From: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark Peterson)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Question for Ruth
Date: 12 Nov 1992 16:33:35 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
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From article <1992Nov11.213254.426@news.wesleyan.edu>, by RGINZBERG@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Ruth Ginzberg):

[...]

> I also suggested that it is a form of reasoning
> first described by Marx & later appropriated by feminist activists, known as
> "consciousness raising."


Hmmm.  The form of reasoning associated with the raising of
consciousness?  We always called this, um, dialectic.  And that, um,
would be Hegel and not Marx.  And isn't it a little sticky to talk
about this as a 'form of reasoning' -- in a feminist context -- when
the 'reasoning' itself is a socially constructed bit of patriarchy?


>reasoning, because those who were able best to REdescribe the phenomena tended
>tobe those who were least well served by current descriptions of it, i.e., the
> epistemically disenfranchised, politically disenfranchised, etc.  

Incidentally, I liked most of the article.  ;-)


> I suggested
> that while this IS some use of human reason, it certainly is not deductive or
> inductive reasoning, but some yet other kind.


Ayup.  Dialectic....    [wicked temptation to make cracks about U Minn...]


> 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.


This was part of your article I was a bit curious about.  You're
suggesting that Hegel didn't do any of this?  It's all in Wissenschaft
der Logik -- and what isn't there explicitly, is implied.



[...]

> Aristotle & many of the GreatPhilosophersOfRationality made this observation]

Don't soft sell this Ruth.  Aristotle argued that women lacked the
rational part of the soul entirely.  This left them unable to pursue
anything that required the rational/speculative faculty.  These
observations (in de anima and generation/parts of animals) were picked
up by the Church (St. Thomas et krewe) -- with gusto, I might add --
and from there it was a short step to wholesale incorporation into the
western world view.  Ugly business.


> 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
>itlook as though they "just don't reason as much" or "as well" or "in the same
> ways."  This was my proposal.


When consciousness is raised, and this means coming to a new
re-cognition not just of phenomena, but of the previous conceptual
categories used to make sense of those phenomena, new ways of
interpreting the phenomena of experience RECAST that experience.
Tada.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't say it -- this proposal, the use of
dialectical reason to achieve epistemological and political franchise,
was Marx's proposal too.  And Hegel's.  And, I guess, even
Schelling's.

But I really did like the article.  A good appropriation of these
themes as a context for a feminist methodology.  Old wine in new
skins.  ;-)


hiho

-- 
mark ce peterson   | uw-washington county  | hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu 
dept of philosophy | west bend, wi.  53095 | (414) 335-5200        

     The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
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