quartet as well as a biographical and historical overview of their philosophical school status. It would be suitable for history of philosophy courses – especially those which emphasise or centre upon 20th century analytic philosophy. This text will also be essential for students who wish to set-up an In Parenthesis reading group, please see here for more information: http://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/curated-resources/for-students/new-undergraduate-reading-list/#intro
Macdonald, Cynthia. Externalism and first-person authority
1995, Synthese 104 (1):99-122.
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Added by: Giada FratantonioAbstract: In this paper, the author explores the relation between content externalism, i.e., the idea that the content of our thought is determines by factors of the environment, and first-person authority, i.e., the idea that subjects are authoritive with respect to the content of their own intentional states. The author develps an account of first-person authoritive that results being compatible with externalism.Comment: It is good as a further reading on the topic of content/semantic externalism.
Macdonald, Margaret. The Language of Fiction
1954, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 28 (1):165-196.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: The opening sentence of Jane Austen's novel Emma is a sentence from fiction. Emma is a work in which the author tells a story of characters, places and incidents almost all of which she has invented. I shall mean by " fiction " any similar work. For unless a work is largely, if not wholly, composed of what is invented, it will not correctly be called " fiction ". One which contains nothing imaginary may be history, science, detection, biography, but not fiction. I want to ask some questions about how an author uses words and sentences in fiction. But my interest is logical, not literary. I shall not discuss the style or artistic skill of any storyteller. Mine is the duller task of trying to understand some of the logic of fictional language; to determine the logical character of its expressions. How do they resemble and differ from those in other contexts? What are they understood to convey? Are they, e.g., true or false statements? If so, of or about what are they true or false? If not, what other function do they perform? How are they connected? These are the questions I shall chiefly discuss.
MacDonald, Margaret. Verification and Understanding
1934, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 34(1): 143–156
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Added by: Viviane Fairbank, Contributed by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
The object of this paper is to discuss one or two points arising out of the view held by certain modern philosophers that the whole meaning of a proposition is given in a set of conditional propositions about the experiences which would verify it. Or, as C. S. Peirce said, that " the rational meaning of every propo- sition lies in the future." And for these philosophers to say that the proposition is true is just to say that if I get into certain situations I do have the prescribed experiences which verify the proposition. A proposition (or arrangement of signs)t which cannot be so verified is either tautological, e.g., the "propositions" of logic and mathematics, or it is just metaphysical nonsense. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects, and if we fancy we have any other we are deceiving ourselves with empty.... Now it may be true that the scientist does tend to identify what he understands with the means of its verification, but it is also true that verification is usually employed in science and elsewhere, not to establish the meaning of propositions, but to prove them true. This, I think, is the usual meaning of the word "verification" and a confusion between these two quite different uses of the word by positivist philosophers leads to certain paradoxical results.Comment: MacDonald's discussion and critique of the verificationist theory of meaning is clear and concise, touching on work by C.I. Lewis, Peirce, and Whitehead. It would be suitable as assigned reading for any introductory course that includes logical positivism and related issues.
MacDonald, Margaret. Necessary Propositions
1940, Analysis, 7(2): 45–51
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Added by: Viviane Fairbank, Contributed by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
I should like to make a few comments on a recent article on necessary propositions by Mr. Norman Malcolm. Not so much because of anything specifically said by Mr. Malcolm as because his article expresses a prevalent view. Mr. Malcolm rejects what may be called the 'metaphysical' view of these propositions, viz. that they describe a special realm of necessary facts known by a kind of interior 'looking' called intuition or self-evidence. But the main concern of his paper is to reject also the later positivist view that they are 'really' verbal..., that they are rules of grammar or commands to use words in certain ways.Comment: In this short paper, MacDonald presents some objections to prominent views of logical necessity. The arguments are clear but require contextual knowledge of what was being discussed philosophically at the time, so some background would be useful.
Mackenzie, Catriona. Embodied agents, narrative selves
2014, Philosophical Explorations 17 (2), pp. 154-171
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
Recent work on diachronic agency has challenged the predominantly structural or synchronic approach to agency that is characteristic of much of the literature in contemporary philosophical moral psychology. However, the embodied dimensions of diachronic agency continue to be neglected in the literature. This article draws on phenomenological perspectives on embodiment and narrative conceptions of the self to argue that diachronic agency and selfhood are anchored in embodiment. In doing so, the article also responds to Diana Meyers' recent work on corporeal selfhood.Comment: available in this Blueprint
Mackenzie, Catriona, Jackie Leach Scully. Moral imagination, disability and embodiment
2007, Journal of Applied Philosophy 24(4), pp. 335-351
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
In this paper we question the basis on which judgements are made about the ‘quality’ of the lives of people whose embodied experience is anomalous, specifically in cases of impairments. In moral and political philosophy it is often assumed that, suitably informed, we can overcome epistemic gaps through the exercise of moral imagination: ‘putting ourselves in the place of others’, we can share their points of view. Drawing on phenomenology and theories of embodied cognition, and on empirical studies, we suggest that there are barriers to imagining oneself differently situated, or imagining being another person, arising in part from the way imagination is constrained by embodied experience. We argue that the role of imagination in moral engagement with others is to expand the scope of our sympathies rather than to enable us to put ourselves in the other's place. We argue for explicit acknowledgement that our assessments of others’ QOL are likely to be shaped by the specifics of our own embodiment, and by the assumptions we make as a consequence about what is necessary for a good quality of life.Comment: available in this Blueprint
Mackenzie, Catriona (ed.), Stoljar, Natalie (ed.). Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Automony, Agency, and the Social Self
2000, Oxford University Press.
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Added by: Clotilde TorregrossaPublisher's Note: This collection of original essays explores the social and relational dimensions of individual autonomy. Rejecting the feminist charge that autonomy is inherently masculinist, the contributors draw on feminist critiques of autonomy to challenge and enrich contemporary philosophical debates about agency, identity, and moral responsibility. The essays analyze the complex ways in which oppression can impair an agent's capacity for autonomy, and investigate connections, neglected by standard accounts, between autonomy and other aspects of the agent, including self-conception, self-worth, memory, and the imagination.Comment: All but one of the papers in this volume are writtn by underrepresented authors.
MacKinnon, Catharine A.. Are Women Human?: and other international dialogues
2006, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Bart SchultzAbstract: More than half a century after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defined what a human being is and is entitled to, Catharine MacKinnon asks: Are women human yet? If women were regarded as human, would they be sold into sexual slavery worldwide; veiled, silenced, and imprisoned in homes; bred, and worked as menials for little or no pay; stoned for sex outside marriage or burned within it; mutilated genitally, impoverished economically, and mired in illiteracy--all as a matter of course and without effective recourse?Comment: An excellent collection of essays by MacKinnon that includes some of her critiques of Foucauldian social constructionism.
Macklin, Ruth. Cloning and Public Policy
2002, In Justine Burley & John Harris (eds.), A companion to genethics. Blackwell. pp. 206-215.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: It seemed like only minutes after a team of Scottish scientists announced, in late February 1997, that they had successfully cloned a sheep, that governmental officials and private citizens throughout the world called for a ban on cloning human beings. The rush to legislate or issue executive orders was so swift, it is reasonable to wonder why the news that a mammal had been cloned ignited such a stampede to prohibit, even criminalize, attempts to clone humans. These events raise a series of separate, yet related questions. Why does the prospect of cloning human beings incite such strong reactions? What reasons have been proposed for enacting national laws or international conventions to prohibit cloning? Can these prohibitions be justified by sound ethical arguments? Before attempting to answer these questions, let us look first at the responses that called for public policy measures to ban human cloning.
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