Diversity Reading List

Comment (from this Blueprint): Radden's paper introduces the reader to broad concerns with the dominant medical model of disorder from a feminist perspective, highlighting the tension with a naturalistic, reductionist approach with the situated and ecological approach of Radden's feminism. This article touches on topics mentioned in other readings (such as enactive concpetions of mind and epistemic injustice) but contextualises them within the field of philosophy of psychiatry. As such, this article is a fruitful springboard for critically considering the nature of medicine and psychiatry from multiple angles. This chapter would be complimented by the further reading of Russell's (2023) paper on Enactive Psychiatry.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Rudder Baker's chapter on the first-person perspective and gender identity is a great starting place to begin thinking about what it means to experience the world through the lens of gender. Rudder Baker's chapter also poses interesting thought experiements, such as whether a disembodied being would have a gender idetity (she argues "no") or whether it is possible to live in a gender-less society. The chapter also introduces the reader to the necessary conditons by which we might want to say that someone has a gender identity andso is a fruitful springboard for further and deeper discussions about not only gender, but language and personal identity more broadly.

Comment (from this Blueprint): In this article, James argues for a deeply embodied account of personal identity. James claims that current psychological theories on personal identity, tend to overlook the role of the body in maintaining psychological continuity. Mainstream thought experiments used by those theories, for instance, examples of body swap, undermine the extent to which psychological traits of a person depend on a body. James claims that the body is constitutive for developing one's identity and character. Additionally, she offers an analysis of the role of gender on personal identity by examining how patriarchal structures promote the idea that the mind can be independent of the body.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Scheman's article is a revision of a seminal paper originally published in 2000 which provides one of the first pieces showing how mainstream philosophy of mind can benefit from the insertion of feminist thought in its practices. In this article, Scheman criticises mainstream physicalism as ignoring the social context in its explanations of the mental. According to Scheman, this dismissal is a mistake since "beliefs, desires, emotions, and other phenomena of our mental lives are the particulars that they are because they are socially meaningful [...]". This article can be nicely paired with the reading of Droege's one for a different viewpoint on how to develop a feminist theory on the mind/body problem.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Jacobson's chapter is an insightful exemplar of feminist philosophy of neuroscience that charts a course between hard-naturalism of mind in science and the pure social-constructivist theories of mental disorder. Jacobson's case study of Boderline Personality Disorder (BPD) demonstrates the ways in which values may be embedded in psychiatric categories, but the phenomena can nevertheless be accounted for using normatively-informed neuroscience. Feminist philosophy of science at large is an influence here, and thus this chapter is an important bridge between this topic and our own, feminist philosophy of mind.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Lugones' concept of world-travelling and playfulness compliments well the discussion in Jones' chapter on empathy. Both authors consider how identification can fail, but come to slightly different conclusions about how to facilitate empathy. These readings would thus work well when read together closely. Lugones' discussion on play also provides a springboard for not only discussing resistence to oppression, or arrogant perception, but also the embedded and problematic assumptions behind the notion of play that may be prescent in academic definitions. Indeed, if we understand play more along Lugones' lines, this may not only help us 'world travel' to meet other humans, but, perhaps, non-humans as well.

Comment (from this Blueprint): McWeeny provides a novel examination of the attribution question by looking into what might be considered one of the most inclusive theories about the mind: panpsychism. According to Panpsychism, "mentality is ubiquitous in nature". Thus, we should expect panpsychism to hold an equal attribution across all bodies, and assert that all bodies have minds, without discrimination. McWeeny shows us, upon further examination, how mainstream panpsychist views (Russelian or physicalist panpsychism) fail to do so. McWeeny provides a detailed analysis of how Cavendishian Panpsychism is more well-placed to give a feminist perspective on the attribution question.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Roege defends a nonreductive account of materialism, which, in her view, doesn't stand against feminist criticisms of physicalism. Similarly to Scheman's "Against Physicalism", Droeger argues that mainstream physicalist theories have ignored the role of the social in their explanations about the mental. Droeger offers an analysis of how feminist practices can illuminate work on the philosophy of mind by taking an interdisciplinary approach that brings together findings and viewpoints from different disciplines.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This paper is especially stimulating if students earlier on the course also read the text by Ahmed on the week on race, as much of "A phenomenology of whiteness" informs Queer phenomenology. This specific chapter, however, focuses on sexual orientation, and discusses some of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Ahmed's article may also be required reading for those exploring a distinctly phenomenological approach to sexuality and could be read in alongside Díaz-León's chapter, which follows in the analytic tradition, for a broader range of 'styles' of discussion of sexual orientation in philosophy.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This is the introductory chapter to the anthology "Feminist Philosophy of Mind" (OUP). In here, McWeeny and Maitra (the editors) offer one of the first definitons "feminist philosophy of mind" as a subdiscipline and as a methodology to the study of the mind. They argue that current methods and theoretical work in philosophy of mind has highly overseen the role of the body and society in our understanding of the mind. This text works as a prompt to intitiate the blueprint and to consider how the study of the mind could benefit from the application of tools from feminist philosophy.