6 thoughts on “15 men discuss causality, free will, and divine action”

  1. Official Statement of the University of Vienna: “The Philosophy Department at the University of Vienna does not approve of “all-male conferences”.

    “The Philosophy Department at the University of Vienna does not approve of “all-male conferences”. We therefore have serious concerns about the conference “Causality, Free Will, Divine Action”, which is scheduled to take place on university property in September 2017: http://iap.li/openness/Tagung2017.htm#english

    The conference organizers were notified of our concerns but declined to reconsider their line-up of speakers.

    We wish to make clear that our department has not provided any form of support for this conference. At a department meeting during the coming semester, we will discuss the formulation of an explicit policy, aimed at ensuring that no philosophy conference that grossly under-represents or completely fails to represent female members of the profession will be allowed to take place on University of Vienna property again.” https://philosophie.univie.ac.at/aktuelles/kurzfristiges/“

  2. I am sis-male feminist. It is always been a preoccupation of mine, underneath my critical theory as a philosopher, that we can’t even begin to understand where “male philosophy” and “female philosophy” might be discerned, because it’s largely a bunch of men talking about it. Simile we hear a lot of philosophy mainly centred around Europe. How can I begin to discern what, say for example, native South American philosophy might be when the app actually referring to mail European philosophers to position themselves.

    I mean I tend to think that some of the problem lay in that we can’t even really know what the difference might be; if there is a common kind of philosophical mode or rationality , or I’m not sure what you would call it, that is common between genders and biology, or if, hypothetically, if philosophy a rose and we were talking about how awful lot of hers are winning if we would have a different lineage of typical philosophical ideas their proposals solutions etc.

    Yeah I think that such questions are pretty moot until we have a couple decades of predominantly female philosophers in a continuing discussion that we can view. I don’t think it happens like hears these ‘two female philosophers and so now we can safely say that there is a common rational human sort, I think we won’t really know until we have a sustained dialogue that involves at least 50% women.

    We tend to assume a certain conclusion but the fact is is that we don’t really know because it’s always men talking about these things and then women referring to them.

    So yay for just starting with what we have instead of attempting to place blame and going into causes of historical Lala Lala Lala Lala . We all know by now that we have sufficient cars to indict male predominance.

  4. ****Open Letter to the Speakers of the Causality, Free Will, Divine Action-Conference****

    Dear Speakers of the Causality, Free Will, Divine Action-Conference in Vienna,

    It has come to our attention that the organizers of this conference have invited only male speakers–fifteen in total–, and that despite ongoing critique, they have refused to diversify their line-up. As the Societies for Women in Philosophy Germany and Austria we would like to draw your attention to the harmful effects of conferences like this one and to your responsibility as an invited speaker.

    There are well-documented patterns of exclusion and marginalization of women in academic philosophy. The situation is deeply alarming in English-speaking academic philosophy, and seemingly even worse in German-speaking philosophy departments. One non-trivial way in which the status quo replicates and reinforces itself is through conferences that have only male, invited keynote-speakers. Keynote speakers are visible examples of recognized leaders in the field. Among the functions of keynote speakers is to confer prestige on events and topics, and to provide a model for younger philosophers of how philosophy is to be practiced as a profession. Events with all-male keynotes help to perpetuate the stereotyping of philosophy as male and contribute to making women’s achievements in philosophy less visible.

    In light of these considerations and in light of the fact that the IAP (Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein), who is the organizer of this particular conference, has actively ignored critiques to change the line-up, we call on you to carefully consider whether to use your position as a keynote to convince the organizers to revise the conference line-up or to revoke your participation at this conference if changes are not forthcoming. The aim of this call is to make inclusiveness an integral part of conference planning and to make academic philosophy more gender just.

    Yours sincerely,

    the executive committee of SWIP Germany,
    Birgit Benzing
    Dr. Christine Bratu
    Prof. Dr. Katja Crone
    Hilkje Hänel
    Prof. Dr. Mari Mikkola
    Johanna Müller
    Dr. Anna Welpinghus

    and for the executive committee of SWIP Austria,
    Dr. Brigitte Buchhammer
    Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Menschl

    For more info about the Societies of Women in Philosophy Germany and Austria, see here: http://swip-philosophinnen.org/ and http://swip-austria.eu/.

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