Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Breonna Taylor and George Floyd

The media, unfortunately, have linked these cases of police killings, even though they have almost nothing in common.  And now, unsurprisingly, a Louisville grand jury has failed to indict any of the officers involved in the no-knock raid that led to Ms. Taylor's death (by contrast, the officer that killed Mr. Floyd was quickly and rightly indicted, although he is planing an aggressive defense).  The failure to indict any officer for the killing of Ms. Taylor is unsurprising because:  (1) a judge had authorized the raid and the warrant to search the apartment because of Ms. Taylor's sometime-boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer, and (2) when the police entered the apartment, the boyfriend fired on the police (he did not know they were police), wounding one officer; the police returned fire, resulting in Ms. Taylor's death.  On these facts, it's hard to see how any officer was culpable for Ms. Taylor's death.  Louisville subsequently banned no-knock raids, which undoubtedly contributed mightily to the cascading calamity resulting in her death.

Philosopher's Annual, ten top papers from 2019

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 13:   The papers are now available at the PA website.

Here are the papers recognized this year:

Brad Armendt (Arizona State), “Causal Decision Theory and Decision Instability,” from the Journal of Philosophy

Maegan Fairchild (Michigan), “The Barest Flutter of the Smallest Leaf: Understanding Material Plenitude,” from the Philosophical Review

A Hume scholar on Hume's racism

Philosopher Paul Russell (British Columbia/Lund) comments in The Scotsman.  In an e-mail to me (which he kindly gave permission to share), he observed:

Suffice it to say that Hume would have laughed at the resemblance between the sanctimonious moralism of this woke mob (who are tormenting him in death) and the crazy nuttiness of the Christian fanatics (who tormented him when he was alive) - they are very similar psychological types.

ADDENDUM:  And here's the petition that started it all.  The original proposal was to rename the tower after Julius Nyerere, but that didn't last long, as the petition organizer quickly did a mea culpa:

A previous iteration of this petition campaigned for the name to be changed to Julius Nyerere Tower. It has been brought to my attention by multiple students that Nyerere was harmful in his own ways, both through his ties to dictatorship and through his homophobia. This petition now only campaigns for the renaming of David Hume Tower. Thank you so much to the students who contacted me to educate me. I sincerely apologize for any harm I have caused.

Relax, you didn't cause any "harm", except ultimately to the reputation of the University of Edinburgh.

 

A sobering account of the nightmare that will begin on November 3 in the U.S....

...unless it's a Democratic landslide.

ADDENDUM:  What will bring any crisis to an end is that when the economic and market turmoil becomes too great, a message that will be communicated by members of the ruling class to their lackeys in the Senate and Congress--at that point, the Republicans will stop supporting Trump in his bid to hang on (assuming, of course, that it's a Biden victory, as expected).

Toronto Law scandal involving political interference with academic hiring continues

Amnesty and the National Council of Canadian Muslims have joined the call for an investigation of the allegations of outside meddling in appointments, and some are now naming the judge allegedly involved, David Spiro of the Tax Court and an alumnus of the law school.

Most influential books of philosophy of the last 20 years?

There was some chatter on Twitter about this, but here's what Google Scholar tells us about which books are being cited the most.

Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) looks to be the hands-down winner, with multiple books cited more than 1,500 times, including Women and Human Development (2001), with nearly 11,00 citations; but also Frontiers of Justice (2009), with 6,100 citations; Upheavals of Thought (2002), with 6,600 citations; and Hiding from Humanity:  Disgust, Shame and the Law (2009), with more than 2,000 citations.

Here are some other philosophy books published since 2000 with more than 1,500 citations according to Google Scholar (cite count rounded to the nearest 100):

Timothy Williamson (Oxford), Knowledge and Its Limits (2000), 5,400 citations

Miranda Fricker (CUNY Grad Center), Epistemic Injustice (2007), 4,000 citations

Cristina Bicchieri (Penn), The Grammar of Society (2006), 2700 citations

Jerry Fodor (late of Rutgers), The Mind Doesn't Work That Way (2001), 2,600 citations

Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh), Articulating Reasons (2009), 2,300 citations

Many universites have extended the tenure track for tenure-stream faculty...

...and they should also try to extend by a year any fixed term appointments that would end this academic year, since the job market has ground to a near-halt this year, meaning these faculty have little chance of securing other academic employment.  The academic world is hitting "pause" (where it can):  graduate programs are extending funding (and in some cases not admitting new students), tenure-stream faculty are being given extra time.  Schools that invested in recent PhDs for fixed term appointments should not throw them into the abyss! 

 

COVID risks while flying

Interesting, case study of ten-hour flight with one symptomatic passenger in business class:

We traced 217 passengers and crew to their final destinations and interviewed, tested, and quarantined them. Among the 16 persons in whom SARS-CoV-2 infection was detected, 12 (75%) were passengers seated in business class along with the only symptomatic person (attack rate 62%). Seating proximity was strongly associated with increased infection risk (risk ratio 7.3, 95% CI 1.2–46.2). We found no strong evidence supporting alternative transmission scenarios.

(Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

"The Microfoundations of Marxism"

Philosopher Jaime Edwards (St. Norbert College) talks with philosopher Robert Gressis (Cal State/Northridge) about some of the ideas and arguments growing out of his important dissertation on this topic.  (Edwards and I are writing the volume on Marx for my Routledge Philosophers series.)

Philosopher Alastair Wilson (Birmingham) on "Natural Philosophies"...

...discussing quantum modal realism.

What is court packing?

Since my e-mail "interview" with NPR is showing up in lots of stories, let me say a bit more.

"Court packing" is typically used to refer to FDR's proposal in the 1930s to expand the size of the Supreme Court, which had been holding New Deal legislation unconstitutional.  The idea was that FDR would add justices sympatico to the New Deal, and thus change the political leanings of the Court that would, in turn, influence its constitutional decisions.

FDR's proposed method of court packing was to expand the court, which would change a century-old norm governing the court's composition.  But the essence of court packing is not expanding the size of the court, it is changing the norms governing Supreme Court appointments for partisan ends:  you can do that by expanding the size of the Court, or you can do it, as Senator McConnell did in 2016, by denying a sitting President even a vote on his nominee for a vacancy on the Court, also a massive violation of an established norm.

Senator McConnell could, perhaps, have been trying to start a new norm, but now it's clear (if anyone had doubts) that was not what he was doing:  he wants to pack the court for partisan ends by adjusting the norms for appointments to suit his political preferences, one rule for 206 when a Democrat is President, another for 2020 when a Republican is President.

A question for readers: from feudalism to capitalism?

I know the standard Marxian story (as told by Marx!), but I'd be grateful for some guidance on literature by historians, Marxists or otherwise, especially about the transitions in very roughly the period of the 16th into the 18th-centuries:   the fall of feudalism and the remnants of the feudal order, and the gradual transitions towards the beginning of the industrial capitalist age.  (I'm less interested in the heyday of feudalism, say the 11th-14th centuries, so happy for references on the passing of that period as well.)   Essays or book recommendations welcome, as well as any comments you might have about the value of the work, the perspective it takes etc.  You should feel free to e-mail me at bleiter@uchicago.edu if you'd rather not post here.  Many thanks!

Blast from the past: for a JD/PhD, does the caliber of the law school matter?

Back in 2011, and still applicable.  Worth noting that Harvard, which used to fully fund all JD/PhDs, has stopped doing so. (LINK NOW FIXED TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE OLD POST.)

The colleges that are succeeding, despite COVID

After the "bad news" stories about college openings that journalists love, the real story now is the number of schools that seem to be making this work.  Notre Dame, with 12,000 students and a rocky start, imposed a two-week lockdown; now they have a positivity rate of 1.2% and only about five dozen active cases on campus.  As we noted before, Duke University is doing quite well, with aggressive testing and good student compliance with behavioral expectations.  Bates College, with nearly 1,800 students in the boondocks of Maine, has had only 2 cases after several weeks of class.  Amherst College, far less isolated than Bates, has had a total of 3.  No doubt this will be disappointing to those invested in the idea that it was obviously nuts to open a school during a pandemic.  But it is good news for students and their families.

ADDENDUM:   Someone on Twitter points out that Brandeis, near Boston, is also doing quite well.  I'm opening comments for readers to add links to evidence of other schools that are faring well.

The life and work of Derek Parfit

Informative essay by philosopher Jonathan Dancy (Texas).

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Stack Waddy, "Mystic Eyes," 1971

British blues rock band active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this is from their debut album (a cover of the mid-60s number by the Irish band Them):

 

In Memoriam: Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (1932-2020)

Professor Rorty wrote very widely in moral psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of the emotions, and the history of philosopy (especially ancient).   She taught for a quarter-century at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and then later at Brandeis and Boston Universities, among other places.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

(Thanks to Geoffrey Batt for the information.)

On the death of Justice Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)

Her death is deeply unfortunate, not just for her family, but for the polity she served, and on many levels.

To start, it makes clear how perverse "life tenure" on SCOTUS has become when people live so long.  You can protect judges from political influence by giving them term-limited tenures that will extend beyond the terms of political actors:  in the U.S., that would be 15 or 20 years.  Many will complain, not unreasonably, that she should have stepped down during Obama's term.  In retrospect, she should have, but recall the Merrick Garland fiasco.

The real problem, of course, is that SCOTUS is a super-legislature--here is a popular explanation and a more jurisprudential one of this point--and so the prospect that a Democratic member of the super-legislture will be replaced by a Republican one is a serious matter.  The Nazi Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, will surely try to ram one through, notwithstanding his obviously spurious claim last time around that the election should decide Justice Scalia's replacement (his absurd rationale for why Judge Garland of the DC Circuit, whom Obama nominated, should not be even considered).  If the Republicans succeed in appointing a new justice to the super-legislature, then in the next Democratic Administration (assuming there is one), SCOTUS membership will either be vastly expanded to counteract this reactionary court-packing or its jurisdiction will be stripped so that it becomes a less relevant super-legislature.

Job search at U of Toronto law school scuttled after politically motivated interference by a sitting judge

Those are the allegations, and, if true, would represent a serious breach not only of judicial ethics but of academic freedom at the University of Toronto.  Job searches should be conducted and positions filled based on academic considerations, not the political concerns of members of the public, even if they are alumni and donors.

Meanwhile, America's democratic back-sliding continues...

...with craven political hacks meddling in public health advice for partisan ends.  Of course, this is exactly what the U.S. accused China of doing at the start of the pandemic.

UPDATE:  I guess the NYT story was too much of an embarrassment!   At least that democratic institution--a moderately free press--is still functioning on some issues.

After Princeton President does ritual "mea culpa" for "systemic racism," U.S. Education Department announces investigation...

...since federal money, of which Princeton gets plenty, are conditioned on non-discriminatory practices by the receivnig institution.  Unfortuntely, President Eisgruber (who is, himself, a lawyer, but apparently didn't consult any in this instance) in his public statement a few weeks ago made a number of careless (and probably false) claims that, predictably, would invite scrutiny from an Education Department hostile to affirmative action and racial preferences; for example:

We must ask how Princeton can address systemic racism in the world, and we must also ask how to address it within our own community. That is true even though, for at least the past fifty years, this University has committed itself to becoming more inclusive....

Racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society, sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies....

[M]y Cabinet colleagues examined systems and practices covering all facets of the University....Much of this work is unglamorous, focused not on flashy symbols but on the nuts and bolts of University management. That is essential: to care about eradicating systemic racism, one has to care about systems...

All these statements are naturally read as saying that the current Princeton University suffers from various forms of racism.  The good, legal news for Princeton is that "systemic racism" isn't a legal category, so unless investigation turns up actual conscious discriminatory practices, nothing will come of this.  The law does not try to prohibit "systemic racism":  it prohibits intentional racial discrimination.*

Most states are doing badly on COVID benchmarks

No state meets all four benchmarks; I'm lucky that Illinois is one of a handful that meets three of the benchmarks.  I doubt this would be happening if we hadn't thrown the Republican plutocrat bum out of the Governor's office in the last election.   The Democratic plutocrat now in office is at least competent on basic matters.

In Memoriam: Jeffrie G. Murphy (1940-2020)

A leading contributor to philosophy of law, especially philosophy of criminal law, and moral philosophy, Professor Murphy  taught at the University of Arizona for a number of years before moving to the Arizona State University faculty in 1981; he ultimately held appointments in both the philosophy department and law school.  The ASU memorial notice is here.

Possible new antibody-based treatment for COVID

Interesting, and hopeful.

Interview with Dutch publication about Trump

I talked with a reporter for the Dutch news magazine HP/De Tijd, some of this will make its way into a story they are running in October.  I'll post the full interview here, in case of it's of interest.  The reporter's questions are indented and numbered, my responses are prefaced by BL.

1. President Trump takes a clear and tough position in the debate about police brutality against African Americans and the demonstrations of the Black Lives Matter movement. He glorifies the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot two protesters in Kenosha. At the same time, he shifts the discussion about racism and police brutality against black Americans to a conversation about crime, violence and law and order. How remarkable is Trump's position in this debate?

BL:   Trump is a casual, rather than, ideological racist (Hitler was the latter).  Trump’s basic attitudes were shaped by his childhood in Queens (a section of New York City), which when he grew up was a largely white, middle- or lower-middle-class enclave (Trump himself was a child of privilege, but his attitudes are those of much of the milieu).  He learned instinctive support for police (and firemen and the military) and distrust of “coloreds” and “Negroes” who were disproportionately involved in crime.  (In the United States, the hit 1970s T.V. show “All in the Family” represents this outlook in the character Archie Bunker.)   What’s remarkable is only that Trump is President and says what he says out loud; millions of course believe the same.  While there are fewer “Archie Bunker’s” even in New York these days, there are still millions of white people still alive in the United States who grew up during the apartheid era in the American South, and they and sometimes their children harbor similar attitudes.

2. Does president Trumps position in the racism debate reflect the GOP’s point of view?

BL:  It does not represent the “official” position of the GOP, but ever since Richard Nixon, the GOP has tried to exploit white anxiety about crime, especially crime by non-whites.  Trump is more open and crude about it.

3. Taking such a strong stand in the racism debate, does the president have a clear vision in mind or can we speak of impulsive actions?

2020 Hiett Prize in Humanities goes to a philosopher, Zena Hitz (St. John's, Maryland)

Announcement here.  Nice to see Professor Hitz, a fierce champion for the humanities and philosophy, recognized.

(Thanks to Scott Newstock for the pointer.)

Climate change by county in the U.S.

Fascinating maps and data, by U.S. county.   Crudely, the South and the Southwest are in for trouble, the Midwest and Great Plains will fare better over the next 25-50 years.

Philosophers on Twitter lists

Amusing, although those who are sadly deceased (like Hubert Dreyfus and Roger Scruton) should be dropped.

Columbia Marching Band trolls the NY Times

Amazing.  The NYT will come to regret running this story, I suspect.

Student-maintained Philosophy admissions for 2020-21 spread sheet...

...here.

(Thanks to Linds Whitaker for the pointner.)

TAs, resident advisors at Michigan strike over health and safety issues...

...including Michigan's stunning failure to do adequate testing.   The University Administration is, foolishly, playing hardball, asking a court for a preliminary injunction against the strikers, which could in theory bankrupt the union and worse.   President Mark Schlissel at Michigan is about to go down in academic infamy if he keeps going down this route.

(As a sidenote, let me observe that it was stupid of the grad student union, the GEO, to include a completely irrelevant demand about defunding university police in the strike demands:  this is the trendy and irrelevant bullshit of the moment, and is wholly unrelated to the real issues confronting grad student workers.)

Penn will not admit PhD students this coming year in any humanities/science fields

This is remarkable; we noted a couple of philosophy departments that were not admitting PhD students this year, but this is the first school-wide suspension of PhD admissions in the humanities and sciences.  Comments are open if readers know of other schools following a similar path; please include links.

English Department at University of Chicago embarrasses itself

IHE has a story, and UChicago biologist Jerry Coyne also comments.   Departments do have the right to choose what fields to emphasize in graduate admissions, but to limit admissions to a single subfield (is it even a subfield in English?) to make a political statement is irresponsible and is another data point for those skeptical that English is still a Wissenschaft.  Enzo Rossi's quip on Twitter was also good:  "How self-absorbed and self-important do you have to be to think this is going to make any difference to anything other than the careers of a couple of Ivy League scholars?"  

Characteristics of young adults (ages 18-34) hospitalized with COVID

This is informative.  Of 63,103 hospitalized patients (April through June of this year), only 5% (3,222) were in the 18-34 age bracket (median age of 28.3).   36.8% were obese, and 24.5% were morbidly obese!  2.7% of the young adults died.  41% of those patients who died or needed mechanical ventilation were morbidly obese. From the discussion:

Morbid obesity, hypertension, and diabetes were common and associated with greater risks of adverse events. Young adults with more than 1 of these conditions faced risks comparable with those observed in middle-aged adults without them. More than half of these patients requiring hospitalization were Black or Hispanic, consistent with prior findings of disproportionate illness severity in these demographic groups.

ADDENDUM:  Comments making factual claims must include sources, or they will not appear.

Byrne's reply to controversial Dembroff paper in Phil Studies rejected

In June, philosopher Stewart Cohen (Arizona) resigned as editor of Philosophical Studies in protest after the journal published a paper by Robin Dembroff (Yale) containing personal attacks on Alex Byrne (MIT) (journal policy forbids such attacks), the author to whom Professor Dembroff was responding.  (Earlier coverage here, here, and here.)  Even by the standards of dishonesty characteristic of the "woke" in philosophy, the denial that the Dembroff paper contained personal attacks was astonishing (what else could specultion and criticism of the author's "real" motives be?).   In any case, Byrne's sur-reply to Dembroff has now been rejected by Philosophical Studies.  I inquired with Professor Byrne, who writes:

The reports didn't fill me with hope for the future of this area of philosophy. One referee helpfully urged me to "consult and engage" with the literature, advising me to "be more careful" in my "engagement with works that [I] discuss, making sure to understand them in their entirety." The other purported to prove that the thesis of my original paper was false in a few sentences, ending with "Case closed."

2020-21 Update for U.S. schools for the 2017 Philosophical Gourmet Report

MOVING TO FRONT (SOME CORRECTIONS/ADDITIONS FOR Notre Dame, Pitt, UIC)--ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 24

Since the 2020-21 PGR has been delayed, this is a summary of changes at the tenured (or almost tenured) ranks at roughly the top 50 PhD programs in the U.S. since the 2017 Philosophical Gourmet Report; more precisely, these are changes that were not reflected in the faculty lists evaluators saw for the 2017 PGR surveys (some moves that weren't official until 2018 were reflected in the faculty lists for the 2017 surveys).  (Please e-mail me any corrections or additions, thanks.) 

At the end, I give a rough guesstimate of the new rankings in light of these changes if surveys were done this fall.

New York University (#1 in 2017 PGR):  Lost Jim Pryor (epistemology) to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Richard Foley (epistemology) and Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, post-Kantian Continental philosophy), both of whom retired (or are about to retire), and David Velleman (ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action), who also retired and took up a Research Professorship at Johns Hopkins University.  Will probably remain #1 despite these significant losses.

Rutgers University, New Brunswick (#2 in 2017 PGR): hired Karen Bennett (metaphysics) from Cornell, Derrick Darby (social & political philosophy, philosophy of race) from Michigan, Nir Eyal (bioethics) from the Harvard School of Public Health, Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics) from Northwestern University, and Brian Leftow (philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy) from Oxford University.  Daniel Hausman (philosophy of social science, ethics), who has retired at Wisconsin, has accepted a six-year appointment with the new Rutgers bioethics center, that will also include regular teaching in philosophy for the next six years.  Rutgers was already one of the very top programs in both metaphysics and philosophy of language, and will now be close to tops in philosophy of religion as well and a good choice for philosophy of race and also bioethics (with Frances Kamm, in addition to Eyal).  These appointments mostly play to strengths, but will close the gap with #1 NYU somewhat (NYU's big advantage in terms of the overall rankings has been its broader coverage of philosophy, especially history of ancient and modern philosophy, including the post-Kantian Continental traditions).

Princeton University (#3 in 2017 PGR):  hired Lara Buchak (decision, game & rational theory) from the University of California, Berkeley and Andrew Chignell (Kant, philosophy of religion) (primary appointments in Religion and Center for Human Values) from the University of Pennsylvania.  Also added junior lateral Una Stojnic (philosophy of language, philosophical logic) from Columbia University.  Will remain squarely in the top three.

Evangelicals and climate denial

Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments.

Bad news for restaurants (but not a surprise)

CDC reports that in a sample of those recently diagnosed with COVID, having dined in a restaurant in the two weeks prior emerged as an important risk factor.  With colder weather approaching in large parts of the United States, this is bad news for restaurants and diners.  When this world-historic catastrophe is over, will there be any restaurants left in New York or Chicago or Minneapolis?

Why the right needs to pretend the "left" is more powerful than it really is

Political philosopher Lea Ypi (LSE) comments.  Her point about the Gramscian pedigree of the right's rhetorical strategy is amusing.  (Her focus is Britain, but most of the points apply in the U.S. too.)

Hume and Edinburgh, once again

A propos this, longtime reader Roger Albin (Medicine, Michigan) writes with apt observations that he kindly gave permission to share:

This would be the second time Hume is rejected by the University of Edinburgh.  Hume was denied a Chair at Edinburgh by some of the ideologically “woke” of his time, conservative clergy who suspected Hume of atheism.  Other than his short time as an undergraduate, Hume had no formal affiliation with Edinburgh.  Naming a building after Hume wasn’t an effort to honor Hume, it was an effort to have some of the luster of Hume’s reputation rub off on the University that rejected him.  Hume’s reputation loses nothing by this silly gesture and the University of Edinburgh is revealed as place that capitulates to fads.

Dianoia Institute of Philosophy/Australian Catholic University now accepting applications for MPhil and PhD

There are more details here; note that the deadline is in October, and the term starts in February 2021.  Because all the faculty at the Institute hold research appointments, there are no courses, so this is degree by individual faculty supervision.  The faculty is quite narrow in its strengths (e.g., there is no history of philosophy), but very strong in several areas:  philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, metaethics in particular.  I would expect the Institute to be one of the top 3 programs in Australasia in the next PGR (perhaps even the #1 program), and will likely be among the top 5-10 programs in its areas of strength in the world.

How to evaluate history's heroes

Sensible comments from philosopher Steven Hales (Bloomsburg), and timely again given the Hume fiasco at Edinburgh.   From the concluding paragraphs of the essay:

Newton wrote to Robert Hooke that if he saw further than others it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. That was a medieval metaphor that went back to before the 12th century, when John of Salisbury wrote in his Metalogicon, “Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”

Medieval humility has been inverted in the modern era with the hubris that we are moral giants on the shoulders of the dwarfs of the past, wicked dwarfs who deserve our eternal scorn. As we tear down more monuments to former heroes and erase their names from our buildings, we ought to think about their blameworthiness by the standards and expectations of their own era. Those supposed moral dwarfs we now decry may have been giants of their time. And you don’t have to be a scientist to know that even the largest persons look small when seen from a distance.

Does morality need metaphysics?

Philosopher Simon Blackburn and others discuss.

Let's out-woke "the woke": from now on David Hume will be known as "40 George Square"

A propos this:

"As 40 George Square argues in the Treatise..."

"Kant was awoken from his dogmatic slumber by reading 40 George Square..."

"Did you know that 40 George Square was not opposed to slavery?"

"According to the 40 George Squarean theory of motivation..."

(Thanks to my colleague Agnes Callard for the idea.)

UPDATE:  Courtesy of Greg Spendlove on Twitter.

 

David Hume has now been "cancelled" at the University of Edinburgh

When I first saw this on social media, I thought it was a joke.  It's not.  If members of the Edinburgh philosophy department don't raise hell about this (some members are, alas, confirmed knuckleheads), then let's cancel them too!  Indeed, let's cancel the University of Edinburgh!  

What's bizarre about the mass delusion now gripping the Anglophone world, even outside the U.S., is that no one yet knows whether George Floyd was killed because he was Black, rather than poor, marginalized, and non-cooperative (which cops hate!), the factors that actually explain most police killings (race is largely an epiphenomenon). 

And what's even worse is that none of this has anything to do with Hume.  

Hume was a man of his time in some ways, but we don't read him to figure out whether we should invest in the slave trade.  We read him because he transcended his time, because he touched the fundamental questions about what it is to be a human being in the world:  what do we know, what should we value, what is there really?   In that regard, he is like Plato, the enemy of democracy, and Aristotle, the defender of slavery, as well as Hobbes, Kant, Marx and Nietzsche:   he speaks to all human beings, despite his parochial prejudices. 

That these analysts of human being should be erased from the landscape, because of their local prejudices, is a symptom of our times, not simply of the narcissistic stupidity of "identity politics" and the craven spinelessness of academic administrators, but, more importantly, of the reactionary forces of the moment which  will love nothing better than the erasure of the cosmopolitan ideals we have inherited:  the forces of reaction, after all, are committed to vindicating the local traditions and prejudices and customs.  They can happily join forces with the identity narcissists in eradicating those thinkers concerned with the human.

ADDENDUM:  Leave it to the Edinburgh knucklehead Aidan McGlynn to try to rationalize this.  Of course it's not strictly a "cancellation" (that's actually why I put it in quotes), since it didn't involve a living person losing their job, but it shares with that phenomenon the effort to demote someone's status in response to meritless mob outrage.  Nobody thought putting Hume's name on the building was an insult, obviously taking it off is meant to signal disapproval and demotion, even if it is, as McGlynn says irrelevantly, a "tall brown, tower block" .  (I wonder what the knucklehead's colleagues interested in Hume think about this?  Will the mob soon come for their seminars?)  Enzo Rossi (Amsterdam) points out the additional irony that the former "Hume Tower" will now be known simply as its address "40 George Square," after King George who opposed the abolition of slavery.  (ADDENDUM:   Enzo tells me now that, unlike the George Square in Glasgow, the one in Edinburgh is not named after the King.  That's fortunate considering Hume's new name!)

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Fuzzy Duck, "Just Look Around You," 1971

British progressive/hard rock band in the vein of Uriah Heep and Atomic Rooster, this comes from their only album:

 

Coming soon: faculty updates for non-American programs ranked in 2017

Thanks to the work of reader Mitchell Barrington, I will be able to offer soon a report on changes to the faculties at the ranked programs in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand that were ranked in 2017, similar to what I've done for the U.S. programs.  Hopefully this will be ready in the next two weeks.  My thanks to Mr. Barrington!

There's a serious problem at USC's Business School...

...and it has nothing to do with the professor who was vilified for using a Chinese word that sounds like an English derogatory epithet.  In a normal academic environment, the Dean of the Business School would now be relieved of his duties for violating the academic freedom of one of his instructors and for poor judgment, and the students who leveled the frivolous complaint would be identified and disciplined.   None of this will happen, but at least the Dean has been humiliated internationally for his stupidity.

I think it's time to recognize that Nietzsche had correctly diagnosed what we are witnessing in these displays, in his discussion of the "tarantulas" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

"That the world be filled with the storms of our revenge, that is what we call justice"--thus they [the tarantulas] speak to each other.

"We will wreak vengeance and abuse on all those whose equals we are not"--thus do the Tarantula-hearts vow.

"And 'will to equality'--that should henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that have power, we want to raise our clamor!"

You preachers of equality, the tyrannical madness of impotence cries out from you for "equality":  your secret desire to be tyrants is wrapped up in virtuous words!

The end of the Chicago Palmer House hotel?

In olden times, the Central Division of the APA often held meetings at the Palmer House here in Chicago.  But the pandemic may have finished off the historic site.  Perhaps another hotel chain will acquire the property, but that seems unlikely under current circumstances.

Tasioulas from King's College London to Oxford

John Tasioulas (moral, political & legal philosophy), currently a Professor and Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law in the law school at King's College London, has accepted appointment as Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy on the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and director of the new Ethics of AI Institute.  The Oxford announcement of his appointment, and that of several younger scholars and post-docs, is here. 

(As an aside, let me note that this is a good break for jurisprudence at Oxford, an area in which Professor Tasioulas tells me he will continue to work and supervise.  With the tragic death of John Gardner, the appointment of Timothy Endicott to the Vinerian Professorship in English Law [which will take him away from his jurisprudence work towards his work in administrative law], and the appointment of a moral philosopher to the  Chair of Jurisprudence, the ranks of legal philosophers available to supervise students was thinning!)