Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in October

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

The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy edited by Richard Joyce (Routledge, 2018).

The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics edited by Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett (Routledge, 2018).

Religion, Violence, and the Secular State by John C. Caiazza (Routledge, 2018).

Awakening:  An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought by Patrick S. Bresnan (6th edition) (Routledge, 2018).

Aesthetics:  A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts edited by David Goldblatt, Lee B. Brown & Stephanie Partridge (Routledge, 2018).

Nietzshce's Constructivism:  A Metaphysics of Material Objects by Justin Remhof (Routledge, 2018).

The Fate of Rome:  Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper (Princeton University Press, 2017).

Protestants Abroad:  How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America by David A. Hollinger (Princeton University Press, 2017).

An Introduction to Moral Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018).

Readings in Moral Philosophy edited by Jonathan Wolff (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018).

John Rawls:  Reticent Socialist by William A. Edmundson (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Down Girl:  The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Ten Great Ideas about Chance by Persi Diaconis & Brian Skyrms (Princeton University Press, 2018).

Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity:  The Ethics of Theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard and Levinas by Howard Pickett (University of Virginia Press, 2018).

"Closing in on Professor Leiter in the bunker"

Uh-oh.

The Internet and the crisis of epistemic authority

This is an excerpt from my Paolo Bozzi Prize address, "Realism and Moralism in Political Thought," last week in Turin at the conference on "Post-Truth, New Realism, and Democracy"; I'll put the whole paper on-line before long, but perhaps this bit will be of interest to some readers:

            Most of what we think we know about the world is due to reliance on epistemic authorities, individuals or institutions that tell us what we ought to believe about Newtonian mechanics, evolution by natural selection, climate change, resurrection from the dead, or the Holocaust.   The most practically fruitful epistemic norm of modernity, empiricism, demands that knowledge be grounded in sensory experience, but almost no one who believes in evolution by natural selection or the reality of the Holocaust has any sensory evidence in support of those beliefs.   Instead, we rely on epistemic authorities—biologists and historians, for example.   The dependence on epistemic authority is not confined to ordinary persons—most engineers, for example, do not have sensory evidence in support of the laws of Newtownian mechanics as applied to ordinary physical objects, but they have been told by their basic physics teachers that this evidence exists and that it is true (even as they have been told by their advanced physics teachers that Newtonian mechanics is false at the quantum level).

               Epistemic authority cannot be sustained by empiricist criteria, for obvious reasons:  salient anecdotal evidence, the favorite tool of propagandists, appeals to ordinary faith in the senses, but is easily exploited given that most people understand neither the perils of induction nor the finer points of sampling and Bayesian inference.   Sustaining epistemic authority depends, crucially, on social institutions that inculcate reliable second-order norms about whom to believe about what.  The media of mass communication were crucial, in the age of mass democracy, with promulgating and sustaining such norms.   Consider the most important newspaper in my country, the New York Times, which has long been an ideological mouthpiece for the more-or-less prudent wing of the ruling class in America, a newspaper that supported, for example, the imperial war of aggression against Vietnam in the 1960s and supported the neoliberal Hillary Clinton against a social democratic challenger for the 2016 Democratic nomination for President.  Notwithstanding that, the New York Times has served as a fairly good mediator of epistemic authority with respect to many other topics:  it has provided a bulwark against those who deny the reality of climate change or the human contribution to it; it has debunked those who think vaccinations causes autism; it gives no comfort to creationists and other religious zealots; and it treats genuine epistemic authorities about the natural world—for example, members of the National Academy of Sciences in America--as epistemic authorities in its journalism.  Genuine epistemic authority cannot exist in a population absent epistemic mediators like the New York Times.

               The Internet is, as we all know, the great eliminator of intermediaries.  This was its virtue for all those excluded, justly or unjustly in the past, from public discourse.  But as cyberspace, with its lack of mediators and filters, has become the primary source of information for most people in the economically advanced nations, its ability to undermine epistemic authority has become alarmingly evident.  The Internet is the epistemological crisis of the 21^st century:  it magnifies ignorance and stupidity and is now leading hundreds of millions, maybe now billions, of people to act on the basis of the fantasy world it constructs.

Truth beyond reason?

Philosopher Corine Besson (Sussex) and others discuss at IAITV.

Ethics of self-driving cars

I get worried when philosophers get involved in stuff like this.  No one will buy a self-driving car that will sacrifice the driver to save others.  Full stop.  If the law mandates that self-driving cars do so, people will not use them.  Self-driving cars will simply have to mimic the self-preservation instincts of drivers.  Perhaps there are limits to those, but I think we probably need empirical and psychological information about behaviors, not philosophical reflections.

Am I wrong?  If so, how?

(Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)

PhD programs (including in philosophy) where one can study Indian philosophy

Here's a listing, that looks right as far as the philosophy side of things goes.  Alberta, British Columbia, Buffalo, UT Austin, and New Mexico would seem to be the best overall philosophy programs where one can pursue Indian philosophy these days, though I only know about one of the specialists, Stephen Phillips at UT Austin, who is a leading scholar in the area.

Wiley now permitting journals to offer publication option: on-line soon, or hard copy PLUS on-line at a later date

Philosopher Steve Gross (Johns Hopkins) shared this interesting message he recently got from Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:

We want to let you know that Wiley, the publisher of the PPQ, has just instituted a policy designed to lessen the time it takes between acceptance and publication for the articles accepted by their journals, namely, to publish certain issues as on-line only, instead of both on-line and print.  All articles that appear in the PPQ, regardless of the format, will count equally as publications in the PPQ, and will be assigned a particular issue number and date; there will be no distinction between print + on-line and on-line only issues except for their respective formats and the time it takes between acceptance and publication.  We, the PPQ editors, are happy to endorse this policy, since we think that it’s best for both authors and their audiences to permit quicker general access to the articles chosen for publication in the PPQ.

In this case, it was the difference between December 2017 (on-line only) or March 2019 (on-line plus hard copy).

I suspect other publishers will follow suit, though this may just mark a transition leading to fully on-line publication.

On-line job portals that will not accept letters from Interfolio?

A reader writes:

In the comments below one of your recent posts, Daniel Kaufman (and others) shared eye-opening reports that some online portals don't accept letters from Interfolio, even though to applicants they appear to. Many universities use customized versions of the same few portals. So if, e.g., MSU (Daniel Kaufman's employer) doesn't accept Interfolio letters, presumably Interfolio won't work with any university (e.g., U of Utah) whose portal is a version of that same PeopleAdmin platform.

Would it be possible, as a service to all of us on the market (and to committees who want to hire the best candidates!) to post a thread on this? Such a thread could ask people who've served on search committees to comment with their university (or its portal system platform, if they know it) and whether it accepts Interfolio.

Comments are open.

Socrates on political correctness

The missing dialogue.

(Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer.)

A pretty good short essay on Sartre's philosophy...

...in TLS.  Lots one could argue with, but given the format, not bad.

Dave Mason, "Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave," 1970

Dave Mason's 1970 solo album, Alone Together, is one of the greatest albums of the 1967-1973 period, but apart from one song, one rarely hears the rest of the album (I even own one of the original "marble" vinyl copies).   Mason had become famous with Traffic prior to 1970, and in the late 1970s became a pop icon.  But this album was his high point, a real gem, and this is my favorite number from it:

 

More on the MP seeking Brexit syllabi from universities

Political philosopher Thom Brooks, who is Dean of Durham Law School in the UK, writes:

I've seen you've posted a link to a news story about a letter from a Tory MP - and junior government whip - requesting information on "European affairs" teaching. Lists of courses can be readily found online and most department websites carry information about individual staff interests. The MP, Chris Heaton-Harris, never stated the purpose for his request although widely believed to be a phishing exercise to find a few illustrations selectively and out of context to whip up faux public outrage - and as indicated by today's Daily Mail front page.

I found especially worrying his wanting not only all teaching materials, but links to lectures being delivered to students. Most universities have some kind of lecture capture technology - and Heaton-Harris wanted to see it all. Students are in classrooms to learn and they should feel free to engage in constructive discussions exploring new ideas without any fear that a government whip will soon be snooping in on the conversation so he can score political points dragging staff and students through the mud -- and of course the request for the material was unlawful anyway. This didn't stop the MP for asking or several universities from agreeing to his request. I find that shameful and thrilled my institution (and others) have not.

The PGR in the real world of students, part 391

A student writes:

I studied history in addition to philosophy in undergrad and still have only a vague sense of where the top departments are for that subject. Since the first time I saw the PGR in high school, the same was never the case for philosophy. What you did in creating the PGR has been a great gift to those of us who didn't grow up on the coasts and don't originally come from backgrounds of prestige. I hope you know that there are still some of us out there (even in the younger generation!) who see past this drivel on Daily Nous and are grateful.

Folks can and will discuss the PGR on social media, though I fear they may be deluding themselves if they think their comments on another blog are going to be read by the two decision-makers.  (I should add that while I know many readers have concerns about the behavior of Justin Weinberg, the editor of the DN blog--his petty vindictiveness, his cheerleading for the abuse of Title IX, and bullying of junior faculty--I do not think that thread is the place to discuss them!)

Tomlin from Reading to Warwick

Patrick Tomlin, currently Associate Professor in Political Philosophy (in the Department of Politics and International Relations) at the University of Reading, has accepted appointment (effective April 2018) as Reader in Philosophy (in the Philosophy Department) at the University of Warwick.

Wake Forest's Julian Young interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Leon Wieseltier, pompous windbag...

...and serial sexual harasser.  "Very important hair," though, as Gore Vidal used to say.  We've had so much fun with him over the years that's I'm (only a bit) sad to know this will be the end of him.

"White fragility" can "kiss my ass" too

What a disgrace that Dalhousie University is conducting a disciplinary investigation of a student for a Facebook comment along the lines of the title of this post.   American free speech law has a lot of problems, but on this kind of issue it gets things quite right.  As the U.S. Supreme Court said (in upholding the constitution right of a citizen to wear a jacket in a courthouse that said "Fuck the draft" on the back):

[M]uch linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.   

Fuck Dalhousie University!

(Thanks to Sergio Tennenbaum for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Several readers have written to let me know that Dalhousie has withdrawn its "complaint" against the student.

How one journal, Ergo, dealt with scholarly recklessness in a published article

During the summer, I noted the bizarre case of an article (on philosophy of love) by Carrie Jenkins, published in Ergo, that devoted one section of the paper to criticizing the (alleged) views of Alan Soble, a leading contributor to the philosophy of love literature--except it turned out the target of the criticism was an anonymous paper posted on the Internet actually written by an undergraduate, that even criticized Soble's views and that Jenkins recklessly attribute to Soble.  As a colleague elsewhere said to me, "This is an undergraduate mistake," not the mistake of a professional, or so one might hope.  Instead of retracting the paper, Ergo added the following erratum:

The original published version of this paper incorrectly attributed, in §5, an unpublished manuscript to Alan Soble. That manuscript is by an anonymous author who is not Alan Soble. The author regrets the error, and apologizes to Professor Soble for the misattribution.

But section 5 of the article is devoted to refuting the (obviously feeble) arguments of an anonymous undergraduate who was himself/herself criticizing Alan Soble.  This erratum is itself a fraud.  It should have said that section 5 "of the article refutes the view of an undergraduate on the Internet, views that were carelessly attributed to a professional philosopher, who was defamed by the attribution."

Ergo did itself no credit here, quite apart from my (widely shared) low opinion of the author of the article.  A peer-reviewed journal that publishes an article, a major portion of which is devoted to attacking arguments by anonymous undergraduates on the Internet, ought to apologize and remove the article.  The on-line, peer-reviewed publication model is terrific, but it needs to involve adult peer-review, and adult corrections.  Ergo should do better.

When Trump is history (assuming he doesn't take all of us with him)...

...then a few contemporary Republican figures will emerge looking very good:  Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, John McCain.  But will this be enough to bring the rest of the caucus to its senses?  I do believe that with some sufficiently good pretext, the Republicans will move to impeach Trump and end this nightmare.

The crisis in social psychology, with a case study

Interesting article, touching on issues we've noted here previously.  I was amused that the passive-aggressive Andrew Gelman, the Columbia statistician, makes an appearance in this saga (you can get a feel for his obsession with Cuddy, the psychologist, from this). 

Fascist MP asks universities for the syllabi of lecturers teaching about Brexit

Unbelievable.   Will the universities comply?   Only collective refusal would be an adequate response.   Tenure does not exist in Britain, but academic freedom enjoys statutory protection.  This episode, depending on how it unfolds, may test the status of its protections.

A profile of Oxford's Jeff McMahan...

...at Quartz.

Placement in PhD-granting programs in the new academic job placement report

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 3

I've started to look a bit more at the data from the new placement analysis (commissioned and paid for by the APA no less), and there were plainly some peculiar choices made in how to frame the data.  As David Chalmers points out, post-docs are lumped in with fixed term appointments, adjuncting, and VAPs, i.e., as simply "not permanent appointments."  That's extraordinary, given that some who take them postpone tenure-track jobs to do so, and many use them to launch into highly competitive tenure-track positions.  Even more curious was the decision to create a "placement ranking" based on "permanent placement" without regard to school quality.  Three of the schools in this "top ten" for permament placement--University of Virginia, University of Florida, and University of Tennessee--also have 0% of their graduates placed into PhD-granting programs.  (I'll have more to say about their permanent placements, below.)  By contrast, taking the report's data at face value (I can not represent that this is safe to do, but let's assume it is), here's how a ranking of U.S. programs by placement of graduates into PhD-granting programs (i.e., research universities and departments) would look (for schools with  at least 20% placement into PhD programs):

1.  University of California, Berkeley (59%)                               

2.  University of Pittsburgh (HPS) (43%)                                    

3.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (36%)          

3.  Princeton University (36%)

5.  Massachussetts Institute of Technology (35%)

6.  Carnegie-Mellon University (33%)

7.  Harvard University (31%)

7.  New York University (31%)                                                          

7.  University of California, Irvine (Logic & Philosophy of Science) (31%)

10. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (26%)

11. University of Pennsylvania (25%)

12. University of Chicago (24%)

12. Yale University (24%)

14. Columbia University (23%)

15. Stanford University (21%)

15. University of Arizona (21%)

17. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (20%)

17. University of Southern California (20%)

Of course, this list looks a lot more like the PGR, especially when you factor in the specialty rankings which capture the niches of excellence at places like Irvine's LPS and Carnegie-Mellon. 

Second Rutgers Lecture series in philosophy...

...featuring Sir Richard Sorabji.  (Earlier coverage of this new series.)

University of Pittsburgh advertising in airports its "Quirky Silliness" philosophy ranking

Peter Klein and Clifford Sosis have both passed on this photo from Newark airport:

Now it's understandable why the University of Pittsburgh would do this:  they do have an excellent philosophy program, and this recognition (even if it's absurd, and comes from an absurd source) is a nice way of branding the University as a whole as academically serious (after all, only academically serious schools are excellent in philosophy).   At the same time, it is perverse, since it just legitimizes the Quirky Silliness rankings, which are, still, largely a fraud on the public.

Placement and Funding Information for Prospective Graduate Students

As you may know, Christopher Pynes and I are currently in the process of preparing the 2017-2018 edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report. There are some unintended delays in the process, owing to the transfer of technology, the learning curve, negotiating a new contract with Wiley-Blackwell, etc.

However, one thing that came up in our discussion was funding. Ph.D. and terminal-M.A. granting institutions have been encouraged by Brian years ago to make placement information available for prospective graduate students on their departmental websites. We hope that you will all make this information available this year if you have not done so already. This also applies to terminal M.A. programs. If you have a terminal M.A. program, the relevant placement information will be the Ph.D. programs (or law/medical schools, etc) that past students completing your program ended up going to.

Another request we would like to make is that Ph.D. and terminal-M.A. granting institutions provide a link on their departmental website that states what prospective students can expect in terms of funding. Here are some examples of questions we hope that you will be able to provide the answer to on your websites: Do admitted students receive a tuition and fee waiver? Do they receive a partial waiver? How much is the standard stipend provided for covering living expenses? What is the publicly announced cost of living for the city or town? 

I know that some graduate programs use additional funding as an incentive for people to accept an offer at their program. But most Ph.D. and terminal-M.A. granting institutions should be able to provide a minimum amount of funding provided (or a mean or median amount), and perhaps other details.

While we think prospective graduate students should go to the M.A. program or the Ph.D. program that is the best fit for them (and that offers them a tuition waiver and some kind of stipend), we also know that this is not always realistic, even when students do get accepted into their preferred M.A. or Ph.D. program. Cost of living varies greatly from country to country and from city to city, and so do the private lives of prospective students. Some have families and children that they need to support. Some are single parents. Some are required to pay child support. Some have disabilities or other personal conditions that require expensive professional intervention, etc. Accordingly, making information about funding available to prospective graduate students is likely to be very helpful to them.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Humble Pie, "The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake," live on Beat Club, 1970

This is from their little-known 1969 album (their second), here performed on Beat Club (that's Peter Frampton on the left, Steve Marriott [the greatest rock vocalist in my book] on the right):

 

Drunk utilitarians

This is more amusing than informative.

U Chicago grad students vote to unionize

Good for them.

Nanay: Don't "know thyself"

This essay by philosopher Bence Nanay (Antwerp) makes a couple of amusing points, but I was struck by this:

[M]ost changes happen gradually and under the radar. A few mechanisms of these changes are well understood, such as the ‘mere exposure effect’: the more you are exposed to something, the more you tend to like it. Another, more troubling one, is that the more your desire for something is frustrated, the more you tend to dislike it. These changes happen gradually, often without us noticing anything.

The problem is this: if we change while our self-image remains the same, then there will be a deep abyss between who we are and who we think we are. And this leads to conflict.

To make things worse, we are exceptionally good at dismissing even the possibility that we might change. Psychologists have given this phenomenon a fancy name: ‘The End of History Illusion’. We all think that who we are now is the finished product: we will be the same in five, 10, 20 years. But, as these psychologists found, this is completely delusional – our preferences and values will be very different already in the not-so-distant future.

Why is this such a big issue? It might be okay when it comes to ordering the espresso. Maybe you now slightly prefer cappuccino, but you think of yourself as an espresso kind of person, so you keep ordering espresso. So you’re enjoying your morning drink a little bit less – not such a big deal.

But what is true of espresso is true of other preferences and values in life. Maybe you used to genuinely enjoy doing philosophy, but you no longer do. But as being a philosopher is such a stable feature of your self-image, you keep doing it. There is a huge difference between what you like and what you do. What you do is dictated not by what you like, but by what kind of person you think you are.

A number of rather serious philosophers (more serious, certainly, than the latest p-hackers in the increasingly beleaguered field of psychology) have advanced the view that character--who one is--is quite stable over much of one's life.  Schopenhauer may be the most famous modern proponent of the idea, but Nietzsche, notwithstanding the narcissism of small differences of which he was often guilty, agreed.  This passage is typical:

At the foundation of each of us, the "real bottom," there is clearly something unteachable, a brick wall of spiritual fatum, of predetermined decisions and answers to selected questions.  With respect to cardinal problems, an immutable "that I am" speaks up. (Beyond Good and Evil, 231)

The defect in the literature Prof. Nanay alludes to is that it can't distinguish between the changes that are just "noise" and those that are foundational to who the person really is.   In addition to the p-value disaster currently afflicting psychology, there really is a serious (dare I say it?) "philosophical" problem, namely, that these folks are not at all clear about what it is to be the person that one is.  They need to read some Schopenhauer and Nietzsche!

The official ad for the U of Chicago Law & Philosophy Fellowship will appear on November 1

I've had some inquiries, so I thought I ought to confirm we will offer the Fellowship again for 2018-19.  Here's the draft ad, I will post the official ad with a link to the on-line portal when it is ready:

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL. The University of Chicago Law School seeks a Law and Philosophy Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer, for the academic year 2018-19. This is a twelve month appointment and is expected to begin July 1, 2018. A Ph.D. in philosophy by time of appointment is expected, though in unusual cases a Ph.D. in a related discipline, or a J.D. accompanied by strong training in philosophy, will be considered. Applications welcome from new or recent PhDs or tenure-stream faculty interested in spending a year at the Law School. The Fellow will co-teach the Law & Philosophy Workshop with Brian Leiter on the theme of “Enlightenment liberalism and its critics, left and right.”  AOS:  Political philosophy, with knowledge of the Marxian tradition essential and knowledge of Schmitt a plus; AOC:  open.  Students will read and discuss texts by Kant, Mill, Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Carl Schmitt, among others.  The Workshop will meet about 12-14 times over the course of the year, with some sessions devoted to discussing the primary texts with enrolled students, and others to invited speakers working on these thinkers and themes.  The Fellow will also be asked to supervise student papers, and to contribute to the intellectual life of the Law School, as well as pursue his or her research. Salary $55K + benefits + superb research environment.  To be considered a candidate for this position you must apply on-line through the University website at ________________ by January 19, 2018. Resume, cover letter, writing sample, reference contact information and research statement should be submitted electronically on the web site at the time of application. Three confidential letters of recommendation should be mailed to Mr. Joe Pellettiere at The University of Chicago Law School, 1111 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637 with a postmark not later than January 19, 2017.

The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity/Disabled/Veterans Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, status as an individual with a disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University's Notice of Nondiscrimination at http://www.uchicago.edu/about/non_discrimination_statement/. Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-0287 or email [email protected] with their request.  

Trigger warnings for Shakespeare?

At Cambridge no less!  Curious.

(Thanks to Michael Bramley for the pointer.)

PGR Faculty Lists for Fall 2017 Survey the October Draft UPDATE

MOVING TO THE FRONT with updated file -- Originally posted on 4 September 2017.

Thank you to all of you who have commented or sent emails with corrections.  This most recent draft list of faculties for the 2017 PRG survey is included below.

Download PGR Faculty Lists 2017-18 all (19 October 2017)

The benchmark for the faculty list is fall 2018, so, e.g., faculty who will be retired by fall 2018 are not included on the list, or faculty who have already committed to be elsewhere, are listed with the department they will be with (assuming it is part of the survey).

Cognate Faculty Questions: If you have concerns or questions about the cognate faculty category, please see this post about PGR cognate faculty.

Please post comments and corrections here.  Email me, Christopher Pynes, at cpynes-at-gmail-dot-com if matters are sensitive.  Issues other than corrections to this list should be sent to me and Professor Brogaard, brogaardb-at-gmail-dot-com. 

Only faculty at the department in question should post corrections.  Signed comments only.

Anglophone philosophers tend to know Bachelard (anachronistically) as the proto-Kuhn...

...but I did not know that late in his life he took to writing about poetry, space and architecture!

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

"The Geography of Philosophy"

Edouard Machery (Pitt HPS), Clark Barrett (UCLA, anthropology), and Stephen Stich (Rutgers, Philosophy) write:

We are delighted to announce that the John Templeton Foundation has awarded us a 3-year (2018-21), $2.6 million grant for a project entitled “The Geography of Philosophy: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Exploration of Universality and Diversity in Fundamental Philosophical Concepts.”

Throughout the history of philosophy, many thinkers have urged that some fundamental philosophical concepts are universal–used by all people. Historians and anthropologists have often been skeptical of these claims. Recently, cultural psychologists and experimental philosophers have begun to explore empirically whether fundamental philosophical concepts are shared across cultures. Our multi-cultural, interdisciplinary project will involve over a hundred philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, neuroscientists and economists in 10 regions around the world in order to determine whether, and to what extent, the concepts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom are shared across cultural groups.  

How smart is your pet?

Mine is pretty smart, considering she's a dog.  But philosopher Ali Boyle (Cambridge) has a serious answer.

On living in a retirement community

Typically sensitive and illuminating observations from Robert Paul Wolff.

Trial by ordeal: it worked!

This is an amusing analysis.  Suspend disbelief, and read until the end.

Another contribution of the Internet: "sextortion"

I had never heard of this until a law professor friend posted this article on Facebook.  It's quite grotesque, but you should probably know about it, especially if you have kids.

Blast from the past: "The Myth of the Postmodern University"

February 2004.  The myth is less prevalent now, happily.

PhilArchive

From Bourget & Chalmers:

We're pleased to announce the launch of a new site from the PhilPapers Foundation: PhilArchive.

As its name indicates, PhilArchive is an open access e-print archive for philosophical works. PhilArchive is a relaunch and rebranding of the archive service that has been present within PhilPapers since 2009. The archive service has been widely used, but we have found that some philosophers are unaware of it because of its location within PhilPapers. We anticipate that the new PhilArchive website will significantly increase awareness and use of the service. It will also help to logically separate PhilPapers open access content (which is completely free to all) from its indexing service (for which we ask universities to pay a fee).

At launch, PhilArchive includes the 27,000 works already in the PhilPapers archive, making it by far the largest open access archive in philosophy. PhilPapers and PhilArchive will remain tightly integrated, with all archived papers on one service automatically appearing on the other service. PhilArchive also introduces some important new features, including the ability to make different versions of a paper accessible for citation.

We strongly encourage all philosophers to archive their papers on PhilArchive as a matter of course. Papers submitted to PhilArchive are not peer reviewed, although to prevent abuse they are subject to vetting for minimal standards of quality and relevance. Most journal publishers allow archival at least of a preprint version; you can find information on a specific journal's policy on this page.

We also encourage all users to regularly monitor PhilArchive for new papers. You can set up regular email alerts and also search by fine-grained topics. We hope that the site will help make archival a standard practice in philosophy, as it already is in the physical sciences and some other areas.

Visit PhilArchive

Still more complaints about on-line application systems and job ads

Another job seeker writes:

I wanted to share with you -- and if you think it is worth positing, with your blog readers -- an annoyance about some recent job postings that require application through an online system. There was a similar complaint recently about having applications and letters, which must be separately uploaded by referees, due on the same day (Oct. 9). I fully agree with this. Not all letter writers are available at all times, and it is unrealistic to ask candidates to be sure that letter writers will be available at the relevant times. And not all letter writers want to use services like interfolio. I would like to point out in addition, that there is often a discrepancy between the advertisement and the actual online application about what documents are required and that there is often no mention of when letters are required. Thus, the advertisement might say that a CV, research statement, and evidence of teaching effectiveness is required, as well as the contact information of letter writers. But once logged into the application system, and only once personal information has been entered and saved, it turns out that, say, a statement on teaching is also required, or in my case, transcripts. While the advertisement stated that contact information for referees was needed, one referee wrote to me that day saying he hoped he had met the deadline -- I had no idea that there was a deadline for letters, or that it was on the same day. There was no mention of a deadline in the advertisement or during the online application process. A colleague applying for a job in the UK in a different field found out -- again, once the online application was well underway -- that she should paste into a box an explanation of how she meets the criteria announced, though there was no mention of these in the advertisement. In my case, not having applied for jobs in recent years, I had to dig up a transcript, whereas my colleague had to put together a new document -- something like the cover letter used for other positions. Another kind of case might be one in which only the online application system lists a research statement as optional in additon to a dissertation summary. This means, I take it, that the research statement need not summarize the dissertation.

My beef is not with the fact that certain documents are required rather than others; these are reasonable demands and especially in philosophy, they are relatively standardized. And, apart from the worry that my letters will not be accepted, these were relatively minor annoyances, since both of us have done this before. But it does take some time, and I imagine that it would take more time for someone who is new to this, who is perhaps more concerned to proofread everythign several times, and perhaps especially for foreigners, who might want to ensure that their writing is fully idiomatic, etc. And a minor annoyance could turn into a more major one on a day full of teaching or other responsibilities. So, my plea to philosophy departments is to make sure that their advertisements accurately reflect (i) the documents that will be required and those that are optional in the online application process, and (ii) the deadlines not only for an application but, if applicable, for the receipt of letters of recommendation. It should not be that hard to do so.

Retired UNC philosophy professor Jan Boxill cleared by NCAA investigation of grading practices for student athletes

News report here.  We noted last year that it seemed like she had been railroaded by the university, and this new report by the NCAA seems to confirm that.

Latest in bad behavior by undergrads...

...this time at a public university, the University of Oregon.   You can read the barely literate set of "student demands" here.  I would add a demand to their list:  "Teach students how to express themselves coherently, clearly and grammatically."

Fish v. Neale on truth, meaning, rhetoric...

...at IAITV.

KCL's Mark Textor interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Doe v. Kipnis, HarperCollins update

The court has granted Doe's request to continue to proceed under a pseudonym; the short opinion is here:  Download 36 Jane Doe granted.  The reasons given seem to me quite sound, and so I will also continue my practice of using only "Jane Doe" for discussions of the case.

Wittgenstein, Kreisel and "mining the Baltic"

Mathematician Craig Larson (Virginia Commonwealth University) writes:

There's an obscure comment of Crick in his autobiography ("What Mad Pursuit"), regarding his friend Kreisel, reiterated in Crick's Kreiselania piece, regarding Wittgenstein's idea for mining the Baltic in WWII (Crick worked on magnetic mines during the war):

"I never did discover exactly what Kreisel was doing at West Leigh. There was a war on and I had plenty of urgent problems of my own to deal with. I believe that one of his first efforts was to apply the methods of Wittgenstein (whom he had known at Trinity) to the problem of mining the Baltic. I would dearly like to read this paper but Collingwood was believed to have locked it away in his safe (could it have been a threat to security?) and it has almost certainly not survived."

In the autobiography, Crick calls it Kreisel's "first paper".

Maybe one of your readers might add some further explanation? Googling did not help.

Comments are open; submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear, as I have a busy day.

More mischief afoot in the University of Wisconsin system

Philosopher Alan White (UW-Manitowc) sends along this article, and writes:

[T]hrough a leak...it became known that President Ray Cross would announce a fundamental reorganization of the 26 campus University of Wisconsin System.  Our campuses in the 2-year transfer system--the UW Colleges, 13 such as one entity since the early 1970s--will now return to their status in the 60s--as branches of nearby 4-years (8 of the 13 thus).  My campus--specifically mentioned in the story below--will become a satellite of UW--Green Bay.  While tenure (or our new tenure-lite*, which applies across the entire System including Madison, and which you will recall I uselessly fought against a couple of years ago on behalf of my 13 campuses) will apparently be honored in making the transition--my 13 campus department and its Faculty Senate will be dissolved and all power will be invested in what's left of faculty governance at the 4-years.  None of this involved consultation or faculty input from any institution--Madison included.  It was leaked and then just announced today.  The Regents must approve this--but since they nearly all Walker appointees. . .  The Regents will act next month, hardly enough time for campuses to react in any reasonable way.

UW--Extension--one of the best higher-ed/agricultural/extended-education systems in the country--will cease to be a state-wide entity, and will be folded into UW-Madison.

This is the new normal in higher ed especially in conservative states.  Get used to it--or do something.

BTW, the linked article says that my campus has lost about 50% of its enrollment in the last few years, years in which the legislature cut funding, required increased contributions to pensions and benefits (despite Wisconsin having a 100% funded state retirement system, in contrast to Illinois), and thus contributed to this situation, if not deliberately manufactured it.  I mention the lost enrollment at UW--Manitowoc to contrast one fact against that:  my philosophy enrollments throughout were at the top, and fully justified my 4/4 position.  I'm retiring Jan. 1 after 36 1/2 years as Full Professor before this fiasco will play out, and I will be replaced by a 1/2 time lecturer.  Now that will no doubt make things better--well, for those who wish to downsize access to higher education maybe.

Leading law firms file lawsuit against white supremacists and NeoNazis on behalf of their victims in Charlottesville

Smart strategy, one pioneered by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which bankrupted the Ku Klux Klan in many parts of the country by holding them liable in civil court for their misdeeds.