May 30, 2004
Audio Book Project
In exchange for a very nice gift, I promised Man-Steen I would post something to this blog. I decided to use the opportunity ask for comments on a project I started with Dan, which is in its very early stage of existence. From the project's temporary homepage:
This site is dedicated to hosting public domain readings of public domain philosophical classics. The .mp3 files in our library are licensed under the Academic Free License v. 2.0, and may be copied, distributed and edited with minimal restrictions.The primary motivation of the project is to create a pedagogical supplement and improve the comprehensibility of the great books of philosophy. Our broader goals are described in our Manifesto. To expand our library, you only need a computer, microphone and some free software. Help us grow. To use our resources in your class, give your students our URL or link to the .mp3 files directly.
Posted by dhoracek at 1:50 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
May 29, 2004
Help a Philosopher Fight Leukemia and Lymphoma
Itir Erhart, another Turkish philosopher (B.A., M.A.--Bogazici, ie, Bosphorous Univ., M.Phil--Cambridge, currently working on PhD for Bogazici), and friend of Irem and I, who, like Irem is also married to a stunningly handsome American man and living in the States, is training to run the Chicago Marathon in order to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphona Society. Please help this do-gooder realize her goal of raising $1,400 by giving via this link. She's only up to five miles or so at a time, so give her a boost (oh, and help fight these truly awful diseases)!
Posted by MarkSteen at 6:14 PM
May 28, 2004
Heller's A-comin'
Well, if Brian Leiter can announce it, then I guess we can too. Welcome to Mark Heller, who'll be coming here in the fall (of course along with Kris McDaniel as well, who accepted an offer here before OrangePhilosophy was up and running)! This is very exciting. We'll love picking his four-dimensional hunk of grey matter for the duration. Heller actually got his PhD here lo many years ago, and now he returns to the soothing bosom of the 'Cuse. Anyways, two steps forward back towards metaphysics...
Posted by MarkSteen at 7:21 PM | TrackBack
Gender, Sex, and Race
Sam's latest post (and the comments) got me thinking about the structural relations of race in relation to those of gender and sex. Sex is a biological category, and gender is social. Those with more liberal attitudes about these things tend to include most sex or gender differences in the category of gender, seeing as much as they can as illegitimately forced perceptions of male and female not required by biology. Sam was arguing for a conclusion on the other end of the spectrum, that there isn't anywhere near as much to gender as opposed to biological sex as many people seem to want. I gave some reasons in the comments not to take it so far. People of all political persuasions will want to see some inappropriate gender standards that aren't dictated by biology, and most people don't seem to have a problem even with some socially-determined gender differences. It's not as if most people who affirm the distinction think everything about gender is wrong.
Anyway, that's all in the comments. You can read it there if you want more. What's interesting to me about this right now is its bearing on questions about race. We can separate gender and sex without having to do conceptual analysis to see what our concept of gender refers to in the world or what our concept of sex refers to in the world. These terms have been defined by those who study this issue. The debate is over which elements of our more general sex/gender concepts fit into each category. In race, the debate is at an earlier location. We can't even agree on what criteria are used to determine racial categories. This is because we're trying to do conceptual analysis. We postulate a single concept of race and then try to figure out what that concept refers to in reality (if anything). That in itself will explain some of the differences here.
With sex and gender, the reality doesn't exactly allow the easy definition scholars have given, as the comments on Sam's post make clear. Intersexuals are genotypically male but phenotypically either female or mixed, depending on the cause. So even sex, so carefully defined as biological, separates into genotypic sex and phenotypic sex. Even worse for those wanting neat categories, phenotypic sex admits of borderline cases (or perhaps a third category). As far as I know, genotypic sex is binary.
With gender it gets more complicated. Those more on the liberal end want to remove the idea of legitimate gender differences in expected roles, preferences, or ability or skill level. Those more on the conservative end tend to emphasize the affirmation of such differences as good and affirming of women for who they are. Some who call themselves feminists have now decided to do what conservatives on this issue have always done. The debate here is not over what gender is. That's defined as the socially determined differences between males and females and societal expectations and views of males and females. The debates are over which ones are socially determined and over which ones are worth affirming or condemning.
Whatever you say about these issues, there are cases of people who have resisted their own biological status and adopted the charicteristics of the gender of the opposite sex. Does this mean this is their gender? Social factors determine gender. One such social factor is how people accept a genetic male's claim to be female gender. Enough people would reject that claim that it doesn't seem as if the person is biologically male but societally female. The fact that people would reject that identification, if they were to discover the biological reality, suggests that gender the transgendered biological male isn't gendered female. I don't know what the person's gender is. Some will then say that the person's gender identity (how the person self-identifies, anyway) is female, with a biological sex of male, and the gender itself is therefore confused, hence the term 'transgendered'.
This is all a conceptual structure that's been highly explored. Those trying to do a similar thing with race are really exploring new ground. Sally Haslanger has distinguished between race and racial identity. Someone's race would be a fact of the matter determined by things outside one's own control. Most philosophers who write about this believe that social factors determine which criteria determine someone's race. Some of the factors that determine people's race are biological. Some might be social also. It has to be social factors that determine which criteria these are, though, since the biological factors are completely arbitrary, genetically speaking. I've argued for all this in an earlier post on racial classification.
Someone's racial identity, on the other hand, is a subjective matter partly determined by how one thinks of oneself and partly determined by how one thinks about how others think about one. This could change drastically, even quickly, depending on the circumstances. Suppose I discovered that my parents weren't my biological parents and that one of my biological parents was black. That might affect my racial identity. It presumably wouldn't change my race. There's probably much more fluidity in racial identity than there is in gender identity, simply because there really are two genotypic categories, and almost everyone fits into the two main phenotypic categories, even many of those whose genotype and phenotype don't match up. With racial categories, at best there are many borderline cases and mixings that aren't easily classified, and many people who legally fit into one category (black) are far more mixed than most people realize. Racial ancestry is at least one factor in determining race, and racial ancestry isn't immediately apparent, while phenotypic sex pretty much is.
So those are obvious differences between racial identity and gender identity. What about race and gender/sex? This is what really seemed interesting to me. 'Sex' is ambiguous between genotypic sex and phenotypic sex, with 'gender' referring to the social factors affecting sex/gender talk and thought. There's no analog to genotypic sex. There aren't any particular genotypic characteristics that you could use to divide people along racial lines. There are genes that have a greater tendency to appear in certain racial groups. Yet even the basic ones most people take to be determinative aren't enough to constitute a genotypic category unless you use social factors to decide which ones you will use. You're not getting it right out of genotype, as you do with genotypic sex. That's a basic biological, genetic difference. There's nothing like that with race.
Could you have something like phenotypic race? That's easier, but it's not like phenotypic sex, which often goes along with a basic genotypic division. Again, it would be determined by social factors and not biological ones, though it would indeed be a phenotypic division. It wouldn't be binary, as phenotypic sex almost is. It would also have to have much more vague boundaries than phenotypic sex. This may be what remains of biological views of race at the popular level. Since the older ideas of racial essences have been refuted by science, one might argue that those who still have such ideas are not referring to nothing with their racial terms but are in fact referring to a socially-caused phenotypic division with vague boundaries. After all, this is much closer to the kind of category they think they're referring to, and a best-candidate view of reference favors this as the best candidate for the reference of race terms that are intended to refer to races based on non-existent racial essences.
But then there also seems to be a notion more like gender. That's what social views of race take race to be. It's a category determined by social factors, as with phenotypic race, but the difference is that some of the factors that turn out to be criteria for determining racial groupings aren't biological at all but are social. What seems obvious to me after distinguishing between these two category groupings is that we might sometimes be referring to phenotypic race and other times be referring to social race.
If 'race' is context-sensitive, as the comment thread on my previous post started to move toward, then this is what that would look like. I'm not sure exactly what sorts of contexts would cause this shift in reference, but it seems to me that racial terms could very easily be like this, and it's a lot like our terms 'male' and 'female'. In many contexts, the truth conditions of our sentences are the same regardless of whether we disambiguate to gender or phenotypic or genotypic sex. In many contexts, the truth conditions of our sentennces are the same regardless of whether we disambiguate to phenotypic race or social race. Yet a number of contexts will bring out differences between these categories, requiring separating the concepts in our minds and in our language if we're to make careful distinctions. This work has been done to some degree in the realm of sex and gender, and I don't think it's been done very well in the realm of race.
[note: I'm disabling comments due to spam, but if you have a genuine comment to leave, go to my cross-posting of this post at Parableman]
Posted by Jeremy at 9:45 AM
May 20, 2004
Another Undergrad Blog
Richard Chappell, an undergrad whose blog I linked to earlier, asked me what other undergrad blogs I know of. Well, now I know of one more here. The blog is by Shieva Kleinschmidt, a WWU enfant terribile, whose wisdom is shown by her support of stuff ontology (we've correspondend about this a little bit-and she still has to read my paper!). Good to see her blogging... UPDATE: Also check out Will Davies' (@ Bristol) blog Badgerous, another undergrad blog, which has some good content (including a link to a good SJ Gould article which apparently makes hash of DD, and a good post on C. Wright. and skepticism, or, should I say, scepticism) .
Posted by MarkSteen at 11:51 AM | Comments (6)
May 18, 2004
Summer Philosophy Activities
We have two summer philosophy groups going on this summer, all of which should be of interest to the SU grads, and one of which might be of interest to others in the nearby area. Ishani Maitra is running a work in progress seminar which will meet every two weeks starting this Friday, where Eric Hiddleston will present his paper in progress on physical causation, which you can find here On either the 11th or 25th of June, Irem Kurtsal Steen, my favorite philosopher, will be presenting on either Russell and sense data, or on a work in progress on persistence. Somewhere a bit later I'll be presenting the third, and hopefully much shorter and tidied-up version of my 'How to be a Stuff-Process Ontologist.' I'll announce more presentations when they come up. Secondly, the meeting time for the modal logic reading/work group has been set. We'll be meeting on Thursdays at 4pm in the Dietl Room. The purpose of the modal logic group is for us grads to get more familiar with the various more popular systems of modal logic, as well as get a grasp on certain applications of same (we'll be somewhat ignoring completeness/soundness issues, which were well covered in Brown's course not too long ago). Our reading materials so far include: -Rod Girle's Modal Logics and Philosophy -The Chellas volume (sorry, forgot the title) -Mark Brown's modal logic manuscript -The Hughes and Cresswell -Varzi's online notes [any suggestions or critiques of materials welcome] Philosophy students who can commute here and would like to join us for the modal logic group are welcome. Our first readings are Girle, pp1-28, and the first chapter of the Chellas book. The first meeting is May 27th, where we'll also be formulating a syllabus of sorts for the rest of summer. If you're interested in joining, email me at marksteen@gmail.com .
Posted by MarkSteen at 12:01 PM | Comments (3)
May 16, 2004
Some undergraduate blogs
The undergrad blogs don't too often get a nod. I sometimes check out Personal Knowledge, which is mostly on philosophy of religion. Also you should check out Richard Chappell's blog (Richard is in New Zealand). Richard posts on a variety of topics.
Posted by MarkSteen at 5:18 PM | Comments (6)
May 11, 2004
What Is Race?
We haven't had much in the way of philosophical content on our new site, mostly because we moved right in the middle of grading season. I don't have the time to type up anything new, but I posted some of what I've been working on with the racial classification issue to my own blog not too long ago. I was going to post it to OrangePhilosophy, too, but I wanted to wait until the move, and then I wanted to wait until the next draft, but since there's been little here I'm going ahead with it anyway. I've developed this a bit further since writing this, but I haven't gotten anything seriously organized enough to post. I'm developing this into one of my area papers right now, so I really am looking for feedback. Also, be aware that most of it was originally written for an undergraduate course and could use some increase in its rigor. Update: Due to circumstances beyond my control, many links on my site got changed. The link in this entry is now correct again.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:48 AM | Comments (5)
May 10, 2004
Philosophy of Religion blog
Brian Weatherson congratulates us on our new location (quick thanks to Matthew again, may your beard never grow inward) but complains that the group philosophy blogs springing are institutionally based rather than topical, which would maximize the potential of the internet to gather people from around the world and also provide for more consistent and specialized discussion by those who are closer to being experts. I agree. Therefore, I've decided to pursue the possibility of a philosophy of religion blog, mostly because it's the one of my three main philosophical interests that I can't pursue as easily at Syracuse anymore given the faculty makeup. This would be hosted under Ektopos, as this blog and my own are. Matthew is interested, so it's not pure speculation. Three things I'd like feedback on: 1. Do you think this sort of thing would work? 2. Who would be good to have blogging on it? Are there enough bloggers who know philosophy or religion? Would we have to invite people who don't blog? 3. Can anyone think of any good names for a philosophy of religion blog? I haven't spent much time thinking about it myself and probably won't be able to devote any time to working on this for a while, but it's good to get others' thoughts in advance.
Posted by Jeremy at 12:00 PM | Comments (4)
May 9, 2004
Recent Comments
In case you haven't noticed, there's a list of recent posts in the left column (which will eventually become the right column, if we follow the advice of Matthew, our host). It's also possible to list the most recent comments. Do we want to list that in the sidebar also? It should be easy enough for me to copy my own source code for that into the template for this blog. We'd just have to decide how many to list. I suggest we start with the ten most recent comments. Right now we only have seven comments, so it won't list ten yet. Any thoughts?
Posted by Jeremy at 3:12 PM | Comments (2)
May 8, 2004
Some notes on how to catch plagiarizers, and, how to prevent plagiarism
I have a certain notoriety in the SU philosophy department for being an ardent and effective catcher of plagiarizers, around 35-45 to date in 5 � years of teaching (this number includes only the genuine heinous forms of plagiarizing, not the non-disciplinary-meriting plagiarizing done when one is uneducated about what constitutes plagiarizing, or is too ardent a practitioner of the uncited paraphrase, both of which merely merit a re-write). We�ll ignore the possibility that something about me makes more students plagiarize and operate instead on the assumption that the plagiarism is roughly equal, it�s just that others are missing them. Others often ask me, �how do you do it?�, and I don�t have any short answer, except an unhelpful �I look for irregularities�. In the following I�ll try to actually answer this question I frequently get in more detail, including all the possible indicators of plagiarism that I can think of that warrant doing at least some online research. Many of the following indicators can be innocent, merely indicating carelessness, poor citation skills, inconsistent methods of formatting, etc.. Some of these are so obvious as to barely merit mention, but I do so only out of a concern for completeness. Also note that these tips are mostly for introductory courses that freshmen tend to take. Much of what here seem warning signs would not be for, say, a 500-level course. Feedback and additional indicators that I may not have thought of are welcome. So, I hold that the following, if they come up, give you prima facie reasons for searching the web (or other sources). Almost none of these are at all sufficient for indicating that plagiarism has in fact occurred, however.
Indicators: 1. Bad Writing/Good Writing This, of course, is the most common cause for alarm, and sets bells off in even the beginning TA. Several paragraphs or sentences of piss-poor prose or moderate writing is followed by excellent writing, profundity, etc. 2. Differences of Style Often plagiarism is indicated not merely by the above irregularities, but less severe changes in style, where the quality overall is consistently poor or moderate. This often happens when a student buys a paper from a paper-mill site which, while on the same rough topic, is different enough so that the student had to customize it to fit the bill. Look especially for an introduction and conclusion that do not match the body of the paper in style, or coverage of one issue that differs in style quite a bit from the rest of the paper. 3. Citation Indicators Scan your students� endnotes and footnotes. Sometimes you�ll find that the citations that refer to the anthologized articles covered in class are to where the articles originally appeared, or to a different anthology/reader than you use. Often in this case the student bought the paper and just didn�t bother to check for these kinds of details. Also, look at the page numbers cited. Sometimes you�ll find that the page numbers they list have no relation to the page numbers of the articles in the anthology/reader you use, even if the rest of the bibliographic info is the same. Another red-flag is when the references used by the students in the paper are not to the papers you employed in the course, but rather to different papers on the same subjects by the same authors. For instance, suppose a student wants to write a paper on Taylor on free will. They will search google, find a paper on Taylor on free will, but in this paper the author speaks of Taylor�s treatment in another article than the one you used. Another warning sign is a particularly rich bibliography. Some freshman just happen to be well-motivated and genuinely interested in the topics and doing extra research, but most, of course, aren�t. Again, be wary when the bibliography mentions many outside sources, but few, or none of the original class materials. If you use a standard anthology, such as Reason and Responsibility, and you are using, say, the 11th edition, look at the bibliography. If they cite the fifth edition, something could be awry. Look for two entirely different styles of citation in the paper. For instance, in one place, a student might single-space and indent long paragraphs, in another place they are double-spaced and not indented. In one place, they might cite in parentheses, in another, footnotes. Of course this could always be sloppiness, but I have caught plagiarism by looking for this. 4. Content Indicators Make sure that the essay content carefully matches the essay question. Often you�ll find a paper that roughly matches the essay assignment, but is off in certain key respects. For instance, say your essay question asked about the differences between active voluntary euthanasia and passive voluntary euthanasia. If the student essay ignores this distinction and instead focuses on assisted suicide versus nonvoluntary euthanasia, it might not be mere sloppiness on the student�s part, but plagiarism. Often when students search on the �net for papers, they just want something close enough. I once caught a plagiarized paper on functionalism and identity theory because the student, who was asked to talk about their differences, and which theory is superior, spent a long time covering the distinction between type- and token- identity theory, and different varieties of functionalism. While of course this would be good and show a depth of understanding and commitment to research in many cases, it can also indicate that they just stole a paper which was in answer to a different essay question. Look for terminology that you didn�t use in the course and is unexplained in the student paper. While I did cover functionalism in one course, I was surprised to hear mention of �hermeneutic functionalism� in a student�s paper. Sure enough, Ned Block was one of my students. There�s a certain style for writing handouts which you should look out for in your student�s papers. When a paper reads like a list from a handout condensed down into straightforward prose, it could be taken from one. Also, sometimes a definition or an explanation just looks too good, too economical and graceful. Hopefully you have memorized your own current handouts, or handouts you wrote previously. Also, you should know, or have copies of, all the handouts that other current teachers of 107 (or 191) have, or have used. Many students have friends in other sections of the same course with different teachers, and they exchange handouts. Also, you should know the website content of your colleagues who teach the same courses. Often they will take material from there without citation, especially from Dan Orr and Jeremy Pierce, handout writers par excellance. Also, look at the content and see if any of it violates your explicit instructions as given in the assignment. For instance; no outside sources, focusing on three papers when you said to only focus on two, and so on. I�ve often found, if other things seem fishy, and if a website is cited often, I look at that website and have found that the student took a bunch of material from there without citation as well. This often is not intentional malicious plagiarism, however, but merely sloppiness. If a paper seems eerily familiar, then it just might be because you read it earlier, and another student wrote it, or, like in several cases of mine, that you wrote it yourself. A good reason to require every student to email you a copy of their papers as well. With the advent of google-mail, with search functions, we may want to require that all students send a copy of their paper to one email address that all teachers of a certain course, such as 107, would have access to. This would in effect amount to a paper database which could rid us of the problem of the frat and sorority paper files, where students re-issue old papers which are unsearchable for on the web. 5. Warning signs from outside the paper itself. Know your students. If one seems very dumb, and you can see that a certain paper is beyond them, even though it�s not very good, this of course is an indicator, though a very fallible one. If your course has two or more papers, keep copies of the first batch of papers around (for instance, by making them email you a copy as well), and remember the style of your student�s earlier paper(s). Students tend to plagiarize more often on the later paper(s) in the course rather than the earlier one(s). This is because, when they wrote the first paper, they had no idea that you might mark them down for affirming the consequent, straw-manning, completely misinterpreting a position, or spending a lot of time on the �casual argument� for the existence of God, �Unitarianism vs. Cantism�, or being unable to put a sentence together to save their life. Also, later in the semester students get more desperate as the grade piper prepares to collect, and their method of studying via beer-bonging to the Simpsons didn�t bring them quite the fruits they supposed. Anyways, if the second or third paper is much better than the first or second, you just might be a redneck, or, have a plagiarizer. Another variation of the second or third paper being plagiarized is if the first paper was not fit to wipe your bottom with, and, even though you gave them a chance to re-write, they didn�t, they refused to meet you in office hours to work on their later papers or to seek help on re-writing, and yet the later paper was golden. Some more points about knowing your students. Has your student, who just gave you an excellent, or merely good paper, missed 10 out of 14 weeks of classes? Has the student told you lame excuses in the past, flaked on showing up for appointments, lied about trivial things before, and so on? Does this student really need this class to graduate, keep a scholarship, and so on, but is doing poorly in the course, and shows no genuine desire to put forth the effort needed to do well? More important than catching plagiarizing of course is keeping it from happening in the first place. But, my main emphasis was on catching (since this is what people ask me about), so, I�ll keep this list brief. I do think, though, that enacting these policies has lowered the plagiarism rate. Ways to Avoid Plagiarizing a) Be very clear about the penalties of plagiarizing and what constitutes plagiarizing. Be sure to clarify in both handouts and when you talk about paper-writing in class. b) Make a rule that no papers can have over 33% of their content be either in the form of quotes or paraphrases. [this merely avoids the less pernicious kind of plagiarism] c) Give a copy of your school or department�s academic dishonesty policy to your students, both with your syllabus, and when you hand out essay assignments. d) Require your students to sign a document to hand in with their papers that declares that all the material not cited is their own, and that all paraphrases and quotes are properly cited. e) Require meetings with your students to go over rough drafts. f) Encourage students to meet with you when they have problem with their papers. g) Do not be completely inflexible with deadlines. Sometimes the vague �personal problem� excuses are genuine. There are additional problems that students face other than illness, family emergency, or lacrosse.
Posted by MarkSteen at 3:29 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
May 5, 2004
Well Here We Are
Welcome to OrangePhilosophy! This is the second incarnation of OP. We used to be located at www.orangephilosophy.blogspot.com, where you can find the older entries. The site still needs some tinkering, but I'm a bit busy now with grading for the finals. Expect some changes in the coming days, and an increase in the amount of blogging as we all finish up our finals and grading.
Posted by MarkSteen at 12:17 AM | Comments (7)