Scientific discovery and scientific progress are made by scientists, not philosophers. Philosophers sometimes overlook this fact. It appears to be completely ignored by those who call themselves feminist philosophers of science. A favored claim among them is that the production of a feminist epistemology, or of a feminist society, or of both together, will produce something called ‘feminist science’. Feminist science will be different, they say, from the science we now have. One leading proponent of this view, Sandra Harding, writes: (...) “[t]he sciences that gain world ascendancy in the future are unlikely to be so distinctively Western and androcentric as are the dominant tendencies today.” But just how will they differ? Like all utopians these feminists are short on specifics and we are never told what such a science as science would look like, even in outline, much less in detail, nor how it is likely to differ as science from swnh. (shrink)

We are often told that we are morally obligated to produce equal opportunity for all. Therefore, it seems we should examine what power we have to produce that desirable state. For it would be nonsense to say we are required to provide what is beyond our power to provide. When we examine this question, we find our power limited by two sets of constraints. One set comprises formal constraints upon the idea itself of equal opportunity. We cannot do the logically (...) impossible. The other set comprises limits upon our ability to produce the directed socio-economic change, getting known outputs for known inputs. I illustrate the formal constraints by outlining the work of Douglas Rae. The constraints upon our abilities I illustrate with evidence from sociology and politics. At the end, we shall discover that our power to make opportunities equal is sharply though not unbearably limited. A critical but unbaised survey will reveal that in the past fifty years we have gone remarkably far towards doing all that we are presently capable of doing to equalize opportunities. Perhaps we shall go even farther when we learn how. The word ‘real’ in the title is opposed to ‘ideal’ or even ‘chimerical'. It may seem an interesting question what equality of opportunity should consist in were we able to produce directed socio-economic change at will. But we are not. Therefore, a more interesting and more important question is what equality of opportunity consists in given the very large number of constraints within which we must work to achieve it. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.