Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Question for Ruth
From: RGINZBERG@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Ruth Ginzberg)
Date: 11 Nov 92 21:32:51 EDT
 <BxK9qz.IHF@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> <BxKAF7.JLw@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>
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Organization: Philosophy Dept., Wesleyan University
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In <BxKAF7.JLw@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> jwales@silver.ucs.indiana.edu writes:

> 
> My question to Ruth is as follows:  What is 'feminist logic'?  
> In what way is it different from ordinary 'human logic'?  What are
> the attributes of 'feminist logic' that allow us to differentiate
> it from other logic?  Is there a distinction 'feminine/masculine'
> along the lines of 'modal/deontic'?

First of all let me say that I am reporting what I have published re. feminist
logic, which is not the primary work in the field.  I guess I'd suggest Andrea
Nye's new (1992) book on feminism & logic (I forget the title) as more recent
and probably more representative.  Or Genevieve Lloyd, THE MAN OF REASON: 'MALE
AND 'FEMALE' IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY (1985 or so).

Anyway, in a paper titled "Teaching Feminist Logic" I suggested that
phenomenological redescription (see below for explanation) is a form of the use
of human reason.  I suggested that it is what Thomas Kuhn was trying to explain
when he stumbled around trying to explain "paradigm shifts" and/or why they
were, in the end, rational.  I also suggested that it is a form of reasoning
first described by Marx & later appropriated by feminist activists, known as
"consciousness raising."

Basically, I argued, phenomenological redescription is the activity of
redescribing a state-of-the-world in a way which accounts for more of the
phenomena.  Examples: Kuhn's "paradigm shifts", the transformation of the
hapless Winston's perceptions in the scifi novel "1984" (i.e., brainwashing),
Marxist class-consciousness raising, feminist gender-consciousness raising.
I suggested that this was *NOT* unique to women or feminists in any essential
way, but that it did tend to act as a sort of "affirmative action" w.r.t.
reasoning, because those who were able best to REdescribe the phenomena tended
to be those who were least well served by current descriptions of it, i.e., the
epistemically disenfranchised, politically disenfranchised, etc.  I suggested
that while this IS some use of human reason, it certainly is not deductive or
inductive reasoning, but some yet other kind.  I proposed that it needs to be
studied, that research needs to be done on learning about the parallels to
validity, soundness (etc.) in phenomenological redescription, and that CLEARLY
it is subject to both validity isomorphism and fallacy isomorphism, and that
rather than ignoring or pooh-poohing it, it needs to be researched.

Now you might ask:  what makes this FEMINIST philosophy?

Answer:  The fact that the motivating philosophical question arose out of a
feminist research concern:  namely, "Why is it that (anecdotally, any way)
fewer women than men are attracted to careers in math and science?  Why is it
that at puberty, scores on standardized tests (SAT, GRE, etc) begin to diverge
with women's scores dropping behind men's scores on shat is supposedly a
measure of math *aptitude*?  Why do so many women and men report (anecdotally,
any way) that women's reasoning and men's reasoning seem different? [even Kant
& Aristotle & many of the GreatPhilosophersOfRationality made this observation]
What would happen if, instead of asserting that this is incorrect, we tried
accounting for the phenomena in some other way?  The result suggested was that
perhaps politically and epistemically disenfranchised people engage more often
in a form of reasoning that is not yet *recognized* as reasoning, thus making
it look as though they "just don't reason as much" or "as well" or "in the same
ways."  This was my proposal.

--------------------------
(note: nothing here has anything to do with what women philosophers have
already said, or with what gender the author or discoverer of axioms might be,
etc.  it is not historiography; it is philosophy)

------------------------
Ruth Ginzberg <rginzberg@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Philosophy Department;Wesleyan University;USA