Representing Reason Feminist Theory and Formal Logk Edited by Rachel Joffe Falmagne and Marjorie Hass ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford Contents ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com 12 Hid's Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Acknowledgments vii Copyright © 2002 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Introduction Representing Reason: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a Marjorie Hass and Rachel Joffe Falmagne retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Part 1 Logic and The Structure of Thought British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Chapter 1 The Politics of Reason: Toward a Feminist Logic 11 Val Plumwood Library of Congress Cataloging.. in.. Publication Data Chapter 2 Feminism and the Logic of Alterity 45 Representing reason: feminist theory and formal logic/ edited by Rachel Joffe Falmagne Val Plumwood and Marjorie Hass. p.cm. Chapter 3 Fluid Thinking: lrigaray's Critique of Formal Logic 71 Includes bibliographical references and index. Marjorie Hass ISBN 0-8476-9668-5 (alk. paper)-ISBN 0-8476-9669-3 (pbk.: alk. Chapter 4 "Power in the Service of Love": John Dewey's Logic paper) 89 1. Logic. 2. Feminist theory. I. Falmagne, Rachel Joffe. IL Hass, and the Dream of a Common Language Marjorie, 1965- Carroll Guen Hart BC57 .R47 2002 Chapter 5 Words of Power and the Logic of Sense 117 1601 .82--dc21 2002006968 Dorothea E. Olkowski Logic and Empirical Knowledge Printed in the United States of America Part 2 QTM Chapter 6 On Mapping a Transdisciplinary Approach v:;:::::; The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of to Reasoning 133 American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Rachel Joffe Falmagrie and Marie .. Genevieve Iselin Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. v vi ~ Contents Chapter 7 Logic from a Quinean Perspective: An Empirical Enterprise 169 Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson Chapter 8 Saying What It Is: Predicate Logic and Natural Kinds 191 Andrea Nye Acknowledgments Chapter 9 "What Do Girls Know Anyway?": Rationality, Gender, and Social Control 209 Pam Oliver Index 233 About the Contributors 241 Many people helped to make this book possible. The editors would particu, larly like to thank Linda Nicholson and Sandra Harding for their enthusi, astic encouragement and Jeff Della Rovere for his editorial assistance. Mar, jorie Hass appreciates the dialogues she has established with Lawrence Hass, Tim McCarthy, and Sally Tramel and thanks them for their ongoing intel, lectual and emotional encouragement. She also thanks Susan Seip for her many contributions to the production of the manuscript. Rachel wishes to thank the Five College Women's Studies Research Center for providing a stimulating interdisciplinary feminist context during the early years of this project, as well as Ann Ferguson, Kristin Waters, Linda Dusman, and Diane Bell for broad,ranging discussions across disciplines over the years and for their support of this work. Rachel also thanks the graduate participants in the informal feminist discussion group at Clark for their intellectually and personally valuable contributions to her thinking, in particular Emily Abbey, Christina Hatgis, Marie,Genevieve Iselin, Saeromi Kim, and Abi, gail Mansfield. Finally, we would like to thank our editors at Rowman and Littlefield: Maureen MacGrogan, who initially enthusiastically accepted the book; Eve DeVaro, who saw it through to the end; and Erin McKindley, who supervised the publishing process. A summer research grant from Muhlen, berg College made it possible for Marjorie Hass to write her contribution to this volume. Rachel Joffe Falmagne's contribution and editorial work was supported by a three,year grant from the Spencer Foundation. vii viii r--J Acknowledgments We acknowledge with thanks permission to reprint the following material: INTRODUCTION "The Politics of Reason: Towards a Feminist Logic" by Val Plumwood. Reprinted with permission of the publisher from Australasian] ournal of Philosophy 71, no. 4 (1993): 436-462. '"Power in the Service of Love': John Dewey's Logic and the Dream of a Common Language" by Carroll Guen Hart. Reprinted with permission Representing Reason: of the author and the publisher from Hypatia 8, no. 2 (Spring 1993 ): Feminist Theory and Formal Logic 190-214. "Logic from a Quinean Perspective: An Empirical Enterprise" by Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson. Reprinted with permission of the MARJORIE HASS AND RACHEL JOFFE FALMAGNE author and publisher from On Quine (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000). '"What Do Girls Know Anyway?' Rationality, Gender, and Social Con, trol" by Pam Oliver. Reprinted with permission of the publisher from Feminism and Psychology 1, no. 3 (1991): 339-360. This volume brings together recent essays addressing feminist issues in formal logic and logical issues in feminist theory. As the first volume with this spe, cific focus, it places itself in a contested terrain. Among logicians, the thought that feminism might have something of value to say about formal logic is usually treated with skepticism if not dismissal. The convergence of feminism and logic may also be met with skepticism among some feminists who perceive the projects of feminism to be aimed at more pressing political concerns than the problematics of abstract theory. It is our hope that this collection will dissipate those preconceptions. The chapters to follow reveal that many core concepts at issue in recent feminist theorizing and in philosophical logic overlap. The thematic center of the volume is the relationship between our informal assumptions about concepts such as difference, identity, and generality and our efforts to produce precise, formal representations of these concepts. It is here that feminist theory and philosophical logic engage most fruitfully. Feminist theory has long argued that the exclusion of women from philo, sophical work was more than simply a matter of unfair treatment. When fem, inist activism made it possible for women to be "added" into theory, the full impact of their prior exclusion was finally revealed. This exclusion, in terms of the exclusion of both women thinkers from the academy and women's lives from philosophical consideration, was persuasively shown to undermine the presumed neutrality of many of philosophy's most cherished assumptions in areas ranging from political theory to ethics. Introduction r--J 3 2 r--J Hass and Falmagne During the 1980s and 1990s, feminist philosophers extended their cri... understand these concepts. Moreover, it serves a normative function as well, tiques of this traditional exclusion beyond the political sphere and into the legislating the extension of these terms and holding up for us a model of how bastions of science studies, informal logic, and epistemology. In a series of in... we ought to think. Andrea Nye's groundbreaking book Words of Power: A fluential books and articles, the traditional stance of the man of reason (in... Feminist Reading of the History of Logic isolated this normative role, arguing dependent, neutral, and unemotional) was shown to be an illusory ideal, that formal logic has historically functioned to legitimize the discursive pat.­ made possible only when fundamental features of human nature were brack... terns of the powerful and suppress the forms of speaking that might offer 4 eted and then dismissed as "womanly."1 Far from identifying a special "femi... methods of resistance to exploitative power systems. She indicted the very nine" way of knowing or a segregated woman... specific theoretic framework, desire for a logical theory as an instantiation of the desire for power and con.­ this new work revealed the extent to which what philosophy had always at ... trol. The controversial nature of Nye's reading of the history of logic, and the tributed to women (particularly the specific limitations of embodiment) were consequent breadth of her charges against formal renderings of disputed con... in fact the property of every human being. Moreover, the traditional di ... cepts, inspired both thought ... provoking and dismissive critiques. Although chotomy between the man of reason and the emotional woman would need none of the authors in this volume (including Nye herself) echo Nye's early to be rethought in terms of a more complex single human subject, able to rea... call for a dismantling of formal logic in favor of fully informal interpretations son and feel, to exist independently and in relation. The scope of this work of inference, the influence of her book-the first to offer a specifically femi ... has revitalized epistemology, informal logic, and science studies, raising new nist critique of the desire for abstract logical representation-is still widely and more complex questions about the nature of knowledge for these newly apparent. discovered embodied and perspectival knowers. The hope that informal logic would offer an unproblematic alternative to At the same time, the desegregation of the subject's attributes made pos ... the perceived biases of formal logic has also been disrupted. As shown in a sible a deeper analysis of the nature of sex and gender differences. Feminists series of articles in Informal Logic, informal or critical thinking provides 5 were increasingly convinced that there were crucial differences between men standards for reasoning that are open to biased application. Trudy Govier and women and that these differences made a difference in the way that men has argued that even norms for reasoning that appear neutral and universal and women theorized the world, albeit not in the ways that the philosophi ... on the surface can be applied in ways that serve to silence those deemed to cal tradition presumed.