Misplaced skepticism about belief

A further comment on yesterday's post, which noted that Robert Putnam gives all kinds of explanations for declining social capital except for explanations that cite culture, values, or beliefs--

When Putnam first lists the benefits of living in a community that is rich in social capital, he writes that

"dense networks of interaction probably broaden the participants' sense of self, developing the 'I' into the 'we,' or (in the language of rational-choice theorists) enhancing the participants' 'taste' for collective beliefs" (67).

I find this expression odd. Why call this a "taste" or a "preference" rather than just saying that when people interact with others (and especially with people who are not just identical to them), they are more likely to develop a habit of public-mindedness? They believe that it's worth pursuing what's right for the group rather than what will most benefit the individual in the short-term.

If beliefs are too ephemeral (do you know that you hold a belief until it's tested?), then how about using affect as an explanatory term. Surely people care. Some people care about communities, and some people care mostly about themselves. Some people are willing to make personal sacrifices (e.g., slower and smaller cars) for the sake of the environment or for public well-being, and some people are not.

A social science that is unable to refer to values, or that must call them preferences (and preferences which, I imagine, are non-rational because they don't immediately benefit the self) is a social science without a moral center.

Explaining the Bowling Alone Phenomenon

This week my critical thinking classes read and discussed Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" (the Journal of Democracy article, not the book). I had the students write an essay on it.

A number of students chose to weigh Putnam's explanations for the declining social capital in the US. Some speculated that since voter turn-out in the last two national elections had gone up, social capital's decline has been halted (which I think unlikely!). Others considered his explanation that the reason is the amount of time people spend watching TV and tried to extend that explanation to new media technologies. They were split on whether social networking sites (like Facebook) really create and maintain social networks.

There's one explanation which Putnam did not include which is prominent in my own mind--namely, whether there are cultural changes that have undermined Americans' interest in building social capital (and, especially, the kind of social capital that bridges demographic groups).

I can hypothesize that the reason that Putnam doesn't consider culture is that, as a certain kind of social scientist, he does not consider beliefs and values to be "real" or, at least, to be causally potent. I can see this reasoning--because it seems like if there is a change in beliefs, then that change is caused by something which can eventually be connected to a change that is not itself a belief. And yet, I think explanations that help themselves to words about beliefs can be quite enlightening.

For instance, it seems possible to me that a decline in social capital could be due to an increase in perceived threats, whether that is the threat of an economic downturn or the kind of amorphous threat that wartime brings. I would also like to consider whether people feel like there is more competition now than in the 1950s, and that they are competing over goods that are zero-sum. Just to take an example, there has certainly been a change in college applications and admissions.

Gender Equity: False Hopes and False Dreams

Over at The Philosophy Job Market blog, Rebecca Kukla gave us a tally on how this year's job market is shaping up along gender lines. According to the hiring announcements that Leiter has posted, and with all the caveats needed for such informal word-of-mouth data collection, only about 19% of the tenure-track jobs have gone to women. (N.B.: The APA has promised to collect accurate job market statistics this year, but the collection and analysis will take some time yet.)

Since women have been earning about 25 to 30% of PhD's in philosophy, this looks like there are some social or structural barriers to the hiring of women.

This observation set off a fusillade of criticisms, both on the PJM blog and on the SWIP list. Among women in philosophy, one concern is that collecting such statistics carries the implicit message that women who do not choose to pursue a tenure-track teaching career are somehow in the wrong.

This appears to me to be a misunderstanding of the meaning of statistics (and see Kate's earlier response to similar worries). Statistics can only give us a picture of a collective. They cannot tell us anything, much less anything normative, about individuals. They can't say that a certain woman should have been hired in a certain department, or that a certain man should not have.

Indeed, these statistics are completely mute about how many people with PhD's in philosophy move into (or try to move into) tenure track jobs. It is entirely appropriate that some people get a degree and use it for some purpose other than university teaching in philosophy departments. Or they use it for no purpose--they go into another field entirely.

The statistics only point out that men are hired into tenure track philosophy jobs at a disproportionate rate. And the best explanation for this, based on reams of social science research, is that there is explicit and implicit sexism in academia.

But if you don't see my point, then perhaps you'll find some solidarity here instead:
"CEO Barbie Criticized for Promoting Unrealistic Career Images."

Genderrific Toy Preferences

As I've mentioned on another blog, yet another study has enjoyed some news coverage for showing some preference among young males for "boys'" toys. The twist: They're monkeys! Yes, and not just monkeys, but mostly cute little juvie monkeys. That alone is worth the news coverage, for me; if I had my way, my morning Washington Post would just be about monkeys from end to end. With lots of pictures.

I have many questions about the necessity to fund such studies, cover them in the press, and marvel at them in classes. It's not that it's not interesting, and it's not that nifty little studies don't get grants all the time. It's just that I've long been puzzled about the importance of and widespread interest in the toy preference thing. Why toys? What is so fascinating about a small difference in gender preference for toys? Am I the only one stumped at its significance?

Note, by the way, that the toys used were trucks and dolls, yet no mention is made in the coverage in the New Scientist of the fact that an important difference in these two toys is the presence of facial features on one and not on the other. The emphasis of the author is on hard things with wheels vs. soft plushy objects. So the methodological issues abound.

A truism?

I just came across this sentence in a student paper on Rorty's essay "Education as Socialization and as Individualization." Perhaps it's vacuous, but of course I had to post it here!

"Individuals create their values and beliefs based on knowledge and personal experience."

Why Study Philosophy?

A New York Times article counts (some of) the ways:

For students in philosophy,

"what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers."

Philosophy

"is really at the core of just about everything we do. If you study humanities or political systems or sciences in general, philosophy is really the mother ship from which all of these disciplines grow."

"In an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. 'It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking.'"

With its emphasis "on the big questions and alternative points of view, [philosophy] provides good training for looking at larger societal questions, like globalization and technology."

And of course,

“Philosophy is a lot of fun.”

Numeracy and Democracy

My dad is a statistician/methodologist in psychology, and sent me images of this amazing art installation in Seattle:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?icl=7. It aims to provide a sense of proportion over our waste, and I think it's profound.

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

© Chris Jordan

Detail at actual size:

© Chris Jordan

In several classes this week, I've been speaking with students about political awareness and apathy. I am especially moved by the significance of democracy and our privilege, given the events in Zimbabwe this week over the elections. Yet at the same time, a University Senate sponsored rally against racism drew a pathetic few demonstrators with no clear message, and no clear aim.

Art can be a great way to raise consciousness. Although it tends to preach to the converted, it provides motivation and vision in a way that grassroots politics and activisim no longer seems to.

CFP: Women and Agriculture

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society has issued a call for papers on Women and Agriculture.

The submission deadline is May 1, 2008.

Special Issue: Women and Agriculture

As agriculture becomes increasingly globalized, feminist concerns about women and agriculture revolve around issues of food security, social justice, and sustainability. Women across the globe have always played major roles in agricultural production, contributing substantially to food production and food security. Women produce almost half the world's food, but they often work in difficult conditions with low pay and inadequate access to land and capital. In developing countries women produce 60 to 80 percent of food, but their work has often been discounted. Recently war, HIV/AIDS, and migration of men have contributed to a feminization of agricultural labor in many regions of the world. Despite women's considerable role in agricultural production, they are markedly absent at the policy level in multinational corporations, international institutions, and national and state governments that determine directions for agriculture. Women are also underrepresented in agricultural science, which plays a crucial role in shaping the future of agriculture.

The intersections of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and nationality are, and have been historically, central to the politics of agriculture, structuring who produces food, who benefits from this global food system, and who eats. Women agriculturalists in the Global South are particularly vulnerable to free trade agreements that advantage agribusiness in Western nations.

Women's resistance to the increasing globalization and corporatization of food include forming women's agricultural networks, working for fair trade, supporting organic agriculture, improving animal health and welfare, and contesting genetically modified organisms. Scholarship on women farmers raises fascinating theoretical debates on women's bodies, multiple identities, and technologies. Feminist science studies address issues of genetically engineered food and women's agricultural knowledge and seed saving.

For this special issue we invite international, transnational, and comparative studies of women and agriculture; submissions that engage feminist theoretical and historical analyses of women and agriculture; and analyses of racial, ethnic, and gendered dimensions of agriculture. We seek manuscripts on women and sustainable agriculture, on women in leadership and decision-making positions, and in feminist science studies pertaining to women's knowledge and changing agricultural practices.

Carolyn Sachs, Professor of Rural Sociology and Women's Studies, Penn State University, United States, and Margaret Alston, Professor of Social Work and Human Services and Director of the Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University, Australia, will serve as guest editors of the special issue on women and agriculture.

The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2008.

More submission info here.

CFP: Canadian SWIP 2008

The deadline for submissions to the next C-SWIP is coming up! Well, it would have been today, but it's been extended by almost a week, March 18.

Cate Hundleby had scheduled Val Plumwood as the keynote speaker, but due to Plumwood's recent death, has found another exciting speaker: Marilyn Frye, from Michigan State. Dr. Fry will be giving a talk titled "Kinds of People: 'Don't label me, I'm just a person!'"

The theme for the conference is "Reason, Activism, and Change" and it will be held at the University of Windsor, October 3-5, 2008.

C-SWIP is always a very fun and intellectually stimulating conference! You need not be Canadian to attend, though it helps if you like Canadians.

More info is available here.

Trees

When I'm not teaching philosophy, one of the things I do is study presettlement-era forests in western New York. During the coming quarter I expect to be doing more of that, so in anticipation I've collected a few items on trees:

For one, I keep up with the policy debate over the Bush Administrations "Healthy Forests Initiative" which pays lip service to selective logging. If done right selective logging could decrease the frequency, intensity, and extent of wildfires. But the initiative has been used as an excuse to log (lucrative) areas which would otherwise be off-limits. For instance, since it gives priority to logging in national forests at the "wildland/urban interface," huge remote areas have received that designation. (Read more here.) In December, though, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals suspended the policy that has allowed logging in national forests without environmental review on the basis that the policy violated the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act. (NEPA is the legislation that requires that management of public land include public input.)

There is a blog carnival, Festival of the Trees, and the March edition celebrates orchards.

My favorite tree blogs are:
Tree Species: Exploring the world of trees
Arboreality: About trees, forests, and wood
The Forest Protection Blog

And here are some more general plant and ecology blogs:
Talking Plants, on NPR
Invasive Species

Bullshitting and Brainstorming

Thanks again to Philosoraptor for recommending an article on BS’ing by Kerry Walters in Teaching Philosophy.

The article does discuss the doubts that were raised for me in reading Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” with my class. I was disturbed that the students 1.) thought that philosophy was a perfect example of bullshit; and 2.) thought that all the writing assignments they are expected to do in their liberal arts classes are best satisfied by bullshit—in fact, that they can only be satisfied by bullshit.

My interpretation of this second claim was that Frankfurt defines bullshitting as speaking about something that you know little about or giving an opinion about something when you aren’t really committed to what you say. When you aren’t an expert on a subject, you just spin together the few thoughts that you do have and try to construct them so that they satisfy the questioner. BUT that is exactly what learners have to do all the time. They try out views before they are experts, and this exercise is part of what helps them build skills while increasing their expertise.

Moreover, this applies to a lot of original thought—not just for college students, but for professionals, too. Say I have an idea. In order to test whether it’s a good idea or not, I often have to put quite some amount of work into writing it up. Along the way, the idea changes. This does not mean, though, that I was bullshitting all along. It’s the normal course of development for new ideas—a writer goes through stages from less to more commitment. Hopefully, by the time I’m done, I’m convinced. And this development is true not only of philosophy or only of the liberal arts. In science, too, an experiment may start with one hypothesis, but as the data are collected, they suggest a slightly different and more interesting question.

Walters describes how the bullshitter and the brainstormer can appear, at the level of behavior, to be identical. The bullshitter may even be better at philosophical discussion—precisely because there is no inner conflict. She is what Walters calls a “rhetorical robot.” Both are ready to defend a position and then to change their minds. Both can appear to be engaged and excited and enjoying themselves. But the bullshitter has a (merely) rhetorical aim, while the brainstormer is engaged in a deeper intellectual challenge.

In my class, I struggled to reconcile two kinds of bullshit. On the one hand, there are students who bullshit. (Now, I’m not talking about the ones that feel as though they have to bullshit no matter what they do, but the ones who knowingly, intentionally, write fluff with as little intellectual effort as possible.) On the other hand, I have colleagues whom I know—without a doubt—are bullshitting. Some of them have bullshitted their way to elite academic careers.

These are the ones who disagree with my commitment to philosophy’s practical use in problem solving. To them, philosophy is a game. A difficult but thrillingly competitive rhetorical game. They excel at strategy but could just as easily have taken philosophical stances opposite to the ones they've published.

What I didn’t understand was the connection between these two kinds of bullshitters. The student type—typically—bullshits because it's easy but would rather be doing just about anything besides philosophy. On the other hand, some of my colleagues (at other universities, I should add) are very passionate about philosophy. They work long, hard hours at it. They speak with delight about what “shark tanks” their departments are. Though their product is insincere, they are not taking the easy way out!

Walters connects the dots. He says these kinds of philosophers are “intellectual robots”:

“…it may be the case that habitual bullshitters who wind up buying their own rhetoric graduate from rhetorical to intellectual robotry. After all, young bullshitters must grow up sooner or later. When they do, we sometimes call them academics.”

Val Plumwood

Val Plumwood, an influential philosopher, ecofeminist, and activist died on February 28. Author of many articles and book chapters and four books, her latest was Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason (2001).

She will be remembered for her contributions to a distinctively feminist, anti-patriarchical and anti-hierarchical philosophy of environmental encounter. She argued that Western forms of reason--scientific, economic, and instrumental--are the root cause of an ecological destruction that will eventually end our species. Her philosophical views can be experienced through her personal retelling of her near-fatal encounter with a crocodile. This riveting story illustrates an understanding of humans as potential prey, and the attack caused her to review how she thought of humans' place in nature:

This concept of human identity [as separate from nature] positions humans outside and above the food chain, not as part of the feast in a chain of reciprocity but as external manipulators and masters of it: Animals can be our food, but we can never be their food. The outrage we experience at the idea of a human being eaten is certainly not what we experience at the idea of animals as food. The idea of human prey threatens the dualistic vision of human mastery in which we humans manipulate nature from outside, as predators but never prey. We may daily consume other animals by the billions, but we ourselves cannot be food for worms and certainly not meat for crocodiles. This is one reason why we now treat so inhumanely the animals we make our food, for we can not imagine ourselves similarly positioned as food. We act as if we live in a separate realm of culture in which we are never food, while other animals inhabit a different world of nature in which they are no more than food, and their lives can be utterly distorted in the service of this end.

Science and the Election

Will the presidential candidates debate each other on science and technology issues?

The invitation to join in a Science Debate for 2008 has been signed by MANY organizations and individuals, from the AAAS to my own university and its president. Has yours joined?

The idea is that in Philadelphia on April 18 the remaining presidential candidates will respond to questions that are central to federal policy--questions on topics such as policy responses to climate change, the health of the oceans, species loss, resource conservation, alternative energy, intellectual property, and scientific integrity.

The candidates have not yet responded to the invitation, though both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have said they are giving it "serious thought." Senator McCain, meanwhile, has strayed from the safety of the vague and upbeat messages of those campaigns with his opinion that vaccinations are a likely suspect for rising rates of autism. His is not an opinion shared by the medical community.

Wonderful wonderful wonderful

It's pure awesome to see things we love but which exist in odd corners of our lives come together and meet each other!

An article in yesterday's New York Times describes The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, an art exhibit by Margaret and Christine Wertheim featuring all these wonderful elements:

textile art: In this case, crochet. The exhibit features sea creatures, such as kelp, anemones, corals, and sponges, crocheted out of the most magnificent yarns. The crochet coral reef covers 35,000 square feet! In the Wertheim's essay for the Chicago Cultural Center, they write:

Every person who takes up this craft creates new species of crochet organisms and we have come to see the project as a collective experiment in textile-based evolution. Just as all living creatures result from variations in an underlying DNA code, so the species in these handi-crafted reefs arise from deviations in a single simple algorithm.

feminism: Crochet and knitting, though not exclusive to women, are undoubtedly a feminine realm. (Though there are exceptions!) In 1997 Margaret Wertheim published a feminism-inflected book on women and science, titled Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars.

mathematical theory: The crocheted forms grew from a mathematical model:

Hyperbolic crochet was itself the outgrowth of an unexpected branch of geometry. For two thousand years mathematicians attempted to prove that the only possible geometries were the flat, or Euclidean, plane, and the sphere. Great minds expended themselves on the effort, only to discover in the nineteenth century that a third option was logically necessitated....Mathematicians’ skepticism about hyperbolic space had been based in part on their inability to imagine how it would look, for they had no way to model it physically. Most were thus astounded when, in 1997, Dr. Daina Taimina, a Latvian émigré at Cornell University, presented a hyperbolic structure made with crochet.

science: The crocheted coral reef forms imitate real creatures dwelling on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, whose bodies exhibit hyperbolic forms.

environmentalism: The project highlights the rate at which coral reefs are being devastated by global warming and agricultural run-off.

More photos here!

Maternity and an Academic Career

Adventures in Ethics and Science gives marvelously informative detail about the hazards and joys of bearing children while still in graduate school, with more narrative from readers in the comments section.

The worry that she emphasizes again and again is the need for good childcare, the expense of good childcare, and the inadequacy of even good childcare when the child is sick. I can't imagine who you can call--other than retired grandparents--for back-up childcare in that case. The only solution I know is for one parent or the other to take off from work. Skipping class is a hard thing for an academic to do. Babies do get sick, sometimes for a week at a time.

I've heard colleagues express similar concerns about whether it's possible to have a baby before tenure. GonePublic blogged about this some time ago, and commenters cited evidence that women with children fall behind in rank. Still, we can pursue our careers for 25 years longer than we can pursue reproduction. Reproduction is not for everyone, but in a better world women desiring maternity would not have such worries. And mothers would have the option to work outside the home--or not, as they wished.