The Psychology of Philosophy September 30, 2010

In a comment on New Paper Rae draws our attention to a discussion of work by Carol Dweck at Stanford.  It reminded me for the nth time (where “n” is a large number) how impoverished philosophical discourse seems to be with regard to very important psychological factors.  These have to do with implicit biases, stereotype threat, how conceptions of talent influence performance, ways in which teachers express gender preferences in addressing students, how insiders react to remembering the contributions of outsiders, and so on. 

So how about collecting together some web papers on these and other topics?  Let me start with a few, I think most of which have been mentioned before on this blog.  So please!  Do mention some new topics and new readings!

Implicit Bias:  Jenny Saul’s paper.

Conceptions of talent and their influence on performance:  Carol Dweck’s paper mentioned above.

Stereotype threat:  A popular article by Claude Steele.

Ways one might reduce bias (about racism, but can apply to sexism), a paper from Dovidio’s group.

One of the things that started me thinking about the gap in psychological knowledge in our profession was a discussion on Leiter’s blog about whether the APA should allow job interviews in hotel rooms with beds.  Most of the male commentors seemed to think the problem was about sexual harassment.   This suggested to be a very thin grasp of the differences among men’s and women’s reactions to domestic scenes that can have to do with highly gendered roles.   We could try to do something about that too.

I just failed to find web versions of two papers, so let me suggest that it would be alright to provide an abstract to a paper that could be downloaded from a university database.

The Hello Kitty Assault Rifle September 30, 2010

Amazingly, not from J-Bro.

For more, go here.

Open Positions at E-SWIP September 30, 2010

Position 1: Coordinator of ESWIP Annual Spring Meeting
The Eastern Society for Women In Philosophy seeks a coordinator of the ESWIP Annual Spring Meeting.

Coordinator of the Annual Spring Meeting: Organize the ESWIP annual Spring meeting (usually occurs in March/April, but can be planned for anytime that suits the officers’ schedules). This includes establishing an ESWIP Program Committee (usually five members), distributing a call for papers, finding a conference location, finding a keynote speaker if applicable, collecting all of the submissions and passing them on to the program committee, and making local arrangements in regard to food, and audio-visual equipment.

Please contact lisarivera AT gmail for information or to nominate yourself or another person.

Position 2: ESWIP Junior Scholar and Graduate Support

Work with other SWIP divisions to get funding for a Junior Scholar Award. Each year ESWIP also runs a table for job candidates at the Eastern APA and asks senior scholars to volunteer to be there as support. Give this and other support for junior scholars and graduate students.

An advanced graduate student (dissertation writing stage) is eligible to fill this second position. Please consider nominating yourself or others (including your own graduate students). Please contact lisarivera AT gmail if you have questions or to nominate.

Men and the Normativity of Meaning September 29, 2010

Wanna hear some men discuss the normativity of meaning? Well, you could be in luck, as the invited speakers for the Prague International Colloquium on the Normativity of Meaning are all blokes! The Colloquium is organized by the Department of Logic (part of the Institute of Philosophy) in the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It takes place 25th-27th May 2011, in Villa Lanna, Prague, Czech Republic. The invited speakers (male) are:

• Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh)
• Michael Williams (Baltimore)
• Christopher Gauker (Cincinnati)
• James O’Shea (Dublin).

If you don’t understand this post, you might want to check out this page. Thanks to K.

Water on Oct. 15 for Blog Action Day September 29, 2010

It’s almost time again for Blog Action Day, and this year, the topic, suggested by bloggers far more than any other, is Water.  Here at Feminist Philosophers I’ll be blogging about water and the disproportionate impact that the availability of water has on women worldwide.  Feel free to join our discussion or start your own on other blogs, especially those that don’t take part or seem aware of the lives of women!

Sometimes internet activity is just slacktivism, but other times, a number of people can accomplish a cultural shift in awareness.  Here’s hoping, anyway.

A top-ten female athlete of the year retires September 28, 2010

We remarked when she made the Associated Press’s list of the top ten female athletes.  So,  despite the fact that she’s a horse, it seems appropriate to notice her change now.  From the official statement by her owner:

As a 3-year-old, she set standards and records that no filly before her ever achieved. And I suspect it will be quite a while before a 3-year-old filly ever equals or surpasses her achievements. Although her fans were thrilled by a series of spectacular victories, I believe they, as we, were simply awed time and again by her sheer beauty, courage and athleticism

Plus, she had a photo layout in Vogue:

If you are wondering how Vogue managed to abstract her image from the full horsey details, you might be interested in this video of the shoot.

Porn on the NHS? September 28, 2010

There’s been some recent attention directed to the news that the NHS provides pornography to men at IVF clinics when they’re required to produce some sperm. I say “news” — I thought this had been happening for ages. But a recent report has highlighted the practice, and the Sun and Telegraph have both published stories following up.

The two newspapers concentrate on the waste-of-public-money angle. The original report uses this argument, and also briefly gives some general anti-porn arguments, and a couple concerning how the NHS particularly is morally obliged to refrain from exposing its staff and patients to pornography (the “report” is a short and easy read).

Against this, Ben Goldacre points out in the Guardian that the average amount spent on porn is £21.32 a year per NHS trust. More seriously, he argues that there’s a reasonable amount of evidence suggesting that providing porn increases the quality of sperm produced, and thus the chances of successful IVF, and that this might be more important than moral scruples.

And against Goldacre, Kat Banyard writes to the Guardian to argue that all pornography is harmful — indeed, “a public health crisis” — and shouldn’t be provided in clinics, no matter what the benefits. She cites a Ministry of Justice report as evidence. I’m not sure which MoJ report she’s referring to, but I’m guessing it’s this one (direct link to pdf — not a short and easy read), which is concerned with extreme pornography. So it’s not clear to me that it or the meta-analyses it contains can support her general conclusion about all pornography (though I can only identify two of the three meta-analyses she mentions; is there a different report that I’ve missed?).

Anyway, some engaging to-and-fro, and some interesting issues — I’d never considered a possible increase in the motibilty of sperm as an argument in favour of pornography.

Stuff that needs to be said September 28, 2010

Frank Herbert on the Republican candidate for governor of NY:

One of the things that can happen in the news business is that some portion of a story becomes so vile, so offensive, it is virtually impossible to effectively recount or describe. Reporters keep their distance. Editors lunge for the delete button.

Such is the case with the images and videos forwarded by Mr. Paladino to a wide variety of people. The public should know about these mailings, and Mr. Paladino should give a full, thoughtful explanation of why he trafficked in such filth.

Example: A photo showing a group of black men trying to get out of the way of an airplane that is apparently moving across a field. The caption reads: “Run niggers, run.”

Example: A doctored photo of President and Mrs. Obama showing the president in a stereotypical pimp’s costume holding the hand of the first lady, who is dressed as a prostitute in a grotesquely revealing outfit…

Excellent news: Canada’s prostitution laws struck down September 28, 2010

Canada’s prostitution laws are unconstitutional because they’re contributing to the danger faced by sex-trade workers, an Ontario court ruled Tuesday in striking down key provisions of the legislation. The Ontario Superior Court ruled that laws against keeping a common bawdy house, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of the trade “are not in accord with the principles of fundamental justice.”

“These laws, individually and together, force prostitutes to choose between their liberty interest and their right to security of the person as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Justice Susan Himel wrote her in decision.

Receiving payment for sexual services was not illegal in Canada.

Read the full story in Macleans here.

What does it take to be homecoming king? September 28, 2010

What kind of speech act  is  ”A homecoming king cannot be listed as a girl on the school registrar’s list”? 

The ACLU is prepared to argue it should not be true/correct/etc:

A Creepy Treehouse September 28, 2010

You might want to avoid building one.

An interesting observation from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

A growing number of professors are experimenting with Facebook, Twitter, and other social-networking tools for their courses, but some students greet an invitation to join professors’ personal networks with horror, seeing faculty members as intruders in their private online spaces. Recognizing that, some professors have coined the term “creepy treehouse” to describe technological innovations by faculty members that make students’ skin crawl.

Jared Stein, director of instructional-design services at Utah Valley University, offered a clear definition of the term on his blog earlier this year. “Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity,” Mr. Stein wrote.

Alec Couros, an assistant professor of education at the University of Regina, in Canada, is coordinator of the education school’s information and communication technologies program. He says that there are productive — and non-creepy — ways for professors to use social-networking technologies, but that the best approach is to create online forums that students want to join, rather than forcing participation. “There’s a middle space I think you can find with students,” he says. —Jeffrey R. Young

This strikes me as one of those interesting cases where one might not be able to anticipate the attitudes of those on the other side.

New paper: Gender and Philosophical Intuition September 28, 2010

Wesley Buckwalter and Steve Stich’s new paper, “Gender and Philosophical Intuitions”, is out. I think it’s really interesting. Here’s the first paragraph:

In recent years, there has been much concern expressed about the underrepresentation of women in academic philosophy. A full explanation of this troubling phenomenon is likely to be quite complex since there are, almost certainly, many factors that contribute to the gender disparity. Our goal in this paper is to call attention to a cluster of phenomena that may be contributing to the underrepresentation of women in philosophy, though until now these phenomena have been largely invisible. The findings we review indicate that when women and men with little or no philosophical training are presented with standard philosophical thought experiments, in many cases their intuitions about these cases are significantly different. We suspect that these differences could be playing an important role in shaping the demography of the profession. But at present this is only an hypothesis, since we have no evidence that bears directly on the causal relation between the gender gap in academic philosophy and the facts about intuition that we will recount. In future work, we plan to focus on that causal link. However, we believe that thefacts we report about gender differences in philosophical intuitions are both important and disturbing, and that philosophers (and others) should begin thinking about their implications both for philosophical pedagogy and for the methods that philosophers standardly use to support their theories. It is our hope that this paper will help to launch conversations on these issues both within the philosophical community and beyond.

Thanks, A!

New Labour Leader has perfectly ordinary family life September 26, 2010

More than 40% of British children are born outside marriage. But somehow it’s news when the Labour Leader is not married to his partner and that they have a child together (and another on the way). I guess I should be glad, really. In the US, nobody like this could become the Presidential candidate of either major party.

Abortion and Teenage Depression? September 26, 2010

The first can cause the second, right?  Not exactly; in fact, that looks wrong:

 A press release for the study, which is published in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, explains, “The researchers found that young women in the study who had an abortion were no more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem within the first year of pregnancy — or five years later — than their peers who were pregnant, but did not have an abortion.” The data was pulled from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which surveyed 289 girls between the ages of 13 and 18.

The possibility of psychological harm has been appealed to in arguments for parental notification and pre-abortion warnings.  But now it looks as though the harm may well not be there.

 The truth, according to science, is that “on average, abortion does not appear to have major psychological consequences — for adult women or for teens,” says [lead author Jocelyn] Warren. Marie Harvey, a public health professor at Oregon State University, which conducted the research with the University of California, San Francisco, said: “We have policies being made that are not evidence-based, and that have adverse consequences for women’s health.”

Gosh!  Not evidence-based?!?  Who would have guessed?  It makes it sound as though maybe there’s another agenda being acted on.

The Sunday Cat welcomes Simon’s cat back September 25, 2010

Shades of Maru!

For GLBT teens September 25, 2010

Dan Savage has launched the It Gets Better Project. It’s a growing collection of videos directed at isolated, despairing GLBT teenagers to let them know that it will really get better. Go add one if you like. Or pass it on to someone who might want to. Or who needs to see it. And remember its existence in case you meet someone who does.

Gay rights – 1, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – 0 September 25, 2010

Major Margaret Witt, a decorated flight nurse, was fired from the Air Force in 2004 after it was discovered that she was in a long-term relationship with a woman. Now, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton has judged that she should be given her job back and allowed to serve, despite being openly gay. You can read more here.

Looking for some critical thinking exercises? September 25, 2010

Try having your students spot the problems in this article by Christina Hoff-Summers. As Igor, who sent it to us notes:

Maybe the best point is when the author criticizes not taking variables like education into account when computing the gender gap, and then proceeds to cite a result that urban young women make slightly more dough than their counterpart men due to higher average education level [as evidence that women now have it better than men]

Obama and his pesky healthcare policies September 24, 2010

US readers will probably be completely au fait with this, but UK folks like myself might be interested in hearing about some of the measures which have gotten people so hot under the collar of late. The full healthcare reform act comes into effect in 2014, but there are some interim bits taking effect now. These are:

• Eliminating lifetime limits on how much insurers will pay to cover claims in a policy.
• No more dropping of individuals, or “recision,” when an expensive illness results in big claims.
• No co-pays or other cost-sharing for preventive care, such as immunization or mammograms.
• Right to include children up to age 26 on family policies, whether they are dependent or not.
• No more refusal of policies to children with pre-existing conditions.

You can read more from the Whitehouse on these measures here.

How have the insurance companies responded to these new measures? Well some of the biggest companies have decided that they’re not going to issue any more child-only policies, because they can no longer turn away children with ‘pre-existing conditions’ – i.e., sick children. Apparently, Republican MIck Huckabee had the following to say:

It sounds so good, and it’s such a warm message to say we’re not gonna deny anyone from a pre-existing condition. Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, ‘I’d like to buy some insurance for my house.’ He’d say, ‘Tell me about your house.’ ‘Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I’d like to insure it today.’ And he’ll say ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t insure it after it’s already burned.’ Well, no pre-existing conditions.

In a sense, one can’t entirely blame the insurers – the point of their existence is to make money. They don’t pay for healthcare out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it’s a profitable business. As businesses, they have to protect their interests, which means taking measures to ensure their profit isn’t reduced. But what this means is that there’s something deeply wrong with a system that provides healthcare as a way of making money. The whole rotten thing needs to come down. And for us over here, on the other side of the pond, we need to protect the NHS, because we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it. There’s more on the insurers, Huckabee, etc. here.

Professor Sarah B. Hrdy September 24, 2010

We’ve mentioned Profession Hrdy a few times on the blog – I know JJ has quoted her in some posts. But I’m just rereading Mother Nature in preparation for a class I’m teaching on evolutionary psychology, and I just thought I’d recommend it most highly to anyone who’s interested in biology and gender. Professor Hrdy is an anthropologist and primatologist who has made several major contributions in evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. A common theme in her work is the behaviour of female primates, particularly mothers. Her personal webpage can be accessed here. There is also a Wikipedia entry.