The Autonomy of University Ethics Centers
Wednesday afternoon, Gordon Hull, associate professor of philosophy at University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and director of the school’s Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, put up a post on the Center’s webpage about the recent police shooting of an unarmed black man, Keith L. Scott (see the bottom of this post for that text). (more…)
New Media in Psychology and Philosophy
The focus here at Daily Nous is on the philosophy profession, but the following dispute down the street caught my attention. (more…)
Grad Students: What Would You Tell Your Fellow Students, But Can’t?
First we asked what graduate students would like to say to their professors, but felt like they couldn’t. Then we asked what professors would like to say to graduate students, but couldn’t. Less for the sake of exploring all of the available logical space (but of course partly for that) and more because it was requested and might be of some use, we shall now take up..
Filling in Wikipedia’s Coverage of Philosophy
An effort is underway to fill in some gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage of philosophy, particularly its coverage of “underrrepresented philosophers and philosophy.” As part of this year’s WikiConference North America, there will be an “editathon” during which Alex Madva (Cal Poly Pomona) will be coordinating the addition of information and entries in Wikipedia. The event..
Chaospet (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Chaospet
by Ryan Lake
Timeliness in Academia: Email, Deadlines, Meetings, etc.
There are a bunch of things that people in the course of their normal work lives have to do in a timely fashion in order to stay in good standing in their jobs, but about which there is, let’s say, greater variation in academia. This observation was prompted by a query from Tom Donaldson, received in the Daily Nous inbox a, er, couple of weeks ago: (more…)
Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
It’s Monday already! Time for the weekly report on updates to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR), and Wi-Phi. (more…)
Improve Your Philosophy Teaching With This One Weird Trick
What if I told you there was an easy, scientifically-proven, five-minute method for improving your teaching? Just five-minutes, and your teaching ratings go up. No, I’m not talking about giving your students candy when you have them fill out the course evaluation forms. I’m talking about an actual improvement in learning outcomes, based on real science. How much wou..
Philosophy and the Racial “Epistemic Horizon”
Looking back, I brought something special to those spaces that are predominantly white at Duquesne. And I don’t think that white philosophers can offer what I offered to those Black students and students of color. There is a certain discourse, certain assumptions, a shared discourse, a shared worldview, a shared style. There is also a certain understanding of where ..
The Changing Role of Philosophers As Public Intellectuals
Via a chock-full-of-philosophy-links post at the wonderful Omnivore blog at Bookforum comes “The Philosopher As Public Intellectual” by Patrick Baert, a sociologist at Cambridge University. The essay is part of a forthcoming collection, Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits? (more…)
Hiring Departments Ask Candidates To Anonymize Materials
At least a couple of philosophy departments that are hiring this year have instituted measures to shield the identity of applicants from those reviewing some of their application materials. (more…)
Major Ethics Blog PEA Soup Revamped
PEA Soup (with the PEA standing for Philosophy, Ethics, and Academia) has just undergone a number of changes. It has a new look. It has moved to a new address: www.peasoup.us, and it has teamed up with DePauw University’s Prindle Institute of Ethics (directed by Andrew Cullison). (more…)
APA Issues New Guide For Philosophers Seeking Non-Academic Jobs
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has published a new guide for philosophers seeking non-academic employment, entitled Beyond Academia: Professional Opportunities for Philosophers. According to a press release about the publication, (more…)
Cognitive Bias Codex (updated)
Philosophers have long been interested in how we make sense of the world and how thinking goes wrong. Since some of the most interesting work on these topics in recent decades has been done in social psychology on cognitive biases (even acknowledging this), philosophers should at least be acquainted with some of that research—as some already are. (more…)
To φ Or Not To φ (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
To φ Or Not To φ
by Tanya Kostochka
Other Daily Nous Comics / More Info About DN Comics / Tanya Kostochka on Twitter
Not Refereeing the Resubmitted Paper You Recommended for Revision
Here is something that happens in the world of academic philosophy publishing: (more…)
How To Teach Philosophy In Comedy Clubs (Guest Post by Michael Connell)
The following is a guest post* by Michael Connell, an Australian comedian. Connell has a thing for philosophy, especially Stoicism, which he incorporates into his act (e.g., “How you think shapes how you feel. What I’m saying is that if you don’t enjoy this show, it’s your fault.”). I asked him to talk about his work and conveying philosophical ideas to non-philosop..
Barthold Retaliation Case Settled
This past April I reported that Lauren Barthold, associate professor of philosophy at Gordon College, a Christian liberal arts college in Massachusetts, had filed a lawsuit against the college for retaliating against her for her public statements (such as a letter to the editor of a newspaper) disagreeing with college president Michael Lindsay over whether federal c..
Care to Referee More?
Some members of our profession are referee superstars, being asked multiple times a week to referee papers for journals (and often saying ‘yes’), while others are well-qualified but unnoticed, and are almost never asked to referee. The result is that some philosophers have become unfairly overburdened, journal editors have been having increased difficulty finding re..
Virtual Dissertation Groups
Once again, Joshua Smart, a PhD student at the University of Missouri and an instructor at Christopher Newport University, is organizing virtual writing groups for students working on philosophy dissertations. He writes:
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..
Diversity in Philosophy: Is the Problem Lack of Pre-College Exposure?
Recall these figures from “What is the State of Blacks in Philosophy?” by Tina Fernandes Botts, Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntur Mallarangeng, and Quayshawn Spencer: though blacks in the U.S. make up over 13% of the general population, they make up just 1.32 percent of the total number of people professionally affiliated (as grad students or faculty) with U.S..
Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
Happy Monday, y’all. New thing here: if there are links of philosophical interest you’ve come across recently, you are welcome to share them in the comments to this post (though check out the Heap of Links first to see if it’s not already in there). Alright, then. Without further ado, below are the recent updates to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Int..
Philosophy Teaching Games
Do you use games as a teaching tool in your philosophy course? And if so, which games, and to teach what? The questions were prompted by a friend drawing attention to “The Hobbes Game” by John Immerwahr (in the Fall 1976 issue of Teaching Philosophy). He lays out the game in the first few pages of the article, reproduced below. See the full article for a discus..
Profs: What Would You Tell Your Grad Students, But Can’t?
Comments are still coming in on yesterday’s post, “Grad Students: What Would You Tell Your Prof(s), But Can’t?” In future posts we’ll take up some of the recurring themes in those comments. In the meanwhile, a friend proposed that we hear from the other side. That could be interesting and constructive (I say, suggestively). And so: (more…)
Philosophers among the 2016 Class of Royal Society of Canada Fellows
The Royal Society of Canada has announced its newly elected fellows. “They have been elected by their peers in recognition of outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic achievement,” according to the RSC. Among those honored are several philosophers: (more…)
The Reflectiveness That Makes Us More Opaque To Ourselves
Towards the end of an in-depth and highlyy informative interview with Marya Schechtman (UIC) about the philosophy of personal identity, interviewer Richard Marshall asks her about “difficulties for women in the academy” and whether there’s “something weird going on in philosophy departments that is avoided elsewhere.” Schechtman’s answer includes the following intri..
Philosophy Placement Data: An Update on APDA
Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and headed by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), aims “to make information on academic job placement useful to prospective graduate students in philosophy.” The project has just been updated to include new data, which Professor Jennings describes in a post ..
Grad Students: What Would You Tell Your Prof(s), But Can’t?
In the wake of last week’s post about what graduate students wish they had known going into their programs, a fellow philosophy professor suggested I ask a related question: (more…)