Essex Drops Year-End Philosophy Exams
The University of Essex Department of Philosophy will no longer be requiring its second- and final-year undergraduate students to take formal, year-end written exams, as departments at most other British universities still do. In an essay in The Guardian, department head Fabian Freyenhagen writes:
We realised, in response to feedback from students and employers, ..
Appearance and Reality, Take 2 (guest post by Brian Bruya)
Yesterday’s post, “A Detailed Critique of the Philosophical Gourmet Report,” contained excerpts from “Appearance and Reality in The Philosophical Gourmet Report: Why the Discrepancy Matters to the Profession of Philosophy,” an article in Metaphilosophy by Brian Bruya (Eastern Michigan) in which various criticism of the PGR were summarized. As noted in an update to t..
Mind Chunks (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Mind Chunks
by Pete Mandik
Is Anonymous Grading Really Better?
A philosophy professor has written in with some questions about anonymous or “blind” grading, in which the identity of the student whose work is being assessed is not known to the grader. The majority opinion in philosophy appears to be that there are strong moral reasons in support of anonymous grading. Yet, there are questions about evidence for it, as well as abo..
Philosophers Form New “Justice Without Retribution Network”
There’s a new project to bring philosophy to bear on policy issues. In this case it is free will skepticism and criminal justice.
Gregg Caruso (SUNY Corning), Farah Focquaert (Ghent), Derk Pereboom (Cornell), and Elizabeth Shaw (Aberdeen) have formed the Justice Without Retribution Network.
The Justice Without Retribution Network (JWRN) will bring together res..
A Detailed Critique of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (updated)
The latest issue of Metaphilosophy (October 2015) contains “Appearance and Reality in The Philosophical Gourmet Report: Why the Discrepancy Matters to the Profession of Philosophy” by Brian Bruya (Eastern Michigan). It is a “data-driven critique” of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) that argues that “the actual value of the PGR, in its current form, is not near..
APA’s Best Practices for Interviewing
Interview season is creeping up on us. Interviewers and interviewees may wish to check out the new edition of the American Philosophical Association’s Best Practices for Interviewing. It includes an overview of the typical stages of the interviewing process, along with advice for those hiring.
For example:
Members of the hiring committee should confine themsel..
Citation Problems in Philosophy—and Some Fixes
Philosophers widely violate the academic norm to “cite work that is clearly relevant to the topic at hand,” claim Meena Krishnamurthy (Michigan) and Jessica Wilson (Toronto), in a post at the What’s Wrong? blog.
They identify some varieties of citation failure, and argue that it’s a problem worth taking seriously. Failure to cite people’s relevant work deprives ..
College of St. Rose Cuts Philosophy BA
The College of St. Rose, a Catholic liberal arts college in Albany, NY, is eliminating 27 programs, including philosophy, and 23 faculty positions, according to an article at Inside Higher Ed. IHE reports: “Many faculty members are speaking out against the cuts, saying that the plan was made without sufficient faculty input and questioning the elimination of the job..
SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
Here are the past 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, appearing here via special arrangement with Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with a ton of o..
Philosopher Wins €2.5million Leibniz Award
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, professor of philosophy at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Würzburg, is one of ten winners of the 2016 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. The prize, which includes 2.5 million euros, is awarded by the German Research Foundation. Begun in 1985, it “aims to improve the working conditions of outstanding scientists and academics, expa..
2015 Sanders Prize Winners
The Marc Sanders Foundation, which “aims to stimulate renewed appreciation for traditional philosophy by encouraging, identifying and rewarding excellent research in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion” has announced the winners of its 2015 prizes. They are:
Epistemology: Sophie Horowitz (Ric..
Ad Hoc (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Ad Hoc
by Rachel Katler
Winners of the APA’s Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2015 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize. The prize is for the two best published philosophy articles written by adjunct professors, and includes $1000.
This year’s winners are Ben Bramble (Lund University) for “Whole-Life Welfarism“, published in American Philosophical Quarterly, and Mar..
Remember: “Philosophy’s the thing”
A pair of essays in Times Higher Education—one by Simon Blackburn (Cambridge, UNC) and the other by Mariana Alessandri (Texas, Rio Grande Valley) and John Kaag (UMass, Lowell) —aim to defend the value of studying philosophy.
Each has interesting bits worth considering. Blackburn talks about progress in philosophy:
philosophy has indeed both changed and imp..
Academic Employment Numbers: A Closer Look
Articles about employment in higher education sometimes mention that 75% of today’s college instructors are adjuncts. That number—or at least the idea that there are very many adjuncts employed by universities—seems to inform various discussions about academic training and employment (such as whether there are too many philosophy PhDs — here and here, for examp..
Philosophers On Climate Change
The 21st Conference of the Parties (“COP 21”), a major international climate negotiation involving representatives of nearly every country in the world, and organized through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is currently taking place in Paris.
One of the central goals of this year’s conference is “to achieve a legally binding and univers..
Chaospet (Daily Nous Philosophy Comics)
Chaospet
by Ryan Lake
Trend in Philosophy Books: Slightly More of Them
Slightly more philosophy books were published in North America in 2013 (the last year for which there is complete information) than in each of the previous four years, according to data from Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the same year, philosophy ranked 7th in numbers of books published among the 8 humanities disci..
Against Reducing The Number of Philosophy PhDs
Here’s our situation: for many professions—actor, artist, astronaut, athlete, musician, novelist, philosopher, just to name a few—there are more people who aspire to enter them than succeed in doing so.
How bad is this? There are some problems with it, of course: mainly the disappointment of and opportunity costs borne by those who are unable to join what is ..
No Women Philosophers in the British A-Level OCR Philosophy Courses? (updated)
A reader brought to my attention a petition from 17-year-old Zishi Zhang claiming that there are currently no women included in the A-Level OCR Philosophy and Ethics syllabus, and calling to change this . (A-levels are the course and exam requirements students in the UK and elsewhere must typically meet in order to graduate from high school and attend college. “OCR”..
SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update
Here are the past 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, appearing here via special arrangement with Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with a ton of o..
Are There Too Many Philosophy PhDs? It’s Complicated
In light of the previous post, we might ask, are there too many philosophy PhDs? Some people think so, and take that as a reason to think that some departments should stop offering PhDs. Let’s talk about this.
First, a general point: though the number of PhD studentships is not the result of an open market, there are still good Hayekian reasons for caution about ..
Slight Decline in Number of Philosophy PhDs
451 PhDs in philosophy were awarded in the United States in 2014, marking a modest decrease from the 494 of the previous year. Here are the numbers for the period from 2004-2014:
These numbers are from the U.S. federal government’s Survey of Earned Doctorates. (Thanks to Robert Townsend, Director of the Washington Office of the American Academy of Arts & Scie..
3 Philosophers Are State-Level “Professor Of The Year” Winners
Three philosophy professors have been recognized as 2015 U.S. state-level “Professors of the Year” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. They are:
- Jeffrey Hause — Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University (Nebraska)
- Joshua ..
Columbia Philosophy Outreach Program Wins Award for Excellence & Innovation (updated)
Rethink: A Philosophy Community Outreach Program at Columbia University, has been awarded the 2015 APA/PDC Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. The aim of the prize, which has been jointly sponsored by the American Philosophical Association and the Philosophy Documentation Center since 1999, is “to recognize philosophy departments, research ce..
Do You Act As You Argue? Or Do You Argue for How You Act? (Guest Post by Rivka Weinberg)
“Everybody is somebody’s fault.”
That’s the first line of the introduction to The Risk of A Lifetime, the new book by Rivka Weinberg (Scripps), on “how, when, and why procreation may be permissible.” Those who’ve had the opportunity to talk with Professor Weinberg will recognize in the book her frank style, sardonic wit, and critical eye, which she now, in the f..
Nearly $15m For Philosopher-Led Artificial Intelligence Center
The University of Cambridge has received a £10 million (approximately $14.9 million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust to create a new interdisciplinary institution on artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity, called the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Huw Price, the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, will be the ..