Around The Philosoblogosphere
Below are reports about some recent philosoblogospheric activity. If something philosophical and worth sharing is going on at a blog you read or run, feel free to post about it in the comments.
Aesthetics for Birds received a grant from the American Society for Aesthetics for a redesign of the site that makes it, uh, “readymade” for more aesthetical action. Lots of..
The PERFECT Project for €2 Million
Lisa Bortolotti, a philosopher at the University of Birmingham, has won a European Research Council Consolidator Grant for 2 million euros (over 5 years) for “Project PERFECT”, as in Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts (via Leiter). The goal of the project is “to establish whether cognitions that are inaccurate in some importa..
Heap of Links – Long Weekend Bonus Edition
1. I’ll have the Frege Legs with Russell Sprouts, please.
2. Steven Nadler on the Jewish ban of Spinoza and the relation between wisdom and orthodoxy.
3. A multi-author forum on privacy and the framework for a “digital bill of rights.”
4. Are you more utilitarian in a foreign language?
5. Science Magazine’s special issue on the science of inequality.
6. Want to gues..
Heap of Links
1. “No one goes into the humanities for reasons political, professional, or merely personal. We do so because devoting ourselves to some particular field strikes us an especially exciting and appropriate way of leading a life, because the work required seems to us noble, challenging, and rewarding, and because we love it.” David McCabe (Colgate) on how not to defend..
SC Philosophers Ask: Is the State Legislature Silencing Gay Voices?
Julinna Oxley (Coastal Carolina) and Diane Perpich (Clemson), both philosophy professors who head up the women’s studies programs at their respective universities, have written a brief editorial in South Carolina’s main newspaper, The State, raising questions for the State Legislature about the closure of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University o..
The $4.8 Million Experience
Samuel Newlands (Notre Dame), L. A. Paul (North Carolina), and Michael Rea (Notre Dame) have won a grant of $4.8 million from the Templeton Foundation for a three-year interdisciplinary project on the nature of experience. The project explores the nature and implications of transformative experiences, the character of religious and spiritual experiences, and how wor..
McMahan Offered White’s Chair of Moral Philosophy
Oxford University has offered the prestigious White’s Chair of Moral Philosophy to Jeff McMahan (Rutgers). The chair is currently held by John Broome. Recent holders include James Griffin, Bernard Williams, and R.M. Hare. McMahan has yet to make a decision about the offer.
Ask a Long-Dead Philosopher
If you could ask a long-dead philosopher any one question, who would you you pick, and what would you ask? (For our purposes here, “long-dead” will mean “died 50 years or more ago.”) Post your question in the comments. Folks are welcome to try to answer, too, as they think the philosopher asked would do so.
Colorado Professor Allowed Back On Campus
Dan Kaufman, who had been barred since March for unspecified reasons from the University of Colorado, where he is associate professor of philosophy, is no longer “banished” from campus. Story here.
Heap of Links
1. Jeff Sebo talks about moral status while drawing very fast. And well. Hmmm, maybe he isn’t the one drawing.
2. If privacy is dead, perhaps we should be seeking some obscurity instead? (And here’s an article by the same authors in Wired.)
3. Jesse Prinz, who got his PhD at the University of Chicago, is profiled in the university’s magazine. Relatedly, here is a sh..
Philosophy Major in the News
I’ve had many opportunities to use my philosophy degree to home in on what one politician or another was saying and to find the flaw in their logic and ask them to explain it.
Tamara Keith, NPR’s White House correspondent, majored in philosophy and recently returned to her alma mater, Berkeley, to speak to graduating philosophy majors there. Story here.
Philosophy Students Do It
…for good reasons? How about more? That’s a finding of a recent survey conducted at over 100 British universities. So do we add this to the list of reasons to major in philosophy?
Philosophers Hired Outside of Academia
At the suggestion of a friend I am creating a new page at Daily Nous for people to list their successes finding employment outside of academia. The idea of the page is to, first, show readers what some of the alternatives to academia are and give them a sense of their options, and second, to more accurately reflect the reality of the philosophy job market. So if you..
Philosophy Student Wins on “The Voice”
The Voice is a popular televised singing competition on NBC. The finale of its sixth season aired last night, and the winner is Josh Kaufman, who took part in the competition while taking a break from pursuing his master’s degree in philosophy at Northern Illinois University. You can watch Mr. Kaufman talking about his philosophy studies here, and see him singing St..
Should the Philosophy Job Market Ditch Letters of Recommendation?
Over at the Justice Everywhere blog, Anca Gheaus (Sheffield) takes up the question of whether the practice of asking for, reading, and giving weight to reference letters as part of our hiring decisions is on balance good or bad. She says bad, looking at the ways in which the practice of soliciting and relying on letters of recommendation reinforces the influence of ..
Anja Jauernig (Pittsburgh) to NYU
Anja Jauernig, currently associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, has accepted a senior offer from New York University, starting in January, 2015 (via Leiter). One could say she works on Kant and early modern philosophy, or one could just defer to her own words, which include a brief defense of the history of philosophy:
My main interests i..
Laurence Goldstein (1947-2014)
Laurence Goldstein, a professor of philosophy at the University of Kent, has died. Before joining the department at Kent, Goldstein had held appointments at the University of Hong Kong as well as the Universities of Auckland, Cape Town, Glasgow, St. Andrews, Swansea, and Washington. He specialized in philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and Wittgenstein. The..
Now That I’ve Got Your Attention…
We can ask, what is attention, anyway? The folks over at Brains, the group blog on the philosophy and science of minds, are currently putting on a symposium on one answer to this question offered up by Philipp Koralus (Oxford) in his article, “The Erotetic Theory of Attention: Questions, Focus, and Distraction” (in Mind & Language). Koralus provides a précis of his ..
PIP #1: Huebner Interviews Maffie
A “pip” is defined variously as a small fruit seed, a dot on dice or dominoes, an exemplar. It is a verb meaning to crack or chip a hole in a shell. Wonderfully evocative, no? (It’s also the name of a disease which causes a crust on the tongues of birds but let’s ignore that for now as it is gross and doesn’t really work for what I’m going for.) For here, PIP stands..
Philosophy: “Something scientists should embrace”
Just having the graduate students and Sara present in our space and asking us questions raises our consciousness, our neural system, to be thinking a little more about the ethical implications of what we do…. That could/should thinking is unique to philosophy and is something that science should embrace more and more.
So says Tom Daniel, professor of biology at U..
Report on the Yale Case from IHE
Inside Higher Ed reports on the recent social-media publicizing of allegations of sexual misconduct against “a professor of philosophy at Yale University.” (previously here and here, with a discussion of some of the relevant issues here.)
A More Animated Than Usual Chomsky
The world is a very puzzling place. If you’re not willing to be puzzled, you just become a replica of someone else’s mind.
Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is an interesting-looking animation of a conversation with Noam Chomsky, directed by Michel Gondry (of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fame) last year. You can check out a trailer of it here, and read a review..
Philosophy Festival in Cologne this Week
Today is the start of phil.Cologne, a week-long philosophy festival featuring an international slate of philosophers taking up a wide range of questions. Also included: a philosophy slam. Check out the program.
Ethics? There’s An App For That
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University has developed an Ethical Decision Making app.
The app…asks the user to consider the implications of the option at hand according to five categories of “good”: utility (“Does this action produce the most good and do the least harm for all who are affected?”), rights (“Does my action best respect the..
The Legality of Hiring for Diversity
There is a great discussion on the thread about diversity in philosophy departments at undergraduate institutions, with many thoughtful comments and constructive suggestions still coming in.
One set of concerns that arises in these discussions has to do with the legality of trying to hire in a way that will make for a more diverse department. This was a topic addre..
Another Philosopher Gets a Google Doodle
Check out the Italian Google page for a google doodle marking what would have been the 296th birthday of Italian mathematician and philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi. One day only (as with the previous one.)
David Armstrong (1926-2014)
David Armstrong, a philosopher known for his work in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, has died. He had retired from the University of Sydney in 1992, and had previously held appointments at Birkbeck and University of Melbourne, and visiting positions at Yale, Stanford, Franklin and Marshall, University of Texas, and Notre Dame.
UPDATE (5/15/14): In the comme..
Watch What You Say Online, Profs
The new policy says that faculty and staff of the state’s six universities, 19 community colleges and six technical colleges may not say anything on social media that would incite violence, disclose confidential student information or release protected data. But it also says staffers are barred from saying anything “contrary to the best interests of the university.”..