Gender and Philosophical Intuition

Chapter Author(s) Wesley Buckwalter; Stephen Stitch
Book/Edited Volume TitleExperimental Philosophy
Editor(s)Joshua Knobe; Shaun Nichols
Pages307-346
AbstractIn recent years, there has been much concern expressed about the under-representation of women in academic philosophy. Our goal in this paper is to call attention to a cluster of phenomena that may be contributing to this gender gap. The findings we review indicate that when women and men with little or no philosophical training are presented with standard philosophical thought experiments, in many cases their intuitions about these cases are significantly different. In section 1 we review some of the data on the under-representation of women in academic philosophy. In section 2 we explain how we use the term ‘intuition,’ and offer a brief account of how intuitions are invoked in philosophical argument and philosophical theory building. In the third section we set out the evidence for gender differences in philosophical intuition and mention some evidence about gender differences in decisions and behaviors that are (or should be) of considerable interest to philosophers. In the fourth section, our focus changes from facts to hypotheses. In that section we explain how differences in philosophical intuition might be an important part of the explanation for the gender gap in philosophy. The fifth section is a brief conclusion.
KeywordsUnderrepresentation of women; Philosophical thought experiments; Intuitions; gender gap in philosophy 
This content was generated by artificial intelligence using the text of the original work.
Date Published December 26, 2013
PublisherOxford University Press
Volume2
ISBN9780199927401
Google Scholar Linkhttps://scholar.google.ca/scholar?cluster=16808365245460019449&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Open Access?No

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