Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Minnesota Makes Bid for Notre Dame's Bays--and Notre Dame Makes Offer to UCLA's Carriero

Timothy Bays (logic, philosophy of mathematics), Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has received a tenured offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame has made a senior offer to John Carriero, a leading scholar of early modern philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

New Philosophy Fellows of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Announced

The AAAS press release and complete listing is here.  The new Fellows are Geoffrey P. Hellman (Minnesota), Terence Parsons (UCLA), Robert Pippin (Chicago), Stephen Schiffer (NYU), Wilfried Sieg (Carnegie-Mellon), Michael Williams (Johns Hopkins), and Mark Wilson (Pittsburgh).  Three Foreign Honorary Members in Philosophy were also elected:  Jacques Brunschwig (Paris 1 [Sorbonne]), Ernst Tugendhat (Tubingen), and Timothy Williamson (Oxford).

This is a curious list because no one in religious studies was elected in this category this year (the category is officially "Philosophy and Religious Studies"):  I can't recall a year in which ten philosophers were elected in a single year!

Friday Poem: "Immortality"

Immortality

No one among them had died for years
Or thought they hadn't
Perhaps that explains
The people they had killed

Thinking: I cannot die
                We cannot die
                Only they can die

It does not matter
That we may deserve to die

We will not allow it

11/22-11/23/02
Copyright 2002 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Tenure-Track Hiring by Philosophy Departments, 2006-2007

MOVING TO FRONT FOR THE LAST TIME THIS HIRING SEASON [originally posted February 8 2007]

It's that time of year again...I am opening comments on this thread for people to post news about junior, tenure-track hires in philosophy departments, i.e., hires made during this year of new assistant professors who will be starting in fall 2007 (or thereafter).  Like last year, you may also post information about post-doc appointments, since there are an increasing number of those in philosophy, many quite attractive.  No anonymous posts will be allowed.  The candidates themselves, dissertation advisors, placement directors, department chairs, or faculty members involved with the hiring or the placement of the candidate may all post information.  No hearsay, however:  you must have first-hand knowledge of the placement.  (Please e-mail me about any errors.)

The format of the postings should be as follows:  candidate's name (name of PhD-granting school) hired by [name of school].  AOS:  ________; any prior positions (e.g., a postdoc, a lectureship, a visiting asst prof position).  In the case of a post-doc, it should say not 'hired by' but 'post-doc at' [name of school].

Here's an example (fictional):

John Smith (Chicago) hired by Kenyon College.   AOS:  19th-Century Philosophy.  Previously Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University.

Remember:  tenure-track jobs and postdocs only.  I'll move this thread to the front at various intervals until it looks like the hiring season has wound down.  Please post only once; postings should appear within 24 hours

"Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy"...

...has now been published in the U.S.  It is available in paperback, so hopefully someone will read it!

"Departmental Visits" for Prospective PhD Students

A student recently accepted to graduate programs in philosophy wrote to me inquiring about the "role of post-offer 'departmental visits' in the decision making process."  S/he continues:

I, for one, was totally unaware that these visits had become a central part of the procedure; I had no idea that departments were spending money flying prospective students all over America!  My experiences were very mixed, and I personally witnessed a number of other prospectives having similarly weird experiences.  I'm still not confident that I have a handle on how to best 'use' these visits when making a decision, and I'm similarly unsure about whether I think they're altogether a good idea.  (I think that there is a good chance that some departments are just much "better" at staging these visits than are other departments, and I doubt that an ability to stage a nice visit has much to do with the quality of the education a prospective is likely to receive!)  Anyway, I wonder whether you might at some point include some commentary on these visits in the Report, or at least make mention of how central a part of the process they've become.  It also might make for a good blog discussion at some point.

Comments are open; please avoid discussion of particular departments, and non-anonymous postings will be very strongly preferred.  Post only once; comments may take several hours, sometimes a whole day, to appear.

Hitchcock Declines Offer from Berkeley, to Remain at Cal Tech

Christopher Hitchcock (philosophy of science) at California Institute of Technology has declined the senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

....here.

Jeffrey C. King to Rutgers

Jeffrey C. King, one of the most distinguished philosophers of language of his generation, currently at the University of Southern California, has accepted a Professorship at Rutgers University. King will join the Rutgers faculty in fall 2007, along with Alan Code and Martin Lin.

Cross from Oxford to Notre Dame

Richard Cross (medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion), Professor of Theology at Oxford University, has accepted appointment as John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, filling the Chair previously held by the late Philip Quinn.

Iraqi Doctor Who Disputes US Version of Death Tolls Denied Visa for Conference at U of Washington (Leiter)

Story here; an excerpt:

An Iraqi doctor who made international headlines after stating that civilian deaths in the Iraq war far exceeded officially reported numbers is not being allowed to travel to North America to meet other academics.

Riyadh Lafta and his colleagues have been trying for months to get a U.S. travel visa so the doctor could speak at a medical conference at the University of Washington today....

As an alternative, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., invited Lafta to deliver his lecture today, which was to have been broadcast by video to the UW. But this week, the British government denied him a four-hour transit visa for a stopover between the Middle East and Canada.

Lafta, an epidemiologist, teaches at Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine in Baghdad and co-wrote an October 2006 article about Iraqi civilian deaths in The Lancet, a respected British medical journal.

The UW's School of Public Health and Community Medicine invited him to talk about that study and elevated cancer levels, particularly affecting children, in southern Iraq, said Amy Hagopian, an acting assistant professor.

Hagopian, who is conducting research with Lafta, believes the Bush administration is purposely blocking his travel to the United States. "My hypothesis is the Bush administration was extremely threatened by The Lancet study," she said....

"What we were going to hear about is a public health disaster in Iraq," said Tim Takaro, an associate professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University.

Takaro, who also conducts research with Lafta, called the 2006 study in The Lancet well-researched. He said the death estimate of nearly 655,000 Iraqi civilians is 10 times larger than other studies.

"The magnitude of that has been lost on the American people. Both the British and U.S. governments have discounted these figures," he said.

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, who visited Iraq in 2002, wants to know more about cancer rates in Iraq and what Lafta has found.

"We end up with the State Department and God knows who putting their foot on a guy from being able to attend a medical conference," he said.

Friday Poem: "How Do You Like Austin?"

How Do You Like Austin?

Where am I?

In a room somewhere on the planet.

Is anything outside?

Don't know.  Doesn't matter.
Have always lived inside.
The rest being interlude.

How do you like your new home?

It's still new, may always be.
I visit myself from time to time
Being careful not to startle the walls
Or step too confidently on the carpet.

But isn't it different from New York?

I am different from them both.
Once the sightseeing is done,
There is really no place
That is not home.

And the weather?

Not where I am,
But what I do
Will shape the climate.
If too hot, I will hide indoors.
I'm good at hiding anywhere.

3/9, 3/11/02, 4/6/07
Copyright 2002, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

"Styles of Philosophy"--from Michigan (Leiter)

This account from the Department of Philosophy at Michigan is one of the more sensible things I've seen written about this topic, which we've discussed here in the past.  I'm going to repost it in its entirety:

Philosophers disagree profoundly about what the best way to do philosophy is. Disagreements of this sort are as old as the subject itself, which in the West dates back to the 6th Century BCE in Greece. Even then, some philosophers thought of what we now call philosophy as much the same sort of activity as natural science, while others thought of it as much more like religion. Disagreements of this sort have persisted to the present day.

The most common approach to philosophy, not only at the University of Michigan, but also in most other major universities in the English-speaking world, is what is known as ‘analytic philosophy.’ In the first half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy was a movement that drew on emerging developments in mathematics and logic to clarify philosophical problems. Some analytic philosophers believed that making philosophical questions precise would allow their definitive resolutions, others that it would at least make clear what earlier philosophers had been arguing about -- and still others that it would show these questions to be ill-formed ‘pseudo-problems.’ Today ‘analytic’ philosophy still looks to this tradition, valuing clarity and precision in formulating philosophical positions, and scrutinizing arguments carefully. Analyses of meanings are less central than they were half a century ago, and analytic philosophers are now more wide-ranging in their interests, writing on subjects as diverse, for instance, as law, aesthetics, feminism, and Marxism. Analytic philosophers continue to share a belief that philosophy has much to gain from close ties to the natural, social, and mathematical sciences. In the history of philosophy, analytic philosophers stress clear reconstructions of the positions and arguments of the philosophers under study. Analytic studies in ethics, language, thought, mind, knowledge, and the like stress careful formulation and argument, in hopes that clarifying issues and arguments will lead to progress with the problems. In the words of J.L. Austin, the approach is to make progress by asking, persistently, "What does it mean? How do you know?"

Another way of studying philosophy is via the careful interpretation and examination of classic texts in the history of philosophy, works by past philosophers who have proven to be of enduring interest to contemporary philosophers. Although philosophers often conceive of their discipline as like a science, insofar as they hope that it makes progress in solving problems and discovering truth, they typically devote more attention to the history of their discipline than would be common in the sciences. One reason for this is that, to the extent that philosophy does make progress, it does so by building on the work of past philosophers. Understanding contemporary discussions – understanding why philosophers ask the questions they ask, and consider the answers they consider – frequently requires understanding how we got to the point we are at in this continuing conversation and why the questions have so far resisted definitive solution. But another reason is that  the greatest works of past philosophers are a continuing source of inspiration to contemporary philosophers, who often go back to them to mine them for ideas which haven’t previously been given their due. And finally, some love to study the history of philosophy for the sheer challenge of trying to understand how the world looked to the best minds of other times and places.

The third major approach to philosophy in American universities is via ‘continental philosophy.’ This designation originated in the English-speaking world as a way of referring to those European philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries not directly involved with the analytic movement. The term denotes neither a single philosophical program nor even a single line of inquiry, but encompasses a number of quite distinct movements. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Foucault are a few of the figures usually listed under the ‘continental’ rubric. The much-discussed ‘analytic/continental’ divide was an artifact of the conviction, held by many English and American philosophers into the 60’s and 70’s, that analysis was the only way of doing philosophy. As this conviction becomes less widely held, and as analytic philosophers expand their areas of interest, the distinction is becoming less and less significant -- with the result that even predominantly analytic departments like Michigan generally offer courses covering all the major ‘continental’ figures.

This obviously resonates with claims I've made here before, as well as in my "Introduction" to The Future for Philosophy.   I wonder what readers think?  Post only once; non-anonymous comments are more likely to appear; and comments may take awhile to show up.

Did Nietzsche Use a Typewriter? (Leiter)

Nigel Warburton (Open U) reports my skepticism about a contrary account.  Those with more information should post there.

UPDATE:  So two informative comments at Warburton's site reveal that Nietzsche did, indeed, have a typewriters, and did type some odds and ends with it, though not, it appears, any of his philosophical work.  But did Nietzsche have a laptop?  On that point, I'm more confident....

Virginia Tech Shooting

In view of the horrific mass murder at Virginia Tech today, I invite members of the philosophical community there to post any pertinent information pertaining to the status and safety of its students and faculty.  I hope you are all safe!

UPDATE (1:13 PM Central Standard Time, so 2:13 pm East Coast time):  Kevin Klipfel, an MA student in Philosophy at Virginia Tech, writes:

Thank you very much for your concern. I've talked to several people in the department and everyone seems to be safe. I was not on campus at the time of the shootings, nor were most of the people I've talked to. Those who were told me that the building the philosophy department is in was on lockdown for a couple hours, but that they're now home safely.

Norris, where the second shooting took place is very close to the philosophy department; most of what you see on television is taking place in a very familiar area of campus.

I don't have much to report besides what you can learn from the national news media, although to the best of my knowledge, the faculty and graduate students in the philosophy department appear to be safe.

Some Questions about Philosophy Department Hiring Practices and the Role of Race and Gender (Leiter)

A new assistant professor writes:

PGR has now guided me through grad school and two market cycles. Thanks for the all the hard work.

I wanted to mention that I’d witnessed/heard of a lot of discussion-worthy practices related to demographic attributes of candidates, especially gender and race.  (Demoralizing example: office assistants in the cubicle next to mine trying to guess the ethnicity of candidates from their surnames, which they appeared to be recording in the candidates’ dossiers.)

I’d love to know both people’s considered views and actual practices, particularly concerning whether departments should/do (a) ignore non-academic demographic attributes, (b) consider them in order to pursue/encourage applications from certain demographics, (c) weight demographic attributes but only as a tie-breaker, (d) weight demographic attributes so that an academically superior candidate might be turned down in favor of one with certain demographic attributes, or (e) weight demographic attributes so that a candidate who would normally not be viewed as sufficiently qualified is hired anyway because of demographic attributes.

I will, as usual, give strong preference to non-anonymous comments, though given the sensitivity of these topics may permit some anonymous postings.  Post only once; comments may take awhile to appear, even if approved.

Martin Lin to Rutgers

Martin Lin, currently Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, has accepted a tenured position as an Associate Professor in the department of philosophy at Rutgers University. Lin works in Early Modern Philosophy, and has already contributed a substantial body of distinguished work on Spinoza.

Friday Poem: "I Remember"

I Remember

Beating the pillows on the open sill
Sheets billowing above the street
Look out down there we'll smother you

But the bed cool from airing
Laundered fresh by daylight and breeze
-   -   -   -   -
The wooden bridge across the bay
I fearless nightly crossing
My innocence left in lamplight
With fisherman in stillness staying
Not bridge but water swaying
-   -   -   -   -
Summer's sweat and soaking sheets
The hopelessness of heat
Inescapably imploding
Until 4 AM's cool breeze
Rescues me near morning
-   -   -   -   -
Blinking my brights in Georgia
On a lonely two-lane night
To greet the truckers
Coming       myself going
A foolish camaraderie  yet
Soothing this silent hallooing
-   -   -   -   -   
Readying raw greasy ground beef
Washed under running water
And sculptured into patties
Faithfully four to the pound

Scooping samples from the plate
My chubby pre-teen hands
Slippery and glowing
Wishing to gorge on all of it
Dispense with the rite of broiling
In those sweet days before
The pathology of knowing
-   -   -   -   
Homeward from the library
With an armful of juicy books
To find an overlooked paperback
That I'd slipped into a back pocket
My first though inadvertent theft
The book I found I kept

4/20-4/28/99, 4/7/07

Copyright 1999, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission

New Book on Yale (J. Stanley)

Here is a review of The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges, by Joseph Soares. I haven't purchased it yet, but the review makes it seem like it is good companion reading to Daniel Golden's  excellent The Price of Admission: How the Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates (available here for purchase for those friends of yours who teach at a boutique "because the undergraduates are better"). Given my experience on the college admissions board at Cornell, I agree wholly with the comments about Ivy League Athletics, which should be a much larger scandal than it is. For those who don't know, the Ivy League doesn't give athletic scholarships, so Ivy League athletics is a mechanism for less accomplished students who don't need scholarships to get into Ivy League schools. Princeton regularly wins the national lacrosse title, lacrosse teams are huge, and lacrosse is not a sport for the underprivileged, unless you're an American Indian. To make matters worse, at some boutiques, the sports programs aren't even integrated yet.

But is it H2O? (Wilson)

For the first time: water has been detected on a planet outside our solar system.

Pruss from Georgetown to Baylor

Alexander Pruss (metaphysics, philosophy of religion), who is a tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, has accepted a tenured position in the Department of Philosophy at Baylor University for the fall.

Music out of context (Wilson)

and philosophers in the Post.  Plato, Leibniz, Hume, Kant (who was "obviously right"... maybe), and Paul Guyer are invoked along the way to understanding this mysterious phenomenon.

Richard Chappell (of Philosophers' Carnival fame) is back...

...in New Zealand after his US tour.  Please follow his good google advice, which will benefit PGR readers looking for Brian Leiter!

E-Bay against vagueness (Edmundson)

A British student, Dean Robinson, has been barred from E-Bay for the following infraction:

Your listing breached eBay's No Item policy and has been removed ... You may not list intangible items or items whose existence cannot be verified, such as ghosts, souls or spirits.

Robinson's listing offered unspecified services in return for financial support to enable him to attend Cambridge.  He condemned the ban as "completely pedantic," but

Ebay denied it was a spoilsport, claiming Robinson's offer was too vague. Vanessa Canzini, a spokeswoman, said: 'In the listing he talks about "sponsorship" and "employ" which would have hit our keywords for spamming. He also uses words like "negotiable" and "rates", so you wonder what is this guy offering? I suggest he looks at the email we've sent him. His listing is all over the place. He needs to be clearer what the buyer could expect.'

She pointed to the example of Nicael Holt, an Australian student who earlier this year auctioned his life on eBay, offering his name, phone number, worldly possessions and circle of friends to the highest bidder. Bidding was permitted because eBay deemed the listing to be sufficiently detailed and tangible. It closed at $A7,500 (£3,114).

Details courtesy the Guardian, here. 

Friday Poem: "I Wake Up Dying Instead I Write"

I Wake Up Dying
         Instead I Write

                    l
Who is this man
who rises at dawn
no longer in command
of his body
in manifest fear of death
who opens a book
begins to read poetry
and reflect on the art of expression

There's pain in his head
his heartbeat is dizzy
he gives himself up for dead
so he takes up a pen
some scraps of paper
and writes this down

Who is this man
whose poem
is his only friend

                  2
Years now studying the poets
trying to find my voice
I want to speak with authority
recognizable unique
I want you to know who I am

But I've lost all patience
with trial and error
I'm getting pissed off
you've got to be young
for this work or unselfconscious

Sometimes I think one voice
is as good as another
if you've nothing to say
it won't matter
if you do
a way will be found


                   3             
I was born expecting this dying
I can't remember it otherwise
how many others can say
death is their destiny
as I feel it's mine

Sitting here this morning
clutching my symptoms
throbs jabs jitters in the frame
sensing surges in my blood
it seems so right

I've been preparing for this
all my life

I'm not prepared

                  4
I've awakened thinking I'm finished
my body in distress
but peace of mind eludes me
my dignity out of reach

Is this the naked aloneness
I was promised
is this the denouement
from which nothing follows

I feel let down

                   5
Now at this moment
when death possesses my mind
as I sit here convinced
that I'm done
I hatch a great hoax

I'll leave a note
announcing my conversion
I'll speak of the afterlife
and my joyful expectation
I'll include a prayer

No dice I can't do it
maybe my life was a hoax
in some sense or other
at least let it end
as it began

No crutches

               6
But writing poems when you
wake up at death's border
perhaps that's a crutch
what proud man
with some minimal honor
needs words to talk himself off

As if death were just
an extended conversation
as if silence were the danger
as if language were life's answer
to death's beckon

Asked for the answer
She asked for the question

I say keep talking

                 7
Some would call this therapy
but they're still immortal
and think words a buffer
between themselves and the end
but I have been waiting
for this conviction of dying
to free my life

Death is of course no freedom
it's simply nothing
but the fear of death
adorned with imminence
is art's prize
non-being's muse come at last
bringing the freedom to speak

It is speech unlocked
raised to the light

It is flight

                8
Why this is my own Thanatopsis
(how when young I loved that poem)
my encomium to death
a tribute to the majority
I will join
and an affirmation
(my only one)
that what I was
I am

At such moments
one states things as they are
only infancy or innocence
would not understand
how death serves life

All the doing
loving building
is its tithing
without it we languish
with it at least go on

It is life's yardstick
its engine speed thrust
it is the countryside
through which life travels
the force which moves my pen

It is the stage
for last words' drama
as for long-range plans
the spur of all invention
and motive for some lies

Why without it…
why there is no such thing

               9
I find myself thinking of blood
like a Latin poet
the blood of others
as in some novel
I conclude death is political
in the sense that love is political
when by its intimacy
it rejects tyranny
and possession's bondage

And as death excludes life's baggage
takes only the body
and shortly dissolves it
so death is the witness
against ownership
and imbecile acquisition
life's blood given to gaining
and of the bled little remaining
its residue so trifling
when compared to any body

               10
Last will and testament:
Unsound as I am
I leave you my name
and my freedom
my goods are worthless
use them up

Pass this to five others

9/7/96-2/19/97, 2/7-2/9/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

The End of History (According to the Guggenheim Foundation, at least) (J. Stanley)

As Brian announced, Paul Horwich, the eminent NYU philosopher, was the sole recipient in philosophy of a Guggenheim award this year. In contrast, by my count at least 20 historians received Guggenheim Fellowships. Furthermore, Prof. Horwich's own project, like the majority of successful Guggenheim Fellowships by philosophers in recent years, is itself historical (on Wittgenstein). There is clearly some kind of message that the Guggenheim Foundation is trying to deliver here...

UPDATE: I received the following email message from a philosopher who has previously won a Guggenheim Fellowship:

Re your latest Guggie-post, the situation may actually be a bit more sinister. One year recently both philosophy awards went to ancient philosophers. A year or so later two guys at Chicago got the only philosophy Guggies and on topics that can only be described as falling into the same, relatively narrow equivalence class. Haven't done further fact checking.  But as they say go figure.

[I assume that the second year referred to by this philosopher was 2003, when Arnold Davidson, John Haugeland, and Sean Dorrance Kelly won Guggenheim Fellowships.  Their projects, respectively, were titled "Spiritual Exercises in Philosophy", "An Interpretation of Heidegger", and "Phenomenology, Consciousness, and Embodiment". Obviously, these are projects worth funding (as is ancient philosophy!), and the philosophers in question are important scholars. But  I guess the point is that one could expect a more representative sample of current philosophy than the Guggenheim foundation has selected in recent years.]

The Tenure Case of Norman Finkelstein at DePaul (Leiter)

Professor Finkelstein, a fierce critic of Israeli crimes and defender of the rights of the Palestinians, is embroiled in a tenure battle at DePaul University where he teaches.  There are informative pieces on this unfolding story here and here.  Particularly notable is the way in which Alan Dershowitz--the Harvard law professor, apologist for torture, and unabashed Zionist whose positions are generally to the right of Likud--has inserted himself into the process.  Indeed, he shows up in the comments at the former link to denounce Finkelstein as an "academic fraud" and The Chronicle of Higher Education article quotes him as calling Finkelstein "a propagandist, not a scholar."  Tough words coming from someone who has been embroiled in debates about his own academic integrity and about whom Judge Richard Posner has written, "Although he is a professor at Harvard Law School, he is not a scholar."

I have not read much of Professor Finkelstein's work, though I am inclined to agree with the first commentator here who remarks that, "Defending something called 'civil discourse' is always the favorite claim of deans and administrators seeking to fire people, bust unions, and marginalize critical views."  Professor Kirstein at Saint Xavier University also has a good line:  "Tonality is usually a red herring to destroy controversial speech that elites don’t like."  (Professor Dershowitz, wisely, does not make "civility" or "tone" an issue in his own opposition to Professor Finkelstein's bid for tenure--though why Professor Dershowitz is involved at all in this tenure case is, shall we say, a bit hard to explain in a principled way.) 

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Philosopher Horwich Wins Guggenheim Fellowship

Paul Horwich (NYU) appears to be the only philosopher to have won a Guggenheim Fellowship in this year's competition; he won support for a project on "Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy."

Of local interest, three UT Austin faculty won Guggenheims this year:  Diana K. Davis (Geography & Middle Eastern Studies); Neil Foley (History); and A. Van Jordan (English).

Blackburn to Return to North Carolina on a Half-Time Basis from Fall 2008

Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and a leading figure in ethics and philosophy of language, among other areas, will return to the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill each fall, beginning in 2008 and continuing each fall for at least five of the next six years.   Blackburn, who is 63 this year, will be coming up against the mandatory retirement age in the U.K. soon.  That's a significant coup for UNC, which already boasts one of the top ethics faculties in the U.S.

Ludlow from Michigan to Toronto

Philosopher of language Peter Ludlow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.  This is the latest in a (successful) effort by the Toronto Department to strengthen its presence in areas like philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and philosophical logic; other recent lateral recruitments include co-bloggers Benj Hellie and Jessica Wilson (from Cornell and Michigan, respectively), Evan Thompson from York/Toronto, Byeong Yi from Minnesota, Diana Raffman from Ohio State, and Mohan Matthen from British Columbia.

Michigan, I should note, is at risk on one other senior faculty member this year; prospective students should inquire with the Department. 

Using Google Scholar to Assess the Impact of Philosophical Work (J. Stanley)

Academics spend much time trying to assess the relative merits of work in an area. There is no sure-fire way to do this of course. But citation indices are one method to assess the impact work has had on an area. Though philosophers are loathe to use them, they are widely used in other disciplines. Citation indices of course do not tell us everything we need to know to make such a judgment. Much work is of very high quality, but sufficiently specialized to be of interest to only a very few. Conversely, someone can write a paper that sparks a great deal of interest for its obvious flaws. Nevertheless, one can hope that citation indices could give us at least some sense of the major themes in a subject area. My sense is that as philosophy has become more specialized, more and more philosophers have simply lost contact with what is being currently discussed in journals and books. One might hope that citation indices could provide a rough objective map of the terrain of an area that can be used in place of word-of-mouth. 

Since I discovered Google Scholar about six months ago, I’ve been comparing its citation results to my general sense of what is going on in fields in which I work. Generally, it seems quite accurate – papers that have had a significant impact in an area have had correspondingly greater hits on Google Scholar than papers that have had smaller impacts. For example, some test cases: two much-admired recent papers that have created significant literatures in epistemology are Jim Pryor’s paper, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist” and Adam Elga’s “Self-Locating Belief and the Sleeping Beauty Problem”. Google Scholar correctly reveals this; these are two of the most cited papers in epistemology since 2000 (68 for Pryor’s paper, and 40 for Elga’s paper). Keith DeRose’s “Solving the Skeptical Problem” is one of the most influential papers in epistemology written in the past thirty years, and Google Scholar again reveals this; it has 187 hits, despite being published as recently as 1995. Ted Sider’s book Four-Dimensionalism and Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and Its Limits have been hugely important works, and Google Scholar clearly reveals this (266 hits and 303 hits respectively, despite publication dates of 2001 and 2000, respectively). One paper that has had no impact whatsoever in its field is Jason Stanley’s 1998 contribution to the literature on personal identity, “Persons and their Properties”. Again, Google Scholar correctly reveals this, since this paper has no hits.

There are of course pitfalls to using Google Scholar. First, one should refrain from comparing hit numbers across areas of philosophy. Some areas of philosophy (e.g. philosophy of mind that borders on philosophy of psychology and philosophy of language that borders on linguistics) are cross-disciplinary, and so have created literatures in multiple fields. This naturally increases the number of researchers reacting to these papers, and correspondingly the number of hits. If one wants to compare the impact just in philosophy of a certain work, this makes things difficult. Furthermore, some areas of philosophy seem to involve more citation than others, or simply more researchers. So one must take care to compare (e.g.) only work in history of modern to other work in history of modern, or work in meta-ethics to other work in meta-ethics. Finally, it takes a number of years for the impact of a work to register on Google Scholar. The publication date of an article is a very large factor, as the older an article or book is the more hits it will receive. It is not yet possible to use Google Scholar to assess the impact of publications from 2004 or after. So in judging the relative impact of work, it’s best to compare work that was published at roughly the same time. Nevertheless, after several months of procrastinating with it, in areas such as metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind, when used with appropriate caution, it does deliver results that accord with my sense of what papers and books have created some of the major debates in these areas.

PhD Admissions (Again): Info Sought on the Season Just Concluded

The original thread was derailed into a slightly different (though informative) discussion, so I'm trying again on the original topic:

A student who was unsuccessful in his applications to PhD programs writes:

Would members of admissions committees be willing to share any information about the admissions process for their philosophy programs?  For example, it would be helpful to know how many applicants and admitted students a given program had; whether they use GPA and GRE scores as an initial screen, and what numbers would pass that screen; whether they favor or disfavor applicants with other graduate degrees, such as an M.A. in philosophy or a law degree; whether they prefer applicants right out of undergrad or with work or other experience; or any other information they think might be helpful to applicants who are deciding where to apply.

I ask because I applied to 9 programs for 2007 and was denied admission to all of them, and I gather from various message boards, such as gradstudent.cafe and Who Got In? Philosophy, that many other students were shut out this year and that several successful applicants were applying again after being shut out last year.  If I had known just how selective some of the programs I applied to were, I would have applied more cautiously. Just to give a few examples, I understand that Rutgers had 284 applicants for 7 places, Cornell had 240 for 6, and Toronto had 400 for 14.  I've learned that I overreached this year, but I still don't know which programs are reasonably within my reach.  If visitors to your blog could shed some light on how selective their schools are and/or what they want and don't want in applicants, it would be very helpful to me and other would-be grad students.

I would greatly appreciate your posting this, as I've seen such questions generate many illuminating comments in the past.  Being shut out for a year is a tough way to learn that you and/or your advisers have an unreasonably lofty notion of your admissibility, and I think that making more information available about the harsh realities of the admissions process might spare others from suffering the same fate.

Non-anonymous posts only, and please post only once.  Comments should appear within about 24 hours, usually sooner.

It All Happened on April 2

It's the birthday of literary critic and James Joyce scholar William York Tindall, (books by this author) born in Williamstown, Vermont (1903). He was a literature student when he discovered James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) while traveling in Paris. He became obsessed with Joyce, and read all of his works. When he returned to the U.S., he started teaching a course in modern literature at New York University, and he was one of the first professors in the United States to assign Ulysses to his students. The book was still banned in the U.S. at the time, so his students had to read a bootlegged copy that was chained to a desk in the library.

It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell received patent No. 174,465 for the telephone. He filed for his patent on the same day as a Chicago electrician named Elisha Gray filed for a patent on basically the same device. Bell only beat Gray by two hours.

It was on this day in 1933 that a man named Charles Darrow trademarked the board game Monopoly. Darrow based the game on an earlier game called "The Landlord's Game," which had been designed by a woman named Elizabeth Magie to teach people about the evils of capitalism.

It was on this day in 1917 that the Victor Talking Machine Company released the first jazz record in American history. There were various terms for this new music. It was called "ratty music," "gut-bucket music," and "hot music." Historians aren't sure how it came to be called jazz, but it's believed that the word may have come from a West African word for speeding things up. It was also a slang term for sex.

CORRECTION:  Actually it all happened on March 7.

Hexagon of Saturn (Edmundson)

NASA's Cassini-Huygens probe has revealed what looks to be a hexagonal ring around Saturn's north pole.  Even Cardinal Bellarmine might be impressed.

PhD Admissions in the US: Information Sought on the Season Concluding

A student who was unsuccessful in his applications to PhD programs writes:

Would members of admissions committees be willing to share any information about the admissions process for their philosophy programs?  For example, it would be helpful to know how many applicants and admitted students a given program had; whether they use GPA and GRE scores as an initial screen, and what numbers would pass that screen; whether they favor or disfavor applicants with other graduate degrees, such as an M.A. in philosophy or a law degree; whether they prefer applicants right out of undergrad or with work or other experience; or any other information they think might be helpful to applicants who are deciding where to apply.

I ask because I applied to 9 programs for 2007 and was denied admission to all of them, and I gather from various message boards, such as gradstudent.cafe and Who Got In? Philosophy, that many other students were shut out this year and that several successful applicants were applying again after being shut out last year.  If I had known just how selective some of the programs I applied to were, I would have applied more cautiously. Just to give a few examples, I understand that Rutgers had 284 applicants for 7 places, Cornell had 240 for 6, and Toronto had 400 for 14.  I've learned that I overreached this year, but I still don't know which programs are reasonably within my reach.  If visitors to your blog could shed some light on how selective their schools are and/or what they want and don't want in applicants, it would be very helpful to me and other would-be grad students.

I would greatly appreciate your posting this, as I've seen such questions generate many illuminating comments in the past.  Being shut out for a year is a tough way to learn that you and/or your advisers have an unreasonably lofty notion of your admissibility, and I think that making more information available about the harsh realities of the admissions process might spare others from suffering the same fate.

Non-anonymous posts only, and please post only once.  Comments should appear within about 24 hours, usually sooner.

Pritchard from Stirling to Edinburgh

Duncan Pritchard, one of the UK's leading young epistemologists who is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stirling, has accepted a Chair in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, which will certainly help Edinburgh, already a strong department, be more competitive with the top English departments like Sheffield, Birkbeck, and King's College, London.