Dear all, Just a reminder - Ella Whiteley is speaking on "Human Nature, Dispositions, and Gender" at the SMG today, 5.30-7.00pm in the Faculty Board Room (more details below).
Hope to see you there, Matthew Simpson -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Fwd: Serious Metaphysics - 6th Nov - Ella Whiteley - "Human Nature, Dispositions, and Gender" Date: 02-11-2013 10:56 From: "M. Simpson" <[email protected]> To: [email protected], [email protected] Dear all, This week at the SMG we have Ella Whiteley giving a talk entitled "Human nature, dispositions, and gender" (abstract below). We will meet on Wednesday 6th Nov, from 5.30 - 7.00pm in the philosophy board room. I hope to see many of you there. Best wishes, Matthew Simpson Ella Whiteley - Human Nature, Dispositions, and Gender "Claims about our ‘natures’ have provided the premise of many essentialist arguments about gender, whereby (usually biological) essences are used to explain and justify social differences. Rousseau, for example, claimed that it is women’s natural, biological role in reproduction that makes them suited to domestic life. A common feminist response to this picture was the ‘sex/gender distinction’. This claims that whilst there may be fixed natural differences on the level of sex – biologically, we are either male or female – this tells us nothing about our gender: whether I am a man or a woman is wholly a matter of social construction. Finding this distinction problematic, I offer an alternative criticism of the essentialist, one that more substantially interrogates the core biological assumptions of essentialism. Contrary to the essentialist’s straightforward and uncomplicated claims about our natures, I use a disposition-based model to argue that our natures are not fixed, monistic, crudely-deterministic, or contrastable with nurture. Once reformulated in this way, our (biological) natures are not things that feminists should fear, requiring them to siphon the ‘natural’ off from their theorising. Instead, I claim that biology is a critical resource that feminists should not deny themselves; our ‘natures’, I claim, can positively contribute to feminist research." -- Matthew Simpson PhD Student in Philosophy University of Cambridge Mail: Robinson College, Cambridge, CB3 9AN _____________________________________________________ From the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
