Philosophy and Science of Social Justice
Discussions of justice in the 21st century focus increasingly on issues like sexism, racism, transphobia, and ableism. But what are things like race, gender, and disability? Are they biological differences, or are they socially-constructed? Is there such a thing as “implicit” prejudice? Can “equal treatment” sometimes be unjust? In this course we will examine discussions from the humanities and the sciences on topics such as structural and psychological oppression, microaggressions, implicit bias, and other topics. We will also examine how these theoretical perspectives can be informed by scientific methods, as well as how theories of social justice can be used to criticize and inform our scientific practices.
Course materials
Introductory stuff for the first weeks:
Syllabus, Spring 2022 (subject to change; see TCU Online for most up-to-date version)
Student Skills packet (please read the “Guidelines for Reading,” also available online)
“Philosophical Methods” (7 pages; please read before attempting assignment 1)
Links
Liberalism
You can hear Michael Sandel in his own words, describing his concerns about the right vs. the good (you should imagine Rawls as taking Kant’s side, and Sandel as having Aristotelian worries about Rawls). There are also videos of Sandel’s lectures on the original position and Rawls’ principles of justice.
Authenticity
The New Yorker ran a profile of Charles Taylor in 2016 about some of his recent work and his response to recent political developments in the United States. (Here is a PDF version if you can’t access the New Yorker.)
An editorial in the Irish Times by Conchúr Ó Giollagáin addresses the disappearance of the Irish language in Ireland, and echoes many of Charles Taylor’s concerns about French in Québec. Letters (a letter here and a letter here) reflect some ambivalence among other Irish citizens. NB: the Gaeltachtaí (singular: Gaeltacht) are districts where the Irish language is recognized as the primary language, and has extra protections.
I often ramble about music when explaining Taylor’s response to Saul Bellow. If you want to learn more about appreciating music outside of the Western “classical” tradition, there’s loads of stuff on YouTube. Check out e.g. Adam Neely on “music theory” and white supremacy, which includes some discussion of Indian classical music (44 minutes but very engaging), or 12tone on the structure of pitch and rhyme in rap, which is poorly captured by standard musical notation (12 minutes).
If you want to learn about an example of positive life scripts being created, you might be interested Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s documentary And Still I Rise: Black America since MLK. I draw your attention to this excerpt in particular (Panopto, with captions; 6 minutes).
The racial contract
For more on the history of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, listen to this segment from WNYC’s On the Media (18 minutes).
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi suggests that racist ideas don’t cause racist policies; rather, racist policies cause racist ideas. Hear a short interview with On the Media at WNYC.
The NPR show Code Switch always has interesting and relevant stories. If you're looking for a good place to start, try this episode about Mary Hamilton. There is a detailed transcript available at the link, if you prefer reading to listening.
My friend Leif Hancox-Li wrote a paper that draws on work in the philosophy of science to criticize Charles Mills’ discussion of ideal theory and idealization in political philosophy. The paper tackles some issues we haven’t discussed, but it’s still quite accessible—it is light on jargon, and patiently explains all its important concepts and examples.
There is a 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary about James Baldwin (I Am Not Your Negro). Sometimes it’s free for Amazon Prime subscribers. See write-up here.
Structural oppression
If you’re looking for more about cultural assimilation through education policy, there’s an episode of Radiolab about the Carlisle Indian School and the early history of American football. It’s a good listen.
The podcast 99% Invisible has an episode on the “arsenal of exclusion,” the ways that things like furniture and streets can be designed to exclude people, resulting in de facto segregation. It focuses on Baltimore (13 minutes).
You might also check out this video about the “Troost Wall” in Kansas City and its history. It also includes a primer on structural racism (13 minutes).
Ijeoma Oluo storified an introductory discussion about privilege that might interest some of you.
The Bechdel Test movie list. Look up a handful of your favorite films to see how they measure up. This page also has resources for reading more about the Bechdel test.
After our concluding discussion on the subtlety of structural oppression (and related to our discussion of Jay Smooth), I might recommend a 2015 piece by Arthur Chu on “outrage culture” and the value of consciousness-raising.
Feminism
A friend of mine spoke out in 2017 about sexism in the Irish business community. Read about it here.
A while back The Onion ran an article about objectification. We may discuss this in class.
I may also bring up a 2014 study about women and body hair, discussed succinctly here and with some more consideration here.
My friend Arthur Chu writes from time to time about social justice. This piece of his, about entitlement, misogyny, and the terrible mass shooting of women in a sorority house in Isla Vista, is worth a look. [CW: sexual violence.]
Debbie Cameron writes about policing women’s use of language. The article is a reply to another piece advising women to avoid the word “just.”
Social construction of gender
If you want a primer on the science of trans identity (with a little info on intersex phenomena, too), you could check out the Science Vs podcast episode on the subject.
Or consider Samantha Hancox-Li’s take on the science of oppression, which focuses on scientific and medical approaches to the trans experience.
Social construction of race
In 2018 the New Yorker Radio Hour featured an interview with the funny and charming Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in which Adichie describes her experience as a black immigrant. Scroll down to the segment called “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Discovering America” (or listen to the whole episode if you like).
Much has been made about the strange case of Rachel Dolezal AKA Nkechi Amare Diallo. Some philosophers have weighed in on what they make of her and the media attention her situation has received. Some of these philosophers refer to Sally Haslanger's view (which we discuss in class). Charles W. Mills also weighs in, as does Quayshawn Spencer whom we’ll read later.
For more on transracial adoption, you might be interested in this episode of NPR’s Code Switch podcast, featuring a lot of stories from transracial adoptees.
If you’d like to see Sally Haslanger in action, there are videos of her lectures in YouTube. The videos are long and not of excellent quality, however, and may not be very accessible.
The philosophy podcast The Partially Examined Life has an episode from 2012 about philosophy of race (with guest Lawrence Ware). Their discussion of DuBois and West makes contact in interesting ways with our topic of race and racial identity.
Disability
See Stella Young’s TEDx talk about disability and “inspiration porn.”
NPR’s TED Radio Hour did a segment on Daniel Kish and his echolocation. Personally I think this audio segment is much better than the original TED talk (embedded in the link above).
For a history of (some of) the Disability Rights Movement in the U.S., listen to this podcast episode of NPR’s Throughline on the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Listen here to learn about the history of curb cuts: how disability rights activists fought for them, what people think of them now, and how the concept has been applied to other domains (like service counters and software design). A story from 99% Invisible.
Elizabeth Barnes has a great (and accessible) lecture on disability pride and hermeneutical injustice. The video quality isn’t great, but Barnes’ talk is engaging and thought-provoking. The talk is the basis of a book chapter that I can share with you if you’d rather read.
Implicit bias
If you’d like to see Tamar Gendler in action (and I recommend it; she is one of my favorite academic speakers) you can check out several of her lectures on YouTube. This one is relevant to our topics for this class, and if you skip to time index 32:18 you can see Professor Gendler introduce her students to what she calls “alief.”
Jennifer Saul (who is cited in Washington & Kelly’s paper) has an excellent talk on YouTube about implicit bias, how philosophy can teach us about it, and what we can do to reduce it. (The automatic captions are not great, but if there is demand for a transcript I may produce one. Let me know.)
If you’d like to read more about implicit bias in student evaluations of teaching, here is a dynamic bibliography.
You might be surprised to learn that implicit bias affects computer programs, too, even when they’re designed through machine-learning instead of hard-wired by humans. Roughly this is because if the program is trained on biased data, it will learn to reproduce those biases. If you want to learn more, there’s a nice, clear explainer from Vox. Or there’s a nice article by my colleague Catherine Stinson about computer science and Frankenstein. Or, for a comprehensive list of resources, check out this extensive bibliography by my colleague Abeba Birhane.
Microaggressions
To learn more about microaggressions and their health effects, you can check out this episode of the excellent NPR podcast Code Switch. You can listen at that link, or you can read the detailed transcript.
To see (or hear) Scott Lilienfeld talk frankly about his 2017 paper, check out his appearance of the Half-hour of Heterodoxy podcast (audio and video versions are both embedded). I wouldn’t endorse this podcast in general, though.
Scientific racism and ethics
Radiolab has a series on the troubled history of the scientific concept of intelligence (listen from bottom to top). This episode on eugenics is particularly relevant to our discussion.
Annie Minoff and Elah Feder at Undiscovered discuss the fact that African Americans don’t tend to participate in clinical trials, and examine the causes and consequences. A good listen.
Wendy Zuckerman tells a story about American eugenics and the history of the word “moron” at her podcast Science Vs. Well worth checking out.
The Irish podcast Our Sexual History has a 15-minute episode about the history of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments (or see my annotated transcript of the episode).
Radiolab has a 25-minute segment on the story of Henrietta Lacks. The segment is part of a longer episode about famous tumors, and the other segments are interesting as well (though not related to scientific racism).
Understanding science
My friend and colleague Catherine Stinson, who is the most insightful philosopher of computer science I know of, has an op-ed on the need for ethics education and standards in AI and machine learning. I recommend it highly. (Bonus: she coins the term “nerd-sightedness.”)
The WNYC radio show On the Media has an edition of their Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook on understanding science news. Their story focuses on healthcare news, but many of their lessons can be generalized to popular science.
Epistemic injustice
Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube has a YouTube video on hermeneutical resources, by way of theoretical language and a discussion of “Newspeak” from George Orwell’s 1984.
Language and prestige
If you want to hear Geoffrey Pullum speak, there’s a neat interview where he discusses grammar and the global status of English. Or you can learn the truth about the passive voice.
The NPR podcast Code Switch (whose title is a linguistic reference) has a great episode called “Talk American” on American accents, prestige, and the “newscaster” accent.
Based on this image, which is based on this article.