[A scholar submitted the following data and accompanying analysis; I have made minor edits only.--ES]
- Lycan and Prinz, Mind and Cognition: An Anthology (3rd ed., 2008) has three texts by women (one of them co-written with a man) among 56 chapters.
- Heil, Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology (2004) has five texts by women among 50 chapters.
- Chalmers, Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (2002) has two texts by women among 63 chapters.
- Morton, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind: Readings with Commentary (2nd ed., 2010) has three texts by women among 40 chapters.
- O'Connor and Robb, Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings (2003) has zero texts by women among 28 chapters.
- Bermudez, Philosophy of Psychology: Contemporary Readings (2006) has three texts by women (two of them co-written with men) among 30 chapters.
- Beakley and Ludlow, The Philosophy of Mind: Classical Problems/Contemporary Issues (2nd ed., 2006) has two texts by women (one co-written) among 83 chapters.
- Noe and Thompson, Vision and Mind: Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception (2002) has one text by a woman among 21 chapters.
Possibly I am missing one or two
relevant anthologies, but I am confident that these are representative.
Note also that I've not included a few older volumes -- including
Block, Flanagan, and Guzeldere's The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (1997), Goldman's Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science (1993), and Block's Readings in Philosophy of Psychology
(2 vols., 1980-81) -- but the breakdown in these is no different from
the ones listed above. Finally, note that things do seem to be much
better in the various Oxford handbooks, but these consist of contributed
articles instead of anthologized texts.
1. Anthologies
are important because they embody a narrative (a myth?) that a
discipline tells about itself, through its recognition of certain texts
as constituting a secular canon.
2. They also have an extremely significant pedagogical role: being included in a widely-read anthology presumably makes it more likely that a piece of writing will be read, and regarded as important, by the philosophers (and non-philosophers) of the future.
3. They influence the course of future philosophical work, by signaling to members of the profession that certain texts are important and worth responding to.
4. But those who compile anthologies are NOT just passive recipients of a canon that has already been established, whether by God or the "philosophical community". Rather, editors of these volumes are in a position to DECIDE which texts will be counted as canonical.
5. The upshot of the above is that those who compile anthologies have a social responsibility to ensure the justice of the narratives they convey, in addition to the "intellectual" responsibility of selecting the texts that are best or most important "simply on the merits".
6. Moreover, the idea that there could be any way to assess the merits of philosophical texts dispassionately, without any attention to considerations of justice, is obviously false. There are all kinds of biases that influence our judgment of the quality or importance of philosophical work: not just our own, but also those of past philosophers who deemed certain texts as worthy of commentary, and others not.
7. But! -- I can hear the rejoinder coming -- all this overlooks the fact that there is not ENOUGH work in the philosophy of mind by women from the past decades that is important/excellent enough to be treated as canonical. This is nonsense. First, note again the extent to which our judgments concerning matters like these are likely to be biased. And second: Patricia Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Jane Heal, Jennifer Hornsby, Frances Egan, Maggie Boden, Susan Hurley, G.E.M. Anscombe, Lynne Rudder Baker, Louise Antony, Alison Gopnik, Helen Steward, Janet Levin, Jennifer Church, Kathleen Akins, Patricia Kitcher, Tamar Gendler, Valerie Hardcastle, Cynthia Macdonald, Deborah Brown, Diana Raffman, Fiona Macpherson, Elisabeth Pacherie, Joelle Proust, Fiona Cowie, Josefa Toribio, Karen Neander, and Susanna Schellenberg... I could go on, but presumably this proves the point. (And then there is this.)
Very glad to hear what you think.
2. They also have an extremely significant pedagogical role: being included in a widely-read anthology presumably makes it more likely that a piece of writing will be read, and regarded as important, by the philosophers (and non-philosophers) of the future.
3. They influence the course of future philosophical work, by signaling to members of the profession that certain texts are important and worth responding to.
4. But those who compile anthologies are NOT just passive recipients of a canon that has already been established, whether by God or the "philosophical community". Rather, editors of these volumes are in a position to DECIDE which texts will be counted as canonical.
5. The upshot of the above is that those who compile anthologies have a social responsibility to ensure the justice of the narratives they convey, in addition to the "intellectual" responsibility of selecting the texts that are best or most important "simply on the merits".
6. Moreover, the idea that there could be any way to assess the merits of philosophical texts dispassionately, without any attention to considerations of justice, is obviously false. There are all kinds of biases that influence our judgment of the quality or importance of philosophical work: not just our own, but also those of past philosophers who deemed certain texts as worthy of commentary, and others not.
7. But! -- I can hear the rejoinder coming -- all this overlooks the fact that there is not ENOUGH work in the philosophy of mind by women from the past decades that is important/excellent enough to be treated as canonical. This is nonsense. First, note again the extent to which our judgments concerning matters like these are likely to be biased. And second: Patricia Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Jane Heal, Jennifer Hornsby, Frances Egan, Maggie Boden, Susan Hurley, G.E.M. Anscombe, Lynne Rudder Baker, Louise Antony, Alison Gopnik, Helen Steward, Janet Levin, Jennifer Church, Kathleen Akins, Patricia Kitcher, Tamar Gendler, Valerie Hardcastle, Cynthia Macdonald, Deborah Brown, Diana Raffman, Fiona Macpherson, Elisabeth Pacherie, Joelle Proust, Fiona Cowie, Josefa Toribio, Karen Neander, and Susanna Schellenberg... I could go on, but presumably this proves the point. (And then there is this.)
Very glad to hear what you think.
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