Che genere d’intuizioni? Maschile, femminile e ragionamento filosofico

Why are there so few women in philosophy? Do women dislkes rigorous argumentation? Recently, Wesley Buckwalter e Stephen Stich have argued that women and men tend to have different philosophical intuitions and that these differences might play a role in explaining the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. To the contrary, in this paper, I defend the view that intuitions are in part socially constructed and product of stereotypical behaviours. The paper is divided in two parts. In the first, I present Buckwalter and Stich’s view as characterized by the two following theses: (i) there are significant differences between men and women in intuitive responses to some philosophically important thought experiments; (ii) women intuitions do not accord with those of professional philosophers insist are correct. In my analysis, particular attention is given on their hypothesis about the gender gap in academia as, in part, the result of a selection effect: women, because of the fact they do not have standard intuitions, become convinced they are not good in philosophy or are discouraged from continuing in philosophy. In the second part of the paper, I show why Buckwalter and Stich’s approach is inadequate, by showing that the data in the works they reported are too low to support their conclusion (i.e. in many important thought experiments are no significant gender differences) and their thesis does not match with the idea the intelligence is not a fixed entity and the view that gender as social construction differs from one society to another. Gender differences in responses to thought experiments, I conclude, are not differences in intuitions per se, but in how women and men interpret the cases at issue, and are not an important part of the explanation for the gender gap in philosophy.