Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

One philosopher is not worried about ChatGBT

Philosopher Larry Shapiro (Wisconsin) writes in the Washington Post:

Here’s what I plan to do about chatbots in my classes: pretty much nothing. Let me say first that as much as I value the substance of what I teach, realistically my students will not spend more than a semester thinking about it. It’s unlikely that Goldman Sachs or Leakey’s Plumbing or wherever my students end up will expect their employees to have a solid background in philosophy of mind. Far more likely is that the employees will be required to write a letter or an analysis or a white paper, and to do this they will need to know how to write effectively in the first place. This is the skill that I most hope to cultivate in my students, and I spend a lot of time reading their essays and providing them with comments that really do lead to improvements on subsequent assignments. In-class exams — the ChatGPT-induced alternative to writing assignments — are worthless when it comes to learning how to write, because no professor expects to see polished prose in such time-limited contexts....

But what about the cheaters, the students who let a chatbot do their writing for them? I say, who cares? In my normal class of about 28 students, I encounter one every few semesters whom I suspect of plagiarism. Let’s now say that the temptation to use chatbots for nefarious ends increases the number of cheaters to an (unrealistic) 20 percent. It makes no sense to me that I should deprive 22 students who can richly benefit from having to write papers only to prevent the other six from cheating (some of whom might have cheated even without the help of a chatbot).

Professor Shapiro makes an important point.  It's of course galling to grade "fake papers" produced by AI, but most of our students still need our feedback on their writing.  I imagine lots of readers would benefit from hearing how other faculty are thinking about this. 

Carpenter from NUS to Boston University

Amber Carpenter (ancient Greek and Indian philosophy), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale/National University of Singapore College, has accepted a Chair in "Classical Greek Studies" at Boston University, starting this fall.

U.N. chief is worried too

A propos our recent thread, the head of the U.N. is worried too:

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned nations Monday that he fears the likelihood of further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict means the world is heading towards a "wider war"....

 

Top of the list [of threats] was Russia's war in Ukraine, which is approaching its one-year anniversary.

 

"The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing," he said.

 

"I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open."

Inviting waitlisted prospective graduate students to visit?

A philosopher elsewhere writes:

Does it ever make sense for a department to invite waitlisted prospective graduate students to visit?

I am aware of a department that invites all accepted and waitlisted students to visit, offering to pay for the accepted students' travel but not for the waitlisted students'. On the one hand, this gives the waitlisted students an opportunity to make a more informed decision, which can benefit both the student and the department. On the other hand, it risks a host of logistical complications and social tensions during the visits (both because waitlisted students might feel awkward being around accepted students and vice versa, and because the waitlisted students may feel the need to perform—or worse, compete—in hopes of improving their standing), and it may even make waitlisted students feel that their best chance at admission is to visit, even if doing so is financially perilous.

I know of other disciplines that invite waitlisted students, but they pay for them to visit.   Inviting waitlisted students to admission events without paying for them is perverse and exploitative in the way my correspondent worries.  Comments are open:  please use a real email (which will not appear), and in your comment indicate your position in the academy (e.g., philosophy professor, graduate student, professor in phyics, etc.).

How does ChatGPT work?

A computer science professor at the U.S. Naval Academy explains.  (The core explanation starts around 7:30, although there is interesting stuff before that, including that ChatGBT can write simple computer programs!)

(Thanks to Joe Hatfield for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: The importance of doing unfavorable tenure reviews

Back in 2012, with reader discussion.

JHP article prize for 2022

Philosopher Deborah Boyle, editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, writes:

The Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded the prize for the best article published in the journal in 2022 to Karolina Hübner’s “Representation and Mind-Body Identity in Spinoza’s Philosophy” (JHP 60.1 [January 2022]: 47–77). The prize comes with an award of $1500. The article can be read here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/846364

Trump, the Mafia Don, redux

Philosopher Steve Sverdlik calls to my attention this review of a new book, which confirms my original diagnosis:

“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Mr. Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”

"Western philosophy" and "Eastern philosophy"

A philosopher at a liberal arts college writes:

I’m writing to suggest a topic for a possible blog discussion that may be of potential interest to your readers. 

At my college I have proposed the creation of a new 100-level course entitled Ancient Wisdom: East & West, whose course description reads:

"An introductory exploration of ancient classics of Western and Eastern Philosophy. Topics to be explored include accounts of personhood and the self, definitions of happiness, the nature of right and wrong, and the place of humanity within the larger universe. Readings will be drawn from Greek sources such as Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Stoics; Indian sources such as the Upanishads, Vedanta, and the Buddha; and Chinese sources such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism."

My proposal got rejected in its current form by my school’s Curriculum Committee. In describing their objections, they wrote,

Kripke memorial conference at CUNY Graduate Center in May

Details and information here.

Great moments in (extremely) obscure rock 'n' roll: Creepy John Thomas, "Gut Runs Great Stone," 1969

Following up last week's discovery, I've been listening to his first album, which has many good tunes. This is the lead number:

 

The latest escalation of the war in Ukraine

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 31--A LIVELY, AND GENERALLY QUITE INTERESTING DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS, AS BEFORE

Provision of tanks to Ukraine in the West's proxy war against Russia is another dangerous escalation of the conflict.  We haven't discussed the Ukraine situation, and the risk of nuclear conflict, in awhile, and reader Brendan Moran suggested another discussion might be illuminating.  So what do readers make of these developments?  Do they bring us closer to nuclear conflict?  Will they "help" end the conflict or prolong it?

Raz memorial service at Balliol, Oxford...

...is now available online.

Why British university faculty are striking

A pretty grim state of affairs.  What the author does not note is that the so-called "marketisation" of higher education in the UK was actually the worst of both worlds:  universities continue to be under the control of state bureaucrats, and can't charge "market" prices," only state-set prices.  The state can then justify spending less on universities, while still meddling in every aspect of university life.

Comments are open for reactions to this piece, especially from UK faculty.

(Thanks to Paolo Sandro on twitter for calling this to my attention.)

"Endings," professional and personal

Philosopher Daniel Kaufman comments, and it's a very interesting read.

A documentary about "free will"

The trailer:

Among those I recognized were the philosophers Daniel Dennett, Robert Kane,and Gregg Caruso, as well as the physicist Sean Carroll and biologist Jerry Coyne.  Oddly, the trailer features Dennett saying, incorrectly, that we have had the problem of free will since the Prescoratics.  But our concept of free will comes much later, and dates from the Stoics, not the Presocratics, as Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede have shown (although they have some disagreements about which Stoics).

 

Blast from the past: when Jordan Peterson threatened to sue philosopher Kate Manne....

...back in 2018 (with a guest appearance by the dishonest weasel Jonathan Ichikawa).

Scholars of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy rally to the side of Viktor DeSantis in Florida

Not really, but there may be a silver lining for them in the latest rain cloud:

DeSantis’s proposals include requiring that students at the colleges take certain core courses “grounded in actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization"....

Last year, the state passed a bill that allowed Florida’s Board of Governors to require professors to go through post-tenure review every five years. On Tuesday, DeSantis proposed giving college presidents more power over faculty hiring and allowing presidents and boards of trustees to call for a post-tenure review of a faculty member “at any time with cause.”

The governor said he would recommend the legislature set aside $100 million for the state universities to hire and retain faculty members. He recommended $15 million for recruiting students and faculty members to the New College of Florida, a small, public liberal-arts college whose governing board DeSantis recently overhauled with the appointment of six new members. One of the new trustees then wrote that he intended to see if it would be legally possible to fire everyone at the college and rehire only “those faculty, staff, and administration who fit in the new financial and business model.”

“We are also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said without specifying what “DEI and CRT bureaucracies” were. “No funding, and that will wither on the vine.”

DeSantis presented eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion projects as a way of saving wasted money, although a previous Chronicle analysis found that such projects make up 1 percent or less of the state universities’ budgets.

Lateral moves/retirements (etc.) since the 2021 Philosophical Gourmet Report: 2023 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.)  Unless otherwise noted, the appointment (or retirement) takes effect in 2023.  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.

*Richard L. Arneson (political philosophy) is retiring from the University of California, San Diego at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

*William Bechtel (philosophy of cognitive science and neuroscience) is retiring from the University of California, San Diego at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

*Patrick Connolly (early modern philosophy and science) from Lehigh University (untenured) and University of Wisconsin, Madison (visiting) to Johns Hopkins University (effective January 2023).

*Rachel Fraser (philosophy of language, epistemology, feminist philosophy) from Oxford University to the Dianoia Institute, Australian Catholic University.

*Charles L. Griswold (18th-century philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, ancient philosophy) is retiring from Boston University at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

*Paul Guyer (Kant, aesthetics) is on phased retirement at Brown University (he will retire fully no later than the end of June 2025, and perhaps sooner).

*Thomas Hurka (ethics), who has been on phased retirement at the University of Toronto, is retiring at the end of the 2022-23 academic year. (This information was included in the 2021 PGR surveys, so should, in principle, have been taken into account by evaluators.)

*Katharina Kraus (Kant, philosophy of mind and psychology) from the University of Notre Dame to Johns Hopkins University (effective January 2023).

*Harvey Lederman (logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, Chinese philosophy) from Princeton University to the University of Texas, Austin (effective January 2023).

Richard Marshall interviews Ludwig Büchner...

...at 3:16 AM.  Büchner was something like the Richard Dawkins of his day, a proseltyzer, not for Darwin, but for physiology and materialism.  His Kraft und Stoff was the best-selling book in Europe in the second half of the 19th-century after the Bible.  A young Einstein reportedly read it and was inspired by it.  Büchner is also the "old doctor" Nietzsche derides in Beyond Good and Evil, although as usual with Nietzsche it was a matter of the narcissism of small differences:   Nietzsche was deeply influenced by the German materialists, but rejected wholly their eliminativism about psychological phenomena.

Charlie Kirk "solves" the Euthyphro dilemma

It's not fair to idiots to observe that Mr. Kirk is one, but this video certainly drives it home:

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

A nice write-up about philosophy at Wake Forest University...

...where the major is thriving!

In Memoriam: Kent Greenawalt (1936-2023)

Philosophers who work in moral, political and legal philosophy will no doubt be familiar with Professor Greenawalt's work; there is a notice and links at my law school blog for those interested.

The NYT tunnel vision about race comes up against reality

Perhaps someone there should look at the evidence:  "The fact that the five officers charged with Mr. Nichols’s murder are Black complicates the anguish."  That's because in police killings, race is the not the primary variable, but rather class (as with Mr. Nichols:  a high school graduate and unskilled laborer with very little money)--class, plus the pathologies of police culture.

ADDENDUM:  As one reader points out, blacks are three times as likely as whites to be killed in police encoutners.  That is, alas, not surprising given the economic disparities between blacks and whites in America, with its history of apartheid:  "In 2014, about a quarter (26%) of blacks were poor, compared with 10% of whites. The black-white poverty gap has narrowed somewhat since the mid-1970s, when 30% of blacks were living below the poverty line – a proportion nearly four times the share of whites living in poverty (8%)."   The hard empirical question is disentangling the effects of race and class in police violence, a point the murder of Mr. Nichols by black officers drives home.

 

Class, not diversity

Kenan Malik comments at The Observer:

If debates about poverty have become warped by a longstanding view that attributes blame to the individual, debates about inequality have become distorted by a more contemporary trend: the increasing tendency to look at equality in terms of “diversity”. “When you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity,” observes the American academic Walter Benn Michaels. “But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity.”

Did you know you have a "right" to "revelatory autonomy"?

Me neither, but if you make up such a right, The Guardian will write about it.  It does seem a bit odd to think friends and family act wrongfully by offering advice about major decisions in life, but the ever-evolving etiquette manual of academic philosophers is full of surprises!

UPDATE:  Philosopher Farbod Akhlaghi, whose work was being discussed in The Guardian, kindly shared a clarification about his views:

On the neoliberal identity politics of the fake "left" in America

This essay makes a number of good points (although readers will notice echoes of Adolph Reed, the essay overall lacks his more sophisticated theoretical framework); an excerpt:

[Ne]oliberal identity is u]sing one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, “As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.” What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse— dismissed....

In Memoriam: Edward Erwin (1937-2022)

This seems to be the year for belated death announcements, but Michael Tooley just alerted me to the fact that Professor Erwin, a longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami, died last spring.  He was particularly well-known for his philosophical investigations of the foundations of psychotherapy, especially Freudian psychoanalysis.  He also had the misfortune to be wrongly named a defendant in a lawsuit (dismissed with prejudice by the court as against Erwin) growing out of the controversy surrounding sexual misconduct allegations against Colin McGinn, of whom Professor Erwin was the lone defender in the department.  I was surprised that the Miami Department did not post a memorial notice, although was told one was circulated locally.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Erwin or who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

Great moments in (extremely) obscure rock 'n' roll: Creepy John Thomas, "Down in the Bottom," 1970

Reader Dave Wasser kindly flagged the long-forgotten Mr. Thomas for me; born in Australia, he recorded this number in London for his second album and it's not bad!  He later played with the Edgar Broughton Band and with his own band in Berlin.

 

Nyholm from Utrecht to LMU Munich

Sven Nyholm (applied ethics [esp. ethics of technology], ethics), currently Associate Professor in the Ethics Institute at Utrecht University, will become Professor of the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence on the philosophy faculty at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich this summer.

And the prize for proposed legislation that would most clearly abolish tenure and academic freedom with it...

...goes to North Dakota.  Yikes!

Lanier Anderson to be new Chair of the APA Board

It is with genuine sadness that I must report that philosopher Lanier Anderson, an exceptionally nice guy and serious scholar, will have to be the next Chair of the American Philosophical Association Board.   My condolences to Lanier and his loved ones.

Karl Jaspers and the origins of existentialism

A short popular account here of the now little-read Jaspers.  The last time I read Jaspers it was his book on Nietzsche, which is uneven, but better than Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche!

The most checked-out books from the New York City public library system

I confess I've heard of none of these books and almost none of these authors  Apart from old rock 'n' roll, I'm a poor consumer of popular culture.  What do readers make of this list?  Are some of these books worth reading?

"Ameliorative"

Awhile ago, I observed that "whatever ameliorative analysis is, it's not an analysis," but philosopher Alan Thomas has done me one better on Facebook (which he gave permission to share):   "I long for the good old days, when we just called 'ameliorative conceptual engineering' 'Newspeak'."

Blast from the past: In defense of English departments!

Back in 2014, with discussion.

Where professors come from

An article in Nature a few months ago documented where professors across all fields got their PhDs; the study found:

Overall, 80% of all domestically trained faculty in our data were trained at just 20.4% of universities. Moreover, the five most common doctoral training universities—UC Berkeley, Harvard, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford—account for just over one in eight domestically trained faculty (13.8%; Fig. 2a and Extended Data Table 3). Even when disaggregated into domains of study, 80% of faculty were trained at only 19–28% of universities (Fig. 2b).

A couple of observations.  The fields studied were the humanities, social sciences, applied sciences, natural sciences, mathematics & computing, medicine & health, engineering, and education.  While the "big five" producers (above) are all excellent research universities they are also distinguished by being comprehensive in a way that, e.g., Princeton or MIT are not (the latter, for example, do not offer PhDs in education, or medicine; and MIT does not offer PhDs in all the social sciences and humanities).   

Why did Bostrom's "apology" for the racist email mention eugenics?

This author offers an hypothesis. (Earlier coverage, including a link to the strange apology.)  I don't agree with all of this analysis, but it's worth a look.

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews Friedrich Lange...

...at 3:16 AM.  Lange was an immensely important figure in German philosophy in the second half of the 19th-century.  His major work on materialism became so well-known that Bertrand Russell wrote an introduction to an English edition in the 1920s.  The "interview" is both amusing and quite informative.

Montana Taliban trying to wreck science education

Religiously inspired stupidity isn't dead yet, as a new draft bill in Montana makes clear, which states that, "a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation," and can't be taught in the public schools.  Oy veh!  Does the draft bill have any chance of enactment?   Comments from knowledgeable readers welcome.

(Thanks to Bradley Wood for the pointer.)

 

Blast from the past: Twitter "believe it or not" part 3: the Twitter kids can't figure out why no one is taking them seriously

Back in 2019.  I imagine most of these benighted folks are as ridiculous and clueless today as they were then.

Kraus from Notre Dame to Johns Hopkins

Katharina Kraus (Kant, philosophy of mind and psychology), Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has accepted a tenured offer as Miller Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, where she will start this term.

In Memoriam: Joseph Agassi (1927-2023)

A student of Karl Popper, Professor Agassi was a prolific writer in philosophy of science and social science, among other areas.  He taught for many years at Boston University, and then at York University, Toronto and Tel-Aviv University (concurrently for a long time at both).  You can learn more about his career and work here.   I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Agassi, or who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to David Gordon for alerting me to Professor Agassi's death.)

Mandatory "diversity" training doesn't seem to work

We've touched on this before, here's the latest debunking of the DEI industrial-complex:

“We have been speaking to employers about this research for more than a decade,” wrote the sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in 2018, “with the message that diversity training is likely the most expensive, and least effective, diversity program around.” (To be fair, not all of these critiques apply as sharply to voluntary diversity trainings....

Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them....

In the case of D.E.I., Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity trainings that are mandatADory or that threaten dominant groups’ sense of belonging or make them feel blamed may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate biases.

Many popular contemporary D.E.I. approaches meet these criteria. They often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary reunderstanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems. And they often blame white people — or their culture — for harming people of color. For example, the activist Tema Okun’s work cites concepts like objectivity and worship of the written word as characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” Robin DiAngelo’s “white fragility” trainings are designed to make white participants uncomfortable. And microaggression trainings are based on an area of academic literature that claims, without quality evidence, that common utterances like “America is a melting pot” harm the mental health of people of color. Many of these trainings run counter to the views of most Americans — of any color — on race and equality. And they’re generating exactly the sort of backlash that research predicts.

ADDENDUM:   Professors Dobbin and Kalev discuss their diversity research here.   Amusingly, they note that most management practices are not evidence-based.

(Thanks to Roger Albin for the pointer.)

Savulescu from Oxford to NUS in 2022

Reader Valentin Weber points out to me that the well-known bioethicist Julian Savulescu, previously Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford, took up a Chair in medical ethics at the National University of Singapore last year.  NUS, which pays competitively with the best American universities, has recruited senior faculty from the UK (and sometimes even from the U.S.) in many fields in recent years.

Great moments in (not so obscure) rock 'n' roll: David Crosby memorial edition

David Crosby, who enjoyed great success with The Byrds in the mid-1960s and then with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young) from the late 1960s onwards--and occasional success on his own and with Graham Nash--was a fine singer, capable especially of brilliant harmonies, but never as good a song composer as those he worked with.  Here's a few notable songs he either authored or co-authored during his long career that are among my favorites:

He co-wrote one of The Byrds's biggest hits and most memorable songs, "Eight Miles High," from 1966:

My favorite Crosby composition is "Long Time Gone," from the CSN debut in 1969:

A petition in support of philosophy at Utica University

They are, alas, the latest philosophy major under threat.  

(Thanks to Christian Miller on Twitter for calling this to my attention.)

Blast from the past: the most significant moral philosophers in the history of Western philosophy

A poll and discussion, back in 2013.

Harvard Kennedy School Dean reverses decision, and extends offer to Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch

Professor Risse tells me that Mr. Roth has accepted the Senior Fellowship.  (Earlier coverage.)  The Dean, in his letter to the faculty, wrote:

In the case of Mr. Roth, I now believe that I made an error in my decision not to appoint him as a Fellow at our Carr Center for Human Rights. I am sorry that the decision inadvertently cast doubt on the mission of the School and our commitment to open debate in ways I had not intended and do not believe to be true. The broader faculty input I have now sought and received has persuaded me that my decision was not the best one for the School. I have spoken now with a colleague at the Carr Center, and we will extend an offer to Mr. Roth to serve as a Fellow. I hope that our community will be able to benefit from his deep experience in a wide range of human rights issues. 

Blast from the past: Why academic freedom?

Back in 2017, but still relevant, needless to say.