Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Attack on philosophy and other arts & sciences disciplines accelerates at SUNY Potsdam

Although there had been good news earlier, the bloodbath is about to begin in earnest.  Philosopher David Curry at SUNY-Potsdam writes:

SUNY Potsdam has finally given up on pretending to be an institution “committed to the liberal arts and sciences as an academic foundation for all students”, as expressed in its mission statement. After holding a sword over the head of faculty by threatening extensive cuts for going on 3 years, the next phase commences. 

Dr. Suzanne Smith (6 months on the job) announced on September 19 a plan to discontinue 14 degree programs at the university, including philosophy, and cut an as-of-yet-unknown number of faculty. This is on top of 4 programs discontinued over the Summer.  The plan is an attempt to reduce the university’s $9 million operating deficit. Enrollment at the university has dropped around 40% over the past 10 years.

Professor Gino, the embattled Harvard psychologist, creates a webpage defending her academic integrity

Here.  (Earlier coverage, and also here.)  This is a risky, and aggressive, strategy:  everything posted there will be dissected by the lawyers for the defendants.  I will say that between this, and the lawsuit, she is acting as one would expect an innocent person to act; that doesn't mean she's innocent, of course.

Hannah Arendt, "white supremacist"?

Why not, everyone is these days apparently?  Some of the essay is just "guilt by association," but some of the quotes from her writing do not redound to her credit, but I don't know the texts to know whether this is cherry-picking.  Curious what readers more knowledgeable about Arendt make of this hit piece?

"On the Relevance of Etiology to Justification (with reference to Marx and Nietzsche)"

A new paper, slated for an issue of Midwest Studies in Philosophy on the topic of "Genealogy," edited by Yuval Avnur; the abstract:

Some philosophers associated with the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy (for example, Marx and Nietzsche) think that the etiology of a belief can impugn the epistemic status of that belief, leading us, correctly, to be “suspicious” of it; let us call them “Etiological Critics. Many analytic philosophers, responding to these and related etiological critiques within Anglophone philosophy are unimpressed (White 2010; Srinivasan 2015). These analytic philosophers agree that facts about the etiology of belief might bring to one’s attention epistemically relevant considerations—for example, the fact that other possible epistemic peers disagree with one’s beliefs (White 2010: 576-577, 605-608)—but they deny that the etiology itself has any direct bearing on the epistemic status of belief (in particular, whether it is doxastically justified). I argue that etiology is directly relevant to the epistemic status of belief, arguing against White and Srinivasan, using examples from Marx and Nietzsche.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll covers: The Stealers, "Parachute Woman," 2021

The Stealers are a British band from Brighton, with not even 50 regular "listeners" on Spotify! But they have a great cover of this Rolling Stones number from 1967 off the classic Beggars Banquet:

 

 

Blast from the past: Good career paths for undergraduate philosophy majors? (LINK NOW FIXED)

Back in 2011, with reader discussion.

"Marx" in the Routledge Philosophers series

Jaime Edwards and I delivered the penultimate draft of our manuscript on "Marx" to the press yesterday.  I'm sure we'll be making revisions after getting referee reports and feedback at a conference on the manuscript in early January, but with luck the book will appear in fall 2024 or at the latest by spring 2025.  Thanks to those who have written over the years inquiring about the book.  Here's the tentative table of contents, for those who might be interested:  Download Toc edwards leiter marx

 

In Memoriam: Paul Woodruff (1943-2023)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 25--SOME VERY NICE REMEMBRANCES OF PAUL IN THE COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

A longtime faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was only recently emeritus, Professor Woodruff was best-known for his work on Greek philosophy (especially Socrates, the Sophists and Thucydides), and the philosophy of theater.  There is an informative obituary here, and you can read about his final, forthcoming book here. (Thanks to Curtis Sparrer for the pointers.)

Professor Woodruff wrote about his illness, and about life, here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Woodruff or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

Blast from the past: Crispin Wright on becoming a philosopher

Back in 2009.

Anthropology conference will not permit a panel on "biological sex"

What an embarrassment for a field which already has a terrible reputation for political bias interfering with scholarship.   Let's hope philosophy doesn't go the same way, but I must note that the tenured philosopher who sent this to me said, "If you post about this please don't say I sent it to you, for obvious reasons."

For an actual biologist's take on biological sex, see this (and the other embedded links).

Why numbers are not objects, and other topics in philosophy of mathematics

An interview with philosopher Alexander Paseau (Oxford).

Panpsychism makes it to "Scientific American"

Yikes!

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: Dick Cavett on Paul Weiss

Back in 2016.  (See also.)

Mindless jurisprudence-bashing on Twitter (updated)

Speaking of "impotent rage" and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, there was an amazing display of both on Twitter last week, all prompted by Stephen Sachs, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard, sharing on Twitter his syllabus for his "reading group" in jurisprudence, whose stated aim was to address "the nature of law and legal obligation, the relationship between law and morals, and the role that philosophical issues can or should play in the actual practice of law."   His syllabus was completely reasonable (as any expert could tell you), although it certainly included texts I would not assign, and omitted some I usually do assign:  but that is hardly surprising.  The point is the syllabus was perfectly appropriate for the topics and the level of instruction (i.e., this was not meant to be an advanced course in jurisprudence).

The syllabus, however, provoked an orgy of online stupidity and anti-intellectualism because most of the authors were (guess what?) "white men."  Most of the authors, of course, were actually Jews, many of whom lived through the period in academia when no one considered them "white men," but we put this little irony to one side.   Alex Green, an international lawyer on the law faculty at the University of York, got things started with this remarkable outburst:

 

As I observed on Twitter:

The giveaway is that Green actually has the audacity to say that the topics Professor Sachs is covering do not constitute "real jurisprudence," which is tantamount to confirming he knows nothing about the subject.  I take it what he really means to say is he's not interested in the core topics in general jurisprudence, but in something else that he thinks of as jurisprudential.  That's fine, and not notable, but then he should avoid smearing those who are interested in general jurisprudence

Lederman on the tasks for Chinese philosophy scholarship

Philosopher Jeremy Goodman calls to my attention this essay by philosopher Harvey Lederman (who does formal work, but also works on Chinese philosophy) on the tasks confronting Chinese philosopy, and suggested it might make a good topic for discussion; an excerpt:

The meat that scholars of Chinese philosophy have in our mouths are these curious, beautiful,
and inspiring texts. As I see it, our job as scholars is to tell the story of these texts: to understand the people who wrote them as well as the people who read them; to bring to life their ideas, regardless of whether they seem familiar or unapproachably strange; and to determine as best we can which of these ideas are plausible and which are not. Our job is to teach students to read these texts with care, with reverence 敬, but also with a critical, skeptical eye. In both our writing and in our teaching, our job, like the impersonator 尸 of the dead at a ritual, is to bring these ideas to life in a very literal sense, to make it possible for others to have a real conversation with them, in the hope that all of us can better understand their authors’ beliefs and the challenges they faced as they sought to live virtuous lives in often quite challenging political circumstances.

I am afraid that this job is not glamorous or easy. It requires humility, patience, and an exacting
discipline. The texts often do not speak to the most exciting recent trends. But our job is still to impersonate them, even when they don’t talk about what we most wish they did. This job can be a lonely one. We wake up in the morning and wonder if we really need to re-read hundreds of pages of challenging, confusing passages again, and the only person who says we need to isourselves. The job is also slow. We watch our colleagues (or perhaps another half of ourselves) produce dozens of papers or books in other areas. But our jobs cannot be done quickly—we cannot write those dozens of books—since we must respect, reread, and rethink, our texts. Our work has only the slow glory that belongs to the miniaturist, a glory realized in details, which appears in long-labored works only to those who are willing to look closely themselves.

This is well-said, and not at all specific to the study of Chinese philosophy it seems to me.  Comments are open for reader reactions.

Ibram Kendi's "Antiracist Center" at BU implodes

The student newspaper at Boston University reports:

Three years [since its founding], after at least $43 million in grants and gifts and what sources say has been an underwhelming output of research, the Center for Antiracist Research laid off almost all of its staff last week.

Multiple former staff members allege that a mismanagement of funds, high turnover rate and general disorganization have plagued the Center since its inception.

The $43 million, according to 2021 budget records obtained by The Daily Free Press, includes general support, such as the $10 million from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as well as donations for specific projects.

The document, which is not an all-inclusive list of donors, also lists TJ Maxx’s foundation, Stop & Shop and Peloton as donating over a million dollars....

A week after the layoffs, BU announced Wednesday that they received complaints “focused on the center’s culture and its grant management practices"....

The Compliance Services Office received an anonymous complaint in 2021 about the Center from Saida Grundy, an associate professor of sociology at BU and former CAR employee.

The complaint detailed multiple high-level employees leaving suddenly and allegations of a workplace culture that included fear of retaliation and discrimination.

An apt takedown of the awful Rupert Murdoch, the man who helped wreck America...

...by Michelle Goldberg, one of the two NYT opinion writers I actually read on occasion (the other is Jamelle Bouie); an excerpt from the end:

Murdoch’s legacy is decided. We are hurtling toward another government shutdown, egged on by Hannity. The electorate that Fox helped shape, and the politicians it indulges, have made this country ungovernable. An unbound Trump may well become president again, bringing liberal democracy in America to a grotesque end. If so, it will be in large part Murdoch’s fault. “The Murdochs feel bad, about Tucker, about Trump, about themselves,” writes Wolff. Just not bad enough.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Sweetwater, "Why Oh Why," 1968

This Los Angeles-based band (active in the late 1960s and early 1970s) was supposed to be the opening act at Woodstock, but got stuck in traffic, so they performed after Richie Havens (whose performance made the movie).  This was the closing number of their debut album, and a nice one:

Comments are open for those who want to share links to other Sweetwater favorites.

New "Technology Ethics" podcast

Philosopher Sven Nyholm (LMU Munich) writes:

John Danaher (Senior Lecturer, University of Galway's Law School) and I--Sven Nyholm (Professor of the Ethics of AI, LMU Munich) - have just started a new podcast series on the ethics of technology, which will run for one season consisting of nine episodes: the "technology ethics podcast". The podcast follows the structure of my recent book This is Technology Ethics: An introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023). The intended audience for the podcast: professors teaching courses on technology ethics, students taking courses in the subject, or anybody who might be interested in the ethics of technology. The podcast is as of today available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, etc, and it also has its own website: https://technologyethicspod.wordpress.com

Where junior tenure-track faculty at the "top 20" PhD programs got their PhD, 2023-24 (corrected)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 12--CORRECTED

Here is where the current untenured tenure-track faculty in philosophy at the top twenty U.S. programs got their Ph.D. (or D.Phil.):

1.  Harvard University (10)

2.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (7)

2.  New York University (7)

4. Yale University (5)

5.  Princeton University (4)

5.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (4)

5.  University of California, Berkeley (4)

8.  Columbia University (3)

9.  Oxford University (2) (both at Southern California)

9.  University of Chicago (2) (both Columbia/Barnard)

9.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2)

9.  University of Southern California (2) (both at Michigan)

These programs each had one graduate on tenure-track at the top twenty programs:  CUNY, U Mass/Amherst, UC Irvine, Buffalo, British Columbia, Indiana, DePaul, UC Riverside, Harvard Government Dept., Toronto, Potsdam, Cambridge, UC San Diego, Texas, Brown, Stanford, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Penn.

The 2022-23 list is here, and the 2019-20 list is here.

I list the Ph.D. by the school at which they are teaching below the fold:

What does "tenure" really mean in Australia?

With the bloodbath at ACU, and the dubious reasons given for it, one has to wonder whether having a "tenured appointment" at an Australian university means much or creates any meaningful legal rights or entitlements?  Consider what happened at ACU:   starting in 2019, philosophers were recruited, often from tenured positions around the world, to a new research Institute devoted to "core" analytic philosophy; they were offered the Australian equivalent of tenure; in 2021, a new Vice-Chancellor came on board, the "unreconstructed Hegelian," and two years later their jobs were gone.   Is this what tenure means in Australia:  you have it as long as the Vice-Chancellor appreciates your research?

One ACU philosopher noted on Twitter that the provost of the Australian Catholic University, Meg Stuart, told him "that being sacked from a continuing contract less than a year after moving to the country is normal for universities in Australia, which must remain 'agile.'"  Is this "normal"?  If so, then tenure does not exist in Australia.

Comments from readers knowledgeable about Australian employment law and tenure practices welcome.

 

ACU's rationalization for killing the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy and cutting back the other research Institutes

Since a lot of folks in Australia have been visiting the blog lately because of the coverage of the ACU disaster, I've been hearing from a lot of academics in fields other than philosophy.  One sent me the "Thematic Review"--basically the hatchet document meant to justify dismantling the research Institutes:  Download ACU Thematic Review of Research and Research Training - Final report -_.   The Directors of all the Institutes wrote a response (which was sent to all faculty in all the Institutes):  Download ACU Research Institute Directors Response to 2023 Thematic Review of Research and Research Training.

In Memoriam: Gianni Vattimo (1936-2023)

A longtime professor at the University of Turin, where he was emeritus, Professor Vattimo was a leading exponent and defender of "postmodern" philosophy in Italy and in Europe, although somewhat less-known in the Anglosphere.  There is an obituary in Italian here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Vattimo, or from those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Mattia Riccardi for the pointer.)

Lateral moves/retirements since the 2021 Philosophical Gourmet Report: 2024 edition

In addition to the separate posts announcing (generally tenured) faculty moves, I will keep a running list of all lateral moves (and retirements and deaths) not reflected in the faculty lists for the last PGR (some moves that took place after the last PGR were reflected in the faculty list, because the editors knew of them).  I will start a new list for each academic year, so that the list does not get unwieldy.  (The 2022 list is here, with a couple of late additions in bold, and the 2023 list is here.)  Unless otherwise noted, the appointment (or retirement) takes effect in 2024.  I will move this to the front periodically, putting recent additions in bold.  Untenured lateral moves will be noted as such, otherwise the move is with tenure.  A lateral move is one from one tenure-stream position to another either into or out of a program offering the PhD or terminal MA.  In addition I will list retirements and also deaths of non-emeritus faculty.  Please e-mail me with additions or corrections.

*Monima Chadha (Indian philosophy) from Monash University to Oxford University.

*Lu Chen (philosophy of mathematics & physics, metaphysics, philosophical logic) from Koç University (Turkey) to the University of Southern California (effective January 2024) (untenured lateral).

*Edward Elliott (philosophy of mind, decision theory) from the University of Leeds to the University of Notre Dame.

*Samuel Fletcher (philosophy of science, philosophy of physics) from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul to Oxford University.

*Robert Gooding-Williams (social-political philosophy, philosophy of race, 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy) from Columbia University to Yale University.

*Jessica Isserow (metaethics, ethics, moral psychology) from the University of Leeds to the University of Notre Dame.

*Simon Kirchin (ethics, metaethics) from the University of Kent to the University of Leeds (effective January 2024).

*Jake McNulty (19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophy) from University College London to Yale University (untenured lateral) (effective January 2024).

*Yujin Nagasawa (philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind) from the University of Birmingham to the University of Oklahoma, Norman (effective January 2024).

*Adina Roskies (philosophy of mind & cognitive science) from Dartmouth College to the University of California, Santa Barbara (effective January 2024).

*Peter Singer (ethics, applied ethics) will retire from Princeton University at the end of 2023.

Obviously a number of these developments (in 2022, in 2023 and now 2024) would likely alter the 2021 PGR results in a new survey (which won't take place before fall 2024 I expect).  Many senior moves and retirements will affect a program's standing in the specialty rankings.  Overall, students should think of Texas as now squarely in the top 15 in the U.S. (and on the cusp of the top 10), and Johns Hopkins as now in the top 20 (based on some hires not yet announced).  I  would also expect North Carolina and CUNY, despite significant losses, to remain, respectively, in the top 15 and top 20; Brown to remain in the top 25; Arizona and Wisconsin to remain solidly in the top 30 (and possibly the top 25); UC Santa Barbara to move into the top 35; and BU to still remain in the top 50.

The study of philosophy in law schools, and JD/PhD programs, 2023 edition

Some terminology:  by "general jurisprudence," I mean the core philosophical questions about the nature of law, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal reasoning; by "normative jurisprudence," I mean the myriad philosophical attempts to make normative sense (or provide normative rationalizations) of different substantive areas of law, like torts, contracts, criminal law, property, anti-discrimination law, free speech, and so on.

1.  The main reason to consider a JD/PhD program at the same university is that it almost always involves saving time on your coursework--that is one of their main advantages, along with a better chance of continuity of supervision and interaction with faculty mentors.

2.  Many students, however, do the law degree at one place, and the PhD somewhere else.  This can make good sense, depending on a student's interests and the strengths of differing schools.  (In the law school here at Chicago, we have had terrific students with PhDs (or DPhils) from Oxford, Princeton, NYU, Brown, Michigan, and CUNY, among other places; in addition, outstanding law graduates from here are now pursuing PhDs in philosophy at Princeton, Pittsburgh, and Cornell, among other places.)  (As an aside, a student with a common-law law degree and a suitable background in philosophy can do a 2-3 year JSD here in the law school at Chicago focusing on general jurisprudence.)

3.  Legal academia is more pedigree-sensitive than academic philosophy (and I'm sure many of you think academic philosophy is way too pedigree-sensitive!).  Four law schools dominate the market for new law teachers:  Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.  (With the exception of Stanford, these are also three of the top four faculties in scholarly influence, as well as the four schools that graduate the most Supreme Court clerks.)  On a per capita basis, Yale is ahead of the other three in placement in law teaching (a selection effect), and these four are ahead of everyone else (see, e.g., this from 2020, this from 2011 and this from 2007).  On a placement success rate basis (i.e., percentage of academic job seekers who actually get tenure-track jobs), Chicago and Yale generally dominate.  Stanford Law has no serious interest in legal philosophy, so is not worth considering.  Harvard Law has recently added good younger faculty in normative jurisprudence (in addition to senior faculty with philosophical interests--like Richard Fallon and Cass Sunstein [constitutional theory], John Goldberg [tort theory], and Henry Smith [property theory]), so it is a better choice than previously (it still has no one in the central subject of general jurisprudence, however).

Blast from the past: Some observations about twitter, esp. philosophy-related twitter

Back in 2020, and still apt, alas.  The only good news is Elon Musk seems to be destroying Twitter, so maybe it will go away?

In Memoriam: Michael Scriven (1928-2023)

Professor Scriven had an eclectic career that ranged widely in both topics and institutions.  He wrote well-known papers on the philosophy of scientific explanation (including famous counter-examples to Hempel's covering law model of explanation), and later became a prominent figure in philosophy of education with his work on "evaluation."   He taught during his long career at Berkeley, Indiana/Bloomington, Western Michigan University, Western Australia, and finally at the Claremont Graduate School, where he was emeritus.  The CGS memorial notice is here and from the American Educational Research Association here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Scriven, or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

ADDENDUM:  There's a charming anecdote about meeting Scriven from Bas van Fraassen here.

Hermann Helmholtz talks to Richard Marshall...

...at 3:16 AM.

Fragments by Maimonides discovered in Cambridge University library

Story here.

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

Statement by Dianoia Institute of Philosophy on Proposed ACU Change Plan

The following statement from the Dianoia Institute at the Australian Catholic University was shared with me:

The Australian Catholic University has recently proposed a change plan that includes the disestablishment of the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. After the creation of the Dianoia Institute in 2019, ACU’s PhD programme in Philosophy became the second highest ranked amongst Catholic institutions in the English-speaking world (after the University of Notre Dame). With its disestablishment, scholars who were convinced to join ACU in building a centre for world-class philosophy research (often leaving permanent positions at more stable universities and uprooting their families in the process) will be made redundant.

This change plan targets for redundancies 13 philosophers as well as 35 academic positions in history, political science, and theology and religious studies. The rationale offered for these draconian cuts is financial. But spending on academic staff at ACU has remained flat from 2017 to 2023, during most of which the university was enjoying surpluses. It is only in 2022, after a change in administration, that the university began running deficits. The academics in positions marked for redundancy did not cause these budgetary problems, but will bear the brunt of cuts whilst the university administration that turned a streak of surpluses into deficits retain their jobs.

According to ACU’s mission and identity statement, “Within the Catholic intellectual tradition and acting in Truth and Love, Australian Catholic University is committed to the pursuit of knowledge, the dignity of the human person and the common good.” The Catholic Church has repeatedly emphasized – from Aeterni Patris in 1879 through to Fides et Ratio in 1998 – the centrality of philosophy to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and to the mission of Catholic colleges and universities. This change plan would vitiate philosophy and other humanities at ACU, do lasting damage to its reputation, and run counter to the moral ideals the university holds itself to in its commitment to human dignity and the common good.

We ask you to oppose this change plan by signing the petition to Save the Humanities at ACU and the National Tertiary Education Union’s petition; and by emailing Vice-Chancellor Zlatko Skrbis ([email protected]), the DVC-Research Abid Khan ([email protected]), Acting Provost Chris Lonsdale ([email protected]), the email address set up for consultation on the change plan ([email protected]), and members of the University Senate ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]).  Please also cc: the Minister of Education Jason Clare ([email protected]).

Cc'ing the Minister seems particularly important:  this whole fiasco sends the message to the world that tenure means nothing in Australia, even for distinguished academics!  If ACU is permitted to follow through on this treachery, it will hurt all Australian universities in their efforts to recruit academics from overseas.

"Save the Humanities at Australian Catholic University"

Professor Finlay calls to my attention a new petition on behalf of all the programs and faculty targeted by the "restructuring" plan.

How to support the philosophers at the Dianoia Institute at ACU

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM THIS MORNING--MULTIPLE UPDATES (COMMENTS ARE ALSO NOW OPEN FOR MORE INFORMATION)

See the comments by Stephanie Collins and Stephen Finlay on the earlier thread (and scroll down) for information about how to voice your support for the Institute and the philosophers whose livelihood is being threatened.  The faculty union has also launched a petition here, which readers should sign.

As the petition makes clear, the villain in this story is ACU Vice-Chancellor Zlatko Skrbis, who came to ACU in 2021 (so after the creation of Dianoia) and seems to have a robust commitment to mediocrity.  His PhD is in sociology from Flinders University, and his scholarly profile suggests he thinks of himself as a philosopher, albeit not in the Dianoia mode.  I suspect his "leadership" [sic] lies behind the particular animus towards philosophy in the restructuring plan.

ADDENDUM:  An administrative contact at ACU, who had handled their previous blog advertising, asked yesterday that the ad for PhD applications for Dianoia be removed from the blog, for understandable reasons.  ACU had paid for the ad, but given the recent developments, it does not make sense to be recruiting PhD students to an Institute that is about to be "disestablished."

The downsides of virtual reality

Philosopher of science James Ladyman (Bristol) discusses these and other issues in connection with David Chalmers's recent book:

(Professor Laydman flags for me two errors: Erik M Conway is the co-author of Merchants of Doubt. Also the term ‘digital enclosures’ comes from sociology, specifically Mark Andrejevic:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10714420701715365?journalCode=gcrv20.)

Blast from the past: SEP's coverage of Marxism and feminism, a revealing study in contrasts

Back in 2019, and still relevant, although there has been some improvement (there is now an entry on Gramsci, for example).

Two senior hires for Oxford University: Chadha from Monash, Fletcher from Minnesota

Monima Chadha, currently at Monash University, will become Professor of Indian Philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall (effective April 1, 2024); and Samuel Fletcher, currently at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul, will become Professor of Philosophy of Physics at Merton College (effective September 1, 2024).

AI means professors need to raise their grading standards

English professor Michael Clune comments.

Australian Catholic University proposes to "disestablish" its Dianoia Institute of philosophy... (UPDATED)

...and eliminate 11 faculty lines, although these faculty can compete for just four positions that will now be located in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (another research institute that is surviving this process).  (The draft plan--which I've been unable to upload--was sent to me by someone not in philosophy or even at the ACU.)  ACU's budgetary problems have been apparent for awhile, but these proposals are pretty dramatic.  In the last PGR, ACU, thanks to Dianoia, emerged as the third best philosophy program in Australasia, and tied for 32nd best in the Anglophone world.   If the plan, which must still go before the faculty senate, is approved, I would expect ACU to drop off the map.

The situation in Israel: "what's all the fuss about?"

Philosopher David Enoch explains in this video:

 

Peter Ludlow asked ChatGPT to rank philosophers and departments...

...and the results are entertaining (and not wholly ridiculous, either, although some answers are bizarre):  Download ChatGPT philosophy rankings

Interview with Bob Goodin, former editor of JPP, in a Swedish philosophy journal, who discusses the disaster that "Open Access" has been for quality journals

Professor Goodin discusses the JPP fiasco, noted previously, although legal liability constrains what he can say:

I can’t say much about that episode, or dealings with Wiley around the journal more generally, without rendering myself liable to lawsuits for breach of ‘commercial-in-confidence’. Not, I hasten to add (to avoid other lawsuits), that they have made any specific threats in that direction. But the very fact that the possibility occurs to me tells you something about the nature of the ending, I suppose.

Wiley was not contractually required to give any explanation of why they fired me as jpp editor, and they gave me none. So I can only guess as to their reasons. Thinking that there may have been commercial imperatives at work, I asked around among other publisherfriends about those in a general way. I’ll summarize those conversations below. As I say, I have no idea whether any of that was actually what was behind Wiley’s behaviour vis-a-vis jpp. (Lawyers: note well that litigation-proofing disclaimer!)

Still, the general is probably of more interest than the particular, anyway.  Based on what I have gleaned from sitting on editorial boards of other journals and from those conversations with other publishers, here is what I think has been going on in the larger world of journal publishing. Up to (and in some cases through) the end of the last century, publishers sold subscriptions separately for each journal.  Librarians subscribed or not to any given journal on the basis of their (or their local advisers’) perceptions of journal quality. Hence, back in those days, the publisher’s commercial interest in maximizing subscription income aligned perfectly with the editors’ interest in publishing an academically high-quality product. 

In the years since, publishers began selling their journals to libraries packaged in a ‘bundle’. In that world, the quality of any given journal matters less, and the sheer volume of what was in the bundle comes to matter much more. Often those bundled products are sold to purchasing consortia of many libraries, further reducing the power of any given librarian to exercise quality control via purchasing decisions. The Open Access beat-up has, inadvertently, been the death knell of quality academic publishing, driving a fatal wedge between the incentives of publishers and those of journal editors.

Mistranslation of Newton's First Law discovered after nearly 300 years...

...by philosopher Daniel Hoek at Virginia Tech!

Plato's Cave raising the rent

Sign of the times.

(Thanks to Ethan Seidenberg for the pointer.)

Philosopher's Annual, ten top papers from 2022

From Patrick Grim:

The Philosopher’s Annual volume 42

from the literature of 2022

James Allen (Toronto), “Radicalism and Moderation in the New Academy,” from Phronesis

Elizabeth Barnes (Virginia), “Gender without Gender Identity: The Case of Cognitive Disability,” from Mind

Richard Bradley (LSE), “Impartial Evaluation under Ambiguity,” from Ethics

Sarah Buss (Michigan), “Personal ideals and the ideal of rational agency,” from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Eddy Keming Chen (UC San Diego), “Fundamental Nomic Vagueness,” from the Philosophical Review

Karolina Hübner (Cornell), “Representation and Mind-Body Identity in Spinoza’s Philosophy,” from the Journal of the History of Philosophy

Yoaav Isaacs (Baylor), John Hawthorne (Southern California & Australian Catholic U), and Jeffrey Sanford Russell (Southern California), “Multiple Universes and Self-Locating Evidence,” from the Philosophical Review

Chunghyoung Lee (Pohang University), “I Am Not the Zygote I Came from because a Different Singleton Could Have Come from It,” from the Philosophical Review

Jake Quilty-Dunn (Rutgers), Nicolas Porot (Mohammed VI Polytechnic U), and Eric Mandelbaum (CUNY), “The Best Game in Town: The Re-Emergence of the Language of Thought Hypothesis Across the Cognitive Sciences,” from Behavioral and Brain Sciences

 Francesca Zaffora Blando (Carnegie-Mellon), “Bayesian Merging of Opinions and Algorithmic Randomness,” from The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

 

"Realist Jurisprudence: Selected Essays"

A Spanish translation by Dr. Francisco M. Mora-Sifuentes of eight of my essays on realist jurisprudence and related themes (with a new preface by me and an introduction by Dr. Natalia Scavuzzo from the University of Genoa) is now available from Zela, the leading South American publisher of legal philosophy.

God bless England...

...it may be a dying country, but its academics still know how to speak plainly.   Here is the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity's own accounting of the holders of the "Ely Professorship:"

John Martin Creed was born on 14 October 1889 in Leicester, the son of a local Vicar. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester, and went up to Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, in 1908. He proved a brilliant student, taking a first in Classics in Part 1 and in a first in Theology in Part 2 of the Tripos. Ordained to a curacy in Bradford in 1913, the following year he returned to Cambridge as a Fellow of his college and chaplain from 1915. He spent two years as a chaplain to the Forces 1917-19 and on his return was elected to a Fellowship at St John’s College, where he became Dean. In 1926, he was elected Ely Professor. This was on the basis of his scholarly endeavours, as he was not considered particularly effective with students or in teaching.

(Thanks to FB friend Gary Chartier who shared this.)

Highlights from the summer blog: August

For those who missed them, some blog highlights from August:

I seem to be catching on in Asia

The "bloodbath" at West Virginia University [sic]

First "the heckler's veto," not the "lone wolf's veto"

Steven Salaita is now back in academia

The "Elephant in the Room" in the debate over judicial review in Israel

Suspicious job search in philosophy at the University of Genoa

Nathan Osserof-Spicer still defaming philosophers:  this time he falsely accuses a philosopher of plagiarism!

Does font affect writing?

Nathan Ballantyne talks to Daniel Stoljar at The Workbench.

Highlights from the summer blog: July

Some more highlights from the summer, for those who may have missed them:

A serious blow for faculty speech in the 4th Circuit in the U.S.

In Memoriam:  Harry G. Frankfurt (1929-2023)

Philosophers and political theorists elected as Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy

The canary in the coal mine for academic freedom at Texas A&M University

Reader experiences with peer review?

A reader writes:

How do people feel about peer review? Does it really help? Has it made papers better in authors’ experience? There is an overwhelming amount of commentary about how peer review is no longer in any sense the guarantee of quality that it is often assumed to be. The publishers have not wanted to take this message on board – much like they didn’t want to take open access seriously – but within the academy, I’m seeing critiques from all disciplines, and particularly from the sciences, which drove the uptake of peer review for the social sciences and humanities.

In my view, the fundamental problem is the way that the modern university fetishizes “output” in terms of journal publication (and books depending on the discipline), which creates enough perverse incentives that lead to mediocre writing, plagiarism and outright fraudulence, which to be fair, can’t be detected in most cases by peer reviewers.

Here is a good and representative summary of the various discontents.

 https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review

The main pernicious effect of peer review in philosophy (but probably in other disciplines) is to encourage conformity and conservativism.  That may be unavoidable, and built into the idea of a Wissenschaft.

Thoughts from readers on peer review?   Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

Nagel on J.L. Austin and his role in WWII...

...at the London Review of Books.  A side of Austin most won't have known!

(Thanks to Christopher Morris and David Zimmerman for pointers.)