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    • Hyperemployment and gender (guest post)

      Gordon Hull sends us this guest post:

      —

      Writing at the Atlantic, Ian Bogost develops the concept of “hyperwork” to describe the constantly-on conditions of work in contemporary society.  The gist of the argument is that we (technology users, anyway) are overworked because we are doing a lot of jobs.  As he puts it, “No matter what job you have, you probably have countless other jobs as well. Marketing and public communications were once centralized, now every division needs a social media presence, and maybe even a website to develop and manage. Thanks to Oracle and SAP, everyone is a part-time accountant and procurement specialist. Thanks to Oracle and Google Analytics, everyone is a part-time analyst.”  And that’s before we get to try to manage email.  Most of these extra jobs aren’t paid, but the loss of money is not nearly alarming as the loss of time.

      At Cyborgology, my colleague Robin James takes up one point that Bogost does not make: that the new jobs we are all working are, by and large, traditionally jobs held by women or other minorities, for which traditionally “feminine” attributes of caring and nurturing are useful.  She wonders aloud whether the phenomena of hyperwork will thus alter our notions of femininity.

      Another point to which Bogost gestures but that needs more emphasis relates to what Tiziana Terranova, Paolo Virno, Franco Berardi, Antonio Negri and others of the Italian “autonomist” school of thought call “cognitive capitalism,” which is basically a Marxist interpretation and critique of the “net economy.” 

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    • Revolutionary democracy and statist “democracy” (reflections on Mandela pt 2)

      There is a theme I'm seeing over and over in the coverage of Mandela's funeral – in everything from mainstream press, to "expert" commentators both inside and outside the press, and essays on the left. People note how brilliant, effective, humane, democratic, strategic, etc. Mandela was when leading the resistance movement. Then they note that he was less effective, less strategic, less brilliant, less democratic as president. (Those on the left add that he began collaborating with international corporations, imperialist or otherwise disreputable states, etc.) And then they move onto how much this negative  trend has continued and in some cases wonder whether there is a leader who can bring South Africa back to the excitement and progress of the revolution. 

      What is striking is that everyone takes this history to reflect on Mandela, on Mandela's legacy as a person. It is if the main observation is that this guy was great for a time and only good later, to be followed by people who were massively worse. And so we are led to take from this the lesson that we need to find someone who is as he was earlier but able to maintain this disciplined humanity as president.

      No one that I have seen has so much as entertained the possibility that this difference might imply not changes in Mandela, but the difference between democratic voluntary movement coalitions and institutionalized states, even ones with marvelous constitutions like that of South Africa. If we did consider seriously this other possibility – that it is the structures that were the independent variable in this experiment – might we possibly be led to the thought that the way such revolutions are organized is a better model for society than the way states are?

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    • Personal vignettes from the anti-apartheid struggle – (1st of 2 reflections on the passing of Mandela)

      My own involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle began in the mid 1980s when I was a graduate student at Pitt. It was a formative period for me, a time when I was learning to be an activist and organizer, and taking that on as part of my life and identity. throughout that time, Mandela was a symbol more than a real live figure.  We read his speeches and analysis, studied his life. But locked up in prison, he was not someone we interacted with, even from a distance.  Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, and many others were the ongoing partners in our thinking.  Numerous less well known representatives came to our campuses and engaged with us directly.  Mandela was this figure on "free Nelson Mandela" posters, but nonetheless important for all that.  Of course this change with his release from prison and the transformation of roles that he took on as a result. In this first post, I want to reflect on the importance that this time had for me, by passing on a few little vignettes.  I invite others to do the same in comments. this might seem odd, talking about my own life on the occasion of the passing of one of the world-historical greats. But as I see it, a good measure of the importance of Mandela lies in the changes he brought about in so many thousands of less significant people like me. 

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    • Wittgenstein and Enactivism

      Let me begin with two of what I think of as an extremely simple, indeed grossly over-simplified, truism. Wittgenstein told us that meaning is use. He also told us that meaning should not be understood as primarily consisting in the relationship that holds between a name and its bearer. My truism is this: Wittgenstein’s two dicta are logically independent. It might be that meaning is use: that is, it might be that ultimately anything I mean has to be explicated in terms of something I use it for.  For instance, it might be that every time I utter ‘cat’, I am doing something cat-related. It may nonetheless be true that the best way to understand the word ‘cat’ is as naming the concept CAT. Conversely, it may be that my utterances of ‘cat’ have to be understood in complex, situationally variable ways, so that the word cannot be explicated as naming anything. Nonetheless, it may be true that meaning is independent of use. In short, one of these dicta is about the communicative and pragmatic aspects of language, and the other about semantics, and though closely related in Wittgenstein’s thought, they are logically independent and they have to be argued for separately.

      In a similar vein, the meaning-is-use claim is logically independent of Wittgenstein’s no-inner-mentality ideology, unless you follow a stolidly behaviourist line of thought. You might think that understanding the meaning of ‘cat’ is a matter of behaving in a certain way with regard to cats. But this has little to do with whether or not you change your inner state when you come to understand ‘cat’.

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    • GMO paper retraction produces yet another Elsevier boycott

      In an earlier post, I suggested that the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) should not have retracted a paper that purported to show toxic effects in rats fed GM corn.  Now just over 100 scientists have signed a petition protesting the retraction, stating that the retraction violated the norms of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), of which FCT is a member.  The scientists note concerns about the impartiality of the process (e.g., the the appointment of ex-Monsanto employee Richard Goodman to the newly created post of associate editor for biotechnology at FCT) and assert, "The retraction is erasing from the public record results that are potentially of very great importance for public health. It is censorship of scientific research, knowledge, and understanding, an abuse of science striking at the very heart of science and democracy, and science for the public good."

      The scientists are boycotting the journal's publisher, Elsevier; they will "decline to purchase Elsevier products, to publish, review, or do editorial work for Elsevier."

      This is one more black eye for Elsevier that we can add to the removal of papers from Academia.edu, which Catarina recently blogged about, and the pre-existing boycott of Elsevier, discussed on this blog many times (see, e.g., here,  here, here, and here).

    • Simon Baron-Cohen’s Autism-Spectrum Quotient test

      Simon is comedian Sacha-Baron Cohen's (AKA Ali G., Borat, Bruno) brother, and also does philosophically interesting work on psychopathy.

      Wired has the test HERE.

      What's interesting about the test is that 80% of the people who scored 32 or above then went on to pass other diagnostic tests for what's now called Autism Spectrum Disorder. Pretty impressive for a test consisting of 50 questions involving this kind of self-reporting.

      In any case, this is a good excuse to revel in Simon's brother flummoxing (recently incarcerated) evolution denier Kent Hovind at right. One can score pretty high on Simon's test and still find this kind of thing hilarious.

    • Gender and philosophy in the Netherlands (Guest Post)

      This is a guest post by Anthonie Meijers. He is professor of philosophy at Eindhoven University of Technology, and chair of the board of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy.

      ————————————-

      There is a serious gender problem in philosophy in the Netherlands. In the 11 departments of philosophy the numbers of permanent staff members are roughly the following:  assistant professors: 110, of which 25 are women; associate professors: 45, of which 5 are women; full professors:  65, of which 7 are women (I have not included part-time professors; this data is based on the websites of the departments).  You may think that this just indicates that women have to work harder to get advanced positions at Dutch universities (i.e. that the problem is only theirs). But there is sufficient evidence now that a gender bias is built into the system. This implies that men are part of the problem and that they will have to take their responsibility. The solution is not easy though. It requires a package of measures. What can we do?

      It is always good to raise awareness, but what really helps is to move beyond awareness-raising with a few very simple institutional measures that can be implemented right away. Why not make it a rule that 30% of all invited speakers at conferences are women, or that 30% of the papers in special issues are by female philosophers? The Board of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy (OZSW) will discuss such measures for activities organized by the OZSW later this year. There may of course be exceptions to this rule, but these exceptions need to be justified. Similarly, we should stick to the rule, formally adopted by many universities, that selection committees should include at least two women.

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    • The Dogs of Istanbul

      Spending a short holiday, and of course, seeing all the fabled sights of this fabulous city. 

      Back one day from several hours on a cruise up the Bosphorus, Lynne and I settled in to some comfortable sofas in a restaurant called Pallatium (or something like that) with a glass floor that looks down on to an excavated palace and a view of the street. It was the latter that fascinated us an in particular, a bright, intelligent, dog who looks very much like this one:

      DSCF1362

      (Note the tagged ear. See below for explanation.)

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    • Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu

      It's very ugly (via many of my Twitter contacts). Go check the whole story, but here's the beginning:

      Lots of researchers post PDFs of their own papers on their own web-sites. It’s always been so, because even though technically it’s in breach of the copyright transfer agreements that we blithely sign, everyone knows it’s right and proper. Preventing people from making their own work available would be insane, and the publisher that did it would be committing a PR gaffe of huge proportions.

      Enter Elsevier, stage left. Bioinformatician Guy Leonard is just one of several people to have mentioned on Twitter this morning that Academia.edu took down their papers in response to a notice from Elsevier.

    • Brazilian music on Fridays: ‘Free Nelson Mandela’

      BMoF today could not but honor Nelson Mandela, without a doubt one of the greatest humans in the 20th century and possibly of all times. There is probably no better way to honor him than with music – a man who once said “it is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world and at peace with myself”. There is much in common between the place that music occupies in people’s lives in South Africa and in Brazil, and this statement by Mandela encapsulates how many Brazilians feel about life, music and dancing (that's certainly the case for this particular Brazilian…).

      I found this 1990 video of the pop band Paralamas do Sucesso performing ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, where they reveal their roots as a ska/reggae band. They appeared in the 1980s, and provided much of the soundtrack for my childhood and early teens. They continue to play and record to this day, despite some set-backs (in particular the ultra-light accident of the band leader Herbert Vianna in the early 2000s, which killed his wife and left him paraplegic).

      So let’s all get up and sing for (and with) Mandela, and thank him for all he’s done to make this world a better place. (The music itself starts at 1.10.)

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