Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Factory, "Try a Little Sunshine," 1969

The second single from this largely forgotten British psychedelic band we featured last month; a good tune, very much of its moment:

 

Members of the "White Rose" resistance to Nazism were executed on this day in 1943

If you don't know the story, you can check out this short video.  (This longer film is very good.)  Actual examples of moral courage are few and far between, but this was the real deal.

Yale faculty (philosophers and law professors) vouch for Sarah Braasch, the real victim in the "napping while Black" manufactured scandal

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 18, UPDATED

The letters of support, after Ms. Braasch was the target of vilification on both actual and social media platforms, are now available for those readers who would like to know who Ms. Braasch really is:  Alan Schwartz, Scott Shapiro, Jason Stanley, Zoltan Szabo.  These letters make it unsurprising that Yale dropped-the charge of racial harassment against Ms. Braasch, a fact that got almost no media attention.

Will some conscientious journalist tackle this case in the mass media?  One hopes so.

ADDENDUM:  Since Yale did not find Ms. Braasch guilty of racial harassment, why did they ban her from campus?  It was presumably to appease the mob, including students at Yale who demanded she be ousted.

UPDATE:  A letter of support from philosopher Shelly Kagan (Yale) is also available now.

Philosopher vs. tabloid in Canada

The philosopher is Daniel Weinstock (McGill), whose views were misrepresented by a malevolent columnist.   Since it's Canada, a jurisdiction less protective of defamers than the U.S., I hope he sues them!   The fabrications have now cost him an official position.

(Thanks to Mike O'Brien for the pointer.)

"Escape from Wuhan"

Gripping piece of writing by philosopher Spencer Case, who had been on faculty at Wuhan University.  Professor Case tells me that his "colleagues Matt Lutz, Tim Perrine and many Chinese philosophy faculty -- I'm not sure how many -- remain stuck in the lockdown."

Blast from the past: what happens in a country where the law protects reputations, not defamers

Back in summer 2019.

Best introductory texts in philosophy of social science (or philosophy of a particular social science, e.g., economics)?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--MORE COMMENTS WELCOME

Continuing with our new series about the best introductory texts in various areas of philosophy, I now invite readers to name what they think are the best introductory texts in philosophy of social science (or philosophy of a particular social science, such as econmics).  As before, don't just name a text, but say something about why you think it's particularly notable or valuable.  Although you don't have to sign  your comment, I do think signed ones will carry more weight with readers.

Bloomberg at the Las Vegas Democratic debate

I saw it with my own eyes!

In a demonstration of the high level of enthusiasm the former New York City mayor enjoys among the electorate, surging presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was met with a standing ovation during the Democratic debate Wednesday as he promised to “rule you peasants with an iron fist.” “Kneel before me and tremble, you piteous wretches, for I am your new sovereign ruler and my will is infallible,” said Bloomberg, cutting into his rivals’ speaking time as his pledge to “vanquish my enemies and reward my supplicants” was met with thunderous applause by thousands of assembled audience members. “You peons, you mean as little to me as a clump of dirt to a mighty mountain, and I’ll step on the necks of every last one of you on my quest for greater and greater power. Gaze upon your new God and fear my capricious wrath.” At press time, the audience had broken out into chants of “Bloomberg! Bloomberg!” as armed guards emerged from the exits to indiscriminately beat them with batons.

Jokes aside, I'm amazed by the naivety of my academic friends who think that because Senator Warren sliced and diced Bloomberg in the debate that he's finished.  (I didn't watch the debate, just read the post-mortems.)   If only it worked that way...but it doesn't.

$1 million from the Mellon Foundation to Northwestern's Prison Education Program...

...started by philosopher Jennifer Lackey!  Kudos to Professor Lackey and her colleagues.

BJHP Article Prize for 2019

The British Journal for the History of Philosophy has awarded the 2019 Rogers Prize—its annual prize for the best article it publishes—to Nicholaos Jones (University of Alabama in Huntsville) for his The architecture of Fazang’s six characteristics (Vol. 27, no. 3).  Here’s the abstract of his article:

This paper examines the Huayan teaching of the six characteristics as presented in the Rafter Dialogue from Fazang’s Treatise on the Five Teachings. The goal is to make the teaching accessible to those with minimal training in Buddhist philosophy, and especially for those who aim to engage with the extensive question-and-answer section of the Rafter Dialogue. The method for achieving this goal is threefold: first, contextualizing Fazang’s account of the characteristics with earlier Buddhist attempts to theorize the relationships between wholes and their parts; second, explicating the meaning Fazang likely attributes to each of the six characteristics; third, situating the characteristics as explicated within Fazang’s broader metaphysical framework.

(Thanks to Alix Cohen for the information.)

Blast from the past: not enough space in leading journals, so why aren't more on-line?

Back in 2010, with lots of comments.  The situation has changed a good bit since!

"Extremism" is psychological, not political

Philosopher Quassim Cassam (Warwick) comments.  I'm not sure I find this plausible, but it is worth considering (and is a more serious proposal than the usual fare).

On Althusser

This author doesn't like him (I don't either), but he points out some things I did not know:

He’d done precious little of the donkeywork required of a professor of philosophy. As he admitted in that posthumously-published memoir, though he’d been the École’s go-to guy for counsel on the most abstruse philosophical ackamarackus, he’d actually been winging it for years. He hadn’t, it turned out, read all that much. “I knew the work of Descartes and Malebranche well,” he wrote, before descending into a more confessional mode: “Spinoza a little, Aristotle not at all . . . Kant not at all, Hegel a little.” A little is right. For his thesis on Hegel, Althusser actually made up quotations that were never spotted by his tutor, Gaston Bachelard.

Above all, though, Althusser was unfamiliar with the bulk of Marx’s work. That’s right. The guy who found fame with books called For Marx and Reading Capital, had read about as much Marx as Margaret Thatcher had. Though he followed Bachelard in arguing that The German Ideology represents an “epistemological break” in Marx’s thought (as it does: it’s the book in which Marx abandons Hegelian idealism), Althusser later admitted that he was unsure how he’d arrived at that conclusion because the only bits of Marx he’d glanced at all predated The German Ideology.

Alas, the author of this anti-Althusser polemic doesn't realize that Marx did indeed understand his theory as a scientific (wissenschaftlich) one, the aim of which was to explain social and economic transformations through history.   "Positivist fealty" is thrown around as a term of abuse, and Popper is actually mentioned as someone who actually had an interesting objection to Marx (Popper understood even less about Marx than Althusser).   So most of this essay is garbage, but the facts about Althusser (if that's what they are) are interesting.

(Thanks to Paul Horwitz for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Christopher Byron, a PhD student at the University of Georgia writing on Marx's theory of exploitation, writes with a useful point about the preceding:

I am not an Althusserian, my thesis rejects most of his work, but nevertheless, we need to be careful here. It is true that Althusser confessed to being a fraud at the end of his life. However, he was also clinically mad at that point, so how reliable is that confession? I reached out to professor Warren Montag who has done a lot of good scholarship on Althusser and has visited his archives. He informed me that in fact if you go through Althusser's books, it's transparently clear he read Kant, Hegel, Marx, etc etc., closely, with copious notes, manuscript drafts, marginalia comments etc.  Moreover, if you read reports by his students like Derrida (Yes I know Derrida sucks!) and Foucault, among others, they all praise him for being consummate in his knowledge of the canon. Moreover, if you read some of his manuscripts that are now being published (e.g., how to be a marxist in philosophy) it's clear he's well read. So although Althusser said he hadn't read Vol I-III, he lied, or forgot, or lost his mind. Montag says his handwriting is all over his copies of Vol I-III. Although he said he never read Kant, or Hegel, he lied, or forgot, or lost his mind. I'm not defending Althusserian theory, but I do want to defend him from the claim that he got away with decades of lying and fakery.

David Rieff did not like Samantha Power's book

Not philosophers (although I encountered it on a philosophy friend's FB page), but amusingly damning:

Power writes in her introduction that, “We make sense of our lives through stories.” It is a revealing moment. ...[N]ot all of the stories we tell ourselves are true, and in Power’s case the stories she tells herself and now retails to her readers more often than not are prophylactics against understanding. Repeating that the United States is the world’s greatest nation when it has the lowest social mobility of any developed country, or that it is a leader in human dignity when it has the highest incarceration rates in the world and is the only OECD country besides Japan and South Korea to have the death penalty, not to mention an undemocratic system for electing presidents and politics hopelessly corrupted by money—all phenomena that long predate Donald Trump’s presidency (Power belongs proudly to the “Trump is an aberration” school)—is absurd. And saying that America has nothing to apologize for is to enter the realm of fantasy....

Power’s good intentions are not at issue. But like so many well-meaning servants of the Pax Americana before her, Power profoundly misunderstands her own role. Cicero wrote of Cato that he “gives his opinion as if he were in Plato’s Republic, not in Romulus’ cesspool,” and that is Power’s error as well. For when she writes extensively about America’s successes and failures but never of America’s crimes and complicity in crimes, she is engaged in an exercise in idolatry, and idolatry of a particularly exasperating and mediocre kind: self-idolatry. Power is well aware of the dangers of imperial overreach, but she writes as though she remains insensible to the dangers of imperialism itself. This, it seems, is what passes for idealism in the Washington policy establishment these days.

Richard Marshall interviews David Boucher (Cardiff)...

...at 3:16 AM.

On Frank Ramsey's contributions

An illuminating essay (a kind of precis of her forthcoming book on Ramsey) by philosopher Cheryl Misak (Toronto).

In Memoriam: Jack Macintosh (1934-2020)

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary (which he joined in 1966), he was best-known for his work in the history of philosophy and science, especially on Robert Boyle.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Mohan Matthen for calling this to my attention, and Dean Rowan for his year of birth.)

Strong statement by former Department of Justice lawyers protesting political meddling in prosecutions and sentencing

More than 1100 signatures, including, according to one law professor, about 100 former lawyers who served in the DOJ in the Trump Administration; 85% overall served DOJ in Republican administrations.   AG Barr needs to go.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Frijid Pink, "Sing a Song for Freedom," 1970

Another number from this Michigan band; this was a single, that missed the top 40, but did chart:

 

Bloomberg's "stop-and-frisk" policy in NYC

This is a quite damning account.  (By the way, I do wish people on the left would stop calling Bloomberg a "racist":  he's plainly not (as the multiple endorsements from Democratic African-American elected officials might suggest).  He's a member of the ruling class, and he's incapable of significant empathy with those not in his class.  That includes poor African-Americans, but as many of his policies as Mayor makes clear, it includes many others.   The stop-and-frisk policy was damaging enough without further diluting the meaning of the word "racist.")

A propos the coronavirus...

...and our post the other day:  this is not good news (e.g., 8 of 50 documented cases from Singapore [which does more reliable reporting than China] are in the ICU).

Racism in British universities?

Two Exeter faculty take a skeptical look at the data.  I'm opening this for comments from those who see mistakes in the analysis and commentary on the availalbe data.

(Thanks to Mark Couch for the pointer.)

If Sanders doesn't carry union voters, including in the midwest, he can't win...

...so this is a hugely ominous sign.  Other unions will have similar reactions I strongly suspect.

ADDENDUM:  On the other hand...but it's still early days.

Not-so-obscure rock 'n' roll

Black Sabbath's first album was released 50 years ago today.  I still think it's their best, and one of the best albums in a year full of excellent ones.

(Thanks to James Bondarchuk for the pointer.)

Jonathan Mitchell did not like Tom Stern's "New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche"

From the review's conclusion:

Overall this volume is idiosyncratic and mixed. Instead of a state-of-the-art snapshot of Nietzsche-studies married with perspicuous introductions and overviews of central texts, many of the contributions lacked philosophical depth. Those that were of a more philosophical bent flirted with obscurity and verbosity, not infrequently straw-manning the so-called analytic [i.e., philosophical] interpretations. That being said, [Sebastian] Gardner's and [Michael] Forster's contributions are worth reading, the latter being a fine example of the required form and standard of content for a contribution to a companion. It was a shame that many of the other contributions fell short of this standard.

(For those interested in Nietzsche scholarship, I say a bit more at my Nietzsche blog.)

Near-death experiences?

Philosopher John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) debunks them at the NYT; comments are open only today, and John tells me he will try to respond to them.  He would no doubt be grateful if some philosophers weighed in!

Battle of the New York "billionaires"

Trump v. Bloomberg.   Bloomberg does have the potential to make Trump apoplectic, since he's got many of the same New York verbal street-fighter instincts.  In terms of winning, I think the Sanders approach is ultimately better, which is to keep his eye on the ball (i.e,. the issues), instead of on the goofball.

William Barr's moment of truth

This sums up his choices.  His choice has profound implications for the rule of law, at least at the federal level.  (Since the U.S. has a federal system, the state attorney generals have considerable autonomy, although some offenses may be purely federal ones.)

Attention Democratic Party: the blog readers have spoken!

So with more than 800 votes since yesterday afternoon, here are the results:

Bernie Sanders:        49%

Elizabeth Warren:    20%

Amy Klobuchar:       12%

Mike Bloomberg:      10%

Pete Buttigieg:          6%

Joe Biden:                 2%

Tom Steyer:               1%

I've notified the DNC that the people who count have spoken! 

Best introductory texts in philosophy of action?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 11--MORE COMMENTS WELCOME (INCLUDING CONCURRENCES!)

Continuing with our new series about the best introductory texts in various areas of philosophy, I now invite readers to name what they think are the best introductory texts in philosophy of action (including, but not limited to, free will).  As before, don't just name a text, but say something about why you think it's particularly notable or valuable.  Although you don't have to sign  your comment, I do think signed ones will carry more weight with readers.

Blast from the past: on visiting departments as a prospective PhD student

Back in 2014, but since it's getting to be that time of year again...

Only a poll of blog readers can bring clarity to the 2020 Democratic nomination contest

Only Americans should vote!   The masses await your guidance!

More reason to think the Democratic primary contest will come down to Sanders and Bloomberg

Biden's dysmal fifth-place finish in New Hampshire is the beginning of the end.  Creepy Pete will do poorly in South Carolina and Nevada.  Senator Warren, sadly, looks to be finished.  Senator Klobuchar will also do poorly in South Carolina and Nevada.   Bloomberg, meanwhile, is targetting the crucial demographic he needs for the Democratic nomination, beyond the suburban voters that have drifted away from the Repugs and that he'll lock up easily over Sanders.  And, of course, he has more financial resources than any of his competitors.  Given that the Democratic Party has been for at least thirty years now merely the prudent and less vicious wing of the ruling class, what could be more apt than nominating a billionaire to take on the perfect symbol of the imprudent and very vicious wing of the ruling class?

UPDATE:  As if on cue!  (Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

For those who use Twitter...

...I'm continuing my practice of tweeting out links to new posts on the blog, so you can follow the new links there.  I occasionally tweet out other stuff as well unrelated to the blog.

Brownlee from Warwick to British Columbia

Kimberly Brownlee (moral, political & legal philosophy), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, effective July 2020.   This will further solidify UBC's place as the #2 department in Canada, after the University of Toronto.

Britain's UCU calls for more strikes by academic staff (LINK NOW FIXED)

Philosopher Alexander Douglas (St Andrews) is skeptical.

APA extends voting rights to graduate students

Announcement here.   Will this change the APA?  If so, how?   I've no idea!  Thoughts from readers welcome, especially those more engaged with the APA.

Moral grandstanding at the Oscar ceremonies?

Philosophers Justin Tosi (Texas Tech) and Brandon Warmke (Bowling Green) comment.  The discussion is quite nuanced, making it all the more remarkable that it appears on the CNN website!

(Thanks to Alan White for the pointer.)

The Attorney General of the United States appears to be a fascist

This is beyond shocking:  this is what one expects in Russia and Hungary and Poland; this is what one expects when the rule of law is dying.  Attorney General Barr is a disgrace to the legal profession.  One can only hope the sentencing judge ignores the Department of Justice's recommendation to reduce the sentence for Trump's crony Roger Stone.

Not a great piece of "public philosophy": on Strawson and the coronavirus

I've noted with appreciation some of philosopher Regina Rini's past public work, but her debut essay for a new "ethics" series at the TLS is neither a good piece of work nor a good advertisement for philosophy.   The subject is the arrival of the novel coronavirus in Toronto, where Professor Rini teaches (at York University):

Toronto has a large Chinese Canadian community, particularly in the suburb of Markham. When I heard that someone had arrived with coronavirus from China, I admit that my first thought was to avoid restaurants in Markham for a bit.  My second thought was that my first was dangerous, probably more dangerous than the disease itself.

"[M]ore dangerous than the disease itself"?   You can read a vivid description of the condition of the sick for yourself:  those with symptoms (we have no idea what percent of the infected develop symptoms) appear to suffer for two to three weeks before recovering, if they do.  Ignoring that half of new infections are passed on by those who are not themselves symptomatic and that the virus appears to be spread just like regular influenza, Professor Rini assures us that,

Even in the unlikely chance you did catch coronavirus, the statistics suggest your risk of dying is quite small. As of February 4, with around 20,000 cases confirmed in China, 425 of those patients have died. Such a fatality rate is far less than that of Ebola or SARS.

This is an egregious mistake:   all the experts agree that we have no idea what the fatality rate of this new virus is; here's but one example:

Usually, simple math would determine this “case fatality” ratio: divide the total number of deaths by the total number of people infected. In an emerging epidemic, however, both numbers keep changing, and sometimes at different speeds. This makes simple division impossible; you will invariably get it wrong.

For example:  we don't know how many of those infected are asymptomatic, or simply not showing up in official data; we don't know how many are dying of the virus without ever coming to the attention of medical personnel; we don't know how many of the tens of thousands recently infected will die in the coming weeks; and so on.   So this is "public philosophy" predicated on a falsehood.

But even if the mortality rate were 2% (as Professor Rini supposes), that would make it 20 times more fatal than seasonal flu.   Why should anyone be nonchalant about an infection that has a 1 in 50 chance of killing you?  If you want to convince the public that philosophers lack sense, this would be a good way to do it!  Would people drive cars or fly in planes if those were the odds?  

Good news for unmarried fornicators in Virginia

You'll soon be legal!

Will it come down to Sanders and Bloomberg?

If you take a look at the national and state polls at 538, the big story is the rise of Bloomberg in the "Super Tuesday" states and nationally.   With Biden poised to come in 4th or 5th in New Hampshire, after a bad loss in Iowa, his only hope is South Carolina, where he probably will win, but that's unlikely to be enough to save him.  Mayor Pete will do miserably in South Carolina and Nevada, and then come Super Tuesday the "moderate" Democrats will vote for Bloomberg as their best hope (it helps that, unlike Biden, he's cognitively functional and can speak English and that, unlike Mayor Pete, he has substantive things to say [but that aren't too scary for "moderates"--he's the ideal suburban "soccer Mom" candidate]).   If it comes down to a brokered convention, one can guess whom the "establishment" will support as between Bloomberg and Sanders.

"Creepy Pete"

This is actually pretty apt:

“We had the belief that in the face of exhaustion and cynicism and division, in spite of every trampled norm and every poisonous tweak,” [Mayor Pete] said, “that a rising majority of Americans was hungry for action and ready for new answers.”

What action? What answers? What is this? The whole timbre and cadence of his speech seemed to be modeled after the rhetoric of Barack Obama. But it lacked all the reassuring notes of specificity that seemed to prove Obama was an actual human being, inhabiting a corporeal body in the same space-time continuum that I inhabit.

Buttigieg’s speech, on the other hand, resembled a kind of mad-lib speech in which none of the blanks had been filled. Obama was promising not just “action” but to turn back the rising sea levels. How did Pete Buttigieg manage to beat Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, and a dozen other people with more charm (such as Andrew Yang) with this utter pablum?

I’m not saying for sure that Pete Buttigieg is a robot or a phenomenon of massive psychotic projection. I can’t prove that. All I can say is that when he came out on stage in Iowa, I felt like we were undergoing a coup.

To be fair, I'm not sure Mayor Pete's pablum is worse than "Change we can believe in."

UPDATE:  The Onion nailed this last April!  (Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

When will the EU cut off funding to the fascists in its midst?

The EU has done nothing about Orban in Hungary, what about PiS in Poland?  (Even the Financial Times, which presumably has the ear of the EU ruling class, is worried!)

On the experience of being in a "manic" state

Philosopher Paul Lodge (Oxford) comments.

(Thanks to Daniel Kodsi for the pointer.)

In case anyone forgot that Rush Limbaugh is the scum of the earth (with apologies to scum)...

...a small sampling, but one that does no justice to the extent to which he has damaged the polity and the democracy over the last thirty years.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Blodwyn Pig, "It's Only Love," 1969

After Mick Abrahams, the original guitarist for Jethro Tull, left the band after a dispute with Ian Anderson about the musical direction of the band (This Was, Tull's debut, was a much more British blues-style album than later work), Abrahams formed a new band Blodwyn Pig.  This tune comes from their debut album (and doesn't sound at all like Jethro Tull!):

 

More academic visa craziness in the UK

Together with Brexit, this stuff will be a disaster for UK academia, which is already under tremendous pressures.

The Godfather strikes back!

Does this remind you of this:

It should.  You heard it here first!

UC Santa Cruz also using "diversity statements" to weed out faculty job candidates

My colleague biologist Jerry Coyne has the details.  See also this.