Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Shields on Aristotle

Christopher Shields's book on Aristotle in the Routledge Philosophers series gets a justly laudatory review in the current Philosophical Review:

This delightful and fully engaging book, written in a sparkling style and abounding in entertaining examples, is designed for those who are new to Aristotle and want to approach him from a contemporary philosophical standpoint. It presupposes no familiarity with ancient philosophy and just a little bit of general philosophical knowledge. The main objectives Shields sets for himself are to reconstruct and explain the philosophical motivations that uphold Aristotle’s central tenets, and to provide his readers with the key concepts and a general interpretative strategy that they can put to work in studying Aristotle’s texts and assessing his views on their own. The book fulfills these goals very well and thereby offers a prime alternative to standard introductions to Aristotle.

Medieval Philosophy Scholar John Marenbon (Cambridge) Elected to the British Academy

The full list of new Fellows is here.

UPDATE:  Jo Wolff (UCL) points out to me that the logician Wilfrid Hodges, who taught mainly on mathematics faculties, was elected to the Philosophy section of the Academy, and so really should be singled out here as well.

OUP to Publish 1st Volume of Kripke's Collected Papers...

...including five previously unpublished papers.   I imagine this will generate a lot of interest, given Kripke's huge influence upon Anglophone philosophy of the past forty years.

Jerry Springer Meets Philosophy

Barry Lam (Vassar) sends along this funny video clip, which he thinks is from an Australian comedy show.  As Professor Lam notes:  "If this is funny to Australians, then they must be far more educated than Americans."

UPDATE:  My colleague Michael Kremer passes along this "viciously funny" segment from the same Australian comedy show, this one about dumb Americans (and I mean really dumb).  It's a bit long, but it is funny (even funnier, I imagine, if you don't live here!).

Marx, Greenspan, Mandeville, and the Current Crisis of Capitalism

Thoughts from Jo Wolff (UCL).

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Fleischacker Wins 2009 Gittler Award from APA

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

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

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

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

More details here.

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

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

Five Philosophy PhD Students Win Newcombe Fellowships

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

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Greene & Knobe on Explaining Moral Intuitions

Here.

Chicago Area Consortium in German Philosophy

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

What's "The Point"?

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

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

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

Video of 1959 Interviews with Russell

Links here.

(Thanks to Matt Burstein for the pointer.)

Ludlow Interviews Chomsky on Issues in Philosophy of Language and Mind

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

Fun with Google Scholar: Most Cited Monographs on Free Will

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

Callender and Maudlin Discuss Philosophy of Physics

Here.

Nous & PPR Not Accepting Submissions Until October 1, 2009

Via the Weatherson blog.  Another argument for more open access venues like Philosophers' Imprint.

UPDATE:  Tamler Sommers (Houston) writes:

My guess is that the reason PPR and Nous are swamped is because they have, by far, the most responsible reviewing process of the very top journals.  They get back to people within a month, usually with helpful comments even if they reject.  If they accept, you get to put a great 'forthcoming' publication on your CV, which can help you get a job or move up in the world even if the article takes forever to actually come out.   As a junior faculty member, you have a strong incentive to choose them for an initial submission over other journals. 

 

So Open Access is great, but a bigger issue is reviewing practices.  If Open Access can help with that, then it's the best of all possible worlds.  If not, there's still a real problem and the journals who address it--open access or not--will have to take frequent moritoriums.

Comments open for those who want to continue the 'open access' discussion or react to Professor Sommers's observations.

Boring...

...or how not to be, according to Jo Wolff (UCL). 

Plato Translation & Commentary On-Line...with Drawings!

Courtesy of philosopher John Holbo (National University of Singapore) and his wife Belle Waring.

This is just beyond alief!

Philosopher Gendler v. psychologist Bloom.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Some Philosophically Nuanced Work in the NY Times!

Robin Jeshion (UC Riverside) writes:

You often cite newspaper articles that are philosophically uninformed or dimwitted. Here's one that is terrific -- sort of a mix of up-to-the-minute relevant Heidegger and a bit of Marx, with no jargon at all, and its well- written and extremely thought-provoking. Perhaps you'll find it as engaging as I did and worth flagging on your blog.

UPDATE:  Neil Levy points out why the article's author may have become disillusioned with intellectual work.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Epistemology Comes to Bloggingheads TV...

...with Littlejohn (UT San Antonio) and Comesana (Wisconsin, en route to Arizona).

More Video Interviews with Philosophers: Timothy Williamson (Oxford) in Lima

Here.

John Perry (Stanford & UC Riverside) Interviewed

Here.  (Thanks to Varol Akman for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  And Jeremy Waldron too!

Philosopher Aseel al-Awadi One of First Four Women Elected to Parliament in Kuwait!

Story here.  Aseel took her PhD in philosophy at UT Austin, writing a dissertation with my former colleague A.P. Martinich.  Kudos to Aseel and the others for their courage and ground-breaking victory!

Does the NY Times Not Realize That Stanley Fish is Philosophically Incompetent?

It appears not, judging from the fact that they keep running his sophomoric prattle.  I have been ignoring it, but a reader flags today's foray into bad epistemology and philosophy of science:

Evidence, understood as something that can be pointed to, is never an independent feature of the world. Rather, evidence comes into view (or doesn’t) in the light of assumptions – there are authors or there aren’t — that produce the field of inquiry in the context of which (and only in the context of which) something can appear as evidence.

To bring all this abstraction back to the arguments made by my readers, there is no such thing as “common observation” or simply reporting the facts. To be sure, there is observation and observation can indeed serve to support or challenge hypotheses. But the act of observing can itself only take place within hypotheses (about the way the world is) that cannot be observation’s objects because it is within them that observation and reasoning occur.

While those hypotheses are powerfully shaping of what can be seen, they themselves cannot be seen as long as we are operating within them; and if they do become visible and available for noticing, it will be because other hypotheses have slipped into their place and are now shaping perception, as it were, behind the curtain.

By the same analysis, simple reporting is never simple and common observation is an achievement of history and tradition, not the result of just having eyes. And while there surely are facts, there are no facts (at least not ones we as human beings have access to) that simply declare themselves to the chainless minds Hitchens promises us if we will only cast aside the blinders of religion.

Indeed, there are no chainless minds, and it’s a good thing, too. A chainless mind would be a mind not hostage to or fettered by any pre-conceptions, a mind that was free to go its own way. But how could you go any way if you are not anywhere, if you are not planted in some restricted location in relation to which the directions “here,” “there” and “elsewhere” have a sense?

A mind without chains – a better word would be “constraints” – would be free and open in a way that made motivated (as opposed to random) movement impossible. Thought itself — the consideration of problems with a view to arriving at their solutions — requires chains, requires stipulated definitions, requires limits it did not choose but which enable and structure its operations.... 

If there is no thought without constraints (chains) and if the constraints cannot be the object of thought because they mark out the space in which thought will go on, what is noticed and perspicuous will always be a function of what cannot be noticed because it cannot be seen....

Pking gets it right. “To torpedo faith is to destroy the roots of . . . any system of knowledge . . . I challenge anyone to construct an argument proving reason’s legitimacy without presupposing it . . . Faith is the base, completely unavoidable. Get used to it. It’s the human condition.” (All of us, not just believers, see through a glass darkly.) Religious thought may be vulnerable on any number of fronts, but it is not vulnerable to the criticism that in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on mere faith....

So to sum up, the epistemological critique of religion — it is an inferior way of knowing — is the flip side of a naïve and untenable positivism.

Quine, among others, would no doubt be surprised.  Feel free to discuss.  (And for those curious who the Paul Campos is that thinks Fish "smarter" than Dawkins, he is a law professor at Colorado, with an MA in literary theory and a penchant for foolishness, in both his 'scholarship' and his public pronouncements.)

The Most Important Philosophical Books Since 1950?

Reader Tracy Ho sends along the following interesting information:

I am a reader of your blog. Since you recently launched several polls about The Best Philosopher, I thought you might be interested in the following information.

In 2002, Professor Chen Bo (Philosophy, Peking University) was asked by one Chinese publisher about important contemporary philosophical works for publication in Chinese translation. At that time Prof. Chen was visiting at the University of Miami, so he asked Prof. Susan Haack for suggestions. They sent e-mails to sixteen philosophers in USA, England, Australia, Germany, Finland, and Brazil to recommend TEN of the most important and influential philosophical books after 1950. They received recommendations from twelve philosophers, including:  Susan Haack, Donald M. Borchert (Ohio U.), Donald Davidson, Jurgen Habermas, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Peter F. Strawson, Hilary Putnam, and G. H. von Wright.  (Sorry I cannot give you the full list, because their names are typed in Chinese. Two of them I cannot identify.)

The results were as follows:

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.  13 votes go to Wittgenstein. Among them, 9 for "Philosophical Investigation." 2 for "On Certainty." Each of "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and "The Blue and Brown Books" gets one.

2. W. V. Quine, Word and Object.  15 votes go to Quine. 8 for "Word and Object." 5 for "From a Logical Point of View." 2 for "Ontological Relativity."

3. Peter F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics.  11 votes go to Strawson. 8 for "Individuals." "The Bounds of Sense," "Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties," and "Introduction to Logical Theory" obtain one vote for each.

4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.  9 votes go to the same book, "A Theory of Justice."

5. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast.  10 votes go to Goodman. 7 for "Fact, Fiction and Forecast." 2 for "Ways of World Making." One for "Languages of Art."

6. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity.  8 votes go to Kripke. 6 for "Naming and Necessity." 2 for "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language."

7. G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention.  8 votes go for Anscombe. 6 for "Intention." One for each of "The Collected Philosophical Papers" and "Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind."

8. J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words.  7 votes go to Austin. 5 for "How to Do Things with Words." One for each of "Sense and Sensibilia" and "Philosophical Papers."

9. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  5 votes go to him and this book.

10. M. Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.  8 votes go to Dummett. 3 for "The Logical Basis of Metaphysics." 2 for "Frege: Philosophy of Language." One for "Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics" and "Truth and Other Enigmas."

11. Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism.  8 votes go to him. 3 for "The Many Faces of Realism." Two for "Realism and Reason" and "Philosophical Papers." One for "Meaning and the Moral Sciences."

12. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.  5 votes go to him. Two for "The Order of Things" and "Discipline and Punishment." One for "An Archaeology of Knowledge."

13. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere. 4 votes go to the same book.

14. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia. 4 votes go to the same book.

15. R. M. Hare obtains 4 votes. Two each for "The Language of Morals" and "Freedom and Reason."

16. John R. Searle obtains 5 votes. Two each for "Intentionality" and "The Rediscovery of the Mind". One for "Speech Acts."

17. Bernard Williams gets 4 votes. Two for "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.  "One for "Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry" and "Moral Luck：Philosophical Papers 1973-1980."

18. Karl Popper gets 4 votes. One for "Conjecture and Refutation". Two for "Logik der Forschung."  One for "Open Society and Its Enemies." (The last two were published before 1950)

19. Gilbert Ryle gets 3 votes, all of which go to "The Concept of Mind."

20. Donald Davidson gets 3 votes. Two for "Essays on Action and Event." One for "Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation."

21. John Mcdowell gets 3 votes. All go to "Mind and World." (Prof. Chen notes that Strawson and Putnam voted for him.)

22. Daniel C. Dennett gets 3 votes. Two for "Consciousness explained." One for "The Intentional Stance."

23. Jurgen Habermas gets 3 votes. Two for "Theory of Communicative Action." One for "Between Facts and Norm."

24. Jacques Derrida gets 3 votes. "La Voix et le Phenomene" and "De La Grammatologie" and "introduction a “L’origine de la Geometrie” par Edmund Husserl" get one for each.

25. Paul Ricoeur gets 3 votes. Two for "Le Metaphore Vive." One for "Freedom and Nature."

26. Noam Chomsky gets two votes. Each goes to "Syntactic Structure" and "Cartesian Linguistics."

27. Derek Parfit gets two votes. All go to "Reasons and Persons."

28. Susan Haack gets two votes. All go to "Evidence and Inquiry."

29. D. M. Armstrong gets two votes. Each of them goes to "Materialist Theory of the Mind" and "A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility."

30. Herbert Hart gets two votes. Each of them goes to "The Concept of Law" and "Punishment and Responsibility."

31. Ronald Dworkin gets two votes. Each of them goes to "Taking Rights Seriously" and "Law’s Empire."

Since most of the works on list are analytic philosophy, Prof. Chen asked Habermas to recommend some works in Europe. He recommended Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (1992), Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Cerechtigkeit (1994）and Herbert Schnadelbach, Kommentor zu Hegels Rechtephilosophie (2001).  [BL comment:  Forst was Habermas's student]

It is unclear whether the advisers can vote for their own works.

The original document can be found here.  However, this is in Chinese. I cannot find it in English.  Prof. Chen Bo's website is here.

It might be interesting to see a new result voted by your readers.

Reactions from readers to the preceding?  Maybe we will run a poll on this, so feel free to suggest other volumes that ought to be included as  major post-1950 books in philosophy.

XPhil--the Future for Philosophy

They're certainly better organized than most of the discipline!

Pippin Elected to American Philosophical Society

Robert Pippin (Kant, 19th- and 20th-century Continental Philosophy) at the University of Chicago was the only philosopher elected to the American Philosophical Society this year.  Other scholars in cognate fields elected to the  APS this year include Douglas Hofstadter (Indiana) and Anthony A. Long (Berkeley).

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

New On-Line Resource: Philosopher's Digest

Here, featuring short accoutns of the arguments of recent journal articles.

Peter Hacker Did Not Like Timothy Williamson's Book

Via Weatherson, I see that the irascible (and sometimes idiosyncratic and dogmatic [cf. paragraph 7]) Peter Hacker has a rather savage and critical review of Williamson's The Philosophy of Philosophy.  In the hopes of clarifying what's really at issue here, I thought I would single out a substantive criticism from Hacker's review and invite reader comments on its merits.  This is from p. 343 of the review:

Having shown to his satisfaction that philosophical truths are not generally about words or concepts, Williamson queries how philosophy might nevertheless still be an armchair activity that aims at conceptual truths. Since confinement to an armchair does not deprive one of one's linguistic competence, perhaps conceptual truths are those that can be achieved merely through reflection on that competence. This might be so, he writes (pp. 50–1), if all, or all core, philosophical truths were analytic in some sense which imposed no constraints upon the world and hence could be known from the depths of an armchair. Williamson suggests that this view was embraced by those analytic philosophers who believed that philosophical truths are linguistic or conceptual. But this is demonstrably false. Among Oxford philosophers who took 'the linguistic turn', the only significant one who thought that all philosophical propositions are analytic was Ayer (at the age of 26). The manifesto of the Vienna Circle followed Wittgenstein in denying that there are any philosophical propositions. Ryle, Austin, Strawson and others did think there are, but nowhere suggested that they are analytic. All insisted that philosophy is a conceptual investigation, but none held that its task is to disclose analytic truths. It is therefore astonishing that Williamson decides to use 'analytic' and 'conceptual' interchangeably (p. 50). So conceptual truths are analytic, according to Williamson. This is not only historically unwarranted, it is also arguably philosophically misconceived. Such philosophical assertions as 'Idealism and materialism are both answers to an improper question' (Ryle), 'Material objects and persons are the basic particulars of our conceptual scheme' (Strawson), or 'There can be no such thing as a "private language" ' (Wittgenstein), are not analytic, and their proponents did not hold them to be. But they are conceptual truths.

Thoughts from readers?  Critical reactions must be signed with a full name and matching e-mail address.

Philosopher Gibbard Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Allan Gibbard at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has become only the fourth philosopher to ever be elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.  Other living philosophers who are Fellows are Brian Skyrms (UC Irvine) and Patrick Suppes (Emeritus, Stanford).  Quine was, to my knowledge, the only other philosophy professor ever elected to the NAS.  Gibbard may, of course, be best-known to philosophers for his work in ethics and metaethics, but he has also done seminal work in decision theory, social choice theory, and the theory of voting.

CORRECTION:   Robin Jeshion and Brian Skyrms have e-mailed me to correct the record on philosophers elected to the NAS.  Besides those noted above, the following philosophers were also elected:  C.S. Peirce (1877), John Dewey (1910), and Ernest Nagel (1978).  So Gibbard is one of just three living philosophers in the Academy, and one of, it appears, just seven ever to be so honored.

ANOTHER:  Reader Pier Turner points out that Karl Popper (elected only in the late 1980s!) and Thomas Kuhn (if one counts him as a philosopher) were also elected to the NAS.

There's always a market in America...

...for juvenile stupidity.  Didn't these folk see the poll results?  Jeez.

UPDATE:  Philosopher Christopher Pynes sends along this hysterical item:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:  The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

The Philosophers' Magazine...

...has a new website.

SSHRC Awards to Canadian Philosophers

Richard Zach (Calgary) has the details.

Five Philosophers Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

They are:  Karl Ameriks (Notre Dame), Daniel Hausman (Wisconsin), Philip Pettit (Princeton) (elected in the Political Science category), Nicholas Rescher (Pittsburgh), and Stephen Stich (Rutgers).    A distinguished group; also nice to see various sins of omission being corrected.

New Philosopher' Carnival is...

...here.

More Strangeness about Philosophy in the NY Times

This time from Kristof, who is certainly not the most intellectually feeble of their columnists, and he usually seems a humane and well-intentioned person.   So perhaps professional philosophers need to think a bit about why stuff like this constitutes the public perception of the field.  Writing about the movement in recent decades towards more humane treatment of animals, Kristof notes:

[T]he movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer.

Professor Singer wrote a landmark article in 1973 for The New York Review of Books and later expanded it into a 1975 book, “Animal Liberation.” That book helped yank academic philosophy back from a dreary foray into linguistics and pushed it to confront such fascinating questions of applied ethics as: What are our moral obligations to pigs?

I am not entirely sure what is meant by philosophy's "dreary foray into linguistics," but I assume it means a philosophical interest in the nature of language and meaning.   Singer's 1975 book certainly did not do any "yank[ing]" of philosophy away from work on this topic, as anyone familiar with the history of Anglophone philosophy in the last 30+ years knows.  Indeed, it was precisely many years after 1975 that philosophy of language came into very close contact with linguistics, which remains a rather lively interdisciplinary field to this day.  I admit I find this kind of work "dreary," but I feel the same way about recent work in geophysics:  but I actually don't think the geologists should shift their work in the direction of enhancing the quality of life for pigs.  "Interest" is in the eye of the beholder, and in matters intellectual it is probably best to let a thousand flowers bloom.   Peter Singer is no David Beaver, but undoubtedly Singer's work is more accesible than Beaver's.  Why think we need to choose or that philosophers should do one kind of work rather than another?

Why, though, is "our moral obligations to pigs" deeemed a "fascinating" question?  What about our obligations not to launch criminal wars of aggression against other countries?  Or to prevent vast inequities of wealth and life fortunes?  Or to view Palestinians as human beings with equal moral claims on freedom, bodily integrity, and opportunity?  Is it that our moral obligations to pigs do not present much threat to the Manhattan bourgeoisie, whereas the other questions would be especially unsettling?

Mr. Kristof continues:

John Maynard Keynes wrote that ideas, “both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come.

Keynes seems right about ideas, but the problem is journalists never have them (dare I quote Karl Kraus yet again?  "No ideas and the ability to expres them:  that's a journalist").  Why, though, is  Professor Singer's idea about "animal liberation"--far more radical than Kristof seems to recognize--an idea whose time has now come?  It obviously can't be because of Singer's actual arguments for his views, since his hedonistic utilitarianism also entails the permissibility of infanticide of the severely retarded, to name just one of the views for which Professor Singer is often denounced.  Singer and Bentham (as Mr. Kristof note) may both agree, "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?," but it is quite clear that most citizens, and most moral philosophers, do not agree.

Query:  why do members of the educated public think that it is an objection to philosophical inquiry that it is unintelligible to them (or that it does not have immediate application to the quality of life of pigs, say), whereas no one would think to put such objections against esoteric work in the natural sciences?  Are other humanities subjected to this same expectation of "practical relevance and intelligibility"?  I am curious to hear what readers think.  Signed comments are strongly preferred; post only once, comments may take awhile to appear. 

Two Philosophers Win Guggenheims: Campbell, McMahan

Two philosophers have won Guggenheim Fellowships in the 2009 competition:  John Campbell (Berkeley) for a project on "Causation in psychology," and Jeff McMahan (Rutgers) for a project on "Self-defense, war, and punishment."

Memorial Service for Marjorie Grene on May 3

Details here.

Developments at PhilPapers

Chalmers has the details, including the need for editors to oversee subject areas.

Another Philosopher with a Blog

Jose Zalabardo (UCL) is "the Cosmic Exile" (but in Spanish).

An On-Line Resource About Islamic Philosophy

Here.  (Thanks to Peter Ludlow for the pointer.)  I am not competent to assess its reliability, but welcome comment from knowledgeable readers.

U.K. Philosophers Speak Out in Support of Preserving Philosophy at Liverpool

Details here.