Doing Ontology and Doing Justice

What Feminist Philosophy Can Teach Us About Meta-Metaphysics

Bibliographic Data

ID8090450
AuthorsMari Mikkola (0000-0002-4319-7531, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume58
Issue7-8
Pages780-805
Publication date2015-09-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2015.1083469
OpenAlexW2200359381
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited30

Feminist philosophy has recently become recognised as a self-standing philosophical sub-discipline. Still, metaphysics has remained largely dismissive of feminist insights. Here I make the case for the value of feminist insights in metaphysics: taking them seriously makes a difference to our ontological theory choice and feminist philosophy can provide helpful methodological tools to regiment ontological theories. My examination goes as follows. Contemporary ontology is not done via conceptual analysis, but via quasi-scientific means. This takes different ontological positions to be competing hypotheses about reality’s fundamental structure that are then assessed with a loose battery of criteria for theory choice. Such criteria make up the constitutive values of ontology (e.g. providing a unified, coherent, non-circular, simple, parsimonious total theory). These values are distinguished from contextual values of a practice: the political and moral values embedded in the social context of inquiry. Although we may be frank about some meta-metaphysical value commitments, bringing in feminist contextual values is viewed as an unacceptable move when thinking about ontological theory choice. This paper then asks: is this move unacceptable? I think not and I aim to motivate this methodological insight here by examining recent work on grounding

Economic Justice · Epistemology · Feminist philosophy · Metaphysics · Ontology · Political science · Sociology · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Law · Philosophy