Best Philosophy Book Covers
I saw this very clever cover for a book on set theory and it got me wondering about good book design in philosophy. Let’s take a few moments to judge books by their covers. Share ones you think are particularly good here (and provide links to images if possible).
Robert Parris Moses Interview (Famous Philosophy Majors)
Robert Parris Moses “became one of the most influential leaders of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s and afterwards. Martin Luther King called his grassroot organizing an inspiration.” He went to Stuyvesant High School, majored in philosophy at Hamilton College, and earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Harvard. Recently, Paul Jay at The Real News c..
Philosophers Outside Academia
Helen De Cruz has begun a series of posts at NewAPPS collating responses to her interviews of several philosophers who left the academy to pursue careers elsewhere. The careers include software engineers, consultant, television writer, counselor, and others. She writes:
In the course of this week, NewApps will provide an overview of their responses in a series of thr..
A Physicist on Physicists’ Criticisms of Philosophy
“Philosophers care too much about deep-sounding meta-questions, instead of sticking to what can be observed and calculated.”
Finally, the deeply depressing critique. Here we see the unfortunate consequence of a lifetime spent in an academic/educational system that is focused on taking ambitious dreams and crushing them into easily-quantified units of productive work..
Why Philosophy is Worthwhile / Rule-Following
“On occasion, someone will ask you why you’re a philosopher and not a scientist or some other, more obviously respectable, intellectual.”
I don’t know when Bryan Frances wrote “Why I Think Research in Non-Applied, Non-Interdisciplinary, Non-Historical Philosophy is Worthwhile” but now is a pretty good time to read it. It’s not even four pages long.
Afterwards, jus..
Ludlow’s Future at Rutgers
Peter Ludlow, who is currently engaged in legal disputes with Northwestern University and its officials regarding alleged sexual misconduct, had been offered a position at Rutgers University in their Department of Philosophy and as director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. According to news reports, officials at Rutgers said they were not aware of the al..
John Searle Assesses and Advises
Tim Crane interviewed John Searle, and all he got was a lousy t-shirt another dimissal of the state of contemporary philosophy: “It’s in terrible shape!” Searle also talks about his influences, discusses his new book on perception, makes what we can charitably call an “opening move” on the topic of human rights, and offers some advice to young philosophers:
Well, my..
Heap of Links
1. Is it exploitative or otherwise wrong to travel to Brazil to see the World Cup? Daniel Campos asks what an ethical fan should do.
2. For those continental philosophers who felt immune from Unger’s critique of analytic philosophy,there’s this: “Geuss describes teaching philosophy as ‘a mildly discreditable day job’ largely directed towards churning out the next ge..
Inclusiveness in Philosophy
At present, the small gestures made toward greater inclusiveness can in fact lead only to somewhat more robust representation of people who are all already in most important respects members of the same society. It excludes at the outset the people whose way of life separates them from the institutions in which philosophy is practiced and transmitted.
Pittsburgh Makes Offers to Malink and Whiting – Update
Update (6/20/14): Both Whiting and Malink have deferred deciding on their offers until Spring 2015. Meanwhile, Whiting will be a Visiting Professor at Pitt for Spring of 2015.
OP (5/27/14): The University of Pittsburgh Department of Philosophy has extended senior offers to Marko Malink (Chicago) and Jennifer Whiting (Toronto). Both Malink and Whiting work in ancien..
Philosophy Tag
Hey, remember Philosophy Tag? Someone got called home for dinner or something in the middle of the last game and that was that for a while, but now it is back, courtesy of Sara Bernstein (Duke). Let’s see who she has tagged…
Consider the following case, Battlefield: You are at the battlefield and see that some of your soldiers are about to be slaughtered by..
Arvan and Others on Unger
The primary value of Unger’s critique of philosophy may be that it generates good and thoughtful responses. There was Schliesser’s the other day, and also the post by Pigliucci (though he says in a comment it was not aimed at Unger directly). Now Marcus Arvan has a more sympathetic take on what Unger is up to, and it is well worth reading.
What I agree with Unger on..
From Advertising to Philosophy to…?
Meanwhile, elsewhere* in The Weekly Standard, Abigail Lavin, an advertising and marketing professional who recently obtained her master’s degree in philosophy from Columbia, reviews Should I Go to Grad School and reflects on her experience straddling academia and the “real world.”
Yale Sexual Misconduct In The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard has an article about the sexual misconduct allegations against a well-known professor of moral and political philosophy at Yale (previously). No doubt many readers will agree with author Charlotte Allen that the story has a “dark side.” Yet many may be surprised to learn what that is:
Unfortunately, this story… has a dark side. It is also a st..
Ludlow Sues Northwestern
Peter Ludlow, who had been accused of sexual misconduct with an undergraduate at Northwestern University (previously) is suing the university and some of its officials for defamation, gender discrimination, and invasion of privacy. The suit also mentions a relationship Ludlow had with a philosophy graduate student.
The University acted “with malice and with reckless..
Pigliucci on Unger (maybe)
Massimo Pigliucci doesn’t frame this recent post at his blog as a response to Unger, but…
Now, why on earth did we engage in this, ahem, academic discussion ? Because I wanted to give you a flavor of how philosophy makes progress, and why it isn’t particularly fruitful to compare it with progress in the natural sciences (did you see any systematic observation or ..
Heap of Links
1. View many of Routledge’s philosophy books for free, through the end of June.
2. Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) on Tom Burke (South Carolina) on untangling pragmatism.
3. The Singlestate Fallacy: “the erroneous assumption that our ordinary, default mindbody program (aka ‘state of consciousness’) contains all… thinking skills of use to philosophers.”
4. “He’s the ch..
The End of Lying
With the advance of certain technologies, we will soon be living in an era in which it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to lie. An app for facial micro-expression recognition—to reveal your interlocutor’s emotions—will soon be available for Google Glass, and another app that makes use of similar technology to distinguish fake from true emotional expres..
The Phenomenology of Solitary Confinement
Prisoners who are subjected to solitary confinement show symptoms and describe a phenomenology that is not equivalent to either autism or induced autism, but reflect similar motor problems, and often times more extensive and serious disruptions of experience. Guenther (2013), looking at the phenomenology associated with solitary confinement, describes it as becomin..
Schliesser on Unger
Unger declares not once, but twice during the interview that he “knew, but didn’t want to know” that Wittgenstein was right about philosophy. Yet, despite this, he went on “churning” out the papers. Unger does not say what this entails about the institution of professional philosophy with its incentives and privileges for those that don’t want to know; the silencing..
Nearby Possible “Empty Ideas”
Peter Unger’s new book and recent interview have been in the philosonews a lot lately. Meanwhile, in a nearby possible world…
To start things off, could you say a bit about your book Empty Ideas, and what it’s about?
Scientists easily get the idea that somehow or other, just by considering things about the world that they glean from observation and experiment..
The Hunt for Hume’s Wine Cellar
An office block from the 1950s built atop David Hume’s house is being demolished, and historians are hoping to find Hume’s wine cellar underneath. “He was a famous chef and prided himself on his cooking and he had a famous wine cellar,” historian Mike Turnbull says. Who knows what else will be, uh, exhumed from the site?
Heap of Links
1. Don’t call your college students “kids,” says Sean A. Valles (Michigan State).
2. Jakob Hohwy (Monash), who works in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology, and is the author of The Predictive Mind, is guest-blogging at Brains this week.
3. A thought experiment shows that the psychological arrow of time hooks up with the thermodynamic arrow of time and provides..
Putnam on Quine
Reading Quine’s “Two Dogmas”? You’re doing it all wrong, says Hilary Putnam.
Unger Interviewed about Analytic Philosophy’s Empty Ideas
Philosophers easily get the idea that somehow or other, just by considering things about the world that they already know, they can write up deep stories which are true, or pretty nearly true, about how it is with the world. By that I especially mean the world of things that includes themselves, and everything that’s spatio-temporally related to them, or anything th..
Fight Rebecca Kukla
Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown) is looking for a fight. Are you old enough, small enough, and, most importantly, tough enough?
Rail Strikes, Cheat Tweets, and the Philosophy BAC
The railway strike in France has entered its sixth day, risking making students late for the philosophy portion of the baccalauréat exam.
the timing of this strike, reaching into the baccalauréat week, is also a public-relations risk. Every June, as part of a national ritual, over half a million school-leavers sit down to take the first bac exams. For half of them,..
Cognitive Enhancement: the New Normal?
The sixth and final installment of The Conversation‘s “Biology and Blame” series is up, and it is on cognitive enhancement. Nicole Vincent (Georgia State) and Emma Jane (UNSW Australia) raise some worries.