October 2014
Colorado’s Troubles in The Chronicle (several updates)
Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education has a long article (may be paywalled) on the University of Colorado Department of Philosophy’s issues with sexual misconduct and climate for women, with remarks from people inside and outside the department.
They wanted to help solve their field’s longstanding problems over the treatment of women and find ways to improve the ..
What Google Thinks People Think About Philosophers
Enter a word or two into Google and its guesses about what you’re looking for, based on what most other people have looked for using similar words, will appear.
So what do people think of philosophers? Hmmm….
How does Google autocomplete other philosophy-related searches? If you find one worth sharing, take a screenshot, send it to [email protected]…
Drunk Utilitarians
Laboratory assistants have to do all sorts of terrible, embarrassing things, but surely this is among the silliest: Enter a bar in Grenoble, France. Identify people who look moderately drunk. Walk up to them, tap them on the shoulder, and say something along the lines of, “Uh, hey, this is awkward, but, would you be interested in answering some questions about philo..
The Moral Psychology of Racist Brutality
Kate Manne (Cornell) writes in The Stone in The New York Times that the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and the events that have occurred in its wake, suggest that a traditional understanding of racism is mistaken:
One possibility is that people are treated brutally because those who mistreat them fail to grasp their common humanity — or, similarly,..
How Much Weight Should a Candidate’s School Have?
“The next time you do a job search break your committee into two groups. Have one group evaluate the candidates without reference to the institution from which they graduated and have the other evaluate the candidates with all of the institutional information included. I can almost guarantee that the short lists will not be the same. And I believe that anyone who is..
Famous Papers First Rejected
“The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973) by sociologist Mark Granovetter is an extraordinarily influential paper, one of the most cited in sociology (with nearly 30,000 citations, according to Google Scholar). Yet it was initially rejected. You can read the rejection letter via a link from here. It is an interesting case of peer reviewers dismissing an idea because they w..
Andrei Marmor (USC) to Cornell (official)
It’s now official: Andrei Marmor, currently Professor of Philosophy and Maurice Jones Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, will be moving to Cornell, taking up joint appointments in the university’s Sage School of Philosophy and Law School over the summer of 2015. Marmor works in legal and moral philosophy. His wife, Elizabeth Garrett, ..
Philosophy on Homelessness
The University of Oregon Department of Philosophy has “Community Philosophy Institutes” on various topics, and one of its current projects is “Homelessness and Home.” Organized by Professor Naomi Zack, who is also teaching a course on the subject, Homelessness and Home aims to “support creative, intellectual, and practical address of the problems of homelessness. Th..
APA Member Demographics
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has published a table that provides some basic demographic information about its membership, including gender, race/ethnicity, LGBT status, disability status, employment status, and tenure status. According to the introductory page, “All demographic data collection is voluntary, and members may provide or update their inf..
Funding and Philosophical Results (Updated w/ Replies by Dennett)
Suppose you were reviewing a scientific report that drew the conclusion that a diet without fat was in fact unhealthy, and that butter and cream and even bacon in moderation were good for you, and suppose further that the science was impeccable, carefully conducted and rigorously argued. Good news! Yes, but the author acknowledges in fine print that the research was..
Non-Academic Hires — a Reminder
The academic philosophy job market is underway, but academia is not the only place philosophy PhDs might be seeking employment. Check out the Non-Academic Hires page here at Daily Nous to see what kind of work philosophers have landed outside of academia. If you are a philosopher who has recently found employment outside academia, please add your information to that..
Open Letter to Professional Philosophical Associations (Guest Post by Alan Richardson)
Alan Richardson is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He works mainly in the history of philosophy of science and analytic philosophy. He has written an open letter to the leadership of the American Philosophical Association, the Canadian Philosophical Association, the British Philosophical Association, and the Australian Association of P..
Assessment and Philosophy Courses
Most of the discussions regarding “assessment” are fine examples of exactly what we do not want to see college producing: vague and uniform truisms, hooked up with measures so meaningless as to guarantee that nothing will ever change. It is the deadened life of the bureaucratic mind. But imagine, as an alternative, academics charting the careers of students who have..
Update from Leiter
In a post at his blog, Brian Leiter responds to the September Statement calling for him to relinquish control of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) by saying that “there may be a lot more to the story.” He also says that he and the Board of the PGR have made “considerable progress the last few days” toward “a plan for the future in which I step down as editor af..
Reference Management Apps
Philosophers, I have been asked to ask you all about reference manager / bibliographic software, such as Endnote, Qiqqa, Mendeley, Zotero, etc. Do you use any of these? Is there one in particular you would recommend?
Ludlow Sues Undergraduate (updated)
Peter Ludlow (Northwestern) is suing the undergraduate who accused him of sexually assaulting her. The lawsuit “alleges that the student knowingly made false statements to news media and Northwestern professors after he rebuffed her sexual advances.” Ludlow had previously launched a defamation lawsuit against Northwestern University officials, fellow philosophy prof..
Broader Effects of the PGR
The following is an excerpt from an email a well-known senior philosopher sent to his/her colleagues regarding visiting speakers:
“The events are being organized so as to maximally benefit the department. This includes promoting the reputation of the department, providing intellectual stimulation, and just having plain fun. Normally, conferences and workshops sho..
Nottingham Pulls Out of PGR (see 2nd Update from Nottingham)
The Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham has issued a statement asking to not be included in the Philosophical Gourmet Report while Brian Leiter has a leading or advisory role in it. Here is the statement:
We are concerned, as a department, about the recent behaviour of Professor Brian Leiter, editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, towa..
Philosophy Professor Implicated in UNC Academic Fraud Investigation (several updates)
Philosophy professor Jan Boxill was named as an active participant in an academic fraud scheme in a 136-page report issued earlier today by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill entitled “Investigation of Irregular Classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies.” The report details the existence of a number of phony “paper classes.” Accordi..
Open Access and Journal-less Publishing
Recently I was asked by the editors of a journal whose mission and scholarship I support and respect to review a book by a scholar I very much admire. In the past, I would have accepted the invitation without a second thought and proceeded to read the book and develop a review. Over the past few years, however, as my work has focused on questions of public scholarsh..
Comment Linking, Accessing the Heap
Two minor updates about the site:
- Some of you may have already noticed this but a bug of the recent redesign has just been fixed: you can now successfully link to individual comments. Also, clicking on specific comments in the “Recent Comments” section of the sidebar will take you to the specific comment. I appreciate your patience while that was taken care of. ..
World Philosophy Day Plans
This year’s World Philosophy Day is one month away, on November 20th. From the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) website:
In establishing World Philosophy Day in 2005, the General Conference highlighted the importance of this discipline, especially for young people, underlining that “philosophy is a discipline that encourage..
Philosophy Jobs at Community Colleges (updated)
I’ve been asked to solicit information from readers about how to get a permanent job teaching philosophy at a community college.
Some questions:
(a) Where are community college jobs typically advertised?
(b) What makes a job candidate look good, on paper, to community colleges?
(c) How is the job search process different at community colleges?
(d) What misc..
Professors in Poverty
A few weeks ago Salon published “Professors on Food Stamps: The Shocking True Story of Academia in 2014.” The article shares the plight of adjunct instructors, a lot of whom teach many courses at multiple institutions for minimal compensation.
“The most shocking thing is that many of us don’t even earn the federal minimum wage,” said Miranda Merklein, an adjunct ..
How Much Should Publishers Pay Contributors?
A professor who prefers to remain anonymous—perhaps so as to not weaken his bargaining position—asks for help from Daily Nous readers about how much he should request to be paid for allowing a publisher to use one of his articles in a textbook anthology. He writes:
Does anyone have any information about how much, if anything, an author should expect to receiv..
Philosophers and Cognitive Bias
Should the order in which a person considers thought experiments affect one’s responses to them? Rationally, it seems no. Yet the “order effect” is well-confirmed. What about philosophers? We are supposed to have a kind of expertise in handling thought experiments and are known (?) for thinking clearly and rationally; certainly the content of our judgments are not s..
On ‘Begs the Question’: A Poll
With alarming frequency I am hearing friends declare that we’ve lost “begs the question.” What used to be a distinctive phrase for the fallacy of assuming the truth of the very claim you are setting out to prove (aka petitio principii), “begs the question” is now widely used to mean “raises the question.” A Language Log post from over 4 years ago presented some data..
Philosophers to Help Mine Big Data for Biomedical Research
Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy is teaming up with the University of Pittsburgh to form a new “Center for Causal Modeling and Discovery in the Biomedical Sciences.” The center is funded by an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Its aim is to “help scientists capitalize more fully on enormous and growing collections of data..