Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-24T00:26:27.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex Inequality and Bias in Sex Differences Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Alison M. Jaggar
Alison M. Jaggar*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH45221, U.S.A.
Get access

Extract

The relationship of philosophy to science is a matter of long historical dispute. Philosophy has been described variously as the mother, the queen or the handmaiden of science, depending on whether the philosopher’s role was perceived as that of giving birth to science, of regulating and legitimating scientific discourse or of clearing the conceptual underbrush in the way of scientific advance. This essay, by contrast, is grounded on a conception of philosophy and science as partners or sisters, perhaps even as Siamese twin sisters, both proceeding from the same impulse to understand ourselves and the world and to change both for the better. Occasionally relations between philosophy and science have been marred by sibling rivalry, with each sister claiming the right to control and limit the pretensions of the other. In fact, however, philosophy and science are interdependent and ultimately inseparable. To borrow a famous slogan from another context: science without philosophy is blind; philosophy without science is empty.

Type
I—Two Aspects: Science and Morality
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 13: Science, Morality & Feminist Theory , 1987 , pp. 24 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper was prepared for a symposium on Bias in Sex Differences Research, held at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chicago, 14-18 February, 1987.

References

Benbow, Camilla P. and Stanley, Julian C. ‘Sex Differences in Mathematical Ability: Fact or Artifact,’ Science 210 (1980), 1262-4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dinnerstein, Dorothy. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York: Harper and Row 1976.Google Scholar
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men. New York: Basic Books 1985.Google Scholar
Kohlberg, Lawrence. The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco: Harper and Row 1981.Google Scholar
Lowe, Marion. ‘The Dialectic of Biology and Culture,’ in Lowe, Marion and Hubbard, Ruth eds., Woman’s Nature: Rationalizations of Inequality. New York: Pergamon Press 1983.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Rosalind. Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1982.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex,’ in Reiter, Rayna R. ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review Press 1975, 157-210.Google Scholar
Washburn, Sherwood. ‘Tools and Human Evolution,’ Scientific American (1960).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed