Daily Nous - news for & about the philosophy profession

Daily Nous Seeks Cartoonist

I would like Daily Nous to run a regular humorous comic strip having something to do with philosophy, the philosophy profession, or academia. The strip would run every other week. The format (single or multi-panel, black & white or color, serial or stand-alone, etc.) and, of course, the content, would be up to the artist(s). The artist(s) will receive a small amount..

Who called it “Experimenting with Coffee” instead of “X-phresso”?

A pair of philosophers teamed up with a beautiful food website and a fancy coffee shop to bring some experimental philosophy to the people.

Shen-yi Liao (Leeds, soon Puget Sound) and Aaron Meskin (Leeds) served members of the public coffee at Laynes Espresso to investigate whether first-hand experience is required to judge something’s taste and whether knowledge ..

2014 Lakatos Award Given To Two Philosophers

The 2014 Lakatos Award has been won jointly by Gordon Belot (Michigan) for his book Geometric Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2011) and David Malament (UC Irvine) for his book Topics in the Foundations of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation Theory (Chicago, 2012). Each will receive the full award amount of £7500.

From the award website at the London ..

Imposter Syndrome (Ought Experiment)

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Welcome back to Ought Experiment, where everybody nobody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. This week’s question is about imposter syndrome, and the anxiety of interacting with colleagues.

Dear ..

Are MAs the New Norm for Admitted PhD Program Applicants?

From a philosophy professor who prefers to remain anonymous, a question about whether it is now the norm for successful applicants to PhD programs to have (or be on their way to having) a terminal MA:

When I applied to grad school, (I think) the norm was to apply straight from one’s undergraduate institution to PhD programs. Terminal MAs were seen as good fallbac..

Philosopher Wins $50,000 Hiett Prize

Scott Samuelson, associate professor of philosophy and humanities at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, is the 2015 recipient of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. The Hiett Prize is awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, whose purpose is “enrich and deepen lives through the wisdom and imagination of the humanities.” According to the Dallas Inst..

Administrator-Faculty Spousal Hiring

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous writes in with question:

My spouse is a finance professional interviewing to work for a university endowment. While there is plenty of information out there about faculty-faculty spousal hires, I haven’t been able to find anything about admin-faculty hires. That is, if my spouse is offered the position, would a spousal h..

New Philosophy Center Aims to Bridge American – Chinese Gap

The Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center is an initiative launched to “look past contemporary political differences” between the United States and China “to their deeper intellectual roots.” A project of the Berggruen Institute, the Philosophy and Culture Center

will include a fellowship program between Chinese and American universities; an “ideas contest,” co..

Japan’s Education Ministry vs. Humanities and Social Sciences

Times Higher Education reports:

Many social sciences and humanities faculties in Japan are to close after universities were ordered to “serve areas that better meet society’s needs”. Of the 60 national universities that offer courses in these disciplines, 26 have confirmed that they will either close or scale back their relevant faculties at the behest of Japan’s..

Making Journal Issues Larger

The European Journal of Philosophy has announced it is increasing the size of its issues. Joseph Schear (Oxford), the journal’s editor, writes:

For the last several years, we have been suffering from a substantial backlog, in part owing to an increase in the number of high-quality submissions. Fortunately, we have just been given a 50% increase in our page budget..

Leadership of the Philosophical Gourmet Report

Some readers have recently asked questions about who is “really” running the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a ranking of the reputations of some doctoral programs in philosophy.

As was reported last October, PGR founder and editor Brian Leiter (Chicago) was to co-edit the 2014-15 edition of the PGR with his chosen successor, Berit Brogaard (Miami), and then ..

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 lots of other philosophy-related links, by Jon..

Claudia Card (1940-2015) (Updated)

Claudia Card, Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has died. Professor Card received her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Wisconsin, and joined the faculty there after getting her PhD at Harvard in 1969. She wrote on a wide range of topics in ethics and social philosophy, and is especially well-known for her work in femin..

The Unsung Hero of Your Undergraduate Philosophy Education

There are some philosophers we hear a lot about—not just those in the canon, but also the “superstars” of today. These philosophers can often be inspirations on the page, motivating students to take up philosophy as a major course of study. But just as important—probably more so—are those undergraduate professors who inspired or motivated you to take philosoph..

Buchanan Wins 2015-16 PBK Romanell Professorship

Allen Buchanan (Duke/KCL) is the 2015-2016 winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Professorship. The Romanell Professorship is awarded on the basis of one’s “distinguished achievement and substantial contribution to the public understanding of philosophy.” It includes a $7,500 stipend and three lectures. More details about Buchanan’s work and why he won are here.

The Absence of Chinese Philosophy in the U.S.

In the United States, there are about 100 doctorate-granting programs in philosophy. By my count, only seven have a permanent member of the philosophy faculty who specializes in Chinese philosophy.

That’s Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside), writing in the L.A. Times.

Philosophy professors in the United States have all heard of Confucius and the Daoist Laozi. Ma..

Two Philosophers’ Views on the Point of College

This week, two philosophers—Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) in the New York Times Magazine and Gary Gutting (Notre Dame) in The Chronicle of Higher Education—have discussed the point of a college education.

Appiah observes that there are “two distinct visions of higher education contend throughout our classrooms and campuses.”

One is “Utility University,” which..

Philosophical Insights for Good Professorship

A good professor “will be able to put philosophical insights to practical use,” argues Robert J. Bloomfield, a professor at the School of Management at Cornell, in an extraordinarily useful paper, “How to Be a Good Professor.” The paper offers an impressive range of good advice, including a section on the value that an appreciation of philosophy has for all professo..

Are Bans on Faculty-Student Sex Unjust to Students?

The New Republic has published “Lust for Learning,” by Laura Miller. If it weren’t for the fact that this article is full of references to philosophers past and present, I would ignore it and its ridiculous subtitle: “Is erotic longing between professors and students unavoidable?” Take a moment to imagine the bizarre world in which the answer to that question is yes..

Plot Philosophy’s Subfields

Yesterday’s post about interdisciplinary work in philosophy got me curious about how philosophers understand their work in relation to other disciplines.

One question we can ask of academics is: “what do they take themselves to be studying?” Of course, there are various ways of answering this question. One way of doing so is trying to determine where on a spectru..

Philosophy Dissertations More Often Venture Beyond the Humanities

Among new PhDs in the humanities who described their dissertation research as interdisciplinary, philosophy students reported the largest percentage of dissertations that crossed fields rather than partnering with another humanities discipline (over 50% in the 2011–2013 cohort), compared to less than a third in the other humanities disciplines… In more than a thir..

“Uncomfortable Truths” about Academic Freedom

We’ve discussed academic freedom at Daily Nous before (for example: Thoughts on Academic Freedom, Are We Being Chilled?, Strategies for Keeping Warm, Microaggressions and Academic Freedom). One thing I’ve been concerned with is the extent to which the very few actual cases in which a professor’s academic freedom has been violated owing to the expression of unpopular..

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..