This week, I travelled to the biennal meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association in Seattle, the largest organization in my field. When I arrived at the conference venue, I noticed a large poster next to the registration desk; announcing a PSA initiative aimed at underrepresentation in philosophy of science. (You may have to zoom in to read it properly.)
This poster is noticeable for a variety of reasons. First of all, for its drastic language: women and other minorities are “drastically underrepresented”, “philosophy of science is one of the worst subfields” (boldfaced), “we [PSA members] need to be more proactive”.
For anybody who has attended a critical thinking class this looks like a classical is-ought fallacy. From observations about gender and race distribution it is concluded that something is wrong in the field. Then a sense of responsibility and the bad conscience are invoked. We, the PSA members, are responsible for this (“we are the worst”). Therefore, we need to do something.
Notably, it is not asked what the causes of the uneven gender and race distribution could be, and whether they are necessarily indicative of discrimination in the field (link in Dutch). For example, the faculty appointed in the 1980s and 1990s is still around and obviously, they distort the statistics towards the proportion of white men.
Then, is it surprising that many young Black scholars decide to work on social, political and African philosophy, given the experience they and their family members faced in their lives? Is it something bad (as the authors suggest)? Is it a reason to worry? After all, also gender distributions over different academic disciplines vary widely. Is it all about disciplinary culture? Or not rather about different interests? Is it outrageous to explain diverging interests between the genders by a combination of biological factors and social mechanisms that push boys and girls at an early age into different directions? The latter is perhaps the most promising explanation, but if it is true, change needs to come from society as a whole.
There are also other factors that contribute to the gender gap in my opnion: the problem of combining family and academic career, the lack of affordable childcare, the impossibility of making a part-time career. Women are more strongly affected by these factors than men and therefore more likely to decide against an academic career.
All of this are complex matters, of course, on which one can rationally disagree. But this is precisely the point. Just because the topic is so complex and delicate, it should not be condensed in a shaky three-line argument. It is saddening to see that the PSA engages in this form of political activism instead of opening a balanced discussion. The use of statistics for underscoring normative claims is common, but especially as philosophers of science, we should treat them with caution and consider various explanations for the numbers instead of pushing “the obvious” conclusion. For example, many philosophers of science completed their first degree in a STEM discipline where men are traditionally more numerous than women. The gender gap may thus also be a consequence of the typical career trajectories in philosophy of science.
So much for the epistemic basis. Then, the rhetorics. While the initiative itself can be a valuable thing, the chosen language is more about political mobilization than about intellectual persuasion. We, as PSA members, have to pay attention, to care, to do something. (And if you disagree, you are not one of us.) Instead of: please have a look at the evidence, consider various explanations, and if you also think this is a problem, talk to us. It is ironic that exactly the champions of diversity are so adamant on enforcing their own political standpoint.
On a related note, the registration package contains a leaflet distributed by the Women’s Causus.
While sexual harassment deserves indeed zero tolerance, the leaflet also suggests specifics actions to counter "biased behavior". Which may be just another word for voicing a different opinion. True, certain utterances may not always be pleasant to hear, especially when ill-supported by evidence, but should not we try to persuade the speaker instead of sanctioning him or her? (And is it so clear that he/she is mistaken? Shouldn't we first consider the argument before reacting?)
I do not know where this change of intellectual culture comes from, but it was different some years ago. Perhaps it is a contagion effect in a country governed by a president who only knows the good and the evil and whose rhetorics are mainly aimed at agitating and mobilizing the own political base.
I occasionally talk to political conservatives and Trump supporters who complain about lefty bias in academia, especially the humanities. So far I was proud to tell them that we are not the communist party. That most of us may have progressive views, but that we consider arguments for conservative positions as diligently as arguments that support our own views. That we carefully disentangle observations, implicit premises and conclusions. And that we are willing to tolerate viewpoints that we are in disagreement with.
What shall I respond to them now?
