Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in February

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

Things That Bother Me:  Death, Freedom, the Self, etc. by Galen Strawson (New York Review Books, 2018).

Isaac Newton and Natural Philosophy by Niccolo Guicciardini (Reaktion Books, 2018)

A Philosophy of Dirt by Olli Lagerspetz (Reaktion Books, 2018).

The Province of Jurisprudence Naturalized edited by Jerzy Stelmach, Bartosz Brozek & Lukasz Kurek (Wolters Kluwer, 2017).

Post-Truth by Lee McIntyre (MIT Press, 2018).

On living with anxiety

This is a nicely written essay by philosopher Samir Chopra (Brooklyn College).

Wealthy helicopter parents and public universities

Meet the future.

Blast from the past: Best Anglophone philosophers of language since 1945

From a poll over two years ago.

'Steven Pinker’s embarrassing new book is a feeble sermon for rattled liberals'

That's the title of John Gray's amusing takedown of the latest panglossian blather from Pinker; an excerpt:

[For Pinker] you don’t need to bother about what the Enlightenment was actually like. By any standards, David Hume was one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers. It was the sceptical Scottish philosopher who stirred Immanuel Kant – whose well-known essay on Enlightenment Pinker quotes reverently at the start of the book – from what Kant described as his “dogmatic slumber”. Pinker barely mentions Hume, and the omission is not accidental. He tell us that the Enlightenment is defined by a “non-negotiable” commitment to reason.

Yet in A Treatise of Human Nature (1738), Hume wrote: “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Hume believed being reasonable meant accepting the limits of reason, and so too, in quite different ways, did later Enlightenment rationalists such as Keynes and Freud. Pinker’s Enlightenment has little in common with the much more interesting intellectual movement that historically existed....

Attention U of Chicago tenure-track faculty: here's who to contact to voice support for non-tenure-track colleagues

A propos the letter in support of non-tenure-track faculty in their collective bargaining with the university,  the bargaining team has supplied the following useful contact information of,

[Y]our tenured colleagues on the administration bargaining committee in case you wanted to express serious concern about their current direction, and urge them instead to settle a fair contract with us now. 

They are: 

Jason Merchant, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Lorna Puttkammer Straus Professor in the Department of Linguistics

[email protected]

Michael L. Stein, Master, Physical Sciences Collegiate Division, Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, Department of Statistics

[email protected]

Christopher Wild, Deputy Dean and Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division, Associate Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies

[email protected]

For good measure I will add in two other names who have substantial ties to faculty and are as committed as we are to liberal arts education. If you know them feel free to write them an email. 

U Chicago tenure-track faculty only: please sign the letter...

(MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 22)

...in support of our non-tenure-track colleagues who are trying to negotiate decent terms of employment.  (More background here.)

"The Young Karl Marx": the trailer

It's finally getting released in the U.S., it appears; I saw it on a Lufthansa flight a year or so ago, and highly recommend it:

 

European Horizons Midwest Regional Conference

This is a bit out of the ordinary for around here, but perhaps this event (organized by a student here I know well) will be of interest to some readers (undergraduate or graduate students):

The European Horizons Midwest Regional Conference (MRC) application is now live and open to all undergraduate and graduate students!

This is a great opportunity to meet other students interested in European policy in the Midwest and to meet experts in their fields. The conference will include guest speakers including Gossen prize winner and U of C Professor of Economics, Harald Uhlig, and Nils Ringe, Professor of Political Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison. The conference will take place April 6th-8th at the University of Chicago and, pending funding, transportation may be subsidized. Lodging will be provided both nights and food will be provided for.

Fill out this brief application due Wednesday, February 28th to be considered:

https://goo.gl/forms/AW3dwb7lJ2zMHaVJ3

New PGR for 2017-18 should be out next week

That's the jist of a short note I got from Professor Pynes, after he finally heard back from Wiley-Blackwell.  Apparently the redesign of the site has delayed things, but it looks like it should be live some time next week (i.e., during the week of March 5).

What has the Internet done to our profession?

Philosopher Alex Rosenberg (Duke) writes:

Did you see that someone lifted a line from the “what it's like” interview and made it a target for the disgruntled on Daily Nous?

What has the internet done to our profession, academe generally and the culture...besides electing Donald Trump?

We've seen this before:  the internet has certainly facilitated the "slave revolt in philosophy."

"This is an appalling country"

It really is, and Robert Paul Wolff, as usual, sums up exactly why.

Outgoing Hypatia Board offers "thanks" to the Associate Editors who destroyed the journal's reputation in the Tuvel affair

Even more alarmingly, the new incoming Board includes one of the Associate Editors (Linda Alcoff) who led (and even defended after widespread condemnation) the defamation of Rebecca Tuvel, another (Talia Mae Bettcher) who signed the defamatory letter about Tuvel, and a third (Nancy Tuana) who was was involved in the "Climate for Women" scandal back in 2011.   None of that bodes well for the journal's future or reputation.

UPDATE:  A reader points out to me that Kim Hall, another ringleader, like Alcoff, of the defamation of Tuvel and the defense of it, is Chair of the Search Committee to appoint a new editorial team at Hypatia.  Amazing!

Lawrence Krauss, poster boy for physicists who don't know what they don't know, has another problem

This one is more serious.  (Earlier coverage of Prof. Krauss.)

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

Emma Gonzalez calls "BS" on the apologists for guns and mass murder

Another teenage survivor of the Parkland shooting.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Samuel Prody, "Woman," 1970

And now for something really obscure, so obscure I hadn't even heard it until this morning.  Another British hard rock/blues outfit; the lead singer, Tony Savva, sang with many other bands, before and since.  I'm still checking him and them out, so there may be more.

 

What is it like to be a philosopher? Alexander Rosenberg edition

Here, courtesy, as always, of Clifford Sosis.  I enjoyed this interview a lot!

When did "philosopher" become a label with a positive valence?

That's an important question, when one reads that a "celebrity" charlatan philosopher (not Zizek, but close) has endorsed a certain view.  (Thanks to James O'Connor for the pointer.)  This is really a question for a sociologist or other empirical scholar of the humanities who can tell us when "philosopher" became an honorific and why.  I suspect it is due to the historical connection between "philosophy" and both "science" and "theology," but I would be curious to get references from knowledgeable readers.

Robert Paul Wolff, legal sleuth

LINK NOW INSERTED--BLOG SERVICE PROVIDER WAS DOWN THIS MORNING, SORRY FOR THE DELAY!

Interesting speculation!  Perhaps some among my law readers will comment over at Professor Wolff's about his surmises.

(Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: Society for Analytic Feminism humiliates invited speaker by issuing an "apology" after his talk

Back in 2016.  This was before the Hypatia fiasco involving Prof. Tuvel, but many of the same people were involved in both.

ADDENDUM:  By the way, SAF never did apologize to Prof. Shelby for their unprofessional treatment of him. 

Attention University of Chicago faculty: the University is about to really stick it to the non-tenure-track faculty

A colleague asked me to share this letter from the AAUP chapter here, which I am very happy to do:

Dear Colleagues,

In recent days our attention has been focused on the administration’s refusal to acknowledge the decision of our graduate students to unionize. While we were focused on that, the administration also took action against our non-tenure-track colleagues. The AAUP is calling a meeting to begin organizing the support of tenure-track faculty for our non-tenure-track colleagues.

What:  Meeting to Support Our Non-Tenure-Track Colleagues

When: This Friday, February 23, 2-3pm

Where:  Swift Hall Common Room

Why is this meeting suddenly needed? Non-tenure track faculty at the University of Chicago voted to form a union in December of 2015, and for more than two years now they have been negotiating their first contract with the administration. Yesterday, the administration bargaining team unveiled its proposal for teaching load, salary, and benefits. It included provisions like the authority to strip non-tenure track faculty of their non-teaching duties and replace them with extra teaching, up to 8 courses a year (a 33% increase in courseload). With respect to pay, they proposed a 0-2% raise for the 2019-2021 academic years. For the lowest paid and most vulnerable, it was the worst: in the first year of the contract, part time lecturers would receive pay of $4400 or $5500 for each course they teach, with no health insurance. 

It is our understanding that the non-tenure stream faculty are now considering the possibility of authorizing their bargaining committee to call a strike for early in Spring Quarter. 

At Friday’s meeting, non-tenure track faculty members, including members of their bargaining committee, will tell us about their negotiations, answer any questions we have, and discuss the possibility of a strike. They will also explain what support from tenure track faculty they might need in their effort to win a fair and inclusive contract.  

If you cannot attend this Friday’s meeting but would like to be involved in supporting our non-tenure-track colleagues (e.g. by signing a letter of support), please send an email saying so to: [email protected]. 

Steven Pinker's latest bit of ideological obfuscation on behalf of capitalism...

....wins rave reviews from billionaire capitalist!  Who would have guessed?  I understand that Pinker once upon a time did serious work, but starting with his polemic against putative skeptics about human nature (by which he really meant skeptics about disreputable evolutionary psychology of human nature) he really went off the ideological rails, becoming the right-wing media darling and intellectual clown act (complete with the hair!) we now have before us.  (An earlier item of relevance.)

ADDENDUM:  Many years ago (when I had hair!), a young (conservative) philosopher amusingly dubbed me the "Marxist with clown hair."  Now we have found "the libertarian with clown hair"!

ANOTHER:  An amusing take on the latest ideological nonsense from Pinker.  (Thanks to Aaron Garrett for the pointer.)

Uninformative PGR update

I know that PGR co-editor Christopher Pynes recently asked Wiley-Blackwell about the production schedule; under the terms of the contract, as I understood it, it really should have been on-line by now.  I hope it will be on-line imminently.  I've asked Professor Pynes to post an update when he has more concrete information.

Haaretz predicts we are in the final days of Netanyahu's rule

We can only hope, for Israelis and Palestinians, that this is right.

Tenure-track jobs by area advertised in 2017-18

Marcus Arvan (Tampa) has put together his annual analysis of the areas in which jobs were advertised this hiring year; particularly striking is the distribution of AOS for the 228 tenure-track jobs that were advertised:

Breakdown by AOS - Tenure-Track Jobs Only (228 jobs)

• Aesthetics: 1 job (.04%)
• Continental: 9.2 jobs (4%)
• Core: 28.8 jobs (12.6%)
• History/Traditions: 36.2 jobs (15.9%)
• Open AOS: 40.5 jobs (17.8%) – many at small schools (~60%)
• Religion: 5.25 jobs (2.3%)
• Social identity (race, gender, etc.): 11.7 jobs (5.1%)
• Science: 14.8 jobs (6.5%)
• Value theory (ethics, political): 79.2 jobs (34.7%)

A few observations of my own.  As noted earlier, this was indeed a good year for Continental job seekers.  And the early signs that the "core" is dying do seem borne out by these statistics:  how "core" are areas that account for only 12.6% of all jobs advertised?  On the other hand, some parts of the so-called "core" (language, mind, metaphysics, epistemology) spill over into parts of philosophy of religion, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender and, sometimes, value theory, so perhaps the statistics aren't as bleak as they look--and some of the "open" jobs will, of course, go to those working in "core" areas.  That 5.1% of the jobs had an AOS for philosophy of race and gender is stunning (that's more than for Continental or philosophy of religion, let alone aesthetics), though one suspects some of these may really be "hidden criteria" searches.  Value theory continues to have the most job ads, but probably also the most job seekers.

Comments from readers on this data welcome.

Chakravartty from Notre Dame to Miami

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 14, 2017--UPDATED

Anjan Chakravartty, a leading philosopher of science currently at the University of Notre Dame, has accepted the Appignani Foundation Chair in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami, effective next fall (this Chair was established to support the study of atheism.)  That's a big catch for Miami (and for atheism)!

UPDATE:  An article from a local Miami paper about the appointment.

Adorno against popular culture

A sympathetic essay.  Probably Adorno is right, though I can't shake my plebian affection for rock 'n' roll Rausch and The Professional.  But he was objectively wrong about Schoenberg, who is an offense to aesthetic decency (of course, Adorno criticized Schoenberg, but not harshly enough!).

March 24, "March for our lives"...

...organized by student survivors of the Parkland school shooting.  It's a good video, these kids are smart, I hope they and others can succeed and send the NRA monsters back to their caves.

Stroud from McGill to North Carolina

Sarah Stroud (ethics), Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill beginning in the 2018-19 academic year.

Seeking philosophers who were in Oxford in the 1950s or 1960s or other centres of ordinary language philosophy in those years

Philosopher Adriane Rini (Massey U) writes:

Several of us in New Zealand (Max Cresswell, Edwin Mares, and I) have a research grant for a project we call 'The Logic of Ordinary Language', looking among other things at the connection between logic and what has sometimes been called ‘ordinary language philosophy’. We would love to hear from any philosophers who were in Oxford during the 1950s and 1960s, or who have information or want to reminisce about Oxford or other centres of ordinary language philosophy in those years. The grant gives us travel money to visit and interview people and we’re keen to compile a list of potential contacts.

Anyone interested should contact any one of us at our university email addresses:

Adriane Rini:  [email protected]

Max Cresswell: [email protected]

Edwin Mares: [email protected]

What it's *really* like to be a bat

A scientist specializing in bats and a philosopher discuss.

"Old Man River" in India

Following up on our earlier item about the great Paul Robeson, longtime reader Ruchira Paul writes:

India had a pretty robust communist culture dating back to the time of India's independence in 1947. But it did not blossom into the kind of widespread political movement as the non-violent freedom struggle that Gandhi-Nehru espoused. Off and on there have been regional governments headed by the communist parties especially in West Bengal in the east and Kerala in the southwest. Paul Robeson was embraced as an icon of people's struggle by Indian communists very early on. And even now, workers' rights and student movements use his Ol' Man River as an anthem. The song has been translated into several Indian languages and the Mississippi is replaced by the Ganges in Indian languages.

Following are two renditions - the first chorus is in Nepalese the second is in Bengali.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLAR3QpSIjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS5aGg65hIE

She added, however, "that except for the current government of Kerala and isolated tribal uprisings that embrace the communist ideology, communism and even the milder Nehruvian socialism have mostly disappeared from the Indian political scene. Most of India now espouses right wing free market capitalism."

"The Value and Limits of Academic Speech"

Now available for pre-order.  I think I may be the only far left academic freedom absolutist in the group!

The best essay I've read in a long time about America's insane tolerance for gun violence...

...and the brainless media coverage of the post-mortem spectacles.  It's time for all of us to become single-issue voters on draconian gun regulations.  If we do that, maybe we'll get sensible regulations at least:  ban the assault rifles, universal background checks, strict licensing requirements, registration of all guns, and so on.

Problems of inference

A useful review of three recent books (including one co-authored by philosopher Brian Skyrms) by James Ryerson at the NYT.

Why UK faculty are going on strike

This is a good, succinct article, posted in the earlier thread, but it deserves its own separate billing.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Donovan, "Barabajagal," 1969

In the mid-1960s, Donovan was a sensation--the "Scottish Bob Dylan" some said--who enjoyed a string of "top 5" hits ("Sunshine Superman," "Mellow Yellow, "Hurdy Gurdy Man").  This tune was his last (barely) top 40 hit in the U.S. (it did better in the UK).  He's backed by the members of the Jeff Beck Group here:

 

Michigan/Deaborn's David Skrbina interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Criminalize private ownership of the AR-15

There is no argument against that position.  Anyone who opposes it should be banished from civilization and its benefits. 

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

Newly discovered draft of Descartes's "Meditations"!

Philosopher Jeremy Hyman (Arkansas) made the find.

(Thanks to James Mahon for the pointer.)

Philosophy teacher in Quebec suspended for anti-gay remarks on social media

Story here.  (Note that he is teaching at a level that is intermediate between American high school and American university education.)  We may put to one side his silly rationalization for his anti-gay bigotry, I am curious to know whether (1) CEGEP faculty enjoy academic freedom, (2) whether academic freedom in Canada includes protection for extramural speech (this was clearly extramural speech), and (3) whether hate speech laws in Quebec, or at the federal level, cover the kinds of remarks at issue here (in which case, I assume they trump academic freedom).

The U.S. government's active role in racial segregation quite apart from the Jim Crow South

Anyone interested in issues of racial inequality in these benighted states of America should read this; an excerpt:

[P]art of the book’s shock is just how explicit the government’s racial engineering often was. The demand for segregation was made plain in workaday documents like the Federal Housing Administration’s Underwriting Manual, which specified that loans should be made in neighborhoods that “continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes” but not in those vulnerable to the influx of “inharmonious racial groups.” A New Deal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, drew color-coded maps with neighborhoods occupied by whites shaded green and approved for loans and black areas marked red and denied credit—the original “redlining.” The FHA financed Levittown, the emblem of postwar suburbanization, on the condition that none of its 17,500 homes be sold to blacks. The policies on black and white were spelled out in black and white.

"The Lottery" comes to Parkland, Florida

The story and the reality.  Repeal the Second Amendment, make private gun ownership a crime.

ADDENDUM:  "With the Parkland shooting, three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern United States history have come in the last five months."

Dalhousie restricts search for new VP to "racially visible" or Indigenous persons

Reader Michael Fournier calls my attention to this curious story:

Dalhousie University says its search for a new senior administrator will be restricted to "racially visible" and Indigenous candidates, part of its efforts to increase underrepresented groups on the Halifax campus.In a memo to the university community, provost and vice-president academic Carolyn Watters said the prerequisite is in line with the principles of Dalhousie's employment equity policy.

"We have embarked on the process of selecting a new vice-provost student affairs," she stated in the memo last month, adding that the search "will be restricted to racially visible persons and Aboriginal Peoples at this time."

I infer that announcing such a criterion is not unlawful in Canada, as it would be in the U.S.; in that regard, the openness of the Canadian approach is to be preferred to the "hidden" criteria approach in the U.S..  What I am most struck by is the "racially visible".  What will the university do if a transracial person applies?  And what about a light-skinned person of African descent?  How light is too light?  This seems fraught with complications.

I am curious to know how common this is in Canada and how some of the potential problems for such a search are addressed.

Blast from the past: best Anglophone philosophers of art since 1945

Here.

Universities awash in "bullshit"

It's an amusing list, some apt, some less so.

Karl Marx, fierce chess player

Here.  As philosopher Bernard Kobes wrote to me, "To judge by this game, Marx was an unusually aggressive player."  He also notes that it appears to be authentic.

Impending strike by university faculty in the UK

Philosopher Luke Fenton-Glynn (UCL) writes:

I was wondering if you were aware of the strike action that's about to sweep UK universities? For details, see:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/9242/UCU-announces-14-strike-dates-at-61-universities-in-pensions-row

And:

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/feb/07/students-demand-compensation-from-universities-over-lecturer-strikes

I thought this might be of interest to a significant number of your blog readers. Mike Otsuka (LSE, Philosophy) has an excellent analysis of the role of Oxbridge in undermining the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and precipitating the pension cuts that are the reason for the strike:

https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/oxfords-and-cambridge-s-role-in-the-demise-of-uss-a3034b62c033

Again, apologies for the unsolicited email, but any airtime you're able to give this via your blog would I'm sure be much appreciated by those philosophers like me who are about to commence 14 days of industrial action!

I had heard about this, but am glad to now have details and informative links.  Comments from readers--with more information and anything else relevant--are also welcome.  Prof. Otsuka's piece is definitely worth a read.

 

Qualia

The pill.  As Evan Goodwin, who flagged this for me noted, if they could produce a specialty pill--say "bat qualia"--then we'd make some real philosophical progress.

Trump budget proposal includes significant (catastrophic?) changes to federal student loan policies

One news item; an excerpt:

The proposal would sharply curtail income-based loan repayment plans, scratch the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, embolden the government to go after students who don't pay their loans and cut funding for federal work study in half.

Changes to loans would apply to borrowing after July 1, 2019, not including those loans provided to borrowers to finish their current education. 

The budget would eliminate subsidized loans. Some 5.7 million students had subsidized loans in the 2016-2017 academic year, according to Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan expert.