Macquarie University's Inaugural Women in Philosophy Lecture entitled 'What is philosophy's problem?' to be delivered by Prof Fiona Jenkins (ANU)
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/inaugural-women-in-philosophy-lecture-tickets-745736456817?aff=oddtdtcreator
What is philosophy's problem?
Abstract: Philosophy's gender gap is often explained by offering a strong characterization of the qualities of its practitioners and of its proper disciplinary nature. For example, Louise Antony (2012) tells us that philosophers are particularly prone to ‘over-confidence bias’ for they ‘regard themselves as smarter than others in the humanities and think of themselves as particularly sensitive to fallacious or ungrounded reasoning’. Explanation of the barriers to women in philosophy regularly likens the discipline to maths or sciences, permitting explanation of women’s poor representation in terms of ‘gender schemas’ that are ‘male-associated’. I will suggest that these patterns of explanation may be doing hidden work to protect as much as criticise aspects of the discipline. By exploring the terms on which philosophy is read as a discipline more aligned with maths and science than with the ‘other humanities’, I hope to open up some fresh perspectives on how we understand philosophy’s ‘problem’ and what to do about it.
