New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Why Alistair Norcross Signed the Call to Action in Support of the GCC, and Why You Should, Too

It is demanded by justice (which, at least in this case, promotes utility), and it will improve the quality of philosophy."--Alistair Norcross (Colorado)

The petition is here (with more than 800 signatures); the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Why you should support the call to action in support of the GCC, too!

"What I support are aggressive means for confronting the fact that too many philosophy conferences and volumes are exclusively male.  I had originally liked (and I continue to support) the Gendered Conference Campaign's nonconfrontational approach, which highlighted those conferences and volumes that are exclusively male, without raising the issue of the causes of this sort of non-inclusivness -- with the twin aims of raising awareness of this issue, and getting good-hearted people to adopt a more inclusive policy going forward.  Still, given the extent of philosophy's "gender problem," I believe that something further can and should be done -- especially by those of us who are in a good position to change things (e.g. mid-career or above).  A proposal to have people commit to not accepting invitations to events/volumes that are not gender-inclusive strikes me as a great idea in this regard; this aspect of your petition resonated with me.  Admittedly, one might reasonably worry (as some have) about the precise form that the commitment takes.  For this reason I wonder whether your petition might be more effective if it called on people to decline invitations from conferences/volumes that are "unrepresentative" in their gender-inclusiveness, rather than using the numbers you used ("We call on all senior male philosophers to refuse invitations to keynote at conferences with two or more keynotes none of which are women.")   Still, I do not want this worry (over the best way to formulate an actionable and realistic goal) to obscure the fact that I wholeheartedly endorse your petition's main idea to get folks -- again, especially those of us who are mid-career or beyond -- to put our money where our mouth is, by having some way to signal in advance that we do not accept invitations that are not properly representative gender-wise.  (I say this having learned the lesson the hard way: it was brought to my attention that I accepted several such invitations in the last two years alone.  While I have honored and will honor those commitments, I have resolved not to do this again.)   This sort of "signaling" will help our community change more rapidly than it otherwise would.  For this reason I would urge my philosophy colleagues to consider making some sort of commitment to inclusiveness in the invitations they accept."--Sandy Goldberg (Northwestern)

The petition is here (with nearly 800 signatures); the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Rocky Raccoon'

Busy week of conference-hopping for me (Cambridge and Konstanz), so here is a short MBoF. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, now that I’m finally on Facebook, I’ve been keeping up with what school friends are up to. One more person I was in school with and is now in the music business is Giba Nascimento, and through his Facebook feed I found out about this awesome version of ‘Rocky Raccoon’, by Giba and band General Osorio. It is one of my favorite Beatles songs, and here it is (over at SoundCloud) on a reggae’n’dub version that makes you wonder why the Beatles themselves hadn’t thought of it.

CFP: Piece of Mind graduate conference organized by my research assistant Kristian Marlow

I don't normally post CFPs here but this artwork by Jesse Prinz is just too cool not to post. So here we go:

On the Notre Dame healthcare lawsuit

This is a guest-post from Kathryn Pogin, a graduate student at UND involved in resisting UND's stance on the healthcare law.  (ML)

Earlier this year, the University of Notre Dame filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services, claiming the HHS mandate requiring Notre Dame to provide employees with insurance coverage for contraception violated the university’s First Amendment rights. In response, Benjamin Rossi and I drafted and circulated a petition opposing Notre Dame’s lawsuit; our concerns are multiple. It is not clear to us that complying with the mandate is actually contrary to Catholic conscience. Further, regardless of whether or not complying with the mandate would violate Catholic conscience we believe there are good reasons (moral and legal) the university ought to comply anyhow. Pursuing the suit is an affront to gender equity, and the university’s proposed solution only shifts any burden on freedom of religion from the university to the tax-payers.

The purported problem with the university providing wider access to contraceptives is that women will ultimately use it for morally illicit reasons, contrary to Church teaching, and aiding them to that end violates the university’s Catholic conscience. However, Notre Dame already provides access to medications that treat erectile dysfunction, without requiring the insured provide evidence of marital status (in fact, men need not even provide documentation of a medical need). If students or employees are unmarried, providing access to such medications is also aiding the insured in gravely immoral behavior according to Catholic teaching—and further, at least according to university practice, this has not interfered with the ability of the university to live out its Catholic mission to date. If the university can provide access to medications that treat erectile dysfunction because it trusts the decision to use it wisely to the individual consciences of insured men, why not trust women when it comes to contraceptives? Fundamentally, university’s policies do not treat men and women as equally capable and trustworthy moral agents, and the university is going to court to defend that disparity.  

Brian Leiter on our Call to Action in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign...

When the historical baseline is unjust you should avoid appealing to it to justify your objections to changing it. That's a simple moral maxim. 

After more than 700 professional philosophers signed the call to action and petition to support the GCC, Brian Leiter weighed in against it.  First, the good news is Leiter now supports the GCC, whereas before he seemed more reserved about it. The bad news is he criticizes our call to action by violating the simple moral maxim. For he writes, "About 16% of senior philosophers (i.e., likely keynote candidates) are female, and in some sub-fields, the numbers are worse.   I am not going to decline invitations to keynote based on such a standard, and I imagine many others feel the same way."

 Even so, Leiter's post is worth reading because he quotes from an eloquent letter from an unnamed "female philosopher:"

The causes of all-male conference lineups are various: age distributions, topic areas, social networks, self-promotion, salience, implicit bias, chance. I personally don't really care what the fine detail of the causes is—I actually think the effect of implicit bias specifically is vastly overplayed, whereas the weight of both conscious sexism and more institutional or structural facts about the field play a much larger role. Be that as it may, and aside from sheer bad luck, most of what's happening is in the general ballpark of unjustified exclusion-by-default, whether due to active malice or passive entitlement. That culture needs changing....  The ingrained sexism of professional philosophy is real. It is a problem that I (and women like me) have experienced directly, in small ways and large, at almost every point in our careers. I am tired of waiting for it to magically go away by itself....The GCC has been great for women in [my fields].....[Philosophy has terrible problems with institutional sexism, and I think the GCC has proved itself unexpectedly effective in shifting the balance of expectations in a positive way.

Astronomers on Gender Equality

The American Astronomical Society (membership (~7,000)) has been focused on the status of women in Astronomy since their Baltimore meeting in 1992. The AAS Committee on the Status of Women (CSWA)  has been promoting the so-called Pasadena Recommendations for Gender Equality in Astronomy. Interestingly enough, CSWA maintains a webpage in which it lists quite a bit of data on gender ratios at conferences, including the names of the Scientific Organization Committee Chairs of the conferences. [HT to Julia Driver.]

Scientists, Your Gender Bias Is Showing

Sean Carroll writes:

I know it’s fun to change the subject and talk about bell curves and intrinsic ability, but hopefully we can all agree that people with the same ability should be treated equally. And they are not.

That's the conclusion of a new study in PNAS by Corinne Moss-Racusin and collaborators at Yale. (Hat tip Dan Vergano.) To test scientist’s reactions to men and women with precisely equal qualifications, the researchers did a randomized double-blind study in which academic scientists were given application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position. The substance of the applications were all identical, but sometimes a male name was attached, and sometimes a female name.

Results: female applicants were rated lower than men on the measured scales of competence, hireability, and mentoring (whether the scientist would be willing to mentor this student). Both male and female scientists rated the female applicants lower.

[Quoted from here; HT to L.A. Paul & Gwyneth Harrison-Shermoen on Facebook]

Why You Should Support the Call to Action and Petition in Support of the GCC, too

Academic philosophy has a gender problem and has had one for a long time. If nothing else, this becomes obvious when philosophy is compared to other academic areas when it comes to representation at higher levels of professional status and controlled for results in studies. Besides the general political spin that can be made on this with regard to gender equality, I find this situation troublesome also for purely academic and philosophically chauvinistic reasons; our beloved subject misses a large portion of potential talent due to what mainly seems to be structural reasons.The proposed action in this petition in order to influence conference organizers when it comes to keynote speakers is, in light of this, a very modest one.--Christian Munthe (Gothenburg)

The petition is here; the  most recent list (with over 700!) signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Why you should support the Call to Action and Petition in Support of the GCC, too.

Equality of opportunity is not just an abstract ideal. Achieving justice requires concrete action. And both the quality of philosophical work and the relevance of philosophy to real problems -- which two goals are intimately related -- will be enhanced in proportion to our achievement of gender balance (balance also of race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual preference, etc.) in the profession of philosophy.--Don Howard (Notre Dame)

The petition is here; the The most recent list with (over 600!) signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

More than 500 Signatures on the call to action and Petition in support of the GCC!!!

The call to action has gone viral with the numbers that are signing up accelerating during the last 48hrs!

The petition has moved beyond more than 500 signatures (and climbing)!

Nearly all signatures are from professional philosophers or graduate students in philosophy. The signatures are from the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Asia, and from accross disciplinary divides.  (Read the "reasons for signing section" here.)

 The petition is here; the The most recent list of signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Tactical reviewing

"The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States. Tocqueville (Democracy in America.)

Let's stipulate that the readers of the NYRB and the public image of philosophy are not well served by demolition jobs masquerading as reviews. Let's also stipulate that Thomas Nagel is one of the most important and interesting philosophers of the last four decades so it is no surprise that NYRB turns to him. Now, Mohan has already called attention to the silly claims about the relationship between the so-called "Hard Problem of Consciousness" and evolution. Even so, what the hell is going on in Nagel's review of Plantinga? Even if we leave aside the remarkably uncritical attitude toward Plantinga, take the first sentence: "The gulf in outlook between atheists and adherents of the monotheistic religions is profound." In what world is Nagel living? You don't need to agree with Nietzsche (who saw the ascetic ideal operating both in faith in God and faith in science) to see that modern, educated North American atheists and Christians are fare more alike in the practical and theoretical things they take for granted than, say, the Babylonian high-priest who believed in omens. 

Nagel's Gone Batty

The Hard Problem of Consciousness poses a problem for philosophical materialism. The problem in a nutshell is that every function of consciousness can be achieved without consciousness—in zombies, for example. And this means that none of these functions is identical with consciousness. So how could consciousness be material? This is a problem.

Still, does the Hard Problem pose a problem for evolutionary biology as it stands today? Tom Nagel thinks so. His forthcoming book is entitled Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. (It is available already on Kindle.) The Amazon blurb for the book reads like this:

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. . . Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. . . An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.

Hang on!

Why you should sign the Call to Action and Petition in Support of the GCC, too.

"The days in which it was too hard for an organizer to find talented women to fill conference slots are over." Janice Dowell (Nebraska)

The petition is here; the The most recent list of signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Chairing Principles

[Excessive finger abuse at this weekend's conference (cf., Brit's timeline on Facebook, Saturday, September 15, 2012) warrants this reposting of my old blog post from Lemmings, January 17, 2008]

There are many different theories about how best to chair a session. Disagreement arises in particular when it comes to the principles for determining the order in which people get to speak. Some will simply put people on the list in the order that they see them raise their hand---but remember, seeing is theory-laden. Others will invoke more sophisticated principles, for instance, pick people in the back before picking people in the front or pick people to the left before picking people to the right, and so on. In Arizona Agustin Rayo (aka 'Augustin Reyo') would punish people who raised their hands one second too late (the slow ones didn't get to ask follow-ups, etc.), and Ned Markosian put people whom he thought had already spoken too much in earlier sessions at the end of his list. Both Agustin and Ned were punished for these practices. Here is a picture of Agustin being punished.

Why you should support the call for action and the petition in support of the GCC, too

There are some pros and some cons to this petition, as has been discussed on the New APPS blog earlier this year. Obviously, reasonable people may end up disagreeing. My reason to sign this is similar to everyone else's: there are many excellent female philosophers in all fields. It is wrong that they're underrepresented at conferences. If a bit of individualistic affirmative action like this makes things better, then I support it.
Jeff Ketland (Oxford & MCMP)

The petition is here; the updated list with signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Žižek and Kant: on philosophical taboos (or: on the demise of philosophical history)

Slavoj Žižek calls attention to and connects the following two passages in Kant:

A people should not inquire withany practical aim in view into the origin of the supreme authority to which it is subject; that is a subject ought not to rationalize for the sake of action about the origin of this authority, as a right that can still be called into question  with regard to the obedience he owes to it....[this] sets forth an idea as a principle of practical reason: the principle that the presently existing legislative authority ought to be obeyed, whatever its origin. (6: 318-9 and the German).

For a people already subject to civil law these subtle reasonings are altogether pointless and, moreover, threaten a state with danger. It is futile to inquire into the historical documentation [Geschichtsurkunde] of the mechanism of government, that is, one cannot reach back to the time at which civil society began (for savages draw up no record of their submission to law; besides, we can already gather from the nature of uncivilized human beings that they were originally subjected to it by force). But it is punishible to undertake this inquiry with a view to possibly changing by force the constitution that now exists. For this transformation would have to take place by the people acting as a mob, not by legislation. (6:339-40 and the German [The parts in bold are omitted by Žižek (because he is focused on a slightly different question--ES.])

As Žižek notes, Kant legislates a philosophical taboo (recall here.) A people cannot call into question obedience to present (lawful) government. This is not the place to explore  if Kant allows either exceptions to such obedience or  if a government stops being lawful (say because its laws become at odds with itself (recall my recent posts on Smith and Emerson and Thoreau) or  because it has no de facto authority (recall my posts on Hobbes, Hume, Smith) etc.), such that no obedience is warranted anymore. Moreover, I am also going to pretend as if the events of the French Revolution have nothing to do with this doctrine of Die Metaphysik der Sitten. Rather, Kant's taboo limits the possible philosophical role of history (as a form of inquiry) on practical grounds (if not plain raison d'État). For, history has to stop just where it gets interesting. Moreover, if history is not allowed to tell the origins of (any) us as a political unity, it cannot provide a genuine causal account of our unity and, thus, is incapable of offering full explanations. (It's only when one lowers one's expectation of what a proper causal account is that such history gets allowed back in.) The taboo is especially striking because it goes against the classical ideal that inquiry into politics is among the highest philosophical goods (I'll remain agnostic on what the correct reading of Aristotle is).

Kant's taboo helps us better understand the demise within philosophy (and history) of history as a genuine philosophical enterprise. This has caused a so-called Kuhn-Loss for philosophy: we are incapable of recognizing much of Xenophon,  Polybius, Machiavelli, and, say, Hume's History, as properly philosophical, nor (as I noted recently in response to Hazony's book), the main narrative of The Hebrew Bible.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Alta noite'

Another busy week here, and only now do I get the chance to work on this week’s BMoF (I usually do it during the week). So I opened youtube to see what would inspire me today, and in fact I already sort of had something else in mind. But then youtube suggested I check a real gem, a live version of ‘Alta noite’ by Marisa Monte, accompanied by two acoustic guitars: Dori Caymmi (one of Dorival Caymmi’s sons, who I posted on a few weeks ago) and Raphael Rabello. Raphael Rabello was widely considered as one of the most talented Brazilian acoustic guitar players ever; sadly, he died prematurely in 1995. 

I’ve never thought much of this particular song, recorded in Marisa Monte’s 1994 album Verde, Anil, Amarelo, Cor-de-Rosa e Carvão, but this particular version truly embodies what is so special about Brazilian music: amazing guitars and delicate, precise vocals. (This is really a great thing about writing BMoF: I keep discovering gems I didn’t even know existed.) 

Why you should support the call to action and the petition in support of GCC, too

Because philosophy is one of the areas of the humanities with the smallest proportion of women faculty.  Because I had thought when I was a graduate student that this would have changed by the time my generation had become full professors. ---David Stern (Iowa)

The petition is here; the The most recent list of signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

What's Wrong with an Informal Cartel?

I often find that my views diverge from Eric's. And here we go again!

Publishing in philosophy is a way of getting your work to the readers you want to reach. People in unpopular fields often find that launching a niche journal is the best way to do this. This is the practice Eric calls "journal capture." What exactly is wrong with it? Especially in these days of self-publishing. If I want to get a paper out there, I post it on PhilPapers. With the right keywords, it gets an audience. Completely unrefereed. And that audience is probably just as big as when I publish in a journal. Since this is so, why is refereeing so important in journals where you have to submit to an editor?

Of course, there is a risk. As I have noted elsewhere (following Linsay Waters), universities use publication in prestigious journals as a substitute for serious evaluation.  (This has been going on for a long time: G. E. Moore was denied a job because of a referee report, and the same referee recommended against publication in Mind.) And it would (perhaps) be a bad thing if publication was rigged leading to tenure and promotion on rigged evidence. (Or maybe it would just force universities to be less lazy.)

But what's another reason why refereeing has to be transparent? Editors need advice on what is worth publishing. Why does this advice have to manufactured in some supposed haven of neutrality?

Informal cartels in philosophy?

Have you ever been asked to referee a paper by a journal that never accepts your work? (I have!) The eminent metaphysician, Stephen Mumford, writes about it and much more. Here's an excerpt [HT to Jani Hakarrainen on Facebook]:

I will add straight away that clearly we cannot assume malpractice just because a journal publishes work by a board member or other editor. Academics gain such positions chiefly because they are excellent scholars who, of course, should not be excluded from publishing just because of their position. But what we lack is the transparency and public accountability that could reassure us that malpractice never occurs.

I will add straight away that clearly we cannot assume malpractice just because a journal publishes work by a board member or other editor. Academics gain such positions chiefly because they are excellent scholars who, of course, should not be excluded from publishing just because of their position. But what we lack is the transparency and public accountability that could reassure us that malpractice never occurs.--In Times Higher Education.

I doubt the "egregious case" occurs so blatantly in philosophy (although maybe a sociologist of knowledge will prove me wrong). But in philosophy there exists plenty of journal-capture, where an incrowd network protects its franchise around a relatively prestigious (or well indexed) journal and ensures that intellectual friends (and their students) of board members get 'competent' referees. 

As I have argued before (see also here, here) one way to create more transparency is to include the names and (online) reports of referees of published papers; Mumford argues for complete transparency over the editorial process. This way the networks become public information.

Another week in which the pattern of sexual exclusion reinforces itself.

Here's a cfp for a conference on rationality and a special issue of a journal; eight invited men, no women.

Here's an invite only workshop on the unity of the proposition; six men, no women.

Here's an another invite only workshop on The Development and Education of Virtue; six men, no women.

See here for my analysis of how the mechanism of  our complicity in collective negligence works. We can and ought to do better (see here). Why not sign up to this call for action?

Why you should support the Call to Action and Petition in Support of the GCC, too

According to the U.S. Bureau of Education Statistics, only 20 percent of all postsecondary teachers of philosophy are women, and only 16 percent are in tenure-track jobs. A common explanation is that women just aren’t very interested in the topics philosophy concerns itself with, but a more accurate way to put it is that men police the boundaries of philosophy to exclude as “unphilosophical” the things that people in socially privileged positions don’t care about. When women, people of color, and people in other disadvantaged social groups join the philosophical conversation, they broaden and enrich it. All philosophers should want that to happen. So excluding women from prominent positions on conference programs is not only unfair to women, it enervates the profession.--Hilde Lindemann (Michigan State).

The petition is here; the  The most recent list of signatures is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

undeveloped frequent observations in philosophy

In this post, I  propose a meta-philosophical category: the undeveloped frequent observation. I'll explain with an example, but the general idea is of something that important philosophers notice every so often, but that doesn't receive systematic development.

Now one reason not to run with an idea is that people find it false.  So I'm interested especially in observations that pop up again and again, but are neither argued against nor rejected by a near concensus.  (It doesn't take a consensus that the observation is true for it to be taken up and run with, just a few philosophers.  So only a near concensus of falsehood would explain a lack of work.) That is, I am interested in substantive philosophical observations or suggestions that are made by several influential philosophers and largely ignored by the profession thereafter.

K-16 teacher solidarity

This little Facebook post, provoked by the Chicago Teachers Union strike (a nice post by Brian Leiter will get you started; see also here and here), got some good reactions, so I thought I'd put it here. 

Public university colleagues: let's start thinking in terms of K-16, so that we highlight our solidarity with our K-12 colleagues. Because we are the leading edge, the experimental subjects, of "flexible" labor practices for our TAs, adjuncts, instructors, and other colleagues forced into precarious labor, just as our K-12 colleagues are sites of experimentation for tying evaluations to standardized testing. The admins in each area look longingly at the practices of the other. In other words, we are each canaries in the other's coal mine.

CTU solidarity fund here; other support ideas here.

Why you should support the Call for Action and petition in support of the GCC, too

"If the status quo is to be changed anytime soon, positive measures like this one will have to be taken." --Alan Nelson (UNC, Chapel Hill)

The petition is here; the The most recent signature list is here; the call for action is here; the Gendered Conference Campaign is here.

Weekly Philo of Economics: Emerson, Complicity and the Natural Sentiments

"Greece and Judea, furnish the mind and the heart by which the rest of the world is sustained"

Every hour brings us from distant quarters of the Union the expression of mortification at the late events in Massachusetts, and at the behavior of Boston. The tameness was indeed shocking. Boston, of whose fame for spirit and character we have all been so proud ; Boston, whose citizens, intelligent people in England told me they could always distinguish by their culture among Americans; the Boston of the American Revolution, which figures so proudly in John Adams's Diary, which the whole country has been reading; Boston, spoiled by prosperity, must bow its ancient honor in the dust, and make us irretrievably ashamed. In Boston, we have said with such lofty confidence, no fugitive slave can be arrested, and now, we must transfer our vaunt to the country, and say, with a little less confidence, no fugitive man can be arrested here ; at least we can brag thus until to-morrow, when the farmers also may be corrupted.--Emerson, "THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW ADDRESS TO CITIZENS OF CONCORD, 3 MAY, 1851"

The second passage above was at the core of a fantastic lecture, "A Kantian Account of Complicity," delivered by Julia Driver in Ghent yesterday (and tomorrow in Amsterdam), all the more notable because Driver tends toward a more consequentialist moral philosophy. The core of Driver's lecture, was on the relationship between complicity and a certain form of action-guiding self-respect (even integrity). For, in Emerson, the dishonor of Boston creates a collective shame that potentially leaves none untouched.

In the passage, Emerson re-actives what we may call a republican rhetoric, in which commerce, luxurious prosperity, and city-life are associated with cowardice and tameness. By contrast, the independent, self-reliant, rustic farmer all stand for heroic virtue. But Emerson also insists that even beyond the suburbs, the country is no safe haven from the shared complicity in injustice (tomorrow the farmer). As Emerson said in his lecture, "Great is the mischief of a legal crime. Every person who touches this business is contaminated." So, in his lecture, Emerson's analysis relies on a different strain of argument, one greatly indebted to Adam Smith, who as regular readers may recall, thinks we can even be polluted if we unwillingly contribute to harm of others (and connects shame to pollution).

A Cartoonist explains his response to 9/11

So, at the age of 32, I uncapped my pen to create a concept that could be popular in the East and the West. I would go back to the very sources from which others took violent and hateful messages and offer messages of tolerance and peace in their place. I would give my heroes a Trojan horse in the form of THE 99. Islam was my Helen. I wanted her back.

THE 99 references the 99 attributes of Allah - generosity, mercy, wisdom and dozens of others not used to describe Islam in the media when you were growing up. But if I am successful, by the time you read this, you will not believe that such an era could have ever existed.

Knowing that children will learn vicariously from THE 99 to be tolerant of all who believe in doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, makes me very proud.--Naif Al-Mutawa (Exerpted from here).

Call to Action and a Petition in support of the Gendered Conference Campaign (revised)

[This version is slightly improved from the earlier call.--ES & ML]

In response to substantial feedback from colleagues on our earlier version of this proposal, we have revised our call. We offer the following result of that collective discussion and hope the profession will support.  In particular, this version of the proposal is indebted to Martin Kusch who suggested the general form that we have adopted here. 

 

Petition in support of the Gendered Conference Campaign.

• Professional, academic philosophy has a well-documented and ongoing pattern of excluding women. The situation is bad in the English-speaking philosophical world, and it is no better in much of Europe. We recognize, of course, the significance and severity of other sources of exclusion.
• One non-trivial way in which the status quo replicates and reinforces itself is through conferences and edited volumes that have only male, invited keynote-speakers and contributors.
• Keynote speakers are visible examples of recognized leaders in the field. Among the functions of keynote speakers is to confer prestige on events and topics, and to provide a model for younger philosophers of how philosophy is to be practiced as a profession.
• In light of these considerations, we call on all senior male philosophers to refuse invitations to keynote at conferences with two or more keynotes none of which are women.  (There will sometimes be extraordinary circumstances in which accepting an invitation may do more to respond to various dimensions of exclusion in philosophy than refusing, and there is no way to codify every possible circumstance. What we are calling for is a strong defeasible commitment not to participate in exclusionary conference line-ups.) The aim of this call is not the refusal, but the deployment of leverage, where it resides, so that inclusiveness becomes an integral part of conference-planning. Further, we ask senior male philosophers to carefully consider refusing invitations to conferences and edited volumes in which the line-up is disproportionately male.
• We call on all philosophers - of any gender or rank - not to organize male-only or male-almost-only conferences,workshops, or edited volumes. (Information on female experts in various areas is available here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
• We call on all philosophers to add to their websites and email signatures the following line: "I am a signatory of the 'Online Petition in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign'; please visit [Online Petition] for details."
• We call on all philosophers to engage in positive steps to educate our community about the Gendered Conference Campaign.

Mark Lance & Eric Schliesser

Remembering Leonard Linsky (1922-2012)

[This is a follow up to this post.]

When I arrived at The University of Chicago (1995), Leonard Linsky's weekly, Friday afternoon reading group on the Investigations was already years old. It was timed not to interfere with departmental colloquia, or the departmental coffee hour. Even though Leonard had officially retired, it attracted the best and brightest graduate students who would talk about it for days after. I had not yet acquired a taste for close reading, and the devotional quality to the reading group put me off. This did not stop me from being fascinating by Leonard--there was a dogged rumor on campus that one of the characters in Erica Jong's Fear of Flying was loosely based on him.