July 2015
Philosophers Win NEH Grants
Earlier this week the National Endowment for the Humanities announced funding of $36.6 million for more than 200 humanities projects. How did philosophers do? By my count, there were seven projects led by persons affiliated with philosophy departments, with their funding totaling $1.1 million. (If I missed any, please let me know.) Let’s congratulate the winners.
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Keeping it Real in Philosophy: an Exchange
This summer has seen a series of guest posts by Elijah Millgram (Utah) on his new book, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization. One theme of the book is that there has been a steep increase in specialization that in some ways threatens knowledge. In the following post*, Millgram starts an exchange with Jerome Ravetz, author of Scientif..
Listing MA Program Placements
A student has written with a question about how MA programs should list their placements: should the program list all of the PhD programs (or other programs) to which their students were admitted, or should the program list only those PhD programs which their students ended up enrolling?
My sense is that so long as the information is very clearly labeled, either ..
Philosophy Snobbery and Communication
Scientists came to realise the media had an important role to play in communicating science. The media could not only inform the public of new discoveries, but it could educate them about the scientific method, and it could boost the visibility, esteem and trust of science as an institution. Then came the advent of “science communication” as a profession unto itself..
What Contemporary Philosophy Should the “Greats” Read? (Updated)
Suppose you could go back in time to hand a relatively recent work in philosophy to a pre-20th Century philosopher. Who would you visit, and what philosophical work would you deliver?
To put some parameters on the question:
Which philosophical work published after 1950 do you wish would have been read by which philosopher who died in 1900 or earlier?
Note: ..
The Dualism of Philosophy’s Purpose
Professional philosophers don’t present themselves as particularly wise or as people to turn to for advice about how to live. And why should we? That’s not what we were trained for when we were students and it’s not what we promise in the prospectus. I remember, as a student, asking a philosophy professor something about what I should do the following year—whether I..
SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
Below are last week’s updates and new additions to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy(IEP), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR), and Wi-Phi Wireless Philosophy, appearing here courtesy of the folks at Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with philosophical ..
A Database of Philosophical Ideas
PhilosophyIdeas is a searchable database of philosophical ideas compiled by Peter Gibson and built by Martin Berry. Users can search and sort ideas by theme, author, and text. The site has been around for years, but somehow escaped my attention until recently when I saw a tweet from Gibson: “Latest upload. Now over 17,000 philosophical ideas in the catalogue, each o..
We Are Not Human Individuals
Unbeknownst to many people, our emotions, cognition, behavior, and mental health are influenced by a large number of entities that reside in our bodies while pursuing their own interests, which need not coincide with ours. Such selfish entities include microbes, viruses, foreign human cells, and imprinted genes regulated by viruslike elements. This article provides ..
Philosophers Object to Heythrop’s Closing (updated)
The governing board of Heythrop College, a constituent college of the University of London whose mission is “to serve society through philosophy and theology,” met in late June and concluded that “the College in its current form, as a constituent college of the University of London, will come to an end in 2018, although its mission and work will not.” Now, according..
Reforming Refereeing (guest post by Aaron Garrett)
The following is a guest post* by Aaron Garrett, associate professor of philosophy at Boston University. Professor Garrett recently became editor of the History of Philosophy Quarterly and asked if we could open up a discussion about reforming various aspects of article refereeing. I encourage people to contribute to the discussion and share their experiences and co..
Putting the “Ph” in Science PhDs
My goal is to put the Ph back into a PhD. I want to restore more philosophical thinking into the doctoral degrees that students earn here.
So says Arturo Casadevall, chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins University, in the Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine. Casadevall thinks that bringing philosophical thinking, part..
More on the Benefits of Philosophy for Kids
An increasing number of American children from low-income backgrounds are coming to kindergarten lagging in both academic and non-cognitive skills critical to educational success…. Fortunately, there’s a growing — yet under-appreciated and therefore under-reported — method of teaching that’s been showing tangible progress in student academic achievement, including..
High School Summer Philosophy Program
I’ve been teaching high school students a week’s worth of philosophy each summer for the past three years, and I’ve had tremendous success doing it.
So writes Kristopher G. Phillips (Southern Utah), in a post at Philosophical Percolations on the Lyceum Program for High Schoolers, which he co-founded as a graduate student at the University of Iowa with Greg Stoute..
Richard Gale (1932-2015) (Updated)
Richard Gale, who spent much of his career at the University of Pittsburgh, has died. Gale had also held appointments at NYU, Hunter College, Vassar, and the University of Tennessee. He worked on pragmatism and philosophy of religion. Prior to entering graduate school in philosophy, Gale was a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, and also worked in record promotion for..
Student Plagiarism in Philosophy Classes
Do you use Turnitin or SafeAssign in your courses to help deter and catch plagiarism? It turns out such software is not very good, reports Inside Higher Ed. Here are the results of a recent test conducted by Susan E. Schorn, a writing coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin:
Out of a total of 37 sources, the software fully identified 15, partially identi..
SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
The latest edition of Philosophical Percolations‘ “Saturday Linkorama” is up. As usual, thanks to a special arrangement with the crew there, I present below a sample of what they have on offer: last week’s updates and new additions to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy(IEP), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR),..
Philosophy Via Facebook?
Popular essays, fictions, aphorisms, dialogues, autobiographical reflections and personal letters have historically played a central role in philosophy. So also have public acts of direct confrontation with the structures of one’s society: Socrates’ trial and acceptance of the hemlock; Confucius’ inspiring personal correctness. It was really only with the generation..
Peter Manchester (1943-2015)
Peter Manchester, a philosopher at Stony Brook University (formerly SUNY Stony Brook), has died. Professor Manchester started at Stony Brook in 1980 and worked in ancient philosophy, Neoplatonism, speculative theology, hermeneutical phenomenology, and philosophy of time. His last book,Temporality and Trinity, came out just a few months ago. Newsday has more informat..
A Prospective Grad Student Says “No Thanks”
I am not sure what I expected when I applied to PhD programs. But when April rolled around, I began to ask myself what kind of future I was signing up for, and how different it would be from numerous other paths. After all, horror stories abound about the process of getting a PhD, and the terrible job market afterward. At best, I could hope to be turning 40, with a ..
APA Announces Recent Award Winners
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the recent winners of four honors:
Carol Gould (CUNY Graduate Center) has won the 2015 Joseph B. Gittler Award for “an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences” for her book, Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice.
Using Comedy Clips in Philosophy Class
I sometimes use excerpts from comedy routines or shows in my teaching. For example, when I teach Frankfurt’s On Bullshit in my contemporary moral problems course, I regularly use this segment from the Colbert Report:
The Colbert Report
Colbert Report Episode Guide, More Colbert Report Videos, Comedy Central Full Episodes
And in my philosophy and ..
Humility in Philosophy
Because the views we espouse are always open to objections and disagreement, our practice at its best nurtures in the philosopher a capacity to withstand huge shifts in her understanding of even her most deeply entrenched beliefs about how things are in the world. Good philosophy of all stripes fosters in the practitioner the virtue of epistemic humility.
The bes..
Is Philosophy Too “Stupid” For Women? (updated)
Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?, a collection of essays edited by Katrina Hutchison (Macquarie) and Fiona Jenkins (ANU), is reviewed by David Papineau (KCL, CUNY) in The Times Literary Supplement. Papineau reviews the book with the question in mind of why there are so few women in philosophy. Things are not as overtly sexist as they were in the bad old da..
Fallacy Ref Calls It
Fallacy Ref is the creation of Glen Welch, a performing arts critic for Red Publication. It’s “a series of image macros featuring an NFL referee calling fouls on invalid argument tactics and sneaky rhetoric.” Some examples:
I can see these coming in handy. You can read more about the project here and see more of the images on Fallacy R..
Faculty Evaluations of Graduate Students
How does your department evaluate graduate students as they progress through the PhD program? One common method is an annual letter from the department to the student, based on a discussion about the student at a faculty meeting. How informative are these letters? What kinds of information do they provide? My sense is that comparative information (rankings or sortin..
Philosophy “Changes the Subject”
Much of philosophy simply changes the subject when it brings the world under its analysis.
That is Nellie Wieland (CSU Long Beach) in her review of How To Do Things With Pornography by Nancy Bauer (Tufts). Wieland is describing Bauer’s view, and continues:
When we write about pornography we risk not writing about any phenomenon that tracks the experience of or..
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