Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"Identitarian psycho-babble" had its origins in Herbert Marcuse's third wife!

This is a truly weird story.

America is doomed, part 408: Barton Gellman on the 2021 Capitol riot and what's in store in 2024

We're heading for a very bad situation.   Even if Trump expires before 2024, the groundwork has been laid.

Richard Marshall interviews Ben Lipscomb (Houghton)...

...at 3:16 AM.  He talks a good bit about his recent book on Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch.

"Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion"

We know where "diversity" came from in the now ominpresent "DEI" slogan:    it was cooked up by corporate HR departments in the 1970s to defend affirmative action as not being about righting wrongs done to African-Americans but instead as producing "diversity" which was supposed to be good for business; it was then constitutionalized by Justice Lewis Powell of the  Supreme Court in his controlling opinion in the Bakke case in the late 1970s.

But where did the "equity and inclusion" come from?  This is a genuine question, I don't know the answer, but someone probably does.

PGR 2021 Preview: The Top 20 Programs in the Anglophone world

Below the fold are the top 20 programs in the Anglophone world; although most of this could have been inferred from past previews of national rankings, I thought it might be useful to see the aggregated listing (the numbers after each school's name are the mean, median, and mode):

Some more systematic (but still limited) data from South Africa on the severity of Omicron

Interesting and hopeful:

The South African Medical Research Council posted a report Saturday of the early experiences at several hospitals in Gauteng Province, where Omicron was first spotted in the country. Strikingly, most hospitalized patients who tested positive for Covid did not need supplemental oxygen. Few developed Covid pneumonia, few required high-level care, and fewer still were admitted to intensive care.

Experts caution against reading too much into these early reports, which are based on small numbers of patients....

New Yorker article on "mind-reading" technology

An interesting read, but I'm curious what readers--especially, but not only, philosophers--make of this claim about the purported upshot of the new technologies for tracking meaning in the brain:

Now we know what [thoughts] really are: patterns of neural activation that correspond to points in meaning space. The mind—the only truly private place—has become inspectable from the outside. In the future, a therapist, wanting to understand how your relationships run awry, might examine the dimensions of the patterns your brain falls into. Some epileptic patients about to undergo surgery have intracranial probes put into their brains; researchers can now use these probes to help steer the patients’ neural patterns away from those associated with depression.

A new study out of Germany on the powerful effectiveness of masks

Here; an excerpt:

If both the infected and the non-infected person wear well-fitting FFP2 masks, the maximum risk of infection after 20 minutes is hardly more than one per thousand, even at the shortest distance. If their masks fit poorly, the probability of infection increases to about four percent. If both wear well-fitting medical masks, the virus is likely to be transmitted within 20 minutes with a maximum probability of ten percent. The study also confirms the intuitive assumption that for effective protection against infection, in particular the infected person should wear a mask that filters as well as possible and fits tightly to the face.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Cannonball Adderley, "My Little Benny Hen," 1972

Adderley is best-know as a jazz saxophonist, but he did record this live rocking blues number, which appears on the memorably titled album The Black Messiah:

(Thanks to Spencer Case for the pointer.)

The latest on Omicron from South Africa

It appears to be spreading twice as fast as Delta in the Gauteng province; that may mean it is more transmissible than Delta, or only that it is better at evading preexisting immunity.  There is evidence that Omicron can reinfect those who had earlier variants at a rate three times higher than previous variants did.   Less than one third of the population is vaccinated in South Africa, but there have been several previous waves of infection there, and one imagines those previously infected take fewer precautions.  So it is possible--but this is only speculation at this stage--that Omicron is outperforming Delta because it is infecting those who had recovered from earlier variants.   The big question, still, is how well vaccination protects against the Omicron variant.  I have not yet seen any data on breakthrough infections of Omicron; feel free to add relevant links in the comments.

Blast from the past: the state of philosophy in 2007 compared to 1997?

An interesting discussion, back in 2008.

Law & Philosophy Fellow at the University of Chicago for 2022-23

The ad is now online; here's the description of the position (applications are due in late January--see the ad):

The University of Chicago Law School seeks a Law and Philosophy Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer, for the academic year 2022-23. This is a twelve-month appointment and is expected to begin July 1, 2022. A PhD in philosophy, with fulfillment of all substantial requirements by appointment date, is required though in unusual cases a PhD in a related discipline, or a JD accompanied by strong training in philosophy, will be considered. Applications welcome from new or recent PhDs or tenure-stream faculty interested in spending a year at the Law School. The Fellow will co-teach the Law & Philosophy Workshop with Brian Leiter on the theme of “Political Realism,” covering both historical (e.g., Thucydides, Hobbes, Machiavelli) and contemporary figures and themes. AOS: Political philosophy, with knowledge of Workshop theme essential; AOC: open. Visiting speakers will be prominent scholars working on these issues. The Workshop with visiting speakers will meet roughly 7-8 times over the course of the year, but there will be initial introductory sessions for students, plus occasional preparatory sessions for students prior to many of the visiting speaker sessions. The Fellow will also be asked to supervise student papers, and to contribute to the intellectual life of the Law School, as well as pursue his or her research. Salary $60K + benefits + superb research environment. 

"Fulfillment of all substantial requirements" for the PhD by time of appointment means a successful defense of the dissertation has been completed, even if the degree is not awarded until later in 2022 (since most universities only award degrees at a couple of designated times each year).

Existentialist "blonde jokes"...

...at The New Yorker.

PGR 2021 Preview: Most Improved U.S. Departments, 2006-2021

Here, below the fold, are the U.S. programs that have moved up at least ten spots since the 2006 PGR:

"Forgive and forget" is not their approach when it comes to Spinoza (UPDATED: the Synagogue apologizes)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 28--UPDATED

Professor Yitzhak Melamed, the distinguished Spinoza scholar at Johns Hopkins University, kindly gave permission to share this correspondence (click to enlarge):

UPATE:  Regarding "Epicouros," a reader points me to this.

DECEMBER 2 UPDATE:   It looks like Rabbi Serfaty acted without authority to do so.  All's well that ends well (below the fold, click to enlarge):

An epidemiologist on the Omicron variant

This is informative; an excerpt:

The more complicated thing is that we don’t yet know what it’s going to do in very highly vaccinated populations. We know of a case from Israel in which a person who had received three shots transmitted to another person who had received three shots. I don’t want to overstate that single data point, but the fact that we have noted that happening already is important in terms of the ability of three shots to control transmission. Three shots can still be highly protective, though. I would fall off my chair if it turned out that the vaccines’ efficacy against serious illness was seriously affected....

About all we can exclude are the extremes. We know that it’s not very mild because hospitalizations are ticking up in South Africa. We know that it’s not incredibly serious, because hospitalizations are ticking up but not incredibly fast. So, all we can exclude is the extremes, and there’s a lot of room between those extremes for the virus to spring a nasty surprise upon us.

UPDATE:   More on the case of the Israeli doctors from the NYT, and this is good news (the one person it appears the doctor infected was someone he shared a 90-minute car ride with):

Which areas have a "Group 1" consisting of programs with a rounded mean of 5.0? (CORRECTED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY:  UPDATED

Most do not:  generally, the "Group 1" programs have a rounded mean of 4.5, meaning of course that there is some disagreement about what makes for excellence in the specialty.  But eight specialties have a "Group 1" consisting of programs (mostly only one program) with a rounded mean of 5.0, meaning specialists in those areas share more of a consensus.  Those areas and the programs with a rounded mean of 5.0 are below the fold: 

Causation from the point of view of physics

Jenann Ismael (Columbia) and James Woodward (Pittsburgh) discuss.

(Thanks to Lauren Ross for the pointer on Twitter.)

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 10 Programs in General Philosophy of Science

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 10 programs in philosophy of science (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

Blast from the past: departments ranked by citations to faculty in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Back in 2014.

The U.S. Supreme Court, abortion, and the 2022 midterm elections

The NYT coverage makes it sound like there's a real chance the Court will overrule Roe v. Wade next June, which would result in at least 20 states prohibiting abortion immediately (some will permit exceptions in cases of rape or incest, others will not even do that).  Public opinion in the benighted states of America decisively supports a right to choose abortion by a large margin--if not in all cases, then certainly in many.  A decision triggering abortion bans next June will make abortion a highly salient issue to voters in the November 2022 elections, and this issue ought to work strongly in favor of the Democrats.  Of course, all this assumes voted are counted and honored, which obviously isn't the goal in many of the 20 states that will ban abortion if the super-legislature permits them.

Strike at 58 universities in the UK...

...over pension, pay,  and working conditions.

The Rittenhouse verdict explained

A useful discussion of the case by a clinical law professor at Harvard, who explains the law very simply and clearly.  His conclusion is not that different from my far briefer one:

The quarrel, I submit, is not with the jury, or with the extrajudicial commentary that preceded the trial. The better quarrel should be with Wisconsin’s gun law. Long-standing self-defense law conspired with absurdly permissive open carry laws to create the set of conditions to make the Rittenhouse affair possible. Perhaps those of us who find the verdict troubling are better served by focusing our attention on state legislatures. I see nothing in the text of the Second Amendment or its doctrinal exegesis that compels states to permit minors to stroll about town with a rifle strapped across their shoulder. It makes no sense, and the unintended consequence of such a legal regime is a Wild Wild West mentality where citizens feel emboldened to engage in private law enforcement.

The BPhil in philosophy at Oxford

MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING--UPDATED

This is a pretty unappealing portrait by a recent BPhil student; from his summation:

In sum, partly due to systematic funding cuts facing UK Higher Education institutions in the last few years, there are several reasons why the Oxford BPhil can be a bad choice for students (but which are not very widely known).

These not so good things are:

• -          Expensive fees
• -          Almost zero funding options
• -          Overpopulated classes
• -          Relatively little supervision
• -          Lots of deadlines and independent work
• -          Very little distinctive advantage for PhD applications

I'm opening comments for reactions or corrections to the description of the BPhil in the preceding.

UPDATE:  See the helpful response in the comments from Professor Timpson, Chair of the Philosophy Faculty Board at Oxford.

University of Rochester behaving badly!

It has suspended an English professor for reading from texts in class that included the n-word.  The Acaemic Freedom Alliance, fortunately, is on the case, and is providing legal counsel for the professor whose academic freedom rights have been violated.

Think about death, become happier

Maybe!

A brief comment on the SCOPUS database ranking of philosophers

Justin Weinberg (South Carolina) reports the results here,  noting, correctly, that the database "misses quite a bit of philosophy."   The list also misses those who are characterized as "law" or "social science," even when their work is all in philosophy.  Thus, e.g., in the "career" citations, Jeremy Waldron (NYU) would come come in just ahead of Allen Buchanan (who is 6th); Seana Shiffrin (UCLA) is just ahead of Joseph Carens (who is 154th), and I am just ahead of Michael Smith (who is 181st).    Of course, when Quine is only 177th, and Putnam 100th, there's clearly something screwy going on!

ADDENDUM:  SCOPUS's coverage of the humanities and social sciences is apparently quite poor.

PGR 2021 Preview: Biggest Moves (Up and Down) in the Overall Rankings in the UK

In the overall rankings for the UK, the programs below the fold were the biggest movers (at least 3 positions), either up or down:

2021 PGR Preview: Biggest Declines in the Overall Rankings for the U.S. Top 50

We noted the big increases (5 or more spots) in the U.S. top 50 a couple of weeks back; below the fold are the schools that dropped 5 or more spots in the 2021 PGR compared to 2017:

Scotland reports six cases of Omicron variant among people with no travel history...

...indicating "community transmission."  This fits with the speculation noted yesterday that, in fact, this variant has been circulating for awhile before South Africa and Botswana noticed it.  That would also suggest that it may not be destined to dominate Delta.  (See also Dr. Scott Gottlieb.)

UPDATE:  And here's a very optimistic take out of Australia.

ANOTHER:  This news clip of Dr. Gottlieb makes several good points, including (1) of the 61 passengers who arrived in Amsterdam from South Africa who tested positive, only about 20% had the Omicron variant (the rest were, presumably, carrying the Detla variant), suggesting that Omicron is not dominating Delta; and (2) South Africa changed its reporting protocols (on November 23) right around the time of the alleged Omicron variant spike in a way that may be quite misleading.

When "reasonable" Republicans at the NYT tell you that their party is going fascist, one should probably listen

That is certainly my takeaway from the essay by the NYT columnist David Brooks in The Atlantic.  Some excerpts, with interspersed commentary:

The first great project of the national conservatives is to man the barricades in the culture war. These people have certainly done their homework when it comes to cultural Marxism [sic]—how the left has learned to dominate culture and how the right now needs to copy their techniques. If I’d had to drink a shot every time some speaker cited Herbert Marcuse or Antonio Gramsci, I’d be dead of alcohol poisoning....

On the other hand, if he had to drink a shot for each person there who had actually read Marcuse or Gramsci, he would be a teetotaler.

The first interesting debate among the NatCons is philosophical: Should we fight to preserve the classical-liberal order or is it necessary to abandon it?

Funny, the Germans had that "philosophical debate" in the early 1930s, and it wasn't merely "philosophical."

Some of the speakers at the conference were in fact classical liberals, who believe in free speech, intellectual debate, and neutral government. Glenn Loury gave an impassioned speech against cancel culture, the illiberal left, and the hyper-racialized group consciousness that divides people into opposing racial camps. Loury asserted that as a Black man he is the proud inheritor of the great Western tradition: “Tolstoy is mine! Dickens is mine! Milton, Marx, and Einstein are mine!”....

But others argued that this sort of liberalism is a luxury we cannot afford.

I'd love to know who the "we" is that can't afford the "luxury" [sic].

The country is under assault from a Marxist oligarchy that wants to impose its own pseudo-religious doctrine. If you try to repulse that with pallid liberalism, with weak calls for free speech and tolerance, you’ll end up getting run over by those who possess fanatical zeal, economic power, and cultural might.

PGR specialties where there were not enough evaluators to rank programs based on rounded means

This year, those areas were:   American pragmatism, feminist philosophy, philosophy of art, philosophy of race, philosophy of social science.  Each had five or fewer evaluators.  (In each case, the problem was the yield on invited evaluators in terms of participants.)  Programs in these fields were broken into two groups (based on the scores submitted):  Highly Recommended, and Recommended.  So, for example, in feminist philosophy, the "highly recommended" schools for 2021 are:  Cambridge University, City University of New York Graduate Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

More on the Omicron variant

Again from Statnews:

Levels of Covid-19 in South Africa were subdued when the variant was first detected; since that time numbers have jumped. It’s possible that means Omicron has a growth advantage over Delta, but it’s also possible that it’s riding the new surge of cases, not driving it. Some scientists hypothesized that the rise in cases has been propelled by some superspreading events, explaining why a surge was first detected primarily in Gauteng province. Now, however, cases from the variant are increasing around the country, the WHO said, but some of the increase could be tied to which infections are being sequenced....

Blast from the past: Most important contributors to metaethics, 1945-2000

Back in 2019, with a discussion.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Elias Hulk, "Yesterday's Trip," 1970

Short-lived British "progressive" blues rock band of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this comes from their debut album:

 

In Memoriam: Maj. Ian Fishback (1979-2021)

Major Fishback earned a PhD in philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also taught philosophy at West Point.  Unlike most philosophers, however, he was actually morally courageous, exposing military abuse of prisoners in Iraq back in 2005.  His end was tragic.

(Thanks to Cheyney Ryan for the pointer.)

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 4 in Medieval Philosophy

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 4 programs in medieval philosophy (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus

MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING--UPDATED

Oy veh.

UPDATE:  The W.H.O. has named the new variant Omicron, rather than Nu, as initial reports had suggested.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  From the European analogue of the CDC (my bolded emphases):

The variant is characterised by 30 changes, three small deletions and one small insertion in the spike protein, of these, 15 are in the receptor binding domain. This variant was first detected in samples collected on 11 November 2021 in Botswana and on 14 November 2021 in South Africa. As of 26 November 2021, travel-related cases have also been detected in Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel. The Omicron variant is the most divergent variant that has been detected in significant numbers during the pandemic so far, which raises concerns that it may be associated with increased transmissibility, significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness and increased risk for reinfections. As of 26 November 2021, ECDC has classified this variant as a variant of concern (VOC) due to concerns regarding immune escape and potentially increased transmissibility compared to the Delta variant.

ANOTHER (5 PM CST):   A typically informative analysis from Statnews.  Do read this.

2021 PGR Preview: Top 5 Programs in Early Modern Philosophy: 18th Century

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 5 programs in early modern  philosophy:  18th Century (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

Class, education and political divides across different countries

This is an interesting resource.

Richard Marshall interviews G.W.F. Hegel (Berlin)...

...at 3:16 AM.

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 3 Programs in Applied Ethics

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 3 programs in applied ethics (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 6 Programs in Mathematical Logic

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 6 programs in mathematical logic (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 11 in Metaethics & Moral Psychology

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 11 programs in metaethics and moral psychology (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

In Memoriam: Bernard Rollin (1943-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 21--UPDATED

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at Colorado State University, where he was emeritus, Professor Rollin was well-known for his work on animal rights and ethics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  An informative obituary here.  (Thanks to Moti Gorin for the pointer.)

New Open Access Journal: The Journal of Spinoza Studies

The Journal of Spinoza Studies (from the University of Groningen Press) will be edited by Professors Andrea Sangiacomo (University of Groningen) and Kristin Primus (UC Berkeley):

JSS is open access and authors will retain copyright under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. JSS does not charge any submission fees.

JSS will publish two issues per year. The first issue, a collection of invited short essays on the future of Spinoza scholarship, will appear on Spinoza’s 390^th birthday, November 24, 2022.

JSS is now accepting submissions for the second issue and beyond. Submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words (including references and footnotes). Although all articles will appear in English, submissions may be written in Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Please visit the JSS website for more information on the journal’s review process and language policy.

(Today marks the 389th anniversary of Spinzoa's birth!)

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 9 Programs in Decision, Rational Choice, & Game Theory

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 9 programs in decision, rational choice, and game theory (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):

"Cancelling Professor Tenure Act" in South Carolina

That's  literally the name of the legislation sponsored by 22 Republicans that would end tenure going forward, replacing it with 5-year-contracts.   (At least some lawyers explained to them that revoking tenure for existing faculty would be a breach of contract!)   It would also require all faculty (except in graduate-only departments, like law schools or medical schools) to each 2 courses each semester, which is not the norm in the natural sciences, where most faculty run labs. 

When Thatcher eliminated tenure at the universities in the UK in the late 1980, Parliament enacted a law protecting academic freedom.  Don't expect that to happen in the South Carolina case, although faculty at public universities could still assert a constitutional right to academic freedom.  The argument against eliminating tenure that seems to succeed most often with legislatures is cost and competitiveness:  tenure is important non-monetary compensation for faculty, and it will be hard to recruit them without paying them a lot more if the state schools do not offer tenure.

None of these "fictions" have anything to do with "leftism"...

...which Professor McWhorter would know if he read more Adolph Reed, but that aside, he's plainly correct and it's good to say it out loud in the NYT; an excerpt:

That selective schools regularly admit Black students with adjusted standards is undeniable. Examples include “Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program” — as U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch described it last year — and the circumstances of the well-known Gratz v. Bollinger Supreme Court decision, where this aspect of the admissions process was widely aired, as among a number of other cases over the past few decades....

PGR 2021 Preview: Top 5 Programs in 20th-Century Continental Philosophy

Continuing with the specialty previews, below the fold are the top 5 programs in 20th-century Continental philosophy (with median and mode scores in parentheses after each school's name):