Gender Perception as a Habit of Moral Perception: Implications for Philosophical Methodology and Introductory Curriculum

Evidence is in that philosophy, as a profession, is male-dominated in its membership, and underrepresented groups suggest that systemic and persistent inequities endure.1 One possible measure to rectify the gender imbalance, and perhaps therefore the climate of the profession, is to increase the number of women in philosophy. Recent research suggests that it is after taking introductory classes that undergraduate women's enrollments drop off sharply; ratios of women receiving doctorates in philosophy seem to be, comparatively, more consistent with numbers of women with undergraduate degrees in philosophy.2 The authors add, “This suggests that there is an ‘intro-major cliff’ that is perpetuated through the hierarchy of academia, culminating in the gender gap that we see at the faculty level,” and “also suggests that a promising means of closing the gender gap would be to focus on philosophy at the undergraduate level.”3 If future research bears out these findings, then the way we go about designing and teaching our introductory courses may directly influence the gender makeup and the culture of the profession. Solutions to the problem of the intro-major cliff are, on some levels, easily identified. One strategy that feminist philosophers have particularly recommended, to improve introductory curriculum so that courses are more attractive to and retentive of female students, is to include more works by women on syllabi. Especially in “Introduction to Philosophy,” our students would benefit because, as Margaret Urban Walker says, “The presence of concerns, texts, and images that acknowledge women within undergraduate classrooms, graduate training, and professional media allow women students to feel that a discipline, literally, comprehends them, that it is a space that they are free to enter and expected to enter.”4 Yet objections to the inclusion of women's work on introductory syllabi are raised, which indicate that the solutions to the intro-major cliff are not so easily accomplished. A standard argument against the inclusiveness strategy (as I call it in this article) is that the deliberate effort to include women's work is driven by emotional and political motives that are detrimental to achieving more valuable pedagogical goals, such as fairly and accurately representing the canon, and offering selections on the basis of their philosophical quality rather than the identities of their authors; the assumption that gender is irrelevant to philosophy is usually stated or implied in the course of the objection.5 Conversations in conferences and in online venues regularly reduce to inclusiveness advocates being described as overly preoccupied with affective considerations and biased in favor of women, and inclusiveness critics being described as insensitive and biased against women. In what follows, however, I suggest that participants in debates about inclusiveness would be better served by keeping firmly in view the extent to which all the passionate pedagogues in such debates are emotionally invested in their views. I draw on Peggy DesAutels's analysis of “moral perception,” and I apply her insight that different types of moral perceivers connect emotionally with different features of moral situations. Inclusiveness advocates may be mistaken when they suggest that critics are simply insensitive; given the samples of their criticisms below, it appears that critics are very sensitive to what appears morally salient to them. And inclusiveness critics are wrong that advocates are inappropriately attentive to affect or preoccupied with their own emotional states; as I argue, advocates have reasons supported by data for their emotional and political commitments. The extent to which one perceives it important to include women on introductory syllabi may be affected by one's largely unconscious, and unchosen, habits of moral perception. If I am right that most Anglophone philosophers, and most critics of inclusiveness, fit DesAutels's description of abstract moral perceivers, then the extent to which philosophers have (what I call) gender perception is affected by their basic habits of moral perception; abstract moral perceivers tend not to perceive gender matters as morally salient features of the moral landscapes of philosophy and pedagogy. Habits based on such implicit biases can be changed, however, so I conclude with recommendations, whatever one's tendencies as a moral perceiver, as a pedagogue one ought to come around to a more attentive variety of gender perception that responds appreciatively to empirical evidence, outlined below, that women and men are benefited by inclusive curricula and more diverse offerings on syllabi.6 I rely on evidence that biases, once made explicit, are more easily accommodated, and I suggest that philosophers need not dismantle or entirely control our biases in order to develop better habits of gender perception. Given the sorts of benefits that accrue to students of inclusive curricula, including affective engagement and academic achievement, I recommend appealing to abstract moral perceivers with arguments from fairness, impartiality and quality, to best motivate the perception that inclusive curriculum is morally and pedagogically compelling. I begin in Part One with an explication of the ways in which moral theorists tend to describe moral perception; I clarify the relationship of moral perception to implicit bias, and I suggest that while both are dynamic and changeable, biases are not eradicable. In Part Two, I apply DesAutels's distinctions between two types of moral perceivers to the profession of philosophy; I suggest that philosophers tend to be abstract moral perceivers, and that from the point of view of the abstract perceiver, it is possible that gender is not morally salient. The biases informing gender-indifferent perceptions are reflected in the forms that arguments against inclusiveness tend to take; to demonstrate this, I proceed with a characterization of the inclusiveness debate in part three. I advance the case for inclusiveness, emphasizing the evidence of benefits to all students accruing from more diverse curricular offerings. I conclude that the moral and methodological arguments between philosophers have been misconstrued as a conflict of values, rather than as a more fundamental difference in the moral perceptions of advocates and critics, in a profession that selects for analytic capacities and habits of perception. Prioritizing the accommodation of habits of moral perception over changing the moral perceivers who are drawn to the philosophy profession, I recommend differently representing the inclusiveness strategy to analytic moral perceivers. It is out of the scope of this article to explore the many methods of improving moral perception, so I end by noting the possibilities for changing philosophers' habits rather than by providing those solutions here. Philosophical literatures on moral perception and on implicit bias are rich, but philosophers engaged in explicating one of these concepts rarely refer to the other; as so many authors of both concepts tend to argue for broad definitions, the concepts and their interrelation take some sorting out. Charles Starkey offers a widely praised overview of the literature on moral perception, noting that some iterations of it tend to presume that moral perception is normatively correct perception. For example, he notes Gilbert Harman's example of coming upon a group which is attempting to pour gasoline on a cat and light it on fire, the wrongness of which “strikes us immediately and verisimilarly, in the same manner as our other perceptions.”7 Starkey suggests that this is perhaps true, but that it permits only a narrow account of moral perception, overemphasizing the content of rightness or wrongness. In contrast, Starkey aims for a comprehensive definition, or as he says, “a unified category,” one that comes closer to John McDowell's more “action-guiding” account of moral perception as involving “the relevant notion of salience,” that is, “the role of perception in grasping an aspect of a situation” that informs morally relevant choices.8 Starkey therefore describes “moral perception as morally appraisable perceptual apprehension.” He adds, “Moral perception is morally appraisable in that it is morally appropriate (or inappropriate) or morally commendatory (or condemnable) perception. A moral perception is a perceptual apprehension in that it is a perceptual taking-in and assessment of what the moral perceiver encounters.”9 Importantly for my purposes, Starkey adds that it is not his aim to deny “that some sorts of moral perception are better than others but merely to allow room for multiple and at times incompatible senses of what is important in a situation, which can all have a moral bearing. Indeed, it may be a fault on the perceiver's part to not see the competing moral demands. In addition, failing to perceive can be morally appraisable and is thus a form of moral perception.”10 At times, Starkey explicates the capacity for moral perception; at other times, he focuses on moral perception as just the accomplishment of perception on a particular occasion, or as a set of acts: “The category of moral perception is constituted by those perceptions with the property of moral appraisability.”11 Of course, moral perception is necessarily ambiguous in just the same way that sight is ambiguous, referring to the capacity at some times (as when I say my sight is diminishing with age) and the act or accomplishment at others (as when I say the sight of a daffodil delights And of perception are of as “Moral perception is the perception of normatively and of that perception us to in and those perceptual capacities are not an account of moral perception as a to of a that on what differently for the of different to different the of our perceptual capacities not merely to but which features of the we are in a to and perceptual capacities from to then different be in a to be to different features of the aims to the moral perceptions of those as or of as Margaret says, are many that may be morally relevant in a but the that perceptual capacities need to take it as a moral in need of our are such as to us to moral about not aim for in perception, an view of all possible moral features as taking moral on the assumption that can be the to see moral that is to and Peggy DesAutels's to “the to our moral as moral perception (as to moral I both the role of perception and the role of the of and the of in the of the moral of particular situations. perception is a at data and our and I of a moral perceiver as an who or moral features in his or her the of data and to a for of that data include the presence and of implicit other to this in implicit bias is by biases that affect the way we or with from the groups that our biases and and in the of or of on to affect basic perception, and is as is “the the and of and and “the notion that and is to biases and the relationship of implicit bias to moral perception is that of the to the capacities for perceptions are a of implicit biases are and biases that affect all sorts of including moral biases the very of moral perception, so it is that can be I below, to insight the of our perceptual that habits of moral perception are over “moral perceptual by we tend to perceive to the of moral content tend to see or not see tend to my in the of DesAutels's two types of moral perceivers is by my own what philosophers tend to see or not see as morally salient to students, or in gender as an aspect of the philosophers may have the of gender as it to philosophy and philosophers, but it the case that Anglophone philosophers, at the in that gender and are largely irrelevant to philosophy. 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