Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Dembroff, Robin
Abstract
The typical analytic philosophy paper is quite reticent about the personal, written as if its author occupied a “view from nowhere.” In a few subfields, however – feminist philosophy, philosophy of disability, critical philosophy of race – it is far more common for philosophers to write openly about how their personal experiences inform their work. In Chapter 1, “Getting Personal,” I argue that we have good reasons, both epistemic and political, to embrace these more openly personal methods of philosophical reasoning and writing. The personal is philosophical. In the remaining chapters I put theory into practice, building philosophical arguments informed explicitly by experiential knowledge. In “Believing Women,” I defend the ethics and epistemology of the #MeToo movement. Drawing on my training as a crisis line worker, I argue that we should distinguish between two kinds of believing: believing in the epistemic sense and believing in the practical sense. I propose two distinct – but mutually complementary – interpretations of the feminist principle ‘believe women,’ one for each kind of belief. In “Suicide and Paternalism,” I explore the ethics of suicide prevention. I argue that in some cases, some forms of intervention can be justified on paternalistic grounds. But drawing on the testimony of former psychiatric patients, as well as my own experience, I argue that psychiatric incarceration (“involuntary commitment”) fails to meet that ethical standard. All too often, philosophers theorize about policy questions in highly abstract terms, disconnected from the lives of those affected. I model a more grounded, historically-informed approach.
Recommended Citation
Mapps, Moya, "The View from Somewhere: Essays on Philosophy, Positionality and Power" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1135.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1135
