May 2014
Weinberg Donates $7.7m to Michigan
No, not me. Nor, alas, anyone related to me (as far as I know). But Marshall Weinberg, a University of Michigan alumnus, has donated $7.7 million to the University of Michigan for a new cognitive science institute, which will be a cooperative effort between the Departments of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology. The Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, as i..
A Name to Accompany the Accusations
The accusations of sexual misconduct against an as-of-yet-officially unnamed prominent moral and political philosopher (previously here and here) are no longer being made anonymously. They are now being advanced by a friend of one of the alleged victims, a Yale 2010 graduate named Emma Sloan. Ms. Sloan is soliciting funds for the legal case of her friend at this sit..
Philosophy How-Tos
After yesterday’s heap of links included an unusual Wikihow article, it was brought to my attention that the Wikihow site is home to a number of illustrated articles that are more relevant to philosophy, if no less ridiculous. They include: How to Become a Philosopher (“Think about the world, what it means to live, to die, to exist, and what the point of it is“); Ho..
Professors Are Biased, Too
An experiment on unwitting professors shows that racial and gender bias persists, even in disciplines much more diverse than philosophy.
Heap of Links
1. Elizabeth Anderson discusses the history and varieties of egalitarianism at libertarianism.org.
2. “On Being Annoyed” by Tom Roberts (Exeter). A friend asks: the next “On Bullshit”?
3. I’m not sure how helpful it is to ask “What if Plato was an employee benefits professional?” though I do like Dilbert on this idea.
4. A “lost” video interview of Foucault on theme..
Non-Philosophers Teaching Philosophy
Several years ago, during an era of relative plenty, I tried to persuade our philosophy department to credit a new history course I was teaching on the Enlightenment. Neither the reading list, bursting with texts from Bacon and Locke to Montesquieu and Diderot, nor the publication of my own book on Hume and Rousseau undid the suspicion that a professional historian..
Service to the Planet, Sentence-by-Sentence
John Broome (Oxford) is among the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent “Fifth Assessment Report.” One of his tasks is to help the IPCC and its delegates craft the “Summary for Policy Makers” (SPM), a 30-page précis of the 2000-page report that, it is hoped, policy makers (or their assistants) will actually read. Every single sentence of..
The APA’s Collection of Syllabi
The American Philosophical Association has put together a collection of syllabi for courses that are dedicated in whole or part to underrepresented areas in philosophy. It’s a helpful resource for those looking to develop new courses or augment existing ones.
Wanted: Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory
Jeremy Waldron is leaving Oxford to return full-time to New York University (via Leiter), opening up Oxford’s famed Chichele Professorship in Social and Political Theory. Before Waldron, the chair was held by G.A. Cohen, Charles Taylor, John Plamenatz, Isaiah Berlin, and G.D.H. Cole. Who will be next?
St. Mary’s University Receives $1.5m For Catholic Philosophy
St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, has received $1.5 million from an anonymous donor to endow a chair in Catholic philosophy. “The donor requested the gift be used to recruit and retain a distinguished Catholic philosopher who has a deep understanding of prominent Catholic thinkers, especially the Rev. Bernard Lonergan.” Details here.
More on the Recent Anonymous Sexual Harassment and Assault Accusations
In September of 2011, the Yale Daily News published an article that detailed two stories of sexual misconduct at Yale. Now, a woman who says she is the victim in “Case 2” in that article has claimed to be the person initiating the lawsuit mentioned in the anonymous blog post, “The Moral Philosopher and His International Affairs” (previously), and has started a site ..
Way Too Much Going On Here, Mill Edition
In England, a judge who relied explicity on the writings of John Stuart Mill in his ruling granted an imprisoned mentally ill Jehovah’s Witness sex offender the right to refuse a blood transfusion after a suicide attempt.
The judge was told that had been moved to hospital from prison after cutting his arm with a razor blade and opening an artery. Specialists said ..
Very Bad Wizards
Very Bad Wizards is a series of fun and fascinating podcast conversations on morality and related issues between philosopher Tamler Sommers (Houston) and psychologist David Pizarro (Cornell) and occasional guests. They have recently put out their 46th episode, which features a discussion with Josh Knobe (Yale), and starts off with a discussion of how a person’s nudi..
Markosian Declines Illinois Offer
Ned Markosian (Western Washington) has declined the offer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Care, People
College graduates had double the odds of being engaged at work and three times the odds of thriving in Gallup’s five elements of well-being if they had had “emotional support”—professors who “made me excited about learning,” “cared about me as a person,” or “encouraged my hopes and dreams.” Graduates who had done a long-term project that took a semester or more, who..
Philosophy Tag
I am pleased to introduce a new feature here at Daily Nous: Philosophy Tag. Here’s how it works: Philosopher 1 is tagged and becomes it. When you’re it, you have two weeks to do the following: choose an article by another living philosopher, Philosopher 2, that you’ve read and liked; write up your “tag,” including bibliographic information and a description of what ..
Online Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
The 2nd Annual Online Undergraduate Philosophy Conference has begun and will be continuing over the next two weeks, at the rate of one session per day, over at Philosophy TV. The conference is sponsored by the Jackson Family Center for Ethics & Values at Coastal Carolina University and the Philosophy Association of UMASS Dartmouth in cooperation with Philosophy TV. ..
Details About An Alleged “Sexual Exploiter”
Last week we discussed whether some anonymous accusations of sexual impropriety against a prominent philosopher were mere gossip or rather were issues for the profession to deal with. Someone claiming to be the same author has now elaborated on the allegations, providing not just details on claims made previously, but also new accusations regarding sexual violence a..
Louis CK Gets “Philosophical”
“Don’t lie, because lying only fixes everything.”
I don’t know how philosophical Louis CK’s really getting, but I’m enough of a fan of his to give the Washington Post‘s headline writer a pass on this one: “Five times Louis C.K. got really philosophical on late-night talk shows.”
UPDATE: The Huffington Post has published an article on philosophical comedians, includ..
Buddhism’s Logic
Buddhist thought, and Asian thought in general, has often been written off by Western philosophers. How can contradictions be true? What’s all this talk of ineffability? This is all nonsense. The constructions I have described show how to make precise mathematical sense of the Buddhist views. This does not, of course, show that they are true. That’s a different matt..
More Philosophicalish Quips
If you can only be good at one thing, be good at lying. … Because if you’re good at lying, you’re good at everything.
Jerry Dworkin (who put together Philosophy: a Commonplace Book) shares some of his latest discoveries of “humorous quotes, epigrams, aphorisms, parodies, etc. that have some connection to philosophy” over at 3 Quarks Daily. (via Jerry Dworkin)
Would You Do It Over Again?
Philosophy professors and graduate students: think back to when you decided to study philosophy seriously, or to try to make a career out of being a philosopher. Suppose you could travel back to that time and had only a few moments to answer one question from your past self, who asks you, “Should I try to be a philosopher?” How would you answer?
While I won’t requi..
One of These Is Actually Happening
– Not happening. Yet.
Transcendence is the recently released sci-fi movie the plot of which involves uploading the mind of a scientist (played by Johnny Depp) to a computer system. You can watch the trailer here, and then you can head over to OUP Blog and watch a few brief videos of Nick Bostrom (Oxford) discussing the movie and the plausibility of uploading, whole ..
Graduate Student Essay Contest with $20,000 Prize
Elie Maynard Adams was a Professor at UNC Chapel Hill from 1948 until 1990. While there, he helped to found the university’s Program in the Humanities and Human Values. Now that program has launched an essay contest for graduate students on Adams’ 1960 work, Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World-View. First prize is $20,000. The deadline is June 15th, 2014.
Ruse wins Russell Society Award
Michael Ruse (Florida State) has won the 2014 Bertrand Russell Society Award for exemplifying “the kind of dedication to science and reason that was championed by Bertrand Russell over his long life.” Ruse will accept the award at the Society’s upcoming annual meeting in June.
Would We Be Better Off Without Blame?
The reality is that we are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal. A morally serious inquiry into the requisite meaning of free will needs to face some basic facts….
We have gotten nothing f..
A True Lover of Philosophy
I love philosophy, but I wonder if I love it as much as Stephen West. Here is a little bit of his story:
My parents met when my mom was at her cousin’s house smoking weed; my dad was living in her cousin’s dog house at the time, having been kicked out by his parents, both of whom were terribly abusive…. If I were asked to write a book cataloging the different inst..
Heap of Links
1. Want to annoy a metaphysician? Send him or her a link to this video, which purports to answer the question, “How Many Things Are There?”
2. Rousseau, pranking, and spanking.
3. You won’t believe who is saying that there is such a thing as a free lunch.
4. “Real philosophy has always flourished outside institutional walls,” says Scott Samuelson at the Huffington P..