New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Wollstonecraft's Spinozism...

[The prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken its rise from Moses's poetical story; yet as very few, it is presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever supposed that Eve was, literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs, the deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or, only be so far admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his invention to shew that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke; because she, as well as the brute creation, was created to do his pleasure.--M. Wollstonecraft (1792), A Vindication of the Rights Woman (hereafter Vindication), Chapter 2. (25). [Here and below the page-numbers refer to the Dover Thrift reprint, while the provided links refer to the third (1796) edition.--ES]

"Nature, or, to speak with strict propriety, God,"--Vindication, chapter 2, (29).

Upon re-reading the Vindication in preparation for a class discussion, the second epigraph to this post, which we may loosely translate as Natura sive Deus, startled me. Could Wollstonecraft, who so often sounds like a Deist, be a kind of Spinozist? For, Wollstonecraft is quite clear that "propriety" is just "another word for convenience." (106) So, the substitution of "Nature" by "God" is really an act of social expedience. Yet, could this really be so? For, so much of Wollstonecraft's argument seems to rely on commitments that require commitment to immortal souls and, presumably, a judging God (and one can find other Deist commitments).

Why are there so many female academics in Turkey?

Feminist philosophers drew attention to this THE  article on gender equality in academia. The article highlights striking differences between countries on gender participation in academia, with a 47% female participation rate in Turkey, and an abysmal 12.7% in Japan as two extremes (see the map through the link). For most of my academic career, I have studied and worked in Belgium, where gender participation is very poor (it's one of the red countries on the map). Only 13% of full professors in Belgium are women. In the EU, only Cyprus and Luxembourg do worse. In this post, I want to examine  causes for the disparity (the high % in Turkey; the low % in Belgium), drawing amongst others on personal experience, and on this highly relevant article on Turkish academia.

Micro-Inequities: 40 Years Later

[Cross-posted from our Psychology Today blog]

In 1973 Mary Rowe, while working for the President and Chancellor at MIT, coined the notion of micro-inequities, which she defined as “apparently small events which are often ephemeral and hard-to-prove, events which are covert, often unintentional, frequently unrecognized by the perpetrator, which occur wherever people are perceived to be ‘different.’ " Examples of micro-inequities include:

• checking emails or texting during a face-to-face conversation

• consistently mispronouncing a person's name

• interrupting a person mid-sentence

• making eye-contact only with males while talking to a group containing both males and females

• taking more questions from men than women

• confusing a person of a certain ethnicity with another person of the same ethnicity

Central European University is on board with the Gendered Conference Campaign

Exciting news from CEU in Hungary!

How (not) to address an email to women academics in the U.S.

Shortly after posting concerning my history and philosophy of biology resources page, I received a suggestion for an addition via email.  The suggestion was welcome, but the way it was addressed was not:  Mrs. Millstein.

As the correspondent pointed out to me after I questioned the way I was addressed, this can be a cultural difference that is difficult for people from other cultures to navigate.  In that spirit, I offer the following suggested guidelines, especially given that this is not the first time I have been addressed this way, and no doubt it won't be the last.  Not everyone may agree with my suggestions, but I think they are at least a safe way of addressing that is not likely to offend.  I am suggesting them only for the U.S. because that is the culture I am most familiar with; they may or may not apply elsewhere.

List of Feminist Philosophers

Wikipedia has numerous pages containing lists of people working in various areas of philosophy. I noticed that the list of feminist philosophers is exceptionally short. Some of you have remarkable and enviable wiki skills. If you fall into this category, could you please help adding to this list. Feel free to leave suggestions in the commet section.

Women working in philosophy of language

As you may have seen over at Feminist Philosophers, Derek Ball has started a list of women working in philosophy of language. It's still very incomplete. Please add suggestions here in the comment section or edit the document online.

Call for Nominations: Distinguished Woman Philosopher 2013

Each year the Eastern Division of the Society for Women in Philosophy comes together to honor a  woman  philosopher whose contributions to the support of women in philosophy and to philosophy itself are outstanding and merit special recognition. A panel and reception celebrating the honoree's accomplishments will be organized for the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 27-30, 2013.

Nominations should include a copy of the nominee's curriculum vitae and a minimum of two supporting letters, which summarize the nominee's contributions to philosophy and support of women in philosophy.

NOTE: Two-thirds of letter writers for any given nomination must be members of the society for women in philosophy, in good standing.

Please e-mail all nominations to Rochelle Green, ESWIP Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award Secretary (rmgreen1@ualr.edu) no later than April 1, 2013.

Call for contributions to a list of readings by women philosophers for intro classes

It is still very common that students only get readings by male authors in their introductory classes to philosophy. This contributes to the image of philosophy as a boys only discipline. It would therefore be useful to have a list with readings written by women that are suitable for philosophy courses, such as general introduction to philosophy, philosophy of science, ethics, epistemology.

I would like to invite readers to contribute their favorite pieces, written by women philosophers, to the following Google spreadsheet (please fill out the spreadsheet, rather than using the comment section, except if you experience difficulties with the spreadsheet). 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgJqzL_YyKKxdEwyd1o5c1lubFp2TGpiSlkyTE5jOXc#gid=0

In first instance, the focus would be on papers and book excerpts that are not overtly specialist or technical, suitable for intro-level or intermediate courses. Ideally, they should have made a significant impact on their field. They should be readings you have either already successfully used in class context, or envisage using.

Are philosophers more biased than other academics?

As is well known, philosophy is a very male-dominated (and white, straight, etc) field, when compared to all other humanities, social sciences, and even several STEM disciplines. Even if we take into account the difficulties that minorities face in academia, we cannot explain why philosophy does worse than most other academic fields. I'd like to put a slightly controversial idea on the table: there are good reasons to believe that philosophers are less effective than academics from other fields in their ability to counter their own biases, i.e., they exhibit a larger bias blind spot.

The Sexism and Stupidity of a Professional Philosopher on Display

In a letter of recommendation.

Launch of SWIP.NL

Inspired by the success of the already existing Societies for Women in Philosophy (UK, USA, Canada -- and it seems that there are others in the making), we are now launching the Dutch version of the Society (possibly also to include the Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium in the near future): SWIP.NL. We will have our inaugural meeting on April 10th 2013; the announcement for the meeting is below. All are very welcome to attend!

We also very much welcome offers of help to get SWIP.NL up and running, and thus to promote the position of women in the philosophy profession in the Netherlands and beyond.

Also, notice that Jennifer Saul (Sheffield and SWIP-UK), one of the speakers at the launch, will also deliver the first annual Aspasia Lecture the next day in Groningen. See the flyer for further details.

The Genealogy of Genealogy

We tend to associate the practice of genealogy, especially in its unmasking variety, with Nietzsche (or the emulators of Foucault). But teaching Toland's (1704) Letters to Serena reminded me that genealogy has a genealogy that precedes Nietzsche. One of Toland's genealogies focuses on the idea of the immortality of the soul, (the subject of the second letter). In paragraph 1, of Letter 2, the "immortality of the soul" is treated as a "truth" known to classical sources independent from and preceding Biblical revelation (p. 20; in fact, he insists that the doctrine is unknown to the Hebrew Bible (Letter II, p. 56)). In the very next paragraph (2) on the very next page, Toland speaks in his own voice and offers a concise statement of his methodology:

To persons less knowing and unprejudiced than Serena, it would [be] found strange perhaps to hear me speak of the soul's immortality, as of an opinion, which, like some others in philosophy, had a beginning at a certain time, or from a certain author who was the inventor thereof, and which was favoured or opposed as peoples' persuasion, interest or inclination led them. Letters II.2 (p. 21 [I have modernized spelling to some degree--ES].)

Serena is the official addressee of the Letters; she is a high status, educated interlocutor. The preface to the Letters has, in fact, a resounding defense of intellectual, gender equality. Toland suggests that it is either "inveterate custom" or the "design in the men" that causes female exlusion from the "world of learning." In general, Toland thinks nurture is responsible for much of our (very flawed) "second nature" in women and men. So, while Toland accepts a universal human nature, it is according to him extremely plastic. Echoing Plato and Malebranche, he suggests that belief and character formation starts in the womb and is developed (or degenerated by) our major social institutions (family, church, universities, etc.)--he treats our acculturation as inevitable, but as practiced as a form of social disease (cf. "infection.")

CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference (yes...white men welcome, too!)

CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference!

Sally Haslanger writes:

Even more important, we would really like to encourage people - including WHITE MEN - to apply for the site visit training.  It is important that we have allies involved because having mixed teams will be more effective than just a group of women....who are feminists, besides!

Visit the Site Visit Program

It's highly probable that the Munich mathematical philosophers only invite boys

Our friends in Munich still don't get it. This is the third time (recall here and here) I have posted about the gender-exclusive nature of invited speakers at workshops at MCPC. Given that the MCPC is quickly becoming one of the leading and most influential philosophy groups in Europe it is important that they (and the all-boy "steering committees" they invite to oversee these workshops) set a "best practices" example to the rest of us.
Ove a thousand philosophers have signed the petition initiated by Martin Kusch and Mark Lance, and a few more the "official GCC petition."

The journal reviewing process isn’t anonymous. Did you really think it was? Think again!

You have worked on your paper on this extraordinarily complicated and remarkably interesting solution to the knowability paradox for four years. You finally got it right. After polishing the piece, vetting the ideas at department colloquium talks and workshops and incorporating feedback from cohorts, you submit to a top-ten mainstream journal. Then you patiently, very patiently, wait a year and a half and get a rejection. Hostile referee reports! They HATE the paper.

How to ensure gender balance in edited volumes?

(This came up on a FB thread I happened to lay my eyes on; it does not involve anyone I actually know, so it feels a bit like I’m intruding into other people’s business, but this seems important as a topic. Apologies if I am being intrusive!).

What should you do when you are putting together an edited volume on a given topic, you make a serious effort to have a fair representation of female contributors, and yet you end up with a very unbalanced lineup because the potential female authors you approached all declined the invitation? Do you go ahead as is? Do you put the project off and work further on involving female contributors? (Which potentially can only be achieved if you change a bit the focus of the volume as originally conceived.) Do you call the whole thing off?

There seem to be downsides to all of these options. So this appears to be a real dilemma, and I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts on this. I’d be particularly curious to hear experiences of volume editors who somehow managed to redress the problem after a difficult start, as this may be useful advice for those editing volumes at the moment.

Even Majority-Women Disciplines Like Primatology Need a Gendered Conference Campaign

Readers of this blog are no doubt well-familiar with the Gendered Conference Campaign and the petitions associated with it.  I think most of us have assumed that the problems the GCC attempts to rectify – the underrepresentation of women as conference speakers and volume contributors – went hand-in-hand with the underrepresentation in the field.  That is, most of us have assumed that, because women are underrepresented in philosophy, women were not seen as archetypical philosophers and so do not come to mind readily when conference and volume organizers are putting together their lineups (thus perpetuating the underrepresentation of women).

However, a new study published in PLOS ONE (see summary and video interview with lead author Lynne Isbell here) from researchers at my university, UC Davis, suggests that the situation is more complex than that.  Primatology has a higher percentage of women than men, and yet there are still underrepresentation issues at conferences.  From the abstract:

Analysis of 21 annual meetings of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists reveals that within the subfield of primatology, women give more posters than talks, whereas men give more talks than posters. But most strikingly, among symposia the proportion of female participants differs dramatically by the gender of the organizer. Male-organized symposia have half the number of female first authors (29%) that symposia organized by women (64%) or by both men and women (58%) have, and half that of female participation in talks and posters (65%).

Beyond Unconscious Bias & Sexual Harassment: a case study

A recent spate of all-male headlined conference announcements (note this one at Princeton here) made me reflect again on the mechanisms at work. Our friends at the GCC have been emphasizing the ways in which implicit bias and stereotype threat reinforce each other and, more recently, Brian Leiter has reminded us (rightly) that "sexual harassment is still the scandal of philosophy profession." Petitions (the call to action initiated by Martin Kusch and Mark Lance has almost a 1000 signatures; here is the official GCC petition; and an interdisciplinary one sponsored by Virginia Valian and Dan Sperber and friends) are not enough to solve these issues, of course. But I do not think that implicit bias, stereotype threat, and sexual harassment exhaust the pernicious mechanisms at work.

Recently, I wrote some young scholars who ended up hosting a resource-rich conference with a line-up of ten (mostly early career) males. (I wouldn't be surprised this particular conference also ends up being a special issue of a journal.) This surprised me because I had noticed the cfp and it explicitly mentioned blind review of abstracts, and had made no mention of invited speakers. Their response is illuminating because it shows how even selection designs that aim at quality can lead to unfair, gender-imbalanced outcomes without any malice or gender bias (I'll qualify this in a bit) at all:

From a call for papers, we have selected 7 papers (out of a total of 10 to be presented at this workshop). Possibly 7, but at least 5 (out of 24 submitted), abstracts have been submitted by women (judging on the basis of first names). All abstracts have been anonymously evaluated double blind by a pool of 30 reviewers (of which roughly half were authors that had submitted abstracts). The resulting rank order was arrived at by straight averaging, gender was not a factor in the decision. The group of authors selected remained the same irrespective of assigning weights (between 60/40 and 80/20) to reviewers’ scores or authors’ scores. We checked for gender only after the blog post [by the GCC] had become known to us. The best “female abstract” is probably on rank 11.

3 out of 10 talks are given by invited speakers. These had been planned before the call for papers. 2 of these are given  by scholars from [our home universities]. These authors had been asked before the call for papers, as we seek to give precedence to work originating [at our home universities]. Prof. X is the one invited speaker external to the [home universities.]

Baldwin on women publishing in Mind

On January 13^th 2012, a workshop took place in London bringing together the editors of some of the most prestigious philosophy journals as well as others involved in philosophy publishing (such as the area editors for CUP and OUP, among others). Podcasts of the talks and discussions have been made available here, and should be of interest to the NewAPPS readership at large.

One of talks (and accompanying Q&A session) has been quite extensively discussed since yesterday on Facebook and at a post over at the Feminist Philosophers. Thomas Baldwin, the editor of Mind, makes some statements concerning the ratio of women publishing in Mind which are worrisome, to say the least. Here are some passages (more passages transcribed here, courtesy of Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa).

Women and Wiki

Bryan Jackson recently wrote to Sally Haslanger to ask why there were no women on the list of metaphysicians on wikipedia. Sally shared this very good question with a few philosophers who have been interested in similar questions. After some discussion via email Sally started revising the entry. I have no idea how to revise wiki entries or what the rules are for making revisions, but I strongly encourage wiki-tech-y people to make further improvements to the list. Below the fold you can see the old wiki entry, which Bryan was referring to, and the entry as of tonight.

The Harvard IAT test, implicit beliefs and quick hiring and tenure decisions

Inspired by one of Mohan's older posts, I finally got around to redoing the Gender - Career Harvard IAT. I completed it twice. The first time, I sort of cheated. I really didn't want "female" to be associated with "family." I got the result I wanted (or close enough): "Your data suggest a slight association of Female with Career and Male with Family compared to Male with Career and Female with Family." But I really was kind of cheating. I thought carefully about the questions before answering. Well aware of the reasons behind my "good" results, I decided to complete the test again. This time I focused on doing it as fast as possible (as they actually do request in the instructions). The results now revealed my gender biases: "Your data suggest a slight association of Male with Career and Female with Family compared to Female with Career and Male with Family."

Top Scholars sign up for Gender Inclusiveness at Conferences pledge

We therefore undertake to make our participation in conferences – whether as an organizer, sponsor, or invited speaker – conditional on the invitation of women and men speakers in a fair and balanced manner.--See here. (Recall Brit's discussion here,)

This interdisciplinary petition drive was initiated by Dan Sperber and Virginia Valian and has among early signatures high profile folk like Dan Dennett and Stephen Stich.  (There is also a very useful Q&A.)

Are all all-male conferences bad?

In the aftermath of the debates about the desirability of making a pledge not to attend all-male conferences (see Dan Sperber, et all.'s Q&A here), it might be good to revisit the issue of how many speakers in a non-marginalized group should raise a red flag.

The structure of systematic exclusion replicates itself

Yet another female-exclusive, all-male conference: "Structuralism about fundamental reality and natural modality", 26-27 Oct. 2012, Department of Philosophy, University of Luxembourg.

Women in philosophy of mind

Carolyn Dicey-Jennings, John Schwenkler and I put put together a list of women working in philosophy of mind. It is no doubt still incomplete but greatly improved from last time you saw it. E-mail jlschwenkler@gmail.com with addenda and corrigenda.

Why Philip Pettit signed the call to action in support of the GCC, and you should too

"It's an unhappy feature of Philosophy that women are not well represented in our ranks. One way in which we might help to rectify the situation is by making sure  that women in the field are not in any way sidelined and indeed that they are given prominence. That would make for greater fairness. But it would also communicate that Philosophy welcomes men and women equally. And, by signaling the fact, it might help to make the subject equally attractive to them." Philip Pettit (Princeton and Australian National University)

The petition is here (with about 900 signatures!); the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Why Tommie Shelby supports the Call to Action and Petition in support of the GCC

I strongly support the aims of this petition—to end the unjust exclusion of women from conferences and edited volumes. And I agree that aggressive action is needed, since it’s just too easy for people to be complacent about the problem. I do worry, though, that this campaign, should it take hold, will mean even fewer keynote invitations to people of color. I would therefore prefer a broad based inclusiveness campaign (one that takes into account race, ethnicity, gender, disability, etc.) over a gendered campaign. Still, no such action is perfect, and I support this one, but with one qualification. I’m a senior black male philosopher, and so I would not refuse a keynote invitation solely on the grounds that the other keynote is a white man. (And I sincerely hope that no conference organizers will decide not to invite a man of color just to ensure that at least one of their keynotes is a woman.) I do however pledge to use whatever leverage I have (should gentle advice and encouragement prove ineffective) to ensure that the conferences, volumes, special issues, and so I participate in are suitably inclusive.--Tommie Shelby (Harvard)

The petition is here (with almost 900 signatures!); the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

There is now an Official GCC Petition!

As many have noted the call to action and petition --which has now nearly 900 signatures! -- initiated by Martin Kusch and Mark Lance among others  "is much more specific and prescriptive than the actual Gendered Conference Campaign has been."  So, a new official petition has been launched by the GCC "that is more closely aligned with the GCC's methods." 

As I write this over a 100 signatures have been gathered, including from lots of folk on the original (non-official) petition. This "official" petition is also drawing on folk that have publicly or privately expressed reservations about our call to action; it is great to see them drawn into the GCC, which ought to be embraced by the whole profession henceforth!

Why Gilbert Harman Signed the Call to Action in Support of the GCC, and Why You Should, Too

"Women are still underrepresented in Philosophy."--Gilbert Harman (Princeton)

The petition is here (with more than 850 signatures!); the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.