A Year in Review
Reflecting on the Blog in 2023
As we are nearing the end of 2023, I want to look back and reflect upon some of the many inquisitive, insightful, and enjoyable articles that the Blog of the APA has been lucky enough to host this year. While those listed are only a scant glimpse of what our authors offered public philosophy this year, this list offers a peek into which posts piqued my interest.
With so many articles to choose from for each month this year, compiling this list was difficult — so drop us a comment with some of your favorites below!
January – Is it all in my Head? Institutional Sexism in Medicine
Taking the January spot is this piece by Deniz Durmuş, for her poignant detailing of her experience with chronic illness and the longing for clarity about her condition. I most appreciate how she brings big ideas about the structural embeddedness of patriarchy in science down to earth through her own story. From amorphous mystery to a clearly defined condition, women’s systemic preclusion from medical advancement is depicted through the consequences it had on her.
This aspect is especially powerful in her discussion of Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice and Christine Miserandino’s concept of spoon theory. In it, Durmuş describes how meaningful it is to simply have the epistemological tools to name and explain one’s condition. While this idea can have political or legal applications, it also is chiefly personal: naming your experience allows you to begin making sense of it. For Durmuş, getting a diagnosis not only told her that what she was experiencing was real but also enabled her to make sense of her new reality. In being systemically left out of the discussion, too many women are left in the dark about their health, a fundamental part of lived experience.
Consider this excerpt:
The hardest thing to explain about chronic illness is the “chronic” part. This is where the spoon theory came in very handy for me. In my interactions with friends, family, and institutions, I struggled with the expectation that my condition improves or abates in time. […] The spoon theory provided me with invaluable tools to do that. To give an example, when I do not even have the energy to explain why I cannot attend an event, I simply send a link to Miserandino’s blog post with a note that says “out of spoons.”
February – The Dead Eyes of “Decision to Leave”
Conall Cash reflects on the Korean film Decision to Leave for this list’s February placement. Following a central cinematographic theme of the film in question, this piece contends with the idea of perspective and the motif of a ‘dead eye.’ Whether literal dead eyes in a body or figurative versions in the form of CCTV cameras, Cash uses the film to ponder the many empty vessels watching us in everyday life. Most compelling is the juxtaposition of life being viewed by the unliving—and it is an inescapable occurrence.
A world in which two people could meet without each knowing themselves or the other too well, without seeing them too clearly (a dead eye is the only eye that doesn’t blink), because all would remain shrouded in the ‘mist’ of a world not penetrated by a reifying and calculating vision, a world to which they would remain attached, their commitment to dignity and their passion expressing their belonging to this world.
Without delving into Foucauldian fantasies, Cash shows how the film uses the ubiquity of our being surveilled as subjects to force us to question how well we know ourselves and others compared to the overseeing apparatus.
March – Ableism and ChatGPT: Why People Fear It Versus Why They Should Fear It
From Mich Ciurria, we have March’s contemplation on new technology and accessibility. Like many new inventions, ChatGPT promises innovation in more ways than it can deliver and with consequences beyond its control. Ciurria parses the nuance of ChatGPT’s pros and cons eloquently, from its possible perpetuation of social biases to its ability to assist marginalized people.
One such example she provides relates to language:
My own worry about ChatGPT is that its routine use will further marginalize and stigmatize non-standard vernaculars, feminine rhetorical styles, and dysfluent communication, and, by extension, the marginalized speakers who use them. If bot-generated text is widely regarded as “normal” and “correct,” then alternative ways of communicating will be seen as wrong and inferior by comparison.
Despite ChatGPT’s ability to understand different ways of speaking English, generating its responses in a singular voice erodes the diversity of English-language speakers. Indeed, Ciurria is hesitant about what the LLM's creators install as the default or ‘correct’ vernacular. While it forms its database from an array of sources with a variety of vernaculars, that all of the text it generates is standardized to a specific style is both telling and warranting discussion. She expounds upon this theme among others, but I found the not-so-often discussed issue of ChatGPT aiding the erasure of difference valuable and essential to consider as technology becomes more and more integrated into everyday life.
Further writing on the topic:
April – Irigaray and Contemporary Feminist Politics
While I have a predisposition for enjoying Luce Irigaray’s writing, I especially appreciated Jennifer Carter’s application of Irigaray’s work to contemporary issues in this post from April. Irigaray’s work challenges many prevailing ideals in queer theory and third-wave feminist philosophy. However, this is not out of a disagreement with the overall project but rather from a different way of conceptualizing liberation. Opting for a horizontal relationality of subjects, Carter explains that in preserving the discursive differences between gender/sex identities, we can affirm all experiences whilst neutralizing their meaning given by patriarchy. Irigaray’s subversion of both patriarchy and contemporary theorizing is a lesson in the genealogy of identity relations.
Carter continues, writing:
She insists on dismantling masculine standards for all, and advocates for cultivating different values not conforming to the tradition. Her critiques are radical, but do not fall into the tropes of radical feminism that sometimes become unnecessarily pessimistic.
Irigaray embraces a rejection of patriarchy whilst maintaining a notion of sexuate difference. Identity is a complex and convoluted concept that can be both empowering and oppressive. Therefore, Irigaray’s ability to parse what’s problematic about difference whilst retaining what makes it affirming is a valuable look at the process of individuation and identity construction. Carter’s writing here takes the April spot for reminding us of Irigaray’s unique interventions into feminism.
Further writing on the topic:
May – Coffee and Communism
In this insightful interview from May, Ryan Bastidas takes us outside of the Anglocentric realm to think about communism from another perspective. Bastidas confronts the American use of communism as a boogeyman through his interviews with a Quechua immigrant from Peru and a young Georgian immigrant undergraduate student. The discussion the three had is important not only because it sheds light on lesser-discussed experiences with communism but also because it challenges single-sided histories. For example, the conversation with the Georgian student elucidated the benefits that communism had for the working-class towns she grew up in and challenged the misconception perpetuated in the US that women were restricted under communism. Similarly, the Quechuan man provides a more measured view of communism than we find in the US; while critical of communism, he nevertheless acknowledged what was beneficial.
With political discourse — especially when related to Marxism — so polarized and contentious in the US, reading well-intentioned and productive conversations like the one Bastidas facilitated is a valuable reminder of what progress can and should look like. And, in Bastidas’ words, reflecting on their discussion:
Both were unforgiving of the exploitation of people through misinformation and outright harm. They agreed it was unlikely that communism could eliminate all corruption. However, the Georgian student saw that working and poor people still found it more beneficial to them when compared to their current life under capitalism.
June – Depression and the Good
Brian de Kenessey occupies the June section with a philosophical reflection on depression and mental health. With his poignant observation that “philosophers are far more likely to suffer from depression than to write about it,” he uses philosophy to interrogate how depression skews one’s relationship with value. In other words, he shows how depression confronts both applied and metaethical questions regarding the good.
A person who experiences value in terms of how well the world matches what they want is always vulnerable to depression: all it takes is for the world to fall sufficiently out of sync with their desires. The lesson of this may be that desire is the wrong way to relate to value.
He is writing in the hopes of using philosophy to help people out of their depression. Through a philosophical reinterpretation, he suggests we change how we relate to our values: pursuing the good becomes an act of appreciation rather than desire. While everyone relates to their experiences with mental health differently, de Kenessey generously shares his personal experience and provides a perspective that worked for him, and may work for others.
July – Overcoming Cognitive Bias with Algorithms
For July, Cass Sunstein provides a deep dive into algorithms and how they deal with biases. He argues that while algorithms outperform humans in many processing tasks and can overcome the biases we hold, they nevertheless struggle with more local, nuanced, and particular cases of prediction. While the algorithm might perform better than judges in deciding whether or not a defendant should be released on bail, its ability to determine whether two people will fall in love is less promising.
In his comprehensive analysis of algorithmic and human abilities to parse biases, Sunstein makes two crucial claims: algorithms are better at responding to tasks where eliminating bias will immediately solve the situation, but when the situation is more context-specific and reliant on nuances of emotion, social paradigms, and colloquial meaning they have a long way to go.
In the case of predicting the effects of social interactions, he writes:
the real problem is that the relevant data are simply not available in advance, which is why accurate predictions are not possible – not now, and not in the future, either.
While Sunstein shows that algorithms can prove useful for some tasks, how many domains they should be integrated into is questionable. Indeed, how accurate are algorithms in most other contexts? While they may be useful for—or better than—humans in some situations, do they (and, importantly, can they) truly offer as much as their proponents claim?
Further writing on this topic:
August – The Crisis of Policing in a Neoliberal Era
When the goals of policing become opaque and confused and when police officers act without any consent or knowledge of the communities that they are policing, then a legitimation crisis emerges. That crisis is growing and threatening the peace of the social order.
Paul A. Brienza diagnoses the current crisis of policing in this post from August thusly. He interrogates the problem of those experiencing mental health issues being dealt with first and foremost by police. He questions how we treat some of the most vulnerable in society and arrives at a political critique centered on neoliberalism. With markets disincentivizing the funding of alternative social services for aiding those in times of crisis—mental health-related or otherwise—the police become relegated as responders to any and all situations. Without proper training for the specific needs of the specific situations they are called to, needs are not met and the problems of people are pathologized and criminalized, solving nothing.
Therefore, Brienza suggests another look at calls to divest funding from the police toward building up critical social infrastructures that can adequately address non-criminal emergencies. Otherwise, as he mentions in reference to the philosophy of Agamben, police can suspend the norms as they see fit when addressing the marginalized.
September – Can We Get Better at Enjoying Art?
Margot Witte helps us reconsider how we engage with art in her article for September. This piece is an exploration of sensation and curation, asking how we can and should approach art. Do we immerse ourselves in the work in front of us, imagine what it would be like to be the artist, or reflect on the collection of objects and people around us?
They write:
We can think of art as part of a communal project, and of aesthetic experiences as something we do together. When we think of art this way, the other people in our environment cease to be distractions from the aesthetic experience and become integral parts of it. We let our attention expand such that it’s directed not only towards the piece of art itself, but also to the people around it. And this changes our aesthetic experience.
But, as they hold, there are plenty of different ways of experiencing artwork, and we must be open to this. The phenomenology of visiting an art museum is up to the visitor. Understanding this allows us to meet difficulty differently: if there are people talking loudly, Witte challenges us to embrace that distraction as part of the aesthetic experience. They give us an important reminder that there is not one singular way to experience art, which can sometimes feel difficult to approach, but many; and, welcoming a variety of experiences can offer, Witte writes, new ways of appreciating and valuing art.
October – Iran’s Woman Life Freedom Movement and the Critique of Mandatory Hijab
On the one-year anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death, Zeinab Nobowati reflects on the movement that her death catalyzed. In this comprehensive review, Nobowati discusses the colonial and western feminist view of the movement, confronting those perspectives and the nuance they lack.
Whilst the mainstream, western treatment of hijabi women solely regards any headcovering as solely a symbol of oppression, Nobowati notes that the overcorrection often utilized to say there is no oppression of women in Muslim majority-countries is similarly harmful. She thus holds that a robust, transnational feminist account is required to reconcile the many perspectives as well as fight the conflations of religion and politics.
As Nobowati’s writing here is thorough, to avoid reducing her argument to any one idea, I’ll leave you with a powerful excerpt:
Mandatory hijab, far from being a problem of tradition, is in a sense both a product of colonial modernity and the anti-colonial resistance against it. In mandatory hijab, we see an interesting case of policing women’s bodies in which transnational relations of power and local anti-imperialist sentiments unite against women and their freedom of choice. Although veiling is seen merely as a traditional form of clothing by many, a closer look shows that it has been, like any other item of clothing, a product of historical relations of power. Protestors in Iran and the Iranian diaspora show in their signs and slogans that these protests are not against an oppressive tradition, or one corrupt government per se, but against patriarchy’s control over women’s bodies in all the complex forms that it takes.
November – Who Is Innocent? Thinking Morally Amidst the War Between Israel and Hamas
The November entry on this list comes from Hossein Dabbagh, who uses the framework of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to think about the recent and ongoing conflict in the Levant. Despite IHL being primarily a legal framework, Dabbagh employs it for what it may lend to the discussion of ethics. The retooling of this framework from its original or intended locus caught my attention.
Without delving too deeply into the concept or the conflict, what is of specific importance is the notion of innocence and how it becomes an ideal malleable to the needs of the political. On all sides of a conflict, the definition and attribution of innocence skew — this is worth reflecting on. And, this is what IHL being used toward ethics can help us with. As Dabbagh argues, it delineates between individual and nation, affirming the value of human life regardless of affiliation and situation.
With that, consider this essential snippet from Dabbagh:
War blurs the line between complicity and innocence. Philosophical introspection compels us to evaluate these terms beyond their superficial understanding. Blanket attributions of culpability, often leading to collective punishment, undermine the essence of individual responsibility and moral agency. […] Treating individuals as moral agents, capable of independent thought and action, rather than mere extensions of their affiliations or geographies, upholds the very essence of moral justice by recognizing their capacity for moral agency.
December – The Multiverse and Anthropic Principle are not Enough
Completing the list is this forthcoming entry confronting life, existence, and meaning from Timothy Anderson. Between religion, theoretical physicists, and existentialists, it can seem overwhelming to parse the plenitude of answers offered. Ontological and teleological proofs are just some of the many perspectives for deciphering existence.
Therefore, as Anderson offers:
It is as if we came upon a world made of beings made of Lego. We inferred that world must be finely tuned for Lego life, and someone objected, saying, no, life simply adapted to the existence of Lego. The issue isn’t that the building blocks are Lego. The issue is that there are building blocks at all.
The anthropic principle aims to subvert these questions by centering on the observer of these blocks themselves. How or why there are blocks is irrelevant to someone not experiencing them, so this principle concludes that the universe is finely tuned given that someone is around to experience it. In other words, it proposes a solipsistic proof of sorts, in which people experiencing and existing is proof of a well-ordered and designed existence.
Like Anderson, I, too, find this unsatisfying; it makes no attempt at explaining how existence came to be. However, here is not the place to outline the many different theories that do make such an attempt. Anderson’s post offers analysis on a few more theories. And, while we cannot be immediately sure which is correct, we can at least be certain of its complexity.
The universe has a kind of internal complexity apart from life that is unlikely to be the product of random chance nor merely the product of the anthropic principle. And you might wonder, if we could observe it long enough and speed up what we see so that we could see it all unfold over billions of years, we might even start to believe the universe itself is alive: finely tuned by the same processes that allowed life on Earth to exist.
Looking forward to reading the remaining Blog posts of 2023 and all that 2024 has to offer.
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