Michael Greer
I work in feminist philosophy, social epistemology, philosophy of social science, and bioethics. My dissertation, which examines the role of emotion in social movement building, pushes on the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy by drawing on qualitative empirical data that I collected myself. My first chapter reflects on the philosophical value of qualitative methods by appealing to the care epistemology developed in Vrinda Dalmiya’s Caring to Know: Comparative Care Ethics, Feminist Epistemology, and the Mahābhārata. I argue that one reason to use qualitative methods in Philosophy is that they allow philosophers to practice a virtue associated with care-knowing, the virtue of relational humility. I contend that practicing this virtue can change how the philosopher feels about uncertainty, her own ignorance, and knowledge in general, and this can have knock-on effects in the knowledge that she produces, ultimately making it more epistemically just. I thus justify the epistemic payoff of qualitative methods in Philosophy in terms of how they allow us to develop ourselves as caring knowers. I am turning this chapter into a series of papers that connect care epistemology with the value of qualitative methods—in the social sciences and philosophy—as well as ideas around how to conduct a more critical, feminist X-Phi.
Costanza Porro, PhD
I am a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at Lancaster University. My main research interests lie at the intersection between political philosophy and feminist philosophy, and I have published a number of articles and book chapters on theories of equality, the philosophy of vulnerability, the ethics and the politics of care and the philosophy of criminal punishment. My current book project, based on research funded by the British Academy, offers a novel perspective on the place that care should have in our understanding of justice, centred on the under-explored relationship between relational equality and care. I develop a political account of care which captures the political significance of care beyond dependency care and I propose a novel relational theory of justice and care which does not focus on providing the good of care to people, framing care primarily as a concern of distributive justice, but looks at the social structures, institutions, norms and policies that can support the creation and the flourishing of an array of diverse caring relationships. The support to relationships of care, I argue, is owed to all as the appropriate response to their status as moral equals. Looking at questions of care through the lenses of relational equality, I also address issues of inequalities of power, status and esteem in caring relationships and caring practices, including the question of who provides care, and how that intersects with existing gender, race, class and migration status-based inequalities of status.
Website: https://www.costanzaporro.com/
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppr/people/costanza-porro
Kyle Scott
I’m a philosopher working in social and political philosophy. My work primarily concerns the topics of freedom, labor, and capitalism. Currently, I am working on a project on contemporary care work that argues that market pressures increasingly force care workers to perform emotionally engaged labor in ways that are mechanical, instrumentalized, and disconnected from authentic caring motivations. I argue that this produces new forms of alienation that separate workers from the moral and emotional expressions that give their work its distinctive value.