Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Blast from the past: the 20 most important philosophers of all time

Results of a poll back in 2009, along with reader comments. 

Noam Chomsky talks about the history and philosophy of linguistics...

...at Robinson's Podcast.

On the situation at Bowling Green

I try not to comment on internal departmental matters, unless there is substantial information in the public sphere (or I have substantial information that I have permission to share).  Thus, while I have noted some developments at Bowling Green, I have not weighed in on the merits, because there simply is not enough public information for doing so.  Alas, this has not stopped others, for example, here and here.  These accounts both adopt the perspective of Professor Christian Coons, whose job is on the line at Bowling Green.  His perspective may, in fact, be wholly correct, I simply do not know (it wins support from other public comments on social media by former faculty [Molly Gardner] and graduate students [David Faraci]).  What gives me pause is the following information that is also in the public record:

Q(uirky) S(illiness) philosophy rankings for 2023 are here

As usual, the primary explanation for the results is the geographical distribution of the respondents (which they won't disclose), and it would seem this year, the areas of respondents (formal philosophers/philosophers of science were probably over-represented--although, again, there is no disclosure).  QS is a dubious operation, as I've noted before, and it really is a shame that this stuff is probably influencing student decisions.

Stanford Law Dean issues detailed statement regarding the disruption of a talk by a federal judge...

...and it's a model for administrators dealing with student disruptions and free expression issues on campus.

Lateral moves/retirements (etc.) since the 2021 Philosophical Gourmet Report: 2023 edition

In addition to the separate posts announcing (generally tenured) faculty moves, I will keep a running list of all lateral moves (and retirements and deaths) not reflected in the faculty lists for the last PGR (some moves that took place after the last PGR were reflected in the faculty list, because the editors knew of them).  I will start a new list for each academic year, so that the list does not get unwieldy.  (The 2022 list is here, with a couple of late additions in bold.)  Unless otherwise noted, the appointment (or retirement) takes effect in 2023.  I will move this to the front periodically, putting recent additions in bold.  Untenured lateral moves will be noted as such, otherwise the move is with tenure.  A lateral move is one from one tenure-stream position to another either into or out of a program offering the PhD or terminal MA.  In addition I will list retirements and also deaths of non-emeritus faculty.  Please e-mail me with additions or corrections.

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

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

*Martha Bolton (early modern philosophy) will retire from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in July 2023.

*Robert Bolton (ancient philosophy) will retire from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in July 2023.

*Pascal Brixel (social & political philosophy, ethics, Marx & Marxism) from Clemson University to Northwestern University (untenured lateral).

*Amber Carpenter (ancient Greek and Indian philosophy) from Yale/National University of Singapore College to Boston University.

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

*Ann Cudd (feminist philosophy, social & political philosophy) from University of Pittsburgh (where she is Provost) to Portland State University (to become President).

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

*Stacie Friend (aesthetics, philosophy of language & mind) from Birkbeck College, University of London to the University of Edinburgh.

*Michael Garnett (social & political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of action) from Birkbeck College, University of London to King's College, London.

*Ken Gemes (philosophy of science, Nietzsche, Freud) will retire from Birkbeck College, University of London in July 2023.

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

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

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

*Susan James (early modern philosophy, feminist philosophy) will retire from Birkbeck College, University of London in July 2023.

*Hannah Kim (aesthetics, metaphysics, Asian philosophy, existentialism) from Macalaster College to the University of Arizona (untenured lateral).

*Claire Kirwin (ethics, metaethics, aesthetics, Nietzsche) from Clemson University to Northwestern University (untenured lateral).

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

*Michael Kremer (history of analytic philosophy, logic) will retire from the University of Chicago at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

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

Sober wins PhilInBioMed Award from the University of Bordeaux

Dr. Thomas Pradeu (Boredeaux) writes:

The PhilInBioMed Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the advancement of biology or medicine through the use of philosophical and theoretical tools. To complement this recognition, the laureate receives a prize of €5,000, which is awarded by the PhilInBioMed Institute in Bordeaux, France. 

We are pleased to announce that the first laureate of the PhilInBioMed Award is Elliott Sober, who is the Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. 

The ceremony will be held at the University of Bordeaux, France on June 12^th, 2023.  

Issues with the Marie-Curie postdoc from the European Commission?

A young philosopher elsewhere writes:

I was awarded a (Global) Marie-Curie Postdoctoral fellowship by the European Commission. ("Global" here means that there is an outgoing phase - of two years - outside the EU and then a return phase inside the EU.) The participation of UK institutions in the program was contingent on the UK signing an agreement with the European Commission. They failed to do so in time (and as far as I know, they still haven't signed it.) As part of a contingency plan, UK Research and Development took over the funding of all the fellowships which had been awarded to researchers whose host institutions were in the UK. As my host institution in the EU is based in the UK, UKRI is funding my project. I have met/I am meeting a variety of challenges.

I would think that other philosophers who have been awarded the same fellowship have their host institution in the UK. I would be interested in hearing from your readers about this. Do they know about someone who is in the same situation/are they in the same situation? I would also be interested in knowing what kind of challenges they have had/have to meet.

Comments are open.  Readers may post anonymously, but please use a real email, which will not appear.

What is it like to be a philosopher? Gregg Caruso edition

Here.

Blast from the past: the surprising positives/negatives about becoming a professional philosopher

Back in 2015, with many comments from readers.

Paul Woodruff discusses philosophy and war...

...at Robinson's Podcast.  Professor Woodruff, now emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught for nearly fifty years, served in the army in Vietnam.

Philosopher Ann Cudd as Provost at Pitt

As recently noted, she will soon become President of Portland State University.  At Pittsburgh, she had a rough run.  A reader at Pittsburgh also flagged the following for me:

Ann Cudd, philosopher, University of Pittsburgh provost, and soon-to-be president of Portland State University, responded publicly today to demands to cancel campus events featuring controversial speakers. The decision, for now, is the right one, and Provost Cudd seems to grasp the correct rationale for it. But the statement quickly veers into a familiar sort of DEI homily. Provost Cudd openly advertises her political views and implies that the university itself condemns the speech in question (at one point suggesting it represents a "misunderstanding"). The statement culminates in the following fervent pronouncement:

“One fact is unshakable and unchangeable: Before, during, and after these events, our touchstones—the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion—will continue to not only persist and sustain us but will gain even more strength."

Now Pitt's mission statement doesn't so much as mention these so-called touchstones. That aside, I was struck by the religious quality of the statement. I did time at a conservative, religious-affiliated university. To my ear, the grandiose, moralizing tone is unmistakable. I hope that Provost Cudd, and whoever follows her at Pitt, will continue to uphold free expression on campus. This kind of official sermonizing, which in effect raises the stakes for students who oppose the DEI line, does not inspire confidence. 

Santana from Utah to Penn

Carlos Santana (philosophy of science [esp. biology, cognitive science, and linguistics], environmental philosophy), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah, has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania (where he did his PhD), effective this fall.   He will join Michael Weisberg and Quayshawn Spencer at Penn, making for one of the strongest philosophy of biology groups in the U.S.

More on the case of Professor Wax at Penn...

...at my law school blog.

20 years ago, the U.S. launched the criminal war of aggression against Iraq...

...and its perpetrators are still free, having never been punished.   Here's what I wrote about the whole insanity back in 2004:

Less than nine months after fundamentalist religious zealots inflicted mass casualties on the civilian population of the United States, and only about six months after the U.S. toppled the regime that harbored them, a country of no consequence or relevance to the safety of the United States--a country hated by the fundamentalist religious zealots for its secular ideology and its Western treatment of women, a country with a devastated economy and crippled military, a country that the U.S. and Britain regularly bombed (since it didn't even have sovereign control over all its own terriroty), a nation half of whose population were children, a country which the US outspent on military might 400 to 1--this country was suddenly declared the most pressing threat to the U.S. and world peace.

Less than nine months after fundamentalist religious zealots inflicted mass casualties on the civilian population of the United States, and only about six months after the U.S. toppled the regime that harbored them, a country of no consequence or relevance to the safety of the United States--a country hated by the fundamentalist religious zealots for its secular ideology and its Western treatment of women, a country with a devastated economy and crippled military, a country that the U.S. and Britain regularly bombed (since it didn't even have sovereign control over all its own terriroty), a nation half of whose population were children, a country which the US outspent on military might 400 to 1--this country was suddenly declared the most pressing threat to the U.S. and world peace.

Canary in the coal mine: threats against federal judges on the rise...

...as judges seek to scrub personal information from the Internet.

Richard Marshall interviews Hermann Cohen (the NeoKantian)...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Fred F. Wilson (1937-2023)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 15--SOME REALLY INTERESTING REMEMBRANCES OF PROF. WILSON

Professor Wilson, a longtime member of the philosophy faculty at the University of Toronto (where he was emeritus), died in January.  He wrote widely on issues in the history of modern philosophy and science.  The Toronto memorial notice is here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Wilson or who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Will Sweet for the pointer.)

BJHP "Best Article" prize for 2022

Alix Cohen, co-editor of the British Journal of the History of Philosophy, shared this announcement [link to Prof. Kremer fixed, I had copied and pasted what was sent]:

The British Journal for the History of Philosophy has awarded the 2022 Rogers Prize—its annual prize for the best article it publishes—to Michael Kremer (University of Chicago) for his paper “Margaret MacDonald and Gilbert Ryle: a philosophical friendship”

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Savoy Brown, "Leavin' Again," 1970

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 17, 2016

Part of the British blues explosion of the late 1960s, Savoy Brown enjoyed some modest success in both the UK and the US circa 1969-1972, before three members of the band (Dave Peverett, Roger Earl, and Tony Stevens) left and went on to greater fame and fortune in the mid-1970s with Foghat.  This tune was re-recorded by Foghat, but this is the Savoy Brown version.

 

 

"Woke" explained

A very perceptive essay by Freddie deBoer, a man of the actual left:

“Woke” or “wokeness” refers to a school of social and cultural liberalism that has become the dominant discourse in left-of-center spaces in American intellectual life. It reflects trends and fashions that emerged over time from left activist and academic spaces and became mainstream, indeed hegemonic, among American progressives in the 2010s. “Wokeness” centers “the personal is political” at the heart of all politics and treats political action as inherently a matter of personal moral hygiene - woke isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. Correspondingly all of politics can be decomposed down to the right thoughts and right utterances of enlightened people. Persuasion and compromise are contrary to this vision of moral hygiene and thus are deprecated. Correct thoughts are enforced through a system of mutual surveillance, one which takes advantage of the affordances of internet technology to surveil and then punish. Since politics is not a matter of arriving at the least-bad alternative through an adversarial process but rather a matter of understanding and inhabiting an elevated moral station, there are no crises of conscience or necessary evils.

Philosopher Dirk Baltzy on Stoicism...

...at rhizastance.

Philosopher David Enoch (Hebrew U) arrested during protests against the government's attack on the judiciary

Photo and details here (in Hebrew, but the "translate" function gives you a pretty good sense for what transpired).  Professor Enoch went to jail on a prior occasion for refusing to be called up as a reservist in protest over Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.

(Thanks to Ori Herstein for the pointer.)

Israel's "constitutional crisis": the "Alon solution"

Alon Harel (Hebrew U) and Alon Klement (Tel-Aviv U) propose a solution:  Download Separating substance from procedure (1) (003)

Reader comments on their proposal are welcome from interested readers.  Signed comments (full name, valid e-mail address) will be strongly preferred.

"Philosophy of Science Office Hour" sponsored by the PSA

This is a nice idea:

[T]he PSA is introducing the ‘PSA Office Hour’ as a pilot project. Each month, for some months of the year, a philosophical theme will be chosen and two influential philosophers working within that theme will be made available, individually, to graduate students via Zoom through online sign-up sheet posted on the PSA member website The students will select from the following categories that which best describes what they seek out of the opportunity:

• Input on dissertation topic choice
• Guidance on a problem occurring in own research
• Clarification on an issue within professor’s research
• Other (please describe)

and be invited to write a short paragraph in which they describe in more detail what they would like to discuss with the professor. Up to 6 students will be selected to participate in the office hour, where the selection will be made to maximize thematic cohesion and promote resource redistribution. Office hours will last up to 90 minutes and participants must be current members of the PSA. This opportunity is primarily for graduate students, but postdocs are free to apply as well.

Do any other philosophy organizations do this?

Blast from the past: how should we respond to "analytic metaphysics"?

Back in 2016.

Libet, free will, and more

Philosophers Julian Baggini, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and others discuss at IAITV.

Noam Chomsky (and colleagues) express skepticism about ChatGPT

Here; an excerpt:

The human mind is not, like ChatGPT and its ilk, a lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching, gorging on hundreds of terabytes of data and extrapolating the most likely conversational response or most probable answer to a scientific question. On the contrary, the human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant system that operates with small amounts of information; it seeks not to infer brute correlations among data points but to create explanations.

"Human Nature Forum"

A new website of videos, projects, and discussion fora (via Edouard Machery).

In Memoriam: Ernst Tugendhat (1930-2023)

Professor Tugendhat was an early and influential proponent of "analytic" style linguistic philosophy in Germany, but also wrote influentially on Husserl and Heidegger.  He taught at a number of German universities during his career, including Heidelberg and the Free University of Berlin. There is an obituary in English here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Tugendhat or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

UPDATE:  A statement of condolences regarding Professor Tugendhat from the German President!  (Thanks to Christian Beyer for the pointer.)

Philosopher Susan Wolf on happiness and the meaning of life...

...at rhizastance.

The war on universities and academic freedom comes to Texas

This Texas Tribune article gives a useful overview of the mischief afoot; here are the three main legislative initiatives:

A bill filed Friday in the Texas Senate would prohibit public colleges and universities from awarding tenure to professors hired after September, legislation that critics have said would make it extremely difficult for the state to recruit top faculty and negatively impact the reputation of its higher education institutions.

The bill, filed by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, is one of three pieces of legislation in Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s list of priorities for higher education this session.

Creighton also filed a bill that would prohibit Texas’ higher education institutions from considering diversity, equity and inclusion when hiring new employees. The third bill, filed by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would prohibit faculty members from teaching that any race, ethnicity, sex or political belief is "inherently superior to another."

Only the second bill would actually promote academic freedom; the fact that it keeps company with the other two bills makes clear that academic freedom and free expression are not the goals at all:  the goal is to suppress perceived "liberalism" in the universities, the First Amendment be damned.

 

Richard Marshall interviews Macchiavelli...

...at 3:16 AM.

Austria awards nearly 9 million Euros for an "excellence cluster" project on "Knowledge in Crisis"

The project is led by philosopher Tim Crane (CEU), with participants from the Universities of Vienna, Graz, and Salzburg.  On twitter, Professor Crane reports that with matching funds, they will have about 15 million Euros over the next five years for the project.

"What good is philosophy?"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 23--NOW UPDATED WITH THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

An online conference to "raise the funds required to establish a Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy."

(Thanks to Aaron Wendland for the pointer.)

The proposed "constitutional putsch" in Israel

Philosopher and legal scholar Alon Harel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) comments:  Download Harel 2023 Proposed Constitutional Revolution12. 

More on intuitions and reality...

...a rejoinder to Machery, from Nevin Climenhaga, also at IAITV.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: In memory of David Lindley (1944-2023)

The multi-instrumentalist (best-known for mastery of dozens of string instruments) died on March 3.  He was well-known within the rock world for the work he did with Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Rod Stewart, among others, in the 1970s (it's his slide guitar on, for example, Browne's hit "Running on Empty").  But his most interesting work, in my book, was in the 1960s with Kaleidescope, which I've featured periodically over the years.  So here's a retrospective:

Kaleidescope, "Egyptian Garden," the lead number from their debut album in 1967:

The Stanford Law School "heckler's veto" incident involving a conservative judge

For those interested, there is more at my law school blog.

In Memoriam: John G. Slater (1930-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 17--UPDATED

Professor Slater, a well-known expert on the life and work of Bertrand Russell, died in November from Covid.  He taught philosophy at the University of Toronto for more than 30 years, where he was emeritus since 1995.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Slater or who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Mohan Matthen for the information.)

UPDATE:  The Toronto memorial notices is here.

Pope Benedict's engagement with Nietzsche

This is curious.  His rejoinders to Nietzsche are remarkably feeble, and suggest his engagement did not run very deep--perhaps unsurprisingly!

(Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)

Deciding Between Admissions Offers: The Importance of Visiting/Talking With Current Students

MOVING TO FRONT FROM LAST YEAR (SINCE TIMELY AGAIN--originally posted March 6, 2009)

Applicants to PhD and MA programs are now receiving offers of admission and, if they are lucky, are beginning to weigh choices between different departments.  I want to reiterate a point made in the PGR, namely, that students are well-advised to talk to current students at the programs they are considering.   There are often things you will want to know that you won't glean from familiarity with the excellence of the faculty's work, even if that remains the most important, if defeasible, reason for choosing a particular department.  Here are some examples of information that no ranking, no departmental brochure, and no "official" departmental representive will tell you about; all of these are drawn from stories I've heard from students over the last few years about ranked departments (the departments will remain unnamed, obviously).  You can think of them as representing "types" of problems you should be aware of before enrolling.  I've tweaked some of the details to protect identities.

The Absent Faculty:  Are the faculty who look so good on paper actually around and interested in working with students?  I heard a story about a key senior person in one department who is an alcoholic, and who simply ignored his students.  In another department, almost all the graduate students had to sign an open letter to the faculty a number of years ago protesting the failure of faculty to return graded papers and their general lack of interest in mentoring the students.   In yet another department, a well-known senior member of the faculty spent so much time travelling and lecturing around the world, that he rarely had time to review or discuss work carefully with students. 

The Sexual Predator Faculty:  Are women treated as young philosophers and aspiring professionals, or do faculty regularly view them as a potential source for dates and sexual liasons?  It's a bit shocking to realize that this is still a live issue in some departments, but, sadly, it is.  Are faculty-student sexual relations common in the department?  What happens when the relations end?  Are there repeated cases of sexual harassment complaints against faculty in the department?  Do they ever result in discipline?  I suppose it is possible this could be an issue for male students, but all the reports I've gotten over the years have been from women victimized by male faculty. 

Blast from the past: On the pursuit of "novelty" in jurisprudence and normative philosophy

Back in 2015, and as true today as then.

What the mindless "diversity blather" misses about serious pedagogy

I've received many appreciate messages about my response to the confused CHE piece on diversity and academic freedom.  This part of one message is worth sharing, since it captures, I suspect, what many find so offensive about the requirement of "diversity statements":

My entire career, my student body has been extraordinarily diverse.  In fact, I would estimate that north of 80% of my students have been Hispanic and/or black.  I am a middle-aged, white male.  While the ideologues might find it shocking, reviews from my students consistently tell of my genuine care for them, my accessibility, the respect that I show them, the sometimes life-changing experience that they had in their time with me.  Need I catalog in a "diversity statement" my commitment to those students or to those I might teach elsewhere?  What I do has nothing to do with such a concept.  It stems entirely from the fact that they are my students, from the fact that I am invested in their goals, their dreams, their success, regardless of their age, sex, race, sexual activities, politics, or ideologies.

More on the brazen attack on tenure and academic freedom in Florida...

...from the United Faculty of Florida.

In Memoriam: J.N. Mohanty (1928-2023)

Professor Mohanty, who was emeritus at Temple University, wrote widely on Kant and Husserl, as well as on classical Indian philosophy.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Mohanty or who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Matt Kramer for the information.)

UPDATE:   Professor Wolfsdorf, Chair of the Temple Department, kindly shared the memorial notice, which is below the fold

QAnon continues to thrive in the heart of the Republican Party

This is just bizarre; here's a small taste:

ReAwaken America is sort of - it's a very popular pro-Trump road show, essentially, that travels the country. And it's all of these conspiracy theorists under the banner, as you said, of Michael Flynn and a guy named Clay Clark, who's a Tulsa radio host, who's sort of a - slash sort of entrepreneurship guru. And so it's stocked with a lot of - it's a lot of kind of COVID quacks, a lot of people, you know, pushing ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and a lot of leading QAnon figures. I went to its first event for the book in Tulsa in 2021. And I, you know, I kind of slipped past security. They said they were going to have a lot of security to keep out media and antifa because they were convinced that, you know, antifa would travel to suburban Tulsa to wreak havoc.

On the use of "fascism" in America

The historian Bruce Kuklick doesn't have very good intellectual judgment (as those who've read his work on the history of philosophy in America will know), but he has compiled some interesting stuff in his latest book on "fascism" in American political discourse; an excerpt:

[E]ven at this early stage in its history, fascism functioned as more than a neutral descriptor; it instead acted as a “foul noun of preference” that Americans “deployed … against anyone with whom they disagreed politically.” The most popular targets of opprobrium were President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal. At various points in the 1930s, a number of notable figures derided FDR or the New Deal as “fascist,” including liberal philosopher John Dewey (who worried FDR was creating a “police state”), socialist politician Norman Thomas (who worried FDR was beginning to resemble Mussolini), former Republican President Herbert Hoover (who likewise worried FDR was too similar to European dictators), and populist Senator Huey Long (who worried FDR was too close to the business class). But the president was hardly the only one ridiculed in this fashion. As Kuklick highlights, until the U.S. entry into World War II, “everyone called anyone a fascist.”

Agnes Callard profiled in The New Yorker

Here, complete with all the details of her complicated personal life!  But they missed the opportunity to include a photo of her office!

Tim Maudlin talks about laws of nature, absolute space, free will, and more...

...at Robinson's Podcast.