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  1. Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural Essentialism?Erich Hatala Matthes - 2016 - Social Theory and Practice 42 (2):343-366.
    Is there something morally wrong with cultural appropriation in the arts? I argue that the little philosophical work on this topic has been overly dismissive of moral objections to cultural appropriation. Nevertheless, I argue that philosophers working on epistemic injustice have developed powerful conceptual tools that can aid in our understanding of objections that have been levied by other scholars and artists. I then consider the relationship between these objections and the harms of cultural essentialism. I argue that focusing on (...)
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  • Essentialization as a distinct form of abductive reasoning.Alexios Arvanitis - 2014 - Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 34 (4):243-256.
    Essentialism is often criticized for producing biased behavior. Because it is a view through which people attempt to grasp the essence of things, it appears contradictory that essentialism might result in distortions of reality. Somewhere within essentialist cognitive processes there must be mistakes or omissions that fail to capture reality correctly. In this paper, I treat essentialization as an abductive reasoning process, as a hypothesis, that explains particular characteristics of people on the basis of category membership alone. Besides essentialization, essentialist (...)
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  • Environmental Ethics.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis (ed.), The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer.
    A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...)
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  • Gender Is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence.Theodore Bach - 2012 - Ethics 122 (2):231-272.
    Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the (...)
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  • Gender concepts and intuitions.Mari Mikkola - 2009 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39 (4):pp. 559-583.
    The gender concept woman is central to feminism but has proven to be notoriously difficult to define. Some feminist philosophers, most notably Sally Haslanger, have recently argued for revisionary analyses of the concept where it is defined pragmatically for feminist political purposes. I argue against such analyses: pragmatically revising woman may not best serve feminist goals and doing so is unnecessary. Instead, focusing on certain intuitive uses of the term ‘woman’ enables feminist philosophers to make sense of it.
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  • Feminist perspectives on sex and gender.Mari Mikkola - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Feminism is the movement to end women’s oppression. One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (...)
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  • Sex and Gender.Esther Rosario - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.
    This chapter surveys essentialist and anti-essentialist theories of sex and gender. It does so by engaging three approaches to sex and gender: externalism, internalism, and contextualism. The chapter also draws attention to two key debates about sex and gender in the feminist literature: the debate about the sex/gender distinction (the distinction debate) and the debate about whether sex and gender have essences (the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate). In addition, it describes three problems that theories of sex and gender tend to face: the (...)
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  • The stability of social categories.Abraham Sesshu Roth - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):297-309.
    One important thesis Ásta defends in Categories We Live By is that social properties and categories are somehow dependent on our thoughts, attitudes, or practices—that they are inventions of the mind, projected onto the world. Another important aspect of her view is that the social properties are related to certain base properties; an individual is placed in a category when the relevant base properties are thought to hold of them. I see the relationship between the social and the base as (...)
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  • (1 other version)Female Freedom and The Neapolitan Novels.Sam Shpall - 2021 - Hypatia 36 (4):676-701.
    This essay begins to develop a philosophical interpretation of Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale, a work of fiction that is known in English as The Neapolitan Novels. My ultimate aim is to explore the work's ambitious moral psychology, and particularly its subtle conceptualization of women's path to freedom. I begin by reconstructing some of the main ideas of Italian difference feminism as they are expressed in the texts of the Milan Women's Bookstore Collective—texts that are controversial milestones of Italian social theory, (...)
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  • Essentializing Language and the Prospects for Ameliorative Projects.Katherine Ritchie - 2021 - Ethics 131 (3):460-488.
    Some language encourages essentialist thinking. While philosophers have largely focused on generics and essentialism, I argue that nouns as a category are poised to refer to kinds and to promote representational essentializing. Our psychological propensity to essentialize when nouns are used reveals a limitation for anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Even ameliorated nouns can continue to underpin essentialist thinking. I conclude by arguing that representational essentialism does not doom anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Rather it reveals that would-be ameliorators ought to attend to the (...)
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  • Eco/feminism and rewriting the ending of feminism: From the Chipko movement to Clayoquot Sound.Niamh Moore - 2011 - Feminist Theory 12 (1):3-21.
    This article draws on research at an eco/feminist peace camp set up to facilitate blockades against clear-cut logging in coastal temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada in the early 1990s. The camp was said to be based on feminist principles and sometimes these were even articulated as eco/feminist principles. The slippage between these terms provides a focus for my discussion. Specifically the article explores the apparent paradox of the sheer vitality of this eco/feminist activism, (...)
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  • Metaphysics and social justice.Aaron M. Griffith - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (6).
    Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that aims to give a theoretical account of what there is and what it is like. Social justice movements seek to bring about justice in a society by changing policy, law, practice, and culture. Evidently, these activities are very different from one another. The goal of this article is to identify some positive connections between recent work in metaphysics and social justice movements. I outline three ways in which metaphysical work on social reality can (...)
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  • Strategic Conceptual Engineering for Epistemic and Social Aims.Ingo Brigandt & Esther Rosario - 2019 - In Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen & David Plunkett (eds.), Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 100-124.
    Examining previous discussions on how to construe the concepts of gender and race, we advocate what we call strategic conceptual engineering. This is the employment of a (possibly novel) concept for specific epistemic or social aims, concomitant with the openness to use a different concept (e.g., of race) for other purposes. We illustrate this approach by sketching three distinct concepts of gender and arguing that all of them are needed, as they answer to different social aims. The first concept serves (...)
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  • Eschewing Entities: Outlining a Biology Based Form of Structural Realism.Steven French - 2013 - In Vassilios Karakostas & Dennis Dieks (eds.), EPSA11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 371--381.
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  • Reconceptualizing solidarity as power from below.Robin Zheng - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (3):893-917.
    I propose a new concept of solidarity, which I call “solidarity from below,” that highlights an aspect of solidarity widely recognized in popular uses of the term, but which has hitherto been neglected in the philosophical literature. Solidarity from below is the collective ability of otherwise powerless people to organize themselves for transformative social change. I situate this concept with respect to four distinct but intertwined questions that have motivated extant theorizing about solidarity. I explain what it means to conceptualize (...)
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  • A Contemplation on the Role of Gender in One's Identity: A Critical Review of Witt's "Uni-Essentialism" Thesis.Zahra Zargar, Hanieh Gholamali & Homa Yazdani - 2021 - Journal of Philosophical Investigations 15 (35):340-357.
    Metaphysics of Gender is a branch of Feminist Philosophy in which the metaphysical issues about "Gender" are discussed. Charlotte Witt is a feminist philosopher, who analyzes gender from a particular point of view. Witt names her theory "Uni-Essentialism" which is an essentialist theory of gender, while differing deeply from customary essentialist theories. She avoids the current framework of debate between Realists and Nominalists, because her main question is about the role of gender in one's identity. She says that there are (...)
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  • Convenzioni e generi. Donna (o uomo) si nasce o si diventa?Vera Tripodi - 2009 - Rivista di Estetica 41:39-57.
    Non è detto che ogni essere femminile sia una donna. Donna non si nasce, lo si diventa.Simone de Beauvoir, Il Secondo Sesso 1. Introduzione L’incredibile storia di Thomas Beatie, transessuale uomo ma con un sistema riproduttivo femminile, sembra mettere fortemente in discussione uno dei modi in cui convenzionalmente distinguiamo donne e uomini. Nato femmina, Thomas decide in età adulta di cambiare sesso e di sottoporsi a un intervento per la rimozione del seno e a una terapia ormonale. Volend...
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  • Is there a human nature?Mikael Stenmark - 2012 - Zygon 47 (4):890-902.
    Both evolutionary theory and Christian faith have a number of things to say about human beings. Evolutionists claim that humans are animals with a bipedal walk, an erect posture, and a large brain, while Christians maintain that, like everything else, human beings are created by God, but that, in contrast to other things on earth, we humans are also created in the image of God. This much is clear, but do either evolutionists or Christians also claim that there is such (...)
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  • Resemblances of identity: Ludwig Wittgenstein and contemporary feminist legal theory.Vanessa E. Munro - 2006 - Res Publica 12 (2):137-162.
    In a context in which there is manifest multiplicity in women’s daily lives, feminists have struggled to identify what it uniquely means to be a woman, without falling prey to charges of essentialism. Conscious, however, of the role which collective gender identity plays in providing coherence and motivation to feminist activity, a number of theorists have sought to find a way to retain group cohesion in the face of internal diversity. In this article, the merits and demerits of pre-existing attempts (...)
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  • Social Construction.Aaron M. Griffith - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.
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  • Real Essences and Natural Kinds in Feminist Theory: A Revisionist Account.Gillian Howie - 2006 - Contemporary Political Theory 5 (3):238-258.
    This paper examines the problem of natural kinds, a key problem within feminist theory, and argues for a non-instrumental realist account of group identity. I suggest that a reconstructed theory of essence helps to make sense of group membership because it combines a conventional account of groups with a realist commitment to there being something responsible for the appearance of regularities in the world. The claim that natural kind membership is a matter of similarity relationships manages to avoid metaphysical, universal (...)
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  • “All the Difference in the World”: The Nature of Difference and Different Natures.Paolo Heywood - 2020 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 50 (6):543-564.
    This article begins by examining the status of “difference” in representations of perspectivist cosmologies, which are themselves often represented as radically different to Euro-American cosmologi...
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  • Gender as a historical kind: a tale of two genders?Marion Godman - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (3-4):21.
    Is there anything that members of each binary category of gender have in common? Even many non-essentialists find the lack of unity within a gender worrying as it undermines the basis for a common political agenda for women. One promising proposal for achieving unity is by means of a shared historical lineage of cultural reproduction with past binary models of gender. I demonstrate how such an account is likely to take on board different binary and also non-binary systems of gender. (...)
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  • Butler and Postanalytic Philosophy.Paul Giladi - 2021 - Hypatia 36 (2):276-301.
    This article has two aims: to bring Judith Butler and Wilfrid Sellars into conversation; and to argue that Butler's poststructuralist critique of feminist identity politics has metaphilosophical potential, given her pragmatic parallel with Sellars's critique of conceptual analyses of knowledge. With regard to, I argue that Butler's objections to the definitional practice constitutive of certain ways of construing feminism is comparable to Sellars's critique of the analytical project geared toward providing definitions of knowledge. Specifically, I propose that moving away from (...)
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  • Embracing the Icon: The Feminist Potential of the Trans Bodhisattva, Kuan Yin.Cathryn Bailey - 2008 - Hypatia 24 (3):178 - 196.
    I explore how the Buddhist icon Kuan Yin is emerging as a point of identification for trans people and has the potential to resolve a tension within feminism. As a figure that slips past the male/female binary, Kuan Yin explodes the dichotomy between universal and particular in a way that captures the pragmatist and feminist emphasis on doing justice to concrete, particular lives without becoming stuck in an essentialist quagmire.
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  • Genere.Boris Rähme & Valentina Chizzola - 2017 - Aphex 15:1-38.
    According to a standard interpretation of the term, ‘gender’ denotes sets of social roles and expectations conventionally associated with the sexual physiology of human beings. Originally introduced in psychology, the term is now widely used in the social sciences and humanities, as well as in the biological sciences. In this article we introduce and discuss the central themes of contemporary philosophical debates on gender. Particular attention is paid to recent feminist arguments concerning the distinction between sex and gender, and to (...)
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  • Affective Schemas, Gestational Incorporation, and Fetal-Maternal Touch.Nicole Miglio - 2019 - Humana Mente 12 (36).
    In this paper, I will argue that one’s participation in the experience of pregnancy is an essential part of the constitution of selves. Taking the radical notion of concrete essence as my point of departure in the first part of my paper, as well as the fundamental continuity between essences and facts proposed by Husserl, I will briefly map out my proposal within the contemporary feminist debate. In particular, I will argue for re-framing the role of pregnancy, rejecting the idea (...)
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  • Nature, Feminism, and Flourishing: Human Nature and the Feminist Ethics of Flourishing.Celeste D. Harvey - 2016 - Dissertation, Marquette University
    This dissertation examines the viability of a feminist ethic of flourishing. The possibility of a eudaimonist, or flourishing-based, ethic adapted for the needs of feminist ethics and politics has recently been raised by a number of feminist moral philosophers. However, in these discussions, the degree to which an ethic of flourishing requires a substantive conception of human nature has not been adequately addressed. Flourishing-based ethical theories appear to require a substantive account of the kind of thing whose flourishing is to (...)
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  • The feminine in body, language and spirituality.Kaye Gersch - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Queensland
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