Reviews for Discovering Reality Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Phi...

The average rating for Discovering Reality Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Phi... based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-01 00:00:00 Tony Villa I read pages 139 - 207 - How Can Language Be Sexist (139) - A Paradigm of Philosophy; The Adversary Method (149) - The Man of Professional Wisdom (165) - Gender and Science (187) 'How Can Language Be Sexist' - a discussion about ontology. This essay uses ontology as a means to briefly identify/prove the existence of sexist language. The essay is high-IQ work, but is ultimately pointless. ----------------------- 'A Paradigm of Philosophy; The Adversary Method' - a criticism of the "Adversary Paradigm" in Philosophy, whereby philosophers test the validity of arguments by means of aggressive attack. The author begins the essay with irrelevant comments on general aggression and with a specific definition of aggressive behaviour as hostile and unprovoked. The author later acknowledges a theme of debate in which the debater with the stronger personality tends to win the affection of the crowd while not necessarily winning the debate by strong argumentation. Her proposed alternatives to the Adversary Paradigm are 1) "to consider how the reasoning relates to a larger system of ideas," and 2) "[to consider] experience [as] a necessary element in certain reasoning processes." These are methods by which one may build a philosophy, but these methods will never establish the truth-value of a proposition in rational, academic philosophy. I liked reading this essay, but I am indifferent to the conclusion of this essay. ----------------------------------- 'The Man of Professional Wisdom' - an essay that introduces the concept of "Cognitive Authority" in the sciences. This concept is TRUE, and the effects of the cognitive authority of those in a specialized professions is real. Those who have cognitive authority do impose their own "metaphysics" and preferred methodology on their field of study; They can promote or ignore whomever, and thus can decide the degree of professional success a scientist will achieve in his field. Thus, "science advances one funeral at a time" (Max Plank). - The old gate-keepers die, and the new gate-keepers replace them, forever onward in time. The author, Kathryn Pyne Addelson, suggests that we "acknowledge the metaphysical commitments as part of the content of scientific understanding and thus open them to scrutiny and criticism by specialist and non-specialist alike" as a solution to the influence of cognitive authority. This criticism of the metaphysical commitments of scientists should be "institutionalize[d]" and made "part of [the] scientific method". The "criteria of scientific rationality and criticism" should "include [the] social arrangements within the scientific professions." She continues to say that a change in "our social system" in science would not be "illegitimate" politicization of science, because science is ALREADY politicized by way of the cognitive authority being exercised by thought-leaders in specialized sciences. This excuse for politicization of science is lousy; It shows a lack of truly scientific character and love for truth. Addelson is probably referring to the social sciences in this essay, but does not explicitly say so, and presents her argument as universal to science. Indeed, the social sciences have a problem with politicization (see: the decline of status of Darwanism in the social sciences - anthropology, psychology, sociology - during the 20th century; a decline facilitated by relentless (mostly) Jewish scholars who commandeered positions of gate-keepers in various prestigious universities. Read 'Culture of Critique' by Kevin MacDonald). But instead of trying to improve the actual status of social science as a fact-collecting mission, Addelson resolves to justify continued politicization of the sciences. By such a resolution, she betrays herself as a political actor, a typical academic feminist, a cunning and cynical politician. She is not a lover of truth. Any desire to redefine rational criticism to include "social arrangements within scientific disciplines" is a desire promulgate ideology, and is not a desire to discover facts about the world. But Addelson would say to me, "A fact is a product of a metaphysical epistemology; if we change our metaphysical assumptions, then we discover different (perhaps contradictory) facts. Truth is relative to one's metaphysical epistemology." You say that you have a metaphysical assumption about matter being a projection of the mind? Go sit in that corner and try to turn your toes to potatoes. -- Not all metaphysical epistemologies were made equal, thus not all of them are fruitful. -------------------------- 'Gender and Science' - (Sigh). This essay (Shiver) shamelessly employs psychoanalysis as a tool to critique science and psychoanalyze scientists. The essay was written by Evelyn Fox Keller, a daughter of two "Russian" (read: Jewish) immigrants. Keller firstly describes the development of objectivity in people with psychoanalytic theory and jargon, and boldly asserts the origin of objectivity to be in the mother-infant relationship. Keller secondly describes the development of gender with the same psychoanalytic theory and jargon. Keller, after describing objectivity and gender, thirdly describes the development of scientists with the concepts that were established in the previous sections. The essay contains verbiage which creates such ugly sentences as: "When even physics reveals "transitional phenomena" - phenomena, that is, about which it cannot be determined whether they belong to the observer or the observed - ...". This sentence may be re-rendered as: "... - phenomena that cannot be determined to belong to the observer nor the observed." Besides an invocation of quantum woo-woo as a supporting argument, we find constant equivocation, which hides the silliness of her truly bumpkin-bred ideas. I will now reveal the laughable logic of her ideas by a analysis of the following sentences: "The genderization of sciences - as an enterprise, as an intellectual domain, as a worldview - simultaneously reflects and perpetuates associations made in an earlier pre-scientific era. If true, then an adherence to an objectivist epistemology, in which truth is measured by its distance from the subjective, has to be re-examined when it emerges that, by this definition, truth itself has become generdized." The logic is explained thus: Science, especially the 'hard' sciences, is dominated by males and is viewed as a masculine profession, and is thus genderized. Furthermore, Nature (or, 'objective reality') is perceived as female and Reason as male: Nature is perceived as female because of the process of development of the ego within the mother-infant relationship (i.e. the "pre-scientific era"), wherein the infant first learns about the object/subject relationship with the mother; the mother (or mother-figure) becomes the first 'object' for the typical infant, thus the infant first discovers objective reality by objectifying its mother. Since the epistemology of objective truth began in the process of objectifying the mother, who is FEMALE, the 'objective truths' that spawn from such an epistemology are tainted (i.e. "genderized") and not sufficiently separated from the experience of the subject to constitute objective truth. One may compare this conclusion to the concept of Original Sin. This whole essay is littered with suchlike psychoanalytic gobbledygook. Blech I saw that the next essay was co-authored by Ellen Fox Keller, so I promptly skipped ahead to another random essay, which is titled, 'Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Epistemology and Metaphysics.' ctrl+w. If I had a physical copy of this book, I would use the whole book as the first source of kindling in a time of need, but I would use as kindling every page of the book that Evelyn Fox Keller authored in a time of abundance to spite her and her loathsome, psychoanalytic psychobabble.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-04 00:00:00 Laurie A. Norris Awalnya saya agak sangsi dan sedikit skeptis, bagaimana sebuah paradigma menilai paradigma lain, sekalipun dari bentang konteks yang berbeda. Tapi buku yang berisi 16 esei ini menyadarkan saya, bahwa batas-batas keilmuan dan pencarian atas '(R)realitas' adalah kerja-kerja yang tak akan dan tak pernah tuntas. Anda suka dan atau mengaku feminis? Anda peduli pada ilmu pengetahuan? Baca ini.