The 2009-2010 Philosophy Colloquia Series is now underway, and we have some great talks lined up this semester!
The Texas Tech Philosophy Third Annual Graduate Student Conference on metaethics kicks off this Friday, April 3. Graduate students from around the country will be presenting papers, and many of our own graduate students will be commenting. The keynote speaker will be Geoffrey Sayre-McCord from UNC-Chapel Hill. You can access Prof. Sayre-McCord's website here:
http://philosophy.unc.edu/smccord.htm
And the conference schedule here:
http://www.philosophy.ttu.edu/dept/GradConf2009.doc
The Stanford Encyclopedia entry on metaethics would also be something useful to look at:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/
Hope to see you there!
Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Reid, Armstrong... discuss away. And good luck on your first philosophy exam.
If you were a student in my teaching seminar last semester, I know you are already shuddering at the post's title. Take a look at this NY Times article about active learning in intro physics classes at MIT (& other schools)--then take a look at the comments, especially the ones from MIT students who actually have to take those "TEAL" classes: they tell very different stories. Is the new style of classroom and teaching the way to go? How do we know what's the best teaching method?
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html?s=1&pg=2
If you are thinking about publishing in a graduate journal, read on:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/11/a-young-philoso.html
When you need a good break, you should watch each of the following philosophy campaign ads and then rock the vote: will it be for Nietzsche, Kant, or Kierkegaard? Personally I like Kierkegaard, but I don't know if he has enough experience. I need someone reliable and tested- someone I can set my watch to.
Ad for Nietzsche:
Ad for Kierkegaard:
It was in complete disbelief that I read a colleague's email this morning with the announcement of a new NEH grant called "Enduring Questions: Pilot Course Grants (http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/EnduringQuestions.html). Here's the program description:
I want to start a post for those of us who will be applying to PhD programs this fall. My hope is that we can share advice and keep each other accountable for reaching our application goals. I know that I need someone to push me a little bit, and I would hope I could push someone else (in a good way). We can post links to informative websites, thoughts about writing samples/personal statements, and so on.
I wanted to create a post where those of us in Anna's Philosophy of Literature Seminar (and others) can write about class discussions and so on.
In case you missed it, Brian Leiter has an interesting new article assessing the state of our profession here. It seems right on to me, but I wonder whether others (including my more experienced colleagues) would agree.
While emailing a friend today, I noticed something odd: I take it that a honky tonk is a kind of rowdy bar found in the southern U.S. that plays to a mostly working-class clientele. Is anyone offended by the name "honky tonk"? Why or why not? Isn't the word "honky" still a racial slur toward whites? Clearly "chinky tonks" or "kikey tonks" would be offensive. What's the difference?
Canadian Human Rights Act, Section 13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. R.S., 1985, c. H-6, s. 13; 2001, c. 41, s. 88.
Maybe it's because I drank too much coffee this morning, but I literally felt ill after reading this article (click on the link for the article itself). Apparently this art student at Yale intentionally impregnated herself multiple times, inducing miscarriage each time, and made the results of her miscarriages (including blood) into an art project. Her goal was to "spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body." The exhibit will include recorded footage of the student having her miscarriages.
The student said that she felt her project is in keeping with the true goal of art, which is to be a medium for politics and ideologies and not just a commodity. I have not particularly studied anything relevant to the intersection of ethics and art, but my questions to our aesthetics experts (and others interested in responding) would be:
1) Is the real goal of art simply to be a medium for "politics and idealogies?" My intuition would be no- this view would seem to preclude art for art's sake. While you cannot divorce art from its socio-political or historical context, it would be a stretch to say that the purpose of all art is to comment on such things.
2) I don't know a lot about the intersection between ethics and art, but I can't help but think that some boundary has been crossed. Does anybody write about the intersection of the body with art? I would intuitively put forward the principle that "it's wrong to abuse your body in order to make art," but of course "abuse" would have to be defined accordingly. At the very least, I agree with the views mentioned in the article that it trivializes the decision to have an abortion and the act itself.
3) In general, if we know that an artwork has been created on the basis of some unethical action (assuming her actions were unethical), should that bear on the way we judge the art itself? I'm not an ideal critic, so I can't seem to separate art from process in this case. What if, for instance, a woman decided to become bulimic in order to make an art project, using both the vomit and footage of her purging in the exhibit? Should we judge the relevant aesthetic features (perhaps the patterns made by the vomit) apart from how the art was made? Perhaps these scenarios are not analogous, but it at least gets me thinking.
At any rate, I would love to hear your thoughts on this question, and any other issues it brings up for you.
This wired article reports on an experiment in which researchers were able to predict the decisions of the subjects up to seven seconds in advance of the subjects' actions. The scientists and the article's author make several philosophically dodgy inferences about free will, but the result is interesting in itself....
Is it right to take Adderall to write a term paper or do well on a test? How is it different from taking steroids to do better in sports? There is a discussion brewing in the news about the ethical implications of taking such drugs to improve cognitive performance both in high school and universities (by both students and professors) and in the workplace. The NY Times article is linked from the title of this post.
Have you ever taken such drugs? Do you know people who have? What do you think of the practice? In the interests of confidentiality, this time alone ANONYMOUS posts WILL be allowed.
Berkeley scientists have made significant progress:
The scientists used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine -- a real-time brain scanner -- to record the mental activity of a person looking at thousands of random pictures: people, animals, landscapes, objects, the stuff of everyday visual life. With those recordings the researchers built a computational model for predicting the mental patterns elicited by looking at any other photograph. When tested with neurological readouts generated by a different set of pictures, the decoder passed with flying colors, identifying the images seen with unprecedented accuracy.
I thought I'd share this interesting piece by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. I'd love to hear what people think--do the studies mentioned by Kristof show what is claimed they do? Could there be other explanations? Do people find evidence of such prejudices in their daily lives--do they find themselves, even, thinking and acting on this type of prejudice? If the studies' conclusions are right, could this explain, at least in part, for instance, some of Senator Hillary Clinton's losses in the Democratic primaries? How about the classroom? Do students tend to think less highly of their female professors than of their male ones? Do they tend do evaluate them less highly at the end of the term? If so, what could be done to remedy this situation?
NY Times, February 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
When Women Rule
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
While no woman has been president of the United States — yet — the world does have several thousand years’ worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men’s to shame.
A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I’m neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it’s still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.
Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.
I have a pet theory about what’s going on.
In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.
In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.
In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.
This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: If they’re self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.
The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.
“It’s an uphill struggle, to be judged both a good woman and a good leader,” said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who is an expert on women in leadership. Professor Kanter added that a pioneer in a man’s world, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, also faces scrutiny on many more dimensions than a man — witness the public debate about Mrs. Clinton’s allegedly “thick ankles,” or the headlines last year about cleavage.
Clothing and appearance generally matter more for women than for men, research shows. Surprisingly, several studies have found that it’s actually a disadvantage for a woman to be physically attractive when applying for a managerial job. Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss.
Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.
Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.
Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. “Exposure reduces prejudice,” Professor Duflo suggested.
Women have often quipped that they have to be twice as good as men to get anywhere — but that, fortunately, is not difficult. In fact, it appears that it may be difficult after all. Modern democracies may empower deep prejudices and thus constrain female leaders in ways that ancient monarchies did not.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
