Another Colorado Student Speaks Out
Sofia Huerter, an MA student at the University of Colorado, has written a response to the recent critique of her department’s proposed climate policies by CU PhD student Spencer Case that appeared in the National Review. Meanwhile, Case has published a reply to some criticisms of his article, once again at the National Review.
Heap of Links
1. “Discrimination Is Un-Christian, too” — philosophy graduate student Kathryn Pogin (Notre Dame, Northwestern) on the Hobby Lobby decision, in the NYT.
2. The genetics of belief: “If these predispositions are…to some degree genetically rooted, they may not lend themselves to rational debate and compromise.”
3. HooPs—the Hardwood Philosophical Society—uses “‘the..
Job Market Analyses – UPDATED (yet again)
Update (7/14/14): Last week, Leiter replied to Jennings’ comparisons with some data. Jennings responds with newer data, arguing that “recency and time frame” matter.
Update (6/30/14): The Philosophical Gourmet versus Jennings’ Placement Data.
Update (6/25/14): Jennings tells us which departments have relatively high placement rates.
Update (6/20/14): In a new pos..
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) Expands to UK
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) “is a collection of students in English-speaking philosophy departments that aims to examine and address issues of minority participation in academic philosophy.” There are currently chapters of the organization at a number of US philosophy departments that put on talks, workshops, reading groups, and various other events.
There is n..
75% Philosophers, 100% Indie Rock
So I guess we are on a roll here with philosopher-musicians. Christy Mag Uidhir brings The Counterfactuals to my attention. Composed of a music professor and three philosophers — Jason Decker and Daniel Groll of Carleton College, and Michael Fuerstein of St. Olaf College — The Counterfactuals make indie rock with a kind of midwestern feel (does that sound right?..
Does Philosophy Need A Reboot?
Philosophy is a bit like a computer with a memory leak. It starts well, dealing with significant and serious issues that matter to anyone. Yet, in time, its very success slows it down. Philosophy begins to care more about philosophers’ questions than philosophical ones, consuming increasing amount of intellectual attention. Scholasticism is the ultimate freezing of ..
New Single by Philosopher of Science
Steven Weinstein (Waterloo) is currently working on “multiple time dimensions, causality and determinism in relativistic classical and quantum physics, the arrow of time” and sweet pop music perfect for a sunny Saturday. His latest single, “Don’t Tell Me” has just been released. For those who want more, check out his recent album, Last Free Man. (via Evelyn Brister)
Heap of Links
1. Is Žižek a plagiarist? Update: Newsweek gets on the story. Update 2: Žižek’s response.
2. “Philosophers ought to do their best to find a female captain, not merely a ship’s figurehead,” says Susannah Kate Devitt, reviewing the latest Australian Association of Philosophy (AAP) Conference.
3. The ethics of sex with dead people? Of course, there’s dignity. But maybe..
Non-Academic Philosophers in The Atlantic
The Atlantic has a short piece on Helen De Cruz’s interviews with non-academic philosophers, which were posted at NewApps in three parts (1, 2, 3). The article ends with a telling quote from Carl Baker, who is now a statistical researcher at the House of Commons Library:
If I had to highlight one weakness in my postgraduate training it would be the lack of discussio..
Philosophy Tag
Philosopher to Head NEH
William D. “Bro” Adams, a philosopher who taught at Santa Clara University, UNC Chapel Hill, and Stanford, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the 10th Chairman for the National Endowment of the Humanities. Here is some background about him:
Adams earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Colorado College and a Ph.D. from the University of Califo..
Lappin and Russell and 189 million Swedish Kroner to Gothenburg
Shalom Lappin (King’s College London) and Paul Russell (University of British Columbia) will be heading to the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg. Lappin works on formal and computational semantics, computational linguistics, the cognitive basis of language acquisition, and related topics. Russell works mainly..
Are Trigger Warnings for White People? (Guest Post by Kristina Meshelski)
Kristina Meshelski, an assistant professor of philosophy at CSU Northridge, has kindly authored the following guest post about the recent discussion of trigger warnings at Bully Bloggers by Jack Halberstam (USC), “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma.”
I know many philosophers who teach ethics use at the very least some form..
Heap of Links
1. Vivian Feldblyum may have earlier wooed you with “The Deductive Logic Love Song” but now she is singing the epistemology break-up song, “Do I Have Hands?” Perhaps she is seeing someone else?
2. The new edition of Onora O’Neill’s Acting on Principle, an “incisive and thoughtful defence” of Kant’s moral theory, is reviewed by Michael Rosen in The Times Literary Sup..
Is It Deep or Have You Been Duped?
In line with the principle of charity in cooperative communication, people will try to reconstruct the meaning of unknown terms on the presumption that what the speaker utters is true and relevant — particularly when they defer to the speaker as an authority. If what the speaker asserts seem bizarre or false on its face, it is prudent to suspect that the problem lie..
Making Philosophy Journal Statistics Publicly Available
Philipp Blum, one of the co-editors of the journal, dialectica, has a request for other journal editors:
I think it would be very helpful if philosophy journals would make
publicly available much more information on acceptance rates and
submission statistics.
He notes that dialectica has been doing this for 14 years; check out these charts and graphs, which could s..
The Philosophical Underclass Group
The Philosophical Underclass is a Facebook group of philosophers who request and provide electronic copies of philosophical works from and to each other. It is the idea of Kevin Timpe (Northwest Nazarene University), who explains how it came about:
I work at a university that has very poor journal access. The librarians are great at getting me just about anything vi..
Digitizing the Geometry of Spinoza’s Ethics
Torin Doppelt, a PhD candidate in philosophy at Queen’s University, has created Spinoza’s Ethics 2.0, a an interesting digital humanities project that “provides a representation of the structure of the geometrical demonstrations of Spinoza’s Ethics” (via Philosophy Matters). I asked him if he could say a little more about the project for Daily Nous readers. He write..
Heap of Links
1. NPR’s Tamara Keith, a philosophy major, tells her “it doesn’t hurt to ask” story.
2. Someone who sounds a bit like Carly Rae Jepsen sings “Call Me Nietzsche” (press ►)
3. Susannah Kate Devitt (Queensland University of Technology) makes use of a few different metrics to provide a ranking of philosophy journals.
4. Chris Bertram discusses Rousseau’s moral psycholog..
Which Scientific Idea Should Go?
Edge.org’s 2014 annual question is “What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement?” Many weigh in on the question with interesting answers, including philosophers Andy Clark (Edinburgh), Daniel Dennett (Tufts), Steve Fuller (Warwick), Tamar Gendler (Yale), Ian Gold (McGill), Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, A.C. Grayling (Birkbeck), Thomas Metzinger (Johannes Gutenberg-U..
Relationships with Students
Slate’s Rebecca Schuman reports on recent discussions in the philosophical community on relations between professors and students. Several philosophers were interviewed for the article, including Carla Fehr (Waterloo), Meena Krishnamurthy (Manitoba), Rachel McKinnon (College of Charleston), and Eric Wiland (University of Missouri–St. Louis).
Colorado’s “Best Practices” Document
The University of Colorado Department of Philosophy’s “Best Practices for Faculty and Students” document, in which the department sets out ways to make itself a “safe, inclusive, and welcoming place for all men and women, including members of underrepresented groups, to work, teach and study” is available online, on the climate section of the department’s website. T..
Bentham Trashes the Declaration of Independence
So you’ve had your long weekend and your fireworks, but now it is time for a Monday morning beat down, USA, courtesy of Jeremy Bentham:
The opinions of the modern Americans on Government, like those of their good ancestors on witchcraft, would be too ridiculous to deserve any notice, if like them too, contemptible and extravagant as they be, they had not led to the ..
A Non-Academic Use for those Powers of Deduction
Like a modern Sherlock Holmes, he uses unconventional techniques to unravel the mysteries of corruption, kidnapping and drug trafficking.
Eduardo Salcedo was a philosophy student in Colombia who now employs his deductive skills as a consulting detective. Among other things, he has “uncovered rampant corruption at even the highest levels of Colombia’s intelligence a..
Criticism of Colorado’s Proposed “Best Practices”
Spencer Case, a PhD student at the University of Colorado, writing in the National Review, describes and criticizes some of the practices his department is adopting in the wake of the site visit by the APA Committee on the Status of Women.
Update: Some people have asked why I have posted a link to this article. Let me say first that as a general rule, my linking to..
Friday Night Tunes… from a Philosophy PhD Student
Tom Krell, a PhD student at DePaul, records pop music under the name How To Dress Well. His latest release, What is This Heart, was just favorably reviewed in The New York Times. I’m enjoying it right now, and you can, too, right here.
Co-Authorship and Voice in Philosophy
Necessarily, it seems to me, a co-authored work, growing… out of collaborative discussion and intellectual exchange, cannot have an authentic and distinctive voice. Inevitably, unless one author completely dominates the others, it will be written in the flat, correct, acceptable one-dimensional language of the Academy. There will be no dark recesses or ironic ov..
Gideon Rosen on the Humanities’ PR Problem
Any educated person can rattle off a list of the great achievements of science and technology in the past 50 years: the Big Bang, cloning, the Internet, etc. People who have no idea what the Higgs boson is or why it matters still can tell you that it was discovered in July 2013 by a heroic team of scientists and that the discovery reveals something deep about the un..