Lessons in Fringe Philosophy?

What is feminist philosophy of science?  I take it that it is in large part constituted by pointing out facts such as this one:

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from New York points out that there has been far more testing on the possible health effects of chlorine-bleached coffee filters than on chlorine-bleached tampons and related products. - link

After pointing to such facts (which are obviously distressing), the feminist philosophers of science go on to propose scientific methodologies that will avoid the "male bias" in science.  I guess.  The project has more merit (though whether or not it has merit qua philosophy is  a question I leave unanswered here) than, say, feminist logic, which is, contrary to what you may have thought, not a study of the way women reason, but a concerted effort to undermine fundamental laws of logic (such as the law of identity) by pointing out that they contribute to the oppression of vast numbers of people (who do not believe in necessary or objective truths or else allegedly do not believe in "our" objective truths).  That there is no such thing as "objective truth", and therefore no such thing as the modern analytic philosophers "law of identity", is often defended by appeal to the trivial claim that we are all subjects.

We here at Scottish Nous do not find either feminist philosophy of science or feminist logic, at least in their above crystallizations, very philosophically interesting.  If, however, you think that one of your favorite subjects (or arguments) has been here maligned, please take a moment to set us straight.

 

Comments

[Tom]

Indeed, I find that some feminists sadly tend to retreat to "surrender positions" such as moral subjectivism, pragmatism, and misology. They should recognize that feminism, at least qua the thesis that a woman should not be disadvantaged because of her gender, is both obvious and perfectly defensible from the correct other philosophical positions.

[Mike Z]

I think you know about this, but there are some good arguments (a la Longino) in favor of promoting diversity in the sciences. Not because it helps prevent oppression or because it will help keep the naughty bits from getting inflamed, but because it increases the collective objectivity of science. Hence, it is more philosophical than...well, than whatever is the alternative that you are suggesting in your post.

No individual (or individual group) can hope to recognize or escape all of their own biases, so by incorporating a diversity of viewpoints, the scientific community can better expose and eliminate the biases of the individual members of the community.

[Scott Hagaman]

So we need more people with varied interests making additional progress in science. Duh!?

[Mike Z]

Unsurprisingly, there often are good philosophical arguments for what otherwise may be obvious conclusions.

Also unsurprisingly, it often takes a very specific, well-formulated effort to get an otherwise obvious conclusion to be taken seriously by the philosophical community. Remember the Kuhnian context that many philosophers of science were working with. Something like: "We are all hopelessly locked into our own paradigms, so we can never achieve objectivity."

So, despite your unenthusiastic response, the argument I outlined above does seem to count as philosophically interesting even though it is generally labeled as feminist (for some reason that I do not really understand).

[Noumena]

What is feminist philosophy of science?

You propose to answer this question by examining a single utterance of a Congresswoman? I have no response to this except the interjection `the fuck?'