Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

2013: Philosophers who passed away

The passing of the following philosophers was noted on the blog during 2013:  Edwin B. Allaire, David Braybrooke, Joseph L. Camp, Jr., Arthur Danto, Fred Dretske, Ronald Dworkin, Peter Geach, Keith Gunderson, R.I.G. Hughes, Edward McClennen, Avrum Stroll, Arthur Szathmary, D. Burnham Terrell, Dallas Willard.  You can click on the "Philosophy Updates" category and scroll down for more information, including links to memorial notices and obituaries.

You can see last year's list here.

New Books in December

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month:

Inventing Falsehood, Making Truth:  Vico and Neapolitan Painting by Malcolm Bull (Princeton University Press, 2013).

Killing by Remote Control:  The Ethics of an Unmanned Military edited by Bradley Jay Strawser (Oxford University Press, 2013).

How We Hope:  A Moral Psychology by Adrienne M. Martin (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Why We Argue (and How We Should) by Scott F. Aikin & Robert B. Talisse (Routledge, 2014).

Understanding Peace:  A Comprehensive Introduction by Michael Allen Fox (Routledge, 2014).

Philosophy of Science:  A Unified Approach by Gerhard Schurz (Routledge, 2014).

Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law edited by Deborah Hellman & Sophia Moreau (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Philosophy of Biology by Peter Godfrey-Smith (Princeton University Press, 2014).

AAUP correctly condemns new Kansas Regents' policy on faculty use of social media

Details here, via law professor Stephen Diamond (Santa Clara).

Just when you thought you couldn't have a lower opinion of the Republican Party...

...along comes this news:

Over the last four years, the percentage of Democrats who said they believe in evolution has risen by three points, from 64 percent to 67 percent. But the percentage of Republicans who believe in the theory has dropped 11 points, from 54 percent to 43 percent.

So while there was a 10-point gap in 2009, there is now a 24-point gap.

In fairness, millions of Democrats are apparently ignorant of basic science too.  What a country!

Wi-Phi

Videos by philosophers explaining/exploring different philosophical topics and illustrating how to do philosophy. 

(Thanks to Clifford Sosis for the pointer.)

Vanderbilt's Aikin & Talisse interviewed...

...at 3AM.

John Sexton of NYU takes a strong stand for "academic freedom"

This is funny.

A different take on the Turing pardon

Phil Gasper calls my attention to this piece, which makes an apt point:

In announcing the pardon today, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, said: "A pardon from the Queen is a fitting tribute to an exceptional man." Turing was certainly an exceptional man but the tribute could not be less fitting. It says that the British state is prepared to forgive historical homosexual acts providing they were performed by a national hero, academic giant or world-changing innovator. This is the polar opposite of the correct message. Turing should be forgiven not because he was a modern legend, but because he did absolutely nothing wrong. The only wrong was the venality of the law. It was wrong when it was used against Oscar Wilde, it was wrong when it was used against Turing and it was wrong when it was used against an estimated 75,000 other men, whether they were famous playwrights and scientists or squaddies, plumbers or office clerks. Each of those men was just as unfairly persecuted, and many suffered similarly awful fates. To single out Turing is to say these men are less deserving of justice because they were somehow less exceptional. That cannot be right.

"Why Tolerate Religion?" at Philosophy Talk radio

Here this week (middle column, click on the free live stream).  John Perry, Ken Taylor and I had fun!

Reworking some articles for a book: a bad idea for junior faculty?

A young philosopher writes:

I’m an assistant professor at a small private university in the south. I recently told the chair of my department, along with another associate professor, of my forthcoming book. As you might imagine, I was proud about it and thought it would be a great bit of information to share. When they learned that four of the ten chapters had previously been published as articles, they expressed serious concern over having these articles republished in a book. In fact, they even went so far as to say that my tenure may be in jeopardy because of it. They said that it was a terrible idea to “recycle” my work like this and that this is not the way scholarship is done nowadays. I thought this was odd and sought advice from my old dissertation advisor as well as a couple other professors I had worked with at other institutions. They said that the chair and the other member held a professionally confused view. My advisor said that he had just finished reviewing a manuscript for Oxford University Press in which all of the chapters were slightly modified versions of articles that had been previously published. He said,
 
If a publisher’s reviewers think a previously published article is worth publishing in a book, this is a strong endorsement of the quality of the previously published article. It shows that a reviewer in the profession thinks the article is worth a wider audience.

I’m worried that writing this book may really be detrimental to my getting tenure. I wonder what your readers think about this. Is what the Chair and this other member have said is true? Receiving tenure is obviously more important than anything else at this stage in my career. Any advice is most welcomed.

I confess the reaction of this assistant professor's senior colleagues strikes me as bizarre.  Republishing or reworking material for a book is done all the time, and typically gets one's work greater attention.  I suppose if one simply republished verbatim 10 articles as a book, the tenure "credit" for that would not be as great as for writing a monograph from scratch.  But that isn't even the case here.  What do readers make of this?  Signed comments preferred.

UNC's Paul to take up part-time post at St. Andrews

L.A. (Laurie) Paul (metaphysics) will join the Arche Center at the University of St. Andrews as a Professorial Fellow, where she will spend five weeks (beginning in May) each year for the next five years; she will continue full-time as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Nietzsche, Naturalism and Normativity

My review essay of a very good collection of new essays, for anyone who might be interested--it will be in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews early in the new year.

In Memoriam: Peter Geach (1916-2013)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DEC. 22--UPDATED

Professor Geach was well-known for many books and articles on topics in philosophy of language and mind (including what is now known as the Frege-Geach probject for ethical non-cognitivism), as well as for work in the genre now known as "analytical Thomism."  He spent most of his teaching career at the University of Birmingham and then the University of Leeds, where he was emeritus.   Here is Steve Pyke's famous photo of Geach and his wife G.E.M. Anscombe.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  Philosopher John Haldane (St. Andrews) has written an informative memorial of Professor Geach, which he kindly invited me to share with readers:

The death of Peter Geach on 21st December 2013 at the age of 97 marks the passing of one of Anglophone philosophy's most distinctive and gifted figures. Geach published widely over seven decades in the areas of logic, language, mind, religion and ethics. His first article "Designation and Truth" appeared in Analysis in 1948, and his last was published in the same journal in 2006. Entitled "The Labels" it begins "Once upon a time in China there was a wicked king. His hobby was logic" and it concerns the King's intellectual battles with and eventual defeat of a "very clever logician Lo-sou". Numbering fewer than 300 words, it is an illustrated example of a problem posed by his late wife Elizabeth Anscombe when she herself was 81. "Lo-sou" was the Chinese name for Bertrand Russell. In the previous issue of Analysis Geach published "The Tractatus is not all rubbish", a 200 word response to a critic of Wittgenstein's propositional logic.

Among  analytical philosophers Peter Geach was without peer as a literary stylist. One may disagree with his judgements and take exception to the terms in which they were sometimes expressed; yet his writing is a model of clear and precise English, devoid of pseudo-subtlety but animated by a learned literary spirit. Like Johnson and Chesterton, (both of whom he admired) Geach is a pleasure to read; unlike them he commanded both plain prose and the technical languages of Greek and medieval philosophy, as well being a master of logic and a powerful dialectician. 

He made light of any claim to be a creative logician; yet his contributions to the philosophy of logic are rightly admired, and his deployment of logical insights in the course of non-technical argumentation combines lightness with efficacy. Four examples of the latter deserve mention on account of their insight and influence:

1. In "Frege's Grundlagen" (Philosophical Review 1960) Geach observed that the development of arithmetic can proceed validly within the Fregean system from Hume's principle without reliance on the extension operator. The same point was later developed by Charles Parsons and Crispin Wright.

2. In "Good and Evil" (Analysis, 1956) Geach notes that in its most common and natural uses "good" is an attributive adjective, the criteria for its application being provided by the substantive which is qualifies - as in 'good knife'. This was subsequently deployed by Philippa Foot and many others.

3. In "Ascriptivism" (Philosophical Review, 1960) Geach pointed out that for inferences to be valid, expressions occurring in both asserted and unasserted uses have to have the same meaning, and that this poses problems for attitudinal accounts of 'voluntary', 'intentional' and 'good' and 'bad'. It is worth noting that while the 'Frege-Geach' problem is more or less universally introduced n discussions of meta-ethical expressivism, Geach's first presentation of it was mainly concerned with philosophy of action.

4. In "On Worshipping the Right God" (c. 1960, published in God and the Soul, 1969) Geach distinguishes between 'personal' and 'impersonal' uses of 'to refer' and gives examples where a speaker refers though the definite description he uses is false, and others where the description is satisfied by someone other than the person to whom the speaker uniquely refers. Later in 1960s and in the decade following, such distinctions and examples became standard in the formulation of 'direct reference' theories - though unlike many who turned in that direction he also argued that the use of proper names logically implies the existence of associated kind concepts.

Geach also made important early contributions to logic in the areas of plural quantification, the sortal-dependency of identity, entailment, and intentional identity. Some of his ideas have resulted in the entry of expressions into the philosophical lexicon including 'Cambridge Change', 'predicable', 'pronoun of laziness', 'relative identity', Shakespearean context'.  To the extent that Geach drew inspiration from other philosophers it tended to be from figures of the past, though he had a high regard for Kripke, Prior, and Quine which in each case was fully reciprocated.

ANOTHER:  An obituary from The Guardian.

AND ANOTHER:  Philosopher John Schwenkler (Forida State) on Geach at Commonweal.

AND ANOTHER:  The Telegraph.  (Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.)

The American gun lottery

Apt, unfortunately:

Remember, back in junior high school, when you read that classic of American literature, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson?  In the story, a small town ritualistically draws straws each summer to see who among them will be stoned to death, to ensure a good harvest later that fall. (Goes the local proverb, “lottery in June, corn be heavy soon!”)  As the lottery begins, the townspeople gather in the public square and begin to collect rocks. The head of each family draws a slip of paper from the box, hoping not to see an inky black dot. The family that draws the black dot advances to the next round, in which one member is selected for sacrifice the same way. Tessie Hutchinson, a wife and mother of young children, draws the condemning dot, and the story ends as the terrified woman is stoned by her neighbors while she frantically protests. 

 

Now, looking around your own world, does this dystopian game of chance seem at all familiar? Thankfully not, you are probably thinking – but if we’re really being honest, it should. On the anniversary of the soul-wrenching Newtown shootings, it’s time to concede that we, too, are participants in a lottery of our own making – one so horrifying that we mostly choose not to see it. But let’s face the grim reality.  We are all living in that same nightmare town, where innocents are mindlessly sacrificed in service to ideals that don’t require this kind of sacrifice.  When it comes to gun violence in America, we play the nightmare lottery every time we send our children off to school, each time we visit a public place, walk the streets, and in some cases, live in our homes. 

Where are the WASPs when you need them?

WSJ writer bemoans the end of white rule.

Capitalism is the issue

No kidding:

How long will it take us to understand that the entire neoliberal project – the puritanical mania for cutting taxes, cutting social services and cutting budget deficits that has dominated the Western world’s economy for more than 30 years – has been a disaster? And guess what, liberals: You don’t get to point the finger at Ronald Reagan, Maggie Thatcher and Milton Friedman and claim it was all their fault. The reformist center-left, whether it took the form of Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats,” Tony Blair and “New Labor” or the watered-down social-democratic parties of Europe, has enthusiastically rebranded itself as a servant of global capital. If you were genuinely surprised that the Obama administration loaded itself up with Wall Street insiders, or that it failed to punish anyone for the massive criminal scheme that resulted in the 2008 financial collapse, you haven’t been paying attention.

I make that point because it’s almost impossible to have a serious discussion about this country’s economic problems without getting trapped into partisan political bickering, which is almost irrelevant in this context. The activist Tea Party right (at least in its populist, non-elite form) and the activist Occupy left are essentially reacting to the same phenomenon – worsening inequality, and the long-term economic and psychic decay of the United States – but interpreting it in different ways. Working-class whites who feel an immense loss of relative privilege and social status are not wrong, for example – but it doesn’t have much to do with the Kenyan socialist Muslim in the White House, or his namby-pamby and admittedly screwed-up healthcare law. As Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently noted, census data reveals that men with high-school diplomas but without college degrees earn about 40 percent less today (in real terms) than they did in the 1970s. Obama didn’t do that; capitalism did.

Stiglitz concluded his essay on inequality – which argued that it was a political choice, rather than the inevitable result of macroeconomic forces – by writing that he saw us “entering a world divided not just between the haves and have-nots, but also between those countries that do nothing about it, and those that do. Some countries will be successful in creating shared prosperity — the only kind of prosperity that I believe is truly sustainable. Others will let inequality run amok.” Which kind of country do we live in? That was the question that ran through my mind this week while I was watching Frederick Wiseman’s magisterial documentary “At Berkeley,” a portrait of America’s most prestigious public university as it wrestles with piecemeal privatization and the near-total abandonment of its historic mission.

Reagan was the decisive President in my lifetime, just as Roosevelt was for a prior generation.  Neither Clinton nor Obama has turned the tide, though perhaps Obama laid a foundation for someone more courageous to do so.  We will see.

Share in the Xmas spirit: vote for the "poseur of the year"

Here.   One philosopher is included (I won't give it away), as is one silly philosophical tourist, Ian Bogost (who is winning).

Poseur of the century?  Maybe we'll run that poll after the holidays (though I guess we know the likely winners).

(Thanks to Peter Ludlow for the pointer.)

Royal pardon (at last) for Alan Turing

Story here.

(Thanks to Matt Lavine for the pointer.)

Editors of philosophy journals discuss the issues they confront...

...at a new blog.  They welcome additional contributors--see the "About" page for information (editors of journals may "self-nominate" to participate in the blog).

Poetry at 3AM

Congratulations to long-time reader Aaron E. Baker, who has had several poems published at 3AM.

Recent reviews of "Why Tolerate Religion?"

The good, the bad, and the ugly.  (This is a comment on the quality of the reviews, not the verdicts they reach!)   You would think a very clear, 185-page book would generate more consistently competent reviews, but the topic of religion, alas, seems to be an obstacle.

A happy development: the Tea Party crazies are attacking the Republican Party

Hurray!  It gives me hope that perhaps my grandchildren will grow up in a world without a meaningful Republican Party (apart, of course, from that portion of the Democratic Party that would have been Republicans in 1975).

$2.2 Million for project on "Nature and Value of Faith"...

...with philosopher Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor) as the Principal Investigator.  There is more information about the award and the project here and here.

Jobs for philosophers?

This is funny.

(Thanks to Peter Graham for the pointer.)

Kansas Board of Regents does something foolish and unconstitutional

In the wake of the controversy surrounding a "tweet" by a KU professor about the NRA, the Board of Regents have now adopted the following policy regarding faculty and staff use of social media:

The regents’ policy, effective immediately, gives a university’s top leader the authority to suspend or fire any faculty or staff member who improperly uses social media, including Facebook, Twitter and other sites.

The policy’s list of improper uses includes communications that incite violence, disclose student information or research data, or are “contrary to the best interest of the university.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/12/18/4701383/regents-approve-policy-for-using.html#storylink=cpy

Notice that the prohibition on "inciting violence," if interpreted in accordance with the applicable constitutional standards, would not cover the "tweet" that started all this.  A prohibition on disclosing student data is probably already covered by FERPA (the federal student privacy law), while the prohibition on disclosing "research data" and making statements "contrary to the best interest of the university" are probably both unconstitutional (the latter is at least unconstitutionally vague--unfortunately, the courts have been eroding the free speech rights of public employees in various ways over the last decade, but I would be astonished if this standard passed constitutional muster).

Not a great day for public highe reducation in Kansas.  I assume a court challenge will be forthcoming.

(Thanks to Dennis Arjo for the pointer.)

 

 

Thoughts on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy?

A young philosopher writes:

I've been invited to contribute an article to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and I am wondering whether it would be wise to accept the invitation. Several of my friends and colleagues have likewise been invited, and there has been a lot of disagreement on this question. More specifically, I would like to know: 

1. Whether an IEP article is a good idea for tenure or job market purposes.

2. Independent of (1), whether contributing to IEP means doing a good thing for students or the general public.

3. How the IEP is regarded in the profession in general, on its own or compared to the SEP.

My own sense is that there is no comparison, in terms of both quality and visibility, between SEP and IEP.  I never use IEP, whereas I use SEP a lot, and I expect I'm not atypical.  What do philosophers think?

Is America gradually secularizing, like Europe?

I know, I know, hope springs eternal.

Senior offers declined in 2013

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 19, 2013 (originally posted Nov. 8, 2013)

I last posted a list of these at the end of last year; as I explained then (basically repeating what a philosopher elsewhere had said to me):  "the fact of a senior offer is a more tangible indication of how at least one other department evaluates the philosopher's work....I will [now] report senior offers declined when it is confirmed by the candidate or his/her (home or hiring) department chair." For this post, I am seeking information about tenured offers declined during 2013.

If you are the candidate or the home or hiring department chair, you may post the information below; alternatively you may e-mail me at bleiter-at-uchicago-dot-edu, and I will post an updated list next week.

SO FAR:

Brie Gertler (philosophy of mind) at University of Virginia turned down an offer from Rice University.

Anthony Gillies (philosophy of language, epistemology) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick turned down an offer from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jonathan Schaffer (metaphysics) at Rutgers University, New Brusnwick turned down an offer from Cornell University.

Susanna Schellenberg (philosophy of mind & language, epistemology) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick turned down an offer from Cornell University.

Iain Thomson (Continental philosophy) at the University of New Mexico turned down an offer from the University of South Florida.

R. Jay Wallace (ethics, philosophy of action) at the University of California at Berkeley turned down an offer of the White's Chair in Moral Philosophy from Oxford University.

Philosophy in the university 30 years hence?

A colleague elsewhere sent me the following dystopian reflections, suggesting I open them for discussion:

                    Report of the APA Committee on the Status of the Profession in 2043

                                            Executive summary

 In the US, there will be 15-20 Ph. D programs, each producing 5 Ph Ds per year.  Most of those will be departments currently in the Leiter top 20. In the UK there will be fewer Ph. D, programs; every five years the government will assess the programmes and promote/demote some from premiere status.  In the US the invisible hand will rule.

There will be 30-50 three year graduate programs  producing MAPhT  (MA in Philosophy Teaching) students.  The programs will integrate two years of course work of the familiar kind with a year of training in teaching with practice.

Most remaining colleges will have a philosophy department of three long term faculty with Ph. D.s, one each in history of philosophy, value theory and core analytic (critical thinking and philosophy of science and technology).  Philosophy majors will be scarce and will complete their degrees in three years.  They will spend the last year taking capstone courses in residence after two years of online work. The department will provide courses for thousands of students online managed/taught by a staff of part-time MAPhTs. The long term faculty will teach the capstone courses, select online material for courses and oversee the hiring and teaching of the part-time faculty.

(People will have realized that the magic number “4” is an irrelevant average and degree programs will vary from 3 years in areas such as philosophy to 5 years for engineering.  Engineering students will need to spend the last two years on campus because they will require experience in actual physical simulation laboratories.)

Logic will only be taught in advanced courses; Excel-Logic will provide translations of natural language premises and conclusions into logical notation and evaluate arguments (with more accuracy than students currently possess six months after taking a logic course). It will include the capacity to evaluate arguments requiring tense and modal logic, and will indicate when an argument is valid in S4.2 but not S4.  When ambiguous sentences are entered, it will query the user as to which logical structure is intended. Critical thinking courses will emphasize identifying premises of arguments, a subtler skill. 

History of philosophy students will not be confined to texts but will watch holographs of Socratic dialogues.  Ethics students will be engulfed in holographic virtual reality trolley disaster simulations.

All publication will be self-publication online.  Journals will have become extinct except for the top two which will expire as soon as they publish their backlog which grows every year.  Status of publications will be determined by Zagat-Phil using a complex algorithm based on the number of ratings, the rating numbers and the pattern of downloads, citations of the paper, and status of the citer.

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

Signed comments will be strongly preferred.

 

 

I am usually pretty good about replying to e-mails, but...

...I've fallen way behind lately.  Apologies.

"The Philosopher Is In"

Courtesy of Amherst professors Lawrence Douglas (Jurisprudence) and Alexander George (Philosophy).

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)

Another academic freedom catastrophe at the University of Colorado, Boulder

First there was Ward Churchill, now this:

[Sociology Professor] Adler said that the lecture in question has been part of her course for years, without incident. "It's the highlight of the semester in my signature course," she said.

She uses prostitution, she said, to illustrate that status stratification occurs in various groups considered deviant by society. She seeks volunteers from among assistant teaching assistants (who are undergraduates) to dress up as various kinds of prostitutes -- she named as categories "slave whores, crack whores, bar whores, streetwalkers, brothel workers and escort services." They work with Adler on scripts in which they describe their lives as these types of prostitutes....

Adler said that she was told by Steven Leigh, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, that a former teaching assistant had raised a concern that some participants might be uncomfortable, but that none had in fact complained. Adler said that participation was entirely voluntary and not part of anyone's grade.

She said that Leigh told her that there was "too much risk" in having such a lecture in the "post-Penn State environment," alluding to the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Adler said that she was given the choice of accepting a buyout now, or staying but not teaching the course, and not giving the prostitution lecture, and to be aware that she could be fired and lose her retirement benefits if anyone complained about her teaching in the future.

The ultimatum stunned her, Adler said. She said it was a violation of her academic freedom to be told that she couldn't teach the lecture or the course. But she said she feared the impact of losing her retirement benefits if she stayed and got fired later. "This is health insurance my family depends on," she said.

If this description is accurate, then Dean Leigh, who is a biological anthropologist by academic training, is the one who should be summarily fired from his post as Dean.

It is perhaps worth noting that Colorado is a state where Republican politicans have repeatedly pressured the University on a variety of issues; the consequences are now clear:  administrators are doing the "dirty work" before it rises to the level of political controversy.  What a disgrace.

UPDATE:  Several readers sent me copies of an e-mail sent out by the Provost at Colorado; the relevant portion is this:

A number of you have raised concerns about academic freedom and how it may connect to this situation. Academic freedom protects faculty who teach controversial and uncomfortable/ unpopular subjects. However, academic freedom does not allow faculty members to violate the University’s sexual harassment policy by creating a hostile environment for their teaching assistants, or for their students attending the class.

In this case, University administrators heard from a number of concerned students about Professor Adler’s “prostitution” skit, the way it was presented, and the environment it created for both students in the class and for teaching assistants. Student assistants made it clear to administrators that they felt there would be negative consequences for anyone who refused to participate in the skit. None of them wished to be publicly identified.

The Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and the Chair of the Sociology Department determined that Professor Adler would not teach the class in the spring semester (2014). Pending a review by faculty in sociology and in accordance with the needs of the department, Professor Adler may be eligible to teach the course in the future.

To reiterate, Professor Adler has not been fired or forced to retire. As to comments she has made that she might be fired in the future, I should note that any employee at the University – including faculty members – found responsible for violating the University’s sexual harassment policy, is subject to discipline up to and including termination.

Unfortunately, everything said here is consistent with Professor Adler's allegations, including her allegation that she was threatened with termination if she didn't cease and desist her teaching.  The only thing that might redeem the University's position is if there were a credible allegation of sexual harassment, but on the facts before us that seems unlikely.  More likely is that the University became worried about how this might play in public, and so acted preemptively and in complete violation of the norms of academic freedom.

 

 

 

Boxer Mike Tyson likes Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

No comment.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

A very entertaining interview with Peter Ludlow...

...at 3AM, with nods to Kierkegaard, Kristeva, Herb Hochberg, Chomsky, Justice Scalia, Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and many others!

Philosophy Talk radio on Sunday

I'll be discussing Why Tolerate Religion? with John Perry and Ken Taylor.  10 am California time, noon in Chicago, 1 pm on the East Coast.

ADDENDUM:  I last did Philosophy Talk nearly a decade ago, that time, on Nietzsche.

Columbia memorial service for Danto...

...scheduled for February 6, 2014.

Heidegger's forgotten collaborator, Tim

At last, a definitive guide, as reviewed at NDPR:

Mark A. Wrathall (ed.)

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Tim

Published: December 13, 2013

Mark A. Wrathall (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Time, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 426pp., $34.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780521720564.

Reviewed by Leslie MacAvoy, East Tennessee State University

(Thanks to Ben Schewel for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Unsurprisingly, the typo has been corrected (alas).

ANOTHER:  Tim identified!  (Thanks to Aaron Preston for the pointer.)

AND ANOTHER:  Gary Gutting (Notre Dame) writes with a solution to the "Tim" mystery: "Too bad no one recognized it as a subtle Dickensian Christmas reference, meant to evoke the famous line, 'Being bless us, everyone!'"

Blanchette on Frege's logicism

A new and informative podcast interview with Patricia Blanchette (Notre Dame), conducted by two of our PhD students here, Jaime Edwards and Matt Teichman, as part of the excellent Elucidations series we've noted before.

Boston Review's "Best of 2013"

It includes a number of items of interest to philosophers, some of which we linked here previously.

The philosophy and cognitive science of the emotions...

...is now on-line.

Attention sexist scumbags!

The law is coming...

Arizona State Re-starts PhD program

ASU philosopher Cheshire Calhoun writes:  "Arizona State University's PhD in Philosophy which was deactivated during the budget crisis has now been reactivated and will be accepting applications for Fall 2014. The program has been redesigned with a focus on practical and applied philosophy. For 2014-2015 there will be an unusually large number of TAships available."

2013 JHP Book Prize Announced

Professor Debra Nails (Michigan State) writes:  "This year's $5,000 prize for the best book published in the history of philosophy goes to Jan A. Aertsen of the Thomas-Institut, Universität zu Köln, for Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought from Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suarez (Leiden:  E. J. Brill, 2012)."

Colorado (Boulder) not accepting PhD students this year

A number of applicants have sent me the following e-mail from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder:

"Due to a complex internal reorganization now in progress, the University of Colorado Boulder Philosophy Department will not be admitting any new graduate students for the 2014-15 year.  We apologize for the inconvenience and we will refund the application fees for those who have already paid.  Thanks so much for your interest in us. We expect to re-open enrollments for 2015-16."

One of the students who received this e-mail wrote me:

It is amazing and entirely unprofessional that they would decide not to accept applications so late in the application season. Many of us had already submitted GRE scores, which cost a fee, and had been working on the application and were excited to apply there. I can't believe they are doing this, and it is further complicating the arduous task of applying to graduate school, and now we have to scramble and either have one less school to apply to, or quickly add another school. It's not up on their website as of yet, so maybe you can post about this to help spread the word that they are not accepting applications this year.

Colorado clearly needs to refund not only applications fees, but other fees that students incurred in applying there, such as GRE fees.  I trust they will do the right thing, but would be glad to hear from students going forward.

Has the time-frame for scheduling interviews shifted in the Skype era?

A senior philosopher elsewhere writes:

I get the sense that things may be changing such that the old time-frame is not valid any more.  But what is your sense?  Do people hear still about skype interviews or campus visits roughly as they did before, i.e., before say Dec 23 or so, or is it spread out more?  My students haven't heard much so far, and I'm wondering.  I would have thought that people would be hearing about skype interviews by now, but I am not on top of this this year.

Student website compiling course syllabi: legal?

Professor Peter Barry, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Saginaw State University, writes:

Interesting development at my university, and I thought it might be interesting fodder for Leiter Reports. I'd also be interested in hearing from fellow philosophers with more insight on this issue.

It has apparently come to the attention to my Faculty Association that a student at my University is maintaining a website that houses syllabi from many of my colleagues and myself. The student who maintains the website has not, to my knowledge, asked for or received permission to post or circulate those syllabi from their respective authors and instead directly solicited them on social media. (My current syllabus for my Intro to Western Philosophy syllabus is archived and this is the first I've heard of it.) Our faculty contract includes an article that specifies that course syllabi are intellectual property that belong to the faculty member, and may only be used with the permission of the faculty member. My FA has requested that the syllabus remove course syllabi and any other items of intellectual property for which express permission from the faculty member has not been obtained, and informed the student that further action will be taken if the relevant materials are not removed in a timely manner. The website now appears to be down.

Is there an argument that what this student did falls within a fair use exemption of copyright law? Has this been an issue at other universities?

I would be astonished if "fair use" protected the student appropriation of the syllabi.  Readers?  Similar incidents?  Insight?

Plutocracy watch: the REALLY rich get richer...

...while 90% get poorer.

There is no bottom to dumb...

...and twitter and other social media are recording it all.

The job market for new PhDs across all fields

It shows slight improvement from 2012 compared to 2011, though less than 60% of new Humanities PhDs are finding jobs.

Colorado's Ajume Wingo on Mandela

Here.

(Thanks to Andrew Chapman for the pointer.)