Welcome to Science Visions, Vol. 3, No. 4. Happy 2022! Happy Lunar New Year!

Contents

1. Caucus Announcements: Prize Nomination and Prize Symposium; Co-Editor Needed
2. Feature: Social Media Accounts
3. Highlighted Philosop-Her of Science: Nadia Ruiz
4. What We Wish We’d Known: Magdalena Bogacz's Work on Gender Parity in American Academic Philosophy

Caucus Announcements

1. 2022 Philosophy of Science Association's Women's Caucus Prize Nomination: The Prize is awarded biennially for the best book, article, or chapter published in English in the area of feminist philosophy of science within the five years prior to each PSA meeting. The winner will receive a cash award of $500, which will be presented at the November 2022 PSA meeting. Please nominate by June 1st, using the link. For questions, comments, or concerns, please e-mail Sarah Roe at <roes1@southernct.edu>.
2. The Women's Caucus will consider PSA submissions for the 2022 Women's Caucus Prize Symposium. This prize honors symposia of special relevance to the WC membership both with regards to topic matter and participants. If you are planning to submit a symposium proposal to the PSA, and would like to be considered, please remember to check the appropriate button when submitting.
3. PSA-WC Vote: The votes are in! A majority (67.8%, total =60 votes) of voting members would like the caucus to broaden its purview and include sub-groups/affinity groups focusing on underrepresented academics. Similarly, the majority of voting members (94.9%) would like to see a committee formed to construct and implement our caucus' movements forward. The co-chairs, Cailin and Sarah, would like to collect volunteers for this committee, with a special interest in including philosophers from different identity groups (e.g., POC, LGBTQ+, disabled philosophers, non-native English speakers, etc.). If you are so interested, please email us (roes1@southernct.edu & cailino@uci.edu) by February 15th.
4. Co-editor Needed: We are currently looking for a new co-editor for Science Visions, the PSA Women’s Caucus quarterly newsletter. The new editor will help the current editor run the "Highlighted Philosop-Her of Science" section, where a woman philosopher of science is publicly recognized to the Caucus Membership once a quarter. The editor's duties include soliciting nominations for the section, contacting featured philosophers, and assembling contents. If you are interested in the position, please contact the editor Haomiao Yu at <hyu10@uoguelph.ca>.

Feature: Social Media Accounts

 

Our Facebook and Twitter are up and running! Follow us online and share news about conferences, job openings, and stories about women philosophers of science!

Highlighted Philosop-Her of Science: Nadia Ruiz

By Areins Pelayo

 

To nominate an excellent woman philosopher of science as a future Highlighted Philosop-Her, fill out the form here.

Though originally from El Paso, Texas, she spent most of her youth in Ciduad Juárez, México. She returned to the U.S. and ended up pursuing a B.A. in philosophy and political science at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). In 2006, she took an introduction to philosophy course with Professor Juan Ferret, who taught on a wide range of figures and topics, including Aristotle, Einstein, the philosophy of time, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and José Ortega y Gasset. Professor Ferret taught another, upper-level course called "Great Philosophers," and for the term that Nadia was taking the class, the philosopher of choice was Albert Einstein. This course greatly interested Nadia since, until then, she was not aware of the deep relationship between science and philosophy. Nadia decided to apply for an M.A. at UTEP, where she further explored topics in the metaphysics of science (emergence with professor John Symons), the philosophy of time, and scientific explanation (with professor Sarah Robins). After having received this degree and started her doctorate studies at KU, she developed an attraction toward the philosophy of social science more specifically, due to a course she took with her current advisor, Armin Shulz. Today, Nadia is currently working on scientific models in economics.

 

In particular, she questions the microfoundationalist approach in economics, which says that macroeconomic phenomena must be shown to be derived (reduced) from the choices of individual economic agents (microeconomics). She thinks that the debate about the microfoundations in macroeconomics can be resolved by considering microfoundations as a methodological concern, rather than focusing on the metaphysics behind the nature of macroeconomics, i.e., whether macroeconomic phenomena emerge or supervene from microeconomics. Nadia thinks that if the microfoundationalist approach is analyzed from a methodological perspective only, then the need or absence for microfoundations is purpose dependent. She explores a specific version of this issue in paper that's currently under-review, titled "More Methodology, Less Metaphysics: A Response to Hoover's Argument Against Microfoundations." She argues that Hoover's ontological argument against microfoundation falls short, which shows why metaphysical arguments are not enough to settle the microfoundations debate. Instead, she sheds light to a different approach to macroeconomic modeling––Rodrick’s model choice selection account––and argues that the latter illustrates best, methodologically, the question of why (and when) macroeconomic models would be best without microfoundations, or vice versa. In addition to the fact that the philosophy of social science is relatively understudied (at least compared to the natural sciences), what also motivated Nadia to pursue this research project was the status of modeling social scientific phenomena. For her, many scientists and people at large unjustifiably assume that models actually and accurately represent the target phenomena. And this is especially the case in the natural sciences, like physics and chemistry. Yet, in the social sciences the problem is more complicated and more acute insofar as in the social sciences, models are less compelling because they typically involve more assumptions and partly because of this are not as "clean" as models in the natural sciences. She found that economic models in particular were unique because economics holds a special place among the social sciences: it not only relies heavily on mathematics, but also relies on concrete social phenomena. So, any conclusions drawn about economic models, to an extent, can also say something about scientific modeling in general.

 

When she is not working on her research, Nadia is involved in various projects for both academic and non-academic communities. In Lawrence, Kansas, she participates in a group called Somos/We are Lawrence. One of this group's goals is to battle COVID-19 vaccines misinformation among Spanish speakers. They translate vaccine information from English to Spanish and ensure that their audience knows what to and not to expect when getting the vaccine (e.g., no one should or will ask you for proof of citizenship, or anything of this nature). At KU, she strives to increase the representation of marginalized people in academic spaces, particularly in philosophy. One way Nadia does this is by focusing on marginalized groups at the undergraduate level. She, along with other under-rrepresented graduate students, help the undergraduates organize a real philosophy conference: she helps send the call for papers, organizes a post-conference dinner, reviews the submissions, and requests graduate volunteers to comment on accepted papers. Sarah Robin, the current Director of Graduate Studies at KU, says the following about Nadia:

"Nadia has distinguished herself at KU as the only student in our program (and one of very few around campus) to win all 3 of the University’s competitive graduate-level awards—for research, for teaching, and for service. She is active in the philosophy department. For several years, Nadia has been a central organizer for KU’s MAP Undergraduate Philosophy Conference. In 2018, she was the student assistant to the annual Kansas Well-Being Workshop. She is currently the President of GAPS, the Graduate Association of Philosophy Students. In addition to all of her work with philosophy, Nadia has played a prominent role in broader campus and community activities through her work with the Latin American Graduate Organization (LAGO)."

When Nadia was involved in with LAGO, her agenda was to show to that Latinx people are not just working on Latinx Studies in higher education spaces–in fact, a great number Latinx people in academia are working to receive their PhDs, MA, MDs, and more, in various areas, including chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, statistical ecology, economics, technology and education, and more.

 

Nadia reports that her experience as a woman in philosophy has been great: she is especially grateful to have had women philosophers and academics throughout her time as an undergraduate and graduate student, which has shown her what it means to be a woman in the profession. At the same time, as a non-native speaker of English, who was raised with different cultural mannerisms and norms, she has experienced challenges to her cultural, linguistic, and academic identity. With the help of professors who saw beyond her grammar mistakes and fellow underrepresented colleagues, she has overcome these challenges and feels confident and optimistic about others who may be or have been in situations similar to her.

What We Wish We’d Known: Magdalena Bogacz's Work on Gender Parity in American Academic Philosophy

What We Wish We’d Known is a short opinion column that features advice from female philosophers of science about a particular aspect of academic life. To suggest future topics or volunteer as a writer for a future column, please contact Jacob Neal at <jacobpneal@gmail.com>

Understanding the circumstances that underpin gender disparity in American academic philosophy may help identify solutions to the larger problem of gender discrimination and women’s underrepresentation in academia. Thus, the secondary purpose of this study was to create a set of generalizable and transferable recommendations to be used by other organizations that struggle with similar problems of practice. This study found five promising practices to be potentially transferable. They are divided into two groups: 1) hiring practices, and 2) retaining practices.

Keywords: women in academia, gender parity, gender gap, gender gap in philosophy

 

About the author: 

Magdalena Bogacz is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Air University’s Global College. She earned her Doctor of Education in Global Executive degree from University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she focused her research on underrepresented academics, philosophers from different identity groups, and equitable hiring and retention practices. She earned her Master of Arts in Philosophy from KU Leuven in Belgium where she focused her research on the scope and application of scientific method including replicability crisis in social and psychological sciences. Before joining Air University, Dr. Bogacz worked as an Adjunct Philosophy Faculty at California State University, Bakersfield as well as Bakersfield College.
Dr. Bogacz’s research explores the social dimensions of education, with a specific focus on inequities in faculty socialization, gender gaps among university professors, organizational culture, and factors of motivation that impact organizational change. Her passion for working toward gender parity in philosophy stems from a belief that the participation of women would strengthen the field by strengthening the knowledge that is produces.

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