Public Panel on Social Privilege
Organised by Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre
Abstract
Social privilege profoundly shapes how we live, affecting who can fully participate in social spaces such as work, public spaces, educational institutions and online forums. Individuals who don’t have the privilege to move freely through these spaces, whether due—for example—to their race, gender, sexual orientation, class, or ability, must perform additional work to navigate them. This amounts to an added cognitive labour that some people perform on a near-daily basis, whether that involves finding an accessible route through an ageing public transit system or modifying their mannerisms and behaviours to minimize the risks of harassment. Our panel will bring insights from cognitive science, conceptual engineering, and bioethics to shed new light on the idea of ‘privileged cognition’ and how we might better intervene to reduce the harms of social stratification based on social privilege.
Panellists:
Javier Gomez-Lavin, “Involuntary powers: A cognitive construal of privilege”
Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky, “Privileged cognition and the method of conceptual engineering”
Jackie Leach Scully, “A bioethical perspective on privilege”
Chair: Mark Alfano
Interested members of the public from Sydney and surrounding areas are warmly invited to learn and to share their perspectives.
To register, please go to:https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/public-panel-on-social-privilege-tickets-1061790466869?aff=oddtdtcreator
