Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Friday Poem: "Forgotten Not"

Forgotten Not

Street whose image I unlock
Bat from kidnapped household mop
Its dangling hairpiece neatly lopped
Rubber ball with heart of kangaroo
Pink as birth and always true
Borrowed glove that served for two
Old vacant lot that had no name
And all the boys who running came
Their voices ringing round the block
That held our private hall of fame

I want them back I have no shame
I want to see my curve unfurl
Caress the sculpted sewer top
Elude that naked dancing mop
And curl with triumphant pop
Into that friendly magic slot
That grinning squats behind the plate

I want to feel my body brace
And bend its endless store of grace
Into the wind before my face
And watch it send that ball of flame
To scald the sky and win the game

I want another crack at fate
To shake the sign that means too late
To shun the catcalls of the crowd
And arbiters of what’s allowed

That nameless space still holds my spot
My hand still wears that faithful glove
And days I warm its skin with love
And nights I trot that empty lot

Forgotten not forgotten not

5/3-5/28/95

Copyright 1995 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

How *Not* to Write about Phenomenology

Taylor Carman (Philosophy, Barnard/Columbia) has instructive things to say about a recent, not very satisfactory book on Merleau-Ponty.  Many of the faults Professor Carman finds in the book under review--e.g., "These sentences [from the book] seem to be spinning their wheels, repeating and recasting Merleau-Ponty's jargon, rather than advancing our understanding of either the texts or the things themselves"--could be generalized to other scholarly writing one often encounters on post-Kantian German and French philosophers.  We are, happily, living in a golden age for English-speaking scholarship on post-Kantian philosophy, though, alas, a lot of obscure and philosophically superficial work still appears.

The Voice of the Self-Appointed Keeper of the Virtues: Abort Black Babies to Reduce Crime

William Bennett, well-known reaction formation, strikes again.  (The thesis he mangles, by the way, was first put forward by Chicago economist Steven Levitt and law professor John Donohue, now of Yale; the linked discussion of Bennett's proposal for racial genocide mentions only Levitt.)  Of course, Mr. Bennett doesn't ultimately endorse racial genocide; after all, abortion is immoral!

Imperialist Schemers Confront Popular Opposition

Some excerpts from a new study:

A new poll finds that a majority of Americans reject the idea of using military force to promote democracy. Only 35% favored using military force to overthrow dictators. Less than one in five favored the US threatening to use military force if countries do not institute democratic reforms.

The effort to promote democracy in Iraq is generating little enthusiasm. Seventy-four percent (including 60% of Republicans) said that the goal of overthrowing Iraq’s authoritarian government and establishing a democracy was not a good enough reason to go to war. Seventy-two percent said that the experience there has made them feel worse about the possibility of using military force to bring about democracy in the future. Sixty-four percent (65% of Republicans) are ready to accept an Iraqi constitution that does not fully meet democratic standards and once the constitution is ratified 57% want to start withdrawing troops.

These are encouraging results since, of course, the Iraq War had and has nothing to do with democracy, humanitarian objectives, or any of the other fantasies entertained by naifs.  If some of this sentiment finally translates into election results, it may mean the rest of the world will be safe from U.S. aggression.

"Give Back the (Bush) Tax Cut"

An amusing post-Katrina political statement created by two law professors, Robert Hockett at Cornell and Daniel Markovits at Yale.  Most striking is the site's tax cut calculator which makes transparent what a giveaway to the very rich the Bush tax cuts were (of course, we knew that, but this makes it concrete).

Question du Jour

Via the always amusing and merciless Dadahead:  "[A]pproximately what percentage of right-wing bloggers do you suppose are really and truly out of their minds? I mean, not just 'crazy' in the way all right-wingers are crazy, but actually padded-room-worthy, certifiably, batshit insane." 

Congrats to these 5 Outstanding UT Students Chosen as "Human Rights Scholars" for this Academic Year!

Details here.

An Interesting Canadian Perspective on Appointing Supreme Court Justices...

from Allan Hutchinson, legal theorist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. 

On the day the next Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court will be Confirmed, Let's Recall Why He Shouldn't Be

We have been here before:  judges--and especially appellate judges, and especially Justices of the Supreme Court--are inevitably confronted with a range of issues on which they must make moral and political judgments, and thus it makes perfectly good sense to evaluate them based on their moral and political views.  A particularly powerful case against confirming Judge Roberts has just appeared; I'll quote the conclusory opening and closing paragraphs, and invite readers to consult the full article for the documentation and support:

The most intriguing question about John Roberts is what led him as a young person whose success in life was virtually assured by family wealth and academic achievement to enlist in a political campaign designed to deny opportunities for success to those who lacked his advantages. It is a question of great relevance to Roberts's candidacy for the Supreme Court. As the late Charles Black has written, no serious person is under the illusion that "a judge's judicial work is not influenced...by his sense, sharp or vague, of where justice lies in respect to the great issues of his time."

After a privileged upbringing in an Indiana suburb, attendance at an exclusive, expensive private school, high ranking at the undergraduate and law schools of Harvard, and clerkships with Federal Appeals Judge Henry Friendly and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, John Roberts took a job in the Reagan administration. There he joined in its efforts to dismantle the civil rights gains of the 1960s and 1970s....

The record made by John Roberts in his decade of public service clearly documents his single-minded focus on limiting legal protections and opportunities for African-Americans, Latinos, alien children, people with disabilities, women, and others.

There are reasons, still, to hope that as a judge he will be neither more nor less conservative than the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, which also means he will not be as venal and dangerous as, say, Justice Thomas.  Within the next two years, we should have a fairly clear idea where he stands.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, the alleged President will nominate a successor to Associate Justice O'Connor.  If he nominates Janice Brown, Edith Jones, Michael Luttig, or Priscilla Owen, there will be, justifiably, a ferocious confirmation battle, the outcome of which may well determine whether the U.S. will be a free society in the decades ahead (the U.S., of course, is not a just society, so at least that's off the table as an issue!).

Republican House Leader DeLay Indicted by Austin Grand Jury

This is all over the media in the U.S. this afternoon (an example).  Congressman Tom DeLay, from a Houston suburb, is, quite possibly, the most heinous man on the public stage in America right now.  In a civilized nation, he would be some fringe figure of the far right, heading up a party with a fascist pedigree.  (One of my colleagues, a longtime observer of Texas politics and not someone given to my rhetorical flourishes, describes DeLay as a "fascist thug.")  That he has been one of the most powerful and influential Republicans in the last decade or so is a clear indication of the depths to which the United States has sunk.  I am delighted that it was an Austin-based prosecutor who successfully brought this indictment.  Here's hoping for conviction...on all the crimes against decency and humanity of which this venal man is guilty.

UPDATE:  I got the following odd missive from someone who is, perhaps, not a very good reader:  "He has been indicted. Not convicted."  Curiously, this individual seems to think he was stating a dispute with my posting.  Reading is an important skill. 

ANOTHER:  I didn't know this:  12 of the 15 politicians prosecuted by Ronnie Earle (who has just secured the indictment of Tom DeLay and who is being accused of "partisan zealotry," a subject on which, admittedly, DeLay is expert) were also Democrats, like Earle.

AND ONE MORE:  One imagines that the accused did not bother to ask his attorney whether this was a good idea.

Shill for the Discovery [sic] Institute Debates Distinguished Legal Scholar

Here.  My colleague, Professor Laycock, is perhaps the nation's preeminent academic authority on the law of religious liberty, who is unusual in having represented almost all sides in religious liberty cases (he was the primary drafter of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, for example, but also represented a group of clergy contending that "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is, indeed, unconstitutional).  It is obviously a nice public relations coup for the Discovery [sic] Institute when a member of its stable of shills for Intelligent Design Creationism gets to share a forum with someone of this level of scholarly and professional distinction.  Their representative on this occasion is none other than Francis Beckwith, whose intellectual and philosophical dishonesty we have encountered before (here and here, for example).  Many of his standard ploys and lies are already on display, and I may comment on them at greater length next week.  The basic issue, though, about the constitutionality of teaching Intelligent Design Creationism is pretty simple:  since there is no secular purpose in teaching it (since there are no scientific arguments in support of it), it is obviously barred by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 

Thus Spoke Hume

A propos the item on the dysfunctionality of religious societies in comparison to secular ones, Huw Price (Philosophy, Sydney) calls to my attention the following sharp observations of Hume:

How happens it then...if vulgar superstition be so salutary to society, that all history abounds so much with accounts of its pernicious consequences on public affairs? 

Factions, civil wars, persecutions, subversions of government, oppression, slavery; these are the dismal consequences which always attend its prevalency over the minds of men.

If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of.

--Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, XII, 220

Religious Societies More Dysfunctional than Secular Ones, According to New Study

One suspects the 700 Club won't give this a lot of play:

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems....

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution....

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added....

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

Of course, correlation is not causation...

The full text of the article, summarized above, is here. 

APA Book Prize...

...awarded to Robert Pasnau at Colorado (and David Boonin, also at Colorado, received honorable mention).  The Colorado press release is here.

UPDATE:  I just found out the other honorable mention for the Book Prize:  it went to Russ Shafer-Landau at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for his book Moral Realism:  A Defence.

Fellowship Opportunities for Humanities Scholars Affected by the Hurricanes

Thanks to Terry Pinkard for passing this along:

The Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern University invites humanities scholars displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita to apply for short-term fellowships, effective immediately. We are located in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago and can offer an office with a computer, visiting scholar status, and possibly a housing stipend.  Please send a letter of application and CV (or short vita with list of significant publications) to Director Robert Gooding-Williams at rjgoodingwil at northwestern-dot-edu or 2010 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, Il 60208-2225 or fax 847-467-3978.  Questions may be addressed to Associate Director Elzbieta Foeller-Pituch at efp at northwestern-dot-edu or 847-467-3970.

Blogging Schedule

With the move to London, and a variety of other professional obligations, on the horizon, blogging will be a good bit lighter the next couple of months than during the summer.  Happily, William Edmundson, a law and philosophy professor at Georgia State University, who I'm sure is known to many of my philosophical and jurisprudential readers, has kindly agreed to be a guest-blogger the week of October 17, and I am also hoping that Jason and Marcus Stanley will return as guest-bloggers for a week, probably in November.  I may even round up a Brit or two while I'm in London as visitors to the blog.  I'll continue to keep up with developments relevant to the philosophical community, as well as some political and cultural commentary, but probably not as much of the latter as in recent months.  Since readership of the blog has roughly doubled in the last year or so, I may also repost some older items that new readers might find of interest.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Why Have Blogs on the Left Grown Much More Than Blogs on the Right the Last Two Years?

According to a recent study, the highlights of which are noted here, blogs "on the left" have grown much more in readership than blogs "on the right."  The interesting question is why?  My guess would be that the blogs "on the left" are actually fairly far to the left of the traditional media, so they provide an outlet and opportunity for points of view that are often invisible in the major media.  The right-wing blogs (InstaIgnorance et al.) are, by contrast, largely echo chambers for the same conservative propaganda that is served up on Fox TV, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Rush Limbaugh, and numerous other media outlets which already reach tens of millions of people.  Since the right-wing blogs provide less new "perspective" and less new misinformation, they have not attracted as many new readers as the blogosphere has become better known.  By contrast, many of the blogs "on the left" really do provide access to information and perspectives that are almost invisible in the mainstream media, from CNN to The New York Times to National Public Radio. 

How to Understand Intelligent Design Creationism...

...in four easy steps.  (Warning:  this is, quite literally, bathroom humor.)

Historical Precedents for Preventive War

Very illuminating essay; a few excerpts:

The resort to fear by systems of power to discipline the domestic population has left a long and terrible trail of bloodshed and suffering which we ignore at our peril. Recent history provides many shocking illustrations.

The mid-twentieth century witnessed perhaps the most awful crimes since the Mongol invasions. The most savage were carried out where western civilisation had achieved its greatest splendours. Germany was a leading centre of the sciences, the arts and literature, humanistic scholarship, and other memorable achievements. Prior to World War I, before anti-German hysteria was fanned in the West, Germany had been regarded by American political scientists as a model democracy as well, to be emulated by the West. In the mid-1930s, Germany was driven within a few years to a level of barbarism that has few historical counterparts. That was true, most notably, among the most educated and civilised sectors of the population....

Complex historical events always have many causes. One crucial factor in this case was skillful manipulation of fear. The “ordinary folk” were driven to fear of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to take over the world, placing the very survival of the people of Germany at risk. Extreme measures were therefore necessary, in “self-defence”. Revered intellectuals went far beyond. As the Nazi storm clouds settled over the country in 1935, Martin Heidegger depicted Germany as the “most endangered” nation in the world, gripped in the “great pincers” of an onslaught against civilisation itself, led in its crudest form by Russia and America....

It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that Japan’s December 1941 bombings — “the date which will live in infamy,” in FDR’s (Franklin D. Roosevelt) ringing words — were more than justified under the doctrines of “anticipatory self-defence” that prevail among the leaders of today’s self-designated “enlightened States,” the US and its British client. Japanese leaders knew that B-17 Flying Fortresses were coming off the Boeing production lines, and were surely familiar with the public discussions in the US explaining how they could be used to incinerate Japan’s wooden cities in a war of extermination, flying from Hawaiian and Philippine bases — “to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bombing attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps,” as retired Air Force General Chennault recommended in 1940, a proposal that “simply delighted” President Roosevelt. Evidently, that is a far more powerful justification for bombing military bases in US colonies than anything conjured up by Bush-Blair and their associates in their execution of “pre-emptive war” — and accepted, with tactical reservations, throughout the mainstream of articulate opinion.

The comparison, however, is inappropriate. Those who dwell in teeming bamboo ant heaps are not entitled to such emotions as fear. Such feelings and concerns are the prerogatives only of the “rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations,” in Churchill’s rhetoric, the “satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had,” and to whom, therefore, “the government of the world must be entrusted” if there is to be peace — a certain kind of peace, in which the rich men must be free from fear.

Just how secure the rich men must be from fear is revealed graphically by highly-regarded scholarship on the new doctrines of “anticipatory self-defence” crafted by the powerful. The most important contribution with some historical depth is by one of the leading contemporary historians, John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University. He traces the Bush doctrine to his intellectual hero, the grand strategist John Quincy Adams. In the paraphrase of The New York Times, Gaddis “suggests that Bush’s framework for fighting terrorism has its roots in the lofty, idealistic tradition of John Quincy Adams and Woodrow Wilson”.

We can put aside Wilson’s shameful record, and keep to the origins of the lofty, idealistic tradition, which Adams established in a famous State paper justifying Andrew Jackson’s conquest of Florida in the First Seminole War in 1818. The war was justified in self-defence, Adams argued. Gaddis agrees that its motives were legitimate security concerns. In Gaddis’s version, after Britain sacked Washington in 1814, US leaders recognised that “expansion is the path to security” and therefore conquered Florida, a doctrine now expanded to the whole world by Bush — properly, he argues.

Gaddis cites the right scholarly sources, primarily historian William Earl Weeks, but omits what they say. We learn a lot about the precedents for current doctrines, and the current consensus, by looking at what Gaddis omits. Weeks describes in lurid detail what Jackson was doing in the “exhibition of murder and plunder known as the Fist Seminole War,” which was just another phase in his project of “removing or eliminating native Americans from the southeast,” underway long before 1814. Florida was a problem both because it had not yet been incorporated in the expanding American empire and because it was a “haven for Indians and runaway slaves… fleeing the wrath of Jackson or slavery”.

There was in fact an Indian attack, which Jackson and Adams used as a pretext: US forces drove a band of Seminoles off their lands, killing several of them and burning their village to the ground. The Seminoles retaliated by attacking a supply boat under military command. Seizing the opportunity, Jackson “embarked on a campaign of terror, devastation, and intimidation,” destroying villages and “sources of food in a calculated effort to inflict starvation on the tribes, who sought refuge from his wrath in the swamps”. So matters continued, leading to Adams’ highly regarded State paper, which endorsed Jackson’s unprovoked aggression to establish in Florida “the dominion of this republic upon the odious basis of violence and bloodshed”.

These are the words of the Spanish ambassador, a “painfully precise description,” Weeks writes. Adams “had consciously distorted, dissembled, and lied about the goals and conduct of American foreign policy to both Congress and the public,” Weeks continues, grossly violating his proclaimed moral principles, “implicitly defending Indian removal, and slavery”. The crimes of Jackson and Adams “proved but a prelude to a second war of extermination against (the Seminoles),” in which the remnants either fled to the West, to enjoy the same fate later, “or were killed or forced to take refuge in the dense swamps of Florida”. Today, Weeks concludes, “the Seminoles survive in the national consciousness as the mascot of Florida State University” — a typical and instructive case…

…The rhetorical framework rests on three pillars (Weeks): “the assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States, the assertion of its mission to redeem the world” by spreading its professed ideals and the ‘American way of life,’ and the faith in the nation’s “divinely ordained destiny”. The theological framework undercuts reasoned debate, and reduces policy issues to a choice between Good and Evil, thus reducing the threat of democracy. Critics can be dismissed as “anti-American,” an interesting concept borrowed from the lexicon of totalitarianism. And the population must huddle under the umbrella of power, in fear that its way of life and destiny are under imminent threat…

Thus Spoke Thucydides

Pericles, in his Funeral Oration to the relatives of dead soldiers: "It is not possible for people to give fair and just advice to the state, if they are not exposing their own children to the same danger when they advance a risky policy."

--Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

(Thanks to Jim Klagge for the pointer.)

A note from a student about the PGR

The critics of the Philosophical Gourmet Report have largely packed up and gone home (even Harvard, to its credit, has removed the link to Richard Heck's attack on the PGR from December 2001).  A recent note from a student nicely captures how I've always felt about these attacks:

As someone who is applying to graduate school this fall, let me first say thank you for the PGR and for the updates on faculty hiring on your blog.  It's incredible to me that anyone could criticize PGR.  Of course it's not some perfect measurement of the absolute quality of each individual program.  But without it, people like me would be in the dark about the relative strengths of the various schools.

It really has never been any more complicated than that. 

American Democracy at Work: You Can Choose Between Two Pro-War Parties

An excerpt:

As the anti-war movement arrives in Washington this weekend, many top Democrats are leaving.

Nationally known Democratic war critics, including Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and John Kerry of Massachusetts, won't attend what sponsors say will be a big anti-war rally Saturday in Washington....

"There are a lot of people here who are wondering, where are the Democrats?" said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic House member from Maine who's now the national director of Win Without War, one of several groups that are organizing three days of protests against the war in Washington starting Saturday.

"The Democratic Party has an identity crisis on this issue. We need voices. We need leadership," Andrews said. "But fear is driving them...."

Sixty-six members of Congress have formed an "Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus" that wants either immediate withdrawal or a timetable to withdraw. None of the party's congressional leadership and none of the likely candidates for president are members.

Anti-war organizers said they expected 100,000 people Saturday.

UPDATE:  Add this one to the annals of "what's wrong with liberals in America today":  Patrick Smith, a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign--who assures us with some frequency on his blog that he is a liberal guy (perhaps he is)--responds to this posting by slurring 100,000 anti-war protesters as tools of "Stalinists" (I kid you not:  he thinks it obvious that Democrats would "avoid an anti-war rally organized by Stalinists") and assuring us that all the Democrats who dodged the protest were really opposed to the war (I suppose Mr. Smith is thinking of evidence of their opposition to the war like the fact that most of them (1) voted for the war; (2) voted to continue financing the war; (3) have objected to the war primarily on strategic grounds; (4) have refused to sign on to timetables for withdrawal of troops; and (5) have refused to join the Congressional Caucus calling for an end to the war; and so on--truly impressive anti-war credentials!). 

One imagines that even Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Reynolds might have hesitated before tarring yesterday's anti-war rally in D.C. with the charge of Stalinism.  But apparently it's OK to do that if you're a "liberal" in today's America!

AND ANOTHER:  More thoughts from Dadahead.

British Journalist and Incisive Critic of US-British Policy in Iraq Barred from Entering U.S.

Details here; an excerpt:

The internationally renowned correspodent for The Independent -- the great British journalist Robert Fisk -- has been banned from entering the United States. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all known for his incisive reporting from the Middle East for more than 20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation that has followed it, has repeatedly exposed U.S. and British government disinformation campaigns. He also has exposed how the bulk of the press reports from Iraq have been "hotel journalism" -- a phrase Fisk coined....

I have long admired Fisk's unbeatably first-rate journalism, his intrepid insistence on sticking his nose where the authorities -- of whatever country he's in -- don't want him to go. He constantly shows up the sluggish cowardice and indolent hand-out journalism practiced by so many U.S. foreign correspondents from the safety of their hotel bars. That the U.S. won't allow this great journalist into this country to tell what he has seen and what he knows is a scandal.

One indication of how much the right resents Fisk's lack of the cowardice we have come to expect as a matter of course from most of the U.S. media and blogosphere is that Andrew "I'm a descipable neanderthal except when my own interests are at stake" Sullivan and Glenn "no bit of right-wing sliminess is beneath me" Reynolds have aggressively propagated the term "fisking" to describe a point-by-point refutation of a blog posting or newspaper article.  Besides the breathtaking hypocrisy of two right-wing serial liars and shills for inhumanity like Sullivan and Reynolds demeaning a serious journalist's work this way, there is the added irony that the post by Andrew Sullivan held to have been the initial instance of a "fisking" is nothing more than a sanctimonious excretion of bile, without any factual content at all!   No "factual content at all," of course, sums up the American right rather well; no wonder, then, that they want to keep a journalist who doesn't just recycle White House press releases out of the country.

In Memoriam

John M. Dolan (1937-2005)

The University of Minnesota Department's memorial notice is here.

Many kinds of freedom...

...as we are usefully reminded here:

Although every person and every people has the right to a healthy life and to enjoy the privilege of a long and useful existence, the richest, most developed societies, ruled by consumerism and a thirst for profit, have made the health service into a common business, inaccessible to the poorest sectors of the population. In many Third World countries this service barely exists, and between developed countries and the euphemistically called 'developing countries' the differences are vast.

While statistics speak of developed countries with child mortality rates lower than 10 for 1000 life births, and some boast a life expectancy that reaches or surpasses 80 years of age, others, such as many African countries, have to settle for child mortality rates of over 100 for children under one year of age and often 150 for 1000 life births, and a decreasing life expectancy rate that in some countries fluctuates between 30 and 40 years of age. While the world watches this happen, military spending amounts to one trillion dollars every year, a figure only comparable to one other absurd expense, that is, commercial publicity, which also equals one trillion. Either of these sums, invested wisely year after year, would be more than enough to ensure that all the people of the world lived a decent life.

Neither the climate nor genetic potential are causing this tragedy. Cuba, a tropical country, with a hot and humid climate, a favorable environment for viruses, bacteria and fungus, whose population is a mixture of ethnicities, subjected to a cruel blockade and economic war for almost half a century, has, despite all this, an infant mortality rate of less than 6 for 1000 life births under one year of age, a rate that falls just below that of Canada, and is headed towards 5 and maybe even less than 4 in the near future, which will put Cuba in first place in the continent. Furthermore, it will take our country half the time it took Sweden and Japan to raise life expectancy from 70 to 80 years, as it today stands at 77.5 years of age. Its medical services have increased this expectancy by almost 18 years, from a rate of approximately 60 years at the time of the triumph of the Revolution in January 1959.

Hurricane Rita and Texas

Thanks to those who have inquired about the situation here in Austin in relation to the impending hurricane.  The way things look this morning, it appears that Austin and Dallas will perhaps get some rain and wind on Saturday, but nothing out of the ordinary--both cites will be too far from the center of the storm.  Houston is unlikely, it seems, to get the full force of the hurricane, though they will get far more serious rain and wind, with risks of flooding in some of the lower lying parts of that sprawling city.  (There may be more risk right now to Houstonians who are part of the horribly disorganized evacuation of parts of the city.)  The hurricane appears set to hit in the Beaumont/Port Arthur area of far eastern Texas, near the Louisiana border.  We may hope that it will decline in force to a Category 3 hurricane before it makes landfall--I gather from this morning's reports that there is some chance of that, which will make an enormous difference for the communities likely to be at the center of the storm.  Meanwhile, the main effect of the impending hurricane in Austin is an influx of evacuees from Houston who are looking for a safe place to be until the storm passes.  Right now, it looks like Austin will be such a place.

I've opened comments for readers in the affected areas to post pertinent information.

SkyNews Inadvertently Tells the Truth about Bush

This is very funny indeed.

Philosopher Nelson from Irvine to UNC-Chapel Hill

Alan Nelson (history of modern philosophy; history and philosophy of science; history of analytic philosophy), currently at the University of California at Irvine, has accepted the senior offer from the University of North Carolina  at Chapel Hill.

Summary of Major Philosophy Faculty Moves for 2004-05

This is the annual compilation of major (tenured or equivalent) faculty moves involving PhD or MA programs since the last PGR survey (fall 2004), for the benefit of students using the PGR in choosing graduate schools this academic year.

This list includes only faculty moves that were not reflected in the faculty lists for the Fall 2004 surveys.  Remember, those faculty lists were based on expected faculty profile for fall 2005, so included some announced, planned moves. 

Many or most of the faculty moves recorded here are likely to affect the specialty rankings for the areas in which these faculty work.  Where relevant, I comment on how the moves are likely to affect the overall reputation/ranking of a department.

For tenure-track appointments this past year, see here.

Please e-mail me with corrections and additions.

The departments that have strengthened the tenured faculty most significantly since the fall 2004 PGR are the following (some of these appointments take effect this fall, the remainder by fall 2006):

Brown University:  Added Richard Heck (philosophy of language, math, and logic) from Harvard, and Charles Larmore (political philosophy) from Chicago; lost, however, James van Cleve (metaphysics, epistemology, Kant, modern philosophy) to University of Southern California (he had been only half-time at Brown in recent years).  Also made junior appointments.  I would expect Brown to crack the top 15 overall.

University of Arizona:  Added Gerald Gaus (political philosphy) from Tulane, Shaun Nichols (ethics, philosophy of mind, experimental philosophy) from Utah, and Connie Rosati (ethics, philosophy of law) from UC Davis.  Keith Lehrer, who is half-time, turns 70 in 2006.  I would expect Arizona to crack the top 15 overall.

University of Massachussetts, Amherst:  Added a couple in philosophy of mind and cognate fields, Louise Antony and Joseph Levine, from Ohio State University.  I would expect U Mass to crack the overall top 25, perhaps the top 20.

University of Southern California:  Added James van Cleve (see above) from Brown and George Wilson (philosophy of language, action, and film) from the University of California at Davis.  I would expect USC to crack the top 20.

University of Toronto:  Added Mohan Matthen (ancient philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology) from the University of British Columbia; Diana Raffman (philosophy of mind, aesthetics) from Ohio State University; Evan Thompson (philosophy of mind and cognitive science) from York University, Toronto; and Byeong Yi (metaphysics, philosophy of language and logic) from Minnesota.  Also made two tenure-track lateral appointments:  Benjamin Hellie (philosophy of mind) from Cornell, and Jessica Wilson (metaphysics, philosophy of science) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  I would expect Toronto to easily crack the U.S. top 15, perhaps the U.S. top 10.

Yale University:  Added George Bealer (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language) from Texas and (for fall 2006) Verity Harte (ancient philosophy) from King's College, London; senior offer still outsanding to Kenneth Winkler (early modern philosophy) at Wellesley College.  I would expect Yale to crack the overall top 20.

The departments that lost significant ground, in terms of faculty quality, since fall 2004 are:

Northwestern University:  Lost Robert Gooding-Williams (African-American philosophy and political thought, Continental philosophy) to the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago; Terry Pinkard (German Idealism) to Georgetown University; Thomas Ricketts (history of analytic philosophy) to the University of Pittsburgh; and Charles Travis (philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, Wittgenstein) to King's College, London.  In addition to losing ground in various specialty areas covered by these faculty, the Department will sink even further out of the top 50.  Watch for Northwestern to try to do a lot of hiring this academic year.

Ohio State University:  Lost Louise Antony (philosophy of mind, feminist philosophy) to U Mass/Amherst; Bob Batterman (philosophy of science & physics) to a Canada Research Chair at Western Ontario; Joseph Levine (philosophy of mind) to U Mass/Amherst; and Diana Raffman (philosophy of mind, aesthetics) to Toronto.  I would expect the department to drop out of the overall top 25, and quite possibly, the top 30.

University of British Columbia:  Lost Mohan Matthen (philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, ancient philosophy) to Toronto and Catherine Wilson (early modern philosophy, ethics) to the CUNY Graduate Center.  I would expect UBC to remain in the Canadian top five, but to slip out of second place.

University of California, Davis:  Lost Victor Caston (ancient philosophy) to Michigan; Robert Cummins (philosophy of mind & cognitive science) to Illinois/Urbana; Connie Rosati (ethics, philosophy of law) to Arizona; and George Wilson (philosophy of language, action, and film) to Southern California; also lost one tenure-track faculty member, Josh Parsons (metaphysics) to Otago.  Did make one senior appointment:  Jonathan Vogel (epistemology) from Amherst.  I would expect Davis to drop out of the top 25, perhaps the top 30.  Look for Davis to try to do a lot of hiring this year.

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

Other changes in senior faculty ranks since fall 2004 (in alphabetical order, by department):

Economics: the Pseudo-Science even Economists Don't Understand

This is quite bizarre.  My general impression has always been that economists are fairly analytically acute, the ideological peculiarities of their discipline notwithtstanding.  I wonder whether there isn't some other explanation.

"The Fucking Moron Brigade"

Apt.

Why the "Intelligent Design" Con Plays So Well

Here's the answer:

American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century....

Dr. Miller, who was raised in Portsmouth, Ohio, when it was a dying steel town, attributes much of the nation's collective scientific ignorance to poor education, particularly in high schools. Many colleges require every student to take some science, but most Americans do not graduate from college. And science education in high school can be spotty, he said.

"Our best university graduates are world-class by any definition," he said. "But the second half of our high school population - it's an embarrassment. We have left behind a lot of people...."

Lately, people who advocate the teaching of evolution have been citing Dr. Miller's ideas on what factors are correlated with adherence to creationism and rejection of Darwinian theories. In general, he says, these fundamentalist views are most common among people who are not well educated and who "work in jobs that are evaporating fast with competition around the world."

But not everyone is happy when he says things like that. Every time he goes on the radio to talk about his findings, he said, "I get people sending me cards saying they will pray for me a lot."

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

U.S. "a terrorist state"

And he didn't even mention that the United States is the only country to have been found guilty of terrorism by the World Court (the charges were brought, justifiably, by Nicaragua): 

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez...littered his speech to the UN world summit with anti-US comments which were strongly applauded....

Chavez told the UN General Assembly that the United States was "a country that does not respect the resolutions of this assembly."

To loud applause he took up the call of Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar for the UN headquarters to be moved to "an international city" in the southern hemisphere....

At a press conference after his speech, Chavez said that the United States was a "terrorist state" because of its actions in Iraq, Robertson's assassination call and for harboring Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted for the bombing of a Cuban airliner.

"It is a terrorist state. It is a government that violates all rules and behaves shamelessly," he said.

"The United States is the champion of double standards. The United States' government defends terrorism. They talk of the fight against the terrorism, but they commit terrorism, state terrorism," said Chavez.

Don't forget Mississippi!

Hurricane Katrina wreaked horrific damage along the Gulf Coast of the United States, but most of the media attention has been on New Orleans, when, in fact, the full force of the storm hit the coast of Mississippi:  commentary here.

A Month in Pictures from Iraq

Once again, those who voted for the criminal war monger Bush have a moral obligation to view all these pictures, over breakfast.

Looking for a place to stay in Italy?

John Gardner (Jurisprudence, Oxford) calls my attention to a new country hotel run by his brother David, famed Florentine restauranteur.  Check it out!

Another New Orleans Casualty: Poor Thomas Hobbes Falls Into the Hands of Right-Wing Shills

A good example is here, and John Protevi (French Studies, LSU) sends the following apt comments in response:

Rich Lowry, one of the new breed of empty suits masquerading as a conservative pundit, does the utterly expected and, taking rumor and sensationalist media coverage for fact, cites the "massive lawlessness" in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, and then, not to be outdone in his cliched allusions, cites Hobbes. A great philosopher, the poor Englishman, who actually lived through a civil war, would doubtless blanch at the nitwits who cite him whenever they want to indulge a little authoritarian fantasy. The real story of New Orleans is not the scattered criminality, but our willingness to believe the wildest of rumor (like the "riot" at the Riverplex or the "civil unrest" of Chancellor O'Keefe's email to the LSU community or the "carjackings" someone solemnly told me happened "right there on Essen"). The real story of New Orleans is not the every man for himself, "man is a wolf to man," fantasy of Lowry and the other Hobbes-mongers, but the thousands and thousands and thousands of the brave and loving people of New Orleans who refused to leave their old, their sick, their young, their helpless, and who walked miles through the floods to safety, pushing wheelchairs and floating the sick on "looted" air mattresses, along with the hundreds of rescuers, professional and volunteer alike, who found FEMA incompetence a far worse foe than the waters. The real lesson is not that we need order from above to prevent the anarchy that is supposedly close by, but that the solidarity that holds us all together, the civic and human bonds that led all those thousands to stick together, needs only support from a government that needs to be recalled to its proper function as the organized expression of that solidarity. 

Talks this Fall

Here is where I'm slated to speak, as of now, this fall across the Atlantic; not all of these may be "open to the public," as it were, so I'm including a contact person in parentheses:

October 25:  Moral Sciences Club, Cambridge University (Hallvard Lillehammer)

November 7-8:  Philosophy, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (Varol Akman)

November 23:  Politics & Philosophy, University of Manchester (Hillel Steiner or Graham Stevens)

December 7:  Political Theory Workshop, University of Newcastle (Thom Brooks)

A few more (Oxford, Kent, Southampton) are yet to be scheduled, though I hope to make it to as many of these as my duties in London permit.

I look forward to meeting UK readers and many of those from abroad whom I've had the pleasure of corresponding with in the past.

"George Must Go"

A particularly funny monologue by comedian Bill Maher.

Philosopher of Mind Davies from ANU back to Oxford--and other Oxford Chair News

Martin Davies (philosophy of mind), formerly Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford before he moved to the Australian National University in 2000, has now accepted the Wilde Professorship of Mental Philosophy at Oxford, to start not later than October 2006.  Professor Davies has also declined the offer of the Kornblith Chair from the City University of New York Graduate Center.  This is a good break for Oxford which had, for a period of time in the 1990s, been having serious difficulty filling its Chairs with philosophers of international distinction.  But now the Wilde Chair will be held by Davies, the Wykeham Professorship in Logic is held by Timothy Williamson, and the White's Chair in Moral Philosophy by John Broome.  Oxford is now looking to fill the Waynflete Chair in Metaphysical Philosophy (Dorothy Edgington, the current holder, is retiring); although I have no inside information, my guess as an outside observer is that Oxford would be well-served (as the Law faculty was in filling the Jurisprudence Chair with John Gardner) by going for some of the first-rate younger philosophers still in Britain, such as Michael Martin (at University College London) or Ian Rumfitt (moving from Oxford to Birkbeck College, London).

Meanwhile, the distinguished political philosopher G.A. Cohen, holder of the Chichele Professorship of Social & Political Theory in the Politics faculty, will soon be forced to retire, creating another Chair vacancy which has sometimes been filled by philosophers.

UPDATE:  A reader from Oxford points out, correctly, that the Chair in Ancient Philosophy is also vacant, due to the retirement of Michael Frede.

Many thanks to Benj. Hellie and Jessica Wilson...

...for visiting this past week, and providing a stimulating array of material from au courant Bush travesties, to insight into life in the civilized nation to the North.  You can continue to enjoy their blogging at For the Record.

Our first encounter with socialized medicine

Our prescriptions were running out, so it was time to see a doctor.  Would we have to wait for weeks, spend hours in the waiting room, be officiously treated by a harassed doctor with her hands full from treating the hypochondriac hordes clamouring for freely dispensed health care?

Uh, no.  We called a couple of days ago and got new patient appointments right away at a walk-in clinic in our neighborhood.  We walked in to a nice building right on Danforth (a lively street in Greektown) which had its mission statement on a plaque in the open, windowed entry stairwell:

The Albany Medical Clinic will be the model of an independent primary care medical practice. We will continually strive to implement new and expanded services, which will result in the following advantages for our patients:

• having access to a locally-based, seamless system of primary and specialty care, and,
• having access to comprehensive on-site ancillary services.

We will achieve a size and stature, and have an array of services available, that will result in us being the medical clinic of choice for people in our community for the majority of their healthcare needs.

Sounds good.  Up the stairs to check in, where there was a pharmacy and a dentist's office, among other services.  No waiting.  A nice person and 5 minutes later, we were upstairs in the doctor's waiting area.  Approximately 1 minute later, our pleasant, calm doctor (a young man recently moved here from Montreal) invited us to come, separately or together, into the office.  We went in together, and each conversed at length with the doctor about our respective maladies (what fun!) and the alternatives for treating them, made a decision on these scores, and got an initial check-up.  The doctor was thoughtful, informed, and in no hurry whatsoever to get rid of us.  We then took our prescriptions to the pharmacy downstairs, waited about 10 minutes, paid a reasonable amount (we'll get reimbursed when our official insurance comes through... though it's worth noting that the standard base-line insurance doesn't automatically come with prescription coverage.  No doubt prescriptions are covered for those below a certain income threshold), and were on our merry way.

By way of comparison with health care in the States, Benj waited a month to get a new patient's appointment after moving to Ithaca, and to get my first prescription in Ann Arbor I had to sit in the waiting room at the University of Michigan clinic for almost an hour.  In fact, I can't remember ever not having to wait for some extended period of time to see a doctor in the states.  And once in the exam room, the person I had most contact with wasn't the doctor, but rather a nurse or nurse practitioner, who asked most of the questions and performed the general check-up, with the doctor showing up for a 5 or 10 minute diagnostic denouement.  And our health insurance was supposed to be elite!  Free market health insurance -- don't believe the hype.

UPDATE: Reader RA sends along the following story:

A friend of mine [in Santa Monica] sought a medical appointment for some unusual skin growths on her face and back through Kaiser Permamente. She was told it would take four months to get an appointment. She didn't want to wait so she saw a dermatologist outside her HMO and discovered she had skin cancer. $5,000 (out-of-her-pocket) later, she's fine, but obviously not happy with her medical coverage.

And here are several remarkable stories about experiencing socialized medicine as a visitor in France, courtesy of philosopher Alva Noë:

When I lived with my family in Paris a couple of years ago we had a couple of medical run ins. My son August, then 2, stepped in a glass of Miriam's hot tea (left on the floor) and scalded himself. Our neighbors recommended that we take a cab cross town to the hospital in Paris best known for handling children. We were admitted at the emergency room right away; after a lengthy and thorough preliminary examination in a private room by a nurse, August was examined by a physician. Agu (as we call him) was cleaned, bandaged, prescribed and we were sent back to the front desk. People at the desk were a bit embarrassed about the fact that they would have to charge us for the visit but they were confident our American insurance would reimburse us. They behaved as if it were unseemly to make us deal with payment. And then they gave us the bill. Under 30 Euros! I kid you not. I was too embarrassed to tell them that it was not worth my trouble to request a reimbursement of a fee so small!

And that happened another time as well: August developed a rash on his face. We found the name of a pediatrician with a practice in the neighborhood. We phoned the office. The phone was answered by the doctor herself. Yes, come around in an hour. We entered an unattended room, a waiting room. A few minutes later the doctor came out and took care of us. Again, 27 Euros TOTAL.

One last story: I too ran out of a prescription. I rang up a local doctor and explained, to the doctor, who came to the phone, in my terrible French: I wonder if there is some way I could get a prescription filled through your office. The doctor invited me over right away. On my arrival he squeezed me in between appointments. Sat with me for five minutes and wrote me out a prescription. That simple. That straight forward. AND he refused payment!!!

So there you have it.

Indeed.  And so the bilking of America continues...

-- Jessica Wilson

A rude case for social democracy

Here, here, and here. A quick summary:

when you list all these acts and programs and subsidies, some bag of douche conservative'll come along and spout Reagany things about welfare queens, the failure of the Great Society, and loser liberal ideology. But here's the fuckin' deal: the liberal ideas didn't fail - the government failed the ideas. First through the limited funding of the programs, then through the conservative ideological shift in the 70s and 80s, which, reduced to its essence, seems to have been a move from "We can help each other" to "Fuck you." With a Gerald Ford condemnation of New York City to hell along for good measure. So Washington fucked it up.

'Cause, see, during the 1960s, "median black family income rose 53 percent; black employment in professional, technical, and clerical occupations doubled; and average black educational attainment increased by four years. The proportion of blacks below the poverty line fell from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1968. The black unemployment rate fell 34 percent." And much of that growth happened in urban America. So, with such success apparent, conservatives in both parties followed Reagan's lead and gutted programs for urban America like little boys filleting carp with butter knives. All that was left was shreds.

-- Benj Hellie

"Back to being black"

Reader RP alerts us to the following (scroll to episode 316):

And as long as you brought up the racial issue, I have to tell you, there's a friend of mine who lives in New Orleans, is black, and I wrote down exactly, word for word, what she said, because I think it bears repeating. She said, "After 9/11, I was American. Now I'm back to being black." And I think among the feathers in George Bush's resume is that I think he has lost a whole generation of black people who might have felt that way after 9/11, and now are like, "You know what? I can't believe I started to buy into that bullshit." [applause] And I think we're going to have to see a generation of black people who were born after the great fuck-up of 2005, before they start believing in America like they started to after 9/11.

-- Benj Hellie

Ethnic cleansing off to a running start

As was predicted. Details here:

This land rush has long-term implications in a city where many of the poorest residents were flooded out. It raises the question of what sort of housing — if any — will be available to those without a six-figure salary. If New Orleans ends up a high-priced enclave, without a mix of cultures, races and incomes, something vital may be lost.

[JW: *something* *may* be lost? -- the cultural heart and sould of New Orleans *will* be lost!]

"There's a public interest question here," said Ann Oliveri, a senior vice president with the Urban Land Institute, a Washington think tank. "You don't have to abdicate the city to whoever shows up."

For now, though, it's a seller's market, at least for habitable homes. [...]

But people are thinking ahead, influenced by a single factor: the belief that hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid is going to create a boomtown. The people administering that aid will need somewhere to live, as will those doing the rebuilding. So will employees of companies lured back to the area, and the service people that attend to them.

All this will lead to what Sterbcow delicately calls a "reorientation" of the city.

"Everyone I talked to has said, 'Let's start with a clean sheet of paper, fix it and get it right,' " he said. "Some of the homes here were only held together by the termites."

What the owners of the city's estimated 150,000 flooded houses will get out of "reorientation" is unclear, especially if the houses were in bad shape and uninsured.

Some black New Orleans residents say dourly that they know what's coming. Melvin Gilbert, a maintenance crew chief in his 60s, stood outside an elegant hotel in the French Quarter this week and recalled how the neighborhood had been gentrified.

He remembered half a century ago when the French Quarter had a substantial number of black residents.

"Then the Caucasians started offering them $10,000 for their homes," he said. "Well, they only bought the places for $2,000, so they took it and ran."

The white residents restored the homes, which rose quickly in value. Gilbert said he expected the same dynamic when the floodwaters receded in the heavily black neighborhoods east of downtown.

The question of who should own New Orleans is already sparking tension.

As noted earlier, international law binds the US to a certain answer to this question -- not the answer it will in fact give, of course.

-- Benj Hellie

Premisses in an armchair proof that African Americans will be left out in the cold in Katrina reconstruction

1. Rove is in charge of Katrina reconstruction.
2. Rove acts according to the morality of Polemarchus: reward friends, punish enemies.
3. African Americans are among Rove's political enemies.

-- Benj Hellie

Diebold insider speaks

here:

The CEO of North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., Walden O'Dell has been oft-quoted for his 2003 Republican fund-raiser promise to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." O'Dell himself was a high-level contributor to the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign as well as many other Republican causes.

"A very serious problem...one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election"

A helpful reminder that whether voters have had enough of GOP rule may be politically irrelevant -- polling data can always be made up or magically explained away once the numbers fall in the predetermined way. -- Benj Hellie

Levees failing nationwide

Read all about it. -- Benj Hellie

How's the Gulf Coast enviro doing?

Check it out here, or here. -- Benj Hellie