PEA Soup

Update on democratization of Pacific APA

Because the effort to bring elections to the Pacific APA only partially succeeded last year, a group of Pacific APA members plan to introduce new amendments to the By-Laws at the 2008 business meeting.  If you would like to sign a petition (by Oct. 31, 2007) so that these amendments can be introduced at the next meeting, see APA Governance.

Sexism and Philosophy

Today's (Sept. 10) Inside Higher Ed has a news story about Sally Haslanger's paper on Sexism in academic Philosophy

The Significance of "Partial Birth"

The recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act” (Gonzales v. Carhart) attempts to draw a bright line between infanticide and abortion. Supporters of the ban hold that a procedure called “intact dilation and extraction” (intact D&E, or D&X) is a form of infanticide, whereas a procedure called “nonintact dilation and extraction” (D&E, or dilation and evacuation) can, for now, remain on the abortion side of the line.

According to Solicitor General Paul Clement, "The basic point of this statute is to draw a bright line between a procedure that induces fetal demise in utero and one where the lethal act occurs when the child or the fetus, whichever you want to call it, is more than halfway outside of the mother's womb…" (Washington Post, 11/9/06) 

The odd assumption behind “partial birth” abortion bans is that a bright line can be drawn on the basis of where the fetus is in the mother’s body when it is killed, rather than on the basis of the age of the fetus when it is killed (before or after viability), or how gruesome the method of killing is (intact D&E involves collapsing the fetus’s skull, nonintact D&E involves dismembering the fetus). In a recent discussion on a legal blog, one law professor poses the following questions: “What if Congress concludes, based on the Silent Scream videos that we've all seen, that all second-term abortions have a disturbing similarity to infanticide? Or what if Congress decides to ban the D&E procedure entirely, because it involves tearing the fetus apart, limb from limb?” (conlawprof, 4/19/07)

Pacific APA governance reform

Here is my "unofficial" report on the actions taken at the Pacific Division Business meeting (April 5, 2007) regarding the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on By-Law Amendments (for Nomination and Election Procedures of the Pacific Division of the APA). The report and proposals can be found in the Proceedings and Addresses of the APA (January 2007) pp. 211-220, or on the APA webpage.

The Social Dimensions of Ethical Knowledge

In a recent SEP article, Helen Longino provides an overview of philosophical work on the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. She begins by focusing on historical figures, such as Mill, for whom “[t]he achievement of knowledge…is a social or collective, not an individual, matter.” Longino points out that Mill held that ideas must be subject to critical discussion by multiple inquirers in order to overcome some amount of error or partiality produced by individual knowers.

Strike authorized at Pacific Division conference hotel

Workers at 13 San Francisco hotels, including the Westin St. Francis where the Pacific APA is scheduled to meet again in 2007, have voted to authorize a strike.  See the news stories linked below for an update on the labor situation at our conference hotel (a strike date has not yet been set, but last Thursday, several hundred union members participated in an informational picket outside of the Westin St. Francis):

Employees at 13 hotels vote to authorize a strike

Strike Threatens Rebound in San Francisco Tourism

Last spring, when Pacific division members learned that our Executive committee decided to enter another contract with the St. Francis, I asked (on this blog and elsewhere) whether our Executive Committee has made plans for an alternative meeting place, given the possibility of a strike or of an ongoing labor dispute at our conference hotel in the months leading up to the meeting.  I've checked the APA webpages and have not yet found any mention of the labor situation at our conference hotel. If we do not want to find ourselves in the situation we faced in 2005, without plans or alternatives, I would think that planning should begin ASAP. Has anyone heard of any planning within the APA in response to the hotel situation in S.F.? What do folks think the APA should do at this moment?

What Keeps Going Wrong With The APA?

The APA has recently posted on its website the comments of four of its past Executive Directors , which were delivered in a session held at the 2005 Eastern APA. The session, titled "What Keeps Going Wrong With The APA?" was organized by John Lach, and included David A. Hoekema, Eric Hoffman, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Michael Kelly, and Richard Bett (who declined to post his comments on the APA website).  William Mann, the current Acting Director, has posted his response to his four predecessors. Also of relevance to this session is John Lach's posted letter from May 17, 2005, on The Future of Philosophy.

Reproductive Rights

What kinds of rights are invoked when women demand ‘reproductive rights’?  Feminist groups began using the term ‘reproductive rights’ instead of ‘abortion rights’ in the 1990s in response to the criticism that the women’s movement had been reduced to single-issue politics, had lost its radical edge, and was becoming irrelevant to the most marginalized women in our society.  By giving priority to the abortion controversy, mainstream women’s groups reflected the interests of mostly bourgeois, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and married or marriageable women.  These women wanted to resist social pressures to be child bearers and caretakers so that they could take advantage of the career opportunities that were opening to women. Women of color, lesbians, disabled or poor women were not typically subject to pressures to reproduce, and were instead, at times, subject to coercive sterilization campaigns and misguided eugenicist policies . Moreover, the latter groups of women did not typically find themselves presented with attractive career opportunities that might suffer from interruptions for childbearing. As the U.S. women’s movement became less provincial and more international in focus, the issues of women in the global south began to be heard. Leaders of women’s groups in the third world pointed out how the concept of “reproductive rights” had been deployed both to sell population control policies dictated by wealthy countries and to market often unsafe birth control products to create profits for multinational drug companies.