Liam Bright

Just read now! Interesting, agree that play is gone and that’s a noteworthy turn, laughed to think of myself as the new old left. I think you’re way off on the role and influence of feminist #philosophy of science though...

“Values and identity, allowed to “play around” on the field of otherwise objective research, become the only game in town” not recognisable as a description of the field, Longino’s under-determination argument isn’t as you described, & original values-folk not especially feminist

This thread has me thinking about this issue more, sorry for spamming you! I take Longino to have four main points: (1) empiricism, the proper evaluative metric in science is whether we are doing well in predicting the outcome of experiments and interventions...

(2) Under-determination, we need to make choices of theories and hypotheses on grounds that can't be fully captured by cognitive virtues (for critical review, http://thehangedman.com/teaching-files/svd/Intemann_2005.pdf …)...

(3) Diversity, we'd do best by empiricist lights if we allowed for a diversity of sets of non-cognitive values guide judgements, and (4) Feminism, among the non-cognitive values that can form part of a fruitful community of inquiry are characteristically feminist values.

My theory of ort predicts that of these you're gonna be sympathetic to (3), and at least not hostile to (1) and (2), so it's gonna be (4) you disagree with? (4) is where "here's a time when feminist principles led to better science" are relevant, but its in the context of (3).