Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Actual Tenure Review May Be Coming to Harvard Law School

The Harvard Crimson reports that Harvard Law School may start having a real tenure review, thanks to Harvard President Larry Summers. As I've noted before, tenure standards in law schools are rather different than in the rest of the university. If Harvard Law School moves to the tenure norms of the rest of Harvard that would be extraordinary.

Which are the "best" philosophy journals?

UPDATE: I'm moving this to the top, because I would like to encourage more comments from philosophers (including reactions to comments recently posted). Thanks.

FINAL UPDATE (9/30): There's a new comment. More are welcome. I won't bring this to the top after this.

IN MEMORIAM

Edward Said (1935-2003)

The Columbia University memorial notice is here, though it says next to nothing about his important political work.

The New York Times obituary, which reverses the emphasis, is here.

9/30 UPDATE: this is one of the better memorials I've seen, courtesy of On-Line Journal.

10/1 UPDATE: Also see this site.

Law & Economics

This isn't my area, and I've only visited the site a few times, but this relatively new blog looks to be a useful resource for those interested in law and economics (and it has lots of links to other law & econ resources as well).

Synthese

The new editor of Synthese, philosopher John Symons, asked me to post the following information, after a discussion of the outrageous price of the journal on the Weatherson site. The text of his letter follows:

9/29/2003

Dear Professor Leiter,

I’ve received quite a few emails concerning the editorship and pricing of Synthese recently and am sending you and Brian Weatherson a copy of what I’ve been writing in response. If you’d like to post it, I think it might clear up a few things regarding what has been happening with Synthese over the past year and a half. Since your sites are mentioned in the emails I’ve been getting, I thought that you wouldn’t mind. Apologies if it’s a bit long for the blog format.

To begin with, many philosophers have been surprised that a young and relatively unknown philosopher has become editor of Synthese. While I have the full support of Jaakko Hintikka and the editorial board, none of us are under the illusion that I have filled Jaakko’s very big shoes. The principal reasons that I was asked to edit the journal two years ago are practical. I’ve worked on the organizational side of Synthese for many years as managing editor. At that time, I helped to reorganize the journal so as to bring it back on schedule for the first time in decades. Back in the mid-90’s Jaakko’s office was getting between 200 and 250 unsolicited papers per year, authors were waiting at least a year for a decision, and at its worst, the journal was 13 months behind schedule. The reasons for this had much to do with Jaakko’s eagerness to provide a rapidly growing number of papers with at least two referee reports and his habit of writing personal letters in response to submissions. Reorganizing the journal was a long process, but at this point, Synthese has been on schedule for three years, our review process is now entirely electronic and decisions on unsolicited manuscripts are made in an average of about three months. As referees become more familiar with the new review process, it’s getting even faster. For the most part, we continue to provide two or three referee reports to authors. Additionally, rather than having to wait for the official publication date, all forthcoming papers are now available online as soon as they go through an initial proof check (usually within a month after acceptance). These are all important developments and have made for a more responsive and dynamic journal, in my opinion. Of course popular opinion among philosophers often lags behind reality by a few years, so I continue to hear complaints that the review process is slow, etc. There are some cases where a paper is difficult to review responsibly in under three months, but those are quite rare.

Leiter Decisively Refuted at Last

My (characteristically gentle, of course) suggestion that the representation of conservatives in some disciplines some of the time might have something to do with the intellectual merits has produced much indignation, but here at last I am decisively refuted (this courtesy of my favorite group-therapy blog for Straussians):

"Leiter is a famously clueless academic who writes endless pieces about the dangers of Straussians, and of letting philosophy departments slip outside of the analytic mainstream. He is tolerated because he provides a ranking of philosophy departments that please many powerful people. They like Leiter because he keeps philosophy fairly pointless: a fine mix of sterile analysis and not-too-leftwing, but-certainly-not-rightwing opinion. Such individuals are 'conservative' in the vulgar sense: they are quite happy with the way the ship is sailing, and simply want to avoid trouble in their lifetime. They console themselves that quicker 'progress' is not possible, as dumb white America would rebel; but that, if they can just keep things on track, a 'browning' of America will occur that will eventually allow for the socialist paradise of which they have long dreamt."

The author, one "Zoa," is without doubt qualified for a career in academia, perhaps in an ethnic studies program.

More on conservatives in the academy

I found this posting of interest, from the comments section at Crooked Timber:

"As to why most academics are liberal, liberals believe in boring things like fact checking and peer review that are the nuts and bolts of scholarly life. Conservatives, especially, the Potemkin Intellectuals in right-wing think tanks, think that they already know the answers, so why bother. Look at the staff of, say, Commentary Magazine, which has come out against Darwinian evolution. Do they care about evidence? Clearly not."

One might add that National Review recently ran a scandalously incompetent review of Beckwith's apologia for creationism in the public schools, which manifests the same total incompetence with basic science. (The review, alas, is not on-line, so I can't link to it.)

More Confident Claims about Cause and Effect

Courtesy of a former colleague: "This description of countries in economic decline sounds a bit like the world of Atlas Shrugged or of the United States in the late 1970s, before Ronald Reagan turned things around" (emphasis added).

Nietzsche Blog

Philosopher John Holbo has a Nietzsche Blog, which has some interesting discussions of questions of Nietzsche interpretation, and is also interesting pedagogically, because Professor Holbo is using it in conjunction with a class on Nietzsche. This is the first instance I've encountered of this use of a blog.

American Academy of Arts & Sciences

I am periodically asked why I don't include a criterion like membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as a factor in the philosophy rankings. You can see a list of current philosophy fellows of the American Academy here. (Note that philosophy is lumped with religion and theology in this category, and that no distinction is drawn between emeritus and non-emeritus faculty.) There are several difficulties with AAAS membership as a marker of departmental quality. First, fellows are usually elected quite late in their careers, yet departmental quality is often equally a function of much younger philosophers. Second, the selection process for the AAAS is a bit incestuous, both with respect to particular departments and particular genres or sub-fields. Third, and as a consequence of the second point, AAAS membership tends to be underinclusive with respect to quality (it's less often overinclusive). Take a look again at the list of philosophers who are currently fellows, and now ask yourself whether there is a qualitative explanation why the following philosophers aren't also currently fellows: Kit Fine, Christopher Peacocke, Crispin Wright,

"The less they know, the less they know it" post of the week...

...is here, where a navel-gazing recent Yale graduate of no obvious intellectual accomplishment or depth denounces the "idiocy" of, among others, Noam Chomsky, one of the major intellectual figures of the 20th-century. (And does so, oddly, on the basis of a column by Ian Buruma, which quotes [partly out of context, but that's a different topic] various offending "anti-American" critics--Chomsky not among them--and then attributes to them views not actually supported by the quotes! Doesn't anyone read anymore?)

And so it goes in the blogosphere.

"Academic Freedom Bill of Rights"

I'm reposting this, in light of the latest salvo by the right claiming a "bias" against conservatives in the academy. As usual, the possibility that conservatives are underrepresented because of intellectual or scholarly deficiencies isn't broached (how could that topic be broached by a journalist, after all?) (Surely it is relevant to an assessment of why Straussians who work on Plato have difficulty getting hired (except in departments already infested) is that they are viewed by all other Plato scholars as sloppy and philosophically inept scholars.)

Conservatives are usually keen to deny that the absence of, say, Blacks in academia doesn't signal bias; why are they so ready to infer bias from the absence of conservatives?

Only 7% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in God, compared to 90% of the U.S. population. What should we infer?

Readers may also find the discussion here of interest.

====================

The fury of the ex-smoker towards smokers is matched only by the fury of the ex-New Leftist towards anyone to the left of Tom DeLay, which brings us to David Horowitz, and his newest initiative, which ought to scare every scholar in the United States to death. He calls it an "Academic Freedom Bill of Rights," and its text seems almost benign and uncontroversial:

"All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives. No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs."

Who could quarrel with the proposition that "No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs"?

The idea that a "plurality of methodologies and perspectives" be mandated is a bit more worrisome: should someone take the UCLA Philosophy Department to court for not having hired a postmodernist philosopher? At the University of Texas School of Law, we've also passed on a lot of postmodernists and Critical Race Theorists lately. Should we be liable as a result?

Of course, the pathological Horowitz has no interest in these issues. If you want an idea of what "academic freedom" means to him, you need only read a bit of what he has written, for example, this gem on the very same web page where the Academic Freedom Bill of Rights appears, in which he denounces "sociological flat-earthists -- Marxists, socialists, post-modernists and other intellectual radicals -- whose ideas of how societies work have been discredited by historical events" but who "can still dominate their academic fields."

I guess academic freedom doesn't encompass them.

McCarthyism was never so clever. Horowitz says:

Mark Murphy from Georgetown...

is the guest of the Law & Philosophy Program today, and a 3-hour seminar on some chapters from his book manuscript on Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics will be beginning shortly, followed by a talk in the Philosophy Department (which means not much new posting today).

An awful lot is written about natural law theory, but most of it is philosophically pretty feeble (and far too dependent on theological commitments which most writers just take for granted). The main contemporary exceptions have been John Finnis; then David Brink's and Michael Moore's efforts to exploit the new theory of reference to defend some natural law theses (though for a review of the now-standard doubts about this effort, see here); and now Murphy's work, which is extremely interesting and challenging philosophically, and moves beyond Finnis and Brink/Moore in novel ways. Look for his "state of the art" essay on natural law theory forthcoming in Legal Theory later this fall, and see also his own contribution on natural law as a tradition in ethics here.

Free Speech at Southern Methodist University

Given the facts as presented, I think Volokh is 100% right on this one.

It's a shame he wasn't so quick to come to the defense of academic freedom when left-wing speech was at issue at Stanford.
(In that case, last year, Stanford fired radical attorney Lynne Stewart from a paid short-term post as a public interest mentor for Stanford law students (to which she had been appointed based on her extensive experience in criminal defense work) explicitly because of her political views (in particular, her view that sometimes violence is justified to bring about social and economic change). In her magnanimity, Dean Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford didn't have the police remove Ms. Stewart from campus, when she agreed to perform the services for free. Professor Volokh's rationalizations in defense of this action are available at the preceding link, and in subsequent posts at his site.)

Book Censors on the March

Read about them here. Brave New World is, they charge, "pornographic" and will lead to "sexual arousal." One suspects the critics aren't familiar with the real thing on either count.

Philosopher's Annual Announces Choices for Top 10 Articles of 2002

The Philosopher's Annual has announced its choices for the top ten philosophy articles of 2002: Download file

You can see the articles chosen over the past quarter-century here. As the editors admit, choosing 10 articles is a rather daunting task. But if you look at their choices from 20-25 years ago, it's certainly the case that about 25% of the articles they picked turned out to be genuinely important--either the articles themselves (or the ideas they introduced and then incorporated in to books) are still read and discussed today. That's a pretty good track record, given the difficulty of the task. And perhaps with occasional exceptions, the articles are all ones that any student of philosophy, wanting to stay abreast of developments outside his or her main area, would benefit from reading. (Disclosure: having had an article chosen last year, I'm not a neutral observer!)

New members of PGR Advisory Board for 2004-06

UPDATED TO REFLECT 2 ADDITIONAL NEW BOARD MEMBERS

I am pleased to introduce seventeen additional distinguished philosophers who will be joining the Advisory Board of the Philosophical Gourmet Report and lending their expertise to the preparation of the 2004-06 Report. They are:

Chris Bobonich (PhD, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, and has also taught at the University of Chicago. Area: Ancient Philosophy. Books include Plato's Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2002); articles have appeared in numerous journals and edited collections.

David O. Brink (PhD, Cornell) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, and has also taught at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Case Western Reserve University. Areas: Ethics, History of Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law. Books include Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1989); articles have appeared in Philosophical Review, Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Monist, and elsewhere.

Real Scientists Speak out on the Biology Textbook Controversy

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas has more Nobel Laureates on its faculty than any medical school in the nation, as well as more than a dozen fellows of the National Academy of Sciences. Happily, these genuinely eminent scientists--contrast the coterie of "scientists" rounded up by the Discovery [sic] Institute--have penned an excellent column on the teaching of evolutionay biology here. Somehow that famed "scientific controversy" about Darwin hasn't made an impression on these leading biologists. Could it be because the controversy exists only in the minds of the Texas Taliban and their allies, the pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute?

Baylor Alums Want Discovery [sic] Institute's Poster Boy Out

Interesting development here: some Baylor alumni want Discovery [sic] Institute poster boy Francis Beckwith removed from his directorship of an Institute at Baylor that was founded on the principle of separation of church and state. As I understand their position, they are not challenging his academic appointment at the university, just his administrative position with the Institute. If Baylor were a public institution (it is not, of course), the case would call to mind City College's removal of Leonard Jeffries from the chairmanship of his department, which was eventually held not to violate the constitutional dimensions of academic freedom. Since Baylor is private, this is murkier (at least to me): I'm not sure how the AAUP principles about academic freedom would bear on this case.

IN MEMORIAM

Arthur Kinoy (1920-2003)

Progressive lawyer and law professor. The New York Times obituary is available here

Primer on Draft Resistance

Aspiring young philosophers in the U.S., concerned about our nation's belligerent posturing, may find this document of value.

Rhodes Scholars

Reading Yglesias taking issue with Andrew Sullivan's bashing of Rhodes Scholars reminded me of a dirty little secret, about which the "public" seems unaware: namely, that Oxford faculty have a quite low opinion of Rhodes Scholars from the U.S., and that the colleges fight among each other to not admit them to their college. From the Oxford faculty I've talked to over the years, the consensus is that the selection process for the Rhodes simply doesn't favor the most intellectually able or serious students. (Marshall scholars are viewed differently, at least in my experience.) Consider how few philosophers of distinction were Rhodes Scholars. I can think of only one: Thomas Nagel. Perhaps there are 2 or 3 others.

UPDATE: Nagel was not a Rhodes Scholar, but John Searle, Wilfrid Sellars, Thomas Hill, and Jeff McMahan, among others Americans, were. (Thanks to David Chalmers, Australian Rhodes Scholar, for this information.) (Why might Oxford faculty have a dim view of the intellectual merits of US Rhodes scholars? Look at the sample of writings by one recent one for an idea.)

Cause and Effect

"The acceptance of evolution is responsible for the degeneration of morals in society," said gospel preacher Mac Deever. "People are shooting at each other on the highway. Kids are being taught that they came from dirt. There is no accountability; they say, 'I'm just a product of evolutionary theory. Evolution made me what I am, can't help it.'"

Yes, indeed, one does hear that a lot these days.

UPDATE: The preacher's take on evolution is more ironic than I appreciated; see the Curmudgeonly Clerk for more.

Philosophical Joke

Thanks to one of our JD/PhD students for this one:

Why do eliminative materialists sleep so well at night?

Nothing on their mind.

LePore interviews Davidson

Quite interesting interview--interesting both biographically and philosophically-- with Donald Davidson by Ernie LePore, available here.

Bibliography of Metaethics at a new address

This excellent resource, by Jimmy Lenman, has moved with Professor Lenman to the University of Sheffield.

45 days, 10,000 page views

Averaging over 2,000 page views per week lately. And the ratio of page views to readers is? Good question.

The Libertarians on Horowitz

Good article from Reason on David Horowitz's Orwellian "Academic Freedom Bill of Rights."

"No ideas and the ability to express them: that's a journalist."

In most fields which require the ability to use words and ideas, many of those who make it to "the very top" have intellectual content and ability: this is true in law, in philosophy, in economics, and so on. But it is rather painfully not true in journalism, where, in general, "quality rises to the bottom." There are honorable exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Given that banal observation--a commonplace outside newsrooms--one might think it slightly perverse that media outlets should elevate former journalists to the role of pundits, analysts, and news commentators. The worst offender--if only because the most visible--has been The New York Times, which until fairly recently (Paul Krugman, an actual economist is the exception I can think of), has boasted op-ed columnists who were all former journalists.

Why not former scientists? sociologists? psychologists? philosophers? even political scientists? Who--other than journalists, that is--would think years of being a journalist qualifies you to have substantial opinions about the affairs of the world?

Herewith Karl Kraus (I may be mangling the aphorism slightly): "No ideas and the ability to express them: that's a journalist."

And Karl Kraus hadn't even read Thomas Friedman.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Alumni Magazines

Even though Washington University announced in its alumni magazine, sent to every law professor in America, that the political scientist Matthew McCubbins from UC San Diego would be joining them in 2004, I've received the somewhat cryptic warning from a friend of McCubbins (a reliable one, I should add) that "it won't happen." If that turns out to be right--I'll be watching that one--this means the Wash U alumni magazine will have topped the NYU Law alumni magazine for playing fast and loose with the truth. We'll see...

9/10/03 State Board of Education Hearing...

...is reported on in this entertaining article. The quotes from UT physicist and Noble Laureate Steven Weinberg are particularly good.

The word "on the street" is that the effect of the testimony of the pro-evolution/anti-Intelligent Design Baptist ministers and the heavy-hitting real scientists has swayed the two Republican Board members who haven't signed on to the Texas Taliban agenda. So perhaps students will actually get competent biology textbooks? Wouldn't that be something?

New journal: Journal of Moral Philosophy

The new Journal of Moral Philosophy has now completed filling its editorial board, and is continuing to accept submissions for its debut next year.

Law School Faculty Moves

This is the time of year when law professors are deluged with publications from law schools announcing their new faculty hires. I think I'm one of the 8 or 9 law professors in America who actually reads these things (well, given my avocation, I have to, you know). Every now and then an interesting gem turns up, as happened when Washington University's law school alumni magazine arrived.

Now schools that send alumni magazines to law professors are generally wasting their money: what law professors wants to read about the alumni of some other school? (NYU has definitely been wasting its money: its nationwide mailings of its ludicrously hyperbolic alumni magazine have coincided with a steady decline in its academic reputation in U.S. News--not for any good reason, mind you (the faculty keeps getting better), but presumably because academics find it so offensive they mark NYU down in the US News surveys.) Law professors are keen to read about other law professors, which is why the short brochure featuring new faculty makes so much more sense for a mailing to academics. But this issue of the Wash U magazine talks about new faculty hires, so I read it.

Wash U had a number of quite decent tenure-track hires, including of candidates who came across our radar screen, but for one reason or another didn't pan out for us. But the really big news was the senior hire, who will

Fodor on McDowell

A reader tells me that Fodor's review of McDowell's Mind and World is available in his collection In Critical Condition which is available via this MIT site, but for a fee. Here's the concluding paragraph of the review:

"Ever since Descartes, a lot of the very best philosophers have thought

of science as an invading army from whose depredations safe havens have

somehow to be constructed. Philosophy patrols the borders, keeping the

sciences 'intellectually respectable' by keeping them 'within ... proper

bounds.' But you have to look outside these bounds if what you care

about is the life of the spirit or the life of the mind. McDowell's is as good

a contemporary representative of this kind of philosophical sensibility as

you could hope to find. But it's all wrong headed. Science isn't an enemy,

it's just us. And our problem isn't to make a place in the world for the

mind. The mind is already in the world; our problem is to understand it."

"Don't Crap on My Car"

Tired of birds fouling your vehicle? Even if not, you'll still laugh out loud at this site, courtesy of a British ad agency. Click on "View Highlights" and then "clip 1."

The Meaning of "Texas Taliban"

I have received a handful of irate e-mails protesting the use of the term "Texas Taliban," including one from the spouse of one of those so criticized in an earlier posting. (UT law professors have more visibility than law professors at comparable schools in other states, I fear.) Why do I use the term "Texas Taliban"?

I take it the word "Taliban" has now entered our language to characterize those individuals and groups who intolerantly attempt to control the behavior, beliefs, and experiences of others. (In the first post on the subject, I captured that idea by saying the Texas Taliban want "the law of [their] God to be the law of the land.") The far-right in Texas has repeatedly done that, whether it is tampering with textbooks, imposing "moments of silence" in the schools (as a step towards imposing "prayer"--see this press release from the sponsor, with its appalling contempt for the constitutional rights of minorities), or criminalizing certain kinds of sexual behavior. By using the label "Texas Taliban," I am driving home the fact that we're not talking about the real Taliban, but rather Taliban-like attitudes within a Texan context.

Many Republicans in Texas are plainly conflicted about the Texas Taliban; there

More Talibanism, American-Style

No parodies allowed in the Taliban's America it appears.

UPDATE: Two readers suggest that this site is, itself, in fact a parody! As one put it, "I think you've been had." Indeed!

Which philosophers will be read in 100 years?

I was struck by philosopher Chris Bertram's remark, regarding Davidson's death, that "a succession of philosophical giants" have died recently, mentioning David Lewis, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Bernard Williams.

The death of David Lewis (1941-2001) was the first memorial notice posted on the Update Service, back on October 16, 2001. Since then the following memorial notices for eminent senior philosophers have appeared (in this order):

Robert Nozick (1938-2002)
R.M. Hare (1919-2002)
Jerrold Katz (1932-2002)
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)
Rogers Albritton (1924-2002)
Gordon Baker (1938-2002)
Richard Jeffrey (1926-2002)
John Rawls (1921-2002)
Paul Ziff (1920-2003)
Bernard Williams (1929-2003)
Georg Henrik von Wright (1916-2003)
Donald Davidson (1917-2003)
James Rachels (1941-2003)

Of course, shortly before I began posting memorial notices, W.V.O. Quine died as well.

All these philosophers are known to any student of the subject, and certainly Professor Bertram's list of the "giants" is not implausible, even if some might wonder: why not von Wright? Hare? Gadamer? Yet Professor Bertram's comments raise a more general issue, namely, who among philosophers of the 20th-century, including those recently lost to us, will students of philosophy still be reading at the end of the 21st-century, not simply for reasons of historical interest, but because they are really "giants"?

Oklahoma Taliban

A stellar graduate of the UT Law School writes in with the following story (from 1978):

"Having wandered through your Texas Taliban archive, I thought you might
enjoy a slightly-older anecdote:

"In third grade at [name omitted] Elementary School in [city name omitted],
Oklahoma (former HQ of [company name omitted] and so populated with a
disproportionate number of scientists) I had a teacher I rather liked
named Mrs. Smith.

"One day Mrs. Smith was teaching science and told us about the fact that
the Earth was created by God, period. 'There are some people who think
we came from monkeys,' she said, 'but they don't go to church and they
aren't Christians.' (This is very close to a direct quote; it's a
rather distinct memory.)

"Being (a) a Methodist and (b) the son of a Ph.D. electrochemist and a
mathmetician with a masters who had taught me about evolution for some
time, I thought this was rather odd. I mentioned it to my parents, being
naturally concerned about the idea that the fact that we recognized
evolution meant we were going to have to leave our church. My mom had a
rather unpleasant discussion with the school principal; Mrs. Smith
eventually took me out of the classroom for a few minutes one day and
told me that I'd clearly misunderstood her. (I hadn't.)"

"Oddly, she was never quite as friendly the rest of that year."

Another Perspective on Last Year's Hirings

Brian Weatherson, a philosopher at Brown, has offered his own comments about last year's hiring, partly in response to some of mine. He offers a useful and somewhat different perspective, which prospective students may find helpful.
Our main difference may have to do with breadth of coverage as an important feature of a strong graduate program.

More Derrida Jokes

A colleague in Australia writes that his infant daughter "is walking with ease, and starting to talk: only one-word phrases so far, but she can string meaningless noises into sentence-long strings with all the mannersms and facial expressions of understanding (she'll grow out of that phase soon enough, and avoid ending up like Derrida!)."

Houston Chronicle editorial on keeping creationism out of school textbooks

A solid editorial from the Houston Chronicle, which even borrows a few ideas from my Austin-Statesman essay from July. The Texas Taliban are bad for business.

Jerry Fodor is great

Thanks to Brian Weatherson, I discovered that Fodor's characteristically delightful demolition of one of Putnam's recent confused forays in to philosophy of mind is on-line. Can someone point me to an on-line version of Fodor's TLS (or was it also LRB?) dismembering of McDowell's 1994 Mind and World?

Many philosophers do good work in demolishing transparent nonsense, whether it is Martha Nussbaum on Judith Butler, or John Searle on Derrida. But surely the prize goes to Jerry Fodor for taking on the intellectually substantial targets--from Putnam to McDowell--and showing, repeatedly, that the emperor in fact has no clothes.

Leiter's Comments on 2002-03 Hiring Season

What follows are some personal observations on the significance and import of the faculty moves that have transpired in the last year. These reflect neither a survey nor vetting by the PGR Advisory Board. Rather, this is the kind of advice and analysis I would give to a student I was advising (and which I’ve already given, in some cases, to students who have e-mailed me). Please take it in that spirit, and seek out other advice as well.

CHANGES TO THE OVERALL RANKINGS

Most of the hirings and losses this past year will, in my judgment, produce only modest (if any) changes in the overall standing of departments and the quality of philosophical education they can offer—certainly not changes that prospective students ought to be worrying about. Here are the differences that students might notice:

NYU’s wise decision to strengthen its coverage of history of philosophy (by adding Garrett and Longuenesse)—to match its exceptional strength in various contemporary areas—pushes it ahead of Rutgers in my view, maybe even Princeton (but Princeton’s hiring of Michael Smith was a major coup). We’ll see what Princeton and Rutgers do this year.

It’s hard (indeed, probably impossible) to replace philosophers of the accomplishment of Donald Davidson, Bernard Williams and Richard Wollheim. (Note that evaluators in prior years may have already discounted for these faculty in some measure, given their age.) University of California at Berkeley seems likely to slip out of the top 15, though recent additions of good younger philosophers, plus other continuing strengths (history of philosophy, value theory, etc.), will surely keep it squarely in the top 20.

Philosophical humor

This is very funny:

Louis Witteringswine, Tractatus Fuselagico-Umbilicus

Indiana Tries to Shut Down Professor's Blog, then Reverses Itself

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, has a good post on the subject here. Since then, IU has reversed its decision, and permitted IU Professor Rasmussen to keep his comments on the university blog site.

Davidson Memorial Notices

You can find links to numerous obituaries for Donald Davidson here. The one from The Guardian has the most philosophical content, the one from The New York Times the most interesting biographical details.

Two Notable Faculty Moves

Michael Smith, one of the half-dozen-or-so most significant philosophers working in metaethics in the world, has accepted the offer from Princeton University, to begin in 2004. He will there, of course, be reunited with his former ANU colleague Philip Pettit. (Smith also taught at Princeton in the 1980s.) With Smith, Pettit, Harman, and Johnston, Princeton will now rival Michigan as an especially attractive place to work on metaethics.

Gordon Belot, a young philosopher of physics at New York University (and before that, at Princeton), is returning to the University of Pittsburgh, where he took his degree.

This information will be added to the Update Service of the PGR early next week.

No new posts before Sunday...

...since I'll be at what promises to be a very good Nietzsche conference.

Another Letter to Holt, Rinehart

Biologist and philosopher Sahotra Sarkar received a similar letter from Judith Fowler, President of Holt, Rinehart to the one I received. Professor Sarkar's reply is available here:Download file