Online Conferences: Pros, Cons, Tips
“I am about to be involved in organizing an online conference and I am interested in how the group mind of philosophy thinks about it,” writes a regular Daily Nous reader in an email. Reasons to make your conference an online conference? Reasons not to? Reports on how they’ve gone from both organizer and participant points of view? Technical suggestions? Organizing ..
Peter Menzies (1953-2015) (updated)
Peter Menzies, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University, has died. Before his appointment at Macquarie, he held positions at the University of Sydney and Australia National University. He had also been a visiting scholar at several institutions, including MIT, Stanford, and Cambridge.
Huw Price and Philip Pettit write (over the PHILOS-L list):
Pe..
Thoughts on Academic Freedom
It seems to me we need some clarification of the idea of academic freedom, so I am throwing out these thoughts, rather tentatively, to get the ball rolling. I welcome discussion on this, though keep in mind this is a blog post and not an academic paper. Links to helpful resources as well as discussions elsewhere are also welcome. Ok, so here goes:
Academic freedo..
PhilWiki News
Shawn Miller (UC Davis) writes in with some news about the good work being done at PhilWiki:
- Benedict Eastaugh (Bristol) has created PhilMath.net, which is a wiki that tracks Ph.D. and terminal M.A. programs with strengths in the philosophy of mathematics. He has listed nearly 70 Ph.D. programs. His wiki joins Ted Shear’s Formal Epistemology wiki, Shawn Standefe..
Ludlow’s Lawsuit Against Northwestern Dismissed
Peter Ludlow’s legal claims against Northwestern University (previously), which included a Title IX claim, defamation and false light publicity claims, and a civil conspiracy claim, have all been dismissed, according to a ruling from Judge Sara L. Ellis of the US District Court (Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division). From the ruling:
Northwestern Unive..
Great Mishearings
Originally from here.
(from @rickburin on Twitter)
More on Innate Talent and Philosophy (updated)
Alison Gopnik (Berkeley) has written a piece for the Wall Street Journal about the study by Sarah Jane Leslie et al that we discussed last month on innate or “raw intellectual talent” and academia’s gender and race gaps. In her article, she writes, “From a scientific perspective, the very idea that something as complicated as philosophical success is the result of “..
Marquette Seeks to Fire McAdams
John McAdams, the Marquette University associate professor of political science who posted demonstrably false and damaging statements about philosophy graduate student Cheryl Abbate and her teaching on his blog (see here, here, and here), has been told that the university is starting the process to revoke his tenure and fire him.
The Dean of Marquette’s Klingler ..
Summer Programs for Philosophy Undergraduates
Here’s some information about two summer programs for undergraduates thinking about continuing their studies in philosophy. First, there’s the 2015 Summer Program for Women in Philosophy:
The Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego is pleased to announce a call for applications for the 2015 Summer Program for Women in Philosophy, which wi..
Posting About New Hires
I’ve received a couple of inquiries as to whether I’ll be hosting a thread for people to post hires, and the answer is no. Instead, please post your hiring news at the Appointments in Philosophy page at PhilJobs.
Hobbies of Philosophers: Meg Wallace
For the second installment of our Hobbies of Philosophers series, I talked with Meg Wallace (Kentucky). Meg works on metaphysics and philosophy of language, and her philosophy is super bad-ass. But today we are talking about her other life as an equally bad-ass aerialist. I spoke with Meg about what aerialism is all about, how she got involved with it, and how she c..
APA Solicits Code of Conduct Suggestions
Last year, the American Philosophical Association (APA) appointed a task force to determine whether a code of conduct for professional philosophers is warranted. The task force deliberated on the matter and concluded that yes, there should be such a code (previously).
Now, according to a post at the APA website, the task force is soliciting suggestions about what..
Guarding the Guardians (or Editors) (3 updates)
The reason your paper is listed as ‘editor assigned’ is that I’m going to review it myself.
In the wake of the recent discussion here about the editorial practices at philosophy journals, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (UBC) recounts a story, set about five years ago, in which he submitted a paper to a journal with a policy of double-anonymous reviewing—Philosophic..
Philosophy as a Way of Life
Stoicism, of course, may not appeal to or work for everyone. It is a rather demanding philosophy of life, where your moral character is pretty much stipulated to be the only truly worthy thing to cultivate in life (though health, education, and even wealth are considered to be “preferred indifferents”). Then again, it does have a lot of points of contact with other ..
Banning the Guilty?
A philosophy professor who wishes to remain anonymous writes in with the following question:
If a member of the philosophical profession has been found to have violated his or her institution’s sexual harassment and/or sexual assault policies (especially more than once), should there be any restrictions on his or her future participation in professional events, s..
Yik Yak Yuck
Margaret Crouch, a philosophy professor at Eastern Michigan University, was team-teaching a large group of students with two other professors, while, unbeknownst to the three, many of the students were using the class time to post hostile and vulgar remarks about them via Yik Yak. (If you don’t know Yik Yak, think of it as a local anonymous twitter feed in which old..
Philosopher’s Index Upping Its Game
The Philosopher’s Index, an academic philosophy database available through the libraries of many universities and colleges, is rolling out a service that contains not merely abstracts (which it has long featured), but the full text of its indexed articles, according to a recent press release. Called “The Philosopher’s Index with Full Text,” it provides articles from..
For the Money
Graduates with philosophy degrees have “higher earnings potential than many other arts and humanities-related fields,” said TheRichest. Payscale reports midcareer median salaries are $84,000 for your modern day Kant or Descartes. Why? Well, let’s be logical. Which is exactly what philosophy programs require of students … logic. Thinking is hard, it requires analysis..
Why Are So Many Philosophers of Religion Theists?
72.8% of the 3226 philosophers who took the PhilPapers survey in 2009 said that they accept or lean towards atheism. Among philosophers of religion, though, 72.3% accept or lean towards theism. What explains this difference? Adriano Mannino considers the question in a post at the group blog Crucial Considerations. Of these figures, he writes:
On the face of it, t..
Philosophers Talk Football
Hey, so, uh, the Superbowl….
That’s all I got, but feel free, folks.
(images from Academic Coach Taylor)
Philosophical Delight in the Classroom
One thing that makes us different from most of our undergraduate students is that we really enjoy philosophy and they do not. It may drive us to frustration and despair sometimes, but, generally, we find it interesting and take pleasure in it in a way that is foreign to our students. Yet, every once in a while its possible to get students to catch a glimpse, firstha..
Students Object to Job Candidate for Offensive Views
Graduate students in a philosophy department somewhere in the English-speaking world did some online sleuthing about a job candidate for a position in their department, and learned that the candidate seems to hold views they find offensive. In particular, they found reports (including alleged quotes) that the candidate had expressed in online fora the view that homo..
APA’s Inaugural Joyce Mitchell Cook Award Winner Announced
Kathryn Gines, assistant professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, has been named the inaugural winner of the American Philosophical Association’s Joyce Mitchell Cook Award, presented by the Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers (CSBP). Professor Gines works on Continental philosophy (especially existentialism and phenomenology), African Amer..
A Good Offense (updated)
When it comes to teaching philosophy, how offensive may we be, and in what ways? Recent discussions here, particularly regarding teaching same-sex marriage, have raised this issue, but those conversations have been dominated by discussion of the plausibility of arguments regarding that substantive matter. Though it has cropped up, the issue of the role that offensiv..
Unblock Thyself
Jon Cogburn (LSU) has run a little experiment. For months he and others have been unable to comment at Daily Nous. Long thought to be the result of my tyrannical and heavy-handed moderation, this problem has now been traced by Cogburn to Askimet, a spam-filtering service used by many blogs, including DN. Apparently, in some cases, having one of your comments marked ..
New Site for Discussions of Discrimination & Disadvantage
Discrimination and Disadvantage is a new blog developed by Thomas Nadelhoffer (College of Charleston) and Kevin Timpe (Northwest Nazarene U.) for discussions about the philosophy of discrimination and disadvantage, as well as of discrimination and disadvantage in the philosophy profession. As they put it in their mission statement,
In recent years, philosophers h..
Book Dedication Sale
Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski (both of Georgetown), have been working on a book entitled Markets Without Limits. You may recall an earlier post which detailed their plans to sell space in the “acknowledgements” section of their book. Not to be outdone—by their earlier selves—the duo are now selling the dedication page of their book to the highest bidder. You ..
Philosopher Launches Global Health Impact Initiative
The Global Health Impact is an initiative created by Nicole Hassoun, associate professor of philosophy at SUNY Binghamton, that evaluates and compares the health impact of medicine. The site assigns “impact scores” to various drugs based on how much good they do (explained here) and presents the information sorted by disease, drug, country, and pharmaceutical compan..