New listserv for philosophers with psychological disabilities June 18, 2013
Philosopher Joan Callahan writes:
I have managed (after a few false starts) to get up and running a listserv for discussion of inclusion in professional philosophy WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL DISABILITY.
If you want to subscribe to this list, just send a note to listserv@lsv.uky.edu with the message ” subscribe Inclusion ” in the body of your message.
Now, this will subscribe you under the personal name and address of the email account you are using. Since the topic of this list is in many ways a delicate one, if you want to maintain complete confidentiality, I suggest that you open a free email account with a name only you will know, such as Henry.Etta@gmail.com (or Yahoo, etc.) and subscribe to Inclusion from that account. This will keep your identity confidential, even from me, who is identified as the listowner.
I THINK this is all working. Please let me know if you have any problems.
I Guess We Need to Explicitly Say That Suicide is Not a Fashion Statement
I can’t add much else to the observation that, “this seems like some distinctive pinnacle of awfulness.”
(Thanks to RK for the heads up)
“Vice Published a Fashion Spread of Female Writer Suicides”
(Heads up: there are pictures of models depicting suicides.)
Okay, I can add this. For all I know, inside a moral vacuum maybe implying that suicide is beautiful isn’t immoral. But I feel confident in the assertion that in a social context where a segment of the population is encouraged to believe that they are only valuable members of society insofar as they are capable of being beautiful, emphasizing that such people can be beautiful and stylish while committing suicide is pretty damn immoral. And I am equally confident in asserting that we currently live in such a social context.
I’m going to take this opportunity to provide some links and quotes:
If you are feeling suicidal:
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/suicide_help.htm
(more after the jump)
(more…)
Philosophy 101 and the underrepresentation of women in philosophy June 17, 2013
Tania Lombrozo has a great post at NPR about the underrepresentation of women in philosophy. She focuses on recent work by Toni Adleburg, Morgan Thompson, and Eddy Nahmias that surveys the affect of gender on responses to intro philosophy courses (since, statistically, the biggest drop off in women’s participation in philosophy comes between intro-level courses and declaring a philosophy major – at least in the US).
Overall, female students found the course less enjoyable and the material less interesting and relevant to their lives than male students. Compared to male students, they also felt that they had less in common with typical philosophy majors or with their instructors, reported feeling less able and likely to succeed in philosophy, were less comfortable participating in class discussions and were less inclined to take a second philosophy course or to major in philosophy. (Interestingly, however, they didn’t anticipate receiving lower grades.)
Nigella Lawson and Domestic Violence
So Charles Saatchi attacked Nigella Lawson at a posh restaurant. And though lots of people took photos, and some apparently contacted the police, nobody intervened. [Expletives deleted] It is, however, provoking some useful discussion (yes, amazingly, from the Telegraph):
So class or status is irrelevant, but we persist in our naivety. It’s a defence mechanism, of course; we’re desperate to find a cast-iron reason that will distance us from the miserable fate suffered by someone unnervingly similar to our comfortable little selves – because we don’t want to believe that it could happen to us. We cannot tolerate the thought that we are not safe. And from this weaselly position of “I’d never get myself into that situation”, it’s a short, shameful step to blaming the victim: why does she stay with him? Why does she put up with it?
Thanks, C!
What do course evaluations evaluate? June 16, 2013
It would be interesting if course evaluations evaluated teaching effectiveness. A low evaluation would mean the students did not learn much, while a high one indicated a very good teacher. For this to happen, it seems students need to be able to tell if they learned much.
Given what we know now about self-knowledge,** we shouldn’t expect students to be able to tell how effective some teaching really is. And though the evidence is early and fairly small, it looks as though students are NOT very good at assessing how well they are taught.
See the CHE Article:
http://chronicle.com/article/Smooth-Lectures-Foster-Only/139705/
In an experiment students heard the same lecture—on why calico cats tend to be female—from two instructors, one fluent and engaging, the other halting and stiff. Unexpectedly, both groups of students scored equally well on a test of the material, even though the students with the better lecturer thought they’d learned more.
** easy to read references: Thinking fast and slow, by Kahneman; The Invisible Gorilla, by Simons and Chabris
General anaesthesia (GA) for older people
I had no idea about any specific link between dementia and GA. In fact, given the announcement’s date, few people could have known about it until recently. But it seems to me the sort of thing one should know about, either as potential victim or as someone close to a potential victim. ‘Elderly’ starts at 65.
June 1, 2013 — Exposure to general anaesthesia increases the risk of dementia in the elderly by 35%, says new research presented at Euroanaesthesia, the annual congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA). The research is by Dr Francois Sztark, INSERM and University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues.
Postoperative cognitive dysfunction, or POCD, could be associated with dementia several years later. POCD is a common complication in elderly patients after major surgery. It has been proposed that there is an association between POCD and the development of dementia due to a common pathological mechanism through the amyloid β peptide. Several experimental studies suggest that some anaesthetics could promote inflammation of neural tissues leading to POCD and/or Alzheimer’s disease (AD) precursors including β-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. But it remains uncertain whether POCD can be a precursor of dementia.
In this new study, the researchers analysed the risk of dementia associated with anaesthesia within a prospective population-based cohort of elderly patients (aged 65 years and over). The team used data from the Three-City study, designed to assess the risk of dementia and cognitive decline due to vascular risk factors. Between 1999 and 2001, the 3C study included 9294 community-dwelling French people aged 65 years and over in three French cities (Bordeaux, Dijon and Montpellier)…The data were adjusted to take account of potential confounders such as socioeconomic status and comorbidities.
The mean age of participants was 75 years and 62% were women. . After adjustment, participants with at least one GA over the follow-up had a 35% increased risk of developing a dementia compared with participants without anaesthesia.
Dr Sztark concludes: “These results are in favour of an increased risk for dementia several years after general anaesthesia. Recognition of POCD is essential in the perioperative management of elderly patients. A long-term follow-up of these patients should be planned.”
Support Deric Lostutter
The Steubenville rape case helped spark a national conversation about victim-blaming and rape culture.
But the victim only got justice because Anonymous leaked significant social media evidence implicating the assailants — and for distributing those tweets, photos, and video, 26-year-old Deric Lostutter faces more prison time than the rapists got themselves.
Sign the petition here.
Obama’s strong words against rape in military
used as reason to be soft on military rapists. [Many expletives deleted.]
Navy Judge Commander Marcus Fulton has just ruled that comments made by the President regarding military rape “would unduly influence” any potential sentencing in the cases of two defendants in military sexual assault cases, U.S. vs. Johnson and U.S. vs. Fuentes. Stars and Stripes reports that, per the judge’s ruling, should the two men be found guilty, they cannot be punitively discharged because of “unlawful command influence,” meaning, because of what President Obama, as the Commander in Chief, said. Would you like to know what incendiary, unduly prejudicial, trial-influencing comments the president made, so inflammatory that if two servicemen are actually found guilty of violently raping they should not be punished?
“The bottom line is: I have no tolerance for this,” Obama said, according to an NBC News story submitted as evidence by defense attorneys in the sexual assault cases.
‘I expect consequences,” Obama added. “So I don’t just want more speeches or awareness programs or training, but ultimately folks look the other way. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this, they’ve got to be held accountable — prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”
(Thanks, T!)
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