Links added lately…
- “Combining economics with philosophy makes for an excellent and productive career” — that’s advice for graduate students from John Broome, but it might also be a summary of this in-depth interview with him about his education and work
- “The fantasy that you can just wipe away democratic traditions and get something in its place that will solve the problems of democracy is a very dangerous one that Plato fell victim to” — on Plato’s real world attempts to influence government
- “Israel’s State Ombudsman for Judges admonished [a] Supreme Court Justice for speaking at a conference honoring a Hebrew University professor who has criticized the war in Gaza” — the professor? philosopher David Enoch
- “Better to work with a theory that doesn’t accommodate all the data, if that’s the cost of explaining some of them” — Daniel Greco on (Timothy Williamson on) bullet-biting and philosophy
- “More than 40 percent [of over 200 people targeted by Campus Reform one year] said they had received threats of physical violence” — the NYT on the conservative groups threatening freedom of expression in higher education
- “Interesting lives make good stories, not the other way around” — Barry Lam on the age at which it’s best to “peak” and what can be learned from thinking about that
- “Publication rates rise sharply during the tenure-track, peaking just before tenure… After tenure, faculty produce more novel works, though fewer highly cited papers” — a new study on the impact of tenure on faculty research trajectories
- “A future without work could be much better than ours, overall. But, living in that world, or watching as our old ways passed away, we might still reasonably grieve the loss of the work that once was part of who we were” — Harvey Lederman on the dread he feels about the omni-automation on the horizon
Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.
Previous edition.
The Broome interview is interesting all though, but the part that was most surprising to me – completely surpirsing – was that what got him interested in philosophy was Cavell and Wittgenstein. I never would have guessed that, and though I’ve not read close to all his work, I can’t say I’ve ever noticed even a bit of their influence in the work of his I’ve read, making it even more surprising. I only wish he’d talked a bit more about how they influenced him, or why and how he moved away from them.