Should feminists be Humeans? Facts, values, and barriers to entailment

Abstract Can one be a feminist and a Humean at the same time? That is, can one consistently maintain a feminist politic whilst also endorsing Hume’s Law? Gillian Russell has recently put forward an extended defence of so-called ‘barrier laws’, including Hume’s Law: that one cannot ‘get an ought from an is’. Such a barrier law implies a distinction between the normative and the nonnormative, or between facts and values. However, Russell is also a feminist—she, like many contemporary logicians, is committed to feminism in and beyond logic—and it is a widely held truism amongst many feminist scholars that the fact/value distinction is a pernicious dualism and artefact of patriarchal ideology. It seems that these commitments are in tension. This paper develops this tension, showing that feminists drawn to Humeanism (and vice versa) should be worried about it. The paper then sets out six potential ways to resolve the tension between feminism and Humeanism. Finally it concludes by suggesting that the most attractive position of those surveyed is one that actually involves biting a bullet: giving up on a feminist opposition to dualisms.