Philosophy of mind and cognitive science is not yet a feminist place, but it should be. In the analytic tradition, philosophy of mind has usually been thought of as apolitical, with the human mind mostly understood and examined as universal and isolated from power structures and other social dynamics. Whereas fields like metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of language have thriving areas focused on social questions, there is little talk of social, or feminist, philosophy of mind.
In contrast, we believe that we can’t understand the mind without thinking about politics and society. As Sara Ahmed (2017) puts it in Living a Feminist Life:
If we think of the second-wave feminist motto “the personal is political,” we can think of feminism as happening in the very places that have historically been bracketed as not political: in domestic arrangements, at home, every room of the house can become a feminist room, in who does what where, as well as on the street, in parliament, at the university. Feminism is wherever feminism needs to be. Feminism needs to be everywhere (4).
We want to make philosophy of mind and cognitive science—an area of research we are both deeply committed to—a feminist place, a place from which to understand and contribute to the amelioration of different forms of oppression, psychological and otherwise.
Talk of “place” is not solely metaphorical: we think that feminists should take up physical space at universities, not only through writing about feminist topics, but also by opening up actual spaces for discussion, conversation, and sharing of ideas in academic venues.
We should also be shifting what is talked about in these spaces. In a recent pioneering collection on Feminist Philosophy of Mind, editors Keya Maitra and Jennifer McWeeny define feminist philosophy of mind as:
an area of study that investigates the nature of mind with reference to social locations marked by categories such as gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, and ability, and/or investigates the nature of social locations with reference to theories about the mind (3).
As Maitra and McWeeny highlight, when thinking about the mind, we should all be alert to the way structures of power affect our theorizing. We should be willing to question where our existing categories and ways of thinking about the mind come from and whom they serve. And we should actively be working to bring in a plurality of voices and concerns.
But we should go further than that. Taking seriously the feminist motto “the personal is political,” we believe that a feminist approach to philosophy of mind should start from the premise that the mind is political. We should, therefore, center the question: how are our minds shaped by oppressive social structures like the patriarchy?
It is a familiar point that what we perceive, believe, and desire is permeated by our political world. A less commonly noted point is that how we experience, believe, and know ourselves is political. Addressing how this happens, what this entails, and how we should revisit our understanding of mentality in light of it should be central to a feminist philosophy of mind.
We should also note that examining what patriarchy does to the mind (and to our understanding of it) will lead us to an examination of what different forms of oppression—not only sexism, but also racism, ableism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and cultural imperialism—do to the mind. A feminist philosophy of mind is (and should always be) aligned with anti-racist, decolonial, trans, and queer projects.
Where do we go next?
First, we should connect and re-conceive work that is already being done in philosophy of mind. Existing work on topics such as bias, emotions, psychological essentialism, and embodied cognition, as well as work done in feminist, queer, or critical race theory and phenomenology, can and should be integrated and occupy more space in the academy. We should teach courses on feminist philosophy of mind, organize workshops under that header, and connect with others doing similar work.
Second, we should strive to bring a wider range of voices into philosophy of mind. We should expand access to philosophical spaces to demographically marginalized groups, especially those at the intersection of multiple oppressions. We should take intellectual traditions outside of philosophy departments—such as work focusing on the mind done in gender studies or queer studies—seriously. We should cite more widely: both theorists from marginalized groups and those from outside analytic philosophy altogether (what Laura Silva calls “methodological promiscuity”). We should bring the experiences of those who are not cis, neurotypical, white, western males into theorizing about the mind. Indeed, we should be taking these experiences as a starting point, not as a mere add-on to theorizing.
Third, we should see feminism as relevant to all philosophy of mind. We are not thinking of feminist philosophy of mind as a segregated subfield for some people to dabble in, while mainstream, “serious” philosophy of mind goes on undisturbed. Instead, we think that philosophers of mind in general should get used to interrogating their own work from a feminist perspective. We should question the categories and concepts we employ, the (empirical and intuitive) data we start from, and the structures of power that both shape and benefit from them. We cannot hope to understand the structure of cognition without taking into account the effect of oppressive social structures on the mind, and without questioning the presuppositions of traditional theorizing.
Fourth, we should prioritize doing philosophy of mind in a socially engaged way. We should ask more questions that start from experiences of oppression and from engaging with social movements, such as questions about bias, objectification, or psychology of violence. Philosophy of mind can contribute to tracing the structural dimensions of what may seem like individual problems, located in specific minds. In this way, philosophy of mind can be part and parcel of consciousness-raising projects, especially when done collectively and taking as input collectively shared experiences.
Fifth, we would like to see more projects that have as part of their goal contributing to feminism as a political project. We need to understand the workings of the mind to address prejudice, the internalization of bad social norms, and how individuals contribute (willingly or not) to the perpetuation of oppressive social structures. Philosophy of mind can provide important pieces for thinking about helpful interventions. It should do so more.
A concrete example: the Lisboa Feminist Philosophy of Mind Workshop
This June, we organized a workshop on feminist philosophy of mind in Lisboa, at IfilNova (where Gloria is based). We talked about topics like first-person authority over gender claims, gut feelings, social scripts, identity labels, cognitive injustice, feminist methodology, objectification, and agency under bad ideology (brief summaries here and here). In some ways, it was a recognizable space for analytic philosophy of mind: many of these topics have been discussed at length, and presenters often engaged with familiar so-called “big names” in philosophy of mind.
At the same time, it was a kind of space we rarely find in philosophy. The topics were timely and connected to social and political concerns. Some of them reveal gaps in mainstream analytic philosophy: why so little discussion of sexual desire, gut feelings, or self-knowledge of gender? And most of the talks had a practical bent, sketching potential interventions. These included moving away from resolving self-illness ambiguities in psychiatry, changing gendered images in advertising to avoid blank faces, and propagating new scripts for social interactions.
There were also important differences from mainstream spaces in terms of demographics and dynamics. None of the presenters were cis men (submissions were anonymously reviewed, with the exception of our keynote Esa Diaz León and our invited speaker Gen Eickers). We de-emphasized affiliations and career stages throughout, to avoid the hierarchical atmosphere that often characterizes professional events. We managed our shoestring budget (supported by the Marc Sanders Foundation and the LMCKG–ArgLab, IFILNova and offset by our keynote funding her own trip) to prioritize supporting costs for speakers in vulnerable career positions. We hosted the workshop in a hybrid format, to increase accessibility. And, given the current political climate around trans inclusion in academic philosophy and beyond, we focused on making it very clear that this workshop was a trans-inclusive space, with multiple trans speakers and other talks engaging with trans issues and experiences.
It wasn’t a perfect space—most notably, our speaker line-up was not racially diverse (though the work of many Black philosophers and thinkers was discussed in many of the talks). We learned that we should have made more efforts to reach out specifically to POC and global majority philosophers, beyond the general call for papers. Despite this oversight, the workshop showed how philosophy of mind can start to become a much-needed feminist place. And we hope to continue this work in future occasions. We invite you to join us!
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Gloria Andrada
Gloria is an FCT Junior Researcher at IfilNova, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. She works in philosophy of mind/cognitive science and epistemology. She’s also interested in phenomenology and philosophy of technology.
Carolina Flores
Carolina is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz. She works at the intersection of philosophy of mind, epistemology, and social philosophy.
