You can get a pair for just $18!
As the ad says, “you don’t need to be a semiotician to know that these bad boys are full of meaning.” And don’t forget to “note also that these high-quality brass balls re-gift beautifully.”
They’ve clearly thought of these as a gift for men. But why limit ourselves that way?
(Thanks, Mr Jender!)
Apparently Mike Huckabee has been claiming Martha Nussbaum’s support for his view that gay people are icky. She has demanded an apology.
(Thanks, Mary Bullstonecraft!)
A member of Feminist Philosophers invited SPP to respond here to a post of mine. I strongly supported this idea and in doing so assumed that we could at least converge on an account of what happened. Instead the blog has ended up providing a platform for a response from SPP that is in error on facts and issues.
I took my previous post to make two statements. The second was inaccurate, and it was corrected as soon as the error was pointed out. They were: (1) the SPP conference has a talk/session that instantiates an exclusion that it attempts to explain; (2) The conference has a poor record of invited women philosophers at the last 3 conferences; the figures cited were corrected to: 1 speaker in 2010, 3 in 2009, and 0 in 2008. (Readers should note an amendment in the earlier post.) Let us take these in reverse order:
(1) Antony disputes the facts about conference speakers, in part because she includes women who were not invited to speak at the conference. That is, she adds in those invited to speak at a workshop occurring before the conference. The workshop tends to be the responsibility of one or a few individual members; it isn’t a product of the program committee, for example, as the conference is. My understanding is that in the current year, 2010, the workshop was produced by one individual. Hence, the connection between the choices shaping it and those of the SPP is much more tenuous. In addition, the presence of invited women philosophers at this year’s workshop was noted in my comments, as was the unusually high number of contributed papers by female philosophers.
Antony wrongly and puzzingly attributes to me an allegation that I did not make. Indeed, in a comment, Rob Wilson said he wasn’t sure anyone was making the allegation in question, which I take as some sign that the attribution of the allegation is much more problematic than Antony is indicating. It is simply wrong to say that the post was about issues concerned with friendliness or hostility. One indication of the narrow focus of the post is noted by Antony: the number of invited speakers couldn’t possibly decide the general issue of the climate women experience. I couldn’t possibly think it did. That was not going on.
Of course, supposed allegations, like insinuations, may be solely in the minds of the hearers. One should be very careful attributing them to the speaker.
What, then, was the post really about? I was wrong to think that was clear. So let me explain: It is an ongoing concern of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science that practices in many fields deprive women of epistemic authority. This worry provides the motivation behind my post. One reason for our gender conference campaign is that some practices in philosophy do particularly fail to accord women philosophers epistemic authority. They fail, that is, to accord women philosophers equal status with men philosophers as contributors to the intellectual enterprise of philosophy. A good indicator of the inequality is the practice of not featuring women philosophers as invited speakers, or not doing so in numbers comparable to the men (allowing, of course, for differences in overall numbers in the field). That is hardly my idea alone, and our gendered conference campaign arose not just in agreement among ourselves, but also in response to our readers who comment here, along with recommendations from professional literature, such as this pdf from the Barnard Center for Research on Women.
(2) To take up the issue of the opening talk: The underlying concern here as elsewhere is the role accorded to work by women philosophers, including our own professional efforts, along with those from other fields, to understand what to many of us appear to be exclusionary practices.
There is a field of knowledge about the causal mechanisms producing the low number of women in many fields, and it has been extensively developed over the last 40 years. There has been significant success; thanks in part to the $130 million NSF has invested, results are being tested and codified, and new procedures are implemented in many universities. Noting this historical background speaks to formulating and evaluating causal hypotheses linking some phenomenon to the low numbers of women in a field. Stich’s title and a related paper by his co-author suggested that they are advancing a relevant causal hypothesis. I think that I’d object to any causal hypothesis featured at a professional meeting that didn’t take into account existing expertise. But in any case, the point here is that the existing expertise is owned at least in part by people whose general absense was being both explained and instantiated.
There is, then, another layer that explains why the focus was so much on the talk and the invited speakers. That’s the worry that that session did not just instantiate the problem it was discussing, but it may also have instantiated the cause of that problem. The failure in professional contexts to represent women’s professional expertise as relevant can be a real killer-off of women doing research. As the opening session illustrates, it happens even when the knowledge is being developed by leading researchers supported by NSF. That’s what made the issue so important. That and the fact that the choices we are discussing here suggest a lack of knowledge of such issues, as opposed to ill-will.
The scientists I discussed this issue with before writing the post were in contrast very aware of the political implications of the situation. This blog has been very concerned that the physical sciences now appear better able to adapt to women scholars than philosophy is. Supposing my scientist friends are somewhat typical of scientists in the US today, I think it likely that awareness of such issues in the science communities may help explain some of the difference.**
Nothing so far speaks to Stich’s work specifically on gendered differences in intuitions, which may be up to his own high standards of brilliant and revisionary research. (On the net perhaps I need to stress that I am completely serious in saying he has done superb and wonderfully revisionary work.)
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**This still imperfect paragraph has been changed in light of comments 1-3. Thanks, MBS and Jender.
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I haven’t been able to address all of Antony’s points, but I’m not even sure many people will have read this far. For those who have followed this, your comments are very welcome. Unfortunately, when Jender and I discussed which day the posts should go up, I had forgotten that on June 30th I will be traveling quite a bit. However, I will get to the comments as I can. Please be sure to follow our rule – be nice! – so your comment stays up.
Feminist philosophers, like other feminists and other philosophers, sometimes disagree with each other. Here at Feminist Philosophers we think it’s vital to be able to discuss these disagreements cordially and openly. Today we have a guest post from Louise Antony, in response to JJ’s post about the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. JJ will also be publishing a post responding to this one. As always, we ask readers to observe our blog’s “be nice” policy (to be found under “Our Policies”). Because I worry that this discussion could become not-nice, I’m going to be especially vigilant in enforcing our policies. In addition, I don’t want this topic to take over the blog, so I will close comments if it begins to look like no further progress will be made.
As President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP), I would like to respond to the recent claims about our society posted here by jj. I am particularly concerned to counter the impression jj creates about the climate for women within SPP. In fact, the Society is engaging in active and ongoing efforts to increase and support participation by women philosophers, and it would be ironic and sad if these efforts were hampered by jj’s remarks.
JJ makes the following false claim: “[t]he society’s conference have [sic] a dismal record of women philosophers as invited speakers; in two out of the last three conferences, no women philosophers were invited speakers.” This charge has been mostly rebutted by commenters on jj’s original post, but let me rehearse the facts: In 2010, there were three women philosophers invited to speak at the SPP: Julia
Driver, Susan Dwyer, and Adina Roskies. In 2009, there were also four women philosophers invited to speak at the SPP: Adrienne Martin, Valerie Hardcastle, Ruth Millikan, and Tamar Gendler. In 2008, it is true that there were no women philosophers invited to give talks (but see below). In 2007, there were, once again, four women philosophers invited to give talks: Anne Jaap Jacobson, Elizabeth Irvine, Brie Gertler, and Lori Gruen. All of this information, and more, is available from the SPP website.
JJ alleges that the SPP is indifferent to issues of gender equity in its overall practice and organization, and that its climate is hostile to women philosophers. On the contrary, the SPP is quite self-conscious about equity issues and deeply committed both to increasing the diversity of its membership, and to improving the experience for women already participating in the society’s programs and governance. In 2008, Anne Jaap Jacobson raised concerns about what she saw as a low rate of participation by women philosophers in the society, and suggested the creation of a Diversity Committee. Creation of this committee was duly approved, unanimously, by the membership. It was charged, inter alia, with keeping account of gender balance in the society’s leadership and programs, and with actively proffering our collective expertise in studying and addressing the paucity of women in the field of philosophy. It was resolved at that same meeting that we hold a “Diversity Lunch” at each annual meeting in order to discuss equity issues as they arise, and to review the outcomes of earlier
initiatives. The next year, in 2009, we held an invited symposium on implicit belief, which featured a talk by Virginia Valian, author of the influential book on women in academia, Why So Slow? Her talk focused on unconscious behavior and attitudes that function to disadvantage women. She attended our newly implemented Diversity
Lunch and offered a variety of concrete suggestions for improving the climate for women within the society, which we have been endeavoring to implement. At the same luncheon, we undertook a number of initiatives for increasing the visibility of the society among women philosophers, and hope to be able to report progress soon on some of these.
It is noteworthy in itself that JJ’s complaint is so carefully crafted in terms of “women philosophers.” The SPP has long been a place where women are prominent and active, but JJ insinuates that it doesn’t count if these women work in empirical fields like psychology or linguistics. This baffles me. We are a society premised on the value of interaction across disciplines. Why should anyone care if the brilliant woman at the front of the room has a Ph.D. in Psychology or in Philosophy? In terms of the rate of participation by women, the SPP excels. In 2010, women constituted nearly forty per cent of the invited program. In the anomalous year of 2008, we had a woman president (Lila Gleitman), an all-woman Program Committee (Sharon Armstrong, Fei Xu, Susan Schneider, and myself), a woman Stanton Prize winner (Laurie Santos), and a woman (philosopher, by the way) winning our annual poster prize (Kate Devitt).
But even if we restrict our attention to the involvement of women philosophers in the SPP, it is wrong to focus, as JJ does, on one single measure – the number of women appearing in the invited sections of the meeting. There are other questions one might – and should – ask. For example: what percentage of women served as chairs or commentators – roles over which the Program Committee have most control? Here, I can report, the Committee did quite a good job: of the twenty-seven chair/commentator slots filled by philosophers, six went to women. That’s a rate approximately equal to the proportion of women in the field of philosophy as a whole, and probably greater than the proportion of women in the subareas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Additionally, a look at the contributed sessions shows an exceptionally high rate of participation by women philosophers, as compared with men philosophers: of the thirteen philosophers who authored or co-authored a submitted paper presented at the conference, six were women. (We
adhere to a policy, by the way, of mutually anonymous review.) Finally, it should be kept in mind that the program reveals only the people who actually participated in the meeting, not who all were invited. In fact, this year’s Program Co-chairs inform me that they endeavored to include women philosophers in every symposium, but that only Adina Roskies accepted their invitation.
Finally, I would like to say something about the paper delivered by Stephen Stitch. Jj’s characterization of this session is quite misleading. First of all, it was not a symposium on the reasons for the gender imbalance in philosophy. Prof. Stitch had been invited to present a paper to the SPP, and he chose to present one that dealt with this topic. It happened that the paper had been co-authored with another philosopher, Wesley Buckwalter. The work Stitch presented is completely continuous with his (and Buckwalter’s) ongoing study of the role of intuitions in philosophical method, work that is eminently suitable for presentation at our venue. The session
was chaired, as is common for this program slot, by one of the co-chairs of the Program Committee, Ron Mallon. It is not our custom to engage commentators for invited papers, and so there is no question of women having been excluded from this role. (As a matter of fact, however, I served as a de facto commentator, since I was given the first question, and since I went on for quite a while.) Let me just say for the record that (a) we in the SPP find nothing wrong or inappropriate about a man’s addressing the question why there are so few women in philosophy, but that (b) were we to set up a meeting session on this topic, we would of course begin by consulting women in the profession, as well as experts on gender equity.
No doubt our procedures for constructing our programs are not ideal, and perhaps there is more we could do to stimulate interest in the society among women working in philosophy of mind and language. We are open to constructive suggestions concerning these matters, but the promulgation of false claims about the Society helps no one.
Louise Antony
President, Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Feminist Philosophers 