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Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie RussellAbstract:
The enactivist paradigm of embodied cognition represents a powerful alternative to Cartesian and cognitivist approaches in the philosophy of mind. On this view, the body plays a constitutive role in the integrated functioning of perception, affect, and other cognitive processes. Enactivism shares many of the central themes of feminist theory, and is extended to apply to social and political concerns. Following a discussion of the key components of the enactive approach, we apply it to explain more complex social manifestations, specifically gender performance and its reproduction through time. By employing Judith Butler's notion of performativity, we demonstrate how gender, as one marker of social identity and difference, emerges through processes of embodied and embedded sense-making as articulated by enactive theory. We argue that more attention to embodied and embedded values allows for the interruption and transformation of histories of oppressive practices and opens the door to more liberatory possibilities.Buxton, Rebecca, Whiting, Lisa, (eds.). The Philosopher Queens: The Lives and Legacies of Philosophy’s Unsung Women2020, Unbound-
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Added by: Rebecca BuxtonAbstract:
For all the young women and girls sitting in philosophy class wondering where the women are, this is the book for you. This collection of 21 chapters, each on a prominent woman in philosophy, looks at the impact that women have had on the field throughout history. From Hypatia to Angela Davis, The Philosopher Queens will be a guide to these badass women and how their amazing ideas have changed the world. This book is written both for newcomers to philosophy, as well as all those professors who know that they could still learn a thing or two. This book is also for those many people who have told us that there are no great women philosophers. Please pledge, read this book and then feel free to get back to us.Comment:
available in this Blueprint
Byrd, Jodi. What’s Normative Got to Do with It?: Toward Indigenous Queer Relationality2020, Social Text, 38 (4 (145)): 105–123.-
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Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin PharrAbstract:
This article considers the queer problem of Indigenous studies that exists in the disjunctures and disconnections that emerge when queer studies, Indigenous studies, and Indigenous feminisms are brought into conversation. Reflecting on what the material and grounded body of indigeneity could mean in the context of settler colonialism, where Indigenous women and queers are disappeared into nowhere, and in light of Indigenous insistence on land as normative, where Indigenous bodies reemerge as first and foremost political orders, this article offers queer Indigenous relationality as an additive to Indigenous feminisms. What if, this article asks, queer indigeneity were centered as an analytic method that refuses normativity even as it imagines, through relationality, a possibility for the materiality of decolonization?Comment:
available in this Blueprint
Cahill, Ann J., Jennifer Hansen (eds.). Continental Feminism Reader2003, Rowman & Littlefield-
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Added by: Alison Stone
Publisher's Note: Ann J. Cahill and Jennifer Hansen collect the most groundbreaking recent work in Continental feminist theory, introducing and explaining pieces that are often mystifying to those outside the field and outside academia. With these essays, Continental Feminism Reader begins the process of reanimating feminist politics through the critical tools of its contributors.Comment: A collection of essays that represent a range of continental-philosophy influenced approaches within feminism, for example with selections from the work of Judith Butler and Kelly Oliver. It could be used as the basis of a course on feminist philosophy if approaching it from a continental perspective, or separate chapters could be used as some of the readings.
Calhoun, Cheshire. The Virtue of Civility2000, Philosophy and Public Affairs 29 (3):251-275.-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Eline Gerritsen
Abstract: The decline of civility has increasingly become the subject of lament both in popular media and in daily conversation. Civility forestalls the potential unpleasantness of a life with other people. Without it, daily social exchanges can turn nasty and sometimes hazardous. Civility thus seems to be a basic virtue of social life. Moral philosophers, however, do not typically mention civility in their catalogues or examples of virtue. In what follows, I want to suggest that civility is a particularly interesting virtue for moral philosophers because giving an adequate account of the virtue of civility requires us to rethink the relationship between moral virtue and compliance with social norms.
Comment: This paper has a clear argumentative structure, gives many examples and does not require prior knowledge of the topic. It can be used on its own in a discussion of virtue ethics, e.g. to illustrate how you can argue that something is a virtue and how to differentiate virtues. It can also be used in a discussion of the relation between morality and social norms.
Callahan, Joan. Same-Sex Marriage: Why It Matters – At Least for Now2009, Hypatia 21 (1): 70-80.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: This paper addresses the progressive, feminist critique of same-sex marriage as articulated by Claudia Card. Although agreeing with Card that the institution of marriageas we know it is profoundly morally flawed in its origins and effects, Callahan disagrees with Card's suggestion that queer activists in the United States should not be working for the inclusion of same-sex couples in the institution.Comment: This article is an excellent rejoinder to Card's "Gay Divorce: Thoughts on the Legal Regulation of Marriage." (She directly addresses the Card text, so it should not be read without first reading the Card.) It would be a good addition to a course that covers same-sex marriage, social justice, or contemporary ethical problems.
Camp, Elisabeth. Two Varieties of Literary Imagination: Metaphor, Fiction, and Thought Experiments2009, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33 (1):107-130.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: Recently, philosophers have discovered that they have a lot to learn from, or at least to ponder about, fiction. Many metaphysicians are attracted to fiction as a model for our talk about purported objects and properties, such as numbers, morality, and possible worlds, without embracing a robust Platonist ontology. In addition, a growing group of philosophers of mind are interested in the implications of our engagement with fiction for our understanding of the mind and emotions: If I don't believe that Anna Karenina exists, can I really pity her, or hope or desire that she extricate herself from her tragic situation? And why is there no 'morality fiction,' analogous to science fiction? I suspect that philosophers have been especially comfortable thinking about fiction because it seems, at least prima facie, to employ the imagination in a way that conforms to a standard model of the mind. Specifically, contemporary philosophers tend to think of imagination as a form of mental pretense. Mental pretense can take two main forms: a cognitive attitude of supposing a set of propositions to be true (make-believe) or else an experiential state of imaging a scenario as if it were before one (imaging). Much of our pretense intertwines the cognitive and experiential modalities, of course. But both share a crucial common feature: all of one's imaginative effort is invested in pretending that certain contents obtain. In this sense, we can understand imagination as the 'offline' simulation of actual beliefs and perceptions (and perhaps other attitudes as well), where we analyze these in the normal way, as states individuated by their attitude and representational content. While I share the burgeoning interest in fiction, I want to suggest that we also have a lot to learn from poetry, and in particular from poetic metaphor. I will argue..Comment:
Camp, Elisabeth. Slurring Perspectives2013, Analytic Philosophy 54 (3):330-349.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Thomas Hodgson
Introduction: Slurs are among the most rhetorically powerful and insidious expressions in a language. One key reason for this, I will argue, is that they present contents from a certain perspective, which is dif?cult to dislodge despite the fact that it is precisely what a nonbigoted hearer most wants to resist.Comment:
Campbell, Shelley. Myra: a Portrait of a Portrait2013, in: Hannah Priest (ed.), The Female of the Species: Cultural Constructions of Evil, Women and the Feminine, Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press.-
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Added by: Hans Maes
Summary: Considers philosophical problems with representation, particularly in regard to the loss of particularity and individuality in instances when an identity takes on symbolic proportions. Hindley, the woman, has been totally merged with Hindley, the monster. Her particularity has been subsumed as a two-dimensional stereotype by having her photo treated with obsessive media attention by being repetitively linked to that same hated stereotype.Comment: Useful in classes focused on depiction and representation.
Artworks to use with this text:
Marcus Harvey, Myra (1995)
Despite Harvey's attack on reflex reactions to Hindley and his verbal protest to the contrary, his portrait has further incited public outrage and denied her a chance of fair treatment. There's a clear discrepancy between what the artist has said in interviews and what the painting appears to express. Useful in classes focused on depiction and representation.
Artworks to use with this text:
Marcus Harvey, Myra (1995)
Despite Harvey's attack on reflex reactions to Hindley and his verbal protest to the contrary, his portrait has further incited public outrage and denied her a chance of fair treatment. There's a clear discrepancy between what the artist has said in interviews and what the painting appears to express.
Capozzi, Mirella, Roncaglia, Gino. Logic and Philosophy of Logic from Humanism to Kant2009, In Leila Haaparanta (ed.), The Development of Modern Logic. Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
This chapter begins with a discussion of humanist criticisms of scholastic logic. It then discusses the evolution of the scholastic tradition and the influence of Renaissance Aristotelianism, Descartes and his influence, the Port-Royal Logic, the emergence of a logic of cognitive faculties, logic and mathematics in the late 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's role in the history of formal logic, and Kant's influence on logic.
Comment: Useful for a history of logic course. Familiarity with Aristotelian syllogistic is assumed.
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Butnor, Ashby, Matthew MacKenzie. Enactivism and Gender Performativity
2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 190-206
Comment (from this Blueprint): Butnor and MacKenzie apply a specific paradigm - the enactive model of cogniton - to the understanding of gender identity in this chapter. This chapter is thus a useful introduction to the enactive framework, but is also an important reading for those already familiar with the literature as it both tries to consider how gender can be 'natural' but also deeply social and political. As such, Butnor and MacKenzie straddle the line between the scientific and the political by provising a non-reductive, natural account of gender that does liberatory work. This reading is also highly relevant to feminists who are critical of essentialist views of gender and poses to them the question of whether we can have our naturalist cake and eat it too.