Daily Nous - Page 108 of 112

On the Write Track

Amtrak is offering writing residencies aboard its trains. Lasting from two to five days, the residencies are roundtrip journeys that include accommodations on board a sleeper car equipped with a bed, a desk, and outlets. The program is open to all sorts of writers, not just philosophers. Amtrak says that “A passion for writing and an aspiration to travel with Amtrak..

AQ (asked questions)

1. Isn’t it supposed to be FAQ? So WTF (Where’s The “F”)? The truth of the matter is that this blog hasn’t been around long enough for any question to really have been asked frequently. Nonetheless, I have been asked some questions about this blog, and thought I might say a few words in response.

2. Is this blog an attack on Brian Leiter? Nope. Like many in philosoph..

Logical Fallacies Through Funny Videos

There are online lists of logical fallacies , websites dedicated to explaining them, posters, children’s books, various videos, and, of course, memes. That many of the examples used to illustrate fallacies are humorous is no accident, as a lot of humor involves both upsetting expectations (e.g., saying something that deviates from what we think follows from what’s a..

Three Philosophers Received Feces in the Mail (Update: Four Philosophers)

Sally Haslanger (MIT), Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins (UBC), and David Velleman (NYU) each received envelopes in the mail this past summer containing feces, according to an article at Buzzfeed by Katie J.M. Baker. As the article notes, “All three philosophy professors were embroiled in a 2014 academic brawl over what they perceived as an abuse of power within their field,”..

Philosophy of War Audio Miniseries Available

A new philosophy show is in the works, and its creator has made three of its episodes—which together make up a miniseries on the philosophy of war—available to anyone teaching a course to which they would be relevant. (more…)

Job Market Mentoring for Women

Now in it’s third year, the Job Candidate Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy” matches job candidates with junior faculty mentors who have recently been on the market. The program provides mentoring and peer support to women candidates during their job search through videoconferencing and online forums.” (more…)

Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update

Happy Monday, everyone. Here’s the round-up of last week’s additions to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR), and Wi-Phi. (more…)

The Conscious Thought of Expertise, The Distribution of Ideas, and the Truth about Chicken Sexers

In an entertaining and interesting interview, Barbara Gail Montero, associate professor of philosophy at CUNY and former professional ballet dancer, discusses, among other things, the role of conscious thought in the activities of experts. On one view (notably advanced by Hubert Dreyfuss and John McDowell ), experts get into the “flow” and act in a “nonminded” way:..

Managing Classroom Discussions of Race and Police

A Daily Nous reader sends in a question concerning classroom discussions of recent events and the controversial and sensitive subjects they involve: (more…)

Enormous Open Access Phenomenology Project

A new project—The Open Commons of Phenomenology—aims to provide an open access digital platform for “the entire corpus of phenomenology,” including canonical texts, research related to phenomenology, and other materials, by 2020. (more…)

Brian Epstein Wins the APA’s Gittler Award

Brian Epstein, associate professor of philosophy at Tufts University, has been awarded the 2016 Joseph B. Gittler Award by the American Philosophical Association (APA). (more…)

Morton White (1917-2016)

Morton White, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, died on May 27th. Over the course of his career he taught philosophy at City College of New York, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. (more…)

Our Duties to Actual and Possible Graduate Students (guest post by Sergio Tenenbaum)

The following is a guest post * by Sergio Tenenbaum, Professor of Philosophy at University of Toronto, on what philosophy departments owe graduate students in light of how difficult it is for them to find secure employment in philosophy.

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Philosophy at Western Illinois Targeted (updated)

At its upcoming meeting in June, the Board of Trustees of Western Illinois University will take up Resolution 16.6/5 which, among other things, calls for the elimination of the university’s philosophy program as a way of responding to severe budget cuts: (more…)

Is Your Department on the Chopping Block?

Inside Higher Ed today discusses a report by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) on faculty cuts at the College of St. Rose (previously). A number of faculty were let go, leading the AAUP to declare that at the College, tenure is “virtually meaningless.” Among the programs affected is philosophy:

This is not the first time a philosophy ma..

Are History’s “Greatest Philosophers” All That Great? (guest post by Gregory Lewis)

The following is a guest post * by Gregory Lewis, a medical doctor and amateur philosopher, in which he looks through a statistical lens at the formation of the Western philosophical canon. You can read more of his writings, including an earlier version of the piece that follows, at his site.

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Nearly $1 Million To Study Ethics of Gene Editing

The Hastings Center, an independent, interdisciplinary bioethics research institute in upstate New York, was recently awarded nearly $1 million from the John Templeton Foundation for a three-year project to study the ethical and social implications of gene editing methods (like Crispr-Cas9) on germline cells (changes to which would be passed down to future generatio..

Hilary Putnam Donates Brain To Harvard

I was going to make an April Fool’s post titled “Putnam Changes Mind About Dying” but sometimes the news gets in the way of a good joke. According to a report from The Boston Globe, the will of Hilary Putnam, who died last month, included the provision that his brain be donated to Harvard University and displayed in a large glass container on the second floor of Eme..

Letter from Philosophers Supporting Öymen

The actions of the present government to persecute Professor Öymen, using an ill-conceived law, applied inappropriately, endangers the standing Turkey now enjoys with the international philosophical community…

are accustomed to offering and receiving blunt criticism. The freedom to do so is a necessary condition for philosophical activity, and even more, part ..

Best Philosophy Blog Post Winners Announced

3 Quarks Daily has announced the winners of its 2015 prize for best philosophy blog post:

Top Quark, $500: Vidar Halgunset, Slow Corruption
Strange Quark, $200: Daniel Silvermint, On How We Talk About Passing
Charm Quark, $100: Lisa Herzog, (One of) Effective Altruism’s blind spot(s)

Of the top two posts, Judge John Collins (Columbia) writes: “they w..

“Reputation Traps” in Philosophy

In an essay at Aeon, Huw Price (Cambridge) writes about “reputation traps.”

His example of this is scientific research on cold fusion, or low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), “the controversial idea that nuclear reactions similar to those in the Sun could, under certain conditions, also occur close to room temperature.” Cold fusion held out the promise of clean an..

Stomaching Controversy (Ought Experiment)

Welcome back to Ought Experiment! This week I heap reflexive and excessive scorn on a philosopher who’s worried that their work is taking them in controversial directions, and that contemporary philosophy might not be all that welcoming a place for such work. Oh, wait.

Dear Louie,

One of the papers I’m working on has a significantly controversial (maybe e..

Burleigh Wilkins (1932-2015)

Burleigh Taylor Wilkins, who was professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara for forty-five years, died last month at the age of 83. Wilkins worked in political and legal philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of history. His career also included appointments at MIT, Princeton, and Rice. A festschrift for him, Essays In Honor of Burleigh W..

A Call for the Humanities to Unite

There is a different unifying principle for most non-STEM disciplines—among them English, history, politics and civics, languages and literatures, education, the arts, philosophy, psychology and sociology—which I call the human disciplines. All of the subjects within human disciplines are fundamentally interested in people and with subjectivity. Our disciplines ..

Back to the Future Day: To When Should A Philosopher from 2015 Go?

In the movie Back to the Future II, Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel 30 years into the future, to today, October 21st, 2015. The movie was ahead of its time, at least when it came to marketing, apparently.

The movie also raised an important question which, alas, is still with us today, namely:
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