Mini-Heap


Friday Mini-Heap…

  1. Three disadvantages of treating English as the lingua franca of philosophy — from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
  2. Senior academic brazenly encourages his followers to help him gaslight a younger philosopher — the person he’s trying to encourage others to think of as “crazy” happens to be the author of a book that discusses gaslighting and other forms of misogyny
  3. The Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical theology at the University of St Andrews has a blog and podcast — with several philosophers contributing
  4. “Already, it is clear that melding digital technologies with human brains can have provocative effects, not least on people’s agency” — a survey of the variety of ethical issues arising with brain-computer interfaces
  5. How to launch and run a summer diversity institute in philosophy — a guide from the American Philosophical Association
  6. Quantum supremacy (in computing) — what is it? why is it important? and when will it happen? (maybe this year)
  7. “9-5 I’m sat in the library in my track-pants, and for the last few months I’ve been whisked away to the most exotic places by SI” — meet Erin Willerton (Manchester), philosophy student and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, whose thesis is on diversity in philosophy

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!

COMMENTS POLICY

Warwick University MA in Philosophy
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Twittererer
Twittererer
4 years ago

The “senior academic” referred to in #2 is Brian Leiter, and his target this time is Kate Manne. For those who have trouble reading Twitter, he writes: “I’d be glad to get a DM [direct message] from anyone who has met Kate Manne,” and then, “trying to figure out whether she is as crazy as some of her colleagues think. Thanks.”

Matt
4 years ago

As for 2 – there is an on-going beef between Leiter and Manne. People can take different views on it as they like – that’s of no interest to me – but it’s clear that Manne – who, in addition to being a fully grown adult human being, is a tenured professor in an ivy league department, hardly some helpless figure – can dish it out as well as anyone, and doesn’t mind doing so. My own thought is that the two should just walk away, but the way that this link is presented is more than a bit distorted. People who are interested can find links on Leiter’s blog or other places, I’m sure.

Matt Weiner
Matt Weiner
Reply to  Matt
4 years ago

The claim of “on-going beef” here doesn’t seem quite accurate, at least not if it suggests the beef is of long standing. It is quite recent and, though I won’t get into exactly what happened, it is clear that Manne has done nothing to Leiter that is remotely comparable to what Leiter is trying to do to Manne, as documented at the link.

Your post seems to suggest, or at least someone might think from reading it, that both sides’ behavior is somehow comparable. It would be unfortunate IMO if people thought that Leiter’s behavior was no worse than Manne’s (I would make the stronger claim that Manne has done nothing wrong and has behaved extremely well).

(I’m on record as having a low opinion of Leiter, to put it mildly, so people might not take my word for this. But then, the reason I have a low opinion of Leiter is that he behaves like this.)

Alfred MacDonald
Alfred MacDonald
4 years ago

adding a twitter argument here seems like you’re weaponizing the mini-heap idea.

to elaborate: I really enjoy these link compilation posts, and frivolous twitter drama is seriously below the typical quality of link you provide; I will browse twitter of my own accord, but what’s interesting about these links is exposure to webpages I’d never see otherwise.

Crimlaw
Crimlaw
4 years ago

Given that as Matt pointed out above this concerns two tenured faculty at major universities, what does it have to do with *age*?