Doing Ontology and Doing Justice

What Feminist Philosophy Can Teach Us About Meta-Metaphysics

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8090450
AutoresMari Mikkola (0000-0002-4319-7531, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen58
Número7-8
Páginas780-805
Fecha de publicación2015-09-12
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2015.1083469
OpenAlexW2200359381
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas26
Referencias citadas30

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