We are women and pro-feminist men in philosophy (also from psychology, cultural studies, History-society-culture interdisciplinary program, also participants from outside universities, etc.), who have formed a Salon (inspired by the format of 18th century salons in France, one of the only and last places that were feminine but in which men and women engaged in intellectual exchanges, etc.) called “Salon Femmes et philosophie”. We are from all Montréal universities but mostly meet at UQÀM.

We meet once a month, and have many really interesting and creative actions and projects planned for 2012 – to denounce the absence of women in philosophy in Québec, to promote and network between feminist philosophers, to put forward and under the noses of teachers and authorities the works of women in philosophy, to push for more feminine content in classes, and be means to each other’s ends in the individual struggles we face alone, each solo in our seminars, surrounded by men who find that “man” is a generic term, that language, sexist as it is, is fine as it is, and that women do not quite “get” the philosophical mindframe, etc. Notably, we try to bring academia’s attention toward invisible biases, glass ceilings, stereotype effects, etc. that affect the experience of women in philosophy, in academia, and as intellectual authorities in Québec.  We are aged 18 – 45, some are parents, some queer, some are activists, some are employed and we are trying to become a diverse yet resolutely pro-feminist group.

In fact, even if your French isn’t above what a Canadian friend calls “cereal box standard”, the Facebook page seems like a useful source of news and views. I like the profile picture.

a. “You know how it is, if you’re going to say anything in a seminar, it has to be brilliant.”

b. “This is the philosophical method: someone puts up a position and everyone tries to knock it down.”

c. A dialogue:
Speaker One: It’s as though you stand on the top of a hill, and say to your students: This is my position, and anyone who wants to have their own position has to knock me off first.
Speaker Two: Yes, that’s what I do best.

First, some obvious things to say: There’s been a lot of discussion of aggressive philosophy and the antagonist philosophical style. But there’s something else that’s more moderate, and that one suspects a lot of us find attractive. That’s the vigorous “exchange of ideas” that is actually carried on with quite a bit of evaluation. If you pursue this as a professor, you might find yourself saying, “Well, that’s not a bad idea, but it isn’t as strong as the first one, and it doesn’t really answer these other questions.” Or,” yes fair point, but most people nowadays have learned that doesn’t cut much philosophical ice.” Students can be very good at summing such remarks up.

Secondly, the less obvious:  Research we looked at earlier this week strongly suggests that there’s a danger that such an environment dumbs down some students, and these students form identifiable groups.  White women and Hispanics.  It really shouldn’t be a surprise that styles in classes can have discriminatory effects, but now we are moving beyond the anecdotal to some ideas about how deeply seated the dumbed down reaction may be.

An opposite strategy:  to try to find as much worthwhile in each comment as you can, and leave off evaluating the rest.  Should one try something like that?  Do the results we reported on before show that those of us who like to stir up a vigorous and challenging debate have obligation to reconsider?  What do you think?

I need your help!

I’m scheduled to teach a graduate course in Education that will be populated with Education graduate students. I taught a graduate seminar in Education within the past year, and it went great. (I am a Philosophy professor.) So I’ve been asked to teach another, and I’m curious to know what you would recommend for this course description, particularly regarding feminist interpretations of education:

Course:

Contemporary Philosophies of Education: Contemporary philosophical approaches to educational problems and issues, including: pragmatist, analytic, existentialist, phenomenological, critical, hermeneutic, postmodern, and feminist.

Any and all help would be welcome, and I’d love to hear from you about feminist interpretations of education as well as the other traditions noted above.

The graduate students will have little background in philosophy, but most of them will have some (from our class together last year) in the history of philosophy regarding education. But other than that, I’m assuming little knowledge about philosophy, since they’re Education graduate students.

At the 2012 Joint Session there will be a SWIP UK panel of papers devoted to topics in any area of interest to women in philosophy. We solicit full papers (2000 words) plus 250 word abstract, suitable to be delivered in no more than 20 minutes with a further 10 minutes for discussion. We encourage submissions from graduate students. (As with all the open sessions, papers accepted for this session will not be published in the Supplementary Volume of the Aristotelian Society.)

The closing date for submissions is *1st March 2012*. We expect to confirm which papers have been accepted by the end of March.

Papers that are not accepted for the SWIP panel may be considered for the Open Sessions. You should also indicate when submitting the paper whether you wish the paper to be considered for the Open Sessions.

Please make sure that your submission is suitable for anonymous reviewing and attach a separate document with your name and contact details. Email submissions are preferred; please send your full paper, with an abstract, as either .doc or .pdf attachment to Roxanna Lynch (roxannajesselynch@gmail.com) or send a hard copy to: R. J. Lynch, 81 Andover Road, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 6JH
To speak at this event you will need to register as a delegate for the Joint Session. Registration will be open from Spring 2012. For more details see here:

http://www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk/jsessions/index.html

Organizers:

Roxanna Lynch, PhD Candidate, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University

Email: roxannajesselynch[AT]@gmail.com

Dr Jules Holroyd, Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham.

Email: Jules.Holroyd[AT]Nottingham.ac.uk

In case the trailer is unclear, the cat has a double life, one as a cat burglar’s helper and another as the beloved pet of a little girl whose police officer mother is after the man who murdered her husband. 

People mostly have a problem with the confirmation bias when they reason on their own, when no one is there to argue against their point of view. What has been observed is that often times, when people reason on their own, they’re unable to arrive at a good solution, at a good belief, or to make a good decision because they will only confirm their initial intuition.
                                 
On the other hand, when people are able to discuss their ideas with other people who disagree with them, then the confirmation biases of the different participants will balance each other out, and the group will be able to focus on the best solution. Thus, reasoning works much better in groups. When people reason on their own, it’s very likely that they are going to go down a wrong path. But when they’re actually able to reason together, they are much more likely to reach a correct solution.

The thought, which surely has some appeal, is that human reasoning has features that defeat one’s getting to a correct solution.  Confirmation bias is an example.  That is, we generally sort out evidence to find what shows we’ve been right.  Unfortunately, though, the idea that groups provide a solution may itself have a problem.

Recent work by Read Montague’s group suggests that in competitive groups, some people end up doing less well on cognitive tasks even when their IQ scores are the same as better functioning members.

Research led by scientists at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute found that small-group dynamics – such as jury deliberations, collective bargaining sessions, and cocktail parties – can alter the expression of IQ in some susceptible people. “You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well,” said Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, who led the study. .

“We started with individuals who were matched for their IQ,” said Montague. “Yet when we placed them in small groups, ranked their performance on cognitive tasks against their peers, and broadcast those rankings to them, we saw dramatic drops in the ability of some study subjects to solve problems. The social feedback had a significant effect.”

“Our study highlights the unexpected and dramatic consequences even subtle social signals in group settings may have on individual cognitive functioning,” said lead author Kenneth Kishida, a research scientist with the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. “And, through neuroimaging, we were able to document the very strong neural responses that those social cues can elicit.” …

There seem to have been at least two very different reactions on the part of the involved researchers.  One response is this:

We don’t know how much these effects are present in real-world settings,” Kishida said. “But given the potentially harmful effects of social-status assignments and the correlation with specific neural signals, future research should be devoted to what, exactly, society is selecting for in competitive learning and workplace environments. By placing an emphasis on competition, for example, are we missing a large segment of the talent pool? Further brain imaging research may also offer avenues for developing strategies for people who are susceptible to these kinds of social pressures.”

It looks to me as though Kishida thinks the experiments show us that competitive grouping may cost us in that we may lose a significant portion of the talented population.  But Quartz (see below) appears to be saying that who is in the talented population depends on who can perform well in the social situations.  Of course, I’m going here just by how he was quoted by a journalist, so we might be tentative about conclusions.

“This study tells us the idea that IQ is something we can reliably measure in isolation without considering how it interacts with social context is essentially flawed,” said coauthor Steven Quartz, a professor of philosophy in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of Caltech. “Furthermore, this suggests that the idea of a division between social and cognitive processing in the brain is really pretty artificial. The two deeply interact with each other.”

One remarkable aspect of the work is that it looks as though the number of women who are adversely affected is significantly higher than that of men.

In my experience, women often enough get the not so subtle look.  It used to be as bad as “O, isn’t it cute that you are trying to have some confused thought.” Now it is for me more likely to be “What idiot thing does this old woman have to say?”  Sometimes it can be quite explicit, as when a young man said after I delivered an invited talk, “I hope you don’t think your little point affects anything Block has to say.”  It has always interested me that these sorts of things can affect my performance.  Its as though one acts in accord with others expectations.  And I think there is some evidence that that is right, but the current research addresses a specific kind of setting very common at least in our version of academia.  The article indicated has a quite detailed picture of the mechanisms.  And I’m wondering whether a xanax or two might be helpful.  Perhaps in that five minute break between talk and questions, one could pop a pill, or have a very quick martini.  Any one want to write up a grant proposal on that?

Thanks to fp!

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality. Can it do even more? Can it teach students to question and challenge the foundations of society itself?

Read more here. Via NewAPPS.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

(Thanks, C and T. Sorry for delayed posting.)

And here’s the link.