July 2014
The Book of Rankings
It’s getting late, at least where I live. How about a bedtime story?Â
And in the 2500 eons of time before ranked time, there was formlessness. Apart from The Academy and The Lyceum, one knew not where a department stood, nor how deeply one might plant one’s feet. One’s judgment was clouded by the gossip of the philosophers and the void created by opinion and argument..
Sherrilyn Roush (Berkeley) to King’s College London
Sherri Roush, who works in philosophy of science and epistemology, and who is currently full professor at Berkeley, will be moving to the Philosophy Department at King’s College London this summer to take up the inaugural Peter Sowerby Chair in Philosophy and Medicine. According to KCL Philosophy Department Head Rosa Antognazza, this is a newly endowed chair “create..
Heap of Links
1. Dave Chalmers on explaining consciousness: the TED talk version.
2. Traveling abroad to avoid long wait lists for a treatment, or to find less costly doctors, or to try out an experimental therapy? Jeremy Snyder (Simon Fraser), featured in an article in the National Post on the ethics of medical tourism, suggests you check out this site for some information and c..
Publishing? There’s an App for that.
HelpMePublish is an app that “provides databases on 13 major subject areas containing information on more than 6000 reputable academic journals provided by journal editors, subject experts and academic users.” According to a comment on another post here by James Maclaurin (Otago), a philosopher who devised the project, there are 557 philosophy journals in their data..
APA’s Code of Conduct in IHE
Inside Higher Ed has an article on the APA’s creation of a task force to look into whether to create a code of conduct for the profession, and if so, what such a code would look like. Several philosophers were interviewed for the article.
Public Philosophy – the Idea and the Challenges (Guest Post by Jack Weinstein)
Jack Russell Weinstein is a Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life at the University of North Dakota. He is the host of the radio show Why? Philosophical Discussions about Everyday Life and the author of its blog, PQED. He generously agreed to author a guest post* on the meanings and methods of public philosophy. Comm..
Another Colorado Student Speaks Out
Sofia Huerter, an MA student at the University of Colorado, has written a response to the recent critique of her department’s proposed climate policies by CU PhD student Spencer Case that appeared in the National Review. Meanwhile, Case has published a reply to some criticisms of his article, once again at the National Review.
Heap of Links
1. “Discrimination Is Un-Christian, too” — philosophy graduate student Kathryn Pogin (Notre Dame, Northwestern) on the Hobby Lobby decision, in the NYT.
2. The genetics of belief: “If these predispositions are…to some degree genetically rooted, they may not lend themselves to rational debate and compromise.”
3. HooPs—the Hardwood Philosophical Society—uses “‘the..
Job Market Analyses – UPDATED (yet again)
Update (7/14/14): Last week, Leiter replied to Jennings’ comparisons with some data. Jennings responds with newer data, arguing that “recency and time frame” matter.
Update (6/30/14): The Philosophical Gourmet versus Jennings’ Placement Data.
Update (6/25/14): Jennings tells us which departments have relatively high placement rates.
Update (6/20/14): In a new pos..
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) Expands to UK
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) “is a collection of students in English-speaking philosophy departments that aims to examine and address issues of minority participation in academic philosophy.” There are currently chapters of the organization at a number of US philosophy departments that put on talks, workshops, reading groups, and various other events.
There is n..
75% Philosophers, 100% Indie Rock
So I guess we are on a roll here with philosopher-musicians. Christy Mag Uidhir brings The Counterfactuals to my attention. Composed of a music professor and three philosophers — Jason Decker and Daniel Groll of Carleton College, and Michael Fuerstein of St. Olaf College — The Counterfactuals make indie rock with a kind of midwestern feel (does that sound right?..
Does Philosophy Need A Reboot?
Philosophy is a bit like a computer with a memory leak. It starts well, dealing with significant and serious issues that matter to anyone. Yet, in time, its very success slows it down. Philosophy begins to care more about philosophers’ questions than philosophical ones, consuming increasing amount of intellectual attention. Scholasticism is the ultimate freezing of ..
New Single by Philosopher of Science
Steven Weinstein (Waterloo) is currently working on “multiple time dimensions, causality and determinism in relativistic classical and quantum physics, the arrow of time” and sweet pop music perfect for a sunny Saturday. His latest single, “Don’t Tell Me” has just been released. For those who want more, check out his recent album, Last Free Man. (via Evelyn Brister)
Heap of Links
1. Is Žižek a plagiarist? Update: Newsweek gets on the story. Update 2: Žižek’s response.
2. “Philosophers ought to do their best to find a female captain, not merely a ship’s figurehead,” says Susannah Kate Devitt, reviewing the latest Australian Association of Philosophy (AAP) Conference.
3. The ethics of sex with dead people? Of course, there’s dignity. But maybe..
Non-Academic Philosophers in The Atlantic
The Atlantic has a short piece on Helen De Cruz’s interviews with non-academic philosophers, which were posted at NewApps in three parts (1, 2, 3). The article ends with a telling quote from Carl Baker, who is now a statistical researcher at the House of Commons Library:
If I had to highlight one weakness in my postgraduate training it would be the lack of discussio..
Philosophy Tag
Philosopher to Head NEH
William D. “Bro” Adams, a philosopher who taught at Santa Clara University, UNC Chapel Hill, and Stanford, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the 10th Chairman for the National Endowment of the Humanities. Here is some background about him:
Adams earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Colorado College and a Ph.D. from the University of Califo..
Lappin and Russell and 189 million Swedish Kroner to Gothenburg
Shalom Lappin (King’s College London) and Paul Russell (University of British Columbia) will be heading to the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg. Lappin works on formal and computational semantics, computational linguistics, the cognitive basis of language acquisition, and related topics. Russell works mainly..
Are Trigger Warnings for White People? (Guest Post by Kristina Meshelski)
Kristina Meshelski, an assistant professor of philosophy at CSU Northridge, has kindly authored the following guest post about the recent discussion of trigger warnings at Bully Bloggers by Jack Halberstam (USC), “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma.”
I know many philosophers who teach ethics use at the very least some form..
Heap of Links
1. Vivian Feldblyum may have earlier wooed you with “The Deductive Logic Love Song” but now she is singing the epistemology break-up song, “Do I Have Hands?” Perhaps she is seeing someone else?
2. The new edition of Onora O’Neill’s Acting on Principle, an “incisive and thoughtful defence” of Kant’s moral theory, is reviewed by Michael Rosen in The Times Literary Sup..
Is It Deep or Have You Been Duped?
In line with the principle of charity in cooperative communication, people will try to reconstruct the meaning of unknown terms on the presumption that what the speaker utters is true and relevant — particularly when they defer to the speaker as an authority. If what the speaker asserts seem bizarre or false on its face, it is prudent to suspect that the problem lie..
Making Philosophy Journal Statistics Publicly Available
Philipp Blum, one of the co-editors of the journal, dialectica, has a request for other journal editors:
I think it would be very helpful if philosophy journals would make
publicly available much more information on acceptance rates and
submission statistics.
He notes that dialectica has been doing this for 14 years; check out these charts and graphs, which could s..
The Philosophical Underclass Group
The Philosophical Underclass is a Facebook group of philosophers who request and provide electronic copies of philosophical works from and to each other. It is the idea of Kevin Timpe (Northwest Nazarene University), who explains how it came about:
I work at a university that has very poor journal access. The librarians are great at getting me just about anything vi..
Digitizing the Geometry of Spinoza’s Ethics
Torin Doppelt, a PhD candidate in philosophy at Queen’s University, has created Spinoza’s Ethics 2.0, a an interesting digital humanities project that “provides a representation of the structure of the geometrical demonstrations of Spinoza’s Ethics” (via Philosophy Matters). I asked him if he could say a little more about the project for Daily Nous readers. He write..
Heap of Links
1. NPR’s Tamara Keith, a philosophy major, tells her “it doesn’t hurt to ask” story.
2. Someone who sounds a bit like Carly Rae Jepsen sings “Call Me Nietzsche” (press ►)
3. Susannah Kate Devitt (Queensland University of Technology) makes use of a few different metrics to provide a ranking of philosophy journals.
4. Chris Bertram discusses Rousseau’s moral psycholog..
Which Scientific Idea Should Go?
Edge.org’s 2014 annual question is “What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement?” Many weigh in on the question with interesting answers, including philosophers Andy Clark (Edinburgh), Daniel Dennett (Tufts), Steve Fuller (Warwick), Tamar Gendler (Yale), Ian Gold (McGill), Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, A.C. Grayling (Birkbeck), Thomas Metzinger (Johannes Gutenberg-U..
Relationships with Students
Slate’s Rebecca Schuman reports on recent discussions in the philosophical community on relations between professors and students. Several philosophers were interviewed for the article, including Carla Fehr (Waterloo), Meena Krishnamurthy (Manitoba), Rachel McKinnon (College of Charleston), and Eric Wiland (University of Missouri–St. Louis).
Colorado’s “Best Practices” Document
The University of Colorado Department of Philosophy’s “Best Practices for Faculty and Students” document, in which the department sets out ways to make itself a “safe, inclusive, and welcoming place for all men and women, including members of underrepresented groups, to work, teach and study” is available online, on the climate section of the department’s website. T..