Uncategorized

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 ..

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.”..

Heap of Links

1. A Henry David Thoreau tumblr.
2. “Jean-Paul Sartre was literally obsessed with crabs. Also, mescaline.” That and other weird facts about some famous existentialists.
3. What can you do with a philosophy degree? Conduct secret negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC guerillas, for one. Meet Sergio Jaramillo Caro, Colombia’s high commission for p..

Diversity at Undergraduate-Oriented Departments

In the 50-plus years of its existence, the philosophy department has offered only one tenure-track position to a woman, and zero positions to people of color.

So writes undergraduate Emily Beszhak, about the Department of Philosophy at Western Washington University, in a letter to the editor of the school paper. The occasion of the letter was a recent hire by the de..

Andrew Cullison (SUNY Fredonia) to DePauw

Andrew Cullison, currently at SUNY Fredonia, has accepted a position at DePauw University as associate professor of philosophy and director of the university’s Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, effective July 1st, 2014. Cullison works in epistemology, ethics, meta-ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion. He is currently Secretary-Tr..

Do Ethics Courses Make Moral Students?

A recent event at Stanford raised the question of what good ethics courses do, with a particular focus on the question of whether such courses can and should make students more moral. Tamar Schapiro, Barbara Fried, and Benoit Monin (all Stanford) were the featured participants, and you can view their talks and the following discussion here. What is the job of the mo..

Judges Citing Philosophers, Kant Edition

Last week we had a judge citing Mill in a rather complicated case in England. This week we have a judge citing Kant in a rather straightforward case in the United States. The judge apparently needed Kant to weigh in on the sentencing of a tire slasher:

Instead of sending David Toledo, 46, to state prison for the recommended five to 10 years, Common Pleas Judge Edwa..

$7.5m Grant for Moral Robots

Move over, 6 Million Dollar Man, and make room for the 7.5 Million Dollar Moral Robot. The Office of Naval Research is doling out $7.5 million in grants to researchers at Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brown, Yale, and Georgetown “to explore how to build a sense of right and wrong and moral consequence into autonomous robotic systems.”

UPDATE: A related ..

Acknowledgments for Sale

Have you always wanted to be acknowledged in the preface of a philosophy book, but haven’t had the time or opportunity or insightfulness to do anything worthy of being so acknowledged? Or perhaps you have been thinking, “what have books done for me, lately?” Well Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski (both of Georgetown) have something special just for you. You can purch..

Yale Seeks Information About Sexual Misconduct

Jason Stanley (Yale) writes:

I just met with Professor Stephanie Spangler, Yale’s Deputy Provost for Health Affairs and Academic Integrity and also the University’s Title IX Coordinator. She is responsible for oversight of the University’s policies and programs to address and prevent gender-based discrimination and sexual misconduct (which are summarized at http://s..

Pigliucci the Pugilist

You and a number of your colleagues keep asking what philosophy (of science, in particular) has done for science, lately. There are two answers here: first, much philosophy of science is simply not concerned with advancing science, which means that it is a category mistake (a useful philosophical concept) to ask why it didn’t.

BOOM! By now you have probably read abo..

Dennis McKerlie (1948-2014)

Dennis McKerlie, a professor of philosophy at University of Calgary, has died. Professor McKerlie worked in moral and political philosophy. His final book, Justice Between the Young and Old, was published by Oxford in 2012. The Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary will be hosting a two-day conference on McKerlie’s work in February, 2015. More detail..

The Philosophy and Science of Creativity

Scientific American has published an excerpt from the introduction to The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, a new collection edited by Elliot Samuel Paul (Columbia) and Scott Barry Kaufman (NYU). In the various contributions, “philosophers draw on scientific research and scientific work is informed by philosophical perspectives.” Paul and Kaufman are two of the..

Grading Shortcuts

For years I provided very extensive comments on students’ papers. What stopped me was one of them, finally, saying “thank you.” It immediately struck me that hundreds of students over many semesters hadn’t cared enough to say anything to me about the comments, and in fact probably hadn’t cared about them at all. I switched to a more minimal commenting approach, at l..

Weinberg Donates $7.7m to Michigan

No, not me. Nor, alas, anyone related to me (as far as I know). But Marshall Weinberg, a University of Michigan alumnus, has donated $7.7 million to the University of Michigan for a new cognitive science institute, which will be a cooperative effort between the Departments of Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology. The Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, as i..

A Name to Accompany the Accusations

The accusations of sexual misconduct against an as-of-yet-officially unnamed prominent moral and political philosopher (previously here and here) are no longer being made anonymously. They are now being advanced by a friend of one of the alleged victims, a Yale 2010 graduate named Emma Sloan. Ms. Sloan is soliciting funds for the legal case of her friend at this sit..

Philosophy How-Tos

After yesterday’s heap of links included an unusual Wikihow article, it was brought to my attention that the Wikihow site is home to a number of illustrated articles that are more relevant to philosophy, if no less ridiculous. They include: How to Become a Philosopher (“Think about the world, what it means to live, to die, to exist, and what the point of it is“); Ho..

Professors Are Biased, Too

An experiment on unwitting professors shows that racial and gender bias persists, even in disciplines much more diverse than philosophy.

Heap of Links

1. Elizabeth Anderson discusses the history and varieties of egalitarianism at libertarianism.org.
2. “On Being Annoyed” by Tom Roberts (Exeter). A friend asks: the next “On Bullshit”?
3. I’m not sure how helpful it is to ask “What if Plato was an employee benefits professional?” though I do like Dilbert on this idea.
4. A “lost” video interview of Foucault on theme..