Daily Nous - news for & about the philosophy profession

Philosophy on Homelessness

The University of Oregon Department of Philosophy has “Community Philosophy Institutes” on various topics, and one of its current projects is “Homelessness and Home.” Organized by Professor Naomi Zack, who is also teaching a course on the subject, Homelessness and Home aims to “support creative, intellectual, and practical address of the problems of homelessness. Th..

Better To Not Create Lectureships?

An assistant professor who wishes to remain anonymous (“given the possibility that my department might proceed to hire a lecturer, I do not by any means want that individual to feel anything other than completely welcome in our department”) writes in with the following query:

“Say an institution is contemplating creating a new non-tenure-track lectureship positio..

On ‘Begs the Question’: A Poll

With alarming frequency I am hearing friends declare that we’ve lost “begs the question.” What used to be a distinctive phrase for the fallacy of assuming the truth of the very claim you are setting out to prove (aka petitio principii), “begs the question” is now widely used to mean “raises the question.” A Language Log post from over 4 years ago presented some data..

Cornel West Arrested in Ferguson

Cornel West (Princeton) was arrested in Ferguson, MO today while taking part in the “Ferguson October” rally, which has been attended by over 1,000 protesters. West said he attended the rally with the intent to get arrested. Details here and here.

(photo: Jim Young / Reuters, via The New York Times)

Philosophers to Help Mine Big Data for Biomedical Research

Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy is teaming up with the University of Pittsburgh to form a new “Center for Causal Modeling and Discovery in the Biomedical Sciences.” The center is funded by an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Its aim is to “help scientists capitalize more fully on enormous and growing collections of data..

Live-Tweeting Conferences

Leigh Johnson (Christian Brothers University) has issued a CFT — a call for tweeters — for the upcoming meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy (SPEP) later this month. (The tweets from last year’s conference are archived here.) What are the benefits of having people live tweet a conference? Johnson’s answer includes:

keeps you i..

Two Ways to Help Victims (Guest Post by Jennifer Lackey)

Jennifer Lackey is professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. She works mostly in epistemology, with an emphasis on social epistemology. She is the author of Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge (OUP), has edited collections on the epistemology of testimony and disagreement, and has written very many articles on these and other topics. In..

The Moral Psychology of Racist Brutality

Kate Manne (Cornell) writes in The Stone in The New York Times that the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and the events that have occurred in its wake, suggest that a traditional understanding of racism is mistaken:

One possibility is that people are treated brutally because those who mistreat them fail to grasp their common humanity — or, similarly,..

Comments and Anonymity at Daily Nous

I am grateful that people take the time and make the effort to comment on the posts here at Daily Nous. I try to post about news and issues that are important to or of interest to other philosophers, and the discussions that the posts generate is one way of gauging success at that. Some of these discussions have been informative and helpful, occasionally provocative..

Leiter to Step Down from PGR / The New Consensus

Brian Leiter (Chicago) announced that he will be stepping down as editor of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a highly influential reputational ranking of philosophy Ph.D. programs he created in 1989 while he was a graduate student, and which has been published on the Internet since 1996. The 2014-15 edition of the PGR will be officially co-edited by Leiter an..

What Google Thinks People Think About Philosophers

Enter a word or two into Google and its guesses about what you’re looking for, based on what most other people have looked for using similar words, will appear.

So what do people think of philosophers? Hmmm….

How does Google autocomplete other philosophy-related searches? If you find one worth sharing, take a screenshot, send it to [email protected]…

How Much Weight Should a Candidate’s School Have?

“The next time you do a job search break your committee into two groups. Have one group evaluate the candidates without reference to the institution from which they graduated and have the other evaluate the candidates with all of the institutional information included. I can almost guarantee that the short lists will not be the same. And I believe that anyone who is..

APA Member Demographics

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has published a table that provides some basic demographic information about its membership, including gender, race/ethnicity, LGBT status, disability status, employment status, and tenure status. According to the introductory page, “All demographic data collection is voluntary, and members may provide or update their inf..

Non-Academic Hires — a Reminder

The academic philosophy job market is underway, but academia is not the only place philosophy PhDs might be seeking employment. Check out the Non-Academic Hires page here at Daily Nous to see what kind of work philosophers have landed outside of academia. If you are a philosopher who has recently found employment outside academia, please add your information to that..

Update from Leiter

In a post at his blog, Brian Leiter responds to the September Statement calling for him to relinquish control of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) by saying that “there may be a lot more to the story.” He also says that he and the Board of the PGR have made “considerable progress the last few days” toward “a plan for the future in which I step down as editor af..

Broader Effects of the PGR

The following is an excerpt from an email a well-known senior philosopher sent to his/her colleagues regarding visiting speakers:

“The events are being organized so as to maximally benefit the department. This includes promoting the reputation of the department, providing intellectual stimulation, and just having plain fun. Normally, conferences and workshops sho..

How Much Should Publishers Pay Contributors?

A professor who prefers to remain anonymous—perhaps so as to not weaken his bargaining position—asks for help from Daily Nous readers about how much he should request to be paid for allowing a publisher to use one of his articles in a textbook anthology. He writes:

Does anyone have any information about how much, if anything, an author should expect to receiv..

Outrageous Firing of 8 Seminary Faculty (updated)

Eight of the ten full-time faculty teaching at General Theological Seminary, an Episcopal Seminary in Manhattan, have been fired after detailing the highly objectionable behavior of their newly installed Dean/President Kurt Dunkle in a letter to the school’s Board of Trustees. Here are some of their complaints against Dunkle:

“On numerous occasions, he has told t..

Advertising Exploitative Positions

Derek Bowman, a recent philosophy PhD who is currently employed as a part-time lecturer, writes in with a suggestion for addressing the increasingly prevalent practice of hiring part-time or adjunct faculty to meet teaching needs. I present it here for your consideration and discussion.

In recent years, the philosophy blogosphere has done an admirable job mak..

U. of Southern Maine Cuts Affect Philosophy

The University of Maine has announced that it will be eliminating 50 faculty positions and 100 staff positions and restructuring its academic departments so as to make up for a $16 million deficit. Inside Higher Ed reports: “The English, philosophy and history departments would be combined into a single humanities department, Provost Joseph W. McDonnell said in an e..

Sheffield Will Not Cooperate with PGR

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield has made the following announcement: “Prospective postgraduates should note that the Department is not supplying updates and corrections to the 2014 Philosophy Gourmet Report, and should not assume that this report is based on accurate information.”

Telling Your Students Your Beliefs

Adam See (Brooklyn College) wrote a letter to his philosophy students at the end of the past semester. It begins:

Dear students,
I am no longer your professor. Throughout the semester many of you have asked me what my personal beliefs are on the topics we’ve discussed. As I understand it, the reason that professors are reluctant to discuss their own beliefs come..

How Much Should Graduate Students Publish?

A current graduate student writes in with this sense of what is expected nowadays:

I’m under the general impression that I need to get as many publications in top journals as I can before I go on the job market. Considering how slow this process can be, and the fact that you can’t concurrently submit the same paper to more than one journal, it follows that I need t..

M.A.D. Philosophy: Consensual Incest (Updated)

M.A.D. Philosophy is a new occasional series here at Daily Nous that highlights philosophical work that Makes A Difference to what is going on in the so-called “real world.” If you have a suggestion for this series (self-nominations are welcome), please send it along to [email protected] for a later installment.

First in the series is “The Ethics of I..

Cosmopolitanism and Diversity in Philosophy

“The reason why most Anglo-American philosophers don’t worry about learning non-Western philosophy is that they assume cosmopolitanism is an ideal developed by Western philosophy. This assumption can create an amazing amount of institutional inertia. Western philosophers assume that the tradition of Plato and Spinoza and Russell just is the cosmopolitan tradition, a..

Sci-Phi Faves (Updated)

Eric Schwitzgebel thinks that science fiction and speculative fiction more broadly is “a powerful philosophical tool.” He has been soliciting suggestions of philosophical science fiction from other philosophers this week at The Splintered Mind and you can view the results here and here.

Sort of related (to this and the big story of late).

UPDATE (10/6/14): Mor..

Leiter Responds: Immediate Departure “Unacceptable” (updated)

Brian Leiter has declared that the two of three options presented by the majority of the Philosophical Gourmet Report’s board members which included requests that he step down immediately are “unacceptable.” He explains that he has already put in a significant amount of work towards the production of the 2014 edition of the PGR so he as “at least co-edited” it. He a..