Philosophie sans frontières (guest post by Graham Priest)
The following guest post* is by Graham Priest (CUNY), and appears here via a special arrangement with Oxford University Press and the OUP Blog, at which it is also posted.
“East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet.”
Well, no. Kipling got it wrong.
The East and the West have been meeting for a long time. For most of the last few hund..
Philosopher Attributes Job Loss To Challenging White Hegemony (updated)
Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, a research associate with a term appointment at University College London, is claiming that his contract was not renewed “because his plans to ‘put white hegemony under the microscope’ were considered too much of a challenge to white-dominated academia,” according to an article in The Independent.
Coleman, who crosses out his surna..
Litland (Texas) Wins Sanders Prize in Metaphysics
Jon Litland (University of Texas, Austin) has won the 2015 Sanders Prize in Metaphysics for his paper, “Grounding Ground.” The prize is given to the winner of an annual essay competition open to scholars who are within fifteen years of having received their Ph.D., or students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program (independent scholars may also be eligible..
Good Online Philosophy Courses
A couple of weeks ago I put the entertaining promotional video for “Paradox and Infinity,” an online course by Augustín Rayo (MIT), in the Heap of Links. In case you missed it, I’ve put it at the bottom of this post. A few other online courses have been brought to my attention that look particularly good, including: two taught by large teams at the University of Ed..
New Group Philosophy Blog
A new group philosophy blog is up and running. Called Philosophical Percolations, it has seventeen authors on its roster (some familiar from other blogs) and is open to adding more. It takes as its tagline, “all the philosophy that’s not fit to print,” which its authors explain in quite a bit of detail here. Check it out!
Academics Defend Freedom of Movement
It is estimated that over 22,000 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to migrate to Europe from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia since the beginning of the 21st Century. In April of 2015 alone, “at least five boats carrying almost 2000 migrants” sank.
The latest response by the European Union to these events has been to increase border patrols a..
Using Initials to Hide Gender
There is some evidence that women scientists use their first initials, rather than their first names, at a greater frequency than men do in their publications. It would not be surprising if this were also true in philosophy and some other non-science disciplines. Reasons for women using initials might include worries about sexism in non-fully-anonymized peer review,..
The Mechanics of Class Participation
In one of the comments on the recent post about attendance, Chris requests a follow-up discussion on the mechanics of class participation. Some relevant questions:
- What kinds of class participation do you ask your students for?
- How do you encourage a wide range of students to participate?
- Does participation count as part of your students’ final grade? If so,..
Are Philosophers Hypocrites?
“On no issue did ethicists show unequivocally better behavior than the two comparison groups,” the researchers reported.
An article in The Atlantic— “The Hypocrisy of Professional Ethicists“— sums up research by Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR), Joshua Greene (Harvard), Sara Bleich (Johns Hopkins), Eric Schulz (Max Planck Inst.), Michael Koenigs (Wisconsin), and other..
Philosopher Wins Princess of Asturias Award
Spanish philosopher Emilio Lledó Iñigo has been awarded the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. Eight such awards are given annually, in different fields. The Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts went to Francis Ford Coppola and the award for social sciences was given to economist Esther Duflo. The awards include a replica of a Joan..
Bringing Philosophy To Elementary School
Some fifth grade students in Irvine, California are getting an introduction to philosophy some eight years ahead of normal thanks to a new program developed by Marcello Fiocco, associate professor of philosophy at UC Irvine. The program, called TH!NK, is a four-week, 16-hour course taught by Fiocco and UC Irvine philosophy graduate students at Canyon View Elementary..
Attending to Attendance
Related to yesterday’s post about the differences between professors and teachers is a detailed analysis by Michael LaBossiere (Florida A&M) of his students’ attendance in his courses. He has long taken attendance and now makes use of Blackboard analytics for gathering information and “generating a picture of why students fail my classes.” He writes:
Not surpris..
Nancy Snow from Marquette to Oklahoma
Nancy Snow, currently professor of philosophy at Marquette University, has accepted an offer from the University of Oklahoma to become director of its new Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, starting in Fall of 2015. Professor Snow works in moral philosophy, particularly on moral psychology and virtue.
The Difference Between Teachers and Professors
First, I am your professor, not your teacher. There is a difference. Up to now your instruction has been in the hands of teachers, and a teacher’s job is to make sure that you learn… However, things are very different for a university professor. It is no part of my job to make you learn. At university, learning is your job — and yours alone. My job is to lead you..
Karl Schafer from Pitt to Irvine
Karl Schafer, currently associate professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, has accepted an offer as full professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, starting this fall. Schafer works mainly in ethics, epistemology, the history of modern philosophy, and Kant, and on related issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and politi..
On Trolley Problems (updated)
Robert Paul Wolff, at his blog The Philosopher’s Stone, objects to the use of trolley problems and other stylized thought experiments in which various complications are waved aside. “I am quite convinced that these sorts of thought experiments are nonsense,” he says. Wisely, he adds: “but it is not so easy to say why.”
I think that trolley problems and the like a..
Mary Louise Gill Interviewed
Clifford Sosis continues his very interesting series of interviews with philosophers with Mary Louise Gill of Brown University. There’s a lot in this one, which Sosis helpfully sums up:
She talks about reading Gone with The Wind in secret at home (it was forbidden), being required to read J Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit in the 6th grade, her father, John Glanv..
How Philosophers Can Help Cosmologists
Cosmology’s hot streak has stalled. Cosmologists have looked deep into time, almost all the way back to the Big Bang itself, but they don’t know what came before it. They don’t know whether the Big Bang was the beginning, or merely one of many beginnings. Something entirely unimaginable might have preceded it. Cosmologists don’t know if the world we see around us is..
First Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy Awarded
The Marc Sanders Foundation, which sponsors various programs and prizes in philosophy, has awarded its inaugural prize in political philosophy to Keith Hyams (Warwick) for his paper, “On the Contribution of Ex Ante Equality to Ex Post Fairness.” The award includes $10,000 and publication of the essay in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, following its presentat..
Crash Course: Environmental Philosophy
Last week saw the creation of a new series of “crash course” posts here at Daily Nous. The brainchild of Natalia Cecire (Sussex), the idea is to come up with a “one-week self education program” for “students who suddenly need to get up to speed in a field, and don’t have time to take a course or immerse themselves in it for a year,” or for professors seeking to lear..
Questions for Academic Publishers (updated)
Oxford University Press philosophy editors Peter Momtchiloff, Peter Ohlin, and Lucy Randall have offered to answer Daily Nous readers’ questions about academic publishing. Here’s how it’ll work. You send in the questions to me at [email protected], or post them in the comment section below, and in a subsequent post during the last week of May, they will post..
An Exchange on Disgust
Many of you will remember Nina Strohminger‘s amusing review of Colin McGinn’s book, The Meaning of Disgust. The review, written with the kind of frankness McGinn’s own reviews are known for, appeared in the journal, Emotion Review. Several months after its publication, the journal received a letter from McGinn responding to the review. That letter, along with Strohm..
The Role of Professors in Students’ Lives
In “What’s the Point of a Professor?“, an opinion piece in The New York Times, Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein laments the current role of professors. In the past, “students looked to professors for moral and worldly understanding.” Now, “finding meaning and making money have traded places.” In the past, “you couldn’t walk down the row of faculty o..
Barnett to Resign from Colorado (updated)
David Barnett, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will be resigning from the school with a $210,000 settlement. Barnett had gone through termination proceedings last year on grounds that he had retaliated against a student who had complained about another student sexually assaulting her (previous stories on this here). The D..
Morgan Freeman, Philosophy, and Science
Through the Wormhole is a television show on the Science Network hosted by Morgan Freeman. Its latest episode is about the direction of time and features Craig Callender* of UC San Diego in its first segment. So pretty much Morgan Freeman does his magical cosmic opening thing and then introduces and discusses time with Callender, who also goes paddle-boarding and ha..
Kant + Data = Beautiful Utility? (updated)
Minerva is “a web tool for supporting philosophical historiography research.” It’s the master’s thesis project of Valerio Pellegrini, and was designed by him in conjunction with “a team of philosophical historians from the University of Milan” and the Density Design Research Lab. It was initially designed for examining the work of Immanuel Kant, but the idea is to e..
Dennett Withdraws from Templeton-Sponsored Event
Daniel Dennett (Tufts) has withdrawn from the popular World Science Festival upon learning of its funding from the John Templeton Foundation. Dennett, whose opposition to Templeton has been discussed here before, is reported by The Washington Post as saying:
“I would be very happy to have the Templeton Foundation sponsor research on religion and science,” he said..
The Last Philosopher in Alaska’s Interior
As reported last month, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks is losing its philosophy major and eliminating philosophy as its own department. Now, the last remaining tenured philosopher at UAF, Eduardo Wilner, has published a column in which he recounts the death of the department:
When I arrived here 17 years ago there were five faculty in our department. But c..