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Duke Philosophers Receive $1.8m Grant

Felipe De Brigard and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, both at Duke University, have received a $1.8 million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation to conduct yearly Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) starting in May, 2016. Each SSNAP will be a 15 day long seminar in which neuroscientists and philosophers will learn about each other’s disciplin..

An Advisor’s Extra Help on the Job Market

Placement practices at different graduate programs in philosophy vary, and one difference concerns what advisors do to help their students land jobs. There is, of course, the advising. And also, of course, the letter writing. But then there is a range of activities that go beyond these regular responsibilities—such as calling or emailing members of search committe..

Site Redesign (updated)

If you are reading this then the Daily Nous website is working. Woohoo! As you can see, it looks a little different. (If it doesn’t, try a “hard reload” of the page.) There are still some kinks that need to be smoothed out, so please be patient. If you notice something isn’t working, it would be great if you could send me an email at [email protected] lettin..

Gerhard Øverland (1964 – 2014)

Gerhard Øverland, a professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo, has died. Professor Øverland worked in moral philosophy, particularly applied ethics. There is an obituary here.

Substantive Philosophy Blogs

Brian Weatherson has created a list of substantive philosophy blogs at his own blog, And Another Thing.

The Cutest Guide To Doing Philosophy

Helena De Bres (Wellesley) has created The Pink Guide to Philosophy, a place where students—especially those about to take their first philosophy course—can get acquainted with what philosophy is about and how to do it, all with the guidance of insect instructors Professor F. Lee Pink and Professor Philosa Flea, “your fearless guides to a better, brighter, more ..

Heap of Links

1. Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) is interviewed by Russ Roberts at EconTalk.
2. Chris LeBron (Yale) is interviewed at 3am Magazine on philosophy of race and “the struggle of humanity vs. humankind.”
3. Was Sartre indifferent to the slaughter of Jews?
3a. Composer Scott Johnson’s latest work, “Mind Out of Matter,” features the words and voice of Daniel Dennett (Tufts..

Heap of Links

1. Simon Blackburn gives us his version of a “kids, these days, let me tell you” cranky rant about selfies, which he saves only by saying we should respond to the vanity and conceit and narcissism encouraged in today’s society with mockery. Seems to me, though, that only someone completely full of himself would attempt such a sweeping characterization of contemporar..

A Moment of Calm

“Nietzsche stayed in Sils-Maria during the summers of 1881 and 1883-1888. In Sils itself is Lake Sils, where the Chasté peninsula was a favorite site of Nietzsche’s – he fantasized about building a hermit’s hut.”

Don’t we all, sometimes?

The Bloomsbury Philosophy Blog has posted a few photos by Mark Anderson (Belmont), whose book, Plato and Nietzsche: Their Ph..

Alfred Mele’s New Blog

Alfred Mele has announced a new blog project called Free Will for All. He explained on Flickers of Freedom the other day one of its distinctive features: it is dedicated to interaction with any undergraduates who are using either of his two latest books in a course, A Dialogue on Free Will and Science and Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will.

“It’s part o..

Academic Ice Bucket Lesson Plan

Arthur Ward (Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State) teaches a unit on charitable giving in his ethics course and has come up with a way of doing so that gets the students really interested and involved:

I had heard of others doing some group work in class with this topic, asking students to research effective charities. It occurred to me that this was a great idea, b..

Nominal Versus Real Change

As I noted here, and as he announced on his own site here, Brian Leiter has asked Berit Brogaard (Miami) to serve as a co-editor with him of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, along with another as of yet unnamed philosopher who is currently considering the offer. Of course At this point this is nothing but a nominal change in the management of the PGR. One or two pe..

Evaluating Philosophy Graduate Programs

Wednesday’s post on the future of the Philosophical Gourmet Report has a lot of thoughtful comments on it, with some interesting ideas for and alternatives to the PGR. Thanks to those who commented. In this post, I’d like to leave behind discussion of Brian Leiter and focus on the evaluation of the programs. Below the fold are my own thoughts on the matter. Your com..

The Chronicle on this Week’s Controversies

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story on the recent events involving Brian Leiter’s emails to certain members of the profession and the future of the Philosophical Gourmet Report. According to the article, Leiter has appointed Berit Brogaard (Miami) as “co-editor” of the report.

Heap of Links

1. A defense of majoring in philosophy, by Joseph Tinguely (South Dakota).
2. Artist Tino Seghal’s latest installation places philosophers in the Roman agora in Athens to engage people in dialogue.
3. Don’t think for yourself, says Caleb Cohoe (Metropolitan State University of Denver).
4. Aristotle, the biologist. (via Johann A. Klaassen)
5. How to get your students..

What Can I Get for a Counterexample and a Jar of Homemade Pickles?

The American Philosophical Association has created “marketplace forums” for its members, in which they can barter with one another for various items (or simply sell or buy them, if they want to be boring). If you need something in particular, you can post a request in the “wanted” forum.

The only limitation on the goods sought or offered is that they be “of interes..

Giving a Philosophy Talk

Ole Koksvik (Bergen), along with the help of friends, has put together a very useful set of tips for giving a philosophy talk. I appreciated the “rationale” section, in which he notes, among other things, that “giving a bad presentation is impolite.” There is some good advice throughout, much of which is consistent with the general rule that guides how I put toget..

Should the Philosophical Gourmet Report Continue? (Several Updates Added)

Brian Leiter (Chicago), who created and organizes a reputational survey of philosophy graduate programs known as the Philosophical Gourmet Report, is asking whether he should continue producing it. He opened a poll on the matter on his blog Tuesday evening, twice stopping and replacing the poll with new versions. The current poll is accessible through a link at the ..

Top Ten Ways Daily Nous Should Respond to the Current Fracas

11. Learn to count.
10. Take a poll.
9. Do some work around the house, such as tighten hinges, remove all fans.
8. Finally figure out exactly what makes something an “implosion” rather than an “explosion.”
7. Threaten to leave the playground and take my ball.
6. Replace old poll with new poll.
5. Take the opportunity to expand my ignorance of continental philo..

Heap of Links

1. “I’m not sure, for example, what the philosophy REF panel would make of Berkeley’s research on tar-water, or even Bentham’s on prisons, for that matter.” That’s Jonathan Wolff on exciting scholarship and whether disciplinarity is just a blip in the history of academia.
2. The History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh has launch..

Scam Journals and Publishers

Scholarly Open Access is a website run by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at Auraria Library at the University of Colorado Denver, that provides “critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing.” In other words, it lists and discusses journals and publishers that look highly suspect, some of which may just be scams. (via David Boonin)

Asking some basic questions a..

Should MA Students Write Theses?

Sherri Irvin (University of Oklahoma) writes in asking what PhD admissions committees think about master’s theses. Her query is below. Please share your thoughts.

Our MA program at the University of Oklahoma is increasingly serving as a stepping stone for students who are trying to get into PhD programs (our own and others), especially now that we have started to..

Agnes Heller to receive Wallenberg Medal

Agnes Heller, a Hungarian philosopher who was, for a while, the Hannah Arendt Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate Studies Program of The New School in New York (now emeritus there), and prior to that taught at La Trobe University in Melbourne, will receive the 2014 Wallenberg Medal, an award bestowed annually at the University of Michigan “to a humanita..

What if a Metaphysician Had Written This?

Cass Sunstein (Harvard) delves into the philosophy of history, particularly counterfactuals and causation, with his review in The New Republic of Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History by Richard J. Evans. (via Philosophy Matters)

Historians cannot conduct randomized controlled trials, because history is run only once. Yet they nonetheless develop hypotheses, and..

Can We Know Whether God Exists?

I don’t think the arguments for either theism or atheism lead to knowledge of their conclusions. But there are arguments on both sides from premises that someone might reasonably judge to be plausible. If you find it quite probable that God does not exist, I think it’s perfectly possible that you are reasonable to think as you do. But this doesn’t mean that someone ..

Heap of Links

1. “Something as ‘mundane’ as coffee tasting generates one of the most challenging philosophical questions…” Anna Marmadoro (Oxford) on Aristotle on perception.
2. The mayor of Sao Paolo, Brazil, who has a PhD in philosophy, has been trying to implement progressive transportation policies in his city. He “has succeeded so far in unifying voters: They want him out…

Ebola and Humanity

We must find a method of caring without touching, of contacting without making contact. The physiological barriers are, for the time being, necessary. But we cannot stop people from caring about one another, so we must create, for the time being, mechanisms for caring. Since we will never be able to beat back humanity, we must coordinate humanity, at the family leve..

Who Is Submitting to Top Journals?

Helen De Cruz conducted a survey about submitting articles to the “top-5” philosophy journals and now has a post up analyzing the results.