I probably don’t need to remind anybody of the bad press that 'formal philosophy'* has gotten as of recently along the gender dimension. More generally, the area has the reputation of having an even worse gender balance than other sub-areas of philosophy, and some even say a particularly bad climate for women. (I wouldn’t subscribe to the latter though, as I’m not under the impression that it is substantially worse than elsewhere – and I do hang out with ‘formal philosophers’ quite a bit! But that's obviously merely anecdotal.)
But anyway, against this background, it seems even more relevant to highlight efforts to foster a different climate for women in these 'techy' areas. A few weeks ago I posted on a conference on formal approaches to interactive rationality and learning, which has 50% of female keynotes. Now (as already noted by the Feminist Philosophers), the organizers of the fifth installment of the Formal Epistemology Festival went a step further and announced a lineup of keynotes which is 100% female (excluding for now the organizers, some of whom will also be speaking, and some of whom are men).
I found it particularly interesting to see someone as Jennifer Nagel listed, who does awesome work in epistemology (one of the few epistemologists seriously engaging with empirical data from the sciences of the mind), but not with a particularly formal bend. (I am under the impression that some of the other speakers do not fit the ‘formal epistemology’ label narrowly construed either, but I do not know their work well enough to be sure.) To me, this illustrates the kind of open-mindedness in drafting lists of speakers that I was advocating a while ago – and not only in the interest of gender balance, but simply in the interest of the vitality of a given sub-area or philosophical topic. Invariably having the same usual suspects as speakers on a given topic ends up becoming rather tedious...
So, kudos to the organizers of the Formal Epistemology Festival; it looks like it will be a lovely event – Toronto in June, mmm… Check out the CFP to see what needs to be done to submit.
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* I don't like the term much, as it suggests the existence of a sub-area of philosophy, dealing with its own issues and questions. Instead, I prefer to think of it as a particular methodological approach to perennial, general philosophical questions.
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