Anne Jaap Jacobson interview

Anne Jaap Jacobson is interviewed at 3AM Magazine, called "the neurofeminist philosofunkster."
I'm not exactly sure what a Philosofunkster is, but I'm quite sure that the world needs more of them!

The interview ranges across intentionality (skepticism but not eliminativism), neuroscience, experimental philosophy, what makes certain forms of analytic philosophy so excruciatingly tedious, what feminist philosophy adds to other approaches, David Hume, and the roadblocks put down for women in philosophy and science.

One part worth noting quotes a report from the AHA:

People seem to be uncertain about whether a woman can do science, and dead certain that a female philosopher has no place in that world.

I could recount a host of other insults, some quite large and some small, and the very worst of it all is that it accomplishes just about nothing, saps one’s strength and weakens one’s morale. This is happening to women in philosophy across the country. When I recently felt I was being done substantial harm, I hired a lawyer. I have since learned I know a number of successful women who have finally gone the same route. The American History Association’s 2005 report on the Status of Women notes that among senior women in their field:

“There is more than enough resignation, bitterness, disillusionment, and discouragement to warrant a more serious and extensive consideration of gender in the profession than we were able to carry out in this survey. … The profession as a whole should be concerned that so many successful women feel they have suffered from gender discrimination. Female talent is being squandered in fights over large and small issues that could be ameliorated by the attentiveness of administrators, department chairs, and colleagues, and the establishment of more transparent institutional procedures.”

And history is supposed to be much better than philosophy. As numerous studies are pointing out, we badly need administrators who will not accept what can amount to a prolonged harassment of women.

Twin-Earth, Hilary Putnam, and the 47%

Philosophy of science exam question:

What does a theory of reference aim to give an account of? Why is a theory of reference relevant for philosophy of science?

An exam answer:

A theory of reference aims to provide a guide for finding the source for entitlement. 

Women in Politics = Women in Philosophy

Sam, a student in my Feminist Theory course, points out that the percentage of people with full-time teaching jobs who are women is about 17% and that the percentage of people in Congress who are women is also about 17%.

No claim about magic numbers here, but just an interesting mirroring.
17% of U.S. Senators are women.
16.6% of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives are women.

In both cases, there is nothing about the work that's done that would predispose women to have less ability or experience than men. (Indeed, in both cases isn't the work related to universals? That is, in the political body, a single representative stands for all constituents, and in philosophy, the philosopher identifies universal truths.) Also in both cases, the methods involve adversarial discussion, and the field's history is predominately male and symbolically masculine.

But it's a Design school!

My university is not just an engineering school, it's a design school, too. We have very good programs in film, in fine art photography, in industrial design. (We're also getting an architecture program, in spite of having no architects on the faculty.)

But here we are, #9 on the Princeton Review's list of 10 UGLY campuses! Hey, they picked one of the nicest shots they could for the slide show!

Recent Chronicle Articles on Women in Academe

Two articles about women's representation in the sciences and philosophy have come out in the last week. One is behind a paywall and focuses on women in philosophy and history: http://chronicle.com/article/In-Terms-of-Gender/135306/

The other tracks women's publishing records in the sciences and makes a few nice points which can be generalized to other areas of research: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Hard-Numbers-Behind/135236/
(The most interesting parts of this article come toward the end, so it's worth reading it in full.)

The first of these, which features Sally Haslanger in a photo, goes over familiar ground. For instance, the speculation that women are turned off by the male canon, but with no explanation of why that would hold in philosophy but not English. And the Rutgers female graduate students' defense of their department, in which they say

their views are taken seriously, they are supported by faculty, and they in turn are role models for undergraduate women. 

If this is true, then what more could one want? One may doubt their word, but it seems entirely conceivable to me that a department may be woman-friendly without anyone doing specific work in feminist philosophy. Feminist work is important, but it needn't be done everywhere--there are good reasons for a department specializing. The proof is in the success and well-being of the women faculty and students.

Another familiar idea to explain the absence of women makes its appearance:

"Philosophy, in the English ­speaking world, has migrated closer to the sciences, and places a high premium on technical skills, logic, and dividing problems into lots of small pieces," Mr. Leiter says. 

But this ignores the prevalence of women in the sciences, including in those areas, such as molecular biology, biochemistry, and chemical engineering, which use technical skills and highly specialized problem areas. Women make up over 50% of undergrads in the life sciences and a larger proportion of majors in chemistry than in philosophy. What it does do is to put the blame on women for being underprepared or selling themselves short. What it doesn't do is take responsibility for the social environment, which is a sufficient explanation for philosophy's shortfall.

The article on women's record of publishing in the sciences is more sophisticated and offers a more complex picture of women's changing status. Women are not let off the hook--the article suggests that they submit fewer papers to journals. But this observation is situated in the complex social setting women find themselves in, for instance with obligations for childcare and eldercare and different expectations for non-research academic work.

The article also shows some of the simplistic thinking that comes to the fore when we discuss the status of women in research, even by people whose other professional work is supremely complex and nuanced. For instance, there is often an assumption that if women aren't facing active, open hostility and obvious discrimination, then nothing is wrong. In that case, any choices they make to cluster in subfields, to publish at lower rates, to collaborate less, or to accept a lower author ranking are chalked up to their own lack of proficiency rather than the social setting.

John J. Siegfried, a professor emeritus of economics at Vanderbilt University who has worked with the economic association, says there is not much that academe can do about gender imbalances, short of forcing women into subfields that may not interest them. "What's the solution?" he asks. "Should I tell women starting a Ph.D. that they should only study finance or econometrics?"

It can seem obvious to the women who consider work in certain subfields that it is controlled by crony networks, or that newcomers are more or less welcomed. This is one of the phenomena which is the target of the Gendered Conference Campaign.

Markets, and also Media Influences on Thought

This post is about Pornography. But I've learned better than to put that in the post title, or it attracts all kinds of comments which then have to be deleted for the sake of decency.

My Feminist Theory course has been discussing pornography, and the reading assignment last week was a well-structured examination of the issues that Catherine MacKinnon raised in the mid-1980s. The pornosphere was so different then, though, that my students had a hard time understanding what the debate was about.

Their obtuseness didn't just seem a result of different experiences with porn than the easy access to Playboy and little else that was a feature of life before the internet. Their premises about cultural influence seemed markedly different from mine and from those of the textbook chapter we read. Most of the students weren't disagreeing with MacKinnon's point. Beyond disagreement, there seemed to be a failure of comprehension. Some of the sticking points:

1. MacKinnon and other feminists started by formulating a definition of porn that differed from the Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court's definition uses criteria such as 'obscenity,' 'prurience,' and 'community standards,' the feminists don't mind materials that are sexually explicit or unusual ("kinky"). Their problem is with violence and with acts and attitudes which are dehumanizing. My students' response was that "you can't change a definition--just look it up in the dictionary." What's going on here? A failure to understand philosophical methods? A failure to see the role of law in changing culture? A failure to accept that culture can change and be changed, that it's not simply given? I don't have a sense of the reason for the strenuous opposition to MacKinnon's move of using a term ("porn") to specify a category different from the category the term usually specifies.

2. Once they understood that MacKinnon was only talking about a subset of porn, the students' response was "don't watch what you don't like." And also, "if enough people like her want more sex-positive porn, then the market will respond." Thus, all culture and all means of controlling culture were reduced to markets. And furthermore, there was the unstated belief that markets are responsive and can't (or shouldn't) be controlled.

3. Finally, the majority of the class resisted the idea at the heart of MacKinnon's critique--that the content of porn could shape how people think about sexual possibilities. That is, though they agreed that many young people look to porn as a form of sex ed, they disagreed that porn influenced how people think about what's appropriate or inappropriate behavior in sexual relationships. Further, there seemed to be general disagreement with the statement that media affect how people think. Instead, they believe that viewers exercise free choice in what they watch, and they only choose to watch things that reflect what they already think. There was strong resistance to the idea that what you watch can change your perception of the world.

More Examined Than Some

A former student recommends The Partially Examined Life podcast and blog.

[Whoa! Is that a St. John's College t-shirt on one of the bloggers? What IS the ratio of philosophers to others at that school? Not that they have majors.]

Interviews at 3AM

It's apparent that since I avoid reading the most-read philosophy blog I do sometimes miss a gem.

And so here I am, on a Saturday evening, finding some thoughtful weekend reading: Richard Marshall's interviews with philosophers at 3AM magazine.

Earlier this week:
Huw Price on deflationary accounts of truth and tenseless time

Last week:
Simon Blackburn, too, touches on deflationism (if these interviews were all one read, wouldn't one develop a healthy attitude toward truth?), but also on relativism and--true to his style, so to speak--just about everything else.

And from the dimly remembered days of summer:
Elizabeth Anderson, who gives a shout-out both to Dewey and to the Levellers.

Update: As I dig deeper into a pint of pistachio ice cream and into my Saturday evening reading, I said to my nearby Saturday evening philosophy-reading friend, "Huh, I never really thought that the second thing someone would say about Huw Price, after 'ice cool,' is that he's a pragmatist. I guess he is a pragmatist, sort of. But it's not the first or second thing to say."
Response: Sure, he's a pragmatist. Like Brandom's a pragmatist.
Me: Elizabeth Anderson--now there's a pragmatist. John Dewey's right there at her elbow. Her work is always socially engaged. Price and Brandom? That's affinity with pragmatism not identity with pragmatism.
Response: Why's it matter?
Me: It's an honorific.
Response: True that.

Gendered Conference Campaign

The Gendered Conference Campaign has designed a petition to publicize the importance of attending to inclusive gender participation among professional philosophers. To sign the petition is to commit to paying attention to whether or not women are included or excluded from organized events (conferences, speaker series), from invitations to contribute to edited volumes, and for other forms of work which are typically organized through precisely those informal networks which tend to leave out women.

The petition also includes a set of links to help jog our memories about the women who work in various subfields:
"Information on female experts in various areas is available here, here, here,here."

Change.org|Make Your Own Petition

Bad writing and writing badly

Siris writes about Jonah Lehrer and the scandal of his recycled, misquoted, and plagiarized writing for the New Yorker and Wired. Most of the work that has been called into question appeared as blog posts or in books.

A news (NYT) article is here, and a more extensive analysis of what he did wrong and why it was wrong is on Slate here.

Siris makes an excellent point about the differences between journalistic writing and academic writing and that though they are similar in that authors in each area strive to say something distinctive or in a distinctive way, the ways in which they build their reputations are different.

That line becomes blurred, though, when academic writing becomes judged as a matter of quantity without concern for the content of what is said (e.g. in merit evaluations that simply quantify number of articles published) or the process of vetting (selectivity of journals, % of their articles that are submitted rather than invited, forms of peer review). I remember reading about this problem and an effort to combat it a while back, but I haven't heard much in the meantime about its effects.

Charles Seife, the author of the Slate article makes a subtle move, highlighting his own control over his writing and the way that a point can be made available to certain readers without making an unfair or explicit accusation. Seife shows text that Lehrer wrote next to previously published but very similar text by other authors. The explicit message is that Lehrer plagiarized others' work. What is not said but can't be missed is that in every case the original passage conveys more detail in fewer words using more interesting sentence structure. A secondary question follows the ethical issue of plagiarism--how does a writer rise to stardom when his material is not (all) original and his writing is not in the best style?

And now a serious question. I've assigned Lehrer's "The Truth Wears Off," an article in the New Yorker, in my philosophy of science class later this term. The New Yorker has posted notes on Lehrer's blog posts identifying the recycled material but has not made a note about this article. On the other hand, the Wired piece makes it seem as though everything Lehrer has written should be called into question, not just for having been recycled (which doesn't bother me in this particular context) and not just because of plagiarism, but also because of factual inaccuracies and unsupported claims. The New Yorker's fact-checking department has a sound reputation, so should I keep the article on the syllabus?

SPSP cfp 2013

Now this is one conference that I couldn't possibly miss.

Open Calls for Papers: Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice, Fourth Biennial Conference

Location: University of Toronto, Canada
Event Date: 26-29 June 2013
Submission Deadline: Dec. 1, 2012
Notification of acceptance: 1 February 2013 
Main Contact: Andrea Woody at the University of Washington

Keynote speakers will include: 

Rachel A. Ankeny (University of Adelaide) 
James Griesemer (University of California at Davis) 
Arthur Fine (University of Washington) 

Please see the SPSP website for details and submission guidelines: 

http://www.philosophy-science-practice.org/abstracts/new_abstract/

The Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) aims to create an interdisciplinary community of scholars who approach the philosophy of science with a focus on scientific practice and the practical uses of scientific knowledge. For further details on our objectives, see our mission statement on our website (URL above). 

The SPSP biennial conferences provide a broad forum for scholars committed to making detailed and systematic studies of scientific practices — neither dismissing concerns about truth and rationality, nor ignoring contextual and pragmatic factors. The conferences aim at cutting through traditional disciplinary barriers and developing novel approaches. We welcome contributions from not only philosophers of science, but also philosophers working in epistemology and ethics, as well as the philosophy of engineering, technology, medicine, agriculture, and other practical fields. Additionally, we welcome contributions from historians and sociologists of science, pure and applied scientists, and any others with an interest in philosophical questions regarding scientific practice. 
 

FEAST 2013 cfp

I've never submitted to FEAST. Florida hasn't been appealing. Arizona is slightly more appealing, though further away from New York.

Pluralism is a potentially divisive topic, oddly enough! I think this would be open to some work on interdisciplinarity and on collaboration between philosophy and other disciplines. If I submitted it would be in that vein.

FEAST

The Association for Feminist Ethics and

Social Theory

invites submissions for the Fall 2013 conference:

Envisioning Plurality: Feminist Perspectives on Pluralism in Ethics, Politics, and Social Theory

Oct. 17-20, 2013

Fiesta Resort and Conference Center

Tempe, AZ

http://www.fiestainnresort.com/

submission deadline: February 28, 2013

Keynote speakers:

Linda Martín Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Author of Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self,  Alcoff has initiated public discussions of pluralism, through both her Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy and her 2012 NYT op-ed piece addressing Arizona’s censorship of the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.

Jennifer Lisa Vest is a mixedblood (Black/Florida Seminole/German) poet and philosopher who holds the position of Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida.  Co-author of Philanthropy in Communities of Color, her book manuscript Sovereign Wisdom: Generating Academic Native American Philosophy is under review.

Invited Sessions:

·        Viewing and discussion of film, “Precious Knowledge”

·        Invited Panel on Pluralism

FEAST encourages submissions related to this year's theme. However, papers on all topics within the areas of feminist ethics and social theory are welcome.
Description of this year's theme:
One meaning of pluralism within philosophy is that it seeks to bring
underrepresented theoretical perspectives and underrepresented groups into the philosophical mainstream, transforming philosophy as a result. Yet what is meant by "pluralism" and how to assess whether or not pluralism has been achieved remains hotly contested.

While philosophy is often depicted as the academic field most in need of pluralistic correctives, other disciplines, too, struggle with the marginalization of those whom, due to their theoretical approaches or their bodies, have been pushed to the edges of their disciplines.

This year's FEAST conference encourages submissions that challenge us to think in new ways about the boundaries, methodologies, and subject matter of academic subfields that pertain to feminist ethics, politics, and social theory, broadly construed. The program committee welcomes papers that take both theoretical and practical approaches to these issues. We aim to create a conference with a diverse group of presenters and a wide range of approaches, topics, and styles. FEAST strongly encourage members of groups that are underrepresented in academia to send submissions.

Call to submit a panel proposal (topic and speakers) for a lunch time “Difficult Conversation”

FEAST conferences typically feature a lunch time “Difficult Conversation” that focuses on an important, challenging, and under-theorized topic related to feminist ethics or social theory. Past topics include: Critical Understandings of Dependency and Disability; Are Academic Feminist Philosophies and Methodologies Still Too White?; A Difficult Conversation about Feminist Sexualities and Identities.  We hereby invite proposals for next year’s Difficult Conversation.

Submission Guidelines

A completed paper of no more than 3000 words must be submitted for individual presenters and prepared for anonymous review. Proposals for a Difficult Conversations session or for non-paper formats (e.g., workshops, discussions, etc.) must include detailed descriptions (500-750 words).

Please send your submission, in one document (a Word file, please, so that abstracts can be posted), to feast2013@csbsju.edu  by February 28, 2013.  Your document must include: paper title, abstract of 100-250 words, and your paper, with no identifying information. The word count (max. 3,000) should appear on the top of the first page of your paper. In the body of the email message, please include: your paper or panel title, name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, surface mail address, and phone number. All submissions will be anonymously reviewed.

Note: Panel organizers, please send the panel title and all three abstracts and papers in one document, along with word counts (3,000 for each paper). Difficult Conversations and other non-paper submissions should be marked as such.

For more information on FEAST or to see programs from previous conferences, go to:  http://www.afeast.org

Questions on this conference or the submission process may be directed to the Program Chair, Jean Keller, at feast2013@csbsju.edu .

Back to School 2012

Labor Day is rolling around, and for me that always means the first day of the official academic year. Perhaps some day my university's schedulers will come to their senses and give us the national holiday off.

I didn't blog much at all last year but will seek to return to the habit with the new school year. I'll go with the shorter style posts, maybe. I suspect that Facebook has replaced the blogging world entirely. If it can't be said in 140 characters, is it worth saying at all?

What have I been thinking about?
-- The SAF conference at Vanderbilt in October
-- climate ethics
-- how to do undergraduate research with philosophy majors
-- assessment of a general education ethics requirement
-- teaching philosophy of science, and specifically teaching issues having to do with assessing evidence useful for policy decisions
-- teaching feminist theory, and the challenges that poses on my campus, with its particular student body (technical school + art school)
-- increasing interest in the philosophy major among undergraduate women

and lots more stuff than that!

Black Oaks and Majesty

In my neighborhood old-growth forest in the city, one of the black oak logs looks to have 260 rings.  It was a fairly careful count, though the most accurate way of counting rings is to cut and polish a slice of the log--not to count rings in the field. This number is significant because the oldest registered black oak is one with 257 rings, and that one lived in Tennessee.

Here is Neil Pederson's blog, "The Broadleaf Papers," which focuses on the ecology of hardwood forests. These old black oaks that live just up the hill from me are my "Charismatic Megaflora."

The Oxford Comma

Although we long ago received the grammarian's permission to eliminate the last comma in a list, I've been in favor of continuing with the Oxford comma because there are those situations where it adds clarification. A student passed on this graphic which demonstrates why. (As an internet meme I was unable to find the attribution.)