Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

The "Best" of 2007

Here's some of the blog postings from 2007 that still seem to me most interesting (of course, what do I know?).  If you missed them the first time, you might enjoy checking them out now (most are by me, but I've included a handful by some of the others who occasionally blog here):   

The Changing "Sociology" of the Philosophy Profession (January)

The Proposed U.S. Troop "Surge" in Iraq (January)

Paul Campos's Problem with the First Amendment and Academic Freedom (February)

On Pluralism in Philosophy Departments, Once Again (March)

Using Google Scholar to Assesss the Impact of Scholarly Work (April)

"Because the undergraduates are better" (May)

DePaul's University Attack on Academic Freedom:  The Tenure Case of Norman Finkelstein (June)

Simon Critchley Rides to the Defense of Derrida (July)

Carlin Romano:  Total Ignorance of Philosophy is No Obstacle to Opining about Richard Rorty (September)

Geuss's Skepticism about Rawls (October)

Summary of Major Faculty Moves and Tenure-Track Hires for 2006-2007 (October)

How Do Departments Decide Whom to Interview at the APA? (November)

The Honderich-McGinn Dispute (with links to earlier postings) (October-November-December)

And from my Nietzsche blog:

Nietzsche Studies:  Where the Action Is (October)

Ridley on "Nietzsche and the Re-evaluation of Values" (November)

Where should a beginner start with Nietzsche? (December)

And from my legal philosophy blog:

The Worst Jurisprudential Article of the Year? (September)

Justifying Originalism (October)

Authorities that Perform a Partial Service:  An Objection to Raz's Objection to Soft Positivism? (November)

Farewell to Hellie and Wilson's "For the Record" Blog!

Details here.  They'll be missed!

Law School

For those readers who might be thinking about law school, the other Brian Leiter has everything (or at least a good deal of what) you need to know.

How is the Eastern APA Going?

The Philosophy Job Market Blog has some funny postings (and be sure to read the comments too, which are often more amusing).

Remembering Some of the Philosophers Who Died During 2007

These were the memorial notices posted for philosophers who passed away during 2007:

J.L. Ackrill

John Arthur

Antonio Cua

Michael Frede

Susan Hurley

Henry Kyburg, Jr.

Peter Lipton

Richard Rorty

Robert C. Solomon

Timothy L.S. Sprigge

"Santa Claus Comes to Wall Street"

Both funny and incisive.

Texas to Consider Licenscing Creationist Institute to Grant Degrees to Science Teachers!

Story here.  Hopefully, the state agency will reject the bid by the crackpots to "train" teachers.  (To get a flavor for how far out this particular group of creationist conmen are, take a look at their FAQ page.)

Politically Correct and Non-Legally Binding Holiday Wishes

Here.

"How the APA Stole Christmas"

Here, courtesy of bioethicist Carl Elliott at Minnesota.

One Flew over the cuckoo's nest? (Edmundson)

Antony Flew (Philosophy, Reading) has just published There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.  In a review in the New York Times (Dec. 23), Anthony Gottlieb writes:

I doubt thoughtful believers will welcome this volume. Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God, it rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.

For the pages of the Times, it's an unusually pungent review, although far short of the upper reaches of the Honderich/McGinn Scale.

Friday Poem: "A Talk with A. Zagajewski"

A Talk with A. Zagajewski

(After reading "A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche")
--No one tells me anything new so I tell myself
my own story-TSZ: 56, Friedrich Nietzsche

I imagine you writing on a balcony in Paris
You float in freedom which at last you savor
Your words are tall as if on stilts
Moving above the history they try to capture
As the long reach of words moves over you

A fine hand cups your neatly bearded chin
As you try to understand how words catch fire
Your lyric ambiguities fan them as they burn
You know that Celan drowned them in the Seine
For in the end we are betrayed by words

I see you've built this dialogue in stone
And scrawled N's name upon it
Some shallow dream has beguiled you
Into mistaking the witness for the deed
As if guilt were nimble and like a cloak
Might be removed and transferred to another

Better seek the Nazis who rule death's lovers
Whose visions are blades burnished in ovens
Who call themselves Only Ones and have no mothers
They live today as if we had not suffered
In a world eager to be blinded by words
Where friendly absolution dances to their summons
They leave few traces they even wear our faces

But you will not find their seed in N's remains
The piety of cowards put him in their place
Giving him as ransom to obtain forgiveness
Sometimes the borders of the kingdoms blend
Sometimes the great dreams twist and bend

2/28-3/3, 6/5-6/6 96, 5/14/98

Copyright 1996, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Honderich/McGinn Dispute Makes the Guardian

Story here.  A short excerpt, from near the end of the article:

"People have complained about my tone in reviews for the past 30 years," says McGinn proudly. "I've made definite enemies in the past 30 years in important departments. People are too cautious. Hard things need to be said."

...

What will happen now? Will Honderich and McGinn kiss and make up? It seems unlikely. Not only is McGinn unrepentant about his review, but Honderich is demanding compensation from the Philosophical Review. "They should not have published it," he says. "It makes them look ridiculous." And then he adds something that, just possibly, is mollifying: "In a way, I'm glad it's been published. My book is now getting the attention it deserves. The mighty little McGinn has done me a service."

For the earlier installments, see (in order) here, here, and here.

Rutgers Votes Out Offers to Dorr, Moss at Pittsburgh

The Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University at New Brunswick voted out tenured offers to a couple at the University of Pittsburgh:  Cian Dorr (metaphysics, philosophy of language), who is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy, and Jessica Moss (ancient philosophy), who is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy. 

Other Resources for Applying to Graduate School

A student writes:

I  am starting the process of applying to Philosophy PhD programs for Fall of '09.  I have been reading your blog & the PGR for a while now.  I was hoping you could put something on your blog about where prospective applicants can go to find resources.  Maybe there is a good blog or 2 out there about this topic, or a moderated forum?  I have tons of questions for people in the know and having trouble accessing those people.  I'm not looking for a personal reply, but if you could post some links on your blog, that would be helpful.

Post suggestions in the comments, and post only once; they may take awhile to appear.

In Memoriam: J.L. Ackrill (1921-2007)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 3

John L. Ackrill, who was Emeritus Professor of the History of Philosophy at Oxford University and Fellow of Brasenose College, passed away on November 30.  I will add a link to a memorial notice as soon as one appears.

UPDATE:  Oxford Philosophy has links to two substantial obituaries that have now appeared in English newspapers.

Death with Shelly Kagan (Edmundson)

Shelly Kagan (Yale) joins the wave of philosophy on the internet.

Why Sometimes It's Nice to be Editor of the PGR

There are some downsides to being, as PGR Advisory Board member Alex Byrne (MIT) put it some years ago, "the most powerful person in philosophy"--including the fact that I'm not, yet bear the costs (as Byrne's joke brings out) of sometimes being perceived as such.  Anyone who peruses Cyberspace knows some of the costs:  personal attacks, resentment, becoming the object of people's desire to kill the messenger, and so on.  When I first produced a simple version of the PGR for the benefit of Michigan undergrads in 1989, I did not anticipate that it would become an institution unto itself a decade later.  I have never had any doubt about the value of the PGR to students, which is why I carry on, notwithstanding periodic unpleasantness.  A kind undergraduate philosophy major (at a school with a top 50 PhD program) sent me this nice note the other day; since the PGR is very much a collective effort, I wanted to share these sentiments, which are representative of what I hear with frequency from students:

I want to say thanks for all you do to improve the community of currently active academic philosophers. I am in the midst of a final paper and, in citing Nicholas Jolley's introduction to Leibniz, discovered you are the series editor. As a senior currently applying to philosophy graduate schools, I have spent countless hours on the Gourmet report and on the Leiter Reports blog, searching for those perfect-fit institutions to which to send my applications. In both these projects, I really don't know where I would be without access to the fruits of your labor.

My budding life as a philosopher has already been greatly impacted by your efforts in the philosophical community, and I just wanted you to know I appreciate it.

Thanks to everyone who contributes to the PGR and makes it a now far more useful tool than it was in the beginning.

The Duke Lacrosse Case: An Expose of KC Johnson

KC Johnson is the Brooklyn College history professor who became obsessed with the Duke lacrosse case and particularly obsessed with harassing and deriding Duke faculty whom he deemed to have any involvement with the case.  (Among the targets of his harassment has been the distinguished philosopher of biology Alex Rosenberg.)  A Duke professor has now penned an expose of Professor Johnson's misrepresentations.  More details and links here.

"I've looked at brains from both sides now"

A song inspired by the work of David Chalmers (ANU).  (The photos accompanying the song do raise an important philosophical question:  why did he stop shaving?)

New Philosophy Listserve for North America

Fritz Allhoff (Western Michigan) and some of his students have put together a new listserve:

I would like to invite you to join Philosophy Updates; this is a mailing list meant to disseminate information regarding philosophical happenings in North America, as well as international happenings of broad appeal. To join, please click the link at the bottom of this email.  Postings will be entertained regarding the following:

1.  Conferences and workshops;

2.  Calls for papers (whether for journals or contributed volumes);

3.  Announcements of faculty positions, post-docs, and fellowships; and

4.  Funding opportunities.

Some of the other sorts of postings that are prevalent on the UK and, to a lesser extent, Australian listservs will not be allowed, such as attempts to track down quotes, bibliographies, people, etc.  The thinking here is that such postings are not of very broad interest and frustrate people who are then confronted with unwanted emails.  If the group wants to hereafter expand the purview of the list, we can, but I would rather start narrowly enough so as to not ward off people who might otherwise be interested.

Postings can only be made by members of the list, and should be sent to philosophy-updates@googlegroups.com. Postings will, for now, be moderated, though they will be quickly approved if they pertain to one of the above topics.  Once the group has established an appropriate “culture”, we might relax the moderation requirement.

I suggest that you set up mail filters so that postings from this group are sent to a separate folder which you may then peruse at your leisure.  All incoming emails will be from philosophy-updates@googlegroups.com, so you may set up a filter using that address.

Finally, let me comment on Google Groups. I chose this forum for various reasons, among which are its simplicity and ability to allow multiple moderators; my graduate students will be assisting with the project.  If you register to the group on a Google account, then there are various administrative options available to you, including setting up digest mode.  These options are available to non-Google account as well, though we have to configure them for you.  If we can be of any help in that regard, please send an email to wmuphilgrad@google.com.

For more information, please see http://groups.google.com/group/philosophy-updates.

You can contact Professor Allhoff for more information or to join.

Some Muddled Philosophy of Science Makes the New York Times

Here.  This quote (from the article) may explain a lot about why scientists make such confused remarks about what they're doing:

“Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” goes the saying attributed to Richard Feynman, the late Caltech Nobelist, and repeated by Dr. [Steven] Weinberg.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Advertising on this Blog...Again

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM DECEMBER 12:  There is still at least one advertising spot available for every month in 2008, and both spots are still available for most months.  In addition to ads for books and journals, I am also willing to take ads for conferences, events, on-line surveys, jobs, post-docs, and the like.  Please contact me.

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

So back in the summer, I inquired about advertising sponsorship for the blog; my thanks to those presses that got in touch.  We did not, alas, arrive at an exclusive sponsorship agreement, so I am going to open up advertising space in one-month slots:  book publishers, journals, or even authors that want to promote their work may purchase advertising space at the top left or top right of this blog; so, too, departments wanting to advertise job openings, or departments or organizations that want to advertise conferences and the like.  Advertisers may buy either space, or both, in a given month, and they may also purchase multiple months in a row (with a 10% discount for purchases of three or more months). The fee structure will be as follows, reflecting differences in traffic at different times of year:

January, February, March, April:  $500 per ad per month

May:  $400 per ad per month

June, July, August:  $300 per ad per month

September:  $400 per ad per month

October, November:  $500 per ad per month

December:  $400 per ad per month

Just to reiterate:  since ads will appear in both the top left and the top right columns, two different advertisers may secure space during any one of these time periods.  We are able to run the first set of ads starting January 1.

Let me remind potential advertisers that this blog is far and away the most widely read blog by philosophers (faculty and students) in Cyberspace.  For example, there were 184,311 page views this past September, rising to 214,635 pages views in October, and 250,056 last month.  About 75% of the readership comes from the United States, about 7-8% from Canada, about 10% from the UK and Ireland, and the rest from a mix of Australasia, Continental Europe (esp. Germany and Scandinavia), East Asia (esp. Japan and Hong Kong), Turkey, Mexico, and Israel.  (The percentage from Australasia goes up in the Northern Hemisphere summer, for obvious reasons.)  Unlike many blogs, where the average length of a visit can be measured in a few seconds, the average length of a visit to this blog tends to be close to two minutes.  You can see more details about readership by clicking on the site meter icon on the left, at the bottom of the list of links.

Please contact me with any questions or to secure advertising space.   

2007 Winners of Leverhulme Prizes in U.K. Announced

Here.  Five philosophers are among the winners:  Hannes Leitgeb (Bristol), Christian List (LSE), Oliver Pooley (Oxford), Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh), Alison Stone (Lancaster).   These Prizes should not be confused with the "Major Research Fellowships" awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, which go to more senior philosophers; recent winners there include the philosophers Helen Beebee (Birmingham) and Robert Stern (Sheffield).  The Leverhulme Trust has provided an extraordinary amount of generous support to philosophy in the U.K.

On Intuitions in Philosophy

From the illuminating review by Michael Liston (Wisconsin/Milwaukee) of the new book by Penelope Maddy (UC Irvine) Second Philosophy:  A Naturalistic Method (OUP, 2007):

[This book] presents the best exploration and defense of naturalism I know of. A primary lesson is that we ought not to build philosophical theories on anything as shaky as intuitions that things must be thus-and-so. Too often our intuitions -- whether inherited from our academic training, the workings of our language, or our natural make-up -- are no more than virtually irresistible impulses to think in certain ways. Liberal doses of concrete case studies are probably our best strategy of resistance.

The Pointlessness of Arguing with Most Denizens of the Blogosphere

Philosopher John Protevi recounts his own exhausting experience with a random know-nothing.  I empathize!  "The less they know, the less they know it."  Or in the immortal words of Ezra Pound:  "you can't talk to the ignorant about lies, since they have no criteria."

Rated "R" for "Metaphysics"

From The New York Times review of Francis Ford Coppola's film "Youth Without Youth":

“Youth Without Youth” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Gun violence, sexual congress, female nudity, metaphysics.

If only they'd cut the metaphysics scene, it might have been PG-13!

(Thanks to Charles Huenemann for the pointer.)

Philosophy Job Market Wiki

Judging from the wiki, and what I'm hearing locally, it's been a busy week for the scheduling of APA interviews--my guess is that will continue at least into the middle of next week.  (I can recall, many years ago, getting an interview call from a "top ten" department on Dec. 23!  Of course, that was a welcome call to receive, though it was the very last interview to be scheduled.)  Best of luck to all those on the job market!

Ubermunsch Snacks!

Something to snack on while watching the Kant attack ad.

In Memoriam: Peter Lipton (1954-2007)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOV. 26--SEE TODAY'S UPDATE

Peter Lipton, the well-known philosopher of science at Cambridge University, died suddenly yesterday of natural causes.  There is a brief announcement at the Cambridge HPS page.  I will add a link to a memorial notice when one is available.

UPDATE:  An initial memorial notice from Cambridge University is here.

UPDATE NOV. 27:  Cambridge HPS has now posted a longer and informative memorial notice.

UPDATE DEC. 13:  The Guardian has run a (characteristically) informative obituary about Professor Lipton.

Think of the Search for a Job as a "Marathon," Not a "Sprint"

Some useful advice for job seekers posted here.

Freeman's Rawls Favorably Reviewed...

...on a blog, but by someone who actually knows something, the political philosopher Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin).  Rawls was one of three titles published this past year in the Routledge Philosophers series I edit:  the others were the volumes on Aristotle by Christopher Shields (Oxford) and Husserl by David Woodruff Smith (UC Irvine).  Coming in 2008 are Merleau-Ponty by Taylor Carman (Barnard/Columbia) and Spinoza by Michael Della Rocca (Yale).

Where Tenure-Track Faculty at the Top 20 U.S. Departments, 2007-08, Earned Their PhDs

REVISED once more (evening 12/13)

Here is where the current tenure-track faculty (pre-tenure decision) at the PGR top 20 departments (based on the fall 2006 surveys) earned their PhD (or DPhil) (this list includes only those who earned the degree from a philosophy or HPS faculty and whose tenure home is in the top 20 department).  Remember that these are tenure-track philosophers who were choosing graduate schools anywhere from five to seventeen years ago.  The differences in the list from just a few years ago are interesting:

1.  Princeton University (10 graduates at Princeton [2], Pittsburgh, MIT, Michigan, Stanford, North Carolina, Notre Dame [2], USC)

2.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (8 graduates at Princeton [2], Michigan [2], MIT, and Harvard [3])

2.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (8 graduates at UCLA, UC Irvine, Yale [3], Brown, USC [2])

4.  University of Pittsburgh (7 graduates at Harvard [2], North Carolina, Chicago [2], UC San Diego, UC Irvine) (both Philosophy and HPS)

5.  New York University (5 graduates at MIT, Brown, Texas [2], North Carolina)

6.  Oxford University (4 graduates at Pittsburgh, UCLA, Notre Dame, Cornell)

6.  Yale University (4 graduates at Princeton, Notre Dame, Chicago, Cornell)

8.  Harvard University (3 graduates at NYU, Stanford, UC Irvine)

8.  University of California, Los Angeles (3 graduates at Cornell, Brown, UC Irvine)

10. University of California, Berkeley (2 graduates at Berkeley, Chicago)

10. University of Chicago (2 graduates at Arizona, UC San Diego)

10. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2 graduates at Columbia, Yale)

All of the following programs had one graduate in a top 20 tenure-track position in 07-08:   Arizona, Brown, Carnegie-Mellon, Columbia, Duke, Free University (Berlin), Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Michigan, Ohio State, Paris, Texas, Toronto, and UC Irvine.

Longuenesse on "Analytic" and "Continental" Philosophy

From an interview conducted by Stanford faculty and students with Beatrice Longuenesse, the scholar of Kant and German Idealism, who now teaches at NYU:

I have never been all that convinced by the so-called division between “two” traditions.  As a student, one of my first ground-breaking experiences was reading Kant and becoming interested in Kant’s philosophy of science and transcendental philosophy. This experience was probably a major factor in my skepticism about the relevance of such a division: Kant is obviously a common ancestor to both “traditions.”

But of course your question does not concern the Kantian legacy, but more broadly the different styles of philosophy and what they might have to bring to one another.  I think the strong point of the “continental” tradition is a greater attention to history: both to the ways in which philosophy itself has a tradition, and to the ways in which philosophical arguments can be influenced by factors beyond the philosopher’s rational control or even awareness.  The strong point of the “analytic” tradition is its attention to logic, conceptual clarity, and argument. I suppose one could name many philosophical issues about which the two approaches could learn from one another. The area in which they most strikingly converge today, I think, is precisely the one I am currently interested in (so maybe I am being partial here!): problems concerning consciousness and self-consciousness, self-reference, personal identity.

I'm curious what people, especially philosophers of mind, think about this, especially the last claim about where "analytic" and "Continental" traditions converge.  (What Longuenesse has in mind presumably has more to do with German Idealism, and perhaps some of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, than with Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Habermas, Foucault, etc.)

WTO Director Recommends Marx to Understand Contemporary Capitalism

Curious story here.  It seems to me a more robust defense of Marx could, in fact, be given on this score.

Advice about Submitting Manuscripts to Publishers

A philosopher writes:

I noticed that an old thread about editorial practices of philosophy journals (delay, etc.) is generating new interests. I was wondering if you would consider creating a similar thread on editorial practices of philosophy book publishers. I am a young philosopher who recently sent a manuscript to an important press and who is curious about how things normally proceed. Are missed deadlines, emails that are not answered, etc. the norm in this domain? What is the usual amount of time it takes for a manuscript to be reviewed? Is sending the same manuscript to many publishers a big no-no?

Another philosopher writes:

A friend phoned me a bit earlier today to ask advice about correct practice in submitting book manuscripts/proposals to publishers.  I don't know if you think it appropriate to open this question on your blog or if you have time to give a personal reply, but if you can do either it would be greatly appreciated.  I'm not really sure what the expected behaviour is here for dealing with book publishers.

My friend works in cognitive science/philosophy of mind/philosophy of language/ linguistics.  He recently submitted a manuscript to a publisher, a publisher where he would like to be considered in good standing whether or not they publish his book.  He wanted to know if he could reasonably send the manuscript to other publishers while the first publisher goes through its review process.

I had two thoughts in response to this.

1.  As far as I know although it is clear that refereed journals have a strict expectation that an article will not be submitted to more than one journal at the same time, I am not aware of any similar expectation with regard to book manuscripts or proposals.

2.  It seems to me to be a bad idea to annoy a good publisher by telling them that one has agreed to publish a book with another publisher while the book was still under review at the original publisher.

I'm not sure which consideration should have more weight, or if there are other considerations I am overlooking.

Comments are open; I will try to weigh in myself when I have a chance.  My experience here is somewhat limited, because I have never had occasion to do "cold" submissions to presses, as opposed to solicited ones.  But I've heard various anecdotes, but it would probably be more useful for those with first-hand experience to offer their perspective.  Since I know a number of philosophy editors at major presses read this blog, I encourage them to comment as well about their expectations and procedures!

A Favor

I'd ask readers with blogs to please consider adding these blogs to their blogrolls (if they maintain one):

Brian Leiter's Legal Philosophy Blog

Brian Leiter's Nietzsche Blog

Thanks.

Experimental Philosophy Makes the New York Times

Deservedly so!

Immanuel Kant: "Wrong on metaphysics, wrong on ethics, wrong on aesthetics"

I'm not sure, though, that he is "wrong for America."  But this is quite funny.  (Thanks to Amy Kind for the pointer.)

Friday Poem: "On the Way"

On the Way

On the way to growing up
I kneeled in a farmyard
near an old Connecticut town
pellet gun in hand
sighting a sleeping feline
curled around a fence

Henry the farmer's city son
beside me as I peered
softly purred instructions
to keep my purpose clear

Here the task before me
was to incapacitate a cat
unknowingly recumbent
and incidentally fat
with shot of great potential
to wound or swipe a life

A life but just a cat's
immobile in my sight
not I nor it or daylight
stirring as I set

The universe breathless
sensitive to a sneeze
poised to shift its purpose
should I in a breeze
lend a hand to chaos
needing but to squeeze
this trigger near my heart
and break the puss apart

Which I did not
but put the weapon up
put aside that sight
seeing another setting
where cats belong all right

I could not hit the kitty
glad glad of that
returned the gun to Henry
saved two lives one the cat's

7/30-7/31/95, 1/26/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Holiday Greetings from the Philosophers of Action at Florida State

Randolph Clarke, Michael McKenna, and Alfred Mele.  (It may take awhile to load, and seems to work better from Internet Explorer than Mozilla Firefox.)

Fun (and Short) Interview with Martha Nussbaum in The Guardian

Here.

Jeff McMahan on the State of Normative Ethics

Once again, an excerpt from an interview in Normative Ethics:  5 Questions, this time with Jeff McMahan (Rutgers):

I am highly optimistic about the prospects for progress in normative ethics.  It is evident to me that great progress has already been made since I entered the field in the early 1980s.  Unlike many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, which in recent years were seduced by bad French philosophy into a lot of silly "post-modern" theorizing that hs exposed them to derision and reduced them to irrelevance, analytic philosophy is flourishing.  Part of the reason why analytic philosophy generally is in such a healthy state is that, as Jerry Fodor observed in a recent book review, philosophers no longer tend to have philosophies.  We no longer devote our lives to developing comprehensive philosophical or ethical systems.  We are individually narrower and more specialized, which enables us to focus more carefully and minutely on the problems we study, and as a consequence to produce work that is more rigorous and detailed.  The result is that philosophy has become more of a collective endeavor than it was in the past, in the sense that different people are focusing selectively on problems that are elements or aspects of larger problems.  When the results of individual efforts are combined, we may achieve a collective product that exceeds in depth, intricacy, and sophistication what any individual could have produced by working on the larger problem in isolation.

I agree that some parts of the humanities have been "seduced by bad French philosophy" that has "exposed them to derision and reduced them to irrelevance"; I agree that "philosophers no longer tend to have philosophies"; and I agree that "philosophy has become more of a collective endeavor."  But I disagree with everything else here, especially in the case of normative ethics (what would be the evidence, e.g., for its "relevance"?).  I am curious, though, what other philosophers think about McMahan's assessment.  (I would also be happy to hear from those who disagree with the claims of McMahan with which I agree as well.)  Signed comments are preferred; post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

Peter Singer on "neglected topics and/or contributions" in Normative Ethics

I've been reading around in the latest in the fascinating 5 Questions series, this one on Normative Ethics.  Here is Peter Singer (Princeton/Melbourne) on "neglected topics and/or contributions":

As for neglected contributions, while the work of R.M. Hare is not entirely neglected, it is not now paid the attention it deserves.  Compare the attention Rawls has received over the last 30 years – and yet Hare is, to my mind, a more rigorous philosopher.  Mind you, I wouldn’t want to see as much written about Hare as has been written about Rawls during those decades.  That’s excessive by any standards.  So much discussion of any one philosopher becomes boring. 

Going back further, I regret the fact that Mill’s Utilitarianism is much more widely read than Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics, despite the fact that Utilitarianism is a hastily-written work, full of doubtful arguments.  The Methods of Ethics, which Sidgwick painstakingly revised 7 times over a thirty year period, is simply the best book on ethics ever written.  It’s difficult to think of any major issues in normative ethics that are not already touched upon there, and often it is hard to improve on what Sidgwick says.  If students find it too long to read, then they should at least be referred to the last two chapters of Book III, all of Book IV, and the Concluding Chapter.  But more people read Mill, no doubt in large part because Mill was the more concise and elegant writer.

I wonder what philosophers think about Professor Singer's answer?

Philosophy Lectures...on IPod

Interesting story here (featuring Hubert Dreyfus [Berkeley]).

ISI Philosophy Journals and Promotion Decisions

A philosopher in Turkey writes:

I am a junior professor teaching at an English language philosophy department in Turkey. There are at present five such departments (Bilkent, Bogazici, METU, Yeditepe and Koc) and a number of American and European trained philosophers at other departments. The number of English language departments looks likely to increase over the next few years. So there is a sizable and growing community of English speaking philosophers working in the country.

The reason I am writing is because here in Turkey the main criterion for promotions and hiring decisions is the number of articles published in journals listed in the ISI Arts and Humanities Citation Index. The distinction between ISI and non-ISI journals is one that is made at the national level by the Turkish Higher Education council. A list of journals included on this index can be found at: http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~phil/phil-jrnls.htm. There are a number of good journals that are not included on this index and philosophers working in Turkey have a very strong incentive not to send papers to these journals. And so I often find myself sending articles to journals that are less prestigious and less appropriate for my work merely because they are included on the index while my preferred journal is not.

The reason why a number of good journals are not included in the index is a frequent topic of discussion here. And the guess is that for most philosophers in the English speaking world whether or not a journal is on the ISI citation index is not relevant when it comes to tenure and hiring decisions, combined with the fact that journal editors are already overworked and undervalued and getting a journal on the index quite possibly involves a lot of bureaucratic work. Is this guess accurate?

I have a number of questions for readers of this blog: (a) Are there any other countries where this sharp distinction is made between ISI and non-ISI journals? (b) Are there any departments in the English speaking world where whether or not a journal is on the ISI index is a crucial issue? (I imagine this might be the case in some institutions that focus primarily on the hard sciences) (c) For journal editors (especially those who have had experience with getting their journal onto the ISI index): Is the process of getting your journal listed extremely cumbersome?

Signed comments will be preferred; post ony once and be patient, comments may take awhile to appear.

Philosopher Barbara Forrest Puts the Fear of God into the Texas Taliban!

Pharyngula has the details, and the New York Times editorializes on the latest disgraceful machinations of the know-nothings.

UPDATE:  Professor Forrest's apt statement on the matter is here.

Peter Ludlow: Real and Virtual

Real here, virtual here.   Wow, that is really weird!

Where should someone new to Nietzsche begin?

Discussion here.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.