Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Cynthia Davis: One of Missouri's "Best and Brightest"

This is no doubt what the drafters of the Declaration of Independence had hoped for:  that 200 years of our democratic experiment would produce brainless and callous neanderthals like Representative Cynthia Davis, a Republican from Missouri, whose web site (link courtesy of Jeff Glick) includes the following "analysis" of a state proposal to expand a school-based meal program in light of the current crisis of capitalism:

Top Research Universities Based on US News Data on PhD Programs

I haven't run one of these meta-analyses of US News reputation data on PhD programs in a number of years, but now that US News has conducted new surveys of natural science, humanities, and social science PhD programs over the last couple of years, I thought it might be amusing.  The scoring system is the one used previously, though I've limited the survey to the Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Mathematics, and Physics), Social Sciences (Economics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology), and Humanities (English, History and Philosophy [from the PGR, of course]), excluding the professional schools and engineering, which not all schools offer.

The rank below is based on total score, followed by a breakdown of the total number of points due to natural science programs (NS), the total number of points due to social science & humanities programs (SSH), the number of fields in which the school ranked at least in the top 25, and the number of fields in which the school had a top five program.

1.  Stanford University (51 total; 24 in NS, 27 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 12 top five programs)

2.  University of California, Berkeley (49 total; 24 in NS, 25 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 10 top five programs)

3.  Harvard University (47 total; 20 in NS, 27 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 10 top five programs)

4.  Princeton University (42 total; 16 in NS, 26 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 7 top five programs)

5.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (37 total; 14 in NS, 23 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 5 top five programs)

6.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (36 total; 24 in NS, 12 in SSH, ranked in 10 of 13 fields, 7 top five programs)

6.  Yale University (36 total; 13 in NS, 23 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 4 top five programs)

8.  Columbia University (32 total; 14 in NS, 18 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 2 top five programs)

9.  University of California, Los Angeles (30 total; 10 in NS, 20 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 1 top five program)

9.  University of Chicago (30 total; 11 in NS, 19 in SSH, ranked in 12 of 13 fields, 3 top five programs)

11.  Cornell University (25 total; 15 in NS, 10 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

11.  University of Wisconsin, Madison (25 total; 10 in NS, 15 in SSH, ranked in 12 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

13.  California Institute of Technology (24 total; 21 in NS, 3 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 4 top five programs)

14.  University of Texas, Austin (21 total; 12 in NS, 9 in SSH, ranked in all 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

15.  University of Pennsylvania (20 total; 6 in NS, 14 in SSH, ranked in 10 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

16.  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (17 total; 11 in NS, 6 in SSH, ranked in 8 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

17.  Duke University (16 total; 4 in NS, 12 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

17.  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (16 total; 2 in NS, 14 in SSH, ranked in 8 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

19.  Johns Hopkins University (14 total; 6 in NS, 8 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

19.  New York University (14 total; 3 in NS, 11 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 1 top five program)

19.  Northwestern University (14 total; 3 in NS, 11 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

Runners-Up:

University of California, San Diego (13 total; 6 in NS, 7 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (13 total; 4 in NS, 9 in SSH, ranked in 9 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs) 

University of Washington, Seattle (11 total; 8 in NS, 3 in SSH, ranked in 7 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

Brown University (10 total; 4 in NS, 6 in SSH, ranked in 8 of 13 fields, 0 top five programs)

Draconian Budget Cuts at UCLA

Student newspaper story here.  In 2008-09, UCLA searched to fill 74 faculty lines; in 2009-10, UCLA will search to fill just 20 faculty positions.

Fleischacker Wins 2009 Gittler Award from APA

Samuel Fleischacker (Illinois/Chicago) has won the 2009 Gittler Award from the APA for work in philosophy of the social sciences for his 2005 book On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:  A Philosophical Companion (Princeton University Press).

"The Guardian" Series of Blog Postings on Great Works of Philosophy

It's here, though I can't, I'm afraid, recommend it based on what I've seen so far.  The series of items on Nietzsche's Genealogy by Giles Fraser is largely incompetent, at a level I would find unacceptable for work submitted by an undergraduate.   Simon Critchley on Heidegger is about what one would expect from Critchley.  A reader told me Baggini on Hume was pretty good, though, but I haven't had a chance to look at that or the others.  So perhaps there is some good stuff there, for readers inclined to take a look.

Great moments in misspellings

Here.  Some are quite funny.

A note on "post only once" in comment threads

When I say "post only once," I mean submit your comment only once, not that you may not submit more than one comment.  But since comments are moderated, when you submit the comment it won't appear right away.  If you submit more than once, it just clutters up my in-box.  But someone who has substantive contributions to make is, of course welcome to weigh in more than once in a comment thread.   I realize from a few cases now that there's been some misunderstanding about that.   Thanks to those who have been commenting on the interesting thread about the youth of secular moral theory.

Reader feedback sought

What are you favorite features/topics/subject on the blog?  Please vote!  This will help me, perhaps, in knowing where to focus my efforts.  Thanks.

Is "Secular Moral Theory" Really Relatively Young?

It is sometimes said (e.g., by Parfit, by Brink, and others) that "secular moral theory" is a relative new field compared to systematic theorizing in the natural sciences, so it is not surprising that there is more disagreement about ethical matters since we haven't had as much time (or made as much effort) to make systematic theoretical progress on the problems.  I confess this has always struck me as a somewhat implausible claim.  Consider:  a perfectly typical "Introduction to Ethics" class (in an ordinary, secular university) might well start with the systematic moral theory of Aristotle, whereas the typical "Introduction to Physics" class will never start with Aristotle's physical theory.   Current "secular" ethical theory traces its intellectual routes back over two thousand years.  And even if the standard secular ethical canon leaps over a millenium or so, it's still the case that contemporary secular ethical theory has a history of 250 years.  Yet can it claim as much progress as "secular" biology, which has a history of about 150 years?  

What do readers make of the argument that secular ethical theory is relatively young therefore we should be optimistic about its progress over time?   Post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

Philosopher Wayne Sumner (Toronto) Wins Molson Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities

More details here.

Sinnott-Armstrong from Dartmouth to Duke

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, well-known for his work in a variety of areas (epistemology, ethics, moral psychology, among others), and a longtime faculty member at Dartmouth College has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Duke University, where he will start in Spring 2010.   Duke has made a substantial investment in value theory over the last decade, with senior appointments of Allen Buchanan, Gopal Sreenivasan, Wayne Norman, and now Sinnott-Armstrong.

Meanwhile, Dartmouth has really taken some serious hits at the senior ranks over the last decade, losing, among others, Robert Fogelin to retirement, Sally Sedgwick to the University of Illinois at Chicago, Julia Driver and Roy Sorensen to Washington University in St. Louis, and now Sinnott-Armstrong.  

More Unethical Behavior by Elsevier

First this, now this.  Elsevier will soon be known as the Bush Administration of academic publishers!

(Thanks to Tim O'Keefe for the pointer.)

This is horrible: the murder of philosophy student Neda Soltani in Iran

Many readers have sent me links about the murder of Neda Soltani, an Iranian philosophy student shot dead by the theocracy's stormtroopers doing what all lethal agents of the state do, ending life indiscriminately.   Some links here, here, and here.  She was attending a protest against the fraudulent elections with her philosophy professor and some fellow students.  As J. Brendan Ritchie, a grad student at Maryland, wrote to me:  "This terrible tragedy is a graphic reminder that there are philosophical colleagues (professors and students) who are fighting on the streets of Tehran for the ideals they have no doubt passionately argued for."

"Nietzsche and Morality" Now Out in Paperback from OUP

I got my actual copies in mid-May, and Amazon reports now having it in stock. The volume contains original essays by Simon Blackburn, Maudemarie Clark & David Dudrick, Thomas Hurka, Nadeem Hussain, Christopher Janaway, Joshua Knobe & Brian Leiter, Peter Poellner, Bernard Reginster, Mathias Risse, Neil Sinhababu, and R. Jay Wallace.

From the reviews on the dustjacket:

"Nietzsche has a tendency to throw out themes and leave us the task of seeing how they cohere. Many of the essays in this book try to tie up apparent loose ends, and make him say what he should have said if he had followed his insights through. We are entering a new era of Nietzsche studies." Roger Caldwell, Philosophy Now

"This collection of essays contains some of the best recent work on Nietzsche and moral philosophy. The editors state that their aim is to present work that advances the understanding of Nietzsche's ethical views and demonstrates the relevance of those views to contemporary debates in normative ethics, metaethics, and moral psychology. In relation to these two ends, the collection is clearly a success. It presents very good historical scholarship as well as some first-rate work in moral philosophy that engages with the issues that concerned Nietzsche. The collection will certainly be of interest to moral philosophers and to those interested in the history of modern philosophy, and many of the essays should be regarded as essential reading for anyone interested in Nietzsche's engagement with morality."--Scott Jenkins, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"This volume constitutes a significant advance in the Nietzsche literature. It is among a handful of volumes that anyone with a serious interest in Nietzsche simply must read. It will also be rewarding for anyone who is interested in the way in which moral psychology and action theory bear on ethics." Paul Katsafanas, Mind

Some comments on other recent books on Nietzsche are here.

More on Iran

These two items I found worthwhile:  here and here (by an Iranian-American philosopher).  May the theocracy fall without anymore bloodshed.

California Budget Crisis Update: 8% Pay Cut for University of California Faculty in the Offing

Wow.  Any private or state school with money for hiring is going to be looking hard at the U of C system for talent next year if this goes through.

UPDATE:  A philosopher in the UC system writes:

The UC pay cut is actually more like 10%.  That is because a separate decision earlier this year meant that they are, starting next yr, directing 2% of our pay into our pensions.  So the 8% cut will come on top of the 2% cut.  And none of that factors in the lack of cost of living increases for many, many yrs.  Most UC faculty are already making 20-30% lower than market rates.  Subtract another 10% and you're right, it could be the end of UC being a preeminent school.  With ten campuses (including UCSF), a 20% cut in state funding is effectively not (state) funding at all two whole campuses.

The Geography of Vice and Sin

Here. 

(Thanks to Andy Cling for the pointer to this amusing site.)

Iran Election Results, Again

Due to other pressing obligations, I haven't been following this matter carefully, but Peter Momtchiloff calls my attention to an interesting chart from The Guardian; here are the four provinces with the most, shall we say, "suspect" results:

East Azerbaijan: Ahmadinejad received 10% in 2005, ‘57%’ in 2009.

Ardabil: Ahmadinejad received 7% in 2005, ‘51%’ in 2009.

Lorestan: Ahmadinejad received 9% in 2005, ‘71%’ in 2009.

Kuzestan: Ahmadinejad received 16% in 2005, ‘65%’ in 2009.

Hmmm.

UPDATE:  A useful round-up of links to analyses here.

Budget Crisis at Florida State University: Layoffs of Tenured Faculty in the Works?

There are a variety of documents collected here, though it's unclear how far-reaching the layoffs will be and whether Philosophy will be among the affected departments.  (My read of the materials suggests that tenured faculty at risk are in units that may be eliminated, and I see no indication that includes Philosophy.)   Any insight from those at FSU?  Philosophy at FSU has been a huge success story over the last dozen years, hopefully it will weather this crisis.

On-Line Reading Group on Lee Braver's Recent Book on "Continental Anti-Realism"

Here.  And the book is here.  Professor Braver kindly sent me the book some time back, but I regret I've not had a chance to read it.  But since the book aims to investigate thematic affinities between "Continental" and Anglophone traditions in philosophy, it might be of particular interest to some readers.

Petition Regarding the Crisis in Iran

Dr. Masrour asked me to post a link to this petition, which follows upon the statement he and his wife wrote.

UPDATE:  Petition link has been changed. 

The Coup d'Etat in Iran

MOVING TO FRONT (from earlier today):   Here is the statement, including a list of web resources:  Download Iran Coup d'Etat

=================

Farid Masrour, a philosopher currently at NYU, and his wife, Giuliana Chamedes, a PhD candidate in History at Columbia and a former journalist, have prepared the following statement about recent events in Iran:

Concerned Iranians call for immediate action

A coup d'état is being carried out in Iran. 

Given the record turnout of voters for this election (around 85% of the voting-age population went to the polls), political analysts predicted that the results would be a mandate for change. 

However, the figures officially announced by the government attribute around 24 million votes to Mr Ahmadinejad. The number of votes won by Mr Ahmadinejad in the elections of 2005 was around 17 million, in an already contested election. His unpopular foreign policy, his repressive tactics, his suppression of women's rights, his treatment of racial and religious minorities, and his widely internally criticized economic policies, must have necessarily, according to all analysts, reduced the number of his voters. Thus, the more than eight million hike in the number of his supporters is simply unbelievable.

The official government figures state that the main challenger of Mr Ahmedinjad, Mr Moussavi, has received around 13 million votes. This result is shocking for various reasons. Throughout his campaign, Mr Moussavi received the official support of the former reformist president Mr Khatami, who resigned from candidacy to support Mr Moussavi in this election. There is no evidence of a fall from grace of Mr Khatami who won more than 20 million votes consecutively in two times. Moreover, almost all of the leading reformist groups in Iran have officially backed Mr Moussavi. The remaining groups have backed Mr Karoubi.There is also ample evidence that even some of the moderate-conservative groups which have traditionally voted against reformist candidates chose to back Mr Moussavi because of their frustation with Mr Ahmadinejad’s policies. Finally, the current election brought to the polls many Iranians who had previously chosen to boycott elections. In particular, numerous high-profile individuals who had advocated boycotts in years past now publicly declared that they would vote and that they would back either Mr Moussavi or Mr Karoubi. As the results of previous elections show, high voter participation in Iran tends to favor reformist candidates. All of this strongly suggests that Mr Moussavi should have obtained a record vote, higher than the average number of votes Mr Khatami obtained in 1997 and 2001. The 13 million votes officially announced for Mr Moussavi is thus grossly inferior to even the most modest projections.   

Mr Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, ran on a progressive platform. His demands include the call for a revision of the constitution in an attempt to protect the democratic rights of Iranian citizens, the protection of women’s right, e.g., promises to halt the mandatory enforcement of veil use, and the defense of the rights of religious and racial minorities. Mr Karoubi received the official backing of some of the former members of Mr Khatami’s cabinet, a number of leading clerics, many members of the women’s movement, representatives of religious and racial minorites, and the largest Iranian university student organization. The official announced result for Mr Karoubi, around 300,000 votes, is thus completely implausible and astonishing. Indeed, the figure is almost lower than the circulation number of his newspaper, lower than the results projected based on all previous polls, and almost twenty times lower than the number of votes that this candidate received in the 2005 election, when he was only 600,000 votes short of beating Mr Ahmadinejad in the first round of the elections. This again strongly suggests that the officially announced number has been simply manufactured, perhaps in an effort to portay Iranian public opinion as opposed to the progressive demands of Mr Karoubi.

In addition to the above, other evidence strongly suggests a pre-planned and systematic attempt by Mr.Ahmadinejad’s faction to manipulate the election results. First, according to the Iranian constitution, the official oversight body for elections is the Guardian Council, however this Council’s impartiality in the recent election is highly questionable. The chief of this twelve-man Council, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader of Iran, has explicitly and publicly backed Mr Ahmedinejad. Additionally, a letter was leaked and widely circulated a few days before the election, in which one of the high clerics in Iran, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, claimed that manipulating the results of the election is not only recommended, but is also the duty of good Muslims when the life of the Islamic republic is in danger.

Evidence that this recommendation was followed includes an open letter written by a number of employees in the Interior Ministry, and issued about one week before the elections, which expressed worries that certain high officials in this ministry seemed to be planning to manipulate the election results. Moreover, according to numerous official reports, many of the representatives of the two reform candidates were systematically and repeatedly prevented from being present at poll sites on the election day. Iranian law states that each candidate has the right to have a representative present at each poll site to oversee the process of voting and the counting of the votes; thus on the day of the elections, the Iranian people were deprived of the legal guarantees to which they are entitled by law.

Finally, a public and official statement issued by the Revolutionary Guards, one of the two branches of the army in Iran, charged Mr Moussavi and Mr Karoubi with an attempt to overthrow the Islamic republic with a colorful revolution, following the example of the colorful revolutions of East Central Europe and mid Asia. The letter explicitly threatened that the Guards would violently suppress any such movement before it is born. All of the above evidence suggests a systematic plot to not only manipulate election results, but also to use intimidatory and violent tactics to block any popular reaction.

The plot was indeed executed. On Thursday, June 11th, the night before the election, SMS services were cut off by the central government. Text messaging, which had become one of the most widely used means for political communication during the last few years in Iran, continues to remain suspended to this day. The Persian-language BBC, was also made unaccessible in Iran starting at the same time, on the night before the election. According to BBC officials, an unknown source is actively sending noise over the wavelength of the BBC broadcast in order to jam the signal. On the day of the election, numerous hours before the official closure of the polls, a considerable number of people were prevented from voting due to a “shortage of paper ballots”. Mr Mousavi’s campaign headquarters in Tehran was attacked in the evening of Friday, June 12th, the day of the election, once it became that Mr Ahmadinejad had lost by a clear margin.

According to sources with links to the Interior Ministry the real numbers were widely different from the officially announced figures: 30 million Iranians voted for change, with around 24 million chosing Mr Moussavi, and around 6 million backing Mr Karoubi. Our sources say that only 10 million Iranians have given their votes to Mr Ahmadinejad.To date, the two reform candidates have not recognized the results of the election, and have accused the ruling party of foul play.

Since the announcement of the official election results, hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, in what is largely interpreted as an unorganized outcry against a stolen election. The protesters are chanting phrases such as "Down with the dictator", and "Give us our votes back". These protests are taking place in most of the major cities of Iran. This movement is spontanous, cuts across class lines, and has no clear leadership. Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that there is any foreign instigation, funding or involvement of any kind.   

Over 100 reformists and various local and international journalists have also been arrested. The internet services were initially cut off entirely and now work only intermittently, with various websites (including the BBC) blocked.

Anticipating the public reaction, the local and riot police occupied the streets in large numbers a few hours before the announcement of the results on Saturday morning. The response to the protests was immediate. The police used tear gas, pepper spray, and batons against female and male protesters. Evidence of this unprecedented violence is widely available online. Since last night, the situation has escalated. In addition to the presence of police forces, various government-funded plain-clothed militia groups, including Basiij (the militia wing of the Revolutionary Guards), have entered the scene, now armed with firearms, knives, machetes and hand granades. Because of the lock-down of the country, it is difficult to estimate the full extent of the violence already perpetrated, however various reports state that gunshots are echoing in a number of Iranian cities. The latest unconfirmed reports from trustworthy sources state that at least fifteen Teheran University students have been shot in the university dorms by members of the militia starting at around 1am. The unconfirmed death toll of the universty dorm raid is five students (four male, one female). Nearly four hundred students, including those who were severely injured during the attack, are reportedly arrested.   

Mr Moussavi, Mr Karoubi, and all the major reformist groups had called for a peaceful mass protest for today, Monday June 15th, to begin at 4pm in Teheran and in all of the major cities of Iran. It appears that this protest has been called off. But according to our sources anger against the coup and the brazen government-sanctioned violence continues to mount. So it is highly probable that the protestors will continue flooding the streets despite the ever-increasing danger and the government’s recent announcement that all forms of public protest are illegal and will be dealt with seriously. Indeed, the response of the government in the first few days following the Iranian election and the escalation of violence since last night, suggest that the government will not refrain from shooting the protesters today and in the upcoming days. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens are in grave danger.

Therefore, we demand the following:

1- It is of utmost importance that the international community immediately use all diplomatic means of intervention to prevent a mass bloodshed in Iran.

2- The international media must use unequivocal terms in exposing this blatantly fraudulent election, something which thus far it is not doing.

Please circulate these demands widely to prevent consequences that are not only dangerous for Iranian citizens but also have inevitable consequences for the whole region.  We strongly believe that under no condition should there be any foreign armed intervention as a response to this crisis.

Five Philosophy PhD Students Win Newcombe Fellowships

They are:  Epifanio Sonny Elizondo (UCLA, for "The Pleasures of Agency:  Kant on Morality and Happiness"), Stanislaus Husi (Rice, for "Building Reasons"), Christiana Olfert (Columbia, for "Building the Soul:  Aristotle's Constitutive View of Virtue"), Christopher Raymond (Texas, for "Shame, Reason, and Virtue in Plato's Ethics"), and Karim Sadek (Georgetown, for "Islamic Democracy:  The Struggle for and Limits of Recognition").  (I was pleased to write on behalf of Mr. Raymond who, in addition to his dissertation on Plato's moral psychology, is doing very good work on Nietzsche.)  A list of past Newcombe winners is here.

Is Francis Beckwith a Grown-Up?

A grad student at Brown writes:

Beckwith calls this light humor (at your expense), but it's at the very least unprofessional.

 

I'm sure this is the kind of thing Jesus recommends his Catholic followers do: publicly make fun of people's appearance and compare them to sniveling, conniving cowards from TV shows.

 

Anyways, good luck with these people, and thanks for calling them on their bad behavior.

What is one to say about alleged adults and professionals who scour the Internet to find an insulting photo of someone and then post it to mock the person?  What can one say?   There were lots of photos from my session with Judge Posner, why did Francis Beckwith choose the one he posted?  There are easily available professional photos of me, why would an alleged adult and professional go out of his way to find a bad photograph of someone and post it?  What's wrong with him?  Does anyone know?

Final Thoughts on Feser

Here.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Bickle from Cincinnati to Mississippi State

John Bickle (philosophy of mind, science, and cognitive science), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Mississippi State University, where he will also become Head of Department.  The MSU announcement is here.

Greene & Knobe on Explaining Moral Intuitions

Here.

SSHRC Embarrasses Itself

Per our earlier item, the SSHRC has asked the conference organizers to supply information about alleged "changes" to the proposal, in response to the political pressures from the conservative Science Minister Goodyear (the fellow who doesn't know what evolution is).  An open letter from York University law faculty to the SSHRC President recaps the latest events and the embararssment this whole episode is for Canadian higher education:   Download Open Letter to SSHRC President.

UPDATE:  Another good open letter from the Canadian Association of University Teachers.  (Thanks to Ingo Brigandt for the pointer.)

LPS at Irvine Makes Bid for Bristol's Leitgeb (Updated)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 18--SEE UPDATE

The Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California at Irvine has made a senior offer to Hannes Leitgeb, Professor of Mathematical Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics in the Departments of Philosophy and Mathematics at the University of Bristol.

UPDATE:  Professor Leitgeb has declined the offer, a significant retention coup for Bristol and its very strong logic group.

Chicago Area Consortium in German Philosophy

Kudos to Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern) for taking the initiative to organize this consortium.

What's "The Point"?

It's actually a new journal of ideas put together by some PhD students in the Committee on Social Thought here at the University of Chicago.  They have some selected content on-line.  I particularly enjoyed in the print version the entertaining piece on the "creation museum" in Kentucky by Tom Stern (UCL), which drew some nice connections with Nietzsche's discussion of the problem of suffering in the Genealogy (though went off the rails at the end in comparing scientists to priests!).  

"Why Evolutionary Biology is (so far) Irrelevant to Legal Regulation"

For those who might be interested, this long-gestating paper with philosopher of biology Michael Weisberg (Penn) is now on-line at the Law & Philosophy site, and will appear in a print edition of that journal later this year.

W.H.O. Finally Declares Swine Flu "Pandemic"

The official announcement is here; the decision was almost certainly overdue.  One good consequence of the decision will be the production of an appropriate vaccine, which, one may hope, will prevent a catastrophic flu season next winter.

Attack on Academic Freedom at York U/Toronto Continues

Canada, which is, like Israel, usually so much more civilized than the U.S. when it comes to the ability to have frank public discussion of competing perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is on the verge of international humiliation.   Having failed in the earlier effort to get York University to shut down an academic conference on a one-state solution to the conflict, the would-be censors have now prevailed on some politicians to put pressure on the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, which is providing funding for the event, to submit the conference proposal to an unprecedented second round of peer review, with the obvious purpose of trying to de-fund it at the SSHRC level, having failed to squelch it at the university level.   My colleague Leslie Green has sent the following letter to Profesor Chad Gaffield, a distinguished historian at the University of Ottawa, who is President of the SSHRC:

Dr Chad Gaffield, President
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
350 Albert Street
P.O. Box 1610
Ottawa, ON  K1P 6G4
Canada

Dear President Gaffield,

If the report in the Globe and Mail of 10 June is accurate,  Canada's
Science Minister, the Hon. Gary Goodyear, "has asked SSHRC president
Chad Gaffield to convene a second peer-review committee to assess if the
[York University] conference is still worthy of public funds...."  :

I hope that this report is inaccurate.  It if is accurate, I very much
hope that you will decline the request to re-review a properly
peer-reviewed proposal for a conference on a timely and important
issue.  In Canada and abroad, senior academics are watching this
controversy with great concern.   I believe it would seriously injure
the independence and mission of the SSHRC, not to mention the value of
academic freedom on which all our work depends, were you to acceed the
this overtly partisan request.
Yours sincerely,

Les Green

--
Leslie Green
Professor of the Philosophy of Law
University of Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford OX1 3BJ

& Professor of Law
Osgoode Hall Law School,

This really is an extraordinary embarrassment for Canadian higher education.  The one-state solution is discussed all the time in Israel, and even those who reject it don't waste their time trying to shut down university conferences on the subject.   Hopefully Professor Gaffield can resist the unethical political pressure being brought.

UPDATE:  A Canadian reader informs me that Science Minister Goodyear is perhaps not entirely qualified for his position.

What's wrong with the world, the shorter version

I added this as an addendum to the earlier post, but it's sufficiently amusing and clever that it warrants its own link.

Anonymous and Pseudonymous Speech in Cyberspace Again

Discussion of the latest tempest in a teapot here.

Jacobson from Bowling Green to Michigan

Daniel Jacobson (ethics, metaethics, aesthetics), Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he took his PhD in the early 1990s.  He will start at Michigan this fall. 

I was fortunate to overlap in grad school with Dan at Michigan between 1988 and 1991, and have followed and learned from his work ever since.  Dan is also now writing the volume on Mill in The Routledge Philosophers series, and I am sure this will be an important and much-discussed book.  In any event, that's an excellent appointment for Michigan.

Are Moral Philosophers Perceived by Their Peers as Being More Ethical in Their Conduct?

Short answer:  no.  I've just been skimming this entertaining paper, not sure whether it distinguishes between Kantians, who (with some honorable exceptions of course!) tend to behave pretty badly (they are blinded by righteousness), from other kinds of moral philosophers.

Video of 1959 Interviews with Russell

Links here.

(Thanks to Matt Burstein for the pointer.)

Ludlow Interviews Chomsky on Issues in Philosophy of Language and Mind

Here.  (Thanks to L.E. Burke for the pointer.)

Fun with Google Scholar: Most Cited Monographs on Free Will

Here.  No real surprises--Dennett, Kane, van Inwagen, Fischer et al. dominate.

Callender and Maudlin Discuss Philosophy of Physics

Here.

Which philosophers have had the most impact on legal scholarship?

I asked readers of my law school blog, and here's their answer.

The Ethics of Teaching in a Small Department and Obligations to the Students

A young philosopher writes:

Here is a question on the ethics of teaching philosophy in a small department. I can imagine circumstances in which a philosopher only gets to teach one course a year in their specialism (because the department is small but it needs to cover as much of the whole cannon as possible). That one course might be the students' only exposure to your area. Do you have a duty to give a survey for that course too (even if this means you only get to give a single lecture, say, on the topic of your PhD---or whatever other topic most interests you personally)? 

The students' education might be better served by the survey course, but on the other hand it would only be the handful of students who take philosophy further that would be disadvantaged, and teaching what really interests you helps with your research and keeps you sane. 

Any thoughts?

Comments are open; please post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

Hypocrisy Watch

State law schools face this problem all the time; I assume it is less common for politicans to lobby philosophy PhD programs to admit students!

Why so few joint appointments (are there any?) in the UK?

Thom Brooks (Newcastle) comments.  I suspect it must have something to do with the heavily bureaucratic nature of higher education in Britain.

What's wrong with the world?

People like Ed Feser (Pasadena City College), apologist for discrimination, now apologist for murder.   It would really be hard to make this stuff up.  Meanwhile, some suggestions for what to do by those who support abortion rights for women and oppose domestic terrorism against providers.

UPDATE:  Jeremy Shipley posts a perceptive reply to Professor Feser in the comments section:

Do the poster and commenters think that a relevant disanalogy arises from the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened? If not, why not? It certainly seems to me that even if I thought Tiller and others had reached the wrong conclusion that I could recognize the moral question as sufficiently difficult that a comparison with Jeffrey Dahmer was beyond the pale. Indeed, what is the purpose of making such a comparison? Surely it is not meant to rationally persuade others to your conclusion. You can't possibly have sat down to write this post thinking that you would change anyone's mind by this argument.

Furthermore, your injunction against vigilantism rings a bit hollow. Do you really mean for this to be an absolutely inviolable principle? Suppose a racist government refuses to protect a minority from persecution. Don't members of the minority have a right to protect themselves? Or, suppose a government refuses to outlaw rape. Would it not be justifiable to protect women by means outside the law? Do you really believe that there are absolutely no circumstances in which vigilante action is justified? I suspect insincerity. You offer a tenuous premise as the only reason more doctors should not be murdered. In light of the fact that your main argument cannot possibly be construed as an attempt to persuade and in fact adds nothing but incendiary rhetoric, I'm inclined to conjecture that the injunction against vigilantism is just cover for an incitement to further violence. That is, I suspect some might read this post and think "if the government had refused to stop Dahmer, I would have"; furthermore, I suspect you know that.

Of course, Professor Feser knows that.

ANOTHER:   More information on the tactics of the terrorists of the Christian right.

AND MORE on the latest victim of the domestic terrorists.

UPDATE 6/6:  Professor Feser's non-reply.   A word for Professor Feser:  it is not a "lie" to call you on your morally depraved rhetoric (and to link to your very words to prove the point!).  Anyone in their right mind can see what the point of comparing an abortion provider to a serial killer/cannibal actually is, and it isn't to lend weight to your two or three (prudent) sentences expressing nominal objections to his murder (cf. Mr. Shipley's remarks, quoted above).  The entire profession, except perhaps a few fringe lunatics (most of whom are already your co-bloggers), understands what's going on, which is why no one objects to my calling you on it.  Your hysterical rhetoric in reply is just a giveaway that you know you've been caught red-handed, as it were.   You and your co-bloggers are, indeed, "what's wrong with the world," as many readers of this blog have noted before.  ADDENDUM 6/8:  Professor Feser, please calm down--I didn't link to your now lengthy "reply" to Mr. Shipley because I hadn't seen it, because, unlike you, I don't spend the entire day reading blogs.  The post I did link to was your purported reply to me.  I am happy to link to your reply to Shipley, since all readers can assess its merits for themselves, just as all readers can assess whether or not you are an apologist for murder, since I linked to your comments in the first place.  Of course, you know what you are, and that is why you're increasingly hysterical on this subject.

ANOTHER 6/10:  This is a very funny, and apt, recap of the whole back-and-forth.  (Addendum:  I see Professor Feser has already discovered this item and--of course--'responded' at length.)

A FINAL UPDATE, 6/12:   The comment section at the post linked above is instructive, both about Feser and his readers, who seem to have a lot of trouble staying focused on the issue at hand.  Professor Feser reports deleting some of the personal attacks on him, but, being a high-minded and honorable fellow (unlike all his critics, of course), he left all the personal attacks aimed at me--including his own:

And what do you think Nietzsche would have thought of a pathetically status-obsessed egalitarian university professor whose "living dangerously" consisted of firing off nasty blog posts from the comfort of an office building, and only ever targeted at people he thought couldn't hurt him professionally?

Since no on else cares about this freak show, let me address my remarks to its main audience.  Professor Feser, you're obviously burning with fury that I've called you out, more than once now, on your twisted view of the world, but surely you can do better than irrelevant personal attacks?  I have focused on the appalling nature of your views, why not keep the focus there?   When your fury subsides, I assume you will acknowledge that I do not produce rankings because I'm "status-obsessed":  nothing has caused more harm to my professional "status" than producing them (I've remarked on this before, and it's obvious to anyone awake) and my actual opinion of lots of "high-status" academics is a matter of long public record.  (Think for a moment about why someone sympathetic to Marx would be interested in rankings.  You're not much of a philosopher, but you're not stupid, I'm sure you can figure this out.)  And you know as well as I do that the list of people I've excorciated includes philosophers and academics of far more significance than you (that's the extent of my egalitarianism, I am an equal opportunity critic).  I'm not as big a coward as most academics and I do say what I think.  That I've been as professionally successful as I have been (is this part of what irritates you?) is attributable to some combination of smarts and good luck.  It surely can not be attributed to my imprudent habit of targetting every religious fanatic, reactionary, mediocrity, and fool, whether they're at Harvard or Chicago or Pasadena City College.  You and your swarmy co-blogger Beckwith had dropped off my radar screen until you showed up as apologists for discrimination against gay men and women and I started reading the extraordinarily deranged blog you folks produce.  Catholicism and your sophomoric version of "natural law theory" do not excuse the moral depravity and venal creepiness of so much of what you folks believe.  On the other hand, I confess I was amused by all the effort Professor Beckwith put in to his exercise in failed reasoning by analogy, but I assume it was prudence on his part to depart from normal practice at WWWW and not open comments, lest someone make the obvious points in reply.  In any case, it's my intention to resume ignoring you, since mine and my readers' appetite for the "bizarro world" of WWWW (to borrow Professor Norcross's phrase) is probably sated.

Which academic discipline *really* loves rankings?

Economics.

Obama's Cairo Speech

An amazingly forthright and sensible commentary in The New York Times of all places:

On U.S. Middle East policy, a subject far more important to any Arab audience than an American president’s views on Islam or ability to cite the occasional Quranic passage, President Obama missed two golden opportunities. On Iraq, he could have issued a formal apology for an illegitimate war and the unspeakable reigns of terror presided over by the U.S. occupation, or noted his own early opposition to the U.S. invasion, or said nothing. Instead, he chose to make the ludicrous claim that Iraq today is a better place than in 2003.

On Palestine, he confirmed once again that American elites are more pro-Israel than Israel itself. Lengthy denunciations of Palestinian violence (Israeli violence was left unmentioned and presumed nonexistent); detailed exposition of the (European) Holocaust, an appropriate excursion into the conflict’s background which, however, becomes improper when simultaneously pretending Palestinians were transformed into a dispossessed and stateless people by a freakish act of nature; pre-conditions solely for Palestinians; and a determination to hawk damaged goods in the form of worthless initiatives long past their sell-by date. It’s the Occupation, Stupid! And that’s not a reference to Tel Aviv.

In sum, great presentation, mediocre substance and a seeming failure to recognize it’s all about policy, not respect. And when it comes to the U.S., policy is about much more than an initiative to promote female literacy.

I imagine the editors will be deluged with deranged e-mails and letters from readers who view any position to the left of Likud as a moral outrage.