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Refutation Watch

Retraction Watch is profiled in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education (currently paywalled). The site keeps track of retractions in scientific research, with an emphasis on retractions owed to scientific misconduct.

Its founders, a pair of veteran science writers, were not just interested in big-ticket fraud cases; they were determined to apply scrutiny to scient..

Ethics of Suicide Digital Archive

In what is being referred to as “an unprecedented example of library-author-publisher collaboration,” a new philosophy book and accompanying digital archive of its material were recently launched. The book is The Ethics of Suicide: Historical Sources, by Margaret Battin (Utah). Professor Battin worked with her publisher, Oxford University Press, and the University o..

Reaching Under-Represented Job Candidates

Job search committees are asking the American Philosophical Association (APA) for help in reaching potential job candidates who are members of under-represented groups in philosophy, according to Teresa Blankmeyer Burke (Gallaudet), the acting chair of the Committee on Inclusiveness in the Profession. Of particular interest are email distribution lists (listservs) t..

Why You Should Teach Online Courses

“The more you hate the idea of teaching online, the more that online education needs you.”

That’s historian Joseph Rees (Colorado State – Pueblo), writing at Vitae. He is no fan of online courses, worried about their quality and effectiveness but notes that their increased prevalence is probably unstoppable. Here’s the context for the above quote:

I recently m..

Philosophy Majors Are Less Likely To Marry Each Other (updated)

Only 5% of “philosophy or religious studies” majors end up marrying other “philosophy or religious studies” majors, according to an analysis of census data by Dan Kopf at Priceonomics this past summer. This makes it one of the least common majors shared by married couples. Since, in the Census data, philosophy is lumped in with religious studies, we don’t know what ..

Philosophy Job Market Mentoring for Women

A program informally piloted last year is officially launching now as the Job Candidate Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy. According to the program’s website,

the Job Candidate Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy matches job candidates with junior faculty mentors who have recently been on the market. The program provides mentoring and peer support ..

Philosophers Doing “Ask Me Anythings” on Reddit

The folks at Wi-Phi are interested in doing more to bring together philosophers and the public, and one avenue they’re tentatively pursuing is having philosophers take part in “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sessions on Reddit (you may recall the AMA that Peter Singer did a few months back).

The first one is tomorrow (Tuesday) at 11am Eastern time and will be with Chris ..

How the SEP Works, and Why It’s a Model for the Internet

The problem with the internet is that “nobody trusts it, yet everybody is referring to it.” That’s Nikhil Sonnad, a reporter and former philosophy student, in an article at Quartz about how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is a model for improving the internet.

Its creators have solved one of the internet’s fundamental problems: How to provide author..

SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update

Appearing here via special arrangement with Philosophical Percolations are last week’s additions and updates to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR), and Wi-Phi Wireless Philosophy. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama” along with lots of other philos..

Philosopher Wins $50,000 Hiett Prize

Scott Samuelson, associate professor of philosophy and humanities at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, is the 2015 recipient of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. The Hiett Prize is awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, whose purpose is “enrich and deepen lives through the wisdom and imagination of the humanities.” According to the Dallas Inst..

New Philosophy Center Aims to Bridge American – Chinese Gap

The Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center is an initiative launched to “look past contemporary political differences” between the United States and China “to their deeper intellectual roots.” A project of the Berggruen Institute, the Philosophy and Culture Center

will include a fellowship program between Chinese and American universities; an “ideas contest,” co..

SEP, IEP, NDPR, Wi-Phi Weekly Update

Here are last week’s additions and updates to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy(IEP), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR), and Wi-Phi Wireless Philosophy, courtesy of Philosophical Percolations. They were first posted in PhilPercs’ “Saturday Linkorama,” along with lots of other philosophy-related links, by Jon..

The Unsung Hero of Your Undergraduate Philosophy Education

There are some philosophers we hear a lot about—not just those in the canon, but also the “superstars” of today. These philosophers can often be inspirations on the page, motivating students to take up philosophy as a major course of study. But just as important—probably more so—are those undergraduate professors who inspired or motivated you to take philosoph..

Philosophical Insights for Good Professorship

A good professor “will be able to put philosophical insights to practical use,” argues Robert J. Bloomfield, a professor at the School of Management at Cornell, in an extraordinarily useful paper, “How to Be a Good Professor.” The paper offers an impressive range of good advice, including a section on the value that an appreciation of philosophy has for all professo..

Are Bans on Faculty-Student Sex Unjust to Students?

The New Republic has published “Lust for Learning,” by Laura Miller. If it weren’t for the fact that this article is full of references to philosophers past and present, I would ignore it and its ridiculous subtitle: “Is erotic longing between professors and students unavoidable?” Take a moment to imagine the bizarre world in which the answer to that question is yes..

Plot Philosophy’s Subfields

Yesterday’s post about interdisciplinary work in philosophy got me curious about how philosophers understand their work in relation to other disciplines.

One question we can ask of academics is: “what do they take themselves to be studying?” Of course, there are various ways of answering this question. One way of doing so is trying to determine where on a spectru..

Although philosophy majors rank 75th on PayScale’s overall list of majors at mid-career earnings, it’s the top humanities bachelors degree in their ranking—from early career all the way to later career. “We hear again and again that employers value..

A Case for Philosophy in High Schools (updated)

Back in 1982, Frank Breslin, a New Jersey high school teacher, wrote an article arguing that philosophy should be taught in high school. Huffington Post just reprinted a version of that piece, and it’s worth taking a look at. One of it’s main ideas is that philosophy is a natural fit for teen rebelliousness:

Adolescents are a skeptical lot. Anything and everythin..

Substantive Philosophical Mistakes In Public Discourse

Public debate is rife with poor reasoning, with certain confused or erroneous claims popping up again and again to affect opinions and policies. Some of these are owed to an inability to understand statistics, some are owed to a lack of scientific understanding, and some are philosophical mistakes. Logic and critical thinking courses already take up formal errors in..

A Bias Against Simplicity?

Kieran Healy (Duke) recently presented a paper entitled “Fuck Nuance” at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting. He writes:

Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Sociologists typically use it as a term of praise, and almost without exception when nuance is mentioned it is because someone is asking for more of it. I shall argue that, ..

The One Statement To Best Restart Philosophy

If all existing philosophical work—and all records and knowledge of it—were to be destroyed in some disaster, and only one sentence could be passed on to future intelligent beings (roughly like us we’ll assume) for them to restart the philosophical enterprise, what should that statement be?

The question is based on a similar one about science, which Richard F..

Philosophy Job Placement Data Update

Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced) posts that the final report for the Academic Placement Data and Analysis project is complete. She’ll eventually be posting more about it, but I repost some of the information from the report below. One thing worth noting is that though 169 programs were contacted, only 87 added or updated information to the project database. If you..

$3.9 Million for “Moral Superstars” Search

The Beacon Project is a new three-year initiative in psychology and philosophy “to find and define the morally exceptional and better understand how to improve moral character,” according to a press release from Wake Forest University. The project is led by professor of psychology William F. Fleeson (Wake Forest) and includes philosophers Christian B. Miller (Wake F..

Philosophically Interesting Books for Young Kids

A friend is interested in soliciting philosophically-minded books for young children—ones who are reading, but are not at the chapter-book stage. Here are a few I’ve enjoyed with my kids…

The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater — for the young individualist.
A Hole Is To Dig by Ruth Krauss — for the young teleologist.
Pierre: A Cautionary T..

$2.1 Million for the Meaning of Life

Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) and Candace Vogler (Chicago) have received a $2.1 million grant for their project, “Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning of Life.” The project will be jointly hosted by the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina and is funded prim..

Texas Higher Ed Board v. Logic

With just a few days before the start of the school year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has removed from the curriculum a number of courses meant to fulfill the “Language, Philosophy, & Culture” core requirement at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). Among the struck courses are several in philosophy, including a number of ethics cours..