This week, to herald the coming Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne (13-15 April 2012), the Deakin Philosophical Society will ask whether New Atheism promotes Islamophobia. A small debate between Melbourne’s own Jeff Sparrow and A/Professor of Biology PZ Myers will form the basis for our discussion. The relevant contributions to the debate can be found at:

• (Opening) Jeff Sparrow, ‘Where have all the progressive atheists gone?’, New Matilda, 8 June 2011.
• (Rebuttal) PZ Myers, ‘Atheism ≠ fascism’, Pharyngula, 12 June 2011.
• (Rejoinder) Jeff Sparrow, ‘The Left, the Right and the New Atheism: a response to PZ Myers’, Overland Journal, 14 June 2011.

Directions to building ib on Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus can be found here.

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

By popular demand, and due to the recent uproar surrounding the Katter’s Australian Party ad against Liberal National Party of Queensland leader Campbell Newman, this week the DPS will ask the question ‘Is there any sound reason to oppose gay marriage?’

To many, the answer may be an obvious ‘No’. Some may think the DPS shallow, idiotic and/or uncultured for even asking the question. But we’re a philosophical society, not a Ministry of Orthodoxy. As such, we have license to — nay, want to — ask these tough questions. More importantly, we want to consider the tough answers.

Chances are that the obvious ‘No’ answer will be the right one. But we don’t know that it’s the right answer until we consider the arguments. That’s why this week we turn to Michael Levin’s whopping 32 page article ‘Why homosexuality is abnormal’.

Levin’s article was published in The Monist (1984, vol. 67, no. 2), a prestigious philosophical journal that’s been around for over one hundred years. Here’s the abstract:

This paper defends the view that homosexuality is abnormal and hence undesirable—not because it is immoral or sinful, or because it weakens society or hampers evolutionary development, but for a purely mechanical reason. It is a misuse of bodily parts. Clear empirical sense attaches to the idea of the use of such bodily parts as genitals, the idea that they are for something, and consequently to the idea of their misuse. I argue on grounds involving natural selection that misuse of bodily parts can with high probability be connected to unhappiness. I regard these matters as prolegomena to such policy issues as the rights of homosexuals, the rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals, and legislation concerning homosexuality, issues which I shall not discuss systematically here. However, I do in the last section draw a seemingly evident corollary from my view that homosexuality is abnormal and likely to lead to unhappiness.

The article is available through Deakin library, here.

Read it, or don’t. See you there, or not.

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

The Deakin Philosophical Society is funded by Deakin University Student Association (DUSA).

This Wednesday, 14 March, from 5-6.30pm in ib3.307 on the Waurn Ponds campus the Deakin Philosophical Society will discuss the question ‘Should philosophy be experimental?’ Discussion will focus on the work of Associate Professor Joshua Knobe. In particular, we’ll look at a very brief article that Knobe published in The Philosophers’ Magazine entitled ‘What Is Experimental Philosophy?’. You can also find good introductions to Knobe’s work here and here, the transcript of an interview with Knobe here, and Knobe’s contribution to the New York Times philosophy column ‘The Stone’ here.

Hope to see you all there.

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

This Wednesday, 7 March, from 5-6.30pm in ib3.307 on the Waurn Ponds campus the Deakin Philosophical Society will discuss the question, ‘Is torture ever justified?’ A presentation by Marc Thiessen at the 2011 Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas will be used as a basis of discussion. You can download video and audio of Thiessen’s presentation at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2011/10/29/3346885.htm. We’ll screen the ‘highlights’ of the presentation at the beginning of Wednesday’s meeting.

Hope to see you all there.

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

Unfortunately, the planned Jim Hopkins session had to be cancelled. Instead we’ll discuss the question, ‘Could a secular ethic defend paedophilia?’ Rabbi Moshe Averick’s brief article ‘A Plea to Atheists: Pedophilia Is Next On the Slippery Slope; Let Us Turn Back Before It Is Too Late’ will form the basis of discussion. Averick responded to reader comments in the follow-up article ‘Atheism and Pedophilia Part II: The Incoherent Moral Philosophy of Michael Ruse’ and that article may clarify some of the arguments in the first article.

Hope to see you all there.

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

The Deakin Philosophical Society is funded by Deakin University Student Association (DUSA).

This Wednesday (22 Feb) the Deakin Philosophical Society will discuss the ethics of a ‘fat tax’. This will be our second week of bioethics discussions.

For background reading on the topic, there is this Op Ed piece from the NY Times as well as this series of Slate articles.

Hope to see you all there,

Jason Bishop
President
Deakin Philosophical Society

Saturday 25 February 2012
9.30am – 5.00pm

Australian Institute of International Affairs
124 Jolimont Rd, East Melbourne 3002

Speakers

9.30am — 10.45am
Jason Freddi
The question of origins: between Freud and Darwin

11.00am — 12.45pm
Jim Hopkins
On psychoanalysis and neuroscience

2.00pm — 3.15pm
Talia Morag
On the myth of wish-fulfilment

3.30pm — 4.45pm
Russell Grigg
How biological are the drives, really?

Entry is free.

Jim Hopkins has published widely on psychoanalysis in philosophical and other leading journals. He is Visiting Professor at University College London, and Reader (Emeritus) in Philosophy at King’s College London. He is an editor of Mind. His current research interests include issues in psychoanalysis such as the death drive, Freud and Darwin, representation, and problems of consciousness.

Jim Hopkins’ visit to Australia is sponsored by the Alfred Deakin Research Institute and the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University.

The DPS will open 2012 by hosting two weeks of bioethics-related discussion. This coming Wednesday 15 February we’ll begin by discussing the ethics of euthanasia.

For some background on the subject, check out the entry on euthanasia at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

If you’d prefer to read pieces arguing for a specific side, Margaret Somerville’s article ‘Death Talk in a Secular Age: We must formulate a moral argument against euthanasia without resorting to religion’ and Peter Singer’s review of Somerville’s book Death Talk are good places to start.

For those of you who want more, there is this series of articles at The Conversation entitled Talk About Death and Dying.

If you wish to attend this event, RSVPing is essential for catering purposes. You can RSVP by reply email or via the DPS Facebook page.

You can also keep up to date with coming DPS events at the Deakin Philosophical Society website: deakinphilosophicalsociety.com

Next week we’ll discuss the topic ‘A Fat Tax: Public Health Measure or Nanny State Intervention?’.

Hope to see you all there,

Jason Bishop,
President, Deakin Philosophical Society.

Erin Kennis,
Secretary, Deakin Philosophical Society.

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

The Deakin Philosophical Society is funded by Deakin University Student Association (DUSA).

This Wednesday, 14 December, is the last meeting of the DPS for the Tri-3 ‘off season’ and, therefore, for the year. As a philosophical society we’re often accused of having our heads in the clouds, so we thought we’d finish the year with a brainstorming session.

We hope to focus the session on topics for next year and suggestions for improving the DPS.

Keep in mind that this is a student organisation that runs on the smell of an oily rag and the time volunteered by generous but busy students. Your suggestions for improving the DPS are more likely to take off if you volunteer to help implement them.

For the same reason, it is also a precondition of suggesting a topic for discussion in 2012 that you nominate the material on which to base discussion of that topic. This material can be anything from an article, a video (TED lectures are quick and easy), podcast, audio recording or piece you have written yourself. For example, if you think we should discuss the Poincaré conjecture, you might suggest we read Terence Tao’s article ‘Perelman’s proof of the Poincaré conjecture’ or watch a YouTube video on the topic. The material doesn’t have to be suggested on Wednesday night, but you will need to have the material submitted a week before we discuss the topic. Material should be freely available in the public domain and should not breach copyright law.

It also helps if you offer to introduce your suggested topic. You do not have to give a long speech about the material, just a brief introduction and some specifics of why you have chosen it (i.e. how you foresee it relating to the discussion). If you do not feel comfortable doing this yourself, you can ask someone to do it for you. However, it will be up to you to find this person and will be totally at their discretion.

If you would like to suggest a topic but cannot make it to the session, there are two options. You can suggest your topic below or on the DPS Facebook page.

In an attempt to further democratise the DPS, once the suggestions are in we’ll offer you an opportunity to vote on your preferred topic(s).

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

On Wednesday 7 December from 5-6.30pm in ib3.307 on the Waurn Ponds campus the Deakin Philosophical Society will discuss what it’s like being a woman in philosophy. The discussion will focus on Petra Brown’s custom-written paper ‘What it’s like being a woman in philosophy’.

Also find the text pasted below.

Kind regards,

Dylan Nickelson,
Treasurer, Deakin Philosophical Society.

What it’s like being a woman in philosophy[1] — an address to the Deakin Philosophical Society
Petra Brown, PhD candidate, Deakin University 2011

Imagine a young girl growing up, playing football. She loves the game, she’s a great player, loves the team and in every way she is one of ‘the boys’. They value her because she runs, tackles and is a mean mid-fielder. Imagine a world where she does not have to leave by default, once she turns 14. Imagine she continues to play with her team. Five years later, she still loves the game. She runs, tackles and is a mean mid-fielder. And she is all those things because she trains harder than any of her fellow players. Her biological handicap, the lack of testosterone, is compensated by relentless weights and cardio-fitness sessions. She has shaped her body to engage in the game.

Yet, this story does not work. In the real world, her place in the football team depends not on her own innate or natural gifts and talents, but on her willingness to conform to an identity. In the real world, to be a footballer is not simply to be athletic, to be a footballer is to be a god of virility. As soon as this young woman ceases to appear as ‘virile’ and, god forbid becomes ‘fertile’, she is no longer one of the boys. She becomes the Other who does not belong on the football team. If she wants to play with the footballers, well, it will be a different kind of playing altogether. Skills and passion have nothing to do with the rules of this game, which are so closely linked to the self-affirmation of male identity. Play the game like a man, or get off the field.

Can the young woman singlehandedly change the culture of the game? No. If she wants to play, she plays a man’s game and she’ll have to repress her ‘fertility’ and imitate their ‘virility’. Only a group of women can band together and tell the football players: you’re messing this game up with your bullshit behaviour that has nothing to do with the game itself. Those women who band together and want to play will push the rules of the game (if that’s what it takes), in order to make it a game for all of footballer lovers, not just the young men.

Football and philosophy may appear miles apart. Yet my use of the word ‘virility’ and its connection to a game embedded in male culture is intentional. Analytic philosophy, the practice of philosophy favoured in the English speaking world, is based on the adversarial method where the philosopher with the best strategy is able to devastate their opponent’s argument and thereby becomes ‘top dog’. Philosophical discussions are not so much aimed at learning or understanding through dialogue, as much as opportunities to demonstrate one’s own wit and intellect. This adversarial method establishes the authority of the single reasoner. He or she is top dog until a challenger overthrows him or her. Without a doubt, the player who benefits by this form of philosophy is the one with the natural skill and ability enhanced by testosterone: a desire for conflict and competition. The woman who enters this game will have to suppress her own preferred way of philosophizing and work damn hard to jump into the fray of this man’s game. And of course, should the woman by some chance become ‘top dog’, the most natural and acceptable strategy of attack for the opponent is her weakest defence: her ‘fertility’, or her hidden identity as a woman.

What if the female philosopher were to think as a woman? What if she ceased to believe that being a philosopher is equivalent to being ‘autonomous’ and ‘rational’? What if she recognised the big sell for what it is, a game played by men who desire power and control? Feminist philosophers (and not those exclusively) have effectively banded together and said — you’re messing up philosophy with your bullshit tactics and invented rules of the game. Make it a game for all humanity, for all lovers of wisdom, not just the white Anglo Saxon males.

What is it to be a ‘thinking woman’? Let’s start with what is it to be a ‘thinking man’. The best and most noble image of the thinking man is the polymath, the genius, the ‘renaissance man’. When I started philosophy, I had dreams of becoming a renaissance man. It took a number of years before reality dawned on me: I would only ever be a ‘renaissance woman’. And the image of the Renaissance woman is not Leonardo Da Vinci but something closer to Botticelli’s Venus. While contemporary feminists work hard to reappropriate the Renaissance woman, the real Renaissance women was a child-bearer, a keeper of the home and a good wife in a culture where the family unit was the bedrock of society and political stability. The few powerful women in the public sphere (notably Catherine de Medici) were far outnumbered by the other ‘public women’, the ‘painted poetry’ or male artists’ images of sexual perfection.

The woman who looks for role models in the philosophy tradition will find few. The woman who looks for answers to her questions will find those questions answered each and every single time by a man. The woman who wants to be a philosopher finds herself either playing a man’s game and at odds with her own identity, or finds herself fighting to be true to her own identity and is thereby at odds with the rules of the game as they are currently constituted.

When I began philosophy, eight years ago, I had all sorts of reasons for doing and loving philosophy and barely noticed my gender. I was completely taken and excited by the breadth and depth of the entire discipline. Undergraduate classes were challenging and stimulating, and I enjoyed stimulating discussions with fellow students, who were both male and female in class (undergraduate classes have a good gender balance) and more informally in the bistro.

Earlier this year, I attended a postgrad seminar on Kierkegaard at Latrobe University, presented by Dr Jeff Hanson, based at ACU and now one of my research supervisors. Of the 12 attendees, I was the only woman. In 2009 I presented at the national Bonhoeffer conference in Australia. I was the only female presenter who spoke on Bonhoeffer. The only other female presenter was a high school principal, speaking on education. She had read little of Bonhoeffer and apologized for being a ‘practical’, not a ‘scholarly’ person.

In my conversations and professional training as a philosopher, I am quite literally, surrounded by men. In addition, I’m writing my thesis on the ideas of a man involved in an assassination plot to overthrow a political figure, the ‘mother’ of all political leaders — Hitler himself. In my research, I’ve had to wade through mountains of war glorifying literature. Like football culture, war culture is the glorification of male virility. The great war makers and theorists (Bismarck, Napoleon, or von Clausewitz) are great because, like great footballers, they left their mark on the game of war. Like great footballers, they affirm masculine virility. In addition to this, to write a thesis on a German is to do philosophy in a tradition of male philosophers. Frustrated with the lack of female German philosophers, I recently discovered that contemporary German feminist philosophers are simply not read in the Anglophone world (unlike their French counterparts, who are widely translated and available).[2]

Sally Haslanger, based in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes philosophy departments as hyper-masculine places that are competitive, combative, oriented towards individual accomplishment, individual intelligence and hostile to femininity. Women are alienated by the atmosphere where ordinary social norms are not recognized. As a result, ‘it is difficult for women to feel “at home” in a hyper-masculine environment since it requires sublimating potentially important aspects of identity’.[3]

Let me be crystal clear about what it is like to be a woman in philosophy. It is to be aware of yourself as a woman all the time, much as a woman is aware of herself as a woman amongst footballers or army recruits. It is to feel vulnerable, to be slightly on guard all the time and that feeling of guarding your vulnerability transfers to what you read, to what you think, to who you talk to and, ultimately, to what you write. Vulnerability is an interesting word here because the ‘top dog’ style of thinking is about consolidating power in order to make one invulnerable from attack.

How does a woman speak to her research topic in an environment that promotes and prides itself on the adversarial technique? Is there a way of doing philosophy that does not depend on the adversarial technique promoted in the Anglophone philosophy world?

The dilemma faced by a woman philosopher can be summed up in the concept of feminism and philosophy, and feminism in philosophy. The first fights for independence, for an extreme intellectual separatism. This is wholesale critique of philosophy. It is the waiting for an as yet unheard feminine philosophical voice advocated by feminist theories such as Irigiray. The second is an internal conception, which overlaps with and is historically dependent on the former. The aim is integration into mainstream debates, seeking dialogue with unconvinced colleagues that at least some of the concerns of feminist philosophers might properly be the concern of any philosopher.

I would argue for the second. If philosophy aspires to self-criticism, self-evaluation, feminism in philosophy contributes to that ideal and to that task. Integration is now an active critical ambition, not a desire for mere acceptance. It is to transform thinking on both sides. An internal critique argues for an improved conception of rationality which brings in a new range of questions to which philosophy may be fruitfully applied.

How might the woman philosopher improve the discipline in which she seeks to make her home? One example is through the transformation of weak objectivity into strong objectivity. I’m drawing her on the work of Harriet Harris (2001) and Pamela Sue Anderson (1998).

Weak objectivity allows privileged individuals to claim knowledge of the world while excluding the world of the non-privileged. Strong objectivity recognises that facts are shaped by the knowers and their processes of coming to knowledge. It tries to gain insight from multiple standpoints, including standpoints from the margins. When we become aware of the limits of our own thinking, and are prompted by the experiences of others to reflect critically on our outlook, then we move into fuller knowledge. This moving into fuller knowledge is not the quest of a solitary individual. To practice standpoint is to be in solidarity with another, to stand alongside. The ability to show empathy, care and concern is not just a moral virtue, but an intellectual virtue. Here is a return to the more ancient union of truth and justice.

In my reflections on what it is like to be a woman in philosophy, I have chosen to write on my experience, an experience corroborated by many other women in philosophy in the English-speaking world (see note 1). I have also provided a brief description of an alternative way of doing philosophy through Pamela Anderson’s standpoint theory, which I have found convincing and encouraging, though I will happily learn from and engage with other forms of critique that question the current dominant model of philosophizing.

But for those of you are unmoved by either experience or argument: here are the cold hard facts.

Of the 21.3 professors in philosophy employed in Australia in 2005, one was a woman.[4] Overall, the proportion of women in philosophy above level B, in senior positions, is significantly lower than the rates across the university sector. Since 1981, the percentage of women philosophers employed in continuing positions in philosophy programs has improved overall from 8% to 23% in 2005, though still lagging behind the 38% mark across the university sector. The bulk of women’s employment in philosophy is fixed-term contracts, casual teaching and research positions. The long-term impact of short-term employment is a heavy teaching and research assistant load, without the secure employment necessary to conduct original research or produce quality publications, thus establishing a distinct disadvantage for these female philosophers in a competitive environment.

The Deakin Philosophical Society rightly prides itself on being a society aimed at students. Perhaps the employment statistics are irrelevant or uninteresting. I hope the following interests all DPS members. Female students make up 55% of Bachelor courses. In philosophy streams, female enrolment for first year philosophy units is 57% (2001-2006), the percentage gradually declining to 39% at doctoral research level. At doctorate research level, the participation rate is slightly higher than the wider PhD population (35% – 2005/2006).

So here is my question — If 57% of students in first year philosophy units are women, where are the women in the DUSA affiliated Deakin Philosophical Society? Could it be that young women find themselves ‘strangers’ in a club which chooses to discuss as light-hearted entertainment a Vanity Fair article called — ‘why women aren’t funny’?

NOTES

[1] For countless of first-hand accounts on what it is like to be a woman in philosophy go to http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/

[2] This unavailability is not arbitrary but has important implications for all women philosophers – “The politics of translation is a critical issue for the status of women in philosophy. Translation practices are one of the most significant means of establishing women philosophers as recognized and important thinkers. Not to translate is to designate the interest of the writer in question local and temporary” Deutscher cited in Postl, G 2005, ‘Introduction: Contemporary Feminist Philosophy in German’, Hypatia, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. viii-xvi.

[3] http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/papers/HaslangerCICP.pdf

[4] All figures and data taken from the Improving the Participation of Women in the Philosophy Profession (IPWPP) report, commission in 2007 with the support of the University of Wollongong and the Australasian Association of Philosophy. Report tabled at the AAP AGM, 2008. Can be found online at http://www.aap.org.au/women/reports/index.html