The Ethical Concept of Care Part Two

By Stephen Downes
Nov 27, 2021
Transcript of The Ethical Concept of Care Part Two

Unedited transcript from audio by Google Recorder

Or once again, to ethics analytics. And the duty of care, this is the ethical concept of care part. Two part of module six in the course, module six, being titled, the duty of care. I'm Stephen Downs and I'm picking up right? Where I left off from part one. So without further ado, let's go into it.

So, where we left off, we are talking about the concept of care rather than being abstract and rather, rather than being deduced, from say, the nature of humanity, or whatever it being is, Carol Gilligan says an ethic grounded in voice and relationships in the importance of everyone, having a voice being listened to carefully in their own, right and on their own terms and heard with respect and additionally.

She says, and ethics of care directs, attention to the need for responsiveness and relationships. Paying attention listening responding into the costs of losing connection with oneself or with others. I will see this value expressed a lot. And again, this is a value that existed prior to these theories and and this drawn on because it's, it's a particular way of approaching.

We'll have to call issues and other issues in general from a care perspective. But I remember in 1980 that was on training in Austin, Texas for Texas, instruments of all places and I took the video tape course although myself it wasn't even assigned to me. It was called on the way up and it expressed a number of aspects of how to manage conflict in the work environment.

One thing it said is the way you should express yourself is through process of feel want to willing, how does this? How does this situation? Make me feel. What do I want? And what am I willing to do? But it also stressed. The relationship aspect of direct communication with the other person.

And it taught me about active listening, which I'm sure many of you have heard about where you don't just sit back and passively let the persons speak and then respond. Although, that's something that I find myself doing. That's a lot of other people did as they sit there. Listening to the person speak, what they're mostly thinking about is how they'll respond to whatever they're saying and they're only sort of half listening.

And the idea of active listening is that you listen carefully and attentively and then you offer in the way of feedback and attempt to express in your own words. What they have told you and there's a couple of reasons for this, right? First of all, it helps you make sure you get it, right?

I'm also builds trust because the other person is aware that you've actually been listening to them. And that you have understood what they've said. And so now when you express, what might be your own alternative perspective, they're in a position to be say, well, okay. I know they've taken what I said into account when they're coming up with this response.

And so you know it's just a better way of communicating overall and that's what I thought of first was when a number of years later. I encountered Michael Moore's theory of transactional distance where the whole concept of again. It's you know, as I learned many years later it's based on information theory, but the idea is you send out your content or your information and then they send it back and you have this process and interaction.

So that's a lot of what's happening here. You're making sure that you're in communication with the other person and and actually responding. But there's a bit more to it than that because, you know, as she go through this process of communication. First of all, it's not just a mechanical process.

But secondly, it's also based in this idea of building up a relationship with them. So I mean I talked about trust a lot of people go. Okay, let's quantify the trust, let's measure the trust in all of that, building trust, you know, trust in your brand name is being an asset value, etc.

That's not quite right either, but this building up a relationship with the other person is an important part of being able to provide care or be cared for by another person. So that's where we begin. Okay. So quite a few contrasts between this view and a more traditional shall we say male perspective, sort of view can be drawn now, here I'm basing.

This next little bit mostly on the discussion that takes place in this book, postman and Pfizer discovering, right and wrong. All I will say, when I got the book, I got the books. Specifically for this course, that's it would have a much more detailed discussion that it has. Oh no, we does not.

But it does have a few pages. So, one area of contrast between an ethics of care and more traditional masculine, ethics is in the area of identities. And gilligan says, nail identity is based around concepts like personal autonomy, freedom, independence, and privacy. Whereas female identity is based more on social network of family, friends and community.

Now kinda. Yeah. But, you know, it's it's not a male theme female kind of thing here in, in the sense that you're either one or the other and never, the twain shall meet. And I I don't think that the sense of building and identity based on these things is exactly what is meant here, either.

What is it to have an identity? Even, you could even craft the difference between the two is saying, a male identity is built or constructed and a female identity is grown or developed. And so, we even have different accounts of what identity is much less about what that, what those identities, consistent?

And I think that coming from a feminist perspective and especially a critical feminist perspective. They would talk about male identities and female identities, as being as much socially constructed, or small socially developed, or socially grown. We'll come back to that as you know, based in what genes and again, it's that nature nurture thing that we're messing around with.

So anyhow that's one aspect of it. But it does give us a way to distinguish between earlier forms of ethics and later forms of ethics the earlier ones. And the lesser people are talking about most of the time in the domain of ethics and analytics, and AI, there are things like autonomy, freedom, independence, and privacy, all of these quote-unquote male values and not at all, talking about a family friends and community.

If I don't recall in all the reading that I've done in the subject, I don't recall anyone talking about the impact of AI and analytics on the social network and family friends and community set. Maybe buttons bullying alone and writings of that hill. But, you know, that's that's far removed from the immediate subject of ethics and analytics.

And AI better aspect is, and we've mentioned this before, focus on me, actual rather than the hypothetical. This is approaching the same issue of abstraction but from slightly different direction. As worth looking at this direction, Gilligan says that her research is focused on the actual rather than the hypothetical situations of moral conflict and choice.

But I've put in here as a diagram. I don't actually provide a reference, but it's to fill up a foots famous trolley problem. The trolley problem again, is not the first time we've talked about it in this course. There you are. You're the person in the middle by the switch.

If you pull the switch, you redirect the trolley and kill one person. But if you do nothing, the trolley continues on its way in kills five people. What do you do? What do you do? Well, this is a hypothetical, right? And and and there's a lot of discussion of the trolley problem and the literature and variations on it have been proposed.

Like for example, what if you know the one person, what if a one person is your wife or your husband or your child, what if a one person is Albert, Einstein? What if a one person is on Hitler? What if you're choosing between killing an old person or five children?

Now you see all kinds of variations, right? And the point here is that it's the variations that create the problem, not the abstract type, athletical has been created by Philip a foot and other philosophers reason and similar ways. And you're going to say, I was impelled to write about an ethics of care.

By the disparities of I heard between the voice of moral theories, and the voices of people on the grounds very much, a Harvard wave, speaker the people on the ground. And now and the logic of an ethics of cares, inductive, contextual, and psychological rather than deductive or mathematical. Now, that is kind of a misrepresentation of what the previous series of ethics are then the last, you know, you get into the calculations of utility or happiness as measured in heat ons and yeah, okay.

You're sort of into deductive and mathematical. But the idea here, the main idea here is that, it's the concrete situation, and the opinions of the people in these concrete situations, that matter. So, let's restate flip a foot. What if the person that is going to get hit, says, pull the lever, pull the lever.

Do you feel the same sort of guilt that you might feel otherwise? And how do the other five people feel about it. All those five people even aware that the trolley is coming upon them. It's cetera, right? I you get into these actual details and the voices of the people and then all of a sudden, you know, all the things that people talk about when they're talking about the hypothetical version of the problem.

All those hypothetical issues kind of dissipate and go away and what you're really left with. It is real trolleys, real people, and a real leader and and all the community around that and then all the relationships form to make that an actual circumstance, which really can't be described in any sort of abstract way.

Another way of saying this same thing, it's this and this happens right in this it was domain, right? We say the same thing we come out of different directions Gilligan again. And again, I'm drawing from Poseman and Pfizer expressing. The idea that women see morality is based within the context of personal relations as opposed to the male perspective, based on making judgments within a rational decision making framework, you know, okay.

But again, it's not an either, or again, you know, it's it's not the idea here that yeah, we're gonna Gilligan is arguing that woman. See the world this way. And that Gilligan is arguing, that this is how we should do a moral judgment on. It's a bit different from that.

And I've got a diagram here and it's, it's a bit hard to read, but I think this is maybe a bit more accurate than what we get in the postman and Pfizer discussion where we begin not with an assertion. But more of the fact persons are fundamentally relational born into conditions of dependence and care, and organizations is primarily primarily located in concrete engineering emotional relationships.

Now, as an aside, there is some discussion in the literature pointing out that they're very rarely concrete and enduring emotional relationships. A lot of these relationships we have particularly environments by hospitals, right? They're kind of quick and hopefully kind of brief in a good way as well. The second part of this is care is a practice as well as a value with special importance accorded to biological practice.

So and that's what we mean by saying morality is based within the context of personal relations, right? It's actually not a thing about making judgments. Not in the sense that we think of making judgments within this, rational decision making framework. It's a practice in. You know, let me put it into male terms, right?

It's a practice, like, being a mechanic is a practice, right? Being a mechanic is about having grease. On your hands, getting them in the car, working with them shaking that piece nudging, that piece getting a sense of what's wrong and what's right with the car. And then doing the thing that needs doing not as a decision but because it's the thing that needs doing see the difference.

Right? You know, nobody would approach mechanics from the perspective of you need to approach a car with a car theory. And the car theory will inform how you need to fix that problem. Now you've could You can come up with a car theory, You can come up with a mechanic decision making framework for cars.

Some people have, I've seen them right? And you can even have the mechanic. Remember that framework. But when they're actually doing the repair, they're not depending on the framework. The framework might be informative and helpful, but it's not like they're making judgments. Based on the framework, they're finding what needs to be done by interacting with the thing and then doing what needs to be found done.

Because that's the thing that needs to be done and as you guessed by my tone perhaps it's not particularly a woman. Think what makes it something? That is a kind of morality that women see, as opposed to men is the the relationship here that I've just sketched is between a man and an object, whereas what Gilligan is talking about for the most part, our relations between one person and another person and the other person isn't the car and you can't just jiggle it to see how it's working and the kind of interaction you have to have is more relational and and more dependent on intangibles like trust and respect and care.

So we get to the you know, the relations versus judgments bit and ethics of care. Conceives is truth as local and evaluating in terms of its effects. It's not good. I follow the right procedure to fix the current it is. Did the car work terror, employs vulnerability and struggled rooted in social and political conditions.

Now, that's the part about human behavior. We're going to come back to that. And then an ethic of care values, the growth of the cared for and accepts an uncertain future. And again, we're going to come back to that the whole concept of empowerment. So, you know, and I've seen this and a few cases reading about care in cases where the writers were male and, and, and especially analytical, and that, and let's span.

So, I'll just press it. There we go. So I was a professional. I would have had by called blocked for. I started doing this. But, you know, so I think I pretty much covered that slide was right in the middle of a sentence. I don't know how it ended.

So anyhow, this diagram is from Thomas B, Lawrence and Sally made this articles care and possibility enacting an ethic of care through narrative process. And you can have a look at it right there. And I mentioned that because it's not on the PowerPoint, slide, the title in that the link is there and only works.

Oh yeah, so yeah. So I did, I do, notice, man, writing about the ethics of care from this. Rational decision making framework perspective, and it's, it's kind of the thing it makes me think of George Lake off of frames, right? And it's almost like they're unable to escape the frame of traditional ethics when talking about the ethics of care.

And it's a challenge, he's totally a challenge and I totally get that because I are one. All right. I said I talked about ruled dependence and that's one of these things. That's really important in the ethics of care and Gilligan rights, about the female view of morality being based on vulnerability and dependence with the male orientation emphasizing rational courageous fully.

Informed people and us these guys again, but it's interesting reading server. Clark Miller on this and talking about the way dependence can be inverse and and the way the ethics of care inverts, depends. And she raises specifically, this is this photos from her article raises. The case of Wonder Woman being brought forward as an example of power, and being in control and being the solution and not being vulnerable and dependent.

And that of course, made me to think of the very short, 10 year of wonder woman quote on quote because it wouldn't be the original Wonder Woman picture here think as the UN ambassador for empowering girls and women and it's sort of points to the two sides of this, right?

Because we look at wonder woman here, especially this version, but even the new version and mostly, I think we see the costume rather than the empowerment in the Amazonian roots and the taking charge of situations etc. And that's kind of, no, it's kind of like a type of dependency, even a type of oppression, you can't really get out of and and it's, it's reasonably.

Well discussed, I think by Miller

The ethics of care. It's probably should have been verted, these two slides, but that's okay. Now, I thinks of care and the ethics of, right? The the female and the male perspective can be contrasted and then here it's this is contrasted in braid, back and actually quoted by Desi at heriani.

And so the ethics of care is achieved through perception, of one's self is connected to others, versus the ethics of rights achieved through process of separation and individual, individuation of self from others and care, moral, dilemmas are textual and rights theory moral. Dilemmas are universal in care. They're solved through inductive thinking in rights.

They're saw through an application about abstract or formal thinking etc, you get the idea right and that's what makes the whole wonder woman thing, sort of interesting because what is happening here is that you're taking a female figure and basically putting her into the rights perspective. So she's accomplishing the empowerment of women and girls.

First of all, by dressing up in in the costume. But then by looking at these moral dilemmas, from this universal perspective, from being representative of, right? Good of order of structure and appealing to universal principles and applying them to moral dilemmas in a universal way by call superheroes. And in fact that's the whole concept of being a superhero.

Although aside the more interesting superhero, stories are stories where back concept breaks down and and you know a lot of the time it doesn't break down and they just resolve it by fighting. And then whoever has the more moral right on their side wins because that's what it always works.

But sometimes and especially in some of the earlier spider-man stuff, it does break down, it breaks down in the interesting ways into the side because, of course, I'd have a commentary about superhero comments coming. Who do you think I have? Okay, so so the Wonder Woman case is interesting and it is illustrative of a dilemma of faced, I think by the feminist movements in general, and by ethics of care and particular, and it taught to the sort of oppression that they have to work against, okay?

So the focus that or the ethics of care is on the cared for and that's, that's a term. I think it's from knottings, right? So you have the the caregiver and the cared for like also is the term career and so this she I'm not really yelling, there is a distinction between the idea of being a caregiver and a carer.

But that's that's we don't need to go into that kind of detail here because we're going into enough acid is right. So the idea here is an audience says instead of turning to a principle for guidance and terror turns to the cared for what this he or she needs her mothers and then at work of care and my competent to feel this need.

Well I sacrifice too much of myself. Is the expressed me. Really in best interest of the cared for A Here. We see all of these considerations that we've talked about from some of the previous slides. Come up to the four, The question of stealing bread, right? Imagine asking all these questions when you're considering whether or not to steal bread.

Imagine asking all of these questions when considering whether or not to pull the lever on the trolley But you know, it doesn't come up in those abstract formulations because there isn't a real person and there isn't a real situation is a fictional character and has no dimension or no community beyond what we see on the screen or in the plane as it were.

And we can't, for example, distinguish in these hypotheticals between a felt need something that I would perceive from a situation and then expressed me. What some person in the situation would actually say to me and it's hard to draw the distinction between a normative approach which would be how I approached the ethical issue based on my best.

Professional judgment versus comparative assessments based on needs of people here, it says with similar attributes but with some other attributes are based on the needs of actual people. And that's a characterization of grad shows, typology of needs, right? And this typeology is important here in this context because it's describing, or helping us describe the difference between an actual concrete situation and abstract situation, and the concrete.

And the abstract are going to differ in all four of those types of expressions of needs. And that's why the abstract you can't just take what you would do in the abstract and apply it to the concrete for us. I like to say, you've got to get grease on your hands.

Just have to or sometimes I talk, you know, from my experience as a journalist, you know, and you know, journalists real journalists saying, you know, like I've got ink stain on my hand. All right. Actually being involved in the process of producing in these and that's different from thinking about hypothetically as in a, Lou grant or the newsroom or whatever.

Totally, they're totally different situations. What was that? Erroneous orca? So, about the news, I watched that sort of, like, you know, nobody is going to preface their arguments in the Israel with, but I love my country as much as anyone. But real-world conversations aren't like that and that's why he's failed.

Another aspect here is thinking of the cared for as empowered, right? It's not simply that they have a say. It's not simply that they have a voice. It's that they are the ones making the decisions about their own care. I am an according Karen Costa here and I think this is Karen Rey, Acosta, but I'm not positive.

And I couldn't find the actual sort of the source of the quote, but I did link to some of her resources on this. But, yeah, the concept here is sound in the ethics of care isn't. Just about giving people a voice. It isn't just about having conversations or having relationships with them.

It's that they actually make decisions about their own care, and that's a fundamental principle of health care and indeed. It's a fundamental principle of care ethics, and I think a lot of ethics in general. I see it a lot. Well, we saw it in ethical codes and we see it a lot in the discussions that we have on research athletics boards.

Where, you know, it's up to the people whose data is collected, how that data is used except for, is that sense of empowerment, a lot of the time, it's how that is manifest how it represented? But the the key thing here is the this isn't consultation in the sense of consultation where we have a conversation, you tell me what you think.

And then I go ahead and implement whatever solution I was going to. Anyways, we do that a lot in politics and the business and in industry and organizations. Generally, trust me. I've seen it doesn't times per week, putting ethics of care. That doesn't actually happen and it's a big part of my own theory of learning that the lunar decides what and how to learn.

There's a lot of a lot of talk, even talk about pedagogies of care, but also talk about, you know, personalized, learning and learning in general, where we will consult the order, or maybe create a contract with the learner. But ultimately ends up with whoever's in charge, making the decisions about what will be learned and how it will be learned, and then making make some choices sort of on the margins.

Feel like, what kind of colors your background or are you gonna have a serif, or non-serif font and your screen, or what you do, your work on Friday or on Saturday trivial things? But there's there's a process here. And we've got six principles of trauma, informed care from the CDC in the United States, beginning with safety, having the person in a safe environment, establishing trustworthiness and transparency.

And that's some of this active listening that I talked about peer support, which I haven't talked about collaboration and mutuality, which I haven't talked about and then empowerment, which is both voice and choice and then the consideration of cultural historical and gender issues. Now, I'd probably put that little earlier in the process but I mean, but but then again it's not a process, right?

Take all of these six things pile them up on top of each other and you probably got something that resembles more and ethics of care. Another way in which terror, ethics and differs from traditional ethics. And indeed, traditional thought is with the concept of objectivity. And that's also something I ran into a lot in journalism is something that we run into a lot in education and it's kind of interesting, a deep cornea just did a tweet on a blast from the past of myself and George Siemens talking about whether there is an objective truth about the world.

Objectivity is this value and again it's, you know, depicted as this male or masculine value where, you know, you stand, apart, from whatever it is that you're talking about, you know, the classic examples, objectivity in news reporting, where you don't take sides, right? But there's also the idea of objectivity and science.

You go where the data leads you in education. We hear talk about evidence and forms or evidence-based decision making. Again, that's appealing for this principle of objectivity. Who Bell hooks writing about this, make some observation, but that's strikes me as dead on. She writes, the professors who prided themselves on their capacity to be objective where most often those who are directly affirmed in their caste class or status position.

Unless the thing with objectivity, right? Objectivity or being neutral is in a very important sense, a rayification of the status quo, it's taking the way things are now as normal. So Parker Palmer, I'll quote here, the oppression of cultural minorities by a white middle class male version of truth comes in part from the dominarian mentality of objectivism.

Once the objectiveness has the facts, no, listening is required. No other points of view are needed. The facts after all are the facts. All that remains is to bring others into conformity with objectives truth. You see the danger of this, right? You can see that, you know, and I'm just thinking, you know, thinking as I read that about the example, I just gave about the mechanic right?

And you know, there, it's not an opinion. You're not making a judgment about how to repair something, it just is the way it is, right? Think of that in contrast with this it sounds like I'm saying the same thing, but I really think I'm saying to different things, the the facts as expressed by objectivity are just as much data leading and subjective as the fact of what's happening.

When the mechanic plays with the car, the both represent a point of view. They both represent a certain way of having hands on a situation, but one of them depicts itself, as though it were neutral independent from a, you know, a third party stance looking down on a situation, but of course, that's stance that perspective is almost always the perspective of people who are at in the highest class or cast who are in positions of privilege, who are able to look down with the actually, the leisure, and the freedom.

And the resources is to create this object of third person, point of view and we have a lot of discretions about this intimidating university press in the 1980s. When I was active in that organization about just what did it mean for journalists to say? We are objective and you know, we have a lot of disputes but among the student journalists in Canada, at that time, it was generally agreed.

That being objective was to reinforce the existing power structure and society, that was quote unquote, the neutral stands, and the question that we wrestled with was not whether that was true. But how best to how best to how best to looking, for a word here, respond to that, how best to work with that, perhaps even how best to oppose that and gaining university press at the time was divided between being an agent of social change.

As one class, one group of people said, probably representing what might today be called the feminist point of view. Certainly all the feminists were on that side and then the other point of view, which frankly I was on as well being agents of social awareness and we perhaps naive belief that if you made people aware of things, like normal means, power structures as usual, that they can make the road decision.

But you see the difference. You see some of the debate here though, right? Because how can people define? Sorry. How can people make their own decisions decide for themselves? If you as the caregiver are determined to create change in them or for them of a certain sort, you know, that's why I've always felt that.

Well that's why I felt then that my relationship would the reader was a better relationship when it was more like this conversation back forth. Where I made them aware, here's the world as I've seen it, but they make their own decisions. As opposed to me being the agent, creates change in the reader.

It's a pretty fine distinction, I think, but it's the sort of considerations that come up in an ethics of care. I don't think really come up in any of the ethical perspective. Certainly not to the depth that we've discussed living. This course, the other side of caring is the carer or the one caring.

Or as I've also characterized it as the caregiver and this is interesting. Bill hooks again saying, sorry about the capitalization there. It's auto capitalized by PowerPoint. Feminists to politics is still the only movement for social justice offers a vision of mutual well-being. As a consequence of this theory of practice that might be overstating.

It, you know, I think that John Rawls would probably say, well, I think mutual well-being is a concept, a consequence of justice as fairness, but there is a bit of a difference in the sense that, you know, justice as fairness isn't really concerned about well-being. You may be practical concrete sense.

And, you know, if people think it's all fair, then some people might still be hurt. Some people might still serve as these usual in ethical theories based on calculation. But again, this is interesting. And I mentioned the earlier the I mean, the way male writers sometimes, talk about caring I quoted from Britannica here and deliberately brought out a named the authors because one of them say praying, the others named Brian and they write what is distinctive and all sex relations is that the one caring action response to a perceived meat on the part of the cared for carrying this involved sentiment, but is not necessarily emotional in nature.

Let's think about that. I would do a little bit of critical pedagogy here. First of all, they got it. Wrong is not in response to a perceived need. It can be perceived, but mostly it's in response to an expressed as we've mentioned earlier, but also it involves sentiment but is not necessarily emotional in nature.

I think that you would find it generally is emotional in nature, although we need to talk about what that cashes out to be. But there's also a sense here that you're saying that it would be bad if it was emotional and nature. And they're also looking at the word sentiment of kind of a technical term and cash that out a bit.

I've got a diagram here that talks about the different kinds of sentiments. Ranging from amusement, excitement, joy love desire, optimism etc, including remorse, sadness brief, discussed anger, all of those are sentiments, right? But all of those are emotions as well, but the idea of sentiment is that it's a feeling, it's like the sensation, the idea of emotion is that there's a value attached to it and the diagrams has positive negative and ambiguous sentiments.

The ambiguous ones in case you're curious are realization, surprise curiosity, and confusion general think are really that ambiguous. But nonetheless, and you know, in the discussion of care and care ethics. I think that emotion plays an important role and we we talk about, are they talk about, you know, the, the feeling of the need to care as being a motivating factor, that you have to have this motivation.

That's what creates a duty, right? It's not not simple, it's not an inclination to care, right? It's a duty to care. And this duty comes not from, in some external imposed force or some universal principles. It comes from the weight that the need to care bears on you right now and it wouldn't work.

If it wasn't emotional in nature unless you have that force of feeling in yourself, you don't really duty. So, I think Dan and Burton are wrong of both counts there, but they're not wrong, in the sense that, you know, they're just making objective mistakes. They're wrong. In the sense that they're looking at an ethical theory from the perspective of ethical theories properly.

So called rather than looking at the ethics of care from within the context of ethics of care, which is what I'm trying to do here. Probably also failing in my own way. I admit that. But nonetheless, I'm trying to draw that distinction here. Okay, caregiving now we're yeah. I mean, just read this and then we'll go into the discussion.

But claiming that women utilize an ethic of care, while men, use justice, and there's that distinction. Again, Gilligan seems to suggest that women are better suited for care giving roles within the home that for professional life and that's Jean Kennel, writing in 25, years of care. Ethics. But this were facts, she continued that many ways.

Women's caregiving. Work has been marginalized and devalued sorry. The many ways, women's care giving work the marginalized and devalued is radical transformative and finally, important feminist work. So the idea here is pointing out and then this is, this is the purpose of trying, the distinction between the male and the female approach, right?

It's not to draw distinction between a male and female approach, right? That's what a male philosopher would do. That's what I would, right? But it's to highlight this aspect of women's experience. Women's traditional experience and to draw out and make the case and show that this were has been marginalized and devalued.

And that's why we have this distinction between a male approaching a female approach, the female approach consists of approaches that happen. Our generalized devalue. Why? Because they are approaches that come from women, right? And because of the way society was structured, the approach that comes to women is devalued and largerized.

So showing how this happens says, killer is transformative and vitally important feminist, philosophy philosophical work. And the reason why it's important, this is me speaking. Now is not simply to push back against the marginalization and evaluation of women, although that's part of it and an important part of it.

But to also suggest that this work of the caregiving work and the thinking behind it should also not be marginalized and devalued that the thinking behind caregiving is as important to defining ethics among other things as things, like rationality abstract, principal calculation, and the rest, I guess not a battle between the two.

Although you often see a represented that way, it's a reclamation of one from the position of being devalued back to thinking of it as something valuable. And the people who practice in as we suggested earlier, as persons as we think about it, and look at the historical rule willingness played in font, if I had to give it an overall characterization, which I did at the top there I'd say, women have been have typically been treated as quote, the other in philosophical thought and generally, because Phyllis philosophical thought is generally been written by men.

So you would expect that woman would be thought of as the other, but, you know, it's not, not just a neutral other aristotle, like actual design. Women are the followers Russo who's so progressive and so many ways. Women are weak passive offer a little resistance Nietzsche. We could talk a lot about each and women but I won't because it's a different subject.

But the most neutral the most neutral thing I can say about Nietzsche is women are deep deceptive. Like, truth might be his his impression of women, I think, I think he values them but is afraid of them at the same time, which is a typical male response, Mary, Wollstonecraft, draws out.

And I think this is important. The distinction between, whether the way women think, and women's ways in the world are based on instinct. In other words nature or social construction and it says, you know, at one point women are girls wouldn't be so interested in goals if they were forced to be interested in those by their confinement.

That's a paraphrase. It's get the idea and some required Miller draws on an interesting thing, talking about the public private divide. The idea that historically women were the people at home that they expressed their influence in private to a man, of course, and they weren't expected to participate in public life.

But one of the major impacts of the feminist movements of the 60, 70s and 80s beyond was that women came out into the public and manifested, their thoughts, beliefs, and ways of doing things in the much more public way. And of course there's a constant effort by early certain segments of society who put them back into that private role.

You see this explicitly in countries like Afghanistan but we see it implicitly. I think in many other ways I won't go through it. I think we'll just observe the best case. So the rare feminist roots to the ethics of care. And I think, you know, we would be completely misrepresenting it if we didn't say that.

And here's the two, male art, authors, in Britannica describing this again, they write quote, it's so happens that those writing in the feminine tradition have come to associate care and responsibility to others. With a female gender approach to ethics and individual rights and justice with a male gender approach to ethics.

Feminist philosophers have argued that the deontological utilitarian and justice moral theories are grounded in the masculine experience. When it's a justice, moral theories. I think they mean social contract theories or roles in theory of justice. Perhaps, it's not clear exactly what their perspective is to a degree. That that's true to a degree.

That's true. But I don't think it's nearly as passive as they represent here. Yeah, it's so happens that, you know, could have been any other way but it just happened. I don't think that's good at all. I think there are very good reasons, why those writing and the feminine tradition of come to associate care, responsibility in ethics.

And I think the ethics of care explores, this and makes it very explicit. We'll talk about that in a bit when we talk about. For example, oppression, not meanings, I think has a better take on it, I forget exactly where she wrote wrote this, but I know she wrote this from the perspective of the patriarchy.

The ethics of carers of feminist philosophy. But from a wider perspective, it's a humanist philosophy. And that too is the thing that I I would agree with as well.

Part of the, you know, parallel problem two is that there's feminism and there's feminism and we talked earlier about the wonder woman thing, right? Wonder woman promoting the the value of girls and women by taking over the male role and that's what might be called traditional feminism.

Where feminism is quote freedom, from sex, determined roles as compared to the current kind of feminism that we're talking about you're quoting Bill Hooks, feminine feminism defined a political term as a stress collector as well as individual experience.

Hooks makes the point and for some very good reasons that you don't get to be, you know, get to have if you will to use a phrase, the best of both worlds here. And you don't get to be a feminist and still agree. With these quote, unquote masculine values.

We resist, she writes the emphasis on individual identity and lifestyle terms like liberal feminist and bourgeois feminist represent confrontations. And I don't think that's literally true because there is other brands of feminism, right? And it exists and is therefore not really a contradiction because contradictions don't exist. But thinking of feminism in the current context, the current context, being the discussion of the ethics of care, the feminism, that results in an ethics of care would produce contradiction.

So terms, like liberal ethics of care theory or bourgeois, ethics of care theory. Those we could say represent contradictions and it's important to understand why that's the case.

Gender. I mean, the ethics of care comes from origins in gender inequality the fact of gender inequality in the historical gender equality in the different views that we've already sketched out of January, inequality, themselves are directly related to the characterization of an ethics of care as it has been characterized.

Now a straw back a little bit and talk about what we mean by equity and inequity, right. Or equity or equality and inequality and know, there's a difference between these two words but with glossite just for the moment. So here's going through more. We conceptualize gender inequality as a complex and intersectional issue which is related to at least three dimensions of an inequality, you vitally inequality, resource, inequality and existential inequality resource.

Inequalities pretty much self-explanatory rights access to resources, vital inequality is equality with respect to things that like health and fitness and life and those sorts of things and would include things like control over your own body. Etc. Existential inequality here means denial of, I put brackets equal recognition, and respect, and use a potent generator of humiliations for black people, and their Indians woman and patriarchal societies pour immigrants.

Low casts stigma, potted stigmatized ethnic groups. So, again, sort of like an American ish perspective but bringing in casts, so, you know, it's not just American. But, you know, when we're talking about Indians, you know, there's Canadian Indians. There's South American Indians, there's aborigines of Australia. There are indigenous people in Africa.

So, you know, let's, you know, let's let's think of this more globally. But the point here is that, the, there is a fact of gendering equality. It's related to other forms of inequality. If we consider all of these together, that's what we call intersectional so that the types of inequality intersects, right?

It's one thing to be something to be sitting here, listening to a train and one thing to be oppressed as a woman, it's another thing to be oppressed as a black woman, or as I suggested that the top of the very beginning of these presentations, it's one thing to be a woman who is oppressed.

It's another to be a woman who's a Harvard, professor who's oppressed difference is here. And that's what this gets at. So nobody has them an awfully on oppression, and the intersectional perspective of recognizes. I think that each person's experience of oppression is personal and deeply personal, and felt differently by every person because they, they're really different circumstances.

Any different situation. Okay, inequality is different ways. You can produce inequality third born lists for gamifices and exercising categorization. So we can just take it as you know, a survey of the field rather than you know, describing an objective reality but before ways are distant. You know, this is the idea about people falling behind their people running ahead exclusion, which is a lot of parts.

I was right, barriers erected to make it impossible for certain categories of people to access a good life. Redlining is another example of that hierarchy. The whole idea of societies and organizations cost intuited as ladders some people perched on top and other people below. And this you think about the whole concept of class mobility.

And that kind of, right? That is a dialogue that assumes inequality exists and is the norm and that will continue, but it's okay. If you allow people to move between the different levels and then exploitation, which is a predominant form of inequality, in global society today in which the riches of the rich derive from the toil in this objection of the poor and disadvantage.

And, you know, need to go very far to see examples of that. Probably the shirt that I'm wearing is an example of that. Sorry. Creative commons. But imagine it's true and I'm not happy about it, but I don't make sure it's in Canada anymore. My grandfather used to make shirts and but not anymore.

So what we have in feminist theory is a response to this suppression and there's a couple aspects here and again Sarah Clark Miller draws this. So, and this is why it's hard to get at something like an ethics of care. So, a world we live in a world in which gender oppression is so pervasive and so normalized.

But often we do not even perceive the patterns of subordination surrounding us, and that's kind of like the wonder woman thing, right? It didn't even occur to the people at the UN. But yeah, the clothing wonder woman wore signify her as someone who's oppressed. Even at the same time, your presenting her, as a beacon of breaking free from oppression, a beacon of power and liberty because for all of what she does, she still has to appeal, the young male eyes.

And this is what Maryland Frey calls the double bind, right? Or another way of putting this, you should smile more right to smile on command is to participate in one's own oppression, not to smile. However, places one at risk of being on the receiving end of sensor anger, or even though right violence plenty of examples of that and it's not just women, right?

You know, we we look at the case and I forget all the names that are involved in it, but it was just a recently concluded, court case in the United States where a black man was jogging through, what is normally perceived to be a white neighborhood? He was taste down by some armed man who cornered him and demanded that he answered their questions which he refused to do so he shot him right now.

The logic is evening. Should answer the classes. All right? But if you think about that right saying yes, I should answer your questions because here you are. You've got me right? That's just to participate in your own oppression. That's to accept that. These white men have the right to tracking down a force into answer questions.

Just because he's a black man job getting jogging and a weight neighborhood and that's wrong and was that's the deliver that this person faced and he refused and he's dead. And that is oppression, and that's the kind of oppression that a precious. Oppressed people generally face where they need to be ruling, participants in their own, in their own oppression.

And that's why and ethics of care, has to be about more than just caring for the oppressed. It has to be allowing and indeed. Enabling the oppressed to if you will not smile, right? It's tool. It's to make it legitimate for them to respond to their oppression in ways that are uncomfortable to the oppressor and TikTok.

There's a guy, I don't know, but he's you'll be racking nice of all to anybody who's on TikTok. He begins his comments with. Hey colonizer. And so naturally, a lot of people ejected to that of these are first nations or an indigenous. Man, I don't know where he lives for what country.

He's from there's a bunch of really good indigenous, people who help me a lot actually, even though they don't know me from that, but he explained that one point that, you know, it doesn't matter. I mean, if that'll no whole idea here. Is that being able to express himself in a way that whites or colonizers?

Find, disturbing is exactly the point because it draws out in these people, the instincts that they should be able to say, hey you stop that and he would just have to stop that. Of course, he doesn't have to stop that. That's one of the things about the internet, too.

And in social media generally is that we don't have the power to oppress people the way we used to so that might be coming back. So almost done this bit and then we'll end the this particular bit of the presentation. In fact, no, I'm gonna end it right there.

This is where I wanted to end. Just my number end was a little off, so as you saw briefly on the next slide out of this, will arise the duty to act, right? The the duty to act comes from the recognition of oppression, right? The idea that the rears such a duty but this ethical duty of care exists at all.

Maybe in part it comes from this traditional idea of faint of female values of caring or female roles of caring. But I think that an equally important source, if not the most important source is the lived history of women as being oppressed. And, and the people that are writing today are women that in their younger years were oppressed.

And I, you know, a lot of the freedoms of women have today are actually quite recent and people can remember, you know, people can remember it's within living memory that women couldn't own property. In many places women couldn't vote, you know, we're still having stories and the news about the first woman, this and the first woman that, you know, it's recent and the experience of rising from this oppression and what it's like to be oppressed.

And then to be working with people who are in positions of vulnerability because they have been oppressed, or simply because they're vulnerable leads to an ethics of care because you can justify and rationalize to the sun. Comes home to the Suncoast. So the cows come home or the sun goes down and so that yes, indeed, you know, different roles for the sexes, or the genders just makes sense.

Or you can say, you know, based on our natural understanding of the world everybody's either a man or a woman and never between somebody etc. You know all of these abstract theories can be used to justify oppression but if you're working against depression or if you are among those seeking to be in the future no longer oppressed, then these generalizations don't help much.

They do more harm than good at what really matters is the real lived experience of the people who are vulnerable, who are being oppressed. So, I think it's a natural that the ethics of care is a feminist ethic and if you had to ask me, which you probably don't, but, you know, I wouldn't trace it to, you know, a naturalist theory at what women are like.

And I wouldn't even trace it to a historical account of what women's roles are. I would I would trade it to the very real experience of, you know, emerging from oppression or in the words of Booker T Washington up from slavery. And Steven Downs. Part three is coming. We got a lot more to talk about on this subject and as you can see, I'm getting into it.

So talk to you soon.

But,

Anything like a good meal of that, all that's awful.

Force:yes