SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
Here 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, courtesy of Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with many other goodies, so check it out. Thanks to ..
Salaries of Philosophy Majors Over Time
Philosophy is the “top humanities bachelors degree” in PayScale’s ranking of majors by salary. The Atlantic reports:
Although philosophy majors rank 75th on PayScale’s overall list of majors at mid-career earnings, it’s the top humanities bachelors degree in their ranking—from early career all the way to later career. “We hear again and again that employers value..
A Case for Philosophy in High Schools (updated)
Back in 1982, Frank Breslin, a New Jersey high school teacher, wrote an article arguing that philosophy should be taught in high school. Huffington Post just reprinted a version of that piece, and it’s worth taking a look at. One of it’s main ideas is that philosophy is a natural fit for teen rebelliousness:
Adolescents are a skeptical lot. Anything and everythin..
Philosopher to Receive 2014 National Humanities Medal
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of the novels The Mind-Body Problem and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, as well as books on Gödel and Spinoza, and who wrote last year’s hit work of non-fiction, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, will be a recipient of one of the ten 2014 National Humanities Medals awarded at a ceremo..
Substantive Philosophical Mistakes In Public Discourse
Public debate is rife with poor reasoning, with certain confused or erroneous claims popping up again and again to affect opinions and policies. Some of these are owed to an inability to understand statistics, some are owed to a lack of scientific understanding, and some are philosophical mistakes. Logic and critical thinking courses already take up formal errors in..
Taking Jokes Too Far in the Classroom (Ought Experiment)
Welcome back to Ought Experiment! It’s a new semester, and that can only mean one thing: fresh opportunities to go home and torture ourselves about the rebelliously stupid sentences that occasionally belly flop forth from our mouths. Or, err… is that just me? Probably not, because this week’s question involves a classroom joke that may have gone too far.
Dear Lou..
Judge Rejects Ludlow’s Amended Claim Against NU
From the Cook County Record:
A federal judge has rejected a Northwestern University professor’s amended claim against the school, ending another chapter in a complex legal battle centered around his relationships with female students. About six months after U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis rejected the Title IX discrimination claim of Northwestern philosophy pro..
A Bias Against Simplicity?
Kieran Healy (Duke) recently presented a paper entitled “Fuck Nuance” at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting. He writes:
Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Sociologists typically use it as a term of praise, and almost without exception when nuance is mentioned it is because someone is asking for more of it. I shall argue that, ..
The One Statement To Best Restart Philosophy
If all existing philosophical work—and all records and knowledge of it—were to be destroyed in some disaster, and only one sentence could be passed on to future intelligent beings (roughly like us we’ll assume) for them to restart the philosophical enterprise, what should that statement be?
The question is based on a similar one about science, which Richard F..
Philosophy Job Placement Data Update
Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) posts that the final report for the Academic Placement Data and Analysis project is complete. She’ll eventually be posting more about it, but I repost some of the information from the report below. One thing worth noting is that though 169 programs were contacted, only 87 added or updated information to the project database. If you..
Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest Winners
The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Public Philosophy has announced the winners of the latest round of its Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest, for op-eds written in 2014. The winners are:
- Mariana Alessandri (University of Texas Pan American / Rio Grande Valley), “Companions in Misery”, The Stone (The New York Times)
- Adam Hosein (Colorado), “Pro..
$3.9 Million for “Moral Superstars” Search
The Beacon Project is a new three-year initiative in psychology and philosophy “to find and define the morally exceptional and better understand how to improve moral character,” according to a press release from Wake Forest University. The project is led by professor of psychology William F. Fleeson (Wake Forest) and includes philosophers Christian B. Miller (Wake F..
Philosophically Interesting Books for Young Kids
A friend is interested in soliciting philosophically-minded books for young children—ones who are reading, but are not at the chapter-book stage. Here are a few I’ve enjoyed with my kids…
- The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater — for the young individualist.
- A Hole Is To Dig by Ruth Krauss — for the young teleologist.
- Pierre: A Cautionary T..
$2.1 Million for the Meaning of Life
Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) and Candace Vogler (Chicago) have received a $2.1 million grant for their project, “Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning of Life.” The project will be jointly hosted by the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina and is funded prim..
SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
Courtesy of the bloggers at Philosophical Percolations.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. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with many other goodies, so check it..
Texas Higher Ed Board v. Logic
With just a few days before the start of the school year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has removed from the curriculum a number of courses meant to fulfill the “Language, Philosophy, & Culture” core requirement at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). Among the struck courses are several in philosophy, including a number of ethics cours..
North-South Academic Partnership on Poverty
Global Colleagues is a one-to-one, academic, multidisciplinary partnership program between scholars in the Global North and South working on issues related to poverty. The first cohort of partnerships began this past May, and the project manager, Robert Lepenies (European University Institute), informs me that there is a “high proportion of philosophers among the pa..
Poster Sessions at Philosophy Conferences
Poster sessions are normal parts of conferences in the sciences and social sciences, but rare in philosophy. So rare, that some philosophers don’t know what they are. So, by way of explanation, they are blocks of time at conferences during which participants display large posters they have made describing their projects and discuss them with other participants—mem..
Just One-Third of Published Psychology is Reliable
A team of 270 researchers have now published the findings from their “Reproducibility Project”—an attempt to replicate the findings in published psychology papers—in Science, and the results are dismal. Nina Strohminger (Yale) and Elizabeth Gilbert (Virginia) discuss the findings in an essay at The Conversation:
Almost all of the original published studies (9..
Political Bias in Philosophy
Philosophers may be lovers of truth, but that doesn’t mean they are exempt from the cognitive biases that bedevil humans generally. Given that philosophers often have strongly-held political opinions, it’s worth asking: To what extent are their opinions conveyed in their academic writings? If political bias is present, then how does it influence the discipline? To t..
Virtual Dissertation Writing Groups
Joshua Smart at the University of Missouri writes to let graduate students know about Virtual Dissertation Groups (previously):
Virtual Dissertation Groups
While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one’s work with peers in a lower-stakes environment, and it can be particularly enlightening to do so with those who take..
APA Responds to Threats to Tenure in Wisconsin
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has released a statement in response to the recently approved Wisconsin state budget legislation, which removed tenure protections from state law and weakened employment protections for tenured faculty. The statement includes the following:
Tenure is the most important safeguard of academic freedom, and academic freedo..
New Journal: Australasian Philosophical Review
The Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP) has announced that they are starting a new journal, Australasian Philosophical Review, to be launched in March, 2017. The journal will be adopting a version of an interesting format (similar to that of Ethics, Policy, & Environment):
Each issue of the *Australasian Philosophical Review* will consist of a curatorial..
Bacciagaluppi from Aberdeen to Utrecht
Guido Bacciagaluppi is leaving the School of Divinity, History, and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen to become Associate Professor in the Foundations of the Natural Sciences at Utrecht University. Professor Bacciagaluppi works in the philosophy of physics, particularly the philosophy of quantum theory. His new post is based in the Faculty of Science and is a..
What Kind of Jerk Are You?
Henry Shevlin, a PhD student at CUNY, has posted about the philosophy of jerks:
What makes someone a jerk? Is it merely being rude, or selfish, or is there something more subtle that underlies the behavior of the jerk? And just as important, how do you know if you’re a jerk yourself?
Following up on Eric Schwitzgebel’s prolific jerk work, Shevlin offers a situ..
Philosophers On The Ashley Madison Hack
Last Tuesday, a group calling itself “Impact Team” followed through on its threat to release data it had stolen from Ashley Madison, an internet service that facilitates encounters between people interested in having extramarital affairs. The data included information on approximately 37 million people who had signed up for the site (see news reports at Wired and 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, courtesy of the bloggers at Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with philosophical and philosophy-r..
Renewed Call to Reinstate Salaita
Kirk Sanders of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign passes along the following:
A group of forty-one Executive Officers and campus leaders from across the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has released an open letter to Acting Chancellor Barbara J. Wilson and President Timothy Killeen. In the letter, the forty-one chairs, directors, and heads ..