As you will see on Sunday, the Sunday cat has aquired a passion for a particularly dear little marsupial. We’d welcome recommendations for other extensions of the Sunday cat’s repertoire.
Month: May 2009
The decisive conjuring trick has been made**
It is very tempting to suppose we can clearly distinguish choosing excellent speakers/philosophy essays and choosing only men’s work. There are reasons to think we might make some mistakes when we reject a woman’s work or don’t think about women when we think of speakers – our implicit biases – but if we try very hard, we can and do just choose on merit. Of course, seeing ourselves in this way means we’ll be inclined to think that if one’s criteria of choice explicitly employ gender, one is not just concentrating on philosophical excellence.
As a student of two Wittgensteinians, I have to wonder if in allowing this, we are missing the decisive conjuring trick, one that has already been worked. I don’t know that it has. I want, however, to try out a line of thought. Perhaps it won’t be very fruitful. But also perhaps there’s something worth discussing.
So, what creates agreement in a philosophical community about what are the promising lines of enquiry? Do we as a community have a particular ability simply to see philosophical excellence? I want to use a recent challenge to a long standing view to raise a question about whether our philosophical decisions are as transparent to us as perhaps we like to think.
Michael Thompson’s recent book, Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought, contains an argument that, if it is correct, seems to count against a very, very pervasive agreement in the analytic philosophical community. The agreement is that actions are explained – or in Davidson’s sense, rationalized – by a belief-desire pair. Thus, my going to a store is to be explained in terms of my desire to buy milk and my belief that in going to the store I am likely to be able to buy the milk. (I’m being loose with the details.)
A second component is that the belief and the desires are propositional attitudes, and so understandable in terms of “that” clauses. I believe that such-and-such about going to the store and I desire that I buy milk.
In this context, Thompson has a stunning argument, which is summarized in a review this way:
When I rationalize my flipping of the switch by pointing out that I want to turn on the light, surely I am appealing to a mental state of mine, an attitude with a non-imperfective propositional content — my want that I turn on the light. Thompson argues, however, that there is not even a plausible space for propositional attitudes of this latter sort. Indeed, if we consider the various acceptable linguistic forms, i.e. ‘that I was turning on the light’, ‘that I turned on the light’, and ‘that I am turning on the light’, we recognize that there is no ‘that I turn on the light’. More precisely, we realize that the only such usage is a habitual usage, as in “I walk to school in the mornings,” or “I turn out the light before leaving.” … (jj’s stress/also, following relevant considerations in the argument are being left out.)
In short, there isn’t a propositional attitude to be had. A rough calculation suggests to me that we’re seeing that a dogma that has held for over 30 years is actually highly questionable. This is also a large issue, since the folk are supposed to belief in this belief-desire psychology, even though one would have thought the folk probably have too much grammatical sense to buy into it. Further, much of the impetus toward the recent and pretty ubiquitous, highly linguistic picture of thinking is connected to belief-desire psychology.
So what is happening, if it turns out the account of action explanation is challengeable in such a straight-forward way? We might say that what we should realize is that we are operating within a normal science in Kuhn’s sense, and all the dissenting voices are pushed aside and not given much credence. We all know that science operates that way, and actually in spite of that we do get progress in science. I’m not sure that we all think philosophy does or should operate that way, especially since the question of progress in philosophy is so tricky, but ….
(In fact, the attacks on belief-desire psychology may be getting stronger, and we may be coming to the end of a normal science, but we should know that much of Thompson’s background rests with Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot and actually precedes Davidson and Fodor.)
So our choices and agreement about what is excellent really do have pretty immense social settings. And these are social settings in which people get chosen to perform certain roles, to be in certain groups, and to get certain kinds of encouragement and acceptances. So perhaps the speakers chosen today were not necessarily the best and the brightest; rather, compared to their female contemporaries, they simply were not as badly handicapped.
**The quote actually is: “The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one we thought quite innocent.” (Wittgenstein, PI para.308). And of course for many the distinction between choosing based on excellence and choosing based on gender has seemed a very innocent distinction.
XX need to think like XY to earn more K
So sayeth the BBC. In defence of the author–Marilyn Davidson, professor of work psychology at Manchester Business School–I think the title misrepresents her article. Good ole BBC. Is encouraging women to be more assertive about pay part of the solution to the pay gap? Seems a tricky one. Assertive-like-a-man woman still equals aggressive bitch in the eyes of many. (Go on then: it even has a quiz you can take to find out whether you’re more XX or XY when it comes to pay negotiation!)
Eurovision and Gay Rights
Regular readers will know of my deep love for Eurovision, which is coming up this Saturday. Reader Hippocampa has let us know, however, of a political aspect to this year’s contest which I’d missed. Apparently gay and lesbian rights demonstrations are illegal in Russia, host of this year’s Eurovision. Gay and lesbian activists are planning to organise a march on the occasion of Eurovision (which is a bit of a camp favourite, hence an appropriate venue for such a march). The Dutch entrant plans to withdraw from the contest if violence is used against gay activists, and according to Hippocampa he has the support of the Dutch government. As far as I know, no other countries or their contestants are lodging protests against the appalling Russian policy. (Do let me know if I’m wrong about this last– I’d love to be!)
Thick Concepts are For Boys
Or so it seems judging from this conference’s speakers. From the description:
The principal aim of this conference is to bring together a number of philosophers so that they can both pursue some of the familiar debates, and raise and discuss new questions and ideas. It is envisaged that the discussions will be of interest to moral philosophers, aestheticians, epistemologists, metaphysicians, and philosophers of language amongst others.
But not to women.
Laptops for ladies
Computers. They’re mostly grey and ugly. Which, of course, means that us gals won’t go near them, and prefer to write everything out by hand, using those pink pens with fluffy bobbles on top. (I am currently dictating this post to my dog as I cannot bear to let my lovely little lady fingers touch the nasty, grey keyboard.) Luckily, Dell has come to our rescue with its range of ‘Della’ products, designed exclusively for women. These are laptops in lovely bright colours, small enough to fit in a handbag, and just perfect for emailing people, and checking the weather, movie times, or restaurant directions (according to the advert, because those are the only reasons us ladies use computers. Work?! Heavens, no!) Thanks, Della!
A cautionary tale, to say the least
I’m not going to name names, but you can probably figure some of this out. The moral of the story rests, however, not with who did it, but how it was done.
Suppose you are experiencing sexual harassment in an organizational setting. All you have to do is to go to the relevant office for complaints? Not exactly. Thus the tale:
In the early 1990’s a friend of mine arrived at a large state university for her second job in academia. She was quite wonderful, full of life and thought, and she had an assistant professorship. Rather splendid looking, she was the sort that one can easily imagine a certain type of man might like to brush against and/or learn against. Perhaps saying a few “naughty words” in her ears and on her email. Yes, well that was her first job. She sued on the grounds that “a chilly climate” was created, and she was compensated; this was in Canada.
When she arrived at her second assistant professorship, she was very wary. Prepared for the worst, she got it, she maintains, from someone who, among other things, was having affairs in the department. This time the administration denied her allegations and were pretty determined to stand by their man, along with belittling any evidence she had. In the end, there was a settlement; he – with rumors of all sorts of misbehavior around him – left to a lucrative professorship in another state, and she was given a supply closet as an office and two years’ salary, after which she was to leave. Which she did, and she went on eventually to a successful career outside of academia. She had some very difficult years, though. It is hard to be treated as a worthless mistake for a long time and still feel much confidence.
And in the last several weeks the alleged harasser has hit the news. He killed his wife, two friends and then himself.
Moral: Do not make any assumptions about whom universities will defend. From the Ivies with graduate students locked in closets (true story, I swear) down the tiers.
(Let me add a recognition of the many other great sorrows that are around this story, a number of them apparently stretching over about two decades. My focus here, though, is on how academic hierarchies can act to protect the alleged perpetrator with little help available for the supposed victim.)
To test or not to test: there is the scandal
It is a scandal. Rape kits stacking up in labs around the US and not tested for months, a year, or not at all. Or victims being charged thousands for lab work.
As Kristof in the NY Times notes, getting a rape kit finished is
a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.
Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).
Meanwhile a rapist may be on the loose. And some states, Texas among them, charges the victims for the processing of the kits. There’s a report on Houston TV’s Channel Two about the situation. There is a crime victims’ compensation fund and it typically has 55-65 million left over each year, funds that are very hard to collect. And here is their video:
What happens when a jurisdiction does test the rape kit? Kristof again,
While the backlog and desultory handling of rape kits are nationwide problems, there is one shining exception: New York City has made a concerted effort over the last decade to test every kit that comes in. The result has been at least 2,000 cold hits [DNA match] in rape cases, and the arrest rate for reported cases of rape in New York City rose from 40 percent to 70 percent, according to Human Rights Watch.
So why aren’t the rape kits tested. And when they are, why do some states charge the victims? Could it be it just isn’t seen as a serious crime? That is a scandal.
On the limitations of femininity
Just listening to the world service before bed, I heard this interview with a London teenager (part of a series on Outlook, about the 2012 generation). The young woman, who sounds quite remarkable, was apparently an excellent swimmer. But she reports that she ditched her Olympic aspirations because the muscle she gained stopped her looking feminine. You can listen to the show here (its about 15 mins into the show).
Race in America
This is one of those New York Times trend pieces that’s wholly anecdotal and for that reason a bit dubious. (Though unlike others, it’s not just interviews with people NY journalists are likely to bump into at parties.) The trend it suggests is one that fits with the evidence on implicit bias— white people being more friendly to black people now that there’s a really prominent highly admired black person who they’re seeing images of all the time. Reading the article was both disturbing and hopeful (on the assumption that there’s a real trend here). Disturbing (and depressing) to read of a black man being called ‘sir’ and treated with respect on a regular basis for the first time. Disturbing (and depressing) to read white people saying that now they feel they have something to talk about to black people so they’re now able to make conversation (WTF!?) and happy that they can do this. (Though this may be a kind of rationalisation offered when the guy in question is asked to reflect on his new-found friendliness to black people.) But hopeful in that at least some changes may be taking place. Maybe. (Thanks, Mr Jender!)
