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I attended the Central APA in Chicago this past weekend. This time, I tried to select more politically-oriented sessions, despite my lack of knowledge in that area. Subsequently, I was exposed to a lot of interesting issues I probably would never have thought about otherwise. Hopefully I have learned something.
Claudia Card’s biographical John Dewey lecture on her experience as a lesbian female philosopher was both depressing and inspiring. Depressing because it seems some things, though less overt, have not changed very much. Inspiring because of the way she dealt with the challenges. Although the talk was not philosophical, per se, it did explain where her philosophical outputs come from. After hearing the talk, I am now really interested in reading her work, if I have time.
I also really enjoyed a symposium on wanted pregnancy and autonomy, with Amy Mullin, Susan Brison, and Maggie Little. Obviously, as a male, a lot of issues do not really come up for me. But since they never come up, it is likely that I would never have thought of the ways in which even a wanted pregnancy compromise a woman’s autonomy, or questioned the many social norms surrounding pregnancy and pregnant women that, upon close examination, appear to be inconsistent with our other moral beliefs and downright bizarre.
The thing that struck me about both of these talks is how personal they are. I like this idea of a personal philosophy, in contrast with the abstractness that our discipline often deals in. The speakers related their personal experiences to their philosophical theories. In my opinion, this makes for a much more engaging talk. Thinking about mereology is interesting, but I think I can actually do that better by reading a paper than listening to someone speak.
I also attended a symposium on responsibility in resisting oppressions. I wrote about some of my questions as I thought about that issue on Go Grue.
Oh, I also tried to talk to the representative from MIT Press at the book exhibit about cover design. I think he was weirded out by my over-enthusiasm.
I just saw that in the latest issue of Analysis, there is an article on the Sleeping Beauty problem by The Oscar Seminar at University of Arizona. So the paper was actually co-authored by 16 different philosophers! I think that is actually kind of cool. And it reminded me of my cohort, when we were in proseminar, wanting to write some papers together under the pseudonym ‘gavagai’. I hope that happens one day, but it’s good to know that a precedence has been set.
