People who think are difficult to control. One day after 'International Women's Day'

Interesting post cross-posted from A. Douglas.

Female logicians and the purpose of philosophy

Here is one of my favourite stories about Elizabeth Anscombe:

    [O]nce, entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers. She proceeded to take them off.

A story with the same moral was told by the logician and mathematician Christine Ladd-Franklin. Here it is recounted by Susan Stebbing in Thinking to Some Purpose (p.23):

    Mrs. Ladd Franklin tells the story of a little girl, aged four, whose nurse objected to her table manners. ‘Emily,’ said the nurse, ‘nobody eats soup with a fork.’ ‘But,’ replied Emily, ‘I do, and I am somebody.’

The moral: Female logicians were troublesome in a society that aimed to control women.

More generally, people who think are difficult to control.

That, to me, is the point of philosophy.

. . . . . . . . .

Some interesting subjects on the Anscombe Bioethics website:

Intention and double effect

From her earliest writings Anscombe showed an interest in the concept of intention. This an interesting topic in itself but it is also key to many moral questions. In order to judge an action we need to be able to describe it adequately, and this must involve saying what is intended. Anscombe's short book Intention, written in 1957, has been described as 'the most important treatment of action since Aristotle.' [15] The book is not explicitly about moral questions, but it is part of the background work Anscombe thought was necessary if we are to think clearly about the goodness and badness of actions. 

One of the dangerous errors common to many modern philosophers is the denial that there is any moral difference between foreseen and intended consequences of action. They emphasise the extent of responsibility for all consequences of action, including those that are unwanted and unintended. This sounds positive enough, but if it were true then there would be no difference, for example, in taking a job despite the fact that this would upset one's parents and taking the same job precisely in order to upset one's parents. Or to take a more extreme example, there would be no difference between saving two children from a burning building when you realise that you must leave a third child behind, and saving two children by deliberately killing a third child and dividing up her organs. 

From such examples it should be clear that what we are aiming at in our actions, what we are trying to achieve, is crucial to the goodness or badness of these actions. 'It is one thing to give a man drugs to ease his pain, knowing that their cumulative effect may kill him before the disease does, and another to poison him intentionally' [16]. It is also important that we weigh up possible unintended consequences of our actions. Nevertheless, side-effects do not stand on an equal footing with what is the aim or the essential means of an action. 

more here

And she was a badass.

Eccentricities

Elizabeth Anscombe was notoriously eccentric, and especially so by the standards of her time. She referred to herself as Miss Anscombe and never as Mrs Geach. She always wore trousers (even though University regulations at that time required a skirt). She smoked cigars and for some time she affected a monocle. There is a story that once, entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers. She proceeded to take them off. It is also said that, once when she was in Chicago she was accosted by a mugger. She told him that this was no way to treat a visitor. He ended up accompanying her through the neighbourhood and reprimanded her for walking in such a dangerous place.