Jitka Kadlečíková

Although many fields of study have been radically reshaped by feminist critiques, formal a priori disciplines like mathematics and computer science have proven more intransigent; feminist critiques have largely emphasized goals like increasing enrollment or participation in these fields, stopping short of proposing radical critiques of their theoretical foundations. In this paper, we discuss how Valerie Plumwood’s work on reading classical logic as a logic of domination can be extended to provide grounds for authentic feminist theories of mathematics. We argue that the relevant arithmetic $$\mathsf{R}^{\sharp}$$ described by Plumwood’s collaborator Robert K. Meyer satisfies the criteria characteristic of a Plumwoodian critique of arithmetic. The setting of $$\mathsf{R}^{\sharp}$$ is finally used to investigate several consequences of such an approach, including the degree to which such an arithmetic parts ways with classical mathematics as regards arithmetical truths.