Thursday, February 9, 2012

Feminism and Science

Thanks to Sara's question in class today, I've done a bit of poking around on folks who have been talking about the impact of scientific research on feminist theory and care ethics.

Of course, Carol Gilligan is the mother of care ethics (though not feminism on the whole), and was a psychologist researching moral development, not a philosopher per se.  Her In a Different Voice is one of the classic texts, and spends a lot of time on her experimental work.  And, as I mentioned in class, Michael Slote, especially in The Ethics of Care and Empathy, is very interested in the research on how children develop empathy, etc.

Beyond that, it was to the Googles and the Philosopher's Index!

... and I didn't find much on my first pass.

It turns out that there has literally just been published an anthology on feminism and cognitive science, Neurofeminism. Of course, I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.

This is a little bit the obverse of the original interest, but may also be interesting: The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy's entry on Feminist Philosophy of Biology.

I have the word out to some of my colleagues who are experts on this stuff, though.  I'll update this post as I learn about more resources.

UPDATE 1: One colleague recommended Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender, which argues that most of the differences that are attributed to "natural" differences in male and female brains are in fact more correctly understood as cultural influences on our neurology.

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