Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: what is an "area of competence" for CV purposes?

Back in 2007.

On the changing demographics of who is voting Democratic and Republican in the US

Two interviews with David Shor, one at Politico, one at New York Magazine (thanks to Benj Hellie for flagging the latter).  Shor doesn't seem to know much about the empirical literature on voter behavior, but there are still many interesting observations.  Some highlights from the first interview:

Politics is fundamentally about splitting the country in half. And if college-educated white people are 4 percent of the electorate, like they were in the immediate post-World War II era, you can’t do that. But if they are 38 or 40 percent, suddenly you can. So, it’s unsurprising that as the education share has gone up, we’ve seen this happen.

If you think mechanically about the reinforcing currents that caused this, as college-educated white people enter the Democratic Party and become an increasingly large share of the Democratic Party while the reverse happens to Republicans, that naturally is going to influence who wins party primaries and what kind of people win internal party fights. In practice — given the fact that college-educated whites donate at disproportionate rates and volunteer at disproportionate rates — I think it’s going to be very hard for Democrats to resist the pull of catering to their preferences, which is naturally going to lead to losing votes among people who aren’t them: not just non-college educated whites, but, as we as we saw this cycle, also non-white voters....

There is a broader trend, though, that as college-educated white people become a larger share of the Democratic coalition and a larger share of the Democratic voice, they do pull the party on cultural issues. Non-college educated white people have more culturally in common with working-class Black and working-class Hispanic voters. So, it should be unsurprising that as the cultural power of college-educated white people increases in the Democratic Party, non-white voters will move against us.

On Brandom's philosophy

A lucid essay from earlier this year giving an introductory overview of the work of Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh).

Blast from the past: smoking a liability on the job market?

Back in 2008.  The comments go on to discuss other odd habits, like being a vegan!

Wuhan after the lockdown

An interesting study; among the findings of note:

(1)  "All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified."

(2) "The detection rate of asymptomatic positive cases was very low, and there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts. There were no asymptomatic positive cases in 96.4% of the residential communities.  Previous studies have shown that asymptomatic individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus were infectious³, and might subsequently become symptomatic⁴. Compared with symptomatic patients, asymptomatic infected persons generally have low quantity of viral loads and a short duration of viral shedding, which decrease the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2⁵. In the present study, virus culture was carried out on samples from asymptomatic positive cases, and found no viable SARS-CoV-2 virus. All close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases tested negative, indicating that the asymptomatic positive cases detected in this study were unlikely to be infectious."

(I came across this via the Twitter feed of the word's dumbest journalist, Alex Berenson, who (1) didn't realize that the study shows, among other things, that lockdowns work, something dumb-dumb likes to deny [how could they not work, we know how the virus is transmitted, and it requires people to come into contact with other people; that doesn't mean lockdowns are also worth the costs]; and (2) dumb-dumb also declared that the study shows that, "Asymptomatic spread isn’t real = masking healthy people is useless," but the study shows nothing of the kind:  it shows that asymptomatic people who don't go on to develop symptoms appear not to infect others; as the study notes, we have evidence that asymptomatic people who go on to develop symptoms are infectious.)

Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine: 70% effective on average

Another two-dose vaccine, that was 90% effective in the group that got a half-dose first, and then a full dose second (but less effective in the group that got a full dose each time).  Note that in this trial they also checked for asymptomatic infections.   Various experts comment here.

On Schopenhauer's pessimism

A nicely written essay by philosopher David Bather Woods (Warwick).

Hong Kong's slide into a police state

This is appalling:

Hong Kong police claim they have received more than 2,500 tip-offs since the launch of a hotline for people to report suspected breaches of the city’s sweeping national security law.

The multi-platform hotline, which opened on Thursday, allows Hong Kongers to report information directly to national security police via text message, email, or WeChat.

A police spokesman told the Guardian that by Friday morning the force had received more than 2,500 pieces of information. The hotline can accept audio, videos, photographs and texts, and contributors will remain anonymous and receive no replies once they have submitted their tips, police said.

While many countries have law enforcement tip lines, Hong Kong’s has been denounced by critics as reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution, when neighbours were encouraged to monitor and inform on each other.

The broadly defined national security law, imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in June, criminalises a wide range of acts on the grounds of subversion, secession, foreign collusion or terrorism.

Blast from the past: Inflated letters of recommendation

A discussion, back in 2011.

(The first link in the 2011 post isn't working:  it goes to this earlier post about the "code" in which letters of recommendation are too often written.)

North Dakota leads the world...

...in recent deaths per capita from COVID.  1 out of every 1,000 residents has died from COVID.  Unsurprisingly, North Dakota has done very little in the way of mitigation efforts throughout this catastrophe.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Tucky Buzzard, "Time Will Be Your Doctor," 1971

British hard/progressive rock band active in the early 1970s and produced by Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones.  This is probably their best-known number:

 

 

In Memoriam: Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-2020)

A longtime member of the MIT faculty, Professor Thomson was best-known for her contributions to applied ethics (most famously 1971's "A Defense of Abortion"), but also wrote widely in political philosophy, metaethics, metaphysics and other topics.  There is a brief biography here and a more philosophical biography here.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

How in the world does a serious university appoint a serial sexual harasser as Provost?

University of Michigan better do some serious self-scrutiny over this fiasco.  And how did he fly under the radar for so long?

Philosophy (and History) under attack at Western Sydney University

Some background from Western Sydney historian Alison Downham Moore:

Today I was invited along with 6 of my history colleagues and 5 of my philosophy colleagues to meetings with our Dean in which we were told that our positions will be affected by a staff-change plan to be implemented by the higher administration of our university before the end of this year. This plan proposes that theses 7 historians and 5 philosophers must reduce their numbers to 5 and 3 respectively. If the university does not receive 4 voluntary retirements from among this group of accomplished scholars who are mostly in the 35-50 year age-range, then within next few weeks they will make ALL of our positions redundant and force us to apply in a competitive process for the newly reduced number of positions. 

To place this in context, Western Sydney University has NOT been dramatically financially impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, due in part to its high ratio of local to international students and to the large number of online teaching-units we have been offering for many years already.

Philosopher Rebecca Tuvel (Rhodes) talks about virtual sex, race, and gender...

...on the Brain in a Vat podcast.

Susan Haack exacts her revenge...

...under the guise of an intellectual autobiography.  Some of the revenge is amusing, but it does bring to mind the even more extreme "score settling" in Ted Honderich's autobiography.  Two things that lept out at me.  First, her praise for her own "independence" of mind often reflects a rather parochial conception of philosophy, and can look rather like the narcissism of small differences to someone with broader horizons.  (In other respects, she has indeed followed her own path, and avoided political fashions.)   Second, it struck me as funny that she proclaimed her own aversion to "self-promotion":  anyone of the right age can recall when the New York Review of Books ran month-after-month-after-month an ad for her book Evidence and Inquiry, an ad that no publisher would have paid for.   Self-promotion on social media can hardly hold a candle to that!

ADDENDUM:  In order to access Professor Haack's essay, you may need to create a free SSRN account:  go here, click to download, then follow the instructions.

"How academia resembles a drug gang"

Perversely amusing.

The Governor of California should resign

What a disgrace.  It's pretty easy not to have a dinner in a restaurant while people are dying from an infectious disease and you're requiring everyone else to not do this.   He should be crucified for this selfish stupidity.

On Brentano, the teacher

Linguist John Goldsmith (Chicago) comments.

ADDENDUM:  Two caveats:  (1) Professor Goldsmith treats "continental philosophy" as equivalent to 20th-century philosophy in the phenomenological tradition, which is an idiosyncratic usage, even if phenomenology was very important to one strand of philosophy on the European Continent in the 20th-century (it was largely irrelevant to the Marxian traditions in philosophy in the 20th-century); (2) what he calls "the Law of Dynasties" is almost certainly a sociological artifact, as he briefly suggests it might be, and there are many dramatic exceptions (e.g., Frege or Nietzsche).

What is wrong with the people in Farmington, Missouri?

Their local public health official  received threats because she is trying to implement simple measures to reduce the spread of COVID.  It got so bad, she resigned and moved.  Farmington is about 75 mile from St. Louis.  What is wrong with the people there?  I hope to God I never have to set foot in that place, or any place so benighted.

The "Be Kind" mantra on the "left"

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) comments.  We encountered related nonsense in philosophy cyberspace a few years back from Jenny Saul & co. at their now defunct blog:  as the late John Gardner remarked, "'be nice' is truly the new slogan of the vindictive and intolerant."

"Benford's law" and the election results

In right-wing crazy land, one of the "ideas" floating around is that Benford's Law shows that there's something suspicious about the electoral results in Chicago for Biden.  This is a nice, patient explanation of why this is all nonsense, as one might have suspected:

 

The latest on the Pfizer vaccine...

...from Statnews.  Between Pfizer and Moderna's vaccine, it looks like about 6-7% of the U.S. population may get vaccinated before the end of the year, which is better than nothing of course.  Hopefully by summer, it will be possible to vaccinate most of the population that wants it (states can mandate vaccinations, and hopefully some will, with exceptions only for health reasons).

Still to be determined, of course, is how long the protective effect of the vaccine lasts.  Does anyone know of any preliminary data or informed estimates?

Right-wing paramilitary group in US, "Oath Keepers," says it will not recognize Biden Presidency...

...or the legitmacy of any laws it enacts.  This is par for the course for not-so-cryptic fascists and reactionaries, but one concern in this instance is that this organization claims to have members who are currently involved with law enforcement.  Most likely these are elected sheriffs in the boondocks, but no one really knows.

British Journal of Aesthetics celebrates 60 years...

...with commentaries on important papers that appeared in the journal; both the commentaries and paeprs are currently available for free.

(Thanks to Nick Riggle for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein...

...at 3:16 AM.

The human need for art in desperate circumstances

Philosopher Sarah Fine (King's College, London) comments.

As long as we're on "myths" in legal philosophy...

...how about the myth that there is a problem for legal positivism presented by the so-called "normativity" of law or the more recent myth that Hart made any kind of "category mistake" in his account of social rules or the rule of recognition.  The former myth is somewhat understandable, the latter one not.  General jurisprudence--philosophical inqiry into the nature of law and the relationship between law and morality--has made a lot of progress since 1961, it's a shame to see it set back by confusions and sometimes nonsense.

 

The myth that H.L.A. Hart had a "practice theory" of rules

I sure hope this paper will retire the myth.

Far more rural whites thought Trump cared about "people like them" than thought Biden did

Is it because they're racist?  Some no doubt are, but it turns out the majority also want to create pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, make police legally accountable for misconduct, and view white supremacists as a threat, among other striking findings.

The Moderna COVID vaccine

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SEE COMMENT BY NED BLOCK, WHICH NOTES A SERIOUS POSSIBLE OMISSION IN THIS STUDY

An informative report from Statnews:

The Moderna vaccine reduced the risk of Covid-19 infection by 94.5%. There were 95 cases of infection among patients who received placebo in the company’s 30,000-patient study. There were only five infections in patients who developed Covid-19 after receiving Moderna’s vaccine, mRNA-1273....

Moderna also released data about the number of patients who had severe Covid-19. There were 11 cases of severe disease, all of them in the placebo group — another point of encouragement for Fauci.

“There was always the concern … since the primary endpoint [of the trial] is just clinically apparent disease, how do we know it’s going to have an impact on severe disease? And the results with severe disease were striking — 11 to zero is very impressive,” he said. At the time of their data release, Pfizer and BioNTech had no severe cases in their study...

Where to go to study Nietzsche as a graduate student (mostly Anglophone world), 2020

I updated my annual recommendations here.

More on the Swedish COVID disaster: the "herd immunity" that wasn't

Here.  Of course, the Swedish disaster isn't as bad as the American one, but that's not saying much!

A question for my scientifically literate readers about biochemistry and biological chemistry

I'm asking for a relative who studied chemistry, including biochemistry, but has never taken any formal biology courses.

What is the difference between biochemistry (as a PhD subject) and biological chemistry?

Many biochemistry programs are apparently located in medical schools.  What is the difference (what are the merits?) in pursuing the PhD in a medical school as opposed to a chemistry or biochemistry department?  Is one preferable?

What are the best programs beyond the obvious ones (e.g., Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech)?  Foreign programs also welcome!

Are there good online resources for students thinking about biochemistry and/or biological chemistry for PhD study?

Thanks!  Feel free to e-mail me at bleiter@uchicago.edu if you'd prefer not to post her.e

Blast from the past: how difficult for a North American PhD to move from a job in the developing world to a North American job

Back in 2016, and probably on the mind of some job-seekers this year as well.

In Memoriam: William J. Wainwright (1935-2020)

Professor Wainwright, a leading contributor to philosophy of religion over the last half-century, was emeritus in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where he spent most of his career.  There is a brief memorial notice from the UWM department here, which links to an obituary.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Speed, Glue & Shinki, "Mr. Walking Drugstore Man," 1970

Japanese power trio led by Hendrix-inspired guitarist Shinki Chen, this is the lead number of their only album:

UPDATE:  On Twitter, Andrew Grossman points out to me that in fact they released a second album, in 1972:  some details here.

As expected, state Republican leaders won't get involved with (illegal) efforts to change the slate of the electors

Political self-preservation triumphs over criminality!

Mobility network models of COVID

People going to gyms and restaurants means trouble,  among other findings.

Blast from the past: remembering Annette Baier

Back in 2012.

Did suburbanites tired of Trump put Biden over the top?

That's the hypothesis here, and it doesn't bode well for Democrats going forward; an excerpt:

Biden was able to hit the numbers he needed in the crucial highly educated suburbs, but many of these traditionally Republican voters split their tickets down ballot, voting for the Republican in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Despite polls showing clear gains for Biden among white non-college-educated voters in the rural midwest, Democratic gains here were minimal, and in some places, like much of rural Wisconsin, Trump actually increased his margin after it had seemed like Democrats had hit rock bottom in 2016. With the hugely increased turnout, Trump actually netted more votes out of much of the rural midwest than in 2016.

Most concerningly, Democrats hemorrhaged votes among non-white working-class voters. Exit polls show Trump winning more non-white voters than any Republican in a generation. This was most apparent among Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade county, who of course have their own idiosyncratic politics. But losses among Latino voters could also be seen in huge margins in the Rio Grande valley, one of the most impoverished regions in the country, in Osceola county, Florida, and up and down the map from El Centro, California, to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Early returns also show consistent gains for Republicans among black voters across the board. Even in the crucial states Biden was able to flip, Trump reduced Democratic margins in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. These results should be setting off alarm bells among Democrats.

COVID vaccine and the universities

Next fall may be normal, but masks will probably be necessary through the Spring.

On the will to truth and the will to meaning in Nietzsche

Philosopher Ken Gemes (Birkbeck) comments.

It's hard to undo election results...

...but Trump is, as usual, doing a lot of damage that may come back to haunt us in the future.

Blast from the past: Why study history of philosophy?

Back in 2011, an open letter from Robert Pasnau (Colorado), and an extensive discussion in the comments.

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

MOVING TO FRONT (since students will soon be applying to PhD programs)--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.

The problem with polls

It's not "shy" Trump voters lying to pollsters, it's that the Trump voters aren't the kind of folks who respond to questions from pollsters (what I've been saying all along!):

[I]t turns out that people who answer surveys are really weird. They’re considerably more politically engaged than normal. I put in a five-factor test [a kind of personality survey] and they have much higher agreeableness [a measure of how cooperative and warm people are], which makes sense, if you think about literally what’s happening.

They also have higher levels of social trust. I use the General Social Survey’s question, which is, “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” The way the GSS works is they hire tons of people to go get in-person responses. They get a 70 percent response rate. We can basically believe what they say.

Richard Marshall interviews Steven French (Leeds)...

...at 3:16 AM.  Very interesting!

Mink-strain of COVID spreading to humans?

I don't know whether this is pure alarmism or whether it has some factual basis and we should worry.  Any insight from readers?

Lord Kilclooney of Northern Ireland refers to Senator and VP-Elect Kamala Harris as "the Indian"

Old habits die hard.   But seriously:  what happens if the Mick loses his peerage over this?  Who gets it?  An Indian? A Colored?  A Yid?