Mini-Heap


Lots of interesting stuff this week, so here’s another Mini-Heap:

  1. “I reject the idea that philosophy is argument” — “Most real philosophy, as experienced by most people, takes the form of fiction” — Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
  2. “Lately, I’ve been wondering whether it’s OK for me to be a philosophy professor.” — Robert Gressis (CSU Northridge) lays out the case against… himself
  3. A film about an “intense debate” between a longtime mayor in an existential crisis and a “brilliant, if dry, young philosopher” just won the best European Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival — “Alice and the Mayor” is “beautifully written, clear, concise and intellectually stimulating without being at all pretentious”
  4. 20 ways to be a great–or not so great–literary citizen, gleaned from Leibniz — or “How to Be a Dick If You Have Gout and/or an Arch Nemesis” by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
  5. Several “gender-critical” philosophers jointly author essay responding to criticisms — but the absence of citations and attributions raises questions: are these criticisms ones typically advanced by other philosophers in their scholarly work? are they the strongest criticisms? etc.
  6. Online speech, varieties of pseudonymity, controversial ideas, and more — Carissa Véliz (Oxford) in conversation with John Danaher (Galway)
  7. “These new ‘pro-life’ laws are deeply inhumane” — Neera K. Badhwar (Oklahoma) & Eva M. Dadlez (Central Oklahoma) on abortion at What’s Wrong?

Mini-Heap posts appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the ever-growing collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thanks!

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G.H.
G.H.
4 years ago

There’s several serious problems with “The inhumanity of the Pro-Life Laws.”

1. Mothers aren’t slaves to their children. It’s called being a parent.

2. The Authors confuse functioning as a person with being a person.

3. The section on souls is pointless.

4. This is the worst one. They say that the rare abortion after 24 weeks is done because of fetal abnormality or for the mother’s health. But this is *empirically* false. So it’s no wonder they didn’t cite a source: we know that women get abortions before after 24 weeks for the same reasons that they get them after 24 weeks. See “Who seeks abortions after 20 weeks?” in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

O.M.
O.M.
4 years ago

Curious. The fact that a Medium blog post lacks the full scholarly apparatus of citation and attribution doesn’t seem like the main thing worth saying about it, and I wonder if it’s a criticism you’d prioritize so much if the topic weren’t gender-critical feminism.

In any case, readers have an alternative way to judge the merits of the case presented there: next time you’re reading anything arguing for or implying the coherence of a concept of “gender identity”, you can check if it avoids all the fallacies outlined in the post. I have yet to encounter any piece of writing that does.