Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Fodor v. Dennett on Adaptationism

Jerry Fodor (Rutgers) wrote a little polemic against adaptationism in the London Review of Books a few weeks back.  The core message--there is more to evolution than natural selection--is, of course, well-known (though he overstates that point, hence the ensuing controversy).  Unfortunately, Fodor adopts the habit of the creationists of referring to "Darwinism" and "Darwinists," when there is no such thing and no such people; the creationists employ this rhetorical device to try to leave the impression that what is in fact an important scientific discovery is really just the "ideology" of a particular person, much like "Marxism" or "Freudianism" (creationists don't like Marx or Freud either).   (It's an indication of the insidiousness of the creationist conmen that they've succeeded in getting a serious philosopher to unwittingly adopt their rhetoric.)

Fodor's polemic provoked various replies:  Simon Blackburn and Tim Lewens, both of Cambridge, take issue with what Fodor thinks is a "conceptual" problem for the theory of natural selection, while Jerry Coyne (the biologist at the University of Chicago) and Philip Kitcher (the philosopher of biology at Columbia University) make a pretty good case that Fodor "seems to know nothing about the way the notion of natural selection has been used in evolutionary explanations for the past 148 years."

But the most amusing exchange is between Daniel Dennett (Tufts) and Fodor.  Here is Dennett (a fan of evolutionary psychology, ergo of shameless adaptationism):    

I love the style of Jerry Fodor’s latest attempt to fend off the steady advance of evolutionary biology into the sciences of the mind. He tells us that ‘an appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists’ are thinking seriously of giving up on the half of Darwinism that concerns natural selection. Did you know that? I didn’t. In fact, I wonder if the appreciable number is as high as one. Fodor gives no names so we’ll just have to wait for more breaking news....

I won’t bother correcting, one more time, Fodor’s breezy misrepresentation of Gould and Lewontin’s argument about ‘spandrels’, except to say that far from suggesting an alternative to adaptationism, the very concept of a spandrel depends on there being adaptations: the arches and domes are indeed selected for, and they bring spandrels along in their wake. No ‘perfectly reasonable biologist’ has claimed that the hugely various and exquisitely tuned sense organs of animals, or the superbly efficient water-conserving methods of desert plants, are spandrels, even if they spawn spandrels galore.

What could drive Fodor to hallucinate the pending demise of the theory of evolution by natural selection? A tell-tale passage provides the answer: ‘Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it couldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are. There couldn’t be a science of the human condition.’ There can indeed be a science of the human condition, but it won’t tell us, directly, ‘what is wrong with what we are’. It can, however, constrain our ultimately political exploration of what we think we ought to be by telling us what is open to us, given what we are. Fodor’s mistake, which he is hardly alone in making, is to suppose that if our minds are scientifically explicable bio-mechanisms, then there could not be any room at all for values. That just does not follow, but if you believe it, and if you cherish – as of course you should – the world of values, then you have to stand firm against any physical science of the mind. It’s admirable, in a way, if you like that kind of philosophy. But it is better to repair the mistake; then you can have a science of the mind and values too. And you don’t have to misrepresent science out of fear of what it might be telling us.

Fodor's reply to Dennett:

Over the years, I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to figure out which bits of Daniel Dennett’s stuff are supposed to be the arguments and which are just rhetorical posturing. In the present case, I give up. I’ll take it more or less paragraph by paragraph. Dennett speaks of the ‘steady advance of evolutionary biology into the sciences of the mind’. He provides no examples, however, and surely he knows that there is a considerable body of literature to the contrary. (See, for example, David Buller’s book Adapting Minds.) Even Dennett’s fellow-critics of my piece express, in several cases, attitudes towards the evolutionary psychology programme ranging from scepticism to despair: it’s a recurrent theme of theirs that Fodor is, of course, right about EP; but he’s wrong about natural selection at large....

Dennett can’t be bothered to correct my ‘breezy misrepresentation of Gould and Lewontin’. In fact, he can’t even be bothered to say what it consists in. That being so, I can’t be bothered to refute him.

‘The very concept of a spandrel depends on there being adaptations.’ This suggests that Dennett has utterly lost track of the argument. Of course the spandrels are free-riders on the architect’s design for the arches and domes. But the question I wanted to raise was precisely whether this account of selection-for can be extended to cases where, by general consensus, there isn’t any architect. In particular, I claim, Darwin overplayed the analogy between artificial selection (where there is somebody who does the selecting) and ‘natural’ selection (where there isn’t). How could anybody who actually read my article have missed this?...

Finally, Dennett says I am worried about preserving my values in the face of scientific reduction. Where on earth did he get that idea? I’ve spent more of my life than I like to think about arguing that ontological questions about reduction are neutral with respect to epistemological questions about intentional explanations....

Fodor's replies to the others are at the above link as well, though my sense is, overall, Fodor's rhetorical posturing is better (and more amusing) than his actual arguments.  But Fodor is, as always, a good read!

"Impact Indices"

William Swann, a well-known social psychologist at UT Austin, has a section on his CV listing "Impact Indices."  Here it is:

Impact Indices

In a 1995 poll, 35th of the 50 most cited psychologists in the world

In a 1999 poll, ranked 22nd most cited researcher in the ">Annual Review of Psychology

In a 2002 survey, one of the most cited contributors to the major Handbooks of Social Psychology

In a 2004 survey, among the top 30 most cited authors published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

In a 2006 survey in >Dialogue, among the top 30 of most cited authors in Social Psychology textbooks.

Citation count: 5000+

I've run into this kind of listing before, this example is just one I came across recently.  It seems to be more common in the social and natural sciences.  Has anyone ever seen anything like this on a philosopher's CV?  Please post only once, comments may take longer than usual to appear as I have a busy week.

Moral Psychology (the empirical kind) in Time Magazine

Here.

Nietzsche in Cyberspace

For those who might be interested:

Discussion of Aaron Ridley (Southampton) on "Nietzsche and the Re-Evaluation of Values"

Discussion of Nicholas White (Utah) on Nietzsche on Hellenic Harmony

Discussion of Raymond Geuss (Cambridge) on Nietzsche:  Two Quotes

Plus what I'm reading in the Nietzsche literature.

Comments and discussion are welcome at the Nietzsche blog.

Friday Poem: "Reading Sabines in the Parking Lot"

Reading Sabines in the Parking Lot

And looking up as you go by
I take you in
To see if there abides within
A dirty woman
One who laughs
Spirit with a glint
Wit pointed as a pin

I do this out of reverie
Boredom's affectation

And vanishing
You have no hint
Of who you'll come to be
Now that you belong to me

6/22-7/24/96
Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission

"The John Hawthorne Page"

It's not what you're expecting.  Of course, he didn't create it either.

Ted Honderich Does Not Think Much of Colin McGinn's Review of His Book...

...and he argues that what I called McGinn's prima facie plausible criticisms of Honderich's book do not, in fact, survive scrutiny.  He also documents, towards the end of the rejoinder (and in a separate page of excerpts), some of the personal history that might explain the fierce tone of the review, the subject of our earlier discussion.  Now that this whole matter has migrated into cyberspace, will Professor McGinn, himself now a blogger, issue a rejoinder to the rejoinder to what may now be the most famous or infamous review of a philosophical book in recent memory?

The Fake War on Terror, Part 793

I haven't done one of these in awhile, but this item is worth noting.  Also pertinent is this older piece by George Soros on the damage done by the careless talk about a "war on terror."  Perhaps if everyone just called it the "fake war on terror," it might actually have consequences? 

Employers Want Philosophers!

And I don't mean universities.

There is no bottom to dumb

A blog devoted to shilling for Intelligent Design has posted a link to the paper by myself and Michael Weisberg critiquing attempts to apply evolutionary psychology to law.  It appears the author of the post, one Denyse O'Leary, a Canadian journalist who is a notorious apologist for ID creationism, thought our article was of a piece with the skepticism about natural selection that is her raison d'etre.  The second commenter appears to have noticed what Ms. O'Leary missed.

The oddest job ad of the season?

Details here.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

It might be worth saying that the fact that I link to the Carnival whenever it comes out should not be construed as a recommendation of all the posts that are linked each time.   There are almost always good and interesting posts, and almost always rather bad and misleading ones.  Caveat emptor!

Margolis from Wisconsin to British Columbia

Eric Margolis (philosophy of mind and cognitive science), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he will start next fall.  With the recent appointment of Murat Aydede from Florida not long ago, UBC is now building up a strong presence in philosophy of mind/cognitive science.

Friday Poem: "When the Poem Was Done"

When the Poem Was Done

When the poem was done
Again old sorrows spun
The painful course rerun
As antidote to dying

And drained silence won
The welcome apathy
Of greying light
And day retired sighing

A warm particularity
Mulled over him
As if the dim objects
Dozing in his room

Were pooled in light
Shimmered where they stood
And tempted him to yield
And love the world

But then he heard
The beat of wings
An airy timber
From some graceful thing

And glancing out
Saw not some bird
But waves of memories
Upon a sea of words

And at his back
The room was black
And in this night
He turned to write

1/7-3/1/97, 1/31/98, 5/12/98, 3/20/02

Copyright 1997, 2002 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Berger from Brandeis to CUNY

Alan Berger (philosophy of language), formerly of Brandeis University, started this fall as Professor of Philosophy and Director of the new Kripke Center at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  (Please note that Professor Berger is officially on leave from Brandeis University at present, and so may yet return.)

In Memoriam: Henry Kyburg, Jr. (1928-2007)

Henry Kyburg, a leading figure in decision theory and epistemology for many decades, at the University of Rochester has passed away.  The Rochester memorial notice is here.

Shelby Turns Down Berkeley, to Remain at Harvard in Joint Appointment with Philosophy

Tommie Shelby (social and political philosophy, African-American philosophy) at Harvard University has turned down the tenured offer from Berkeley reported earlier.  He will now have a joint appointment with the Department of African and African-American Studies and the Department of Philosophy at Harvard. 

Job Placement from One Leading Department Over a Decade

Michigan, as I've noted in the past, presents unusually detailed and informative placement data on its website, which permits one to get a detailed picture of how the job market looks coming out of a top department.  I focus on Michigan only because the data is so thorough and because I have a good handle on where the graduates listed are teaching now (though the site is fairly up-to-date).  Michigan was also clearly a "top" department during the period I'm going to examine--uncontroversially top ten, perhaps top five for much of this time.  I have made a casual, but not systematic, study of the competition, and my conclusion is that only two top departments (Princeton and MIT) have, for this period, significantly better placement records than Michigan.  NYU and Rutgers seem to be developing stronger records at present. 

There were 46 graduates who earned the PhD between 1990 and 2000 at Michigan.   Of these, 9 do not presently have academic positions, and 3 others have non tenure-stream positions.  In other words, 1 out of 5 graduates of a top PhD program are not in an academic position, and about 1 out of 4 are either out of academia or in a non tenure-stream position.  That's the sobering news.

Now the more hopeful news.  About 41% of the graduates (19 philosophers) have tenure-stream (in many cases, now tenured) positions in PhD-granting departments.  (16 philosophers, about 35%, have tenure-stream positions in PGR-ranked PhD or MA-granting departments.)  About 9% of the graduates have jobs in excellent liberal arts colleges. 13% of the graduates during this period now teach in "top 20" philosophy departments, while 3 graduates (about 7%) teach at "top ten" departments.

Depending exactly on how one assesses various jobs, it's fair to say that 60% or more of the graduates during this period have excellent academic positions--at research universities or departments with a strong research orientation, or very good colleges, places with good students and reasonable teaching loads. 

Remember that these statistics are drawn strictly from those who completed the PhD (that's part of what makes the first set of figures so sobering).  Attrition rates vary quite a bit is my impression.  I started at Michigan in the fall of 1988, and of my class of nine, two never finished the degree.  But next year's class had a much higher attrition rate, over 50%.  But I am inclined to think the more meaningful stats concern those who finished the program.  It is one thing to spend a couple of years in grad school and then move on to something else.  It's another thing to invest six or seven or eight years in earning a PhD.  Students quite reasonably want to know:  what happens to me after all that effort?

UPDATE:  A couple of folks, in correspondence, suggested that perhaps those no longer in academia left voluntarily to do something they preferred.  In most (perhaps all) of these cases, the graduates were seeking academic employment, and failed to secure it.  What I am less sure about is whether or not some of these individuals had a "floor" for the kind of academic employment they would accept, such that they would prefer careers outside the academy to certain kinds of jobs within the academy.

Employed Philosophers with Search Experience: Step Up to the Plate!

There are many students seeking reasonable information about the hiring process on this thread:  post some (signed) answers!!!

Interviews with Legal Philosophers

I have been posting some excerpts from the new book Legal Philosophy:  5 Questions over at my Legal Philosophy Blog, most recently, from the interviews with Jules Coleman and John Gardner.  Some readers may find these of interest.

How Do Departments Decide Whom to Interview at the APA?

A reader calls my attention to this posting which purports to be by a faculty member at a school ranked between 13 and 35 in the last PGR.  (It may well be by a faculty member, I have no real basis for judging.)  This anonymous faculty member writes:

I’m at a Leiterespectable department that has aspirations of being Leiterrific. Our deadline was last week, and we’ve received hundreds of applications. We’ll be holding a series of meetings over the next month to come up with a list of a dozen or so candidates that we want to interview at the APA. The first step is to rule out all but 50 or so of the applications. Each file will get looked at by more than one committee member. We’re responsible like that. But on what basis do you think that we will rule out all but 50 or so of the applications? I’ll give you a clue: it doesn’t involve reading any writing samples. It’s not that we’re not required to read any writing samples. Nor is it that some irresponsible committee members won’t read writing samples. It’s that we’re all encouraged not to read any part of any candidate's writing sample at this stage.

That’s right, boys and girls. I know you’ve been slaving away at your writing samples for months now. I just wanted to tell you that, if other departments are anything like ours, chances are that most of the departments that reject you will reject you without reading your work.

Unfortunately, the post does not specify the criteria the search committee does rely upon.  I take it that at most departments faced with several hundred applications, most dossiers are, in fact, put to one side without reading the written work.  But the sorting principles at this early stage are hardly unreasonable ones.  A minority of the dossiers are probably put to one side based on pedigree, i.e., they come from a department that the hiring department does not view as providing credible training in philosophy (that may or may not correspond to the PGR results, it depends on the hiring department, but there is probably some rough correlation).  For the remainder, members of the search committee will at least look at the CV, read the dissertation abstract, and, most importantly, read the letters of reference.  Assuming the CV and abstract make the candidate a good fit for the position, what the letters say and who they are from is probably most crucial at this stage, and will determine which dossiers will get detailed scrutiny in the final round (i.e., whose writing samples will be read with care).  Contrary to what the anonymous faculty member implies, the reason to work hard on your writing sample is because it will now play a huge role in deciding who among the, say, fifty candidates that get scrutinized will actually get one of the ten or fifteen interview slots at the APA.

The anonymous poster, above, is a bit too flip about all this, and makes it sound more unreasonable than it in fact is (maybe it is in fact quite unreasonable at that person's department, but I doubt it).  It's also worth emphasizing that the preceding may not characterize the hiring process at a liberal arts college or a university emphasizing undergraduate teaching and the like.  These programs will surely also be taking into account pedigree and letters, but the pedigree that matters may be the pedigree with which the department has had good experience, and, especially if it is a small department, there will be as much or greater interest in things like collegiality, responsibility, teaching competence, and so on, than simply research excellence, which tends to drive hiring at departments in research universities.

I am opening comments, subject to two ground rules:  (1)  those purporting to describe departmental hiring practices will have to post under their actual names, or the post will not be approved; (2) grad students and job seekers may post questions or comments anonymously, though these will be approved based on relevance and content.  Post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

UVA's Green Turns Down Senior Offer from Northwestern

Mitchell Green (philosophy of language and mind) at the University of Virginia has turned down the senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University on which we reported last Spring. 

Lauener Prize for "Outstanding Ouevre in Analytical Philosophy" Awarded to Ruth Marcus

Ruth Barcan Marcus (emerita, Yale) has received what appears to be the third Lauener Prize for an "Outstanding Ouevre in Analytical Philosophy,"  awarded by the Swiss Lauener Foundation.  The first two winners (in 2004 and 2006) were Patrick Suppes (emeritus, Stanford) and Dagfinn Follesdal (Stanford & Oslo).

Hot Topics in Epistemology?

So what are the "hot" topics/problems in epistemology these days?  Contextualism?  Disagreement?  What else?  The more detail the better, and feel free to post links to on-line resources (papers, blog discussions, etc.).  If this generates a good response, I'll probably run similar threads on other areas of philosophy in the coming weeks and months.  Remember to post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

Do Philosophers Use Google for Research?

In the current issue of The New Yorker, the historian Anthony Grafton (Princeton) writes about the history of the effects of technological developments on books, concentrating, in particular, on the present.  The following passage caught my attention in particular:

Now even the most traditional-minded scholar generally begins by consulting a search engine. As a cheerful editor at Cambridge University Press recently told me, “Conservatively, ninety-five per cent of all scholarly inquiries start at Google.” Google’s famous search algorithm emulates the principle of scholarly citation—counting up and evaluating earlier links in order to steer users toward the sources that others have already found helpful. In a sense, the system resembles nothing more than trillions of old-fashioned footnotes.

Putting aside Grafton's slightly Panglossian view of how Google works, I'm wondering whether the point about research is true of philosophers?  Do you, philosophical readers, generally "begin[] by consulting a search engine"?  And if it is true, what does that mean for the dissemination of scholarship?  For example, if you google "Nietzsche's moral philosophy," the first entry is my essay on "Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy" from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and if you google "legal realism," the first entry is from Wikipedia, the second my SSRN paper on "American Legal Realism."  Someone searching for "Donald Davidson" gets the SEP entry first, followed by the Wikipedia entry.  The SEP essay also comes up first in a search for "mental causation."

To the extent, then, that philosophers, or philosophy students, start their research with Google, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is going to play a quite big role in shaping the reception of ideas and also, one suspects, in determining what secondary literature becomes part of the "canon" on a particular topic.  Fortunately, SEP is generally of high quality.  The same can not be said of Wikipedia, of course, as we have had occasion to note previously.

But the real question is this, and I'd be interested to hear from undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty:  are philosophers using Google for research?  are you?  if you're using it, how do you use it? 
I can report my own practice.  I don't use Google for research, though I do often start research on a topic I know little about using the search engine at the SEP page.  What I do use Google for a fair bit is if I have a quote, but don't have the precise cite for it:  Googling a distinctive quote almost invariably turns up sites with the full reference (of course, it is advisable to double-check the reference!).

Philosophy Job Market Wiki for 07-08

It's up-and-running here. 

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Pittsburgh Makes Bid for UCL's Otsuka

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh has voted out a senior offer to Michael Otsuka (political philosophy, ethics) at University College London.  Pittsburgh has not had a senior political philosopher since David Gauthier retired nearly a decade ago.

Are Moral Philosophers Ethical?

At last, the truth:

The majority of philosophers expressed the view that ethicists do not behave better than non-ethicists.  Ethicists themselves were about evenly divided between saying ethicists behave better and saying they behave the same.  Non-ethicists were about evenly divided between saying that ethicists behave better, the same, and worse.

More useful would be to know about the differences between Kantians, utilitarians, and virtue ethicists.  Based on my utterly non-scientific, anecdotal method, my conclusion is that you're safest with utilitarians and virtue theorists, and in mortal danger around Kantians (it's that combination of dogmatic rectitude and lack of judgment, I guess--or to quote Geuss again, "The Kantian philosophy is no more than at best a half-secularized version of...a theocratic ethics with 'Reason' in the place of God" [Outside Ethics, p. 20]).  I assume some Experimental Philosophers will tackle this weighty matter next.

UPDATE:  Professor Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) observes:

I have noticed that everyone I've spoken to so far who thinks there are differences in ethical character between Kantians, utilitarians, and virtue ethicists thinks the Kantians are the worst of the lot. I'd be interested to hear readers' thoughts about this.

What does it take for the NY Times to Cover Philosophers?

They have to write about wine!

UPDATE:  A philosopher writes:

How can you slander the New York Times so badly? It's simply not true that the only way to get them to mention philosophers is when philosophers write about wine. Here is a mention of Sir Alfred Ayer in the real estate section. 

The New York Times clearly recognizes that philosophy isn't just important to high culture for what we say about wine -- we can also make contributions to other aspects of high culture, namely expensive Manhattan Real Estate.

Is the Rack torture?

Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis) consults the experts for answers.

Who will your descendants be?

From a recent BBC story:

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

(Thanks to Mark Greenberg for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Turns out this was another triumph of high-quality journalism, at Dr. Curry's expense.  Story here.  (Thanks to Mark Dondero for the pointer.)

ANOTHER:  Of course, some folks take even the "science fiction" seriously.

Friday Poem: "Atrocities"

Atrocities

"Raging tempo….Wild….
Beauty of tone secondary"
(a movement notation in
Hindemith's Solo Viola
Sonata-Op 25 #l l922)

Atrocities unfolding
in Sunday's Times
browsed at breakfast
late in July
my walls intact
water ready at the tap
silence broken only by pets
pavement unbroken where people pass

I crunch my Grape Nuts
to Hindemith riffs
the viola massaging
my abstract fear

Tonight a film
on prosthetic devices
shows an armless Croatian
not twenty-one
patiently learning
the prosthete's trade
courtesy of a hand grenade
it's meant to uplift us
to see him so brave
I deem it correct to doubt

I write    my hand steady
then head for the john
where I piss exactly
guiding the stream
flush matter-of-factly
soap my hands clean
scratch my scalp deftly
continue my scheme

(If I walked out
on the streets of Sarajevo
would anyone care
if mortar or fragment
parted my hair
would they report it
or look for me there)

Here in my outpost
on top of the world
my dinner digested
I breath the cool air
away from the raging
safe from the wild
I try to imagine
their fate as my share

I cannot imagine
their fate as my share

7/23-7/25/95, 1/26/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Justifying Originalism as a Theory of Constitutional Interpretation

Some readers might find this of interest.