Perpetuation of patriarchy is not a property of research findings. Research findings are the creation of a model of things that already, truly exist, to the best of our capabilities. They do not, in themselves, allow or prevent mainstream media to publish biased articles on a completely different topic (morality) that use the findings as ammunition in their holy War Against Greens.
This is an absurdly non-consequentialist view. Research findings exist in some actual form, whether as an activation pattern of neurons in the brain of a researcher, or as a published paper. They are part of the physical universe, and as such, exert causal pressure on the rest of that universe.
When research findings are communicated in publications, that action has social consequences. To ignore those consequences is to be blind to reality.
It seems like your position on ev-psych is predicated on the idea that there are in fact no moral differences between men and women to be found in (true) ev-psych research. If there were, then gender inequality (in whatever direction) would be fully justified. I take it you’re not waiting around to see what natural science discovers about possible moral differences between men and women. If that’s right, you may be concluding a priori that natural sciences can’t discover such moral differences.
Which is a reasonable enough position. But then shouldn’t the work of feminism be to argue for this a priori claim directly, rather than attacking naturalistic approaches which are, in the end, harmless?
If that’s right, you may be concluding a priori that natural sciences can’t discover such moral differences.
Not a priori. There’s lots of history that shows gender roles have been very different in different places and times. Given that background, it seems awfully unlikely that the results of a difficult to test field tend to show that the current gender roles are more compatible with human biology that some other gender roles.
That said, if well-grounded research shows additionally morally relevant differences between men and women, then society should take those differences into account. In fact, morally relevant differences between men and women are readily apparent (e.g. pregnancy). It’s just not clear what those differences imply about how society must be structured.
I don’t trust the social process of Science (as EY describes in the Coming of Age sequence, for reference) to reliably produce truth about gender differences. As it has throughout history, I expect it to parrot the dominant social order.
(I don’t really understand what you mean by moral differences, but I don’t think it’s terribly relevant to my response.)
I don’t see social consequences as being inherently part of the research findings themselves, but rather an [Insert Unknown Explanation] process within humans that react in certain ways to the publications. My model classes research findings as “information”, input to the human-machine that will do some arcane computation and output negative social consequences when there is no prior function for correctly interpreting that input.
It is true, however, that the human mental structure and the findings interact in a very causal way that ought not to be ignored. On that we seem to agree. I find myself mentally emphasizing, however, the perceived fact that it is humans that have the greater part in this chain of causality. The same research findings given to a population of superintelligent ants, aliens, AIs or rocks would obviously not carry the same causal meaning. Because of this, I assign the “perpetuation of patriarchy” to the observer rather than the finding, for the same reasons the alien monster would not kidnap sexy torn-dress white women because of some inherent sexiness property of the women.
I guess I’m quite touchy on proper assignment of properties, and it’s sort of a mental reflex by now to double-check those assignments.
I think you’re wasting both of our time by pondering the implications of sexist research on ants.
Rationality means winning, and winning means thinking like reality. If the actual outcome of research in the real world (which, yes, means humans will be consuming the research) is not foremost in your mind when considering research, your map is dangerously far from the territory.
This is an absurdly non-consequentialist view. Research findings exist in some actual form, whether as an activation pattern of neurons in the brain of a researcher, or as a published paper. They are part of the physical universe, and as such, exert causal pressure on the rest of that universe.
When research findings are communicated in publications, that action has social consequences. To ignore those consequences is to be blind to reality.
It seems like your position on ev-psych is predicated on the idea that there are in fact no moral differences between men and women to be found in (true) ev-psych research. If there were, then gender inequality (in whatever direction) would be fully justified. I take it you’re not waiting around to see what natural science discovers about possible moral differences between men and women. If that’s right, you may be concluding a priori that natural sciences can’t discover such moral differences.
Which is a reasonable enough position. But then shouldn’t the work of feminism be to argue for this a priori claim directly, rather than attacking naturalistic approaches which are, in the end, harmless?
Not a priori. There’s lots of history that shows gender roles have been very different in different places and times. Given that background, it seems awfully unlikely that the results of a difficult to test field tend to show that the current gender roles are more compatible with human biology that some other gender roles.
That said, if well-grounded research shows additionally morally relevant differences between men and women, then society should take those differences into account. In fact, morally relevant differences between men and women are readily apparent (e.g. pregnancy). It’s just not clear what those differences imply about how society must be structured.
I don’t trust the social process of Science (as EY describes in the Coming of Age sequence, for reference) to reliably produce truth about gender differences. As it has throughout history, I expect it to parrot the dominant social order.
(I don’t really understand what you mean by moral differences, but I don’t think it’s terribly relevant to my response.)
I don’t see social consequences as being inherently part of the research findings themselves, but rather an [Insert Unknown Explanation] process within humans that react in certain ways to the publications. My model classes research findings as “information”, input to the human-machine that will do some arcane computation and output negative social consequences when there is no prior function for correctly interpreting that input.
It is true, however, that the human mental structure and the findings interact in a very causal way that ought not to be ignored. On that we seem to agree. I find myself mentally emphasizing, however, the perceived fact that it is humans that have the greater part in this chain of causality. The same research findings given to a population of superintelligent ants, aliens, AIs or rocks would obviously not carry the same causal meaning. Because of this, I assign the “perpetuation of patriarchy” to the observer rather than the finding, for the same reasons the alien monster would not kidnap sexy torn-dress white women because of some inherent sexiness property of the women.
I guess I’m quite touchy on proper assignment of properties, and it’s sort of a mental reflex by now to double-check those assignments.
I think you’re wasting both of our time by pondering the implications of sexist research on ants.
Rationality means winning, and winning means thinking like reality. If the actual outcome of research in the real world (which, yes, means humans will be consuming the research) is not foremost in your mind when considering research, your map is dangerously far from the territory.