I have looked at your link and it may reveal aspects of human understanding and the complexities of gender in this. Adolescence is a particularly difficult time for many, as it involves the complexity of conflicts about sexuality. In relation to Descartes' cognito, it may involve the reflective aspects of human identity and consciousness. It also goes back to Sartre's understanding of self-consciousness, which involves reflective understanding, including the experience of 'body'.

Feminism has been an important foundation for thinking, as well as postmodernism. Domestics may involve so much, especially chores and the how gender is manifest. It may involve the basic questions of gender, essentialism and science and how these come into play in philosophical assumptions. I wonder to what extent the thread is about core issues of values, especially in relation to gender in relationships and social discourse. To what extent is a matter of philosophy or involve wider social aspects of politics, especially in regard to the basis of the idea of gender?

It could also be asked to what extent is feminism an entire critique of philosophy?

Now I rather think that nobody who was playing a normal active part among other human beings could regard them like this. But what I am quite sure of is that for anybody living intimately with them as a genuine member of a family, Cogito would be Cogitamus; their consciousness would be every bit as certain as his own.

Loved this. It's been hard for me to take seriously, the people on this forum who think the existence of other minds is such a problem.

Reading on...

The editor rejected it as a “trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into intellectual life. — The Raven

Good call from the editor. I don't know raven magazine. Maybe this is satire and it is off my radar, I hope so.

She misses the point of Descartes, for which I'd give her C on that paper, but since her missing the point was intentional, I give her a D.

The puzzle is, what gave Descartes’ vision its extraordinary force? — Mary Midgely

The zeitgeist. The emergence of 'the individual' as the arbiter of truth and the mathematical sciences as the royal road to certainty.

She misses the point of Descartes, for which I'd give her C on that paper, but since her missing the point was intentional, I give her a D. — Hanover

A Credit raised to a Distinction. A bit low - I'd have given the HD for the spark of originality.

I think she is on the right track in not treating philosophy as the activity of disembodied minds, but it does not seem to occur to her that being unmarried does not mean being celibate.

She is not an astute reader of Plato. One of the main reasons he wrote dialogues was to point to the importance of temperament. Women are to play an equal role as guardians in the Republic. They were to do gymnastics (naked exercise) right alongside of the men.

Midgley misses Descartes' rhetorical strategy. How could he call the authority of the Catholic Church into question without suffering the consequences? He does it by calling everything into question, except God, and takes on the appearance of a champion of the Church and its teachings. He did not infer the existence of other people. He did not write and publish as the result of inferring their existence.

...being unmarried does not mean being celibate. — Fooloso4

For the BBC in the fifties, it did.

I suspect one can pick which replies are from Bachelors...

Wise and witty. Thanks.

That's the gem; My moment of greatest certainty was when I held my daughter, smelling of vernix. Descartes' Second Meditation is too contrived to be taken seriously.

It could also be asked to what extent is feminism an entire critique of philosophy? — Jack Cummins

'Entire"?

The perspective offered here is perhaps more obvious to someone who has carried another person inside their body. At the least it is a reminder of the privilege of masculinity. Descartes had the luxury of a warm chair and a stove. He did not have to collect the kids from school, wash the floor and cook dinner. But what was missed because of that privilege?

Some background.

The podcast that drew my attention to Rings and Books is Mary Midgley, public philosophy and plumbing

Ellie Robson's essay is Mary Midgley on Water and Thought: Is Public Philosophy Like Plumbing?

(Women) In Parenthesis is worth keeping an eye on.

She says:

We do not see Experience these days as a narrow shaky gangway between the two towers of the Knower and the Known, but as a rich countryside, containing and building both of them. Such a view is both more fruitful and closer to the facts.

Who is ‘we’? Who sees it like this? And how does ‘the relation of Knower and Known’ figure in the account?

Who is ‘we’? — Wayfarer

Those who pay for a BBC licence? Those who listened to Descartes, but then managed to move on?

That's the gem; My moment of greatest certainty was when I held my daughter, smelling of vernix. Descartes' Second Meditation is too contrived to be taken seriously. — Banno

Then let's put an end to this silly analytic thing we call philosophy and instead enjoy the sunrise, feel the brook stream through our toes, and smell the honeysuckle in the breeze. That is the life passing before us, not the underlying structure, not the pieces and parts of meaning and language. It is the day we must celebrate.

You decide if I'm mocking or serious.

The last stanza brings it home.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Then let's put an end to this silly analytic thing we call philosophy and instead enjoy the sunrise — Hanover

Good plan.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high over vales and hills
And there and then I came upon
My dog being sick on the daffodils! — Apocryphal, attributed to Spike Milligan.

The idea of carrying ' another person in the body' relates to the philosophy of transgenerism, and gender dysphoria, although this may be a little different from the ideas expressed by Mary Midgely as such. The idea of masculinity as privilege may relate to gender dynamics of power, as identified in feminism. The crossover between feminism and the postmodern critique of gender may be important .

Privilege itself may involve material or psychological aspects. Material satisfaction may be a comfort, just as masculinity may be privilege. The material and social aspects of comfort and priviledge may have some parallel in the dynamics of power.

I added a poll, without good reason.

(I suspect the bachelors will not vote.)

A philosopher is thought to need a room of one's own. But the Greeks did their philosophising in the public spaces of Athens. When did this change?

With Descartes?

It may be about 'containment' of the body and the environment. My own understanding with my room, and the nature of 'clutter' may be as important as the sense of 'body' and its boundaries. The physiological aspects of body may be the starting point for the wider sphere of containment, ownership and influence.

There is an odd anti-feminist feel to this view of personal isolation. The space does not include much room for academicians like Nussbaum or Arendt, to mention two at the top of my head.

There is an odd anti-feminist feel to this view of personal isolation. — Paine

Yes, that seems to be one of the points being made...

None of these philosophers […] had any experience of living with women or children, which is, after all, quite an important aspect of human life […] I wrote [this] article drawing attention to this statistic and asking whether it might not account for a certain over-abstractness, a certain remoteness from life, in the European philosophical tradition. — Midgley

Is that to say that women who partake in that 'over-abstractness' are 'men' by that measure?

Why would you think that?

The article speaks of husbands and bachelors but no bachelorettes. Nor of thoughtful philosophical wives.

:meh:

I don't know what that emoticon means as a proposition. Or the absence of one.

My attention was drawn to this small joy. I thought I should share it with you. — Banno

For the most part I would respond the way Churchill is said to have responded after reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, "I have always believed this." Anscombe would no doubt resonate with the essay.

On the other hand this debate has always been at play in Christianity, with the Hellenization thesis, anthropological and eschatological debates concerning the sexes, celibate vs. married life, eremitical vs. cenobitical life, etc. Further, an androgynous ideal tends to emerge from Greek culture, but is this true of philosophy elsewhere? In places like China or India? Somewhat, but probably less so.

It is about growing up, and being human, and the inherent limits of great men. — Banno

It seems to me that it is about the inherent limits of unmarried men.

In this sense, philosophy can be a form of therapy, helping us to clear conflict, prioritise, and see things clearly. — Midgley

I would see this therapeutic/plumbing approach as useful and yet extremely limited. It is also remarkably recent in the history of philosophy, and I think it is basically a consequence of our pragmatism and naturalism.

It is also remarkably recent in the history of philosophy — Leontiskos

Stoicism is not therapeutic?