TheChosenOne

David Lewis for sure, even though I am diametrically opposed to pretty much every position he adopts, lol. Alvin Plantinga is also a good philosopher and a great writer...but I find myself at odds with many of his views as well (especially his extravagant Platonism). Dean Zimmerman is up there. Great metaphysician, reasonable personality. Love his stuff on time. David Albert is up there, too. Probably my favorite philosopher of science. Makes the issues of QM easy to understand. Engaging writer. Others: Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World), Yablo (for everything metaphysics), Azzouni. But really, apart from David Lewis, I haven't really "given myself" to a particular philosopher. I'm more interested in the debate itself; couldn't care less who the players are.

Great post. I too am interested in what the women of this forum have to say.

Even if we grant your argument and concede B, B alone does not prescribe affirmative action as the solution to the problem. Yes, we should take steps to effect an accurate reflection of society in philosophy departments - but we had better not do so in ways that are equally morally disgusting.

Profound.

I can't resist responding, given that you must have put a lot of effort in that post! I'll respond systematically to each of your points, in order. First, of course I do not mean to suggest that persons who are women or a minority or both do not earn what get, inside or outside academia. (I don't think you took me to be saying that in the first place, but I'd like to make it clear.) Second, regarding your point about fitness, you are absolutely right. I concede your point. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which a person's fitness is determined by her areas of interest, and a person does have control over her areas of interest. Perhaps you may cavil over whether such things as "interests" are really under one's control, but it is certainly unlike judging a candidate according to really uncontrollable and irrelevant contingencies to a candidate's aptitude, like race and gender and sex. Third, it is true that I do not know what is said in our professors' letters. And I am going off of (many) personal anecdotes and (much) testimony from authority (professors). Nevertheless, I think my opinion is somewhat justified. If we're getting technical, I take my epistemic probability that there is racism and sexism in this process to be greater than 50%. Of course, I don't have straight-up proof...but to fair, I don't think you do either. Which leads me to... Fourth, your cited statistic does not show that "women are not welcomed in philosophy and are discriminated against." There are too many factors that could plausibly undercut this inference from the fact that 30% of philosophy-PhD-earners are women. For instance, there are less women that apply in the first place! That could serve as a good explanation for the data. (Maybe it is a problem in itself, but that is a different discussion.) Or perhaps, due to chance and circumstance, it turns out that women don't complete programs as often as men do. I have heard that many women have to delay completing their degree or even drop out because they get pregnant. That's a circumstantial barrier men don't face. EDIT: Also, I notice I'm getting a lot of downvotes, which I don't think is really fair...

Thanks to the understanding few. I'll bow out now; I think I've said all I need to.

Can we just drop it? I would hope as philosophers that you wouldn't be throwing around these irrelevant ad hominems (which I really ought to systematically ignore) and that you would focus on the actual points I'm making. Maybe I'm a moral monster for calling my 20-year-old female peers "girls", but that doesn't impact the soundness of my argument at all.

Congrats! (wrong thread though )

First, I would like to apologize to anyone I may have offended by anything I may have said. I apologize especially for calling women "girls" and "gals". That is not something I take care to be sensitive about (I do refer to men as "guys" if that means anything to you), so I am sorry if it offended you. Second, I would like to point out that I took deliberate care in my original post (and my subsequent posts) to make no claims about the intrinsic qualities of females or minorities. I did cast evaluations on the two women I know personally, for the purpose of illustrating my point, by I did not mean to use them to represent all female philosophers. Finally, I acknowledge whole-heartedly that women and minorities face many grave challenges, and I am sorry if I did not acknowledge those challenges outright. Nevertheless, my focus is on the racism and sexism of this particular situation. I think it is obvious that considerations of gender and race are weighty factors in the application process, and I do not think that should be the case. I do stand by everything I said, but I apologize if it was offensive.

I mostly agree as well. I do think though, based on the body of evidence I have, that my female friends and I are of the same caliber. I could have defeating evidence -- maybe there is some magic word present in their letters but not in mine -- but as best I can tell, we are pretty much equal.

Fair enough, and thanks for the sympathy. I will say I have independent evidence for my broad statements besides the failure of my own application. I have anecdotes from others, first-hand knowledge of these girls' application quality, conversations with my professors to go off of.

And philosophe - your concerns about diversity are legitimate, and I appreciate the cordial tone of your posts. I will still say, however, it is still not clear to me that abandoning the principle of evaluating applicants based on academic merit alone is morally justified. Far from it.

Fair enough - high-stakes for justification, suspend judgment; low-stakes, I'd still say they're fake.

I know these two personally, know their scores, their letters, and their writing samples. I actually helped one write hers. I've also got better GRE scores, and an MA. (She's only an undergrad.) So it is frustrating to watch her get in to so many places while I've gotten pretty much nothing.

Man, getting a call from Dave Chalmers or another big-wig philosopher...I think that would be the most amazing experience in my life to date, lol. I would probably not be able to assert any meaningful utterances for the first five minutes of the phone call. I'd just be letting out emotive sounds and sobs.