Logic and Discrimination

ABSTRACT

The paper is about the connection between logic and discrimination, with special focus on Plumwood’s ideas in her groundbreaking article ‘The Politics of Reason. Towards a Feminist Logic’ (1993). Although Plumwood’s paper is not focused on the notion of discrimination, what she writes is useful for illuminating some basic mechanisms of thought that are at the basis of discriminatory practices. After an introductory section about the concepts of logic and discrimination and their possible interconnections, I present Plumwood’s ideas in 1993 with a special focus on their relevance for understanding the nature of discrimination. More specifically, I use examples of discriminatory practices that make the connection between logical operations and oppression envisaged by Plumwood clear. I focus especially on two questions: Can logic produce discrimination? Can logic contribute to the fight against discrimination? If so, how?

KEYWORDS:

• Discrimination
• normativity
• non-classical logic
• feminist logic
• Val Plumwood

Acknowledgements

For her careful and detailed comments on one version of the paper I am deeply thankful to Franca d’Agostini. For helpful feedback I am grateful to Noëlle Rohde and Juliette Weyand, as well as to the audiences at the University of Hagen, the University of Paderborn and the Conference on Universal Logic at the Orthodox Academy of Crete.

Notes

1 According to Amnesty International, ‘discrimination occurs when a person is unable to enjoy his or her human rights or other legal rights on an equal basis with others because of an unjustified distinction made in policy, law or treatment’ https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/discrimination/.

2 Hegel Werke 7, 46. I quote Hegel’s Werkausgabe (see Hegel 1969ff.) as Hegel Werke, followed by the volume and page number. The translation is mine.

3 For Sigwart logic does not warrant the material truth of the results of following the logical rules, but only their formal adequacy (Peckhaus 2008, 106). See on logic as organon of material truth Peckhaus 2006, 58–69.

4 Some contemporary philosophers of logic (among others Harman 1986, Russell 2020) would not agree with this picture and especially contest that logic can have any normative impact on how we make choices. I am concerned here with the views of those philosophers (first of all Plumwood 1993 and derivatively the dialectical tradition of thinking about logic) who do think that there is some sort of connection. See also Steinberger 2020 on the normative role of logic. It is possible to assume that the idea that logic isn’t normative is (also) motivated by the threat posed by views affine to those presented in Nye 1990.

5 See Stekeler-Weithofer 1992, d'Agostini 2001 and Ficara 2021a on the relationships between the dialectical notion of logic and the technical idea of logic as the theory of valid reasoning in virtue of form.

6 See d’Agostini 2021a, 10.

7 Haslanger 2012, d’Agostini 2017. Rohde (2016, 10) stresses the analogy between the phaenomenon of discrimination and set theory. In set theory ‘if we take the predicate ‘green’ then there is a set x: x is green in which all green things are members. The same is true of groups of individuals. For every trait or feature, there exists a group. In the case of the group x: x is a woman its members can be discriminated against precisely because of their membership in this group’.

8 Routley’s (later Sylvan’s) and Routley’s (later Plumwood’s) views about logic were originally developed independently from the dialectical tradition. About Routley’s dialectical turn see Ficara 2021b. In 1980 Routley/Sylvan and Routley/Plumwood endorsed views about the intersection of logic and politics that were very close to the approach of authors working in the tradition of dialectics and critical theory, yet in 1980 Routley/Sylvan and Routley/Plumwood were critical towards this tradition (they especially criticized Marcuse’s critique of logic). See on this Hyde 2014, ch. 6.

9 See Routley and Routley 1972, Routley and Routley 1973, Routley and Routley 1979, Routley and Routley 1980, Routley et al. 1982, Routley and Routley 1983, Routley and Routley 1985.

10 In 2022 Nickel examines the position about ethics and mathematics presented by Kambartel 1972 – the thesis of a necessary connection between mathematics and ethics is justified in two perspectives: first by presenting the view that ethical judgements are cognitive, secondly by showing that mathematics is normative.

11 To the tradition of the feminist approach to logic belong works that are irretrievably critical towards logic (such as Nye 1990), and works, such as Trettin 1991 and Plumwood 1993, which are not irretrievably critical towards logic. Trettin 1991 rejects the positions (that were defended by both feminist philosophers and philosophers of logic) according to which the formal is the realm of the masculine and the material of the feminine.

12 For Cook and Saint-Croix 2023 Nye confuses the (possibly pernicious) ways that logic has been used with the ways that logic can be used.

13 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupism and Baer 2013.

14 Backgrounding as hiding and suppressing brings Plumwood’s analysis close to the very focus of Trettin 1991. Trettin (1991, VII) shows that hiding/suppressing (verdrängen) is the fundamental logical operation, but also an operation essential to any form of expression.

15 I thank Juliette Weyand for suggesting this example to me.

16 On the notion of suppression see Plumwood’s groundbreaking 1968. On paraconsistency without simplification see d’Agostini 2021b.

17 As stressed in MacPherson 1999, this idea is crucial in order to circumvent Nye’s critique against formal logic. Non-classical logics are formal logics in Nye’s sense, yet they play the role of followers with respect to natural language and the concrete situations in which we think and act; they are closer to the consideration of people’s intentions, times, contextual elements.

18 See Cook and Saint-Croix 2023 for more insights about the connection between Plumwood’s take on feminist logic and anti-exceptionalism about logic, as well as about Plumwood’s idea that the phenomenon of theory selection is itself subject to oppressive dynamics.

19 A version of the example is used by Fricker 2008 to illustrate the meaning of testimonial injustice. In using it, I try to focus on the connection between logic and (testimonial) discrimination, which is not the specific aim of Fricker’s consideration, while it is the focus of d’Agostini 2019 and 2021a. See Rohde 2016 for a detailed analysis of the role of discrimination in Fricker’s analysis of epistemic injustice.