RAIL

An unprecedented apology for excluding women has been offered by the organizers of the Extended Cognition and Epistemology conference at TU Endhoven.

“The organizers of the conference sincerely regret the gender imbalance in the list of contributors. They admit that they should have, before the list of contributions became final, taken more proactive measures to guarantee a better gender balance in the special issue/conference line-up.”

“Gender imbalance” is an understatement regarding the all-male lineup, and respecting the recommendation of pretty much the same lineup at the Episteme conference on privacy and secrecy. There are plenty of women doing work in these fields, and not just (to use Sandra Harding’s terminology about scientists) the “women worthies,” such as Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Lackey.  The apology goes a good way toward indicating a desire to do differently (at least I think it is mistaken to be sceptical), but treating gender as an afterthought, the remedy that they suggest, won’t suffice.

What needs to be addressed is why women are being overlooked, and similar biases have been clear in job applications, promotions, and so on for decades (as Steve keeps reminding me).  We can blame this on implicit bias, but that may seem to limit prospects for a deep or lasting solution. It suggests that the problem has unconscious and permanent roots in individual cognition, which may discourage those who want to make equitable choices.  It doesn’t provide constructive direction to those who would like to do differently, such as the organizers of the TU conference.  Also, the problem is not isolated: it is a problem of reasoning, a problem for epistemology, and suggests a lack of appropriate critical thinking tools.

We need skills for addressing implicit bias, for negotiating the ways in which our thinking is undermined by gender and racial bias, and other “status quo bias.”  We need to develop procedures that encourage the recognition of socially marginalized contributors, experts and otherwise weakly recognized testifiers.  These considerations need to be built into decision-making at all levels.  Evidence of the problem for invited speakers, insofar as those decisions are made at great length, only indicates that the problem has great epistemological depth.

A step in the right direction would be to orient conferences to this problem from the outset: include race and gender analysis in the conference topic; have a regular conference to address that topic; consider how epistemologists are educating philosophers in ways that reinforce social bias; think first of which women (and people of colour) can be featured.  Make analysis of social privilege part of the critical thinking practice in philosophy and the critical thinking curriculum, not just an afterthought.