Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Christopher Hitchens, "War-Toting Superstar" (Leiter)

And they don't even mention that he's a drunk!  (Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer to this amusing site.)

Rorty's Pragmatism and Judge Posner's Moral Skepticism

I've posted a draft of a short paper (slated for the University of Chicago Law Review) on Richard Rorty's Dewey Lecture at the University of Chicago Law School last year, on the subject of Dewey, Posner, and moral skepticism.  There is more detail here.  Although this isn't a rigorous philosophical piece, it might interest some readers.

Draft paper on Continental "Morality Critics": Comments Welcome! (Leiter)

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM DECEMBER 20:  There is a slightly revised version on-line now (changes primarily in the Marx and Foucault sections).  I'd still gratefully receive comments, since I can still make changes at the copy-editing stage.

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

You can download the working draft here.  Comments in the next week would be especially welcome, though I will be able to make more minor edits thereafter.  Here is the abstract:

What could be wrong with morality?  Popular, including religious, thinking has long proceeded on the assumption that “morality” as a system of norms deserves our allegiance and that “moral conduct” should earn our praise and admiration.  Modern philosophy has, on this (as other matters) not been far away from the popular consensus.   Hume “discovered,” happily, that “by nature” human beings were disposed to have the sentiments and dispositions constitutive of sound morality; Kant sought to vindicate the deontological moral intuitions of the ordinary German peasant; while Sidgwick found that the “unconscious” morality of the English “peasants” was utilitarian, not deontological (and locked in hopeless conflict, alas, with egoistic considerations).  Most of moral philosophy of the past one hundred years—from Habermas and the adherents of “discourse ethics” (descendants of the Kantian project), to the proliferating Anglophone Kantians, to the earnest utilitarianisms of J.J.C. Smart, R.B. Brandt, Peter Singer, and others--has proceeded on the assumption that morality and a moral life are worth understanding because they are worth having and leading.

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

One striking feature of post-Kantian philosophy in Europe has been the emergence of morality critics, philosophers who, contra the popular consensus, dispute the value of morality and the moral life.  Their views find a faint echo in the work of some Anglophone moral philosophers (Philippa Foot and Bernard Williams are the main exemplars), but, as we will see, the “Continental” criticisms of morality generally cut far deeper and more radically.  Whereas the Anglophone skeptics take issue with, for example, the “demandingness” of utilitarian moral theory, or the purported “overridingness” of moral obligations as Kantians understand them, the Continental critics pitch their concerns less at the level of academic theory than at the level of social, political, and cultural life.  These Continental morality critics object that morality in practice is an obstacle to human flourishing itself.

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

So understood, this attack on morality raises two immediate questions.  First, the Continental morality critics are plainly not without ethical views of their own—namely, views, broadly, about the good life for (some or all) human beings—since it is on the basis of these views that they criticize “morality.”  Therefore, we need to understand the contours of the “morality” to which these critics object—for ease of reference, we will call it “morality in the pejorative sense” (MPS)—since it must be distinguished from the normative considerations that inform their critiques.  We will refer to this as the “Scope Problem” about morality criticism.  Second, we can usefully divide Continental critics of morality into two camps:  those who see morality as a direct threat to human flourishing; and those who see morality as an indirect threat.  In the first camp are those thinkers who see the individual’s acceptance of morality as such as an obstacle to the individual’s flourishing; in different ways, Nietzsche and Freud are these kinds of morality critics.  In the second camp are those philosophers who see morality as among the “ideological” instruments that sustain socio-economic relations that are obstacles to individual flourishing.  On this second account—most obviously represented by Marx and perhaps some of his descendants associated with the Frankfurt School—it is not allegiance to morality per se that thwarts individual flourishing, but rather the role such allegiance plays in sustaining certain socio-economic relations, the latter of which constitute the immediate obstacle to flourishing.  We will call the former “Direct Morality Critics” and the latter “Indirect Morality Critics.”  (Foucault straddles both approaches, and so we will discuss him in a transitional section.) 

Objective: incapacitation (Wilson)

It appears that the U.S. government has successfully driven Jose Padilla insane.

In Memoriam: Robert C. Solomon (1942-2007)

I am very sorry to report that my colleague Bob Solomon died suddenly on January 2, while travelling in Zurich.  I will link to a memorial notice as soon as one is available.  His breadth of philosophical interests was remarkable, including Continental philosophy, business ethics, Non-Western philosophy, and philosophy of mind, though it is probably fair to say that he is best known among philosophers for his seminal work on the philosophy of the emotions and on existentialism.  His 1972 book From Rationalism to Existentialism:  The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds may still be the single best introductory text on existentialism in English, and his 1976 book on The Passions is a classic in the literature on the emotions.  He was also an enormously popular teacher and lecturer, and a member of the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers.  (You can listen to Bob Solomon on "Philosophy Talk" radio with John Perry and Ken Taylor here.)

I want to extend my deepest condolences to his wife and my colleague, the philosopher Kathleen Higgins.

UPDATE:  Farhang Erfani, a philosopher at American University, has posted the clip from the movie "Waking Life" featuring Professor Solomon.

ANOTHER:  Here is a lovely remembrance from one of his undergraduate students.

UPDATE (JANUARY 5):  The Austin-American Statesman has run a lengthy and informative memorial notice here; one has to register (for free) to access it.  There is also a short memorial notice from UT's College of Liberal Arts.

Philosopher Barbara Forrest: Anti-"Intelligent Design" Warrior (Leiter)

There is a nice profile of the important work Professor Forrest has been doing here.

Philosophy Job Market Wiki Now Covering the Next Stage of the Hiring Process (Leiter)

The Philosophy Job Market Wiki is now keeping track of schools that have notifed candidates about fly-backs as well as offers.  Again, I can not vouch for the reliability of this information (the site says, for example, that my Department has notified candidates about fly-backs, which may well be, though the Department as a whole has not been so notified, but that wouldn't be unusual given the way my Department operates).  But anecdotal evidence and feedback suggests that the site was proving fairly accurate prior to the APA.

UPDATE:  A philosopher writes with the following apt observations:

One way in which the wiki site confuses things is by having coarse-grained
categories.  Example: "has notified candidates for flybacks" might mean has notified *all* flyback recipients or has notified *some* of them.  When things are updated by, eg, one candidate who has received a flyback, the "some" reading would be most natural. When it's updated by a search committee chair, the "all" would be more natural. Unsuprisingly, candidates have more time to update these things than search committee members/chairs.....

Good advice, I hope some anonymous folks in cyberspace will heed it!

Redei from Eotvos (Hungary) to LSE

Miklos Redei (history and philosophy of physics), who has taught for the past twenty years at Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary, has accepted appointment (effective Sept. 1, 2007) as Lecturer in Philosophy at the London School of Economics.

(Note:  there are some accents missing on both Professor Redei's name and the name of his university as it appears in the subject line; only where I cut and pasted did the accents show up.)

Philosophy in the Public Sphere (J. Stanley)

The view within the humanities of the discipline of philosophy as it is currently practiced is that it is an obscure branch of human inquiry, disconnected from the central concerns of the humanities (indeed some philosophers, such as Richard Rorty, have based significant portions of their careers pandering to our fellow humanists' disdain for our discipline). Yet on the rare occasions that central topics in philosophy are discussed in the newspapers, or works of analytic philosophy reviewed that are directed at general audiences, they tend to be received with great enthusiasm. For example, the most e-mailed piece in today's New York Times is an article about free will. The article broaches no new ground, and is basically a short explanation of the problem of free will of the sort one would expect to hear in an introductory philosophy class. Yet it clearly resonates with the ordinary readership of the New York Times. In recent years, some excellent analytic philosophers have written books directed at this readership, not just the ubiquitous Daniel Dennett, but also philosophers who have forged their reputations writing for more specialized audiences, such as Earl Conee and Ted Sider, and Paul Boghossian. The extremely positive reception of the work done by these philosophers provides some evidence that the skill that makes for an outstanding specialist philosopher translates to addressing broader audiences. In fact, I suspect that the philosophers who are considered to be more on the literary humanities end of the philosophy spectrum (e.g. John McDowell) would be particularly ill-suited to the kind of public philosophy that Conee, Sider, and Boghossian have done so well. Though lucid work on traditional topics in philosophy is not well-received (or understood) by humanists in the United States today, we are beginning to see some evidence that there is appreciation for such work outside the walls of the academy.

Mary didn't raise no fool (Wilson)

Cenk Uygur argues by analogy that those 25% of U.S.ers expecting the second coming in 2007 are certifiably insane:

Imagine for a second if instead of Jesus, some psycho was waiting for a magical creature named Fred to come save him this year and suck him up into the sky. Now, who doesn't think that man needs serious counseling and perhaps medical supervision? Now, you change Fred into Jesus, and you have 25% of the country.

In the comment thread Freespeach has an induction-based argument that even believers shouldn't believe this:

Jeezus is way too smart to come back in 2007, think about it.

He would probably just go out to speak at some some peace rally. Then he would get arrested, be sent to GITMO with no trial (at least last time he got a freakin trial) where he would be subjected to water boarding and eventually have his balls stomped on.

Would you come back?  No.

Jezzus ain't stupid, Mary didn't raise no fool.

Like it says on those funky bracelets, what would Jesus do?

Jeezus would get the hell out of the USA and fast. This country just isn't tolerant enough for a dude like Jesus. Too bad we could use his help.

New year's baby (Wilson)

Yesterday the first global super-union was born... or anyway conceived:

British, American and German unions are to forge a pact to challenge the power of global capitalism in a move towards creating an international union with more than 6 million members. [...]

Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: 'Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational organisation within the next decade.'

Welcome, Internationale!

Virtual Milgram (Edmundson)

The notorious Milgram results have been duplicated, sort of.  In the original experiments, the roles of  "teacher" and "learner" were both filled by humans.  In the new study, led by  Mel Slater, of the Catalan Polytechnic University in Barcelona and University College London, the learner role was filled by a virtual character.  Despite the teachers' knowledge that the learner was virtual, not real, they exhibited the same patterns of what could be called "distressed obedience" as in Milgram's trials in the 1960s.