October 2015
Which Philosophy Ideas Make for Good Costumes?
Which philosophical ideas (or examples) would make for a good Halloween costume?
Yes, Brain in Vat. We all think we’ve thought of that one already. What else?
Eternal Recurrence? You went as that last year! And the year before.
I suppose you could go as anything. Just make a sign that says “p & ¬ p” and walk behind it.
How would you go about dressing up ..
The Philosophy of Adjuncting: A Syllabus (Guest Post by Kevin Temple)
The following is a guest post* by Kevin Temple, a PhD candidate in philosophy at The New School for Social Research. It appears here courtesy of Adjunct Commuter Weekly, where it was first published. Adjunct Commuter Weekly is the first magazine to address the lifestyle needs and shared interests of a rapidly growing and increasingly influential demographic. Edited ..
Would the Great Philosophers Have Survived in the Modern University?
Would the philosophers who populate the canon have gotten tenure? Would they have survived the Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessments in the UK? Lloyd Strickland (Manchester Metropolitan University) is skeptical:
Immanuel Kant might look worthy of the nod – his three Critiques shaped a lot of the philosophy that came afterwards. However, those works were..
Ad Hoc (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Ad Hoc
by Rachel Katler
Sanders Graduate Student Prizes Awarded
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2015Â Sanders Graduate Student Prize, sponsored by the Marc Sanders Foundation. They are:
- Joshua Brandt (University of Toronto), “Partiality’s Negative Analogue”
- Kevin Dorst (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “A Contextualist Solution to Miner Disagreements”
- Matthew Shields (G..
A College without Philosophy? A Philosophy Department without Philosophers? (updated)
After program cut upon program cut, at what point does a liberal arts institution cease to be one?
That’s the question in an article at Inside Higher Ed that centers around faculty cuts at Wartburg College in Iowa, a Christian college.
This month, at least three tenure-track faculty members at Wartburg received notices that the college was not recommending the..
APA Book Prize Results Announced
The winner of the 2015 American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize is Manuel Vargas (University of San Francisco) for his Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press).
Honorable mentions went to Adrienne Martin (Claremont McKenna) for her How We Hope: A Moral Psychology (Princeton University Press) and Michael Titelbaum f..
Why Students Aren’t Reading (Ought Experiment)
Welcome back to Ought Experiment, which sadly is not a comic strip. I think this week’s question is about getting kids to do the assigned readings, but if I’m being totally honest with you here, I kind of skimmed the letter:
Dear Louie,Â
I can’t get my students to do the readings! Maybe a third of them will be with me for the first few weeks, but term after te..
U.S. Politics with Logical and Factual Annotation
This is a great public service and a great idea.
Stefan Schubert, a visiting philosophy professor at the London School of Economics, and Spencer Greenberg, a mathematician and entrepreneur who started Clearer Thinking, a site aimed to help people “avoid thinking traps and make improved decisions, to better achieve the goals they value most,” are producing videos ..
Name-Blind Hiring
The BBC reports that
Leading companies and universities are being asked to remove names from application forms in an effort to stop “unconscious bias” against potential recruits from black and ethnic minority backgrounds…Â Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that Ucas, the UK’s university admissions service, will carry out “name-blind” applications from 2..
Chaospet (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Chaospet
by Ryan Lake
Philosophy in 10 Years
Here are five predictions about the state of philosophy in ten years:
1. Philosophy’s popularity as a major will increase. This will be owed in part to the swing of the cultural pendulum, to economic growth making people more comfortable with a major lacking a clearly-defined career path, to efforts by the profession to emphasize the practical value of philosophy..
Bernecker Selected as Humboldt Professor at Cologne (updated)
Sven Bernecker, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, is one of the recipients of the latest round of Humboldt Professorships. The award, which includes 3.5 million euros, will bring him to the University of Cologne. Professor Bernecker works in epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, Kant, and German Idealism. According to the Alex..
Where Philosophy Is Missing
Some colleges have no philosophers. Some colleges have philosophers, but not many, yielding a very low philosopher-to-student ratio, particularly when compared to elite institutions or flagship state schools. Such colleges—which include many community colleges, state branch campuses, and historically black colleges and universities—seem to turn out very few stud..
Applying for Jobs at a SLAC?
A revised version of the Guide for Applying to Jobs at Selective Liberal Arts Colleges has been published at Inside Higher Ed. Check it out. The original was created by a group of philosophers and first published here at Daily Nous over the summer.
To φ Or Not To φ (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
To φ Or Not To φ
by Tanya Kostochka
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Does Philosophy Improve Critical Thinking?
Following on the heels of last week’s discussion of non-philosophers teaching critical thinking, the Chronicle of Higher Education drew attention to a meta-analysis of studies about whether colleges succeed in teaching critical thinking at all. As it turns out, they do:
Students’ critical-thinking skills do improve in college. The difference is comparable to a st..
Open Access Philosophy Textbooks
Open educational resources (OER) are “any kind of material that you can use in teaching and learning that is openly available.” Richard Zach (Calgary) explains that “openly available” in this context means:
Available under a license which allows the “five Rs of openness“:
- Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
- Reuse – the right t..
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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Mind Chunks (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Mind Chunks
by Pete Mandik
Frisch from Maryland to Hannover
Mathias Frisch, currently professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, is moving to the University of Hannover  to take up a chair in the philosophy of science. He will start there in the Spring (the German “Sommersemester”).  Frisch works largely in philosophy of physics and philosophical issues concerning climate change.
(P.S. Junior folks on the mark..
Intellectually Safe Space
What is an “intellectually safe space”? In “What Does Intellectual Safety Really Mean?” Katelyn Hallman (North Florida) notes:
An intellectually safe environment, as typically construed, is something like an environment “in which a person feels comfortable sharing ideas and opinions without fear of harsh judgment or repercussions.” This conception of intellectual..
The Lecture Strikes Back
Lecturing as a teaching style is not particularly trendy these days, but perhaps it is particularly well-suited for the humanities. Writing in the New York Times, history professor Molly Worthen (UNC) makes the case:
In the humanities, there are sound reasons for sticking with the traditional model of the large lecture course combined with small weekly discussion..
Philosophers on Rating People
If you were to be rated—as a person—on a scale of 1 to 10, what do you think you’d get? Questions like that might have been lurking in people’s minds since news broke a couple of weeks ago about Peeple, an app that was pitched as “Yelp for people“. Initially, the idea was that anyone, once they’ve confirmed they know you, could leave a review of you on the Peepl..
Six Degrees of Francis Bacon
You may have heard of, and if so probably by now forgotten about, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” A meme before the age of memes, it is older than some Daily Nous readers. Heck, Wikipedia describes it as a “parlour game.” No one has “parlours” anymore. Barely anyone has a “parlor,” even.
And yet, “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon” kind of works, doesn’t it?
Regardle..
Challenges of Chairing Philosophy Departments
One thing that a Philosophy Head or Chair has to bear in mind continuously is “out-of-sight, out-of-mind.” I’ve always made it a point to tell higher administrators about the many accomplishments of Philosophy faculty—probably to the point of annoying them somewhat. But there’s simply no substitute for self-promotion with administrators who often don’t think of th..
SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
Below are last week’s additions and updates 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 via special arrangement with Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with lots of other..
Grad Student Sues U. Miami, Colin McGinn, and Edward Erwin
The University of Miami graduate student who previously complained of sexual harassment by Colin McGinn has now filed a federal lawsuit against the university, McGinn, and McGinn’s former colleague, Edward Erwin. The Huffington Post reports:
She’s claiming the school violated its Title IX responsibilities by failing to fully investigate her sexual harassment clai..