More Millions for Mele
Alfred Mele (Florida State) has won another enormous grant from the Templeton Foundation, this time for $4.5 million, for his project on the philosophy and science of self-control. He had previously won, in 2010, an award for $4.4 million from Templeton for the study of free will.
Teaching Philosophy in Prisons
Currently over two million people in the United States are in prison, and about nine million worldwide. There are many questions worth asking about the systems of criminal justice that lead to that result. The focus of this post, though, is quite narrow. It concerns just one thing academic philosophers can do, as academic philosophers, in light of this: teach prison..
Accessing PhilPapers From Campus
PhilPapers announces that starting on July 1st, 2014, full access to the PhilPapers site from an institution of higher education will be by institutional subscription only. You will still be able to access the full site for free while off-campus, but if you want to access it all on campus you’ll need to get your library to subscribe. Given how long that could take, ..
Running Commentary
If there were a pill that could replicate all the benefits of running—heath, looks, even enjoyment—would you keep running? In my experience, the longer a person has been running, the more likely they are to answer ‘yes’: to say they would continue running. That is, I think, because running does something to you that is quite different from, and independent of, its h..
Is This Letter Addressed To You? Or you? Or you?
Dear Ambiguous Commentator,
Hi there. I don’t think we’ve met, but I appreciate your interest in the blog and I’m flattered that you have taken the time to share your thoughts. However, I read your comment and I am sorry to report that I won’t be publishing it. It’s not that I don’t want to hear from you, or that I don’t think your opinion matters. It’s just that I..
Philosopher Gets Google Doodle Treatment
The 888th birthday of Spanish Muslim philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd) is celebrated with a Google Doodle today, but not everywhere. Check out Google Spain to see it (today only).
New Report on Adjunct Faculty
A new study on contingent or adjunct faculty has been released. The New York Times comments on it, and then itself comes in for some criticism for being a little late with the news: “The issue isn’t that they’re ‘treated almost like transient workers’ but that they’reactually transient workers. “
The Philosopher-Politician Reflects
We all think we can teach politics, but there is some almost tragic sense in which it can only be learned… by the mistakes you make…. You can go to any number of lectures about what politics is like but it doesn’t survive contact with the enemy…. It’s not a seminar room. It’s not an exercise in persuasion…. Politics is an alternative to war, but you live it ..
What Is Philosophical Progress?
Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (previously) argues that philosophy is making progress, and argues for a particular conception of what philosophical progress is: increased coherence.
Nicholas of Cusa on the Radio
2014 is the 550th anniversity of the death of 15th Century German philosopher Nicholas of Cusa (aka Nicolaus Cusanus), and you are probably asking yourself what the folks at Australian public radio are doing about it. I don’t know why you are asking yourself this, as the answer is pretty obviously a radio program. Dermot Moran (University College Dublin) and others ..
What is Happiness?
Everyone thinks happiness is at least sometimes good, but what is it? Dan Haybron (St. Louis University) takes on some traditional accounts and defends the “emotional-state” view in the most recent edition of the The Stone.
Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014)
Ernesto Laclau, an Argentine political theorist at the University of Essex, has died. Laclau worked in the continental post-Marxist tradition, and is known for his work with his partner, Chantal Mouffe, in particular the book Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics.
Philosophers win Guggenheim Fellowships
Philosophers Eva Feder Kittay (Stony Brook), L.A. Paul (UNC Chapel Hill), and John Palmer (University of Florida) are among the 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship winners. (via Leiter)
Philosopher’s Carnival #162
Recent posts from all over the philosophy blogosphere are selected and summarized at Aesthetics for Birds in the new Philosopher’s Carnival. Lots of interesting posts there!
Heap of Links
1. The science of looking smarter.
2. Professors, you’ve been rated by your students, but have you been drawn?
3. Article on author Lucy Eyre, her philosophically-informed novel, If Minds Had Toes, and the value of teenagers studying philosophy (free registration required).
4. Raising a moral child.
5. An Italian philosopher who had been jailed for nine years fo..
Same Old Song and Dance?
Maybe you’ve always thought there was something off about Ayn Rand, but I bet you weren’t thinking off-Broadway. Well this May, The Anthem, a theater production inspired by Rand’s short novel Anthem, will open at the Lynn Redgrave Theater in NYC—and it is a musical. Sources have yet to reveal whether Rush has agreed to be the pit band. Perhaps The Anthem is meant ..
Political Theory Conference as Preparation for Lawsuit
The Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) hosts several events in political philosophy and theory, including a large annual conference each fall, the MANCEPT Workshops. One of the panels at the upcoming conference is entitled “No Reparation, Without Preparation!” and aims to provide preparatory assistance for the plaintiffs in a proposed lawsuit against t..
Good Philosophical Comic Strips (Friday Fun)
Let’s get a list of good philosophical comic strips going. Post one you like. If it is online, great; list a brief description along with the web address, like so:
Dinosaur Comics on philosophical progress – http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=787.
If you just have a hard copy, take a photo of it and post it somewhere online. Or, if you can’t do that, send the p..
Are Sperm Donors Deadbeat Dads?
“I… think that donor conception is irresponsible. I sometimes compare it to ‘deadbeat dads’: men who abandon their wives and children and don’t provide for them. I think a sperm donor is a kind of deadbeat dad who creates children and then doesn’t care for them.”
So says David Velleman in a brief interview in The Irish Times, in which he is also asked about the no..
Free Porn Studies
The inaugural issue of the academic journal Porn Studies is out, and it’s a big one, by which I mean it is a double issue. Not that size matters. The publisher, Taylor & Francis, has made the entire contents free to download, and after a cursory inspection I can report two things my readership probably wants to know: (1) it seems to be entirely SFW, and (2) it seems..
Philosopher May Hold Record For Most Letters To The Editor
Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a philosopher at Brown, has had over 200 letters to the editor published in the New York Times, The New Yorker reports. “She responds to articles on a variety of topics—ageism, fatism, ‘society’s tendency to medicalize virtually everything’—but her underlying interest is in personal freedom.” She was also profiled in an earlier article in the..
Philosophers Among the 2014 ACLS Fellows
The 2014 Fellows of the American Council of Learned Societies have been announced, and the winners include five people working in philosophy: Michael Brownstein (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Alyssa DeBlasio (Dickinson College), Richard Moran (Harvard), William Newman (Indiana), and Anat Schechtman (Chicago). The fellowships include 6-12 months of salary repl..
A Philosophical Look at Zoos
Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University) has a post at OUPblog in which she makes use of the recent giraffe and lion killings at the Copenhagen Zoo as a launching point for some brief reflections on the ethics of zoos.
Mark LeBar (Ohio University) to Florida State
Mark LeBar, currently professor of philosophy at Ohio University, has accepted a senior appointment at Florida State University, beginning January 2015. Professor LeBar works in moral, social, and political philosophy, as well as ancient philosophy.
Raiders of the Lost Death Mask
For the past few years philosopher Sean Kelly (Harvard) has been on a quest to locate the missing “death mask” of Blaise Pascal. You didn’t even know it existed, let alone that it was missing, did you? The news story does not say that Kelly will be making use of the death mask in a bizarre cult ceremony in a secret temple located beneath Emerson Hall. But it doesn’t..
Comedians on Philosophers
Modern Day Philosophers is a series of podcasts of comedians talking about philosophers. It is hosted by comedian Danny Lobell, and has featured a variety of conversations with comedians discussing and learning about a variety of philosophers, including Lewis Black on William James, Janeane Garofalo on Tom Regan, Bill Burr on Adam Smith, Fred Stoller on Heraclitus, ..
Pretty Penny Paid for Plato
Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford has sold its most expensive book ever: a two volume edition of the complete works of Plato, in the original ancient Greek, published in 1513. The price? £75,000. The mystery is: who bought it? The only clue the article gives is that the purchase was made by “an overseas institution.”
“Significant” Women Philosophers
Charles Murray (American Enterprise Institute), speaking at the University of Texas yesterday, reiterates that “he had found no ‘evidence’ to prove that any woman had been a ‘significant original thinker in any of the world’s great philosophical traditions.'” Story here. Gifs of people facepalming themselves here. I wonder what he thinks we would learn from such a c..