Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Insta-Ignorance

He strikes again.

Scientists take on science journals!

Interesting development.  (Thanks to Michael Weisberg for the pointer.)

Of course, there's isn't quite the same demand for prior "philosophical results," but arguably this isn't wholly irrelevant, especially vis-a-vis publishers that charge extravagant fees for journals (like Springer).

UPDATE:  I didn't notice the linked article, above, is from 2001.  Sorry about that. Rachel Barney (Toronto) points me to a 'live' issue, the organized protest against Elsevier.

ANOTHER:  More from Kai von Fintel (MIT) here and here.

Wilfrid Sellars Fans Unite!

A new society for students, scholars, and philosophical admirers of the "sage of Pittsburgh."

Even NDPR Nods...

...as Spiros observes.

A great poet dies

Szymborska.  My father introduced me to her poetry many years before she won the Nobel Prize.  This one I'll never forget.

Philosopher Pigliucci on Turning Down Templeton Money

He discusses his reasons here.  We've touched on the issue of Templeton funding before.

Moore from St. Andrews to Georgia State

Greg Moore, currently Lecturer in Modern Languages at the University of St. Andrews, has accepted appointment in both History and Philosophy at Georgia State University, starting this fall.  An expert on German philosophy of the 18th- and 19th-centuries, he is perhaps best-known for his work on Nietzsche and on Herder.  This appointment solidifes Georgia State's position as the strongest terminal MA program in the U.S. for students interested in 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy.

Peter Ludlow: "Is it time to dissolve the American Philosophical Association?"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JAN. 29--AN EXCELLENT DISCUSSION THREAD, ONE THAT HAS CERTAINLY CONVINCED ME OF THE IMPORTANT OF A NATIONAL ORGANIZATION AND NATIONAL MEETINGS FOR THE PROFESSION.  MORE COMMENTS ARE, OF COURSE, WELCOME

Peter asked me to share with the readership the following reflections:

Camus famously wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

Camus’ problem has been on my mind since I was recently appointed to the American Philosophical Association (APA) Task Force on Development – one of four new committees charged with rethinking the structure and operations of the APA.  My refection on Camus’ problem isn’t driven by the fact that committee assignments drive me to despair (which they do), or even that attempting to fix the APA is a lot like rolling a stone up a hill over and over again for all eternity (though it is kind of like that).  Rather, my reflection has been driven by a structurally similar question: is there any reason why the APA should not dissolve itself?

In this note I want to make the case for dissolving the organization, not because I’m convinced it ought to be done, but because I think it is a question that needs to be seriously entertained.  Right now, as I write, dozens of philosophers are expending valuable energy trying to think of ways to repair the APA, but this may well be a waste of intellectual labor.  Maybe it is time to pull the plug on an organization that is dysfunctional, no longer serves a useful purpose, and is in an untenable position financially.

Let me begin with the financial situation, because that is the charge of the Task Force on Development – finding a way for the organization to be financially viable.  Here are the depressing details.  The APA has pathetic amount of income for a professional organization, some of the sources of income it does have are (in my opinion) morally questionable, and the possible sources of additional income are (again in my opinion) morally questionable as well.

First of all, let’s put the APA financial situation in the context of how it relates to other professional academic organizations.  In the financial period ending June 30, 2011, the APA had operating revenue of around $1.2 million, but operating expenses of around $1.3 million, meaning that it was digging a financial hole.  An operating budget of a million dollars might sound like a lot of money, but in comparison to other professional organizations it is not.  The APA’s operating budget allows it to maintain a staff of eight individuals (the budget line for those staffers is $640,000), while according to the APA’s David Schrader, the American Anthropological Society has a budget of $5 million and a staff of 20, The American Historical Association has a staff of 18, The American Political Science Association has a staff of 27, The American Sociological Association has a staff of 32.  All of this is a reflection of the fact that these organizations are better funded.  And the rich organizations get richer because they can afford to put (multiple) people on full time development, allowing those organizations to raise more money etc.

As I said, the charge of the Development Task Force is to envision ways by which the APA can raise more money, but the options on the table are not particularly appealing.  Currently, the main source of revenue for the APA is dues, which bring in around $704,000.  The next budget line is a category called “Publication, Items and Services” at around $460,000.  This includes the revenue from “Jobs for Philosophers”, which remains a cash cow for the organization (although revenue from ads has been slipping in recent years because of the weak job market).  So what are the potential sources of future income?   

One option is to have a full time development person working senior APA members (and charitable organizations) for donations.  But assuming a world of finite resources would we really prefer that people donate to the APA rather than many other important causes?  Another option on the table is to generate more revenue off of the APA divisional meetings (in effect this would involve higher fees for attendance; the APA currently loses money on its conventions).  Finally, one option under discussion is the idea of establishing a journal that will be the “flagship” journal in the profession.  How one creates a flagship philosophy journal by fiat is quite beyond me, but the real question is, flagship or not, why would anyone buy it?  I know that some societies require members to subscribe to their flagship journal, so would we make buying the journal a requirement of members?  Required or not, I find it odious to think that a philosophy journal would be established solely to keep a professional organization afloat.

So those are the options: get charitable organizations and wealthy members of the APA (if there are any) to give money to the APA rather than other causes, get more money out of members at the divisional meetings by charging higher fees, create a journal (and force people to buy it?).  All in all it is not a very appetizing slate of options. Maybe there are other options for fundraising out there, but the question has to be asked:  What is the point?  Is there some intrinsic reason why the APA ought to survive?  Is it even worth saving?

As it stands the two main functions of the APA are to support the job market and to organize the three regional APA divisional meetings.  Discussions of the role of the APA in the job market have been all over the internet for the past several years, and the reviews have been largely negative, but quite apart from the performance of the APA, is there any reason why it should be involved at all?  Do job interviews really need to be conducted at a hotel in a distant city over the holidays? Is there any reason to think that Skype interviews are inferior to interviews in hotel suites or to interviews at tables in noisy cavernous hotel meeting rooms? Do they need to be conducted at all in order to come up with a short list of three or four candidates?  Is there some reason why there is not enough information contained in the dossiers of the job applicants?  We are given the applicants’ grades, their writing samples, letters of recommendation, teaching evaluations, and statements of purpose.  What exactly is missing that could not be gleaned from a Skype interview?  Are we trying to find out the firmness of their handshake?  Whether they know which fork to use?  Maybe size up the cut of their jib by evaluating their fashion sense? 

It is puzzling to me that philosophers want to continue the practice of APA interviews, but if some feel compelled to do so, it is far from obvious that the practice should be sanctioned and supported by a professional organization, much less that we should be scrambling to find the financial resources needed to perpetuate the existence of an organization that supports this practice.

It might be argued that the APA’s Jobs for Philosophers serves an important role in the job search cycle, but this assumes that the APA is needed for such a publication.  In fact, matters are currently backwards.  Jobs for Philosophers has become a critical cash cow for the APA, it is doing more for the APA than the APA is doing for it.  I would suggest that an independent organization could publish this information just as effectively, without exploiting it as a device to tax schools and job seekers in an effort to keep the APA afloat.

This leads to the role of the APA in organizing the three divisional meetings.  Again, the question is, do we really need the APA to organize and put on large philosophical meetings?  For that matter, do we even need large philosophical meetings?  I know that the argument is that one has the opportunity to hear talks on a range of topics that one wouldn’t otherwise, but my personal experience is that one often ends up going to talks by friends to provide them moral support.  A broad range of topics are on offer, but we end up going to talks in our individual areas.  There are other options for philosophical breadth, not least is the World Congress of Philosophy, which is offered every few years.  If you are an analytic philosopher interested in what is happening in recent French philosophy, then go to a meeting of SPEP (the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy).  There is no barrier to organizing meetings with a broad range of topics if that is the goal.  We don’t need a professional organization to make this happen.

In sum, we find ourselves in a situation where the APA is badly in need of financial resources if it is to be functional.  There are options available for raising this money (fundraising, higher meeting fees, a “flagship journal”) but all of these options raise the question of why we should bother.  Are we doing all of this just to keep the APA alive?  What is the point?  I’m asking because I would honestly like to know and because, barring good arguments to the contrary, it looks very much to me like it is time for members of the APA to consider dissolving the organization.

Peter Ludlow

John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy

Northwestern University

Evanston, IL 60654

Jan. 28, 2012

Thoughts from readers?  Signed comments will be strongly preferred; unsigned comments that have a valid e-mail address will be considered.

The five most common objections to the PGR

A new PGR always brings the aggrieved out of the woodworks, though I do wish they would learn some new routines.  Herewith, to save time, the five most commonly repeated "objections" to the PGR, almost all without merit (the last one raises a legitimate issue, to which I'll return):

1.  No one filling out the surveys really knows enough about everyone on the faculty to evaluate them all.   No kidding!  That's why we do a survey of hundreds of experts in many different fields.  A good survey aggregates a lot of partial knowledge to give us a more complete picture.   If any one individual could know as much as the 300 philosophers who complete the PGR surveys, then we could just ask that person, and be done.  And, of course, in the absence of the PGR as a resource, that's what happens:  students ask a couple of teachers, and that's the end of it.  (And if your teachers are really "out of the loop" or in the grips of utterly idiosyncratic prejudices, then the student is really in trouble.)  Anyone can look at the list of the 300 evaluators.  If you really don't care about their opinion, then don't use the PGR (and good luck to you!).

2.  Why rely on opinion surveys, there are objective measures of quality, aren't there?  No, actually, there aren't, as the National Research Council in the U.S. discovered, having squandered millions of dollars on results no one takes seriously.  Really, take a deep breath:  there isn't any fact in the world that can prove or disprove the quality of particular philosophical work.  All there is in philosophy is the opinion of experts.  Research universities--in their hiring and tenure decisions--are based on the premise that the opinion of experts is what matters.   We have nothing else to go on.

3.  Isn't this just a 'popularity' contest?  Only if you think the philosophical caliber of a faculty, which is what evaluators are asked to assess, is equivalent to popularity or friendliness.  The whole rationale for a "snowball" sampling procedure, which is what the PGR uses, is to garner informed, expert opinion, not to gauge 'popularity'.  No such procedure is, or could be perfect, but the PGR's is clearly "good enough" to provide some useful guidance to students identifying suitable programs for further study.

4.  This whole report is biased against Continental philosophy, isn't it?  No, it's not--in fact, Continental philosophers are, arguably, disproportionately represented in the evaluator pool compared to their presence in the profession at large. Unfortunately, there is a vocal fringe group of philosophers (the "Party-Line Continentals" as I've called them) who want to protect "Continental philosophy" as their turf, and so they have a vested interest in systematically misrepresenting the PGR, especially since the dozens of Continental philosophers and scholars who participate in the survey don't generally have a high opinion of this fringe.

5.  The report encourages departments to be "conservative" in their hiring decisions.   Where is the evidence?  Given that the PGR also evaluates some 30 different philosophical sub-specialties, there is opportunity for departments to improve their national and international standing along multiple dimensions, and many departments, in fact, do just that (think Carnegie-Mellon or South Florida or Bowling Green and so on).  What is true is that, as the sociologist Kieran Healy (Duke) found in studying prior iterations of the survey, all else being equal, appointing someone in language/mind/ metaphysics/epistemology gives a program a bigger boost in the overall results than appointing someone in, say, history of philosophy.  ("All else being equal" means that the philosophers in question are of equal stature in their fields.  In fact, appointing Alan Code or Terence Irwin in ancient, or Michael Forster or Raymond Geuss in Continental, clearly delivers more reputational bounce than appointing "B-team" philosophers in other areas.)   Given my own philosophcial sympathies and interests, I wish it weren't so, but the question is whether the PGR created this valuation or simply records it.  I'm certain the PGR didn't create it, but the more important question is whether it reinforces it.  I welcome suggestions about how to handle the surveys so as not to reinforce existing professional opinion on this score, without at the same time engaging in manipulation of that opinion that would vitiate the value of the exercise.

New Books in January

Authors and/or publishers kind sent me the following books this month:

Internal Reasons:  Contemporary Readings edited by Kieran Setiya & Hille Paakkunainen (MIT Press, 2012).

Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs:  Science, Philosophy, and Their Histories by Wallace Matson (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, trans. by Donald Landes (Routledge, 2012).

Where the Conflict Really Lies:  Science, Religion & Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Walter Benjamin:  A Philosophical Portrait by Eli Friedlander (Harvard University Press, 2012).

Understanding Nietzscheanism by Ashley Woodward (Acumen Publishing, 2011).

The real trends in the number of philosophy majors over time

Philosophers are indebted to Kathleen Wallace, Chair of the Department at Hofstra University, for this systematic analysis of trends in philosophy majors, responding to the misleading claims in a CHE article we noted previously.  An excerpt from her analysis: 

So, what is the basis for McIntyre's claim that philosophy and religion majors have dropped 20% from 1970 through 2009, "adjusted for enrollment." The assertion is based on the following statistic: in 1970-71, philosophy and religious studies majors comprised .97% of degrees conferred, in 2008-09 .78% of degrees conferred. This might be worrisome if it represented a downward trend. But, it doesn't. In fact, the data shows just the opposite. The trend in both the absolute number of philosophy and religious studies majorsand in philosophy and religious studies majors as a percentage of degrees conferred is upward from 1985-86 to 2008-09. (See graphs.)

This might also be worrisome if the number of degrees conferred remained the same. But it hasn't; it has increased and so has the number of philosophy and religious studies majors. As has been pointed out the number of philosophy majors increased 153% from 1970-71 to 2008-09.  McIntyre's alleged "decline" derives from the fact that the increase in philosophy and religious studies is less than the increase in the total number of degrees conferred -- 191% -- over the same period. But now consider another data point, using McIntyre's criterion of major as a percentage of degrees conferred: 1985-86 showed a widespread drop in many humanities and social sciences majors compared to 1970-71. So, in 1985-86 philosophy and religious studies majors fell to 6,396 and .65% of total degrees conferred. However, from 1985-86 to 2008-09 philosophy and religious studies majors nearly doubled, increasing by 194%, while the total number of degrees conferred increased 162% over the same period. Therefore, compared to 1985=86, philosophy and religious studies majors as a percentage of degrees conferred increased by 20%.

 

Richard Marshall talks to Jason Stanley...

...at 3AM Magazine.

Trouble posting comments

The new "verification" word system seems to have resulted in genuine comments being diverted to spam--I only just discovered this.  I've just approved nearly a half-dozen comments, at least one from a good ten days ago.  I've turned off 'verification' for now, but if there's a massiv einflux of real spam again, I may need to put it back on.  Apologies for the inconvenience to those whose comments were delayed.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

$40,000 per year for 1st grade at a private school in NYC?

Unbelievable, but typical of the way Manhattan in particular has become the exclusive property of the rich and super-rich (with a few housing-subsidized Columbia and NYU faculty mixed in!).  This is bound to have significant ramifications on the recruitment and retention of faculty, at least those who have children of school-age.

Facebook mischief

There is a "Brian Leiter 'interest'" page on facebook, for which I bear no responsibility!  I'm not sure why it's there, except it seems to have its source in Wikipedia mischief.  If you "like" the interest page on FB, then I will be able to skip purgatory and go straight to Heaven.  If you don't like it, then life will go on.  Thank you for your consideration for my eternal soul.

"On What Matters" on what matters...

...and a lot of things matter!  (Credit to Nick Riggle for this amusing montage!  And readers may contribute to it!)

Nietzsche blog

I haven't mentioned my Nietzsche blog in quite some time, and perhaps it will be of interest to some readers. 

Where are the Kants?

Schwitzgebel discusses.

"What's the use of philosophy?"

Gary Gutting (Notre Dame) comments, and a philosopher at Vassar offers additional thoughts.

Philosophers on the "Occupy" Movement

An account of an APA session, with links to many of the presentations.

The Fake "Climate for Women" Guide is still on-line...

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM OCTOBER 31 (Follow the links here for background.  Still no corrections of the errors or public apology for this scandal.)

...and Oregon is still "strongly recommended."  There is still no disclosure of the underlying data on which the recommendations are allegedly based (and still on explanation for the disappearance of Oklahoma), but we are now told that, "For each particular school, we cannot be sure that any current students at that school were consulted in the creation of our report [!!!]," and then we are given this bit of nonsense by way of justification:

Our report is based on what some social scientists refer to as a “reputational survey,” meaning that it surveys the reputations of departments among some leaders in the field. In this way, departments can find out what their reputation is, surely useful information, and in this respect it is no different from other reputational surveys; it merely covers a different area of reputation. It is a way of making public the information that will likely be passed to at least some students who ask faculty for recommendations of where to apply to graduate school.

There is a world of difference between asking philosophers for their opinion about something about which they have information and first-hand knowledge (e.g., asking a Kant specialist about the quality of work done on Kant at a particular department, say) and asking philosophers for their opinion about something about which they may have no first-hand knowledge, indeed no knowledge at all.  And what can it possibly mean to say that the Guide surveyed "leaders in the field":  what field?  The field of detecting "climate for women"?  The list of those surveyed (and we still don't know how many even responded with respect to any particular department) is so heavily skewed towards SPEP members as to be no one's conception of even "leading" philosophers.

There then follows a long excuse for the poor quality of the information, which doesn't warrant comment. 

UPDATE:  A philosopher elsewhere writes:

Notice that the justification for leaving Oregon up there without comment comes, in coded form, here: " The difference between departments is not likely to be whether there are discriminatory practices or attitudes, but whether there are offsetting sources of support, such as mentors and allies, institutional signals of support, recognition and encouragement." 

This is basically a prettied-up version of Bonnie Mann's claim that there is sexual harassment everywhere, it's unimaginable not to have it, but Oregon is still good because they teach feminism and have feminists. So disappointing that her outrageous line is the one they chose to plump for!

ANOTHER:  Another "recommended" program for its "Climate for Women" has a dubious history as well.

Dennett Wins 2012 Erasmus Prize

Press release here, and a list of previous winners here.

Kitcher on Parfit

MOVING TO FRONT FROM 2 DAYS AGO, SINCE THE DISCUSSION IS STILL GOING STRONG

Here.  I'll quote just one striking criticism Kitcher levels:

THE SECOND OBJECTION concerns the method employed throughout On What Matters. Short schematic fictions—“puzzle cases”—are used as if they were analogues of experimental results that could be used to test putative theoretical hypotheses. One deep difficulty with this method is that, for all the words that Parfit expends on attempts to clarify his central concepts, particularly the notion of a reason, the concepts finally remain imprecise, and readers must constantly struggle to decide whether his assertions about the bearing of the evidence are justified. Even more importantly, the reactions he intends us to share are strikingly different from the kinds of reports that play a valuable role in the development of the sciences: whereas the standardization of observations and experimental findings is crucial to scientific objectivity, when people offer their judgments about puzzle cases in ethics there are absolutely no standards for when they are doing it well, no serious understanding of what they are doing or how, no sense of how their judgments might be distorted by prior commitment to some ethical principle—and thus no way of knowing whether their reports have the slightest evidential worth.

Comments are open, for those who would like to discuss this criticism.

Fricker from Birkbeck to Sheffield

Miranda Fricker (epistemology, ethics, feminist philosophy), currently Reader in Philosophy and Head of Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, starting this September.  Sheffield is already one of the top departments internationally in feminist philosophy (among other areas), a distinction this appointment further strengthens.

Philosophy in Brazil

An enlightened country, unlike the United States.

Time to degree

An interesting finding in this study:

The study -- by Jeffrey A. Groen of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics -- found that that the impact on time to degree in the humanities and social sciences is seen three to six years after the job market changes in various academic disciplines. This suggests that those who delay completion due to the job market are those who are in the middle or just starting their graduate programs, and that they somehow adjust their timetables. (Or the impact may be on the professors who advise grad students, but the shifts in pressure they put on Ph.D. candidates to finish would appear directed at those just starting, not those nearing the finish line.)

State Support for Higher Education Over the Last Five Years

The chart here is striking, and mostly confirms what one would have suspected.  It also, of course, explains the generally dramatic increases in tuition at state schools during this period.

Chicago's Police State

What an embarrassment.

UPDATE:  More from my Law School colleague Bernard Harcourt.

A new group blog devoted to the history of modern philosophy

Here.

Some data on the American plutocracy...

...today and over time.

Society for the Philosophy of Agency

New!

UPDATE:  Speaking of action theory, The Onion has a related piece.  (Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer.)

Eastern Division Meeting Dates to Move to Early January in 2015-16

You can discuss here.

Schwitzgebel talks to Richard Marshall...

...at 3AM Magazine.

Trivializing Anti-Semitism

An astute set of observations by a philosopher at the University of Maryland, who is also an Orthodox Jew, who blogs pseudonymously.

UPDATE:  Also relevant.

In defense of philosophy without any practical applications

This defense (Download A Slacker's Apology), from The New Republic, is almost a century old, but still timely!  (The author is Morris Cohen.)

(Thanks to Rob Tempio for the pointer.)

Maudlin on Philosophy of Cosmology

Interview here.

(Thanks to Daniel Fogal for the pointer.)

On SOPA and PIPA

As some readers will know, many web sites and blogs "blacked out" yesteday in protest of pending legislation that aims to address the massive copyright violations the Internet facilitates.  I have not followed this closely, but for those who are interested, this paper by three intellectual property/cyber-law scholars is probably a good place to start.  In general, it seems to me that cyber-space is under-regulated by the law, which explains why it has become a repository for so much garbage, defamation, and invasion of privacy, as well as copyright violations.  (It's a shame, but predictable, that only the latter really gets the attention of Congress.)  SOPA and PIPA may be problematic responses to some of these problems, but the knee-jerk opposition of cyber-libertarians, who readily turn a blind eye to all the ugliness of cyber-space, is itself suspect in my view.

Loyola/Chicago's Trout Chosen as Romanell Professor for 2012-13

J.D. Trout (epistemology, philosophy of science), Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Loyola University, Chicago has been chosen as the Romanell Professor for 2012-13 by Phi Betta Kappa.  He will give a series of public lectures as part of the honor.  A list of past Romanell Lecturers is here.

(Thanks to Joe Mendola for the pointer.)

More thoughts on the relevance of Marx

Reader Aravind Ayyar writes:

Reading your recent post on Marx, I was reminded again of how much a Marxian explanation of the roots of the present economic crisis corresponds with the facts far more plausibly than all the pap of the currently accepted economic theories.  See, for e.g., http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n03/benjamin-kunkel/how-much-is-too-much.

Indeed, as the recently released minutes of the meetings of the Federal Reserve from 2006 show, the nation's top economists refused to countenance the very possibility of a housing bubble that could have devastated the economy. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/business/transcripts-show-an-unfazed-fed-in-2006.html)

As to the immiseration of the vast majority under capitalism, I wonder whether it is a "relative" one to our times after all.  Those marvelous inventions of our age, the iPhone and the iPad, simply didn't pop out of the head of that genius, Steve Jobs, as all the encomiums after his death had it.  Rather, the reality of how those devices are actually manufactured in the prison-houses in China reveals something far more horrifying, something that I doubt that even the London of Dickens could have competed with at its nadir.  And why is this tolerable today?  Because, "Paul Krugman says so."  I kid you not.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-child-labor-2012-1

And anyone who thinks that that's what happens in a "communist" state, should sober up to the fact that the median wage of the retail worker in this country, which used to support a middle class existence for much of the post-war era, is no longer a subsistence wage; indeed, it often doesn't even comply with whatever weak labor laws that have not yet been dismantled by the political class in the race to find the bottom against China.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/nyregion/study-offers-a-look-at-new-yorks-retail-workers.html?src=me&ref=nyregion

Arizona Goes Crazy...

...and it's even hit Tucson.  What a disgrace.

The 4th (!) Annual On-Line Consciousness Conference...

...is only a month away!

"The unexamined life is not worth living"

That is, of course, the famous Socratic dictum around which so much of our discipline is organized, and while some, like Nietzsche, have famously rejected it, their reasons need not immediately concern us.  For there is a more mundane question it presents:  most people--meaning the fathers, mothers, siblings, children of most academic philosophers--do not lead "examined" lives in the Socratic sense.  Is it really the case that philosophers who embrace the Socratic dictum think their lives are not worth living?  I'm curious what philosophers think, and whether they've ever had this discussion with their non-philosopher relatives.

Philosopher T-Shirts...

...but not only philosophers (scroll down).

UPDATE:  And even more philosopher T-shirts.  (Thanks to Steve McKay for the pointer.)

Will Wilkinson, a Profile in Ideological Blindness

Wilkinson, a libertarian blogger, posted several days ago a criticism of one bit of my 3AM Magazine interview, and a couple of readers asked me to comment.  

Wilkinson begins on a silly note.  After insulting me as a "bullying ideologue" (misusing, as all these cry-babies do, the label "bullying"), he then admits that I've "treated [him] disrespectfully on a few occasions for what I assume are political reasons."  I guess his assumption is as comforting as it is baseless; the simple fact is I don't respect his intelligence (and I'm not alone), and most of his criticisms are a case in point.  They themselves are mostly not interesting, but the ideological blinders on offer are, and it is to those I will turn my attention.

Let's dispense with the confused parts of Wilkinson's criticism quickly:  (1) he's beside himself that in listing Marx's "faults" I didn't mention "the labor theory of value" and "the tendency of Marxism when applied to produce totalitarian dictatorships that have caused upward of 100 millions deaths."  The latter has nothing to do with Marx, and everyone knows the former is defunct--one reason the interviewer presumably didn't ask about it is because he'd bothered to read the paper he was asking about, whereas Wilkinson apparently couldn't be bothered (I've even blogged about this, to make it easy for lazy readers like Wilkinson!); (2) he's equally confused about immiseration, as several commenters point out (the issue is relative, not absolute); everyone knows, including most importantly Marx, that capitalist societies produce large amounts of wealth, the problem starts when technological advances replace the need for human labor power, as they have been doing in all the advanced capitalist societies for more than a generation now, with predictable effects on wealth distribution (though as I noted in the interview, Marx was wildly off on the timing); (3) that Wilkinson thinks Cohen's reconstruction of historical materialism in terms of functional explanations "was doing Marx a favor" by showing historical materialism to  be "a credible form of social-scientifc explanation" shows he has no idea what explanatory paradigms are dominant in the social sciences, what the relation is between functional and causal explanations (class conflict being the causal mechanism, even on Cohen's account!), and the kinds of explanations Marxist historians have developed utilizing class conflict as the relevant explanatory mechanism.  (Hint:  read some Robert Brenner to start).  

I'll note in passing that Wilkinson concedes the correctness of Marx's theory of ideology, though, for reasons known only to him, thinks it "vacuous."

The Many Martin Luther King, Jr.'s

Historian Tom Sugrue (Penn) comments.

BPPA "Career Day" Podcasts Now Available

Richard Rowland, President of the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association, writes: 

[A]ll the talks from the careers day are now up as podcasts on our website. These include an absolutely fascinating roundtable discussion on philosophy in culture and the public sphere with Sean Kelly and John Cottingham, among others, in discussion, Brad Hooker and Helen Beebee talking about preparing for the job market, Thom Brooks giving an extremely charismatic lecture on publishing, and a roundtable discussion on equality in philosophy hosted by SWIP.

We also recently put many resources up online for postgraduate philosophers, including written advice from young philosophers who have just gotten permanent jobs in the UK.

Nietzsche in the NY Times

Several readers sent this review, asking for comment.  I've not read the historical work (about Nietzsche's reception in America) under review, but the review gives a competent summary of some main themes in Nietzsche, and thus marks a happy improvement over the irresponsible piece by William Vollmann a few years back.  On the other hand, a book that concludes its survey of Nietzsche's reception in America with the Nietzsche promoted by Cavell and Rorty is clearly not a work by someone who has any idea of the main developments in philosophical scholarship on and appropraitions of Nietzsche in the past generation in the U.S..  But that's not the reviewer's fault, though it would have been nice if he had noticed.

"Analytic" and "Continental," Again

The "odd man" out in last week's lovely set of remembrances of Michael Dummett used the occasion to grind his particular axe.  Simon Critchley (New School) wrote:

As is well known [sic], professional philosophers are broadly and lamentably divided into two opposed camps: analytic and Continental. It is Dummett’s conviction that the only way to reestablish communication amongst philosophers is by going back to the historical and conceptual point where those traditions divided. This is Dummett’s strategy in his hugely influential 1993 book “Origins of Analytical Philosophy.” Dummett recounts the history of analytic philosophy from Frege onwards in the laudable hope that a clearer understanding of the philosophical past will be a precondition for some sort of mutual comprehension between contemporary philosophers. He wrote:

"I do not mean to pretend that one should pretend that philosophy in the two traditions is basically the same; obviously that would be ridiculous. We can re-establish communication only by going back to the point of divergence. It’s no use now shouting across the gulf. It is obvious that philosophers will never reach agreement. It is a pity, however, if they can no longer talk to one another or understand one another. It is difficult to achieve such understanding, because if you think people are on the wrong track, you may have no great desire to talk with them or to take the trouble to criticize their views. But we have reached a point at which it is as if we’re working in different subjects."

Unnoted, of course, is that Dummett's conception of "analytic" philosophy--as "an armchair subject, requiring only thought" and as trying "to clarify the concepts in terms of which we conceive of [reality], and hence the linguistic expressions by means of which we formulate our conception" as he put it in his last book--was such that huge numbers of philosophers in the Anglophone world today wouldn't qualify, though one can happily stipulate that Dummett is an "analytic" philosopher in his sense, and Heidegger is not. 

The more interesting question is why it is so important for Critchley to pretend that "philosophers are broadly and lamentably divided into two opposed camps."  The reason, if you are a scholar of the Continental traditions and have read Critchley, is obvious:  by inventing the two "divided" and "opposed" camps, you insulate yourself from criticism by the opposing camp.   In my experience, the "analytic" philosophers aren't much worried about this, but those who are very keen to carve out a "Continental" category (basically the Party-Line folks) are, and for good reasons as we have seen.

But back to Dummett:  what did he mean by "the point of divergence" between the two traditions?  Based on his earlier work, I take it he meant the Frege line of philosophy versus the Husserl line of philosophy (though, ironically, Frege and Husserl both represent anti-naturalist reactions to late 19th-century naturalism).  That division makes some sense in the 20th-century, but only to some extent--Lukacs, who returned Hegel to 20th-century Marxism, was not operating in the thrall of Husserl, and nor were Horkheimer and Adorno in re-inventing Marx and Freud for 20th-century Critical Theory.  And if one asks what the connection is between Frege and John Rawls, Bernard Williams, and G.A. Cohen (apart from the fact that they all probably read "On Sense and Reference" at some point) the limits of this dividing line even for the 20th-century becomes apparent.

The actual reality is this:  there are a group of philosophers in the Anglophone world--at about a dozen PhD-granting programs in the US (basically the "SPEP universe"), and at a handful of places in the UK--who are marginalized from and not very knowledgeable about the main tendencies in Anglophone philosophy over the last fifty years, but who are deadly serious about Heidegger and who need to justify their existence to university administrators.  Even though there are now literally hundreds of philosophers at the major "analytic" departments that award PhDs who work on the Continental traditions in philosophy (including Heidegger), these SPEPPies need to perpetuate the illusion of two different "camps" so they can explain why the folks in "their camp" aren't taken seriously outside their network.  (A particular embarrassment for them is that they aren't even taken very seriously in Continental Europe anymore!)    That's the real significance of Critchley's irrelevant intervention on the occasion of Professor Dummett's passing.

Central APA and Chicago Restaurant Week

The pre-registration deadline for the former is approaching, and Mike Titelbaum (Wisconsin) points out to me that, although coming to Chicago in February may seem an odd choice to make, the APA will coincide that weekend with the start of Chicago's restaurant week.   Blackbird, Cafe Spiaggo, The Gage, Japonais, and Topolobampo are all very good indeed, and Atwood Cafe is a nice choice for lunch.  (Topolobampo can be impossibly hard to get a reservation at.) Good but not great Italian restaurants are Tuscany on Taylor (Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood) and Osterio.