Primary Sources:
David Stove, "The Intellectual Capacity of Women," Ch. 5 of Cricket Versus Republicanism (Quakers Hill Press, 1995), originally published in Proceedings of the Russellian Society, Vol. 15, 1990 and http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/women.html (Unless otherwise indicated all quotations attributed to Stove are from this essay.)
J. Teichman, "The Intellectual Capacity of David Stove," Philosophy 76 (2001): 149-57.
David Stove, "What is Wrong With Our Thoughts? A Neo-Positivist Credo," The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 179-200.
Supplemental Sources:
Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York: Vintage, 2008). (You must whisper her name.)
Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindications of the Rights of Woman (London: Penguin, 1982), first published 1792.
Janet Todd, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (London: Phoenix, 2000).
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (London: Penguin, 1985), First Published 1793.
Richard Holmes, "A Philosophical Love Story," Sidetracks (New York: Vintage, 2000), pp. 195-267.
Phil Gasper, "IQ, Genetics, and Racism," International Socialist Review, Jan-Feb., 2008, at p. 17.
This essay is for I.G.M. and S.G.M. (Happy Birthday Pisces!) and M.S. (Happy Birthday Gemini!).
I.
David Stove is a philosopher whose writings are controversial and whose work must be read and refuted by those of us opposed to his philosophical and political views.
In an earlier essay I set forth a critique of Professor Stove's epistemological and metaphysical positions. I also provided a defense of idealism on the grounds that philosophical idealism is both more complex and attractive to contemporary theorists than Stove realized.
I will continue to defend those essays -- and this article -- from hackers and vandalism because I believe that they can help to dramatize the flawed thinking that leads, even intellectuals, to denigrate the intelligence of women (still today) and of others who are deemed "marginal," or "like women."
In other words, persons -- like me -- are routinely given unsolicited assistance in thinking about political or spiritual issues by others who seem (to themselves) "superior" to the unwashed masses of students and writers or "subpersons," again, like me. ("Master and Commander" and "The Taming of Somebody I Don't Know Who.")
I am a phenomenologist who is drawn to the hermeneutic tradition and who finds much in recent versions of idealism valuable and useful.
My pragmatist sympathies also lead me to borrow from rival philosophical schools, when necessary, in developing my own theoretical arguments. As long as my finished arguments and conclusions are internally consistent, while remaining externally significant and yielding explanatory power, divergent elements are fine.
It is for fair-minded readers to decide whether what I say coincides with their intuitions.
I am also a feminist because: 1) I see men and women as natural equals, except that women have been denied opportunities and rights for centuries and this has produced unjust and artificial differences in the respect accorded to women's achievements and capacities as compared with men's achievements. This is cruel and unjust to women. 2) I believe that traditionally sexist societies (like ours) must take "affirmative action" to provide opportunities for women to wield political power, enter the academy, enjoy outlets for creative work that enriches everyone.
Professor Stove has declared his commitment to positivism and materialism. This makes Stove's self-contradictions and unknowing abandonment of his own philosophical foundations even more striking in this essay.
Professor Stove is also a self-declared opponent of feminism and far from an adherent of analytical philosophy, despite his claims to the contrary, since Professor Stove's grasp of logic is shaky at best.
Stove contradicts his self-professed "foundational stance" by offering a deeply flawed a priori argument based on probability theory -- after insisting that a priori arguments (ideas) cannot affect reality -- in order to establish a claim about human social reality, namely, that women "on the whole" lack "intellectual capacity" by comparison with men.
Stove's contentions are incoherent on his own terms. His argument is invalid descriptively and logically. Stove's argument is based on an inadequate or non-existent understanding of history. Stove's argument is filled with unexamined and invalid assumptions of fact, also false or illogical doctrines. Stove's argument is unsupported empirically; lacking scholarly foundations; riddled with philosophical errors; it is false and pernicious.
I am rarely this forceful or passionate in my criticisms of a philosopher's ideas. This intensity is justified since Professor Stove's contentions are not simply false, but harmful to young people, in particular, who will not recognize his errors and may even believe his false claims. ("Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism.")
I will not rely upon or quote other criticisms of Stove's essay. I will simply read it, pointing out errors and difficulties, offering some rejoinders by way of conclusion.
I am certain that Stove's essay is not only mistaken and poorly argued, but that it is a paradigm of fallacious reasoning from flawed premises to incoherent conclusions. For example, Stove's first paragraph is puzzling:
"I believe that the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men. By 'on the whole,' I do not mean just 'on the average'; though I do mean that much. My belief is, if you take any degree of intellectual capacity which is above average for the human race, as a whole, then a possessor of that degree of intellectual capacity is a good deal more likely to be a man than a woman."
What is an "intellectual capacity"? What is "intelligence"? Professor Stove does not say.
Suppose that a person displays an unusual fondness and talent for crime. Is that an "intellectual capacity"? If so, then Professor Stove is correct. Empirical evidence (which Stove claims to admire) suggests that men are more likely to commit crimes than women, more likely to be violent and more likely to be stupid about it so as to get caught. Men are "on the whole" and "on average" more likely to be anti-social morons. This can be demonstrated empirically. Indeed, Professor Stove may illustrate the point.
I suspect that this is not the sort of "intellectual capacity" that Stove has in mind.
Intelligence is a vague and context-sensitive quality or virtue that is not easily defined: "[Intelligence] has never been given an agreed-upon precise scientific definition." (ISR, p. 18.)
It has been suggested that: "intelligence is whatever IQ tests measure, but without some further justification this definition is purely arbitrary. In fact the two ideas most commonly associated with intelligence by experts are the ability to adapt to one's environment and ability to learn, but traditional IQ tests are not designed to measure either of these capacities." (ISR, p. 18.)
What do IQ tests measure? Intelligence. What is "intelligence"? Whatever IQ tests measure.
Needless to say people designing IQ tests tend to define intelligence in terms of measuring qualities associated with themselves and others like themselves. Traditionally, most of the persons creating such tests have been affluent white men. Hence, it should not surprise us if traditional testing indicated that women and non-whites residing in places other than suburbia are less intelligent than the mostly suburban and middle class white men who make IQ tests.
There is no objective basis for concluding that women are less intelligent than men. This is true even in terms of IQ tests biased in favor of men and boys assuming that a distinction exists between men and boys.
When cultural factors are accounted for African-Americans are demonstrably as intelligent, or more intelligent, than others. Persons taking the so-called "Black IQ Test," discovered that they were semi-vegetable-like morons as a result only of changes in the language in which traditional IQ questions were asked.
I have serious doubts that intelligence can be measured or quantified in a non-biased manner.
Stove does not tell us at any point in this essay what he means by an "intellectual capacity." Hence, throughout Stove's subsequent discussion, he simply assumes that we all agree with him about what is an intellectual capacity.
Furthermore, Professor Stove also takes it for granted that everyone in history for thousands of years knew exactly what Stove means today by an intellectual capacity (which he does not tell us), while agreeing with Stove that women have less of it than men especially much less than Professor Stove himself.
Stove sees himself as very well "endowed" -- as it were -- with this mysterious "intellectual capacity."
We will be the judges of that claim, Professor Stove. From these astonishing beginnings Stove descends even further into the pit of incoherence:
"In the past almost everyone, whether man or woman, learned or unlearned, believed the intellectual capacity of women to be inferior to that of men. Even now this is, I think, the belief of most people in most parts of the world. In this article my main objective is simply to remind the reader of what the evidence is, and always was, for this old belief, and of how strong that evidence is."
For most of recorded history people believed that the earth is flat. Many still do. This does not make such a belief true.
Professor Stove is telling us that most people have always believed "X" (which he does not define), therefore, we should continue to believe "X." This is not a compelling argument.
I allude to the majority's belief in religion in my critique of Richard Dawkins's recent book. However, I do not infer from that majority belief that religion is "true" or that there is a God. I argue that the burden of proof rests with critics to establish the irrationality of belief. Also, I argue that belief and non-belief are equally rational given inevitable human ignorance concerning such matters. These claims are very different from Stove's contentions concerning women's intelligence or lack thereof.
I eagerly sought to examine Professor Stove's evidence for this historical belief hoping that I might be intellectually superior to women only to discover that there is not a single footnote accompanying his text. Worse, it appears that -- as I suspected -- I am intellectually inferior to most of the women I have known and all of those that I have loved.
There is not one citation or quotation, in other words, from a single empirical study or historical work of any kind to support Stove's abstract generalizations.
What does "almost everyone" mean? 75% of persons who have written books in the past have expressed such an opinion? 4 out of 5 dentists agree? We do not know. Stove does not know.
Professor Stove has contemplated his navel, looked up at the ceiling, scratched his "nether regions" and pulled these conclusions out of it.
I will now indulge in a Stove-like display of unsupported philosophical generalization: "throughout history left-handed persons of Asian ancestry have always been gay, but only when they are Jewish, of course, and not if they are atheists or if they play chess, except if they play chess on Tuesdays."
There is just as much "evidence" for this claim as Stove provides for his contention about women's "intellectual capacity" -- none. The lack of evidence is not altered if I say: "Everyone has always believed this."
Notice that Stove's flawed reasoning has nothing to do with the validity of a priori arguments or classical rationalism.
Stove is offering unsupported empirical generalizations, but giving them an a priori form.
A mathematical proposition is an a priori assertion and may be valid, even necessarily so, without referring to the empirical world. Think of calculus or probabilities -- which will feature in Stove's argument -- that refer to likely future states of the world.
A generalization or interpretation concerning empirical reality, however, should point to some evidence supporting it in what is laughingly known as the "real world."
Stove confuses "prescriptive" (recommending something), "descriptive" (telling you what is the case) and "predictive" (estimating a likely future eventuality) claims, often making all three in a single paragraph on the basis of a flawed premise.
There is absolutely no basis or support offered for Stove's "conclusory" generalizations.
In fact, throughout history, women have wielded political power while managing to be recognized as learned and brilliant thinkers, despite overwhelming social obstacles and pressures against intellectual accomplishment by women. Below are some specific examples.
Professor Harold Bloom of Yale University suggests that the earliest books in what is arguably Western literature's first text, the Hebrew Bible, may well be the work of a woman. Bloom contends, persuasively, that the writer of the earliest Old Testament books, known to us only as "J," must have been a woman of noble birth. If Bloom is correct then Western literature and philosophy -- our religions -- may begin as a woman's invention (or discovery) which would not surprise me.
Many literary and philosophical "superstars" happen to be women, both in the past and in our own time. They are not merely exceptions. Their achievements are even more impressive than those of their male counterparts in light of the social obstacles which women overcame (and still overcome) in order to do intellectual work.
I am not surprised that N.J. people find it necessary to continue to insert "errors" in this essay. I am making it difficult for you to claim that I am "insensitive to women's issues."
I suppose that I will have to read "J-Val." I believe that I am now, as they say, "feministing."
An excellent example of a woman with a far better philosophical mind than Stove's (or mine), who overcame what seem to us like unimaginable obstacles is Mary Wollstonecraft. Another example of philosophical brilliance today is found in a woman overcoming more than sexism, also racism -- Angela Davis. Cleopatra and Nefertiti -- both Africans -- along with many other women, governed empires in antiquity (often through their husbands in sexist societies, i.e., Theodosia, who began life as a prostitute in the Circus Maximus), founded religions, made art and did what human beings (male and female), always and everywhere manage to do. Isabel "la Catolica," Elizabeth I, Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria and any number of other political leaders -- who happen to have been women -- have ruled nations, often very well. None of these women could attend universities in their societies. Women have been philosophers, poets, painters, scientists, overcoming sexist and other barriers to create lasting work in every historical epoch. At the risk of infuriating my would-be censors and fascists everywhere, I hope that we will someday be fortunate enough to elect a woman to the U.S. Presidency. For one likely candidate, see Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham-Clinton (New York: Vintage, 2008). ("'This is totally amazing!' -- Donald J. Trump.")
Women have led armies and governed nations in our time -- Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher -- and women have fought battles as revolutionaries and intellectuals, Rosa Luxembourg, Assata Shakur, "Tanya."
Professor Stove is simply wrong in his unqualified generalization which explains why he offers no support whatsoever for it in scholarship or empirical evidence.
There is no support to offer for Stove's contention that women are intellectually inferior to men because it is not true.
Even if there were fewer women than men of genius in recorded history -- a debatable point which I do not accept -- this can be explained by the difference in social opportunity and cultural approval for men as compared with women intellectuals and artists, even today, and has nothing to do with differences in "intellectual capacity."
From this false premise Stove argues that those who oppose his view and argue for gender equality base their position on "prejudice and passion." However, Stove does not examine that feminist or egalitarian position or the evidence for it. This is an indication that it is actually Professor Stove's views that are the result of "prejudice and passion."
I will help him to examine the counter-argument by quoting John Stuart Mill (not an idealist, but an empiricist and materialist), whose explanation for any alleged differential achievement by women as compared with men in art, science, politics or law is much more persuasive than what Stove has to say.
It is important to remember that, for most of Western history, women could not own land, could not attend universities, could not hold wealth or properties in their own name, could not establish independent lives. Women were -- they often still are -- overworked, living in crowded settings and surrounded by children, for whom they alone were responsible. Virginia Woolf is eloquent on the crowded rooms in which women -- like Jane Austen -- wrote their brilliant novels. Ms. Woolf has convinced me of the impossibility of a female Tolstoy writing War and Peace in the absence of the experiences and opportunities that made that masterpiece possible for its author. Everyone should read Virginia Woolf's A Room of Her Own and Orlando.
Ms. Woolf tells us that there are "real women," but that "femininity" had to be invented by societies as a "role" for one gender rather than the other(s). ("Ex Machina: A Movie Review" and "Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
Women could not go to war. Women could not have adventures and be admitted to society. Women could not really live their own lives but were required to abide by the dictates of society. Many chose to violate those social dictates and paid a great price for it. (See my much-damaged essay: "Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin" also "Master and Commander.") According to Mill:
"Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. ... They [men] have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their [women's] minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others. ... Can it be doubted that any of the other yokes which mankind have succeeded in breaking would have subsisted till now if the same means had existed, and had been as sedulously used, to bow down their minds to it? ... would not serfs and seigneurs, plebeians and patricians, have been as broadly distinguished at this day as men and women are? and would not all but a thinker here and there believe the distinction to be a fundamental and unalterable fact in human nature?"
The Subjection of Women, p. 443. (An obvious analogy to racism is available.)
Rational considerations do not enter Stove's mind. He says that we simply "know" (how?) that women have less intellectual capacity than men (whatever intellectual capacity may be) because the "intellectual performance of women is inferior to that of men."
Whose performance? What specific women philosophers are "inferior" (his word) to men writing today?
In the history of Western thought, from antiquity, women have participated in philosophical dialogues and contributed to the intellectual tradition, at the highest levels, despite nearly overwhelming obstacles against them.
Footnote please, Professor Stove. There is none. No historical or other evidence establishes this assertion. No logical argument is offered in support of this contention. As Gore Vidal once remarked: "in debate the unsupported remark is not worth making."
Stove reasons from ALLEGED inferior performance to ALLEGED inferior capacity, but provides: 1) neither a definition of "inferior capacity," nor 2) a list of specific examples of inferior performances by women. However, he does contradict himself.
Is this self-contradiction an indication of Stove's (or men's!) "lack of intellectual capacity"? Stove says:
"... This, then, is one commonplace truth which needs to be borne in mind when we think about the intellectual capacity of women: that capacity does not require performance."
This is an example of an unsupported statement, by Professor Stove, that is not worth making.
So which is it? Do we infer "the inferior capacity of women from alleged inferior performance"? Or is it true that "capacity does not require performance"?
Stove has articulated an incoherent position. He is saying both A and not-A. To speak of evidence of intellectual capacity requiring performance to exist does not get him off the hook since a capacity may exist and yet not be known due to a lack of evidence.
Stove consistently confuses the ontological and epistemological issues to which he refers. This is a common error which is not excusable for a philosopher. It is too much to expect that Stove has been converted to a form of Hegelian dialectical idealism. He does not suggest a relationship between "capacity" and "performance" but a direct correlation. Stove then says that there is no such correlation, only a correlation between "evidence" of capacity and actual capacity, except that there is sometimes no such evidence. This is not subtle argumentation. It is incoherence.
II.
How many women might have painted as well as -- though differently from -- Leonardo Da Vinci we will never know. (Since people are in the habit of making incorrect corrections when I write essays let me make it clear that "Da Vinci" and "da Vinci" are both acceptable spellings of this Renaissance painter's name.)
Shakespeare's sister is not a good example, I think, but Virginia Woolf's general point is valid that any number of women might have written as well as the men whose works we rightly celebrate, yet without education (or opportunity) their talents were never developed or known even to themselves.
This is not to diminish the importance of achievements by men (mostly) whose works are now canonical in a liberal arts curriculum.
I am merely explaining why there are not many more women on the usual list of great thinkers of past ages even if all such lists are changing quickly to include more women and will (probably) provide for equal representation of men and women in the future.
My talent for dancing the mambo is unsuspected by others since I have never attempted such a dance publicly. This is hardly to establish that such a talent -- in addition to my obvious and astonishing sexual skills -- does not exist in me. These skills and talents may indeed exist in me and not be known, at this time, except by a fortunate few. ("An Evening With Gore Vidal" and "Abrazo: Saying Goodbye to Christopher Hitchens.")
Stove simply knows that women are not his equals. I agree, if not for Stove's reasons. Most of the women I know have far more "intellectual capacity" than Professor Stove. Many of them can also "mambo" as it were. The difference between humor and stupidity is also obvious to those who can read the English language. You (and only you), as a reader, decide what to think of an author. ("Skinny People Dressed in Black" and "La Traviata.")
Stove is willing to assume that the intellectual capacity of every woman that he meets is probably inferior to his own vastly superior capacity.
This assumption is made on the basis of overwhelming evidence from all of recorded human experience of the inferior intellectual capacity of women because (we are told) women's intellectual performance is usually inferior to that of men, especially when it comes to himself, as a male, according to Stove. ("Is truth dead?")
Female inferiority is taken for granted by Stove in the absence of any examples at all from history (or philosophy) by a man who has just published a self-contradictory argument. ("Stuart Hampshire and Iris Murdoch on Freedom of Mind.")
Stove has only managed to provide readers with irrefutable evidence of his own inadequacies, logical and otherwise.
What Stove relies on to establish his non-existent case is an a priori argument based on probability theory in logic, an argument which is also incoherent and false, as I shall now demonstrate.
Professor Stove abandons his positivism and materialism to engage in a form of a priori idealist or rationalist argumentation which he has railed against in the past. This has nothing to do with scientific method or the validity of rationalist methods in the hands of others. Stove contends, on analogy to coins and dice and such things, that:
"Probabilities are a sort of graduated capacities, and the question about the comparative intellectual capacity of men and women is, like the question whether a certain coin is fair, a question of probabilities." (''Self/Less': A Movie Review.")
This is absurd. Women -- perhaps regrettably in Stove's mind -- are not inanimate objects. Women are not coins or dice lying on a coffee table (an interesting image!) to be picked up and tossed about by Professor Stove, so as to calculate the number of times when a particular female person will come up "heads" or (this is indeed interesting!) "tails."
Persons -- Professor Stove is shocked to discover that women are "persons" -- are social beings, defined by their relationships and contexts, languages, religious and cultural affiliations, social roles, economic status, education. It is not possible to abstract and isolate women (or men) from all social contexts in order to regard them as "widgets" or numbers subject to the mathematical laws of probability in terms of an undefined "intellectual capacity." ("'The Mountain Between Us': A Movie Review.")
Unlike Professor Stove John Rawls takes great care to set very careful limits on his thought experiment called the "original position" and to suggest that it is an analogy to the postulated "pre-political situation of humanity." ("John Rawls and Justice.")
Stove abstracts women from the empirical world, performs dubious mathematical calculations, then concludes that this establishes that -- in the empirical world -- women must lack the intellectual capacity of men whatever intellectual capacity may mean.
This claim is what philosophers describe as a "non-sequitur." In more prosaic terms this is bullshit.
Why are Stove's mathematical calculations dubious?
"The mathematical theory of probability enables us to calculate the probability of some kind of event given the probability of others. ... The arithmetic of such combinations, investigated in the seventeenth century by Pascal and Fermat, has developed into a general theory of measures on sets, which correspond to possible values of a random variable. Its most familiar axiomatic treatment is due to the Russian mathematician Kolgomorov."
Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 288. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
Stove is proposing what mathematicians describe as a "contingent probability series." The proposed form being both syllogistic and geometrical:
"If A and B are given occurrences in the past, where situation C obtains; then it is possible to calculate the likely occurrence of A and B, in identical future settings, where situation C is repeated."
This method is excellent for calculating eventualities with regard to the toss of dice or flipping of a coin. Insurance companies hope to estimate frequency of accidents in such ways.
With regard to persons and human relationships in ALL of human history the number of "contingent variables" for which one must account -- such as social factors, religious influence, how one defines "intellectual achievement," cultural reinforcement, economic factors, etc. -- is potentially infinite or beyond the capacity of anyone to identify or factor into a feasible equation.
Men and women are simply not reducible to the abstractions "A" and "B." This is something for lawyers and psychologists to remember. ("Innumerate Ethics.")
You cannot predict or control what people will do. Furthermore, there are moral constraints on what and how you may predict or try to "determine" human behavior. You cannot "condition" persons into behavior of which you happen to approve with any degree of certainty since their responses to ever-changing circumstances will not, and should not be, exactly predictable or alike. This is because persons are not exactly alike. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")
You also cannot calculate probability when you have failed to define the given "X-Factor" -- the "X-Factor" whose probability is at issue in the first place -- or the method to be followed in your inquiries. ("Nice Babies and Bad Psychologists.")
Stove provides no control group, no attempt to eliminate extraneous factors other than this mysterious "capacity." A person is not a thing or a laboratory animal. Human social realities and personal identities are dynamic and participatory never static or strictly "externally" malleable. Professor Stove has run into "Ulam's Dilemma":
"If the number of theorems is larger than one can possibly survey, [no one] can be trusted to judge what is important."
Philip J. Davis & Reuben Hersh, The Mathematical Experience (Boston: Houghton & Mifflin, 1981), pp. 20-21. ("Is the universe only a numbers game?")
David J. Bartholomew, a Professor of Statistics at the London School of Economics and a religious person has offered a highly sophisticated argument -- based on mathematical probabilities -- for the logical plausibility of belief in God. Professor Bartholomew's book is far more sophisticated than anything Professor Stove can produce. However, Professor Bartholomew is careful to indicate that:
"A final point to make about probabilities is that they are almost always conditional. Their value depends on what we choose to regard as 'given.' ..."
Uncertain Belief: Is it Rational to be a Christian? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 27.
Stove assumes what he hopes to prove.
Stove takes for granted that, in the past, women's intellectual capacity (whatever that may be) has been "established" to be less than that of men. He can then say that it is more likely to continue to be less impressive than that of men in the future.
This is the absurd form of "argumentation" that gives philosophy a bad name. Stove was entirely serious in putting forward this argument. There are persons who will not see the logical difficulties in Stove's essay and believe what he says.
Do not believe sexist claims. Sexism is false and immoral. The potential for social harm is very high indeed when this sort of "quasi" philosophy or scientific pretension goes unchallenged.
Does this begin to seem familiar? It should.
There are previous efforts to demonstrate, scientifically or logically, the inferiority of persons of African ancestry, or the criminal minds "produced" by brain chemistry or genes, and the probability of such "determining" factors resulting in further criminality usually based on a totally inadequate attempt to cope with all of the messy factors that make people choose to be what they are -- sometimes within insurmountable constraints -- so as to explain what they do.
I suggest a careful study of the works of Stephen Jay Gould and a biologist, whose books I will read and review at this blog, Richard Lewontin:
"In short, the BIOLOGICAL basis of human uniqueness leads us to reject biological determinism. Our large brain is the biological foundation of intelligence; intelligence is the ground of culture; and cultural transmission builds a new mode of evolution more effective than Darwinian processes in its limited realm -- the inheritance and modification of learned behavior. [Intelligence?] As philosopher Steven Toulmin stated: 'Culture has the power to impose itself on nature from within.'"
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), p. 325. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "Fascinating Fascism.")
I have deliberately quoted from this wonderful book to indicate that it is many persons -- especially women -- who have been "mismeasured."
A teacher reviewed an IQ test with one of her immigrant students who did poorly on the test. She asked why he failed to associate "cup" with "saucer" as opposed to "glass" or "spoon."
The student explained that he had never seen a cup on a saucer at home.
Why should that immigrant student associate "cup" with one of these words more than the others? No reason.
These cultural considerations were, literally, beyond imagination for the nice "experts" designing this "intelligence test" before returning to their homes in suburban Connecticut.
Naturally, it was explained to the immigrant student that he was probably an imbecile and should consider a career in politics. Senator Bob? ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")
Stove's assumptions concerning nature's "requirement" that only women raise children because they are "better equipped" for this task than men is simply laughable:
"In plain English: a woman does not need to use her brains to have a baby, and doesn't even need to use them much in order to see an infant through the period of its most extreme helplessness."
Child-rearing is some of the most difficult work that any person can do. I can attest to this from "experience." There are difficult choices to make with time-allocation, juggling professional and familial responsibilities, home and family care, cooking, cleaning, while reading Kant and writing books, lecturing, sharing sports or playing with one's child are exceedingly difficult human activities, also among the most rewarding things that a person can do.
A brain is definitely helpful in being a parent. I am not ashamed about doing such "lowly" tasks in my home. It is not insulting me to comment on the fact that I scrub toilets or wash dishes. My "manhood," as I define it, is not threatened by these dire accusations of "unmasculine" behavior.
Despite my ethnicity I am not "Ricky Ricardo." No one is or should be "Ricky Ricardo" -- no woman should be so absurd! -- since that t.v. character has now been left behind by American culture (I hope!) as anything other than an entertaining t.v. personality.
My use of this character to identify some regressive tendencies in the Cuban-American community is deliberate. Sadly, persons in New Jersey may have assumed (because of prejudice) that I am exactly like such a stereotype of the Latino male. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
Subtle psychological insight ("intellectual capacity?") is necessary to say exactly the right thing to a teenage daughter whose feelings are fragile and for whom self-esteem is crucial.
Professor Stove is incapable of realizing this since, no doubt, Mrs. Stove takes care of such matters. Stove's home is probably tidy. Meals are ready on time. His newspaper awaits him when he gets home in the evening.
Nothing seems easier -- for Stove or men like him -- than daily home maintenance.
Professor Stove's children are mysteriously neat and well-behaved, well-taught and healthy. This allows Stove to think "deep thoughts" such as those found in this remarkable essay.
Among the most difficult challenges associated with fatherhood (or parenthood) is knowing how to prepare a child for the pains of injustice, cruelty, stupidity among the powerful and many other horrors that, inevitably, will be a part of her life in a world filled with irrational hatreds and bizarre misunderstandings of our complex natures and ethical life.
There are even fascistic morons who insert "errors" in the writings of envied others.
Child-rearing is a human responsibility. It is a responsibility which nature leaves for persons to discharge, as they think best. Gay couples, extended families, grandparents -- all may discharge this responsibility well or poorly depending on the individual circumstances of their lives and other factors.
There is no more important human responsibility than caring for others. This is especially true when it comes to children. Scrubbing toilets and washing dishes -- things that I will do today after I complete this essay -- are exalted by being offered to those we love as a gift of ourselves to and for them.
I will always be happy to do such things for any person that I love. This includes Marilyn Straus.
During the Catholic mass there is an "offertorial procession." Personal gifts are offered to God -- not because God can use a new toaster -- because they are things shared or given from (or by) ourselves. This is the point in "giving" to those we love. Giving is sharing ourselves symbolically.
China has a very elaborate and beautiful language of giving that expresses the same principle.
Since the subject of religion has been discussed it may clarify matters to share an anecdote that I learned from one of my aunts. Rita Hayworth, at the height of her movie fame, visited a leper colony run by Sisters of Charity. The film star said to one of the nuns, "I wouldn't do this work for a million dollars."
The nun laughed and said: "I wouldn't do it for a million dollars either."
The Catholic nun did that "lowly" work only for love and service to God.
Does that help people to understand what is "religion"? ("Is Daniel Dennett an Unhelpful Samaritan"? and "Daniel Dennett and the Theology of Science.")
Physicians -- many monks and priests as well as nuns -- caring for the ill in this community of sick people, lepers, also chose to work for something other than money.
Were these physicians "determined" by nature to do this work? I think they chose, freely, to be guided by love.
Intellectual capacity? Moral sensitivity? Do these terms refer to the same faculty? Why is it mostly men, like Stove -- including quite a few in the legal profession -- who cannot understand this?
The absence of love in our social lives can be not only stupid but lethal for everyone.
Does Obamacare worry people more than the absence of all medical insurance for 50 million Americans?
According to Stove women are like "[m]onkeys treading at random on typewriter keys [who] will never reproduce the works of Shakespeare."
Imagine this statement being directed at (or concerning) African-Americans today.
Professor Stove will not reproduce the works of Shakespeare; nor those of Jane Austen. Stove will never be half the philosopher or person that Edith Stein, Elizabeth Seton, or Mary Wollstonecraft was, is, and will be for future generations. Nor will Professor Stove equal the achievements of his contemporary, Iris Murdoch, as a philosopher and writer:
"In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason." Mary Wollstonecraft says: "This was Rousseau's opinion respecting men. I extend it to women. ... Still the regal homage they receive is so intoxicating, that till the manners of the times are changed, and formed on more reasonable principles, it may be impossible to convince them that the illegitimate power, which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is a curse, and that they must return to nature and equality, if they wish to secure the placid satisfaction that unsophisticated affections impart. But for this epoch we must wait -- wait, perhaps, till kings and nobles, enlightened by reason, and, preferring the real dignity of man [and woman] to a childish state, throw off their gaudy hereditary trappings: and if then women do not throw off the arbitrary power of beauty -- they will prove they have less mind than man."
Vindications of the Rights of Woman, p. 103.
It is an insult and dehumanization of any rational person to presume to decide what is for that person's "own good."
Too many women have been damaged by sexism into regarding their roles as necessarily limited to physical attractiveness or "menial" domestic responsibilities.
This self-imposed or accepted limitation hurts women, all women, and (therefore) men as well.
I believe that we are all mutually dependent. Sexism hurts all of us -- especially those of us who love women who have been brutalized by sexism and objectification -- women made into "objects" that Professor Stove wishes to manipulate with mathematical formulas.
You will always be beautiful to me. ("Thoughts of a Domestic Revolutionary" and "Let's Hear it for the Boys.")
The sexism in this essay by Stove -- which contains not one valid argument -- is not simply mistaken, it is evil. This set of ideas leads to dehumanization of persons and brutality which is why it is evil. Worse, such false reasoning destroys the hopes and even lives of many young women usually when they are unprepared to recognize Stove's nonsense for what it is: a rationalization of an assumed "superiority" (mastery) by one who sees a large segment of the human population as his "natural" "inferiors" in need of his guidance and protection so as to be made into slaves. (''Westworld': A Review of the T.V. Series" then "Master and Commander" and "Not One More Victim.")
We must not allow such claims to go unchallenged. Stove should not be censored; he should be refuted. I think that he now has been refuted. Stove's shameful essay may be dismissed.
We are all, always, in need of mutual protection. We are all silly, absurd, comical, sexual creatures, self-conscious and self-doubting as well as imperfect. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
The burden of being attractive to the opposite sex, or those we desire, and of caring for others -- especially children -- must not fall unfairly on one sex more than the other. ("A Doll's Aria.")
Men and women are intellectual and moral equals as history demonstrates.
Persons of either or any gender, regardless of sexual-orientation, are equally disposed to excel in science, law, philosophy, ballet, Opera, baseball, or any other area of human endeavor, including child-rearing.
None of us in society should be "conditioned into" (forced to accept) values or behaviors determined by "experts" to be for our own good much less manipulated secretly and without our consent to do so. Explaining her decision to write an autobiography at an early age, Angela Davis said:
"There was the possibility that having read it, more people would understand why so many of us have no alternative but to offer our lives -- our bodies, our knowledge, our will -- to the cause of our oppressed people. In this period, when the covers camouflaging the corruption and racism" -- as well as sexism -- "of the highest political offices are rapidly falling away, when the bankruptcy of the global system of capitalism is becoming apparent, there was the possibility that more people -- Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White [male and female] -- might be inspired to join our growing community of struggle. Only if this happens will I consider this project to have been worthwhile." (emphasis added!)
