There are two words -- "significant" and "great" -- which sort of favor whoever is saying the statement, whether it be in the affirmative or the negative, or substitutes any other group of humanity for that matter. For any example all you have to do is say they lack either significance or membership within a great tradition.

"It may be a philosopher, but it's derivative"

"It may be a tradition, but it's not a great tradition"


But if you were to include Thales, for instance, I'd have a hard time seeing how you would not include Hypatia.

But then, if you're disqualifying Arendt, Naussbaum, Foot or Anscombe, I'd suggest the issue lies in your judgement, and not the works in question. You can call foul that this 'attacks the speaker and not the statement', but what kind and of trivial, utterly personal statement is one that begins "I do not consider..."? There's nothing to 'attack' at the level of statement because the whole thing is personal through and through: you may as well say " I do not like the color blue - please attack the statement not the speaker". But it's a ruse, a pseudo attempt at 'objectivity'.

The Atlantic article you linked to makes exactly the right point I think when it rejects the question itself as a complete sham, or at least transforms it into a point of departure to put not women, but 'the tradition' into question: "The real question shouldn't be "can woman do philosophy?" but rather "can philosophy make itself worthy of women like Sojourner Truth, Patricia Hill Collins, and Joanna Russ?" Is there a philosophy that can speak thoughtfully about equality, about injustice, and about women?".

Who is Charles Murray and why should anybody outside his friends and family be interested in anything he has to say?

Perhaps there haven't been the coinciding historical stars on the female side because societies have been literally repressing what's expected of them for Millenia? Unless you're going to suggest some pseudo-scientific biological concoctions for why history turned out for them so differently. The only question worth considering is can we as members of a society evaluate philosophy (or science and mathematics) by its content when we look at it? If someone has something worth discussing, so be it, whoever they are, and we should aim towards creating a society that is inclusive to the variations in human creativity available and be hostile to any shallow considerations that plague prejudices against such appreciation. I'm not really sure what's the point about being round about about the idea that there weren't any original and creative women philosophers. Just be honest and up front that you think that women can never be as good at philosophy.

I do not consider Arendt, Nussbaum significant and/or original -- neither Foot or Anscombe. They are certainly not on the level of Kant and Hume. — Emptyheady

So a philosopher is only original and significant if they're on the level of Kant and Hume? Seems like saying that someone is only a great footballer if they're as good as Messi or Ronaldo. You're setting the bar unreasonably high.

Regarding Anscombe, she did coin the term "consequentialism" and gave rise to contemporary virtue ethics. Seems like an original and significant contribution.

Women have too much sense for philosophy... literally, twice as many nerve receptors.

Women have too much sense for philosophy... literally, twice as many nerve receptors. — Wosret

That's misleading. Women have twice as many nerve receptors per square centimeter of skin, but men have more skin. I think it works out as women having 38% more nerve receptors.

No woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions" — Emptyheady

Social and environmental factors play a significant role more so than receptors vis-a-vis a woman' capacity to undertake philosophical study. I work with young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds and the opinions on when they should marry, how to dress, what to think has solidified that to try and get them to switch that training and find focus with an education and themselves is only possible when I lead by example because they look up to me, but even so it is incredibly difficult.

Women have been coerced to conform into passive and disposable objects for centuries so three cheers for Nussbaum, Arendt, Beauvoir etc for defying all the odds. Charles Murray can shove his gender bias where it hurts.

Only off by 62%? That ain't bad.

"No woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions" — Emptyheady

I think there have been some women holding this status - Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Simone Weil, etc.

I do not consider Arendt, Nussbaum significant and/or original -- neither Foot or Anscombe. They are certainly not on the level of Kant and Hume. — Emptyheady

That they are not the level of Kant or Hume that is certain. But that doesn't mean they aren't great philosophers. Kant and Hume, just like Wittgenstein, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Aquinas, etc. these people are unique - they are on an entirely different level. When we speak of philosophers, we don't speak of those very rare few only. Probably nobody in the whole world (whether they be male or female) today is at the same level as those people, and that alone speaks volumes.

In addition to this, men have often had access through history to education first - meaning that women only got the chance if there were sufficient resources left after educating men. And education was never culturally emphasised for women. Even today, education is only emphasised for women in-so-far as they are told to get a degree so that they can be given a job, not to learn for learning's sake. Furthermore, society, since women were directly needed for reproduction, has always had a much stronger interest in indoctrinating women to unthinkingly join the masses and adhere to social indoctrination - even today. As Schopenhauer said:

"If a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.”

I work with young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds — TimeLine

Good job :)

Suppose one agrees. So what?

There have been no significant women genocidal dictators. Does this reflect an innate moral superiority, a universal female incompetence, or the structural dominance of the male?

My own bias tells me that Murray is not pointing to a curious fact in need of careful investigation and analysis, but attempting to justify the gender disparity as natural and inevitable rather than constructed.

Imagine the student asking is female. Is there not something of a self-fulfilling prophecy at work? You are a woman, therefore you are not worth my time teaching or listening to; I think I would be thinking about changing courses - and another great woman philosopher is lost to posterity.

I have no points to be taken off in this game, so I am quite happy to call Murray sexist, and @Emptyheady sexist. And as a great philosopher once said, "None of what I said are insults. It is a simple observational fact having read your post."

Qualifying terms like "significant" in such discussions usually poison the well from the outset, as "significant' is a subjective and elastic enough term to at least plausibly apply to whichever position one takes in such a dispute.

Kant was a woman.

What I don't get is: what's up with Germany? Why so many great philosophers?

Schopenhauer thought that all geniuses were sexually deviant in some sense at least, as a normal sexuality just wouldn't do for them. I feel like he said that with some remorse and guilt at himself for such a pedestrian maid fetish.

Kant liked to deflect away from himself and personal questions, and only ever gave vague, dismissive comments about his personal life. He definitely was ashamed of something. Like the least was wrong with him from what I could tell. Why so obsessed with being good? Why books over people?

He also was interested in religious quacks of his time. That guy that wrote about the near death experience that was popular a few years ago because he was a famous neuroscientist, Kant would definitely be following that story.

He knocked a maid down the steps one time.

Don't say that in Germany, you'll get arrested.

You know that you can't show Nazi's or Nazi iconography in Germany? That's like half of all of the bad guys in video games and movies! Wtf do they do over there?

There's a dark side to every fetish.

He preferred poodles to women.

I had a boyfriend who had the foot-fetish. That's one I really don't get.

What I don't get is: what's up with Germany? Why so many great philosophers? — Mongrel

I wonder if it's something to do with the language, as per the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis?

Everyone sex stuff is weird as shit except for mine.

Could be.

That they are not the level of Kant or Hume that is certain. But that doesn't mean they aren't great philosophers. Kant and Hume, just like Wittgenstein, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Aquinas, etc. these people are unique - they are on an entirely different level. When we speak of philosophers, we don't speak of those very rare few only. Probably nobody in the whole world (whether they be male or female) today is at the same level as those people, and that alone speaks volumes. — Agustino

You're setting the bar unreasonably high. — Michael

This is probably the best critique so far.

My own bias tells me that Murray is not pointing to a curious fact in need of careful investigation and analysis, but attempting to justify the gender disparity as natural and inevitable rather than constructed. — unenlightened

This was my suspicion as well and I think you’re partly right on this one. But I also think that he is mostly spot on regarding innate differences between the genders. Ascribing everything to discrimination is scientifically completely unsound.

He points out a few well-established facts:

(1) The standard deviation in IQ among men is significant higher than among women, which makes men dominate both ends of the extreme on the spectrum. The results is that pretty much all exceptional geniuses and idiots are men.

(2) Philosophy is the only humanities major that has an average IQ that is above economists and engineers, while the field is still dominated by men. Also note the clear correlation between IQ and Gender in different majors.

(3) The Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, has been given to 44 people since it originated in 1936. All have been men. (...) In a large sample of mathematically gifted youths, for example, seven times as many males as females scored in the top percentile of the SAT mathematics test. We do not have good test data on the male-female ratio at the top one-hundredth or top one-thousandth of a percentile, where first-rate mathematicians are most likely to be found, but collateral evidence suggests that the male advantage there continues to increase, perhaps exponentially. Men also consistently outscore women on SAT Maths scores.

(4) Even in the 20th century, women got only 2 percent of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences—a proportion constant for both halves of the century—and 10 percent of the prizes in literature.

(5) Thus, for reasons embedded in the biochemistry and neurophysiology of being female, many women with the cognitive skills for achievement at the highest level also have something else they want to do in life: have a baby. In the arts and sciences, forty is the mean age at which peak accomplishment occurs, preceded by years of intense effort mastering the discipline in question.

(6) I have omitted perhaps the most obvious reason why men and women differ at the highest levels of accomplishment: men take more risks, are more competitive, and are more aggressive than women.

(7) Evolutionary biologists have some theories that feed into an explanation for the disparity. In primitive societies, men did the hunting, which often took them far from home. Males with the ability to recognize landscapes from different orientations and thereby find their way back had a survival advantage. Men who could process trajectories in three dimensions—the trajectory, say, of a spear thrown at an edible mammal—also had a survival advantage. Women did the gathering. Those who could distinguish among complex arrays of vegetation, remembering which were the poisonous plants and which the nourishing ones, also had a survival advantage. Thus the logic for explaining why men should have developed elevated three-dimensional visuospatial skills and women an elevated ability to remember objects and their relative locations—differences that show up in specialized tests today.

(8) One hypothesis for explaining this paradox is that three-dimensional processing absorbs the extra male capacity. In the last few years, magnetic-resonance imaging has refined the evidence for this hypothesis, revealing that parts of the brain’s parietal cortex associated with space perception are proportionally bigger in men than in women.


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The links can be found in either the text or here.

It's rainin' meninism.

Eh.. There's been a statistically significant rise in IQ's of American children and teenagers through the 20th Century. Your reasoning binds you to the proposition that Americans changed biochemically during that time period.

Female philosophers tend to operate in a different domain, e.g. fiction writing where the philosophy of the mind is often penetrated and revealed. Doris Lessimg is one of my favorites. Virginia Wolfe was interesting, albeit quite boring for me. Camus would be the make counterpart.

Ascribing everything to discrimination is scientifically completely unsound. — Emptyheady

Well I have a general critique of scientific psychology, as some will have noticed. There is a fundamental problem with all the statistics you bring forth above. which is that their truth does not necessarily support the hypothesis of innate differences as is generally supposed. There is a pressure to conform to stereotypes, there is stereotypical treatment, and there is internalised stereotype identification.

I have already suggested that a woman might well find Murray's courses uncongenial, and that they might not even get fair and equal treatment. They may have been given barbies to play with and not lego, they may have been made subtly or unsubtly aware that clever women are unpopular, that mathematics is 'unfeminine', that competing with men is more dangerous for a female.

In short, the stereotype does not just tell you what you are, it demands that you be that. Psychological understanding changes the psyche, and this undermines the 'innate truth' of psychology of all kinds because the theory creates the phenomena.

Well from an evolutionary point of view, women do not need as much skill nor talent as men do to reproduce and there is extremely strong scientific evidence for that:

"Geneticists have found that the diversity of the DNA in the mitochondria of different people (which men and women inherit from their mothers) is far greater than the diversity of the DNA in Y chromosomes (which men inherit from their fathers). This suggests that for tens of millennia men had greater variation in their reproductive success than women. Some men had many descendants and others had none (leaving us with a small number of distinct Y chromosomes), whereas a larger number of women had a more evenly distributed number of descendants (leaving us with a larger number of distinct mitochondrial genomes). These are precisely the conditions that cause sexual selection, in which males compete for opportunities to mate and females choose the best-quality males." (Pinker 2002)

Christopher Hitchens echoes that point in his polemic article: