Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

New Books in January

Publishers and/or authors kindly sent me these new books this month:

Statistical Inference as Severe Testing:  How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars by Deborah G. Mayo (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

How to be Human in the Digital Economy by Nicholas Agar (MIT Press, 2019).

The Sea:  A Philosophical Encounter by David Farrell Krell (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

Science and the Good:  The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality by James Davison Hunter & Paul Nedelsky (Yale University Press, 2018).

Protecting extramural speech by faculty as a prophylactic rule for protecting core academic freedom

Interesting essay by politics and public law scholar Keith Whittingon (Princeton).

Tim Williamson on science, journalism, Bruno Latour, and "post-truth"...

...at The New Statesman.  For a related discussion, see this.

In Memoriam: Isaac Levi (1930-2018)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 27--UPDATED

Professor Levi, a leading figure in decision theory and epistemology, was emeritus at Columbia University, where he had taught since 1970.  He passed away on December 25.   He earned his PhD at Columbia and taught at Case Western Reserve University, before returning to his alma mater.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

(Thanks to Charles Parsons for the information.)

UPDATE:  A brief obituary at the NYT.  (Thanks to David Rosenthal for the pointer.)

ANOTHER:  A brief memorial notice from the Columbia Department, with a longer one promised in the January Journal of Philosophy.

Blogging a philosophy dissertation

An interesting exercise! 

ADDENDUM:  And here's another philosophy PhD student tweeting dissertation ideas and readings!

Gary Gutting funeral this Friday

Since this is time-sensitive, I wanted to share it right away.

Light posting the next couple of days...

...lots of teaching, plus a family emergency.  Thanks for your understanding.

QUICK UPDATE:  Thanks to readers who have written; this does not involve my father (who is doing fine), and I'm hopeful things will work out fine in the next few days.  I appreciate your concern.

Frank Ramsey's pragmatism

A quite interesting essay by philosopher Cheryl Misak (Toronto).

Blast from the past: the defamation of Rebecca Tuvel

Less than two years ago.  A shameful but revealing moment about a segment of the profession, the same segment that is now on a crusade to shut down feminist philosophers, scholars and activists who raise questions about the gender self-ID law.

Pseudo-science watch, neoclassical economics edition

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY--FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT

Indeed.   The Marxian theory of ideology, especially as being developed by Jaime Edwards, helps explain how such an academic industry can sustain itself for so long.

Industrial and economic growth in the Soviet Union

A revisionist view from economic historian Robert Allen, which is at odds with what an orthodox Marxist view would have predicted about state-directed industrialization.

(Thanks to Roger Albin for pointing me towards Allen's work.)

Blast from the past: Malcolm Gladwell exposed

Back in 2012.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Poobah, "Rock 'n' Roll," 1972

Here's another tune from the Ohio hard rock band that never made it nationally; this is also from their debut album:

 

The inescapable logic of capital makes the NYT

No kidding!

They’ll never admit it in public, but many of your bosses want machines to replace you as soon as possible....

[I]n private settings, including meetings with the leaders of the many consulting and technology firms whose pop-up storefronts line the Davos Promenade, these executives tell a different story: They are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers.

All over the world, executives are spending billions of dollars to transform their businesses into lean, digitized, highly automated operations. They crave the fat profit margins automation can deliver, and they see A.I. as a golden ticket to savings, perhaps by letting them whittle departments with thousands of workers down to just a few dozen....

In Davos, executives tend to speak about automation as a natural phenomenon over which they have no control, like hurricanes or heat waves. They claim that if they don’t automate jobs as quickly as possible, their competitors will.

As to who will buy the products of their operations once all the workers are gone...well, that doesn't seem to occur to any of them.

If only there had been a philosopher and economist who had examined this phenomenon.

UPDATE:  Reader Jeff Rice (Northwestern) shares this funny anecdote:

Charles Wilson, president of GM was walking through an auto plant with Walter Reuther proudly showing off the first robotic arm working the assembly line.  Wilson says to Reuther, “try organizing robots” to which Walter replies, “try selling cars to robots”.

Illinois's Colleen Murphy interviewed...

...at 3AM.

The gender wars and academic freedom in the UK

The situation is plainly worse there, than in the U.S., with most of the mindless extremism here confined to the Twitter red guard.

UPDATE:  A reader points out that Christa Peterson, one of the Twitter red guard, is waiting for me to die.  Wow!   This is pretty sick; I love polemics, but wishing others dead is beyond the pale, I would have thought.

Templeton awards nearly $1 million to philosophers at Missouri/St. Louis...

...for work on medieval Islamic philosophy and the epistemology of religion.

(Thanks to Billy Dunaway for the pointer.)

Most-cited law professors

If you care, you can find out here.

In Memoriam: Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019)

Professor Wright, whose blogging about his final days we noted here, has died.  There's a lovely remembrance from his philosophy colleague Harry Brighouse at Wisconsin here.

(Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.)

Ethics for robots and AI

Philosopher Derek Leben (Pittsburgh/Johnstown) talks with physicist Sean Carroll (Cal Tech).

The American Academy of each other's friends in the Arts & Sciences

Usually known as the AAAS, every observer knows what it mostly is, as conveyed in the title of this post:   it is friends electing friends for "honor" ostensibly for their academic contributions.   The AAAS is not meaningless, to be sure, and its sins are mostly ones of omission, as I've remarked previously, as well as current fashions.   Past philosophy members of the AAAS, no doubt eminent and well-connected in their time, include Harry Berger, Francis Bowen, John Cobb, Jr., Irwin Edman, John Fiske, Levi Hedge, Laurens Hickock, Henry Mansel, James McCosh, James Pratt, James L. Walker, Richard Whately, and James H. Woods, among others that are probably unknown to most contemporary philosophers. 

Elections to the Academy follow certain patterns.   For example, in 2012, MIT's Stephen Yablo was elected to the Academy.  The following year, his MIT colleague Rae Langton (now at Cambridge) was elected.  Two years later, Langton's friend and former colleague, and Yablo's spouse, Sally Haslanger at MIT was elected.  Haslanger (well-known, of course, for her commitment to diversity [vide Reed for an explanation]), quickly joined the selection committee for Philosophy, and that year only one white man (in his 70s) was elected while two prominent feminist philosophers were among the small number of honorees.  The latter is hardly suspicious:  I've observed the same patterns over the years with formal philosophers, with epistemologists, and with Kant scholars--once one gets in, others in that sub-field are admitted in the subsequent years.  As one AAAS member wrote to me a couple of years ago:  "newly admitted members are often energized to make nominations," and, unsurprisngly, they invest that effort in their friends and colleagues. 

But if there was ever a "popularity contest," it would be the AAAS, in which existing members vote on possible new members on a scale of 1-5 (just like the PGR scale for whole faculties!).  Ballotting proceeds in two stages.  Any two members can nominate someone for election to the Academy of Friends, and after an initial round of voting, 8-10 candidates are submitted to the membership for final votes.  The "panel" is, I'm told, bound by the votes of the existing members, except when there are "diversity" considerations. The current panel consists of Susan Wolf (North Carolina, the chair), Julia Annas (Arizona) Sally Haslanger (MIT), Dan Hausman (Wisconsin), Beatrice Longuenesse (NYU), and Stephen Stich (Rutgers).  The Chair of the panel must ultimately negotiate with chairs of other humanities committees over how many philosophers get to be put forward for membership.

A current Academy of Friends member sent me the list of the current first-round candidates.  This was against the rules, but I suspect that s/he was concerned about the way things have been going.  I will not name any of the nominees.

In Memoriam: Gary Gutting (1942-2019)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 20--UPDATED

I was quite sorry to learn, via Martin Kusch, of the passing of Professor Gutting, a longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where he was emeritus.  He was, of course, best-known for his excellent work on Foucault, as well as on French philosophy of the 20th-century more generally, although his philosophical interests and publications ranged widely and across traditions.  In addition, he founded and edited with great integrity and care Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, which has become the most important source for book reviews in academic philosophy.  He had recently agreed to write the volume on Foucault for my Routledge Philosophers series, which was about to go under contract.   You can find out a bit more about his work here.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  An announcement has gone out to the editorial board of NDPR (of which I am a member) from Professor Gutting's widow, who has also been co-editor of NDPR in recent years:

I am sorry to be the bearer of sad news, but I need to let you know that late on Friday evening Gary passed away. The end came much faster than anyone had expected but was peaceful, and he was surrounded by his family.

There will be a memorial service at the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, and I will forward further details as soon as they are available.

In the circumstances, I have decided to suspend publication of reviews for a minimum of one month.

I will post details of the memorial service when they are available.

ANOTHER:  A remembrance by philosopher John Schwenkler (Florida State) at Commonweal.

AND MORE:  A remembrance from the editor at the NYT who worked with him.  (Thanks to Paul Weithman for the pointer.)

IN ADDITION:  Notre Dame's memorial notice.

The revolt of the working class in France

This is an interesting interview; an excerpt:

spiked: How have the working-classes come to be excluded?

Guilluy: All the growth and dynamism is in the major cities, but people cannot just move there. The cities are inaccessible, particularly thanks to mounting housing costs. The big cities today are like medieval citadels. It is like we are going back to the city-states of the Middle Ages. Funnily enough, Paris is going to start charging people for entry, just like the excise duties you used to have to pay to enter a town in the Middle Ages.

The cities themselves have become very unequal, too. The Parisian economy needs executives and qualified professionals. It also needs workers, predominantly immigrants, for the construction industry and catering et cetera. Business relies on this very specific demographic mix. The problem is that ‘the people’ outside of this still exist. In fact, ‘Peripheral France’ actually encompasses the majority of French people.

spiked: What role has the liberal metropolitan elite played in this?

Guilluy: We have a new bourgeoisie, but because they are very cool and progressive, it creates the impression that there is no class conflict anymore. It is really difficult to oppose the hipsters when they say they care about the poor and about minorities.

But actually, they are very much complicit in relegating the working classes to the sidelines. Not only do they benefit enormously from the globalised economy, but they have also produced a dominant cultural discourse which ostracises working-class people. Think of the ‘deplorables’ evoked by Hillary Clinton. There is a similar view of the working class in France and Britain. They are looked upon as if they are some kind of Amazonian tribe. The problem for the elites is that it is a very big tribe.

The middle-class reaction to the yellow vests has been telling. Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.

Standard edition of Leviathan, redux

Last fall, I noted an open letter from philosophers S.A. Lloyd (USC) and A.P. Martinich (Texas) arguing that Noel Malcolm's new OUP critical edition of the Hobbes classic should not become the standard reference point for scholars and students.  It has now been brought to my attention that there are several important responses to Lloyd's and Martinich's arguments here, including from philosopher Daniel Garber (Princeton), intellectual historian Justin Champion (Royal Holloway, London), and Malcolm himself.

Cal Tech's Frederick Eberhardt interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Blast from the past: Olberding on Tuvel

Never forget.

Kamala Harris is not a progressive candidate...

...as this list of her "major" proposals shows.  My friend Scott Shapiro nailed it on Twitter, as usual.  I hope she fades fast in favor of an actual New Deal liberal, and takes her Clintonesque blather back to the Senate.

Daniel Kaufman (Missouri State) talks with Oliver Traldi (Notre Dame)...

...at Meaning of Life TV,  although it is misleadingly titled as "Leftism in Academic Philosophy" (the title was not chosen by Kaufman):  the current "identity politics" mania afflicting parts of philosophy has nothing to do with "leftism," which concerns human liberation.  Vide Marx, "On the Jewish Question."  Things get quite salty in the interview around the 1:05 point in the dialogue.

UPDATE:  Prof. Kaufman succeeded in getting a more appropriate title for the dialogue.

BJHP announces 2018 Article prize

Philosopher Alix Cohen (Edinburgh), Deputy Editor of the BJHP, asked me to share the following announcement:

The committee made up of all the editors of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy has awarded the Rogers Prize for 2018 for the best article published in the BJHP last year to Michael Gill (Arizona) for ‘Shaftesbury on life as a work of art’, published in volume 26.6 of the journal.

This Prize, awarded for the first time in 2012, was established in honour of Prof. John Rogers, the Founding Editor of the journal. It is worth £1000, and will be announced in the next issue of the journal.

The runner-up is Kathryn Tabb (Columbia) for her paper ‘Madness as Method: On Locke’s Thought Experiments about Personal Identity’, published in volume 26.5.

Congratulations to them both!

 

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Buffalo, "Suzie Sunshine," 1972

Australian hard rock outfit, this is from their debut album--I'm sure I'll be featuring more from them in the future.

 

Conference on the work of Bernard Williams at Lund this June

I'll be talking about Williams and Nietzsche, at what is shaping up to be a very interesting conference:  further program information is here (including about how to register, for free).

How the federal government shutdown fiasco in America ends

The monster-child will continue his tantrum, and the Democrats will hold fast on refusing to fund the idiotic border wall.  But the shutdown will start to affect things that matter, even to Republicans, like air travel.  At that point--and we are surely nearing it--enough Republicans will override a veto and vote to reopen the government.  It's possible that if and when that becomes apparent, the monster-child will back off, but who knows with him?

Hackers discover Gettier

A hacker wrote a piece on the Gettier problem, which then generated a big discussion in the hacker on-line community!

(Thanks to Vincent Abruzzo for the pointers.)

Blast from the past: Biology textbooks under attack in Texas

Way back in August 2003.

IHE on the erroneous job ad specifying the candidate sought

Some more details (not many) about this.

UPDATE:  Jeff Speaks, Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame, writes with useful information regarding  the erroneous job ad:

Obviously you are correct -- it is a very weird ad -- and so I wanted to send you a clarification. The position in question is not a position in Philosophy -- it is in the Program of Liberal Studies (which is a separate department at Notre Dame).

And it was never supposed to be posted anywhere. As I'm sure you know, universities often make temporary non-tenure line hires without conducting searches. This was supposed to be such a hire. At Notre Dame, all hires -- even ones like this one which do not involve searches -- now have to be run through Interfolio. What happened in this case is that an automated system of an outside vendor hired by Notre Dame's administration posted what was supposed to be a hire as a vacancy. The person to be hired was listed by this automated system as the "preferred candidate" for the (non-existent) vacancy.

Especially given the state of the job market in philosophy, it's really bad that this happened. But I at least wanted to clarify that it doesn't reflect anything about Notre Dame's hiring practices (other than the fact that Notre Dame, just like pretty much everywhere else, sometimes makes temporary non-tenure line hires without conducting searches).

Who is Sam Duncan and why does he think I stole his milk money?

The  sixth law of cyber-dynamics is:  on any blog with unmoderated comment threads, there will be no correlation between those who regularly post comments and those who actually have something worthwhile to say.   Weinberg's "safe space" philosophy blog suffers from several regular commenters who illustrate this law, but the only one who interests me today is the character known as "Sam Duncan."  I don't know Mr. Duncan, don't know who he is, don't even know if it's his real name, although it appears to be (I am told it is this guy, but if it's not, he should tell me [UPDATE:  He's now here.).  But Mr. Duncan, judging from his obsessive comments, seems to think I took his milk money and he's very mad about it.  I swear I didn't!

Wittgenstein's letter of recommendation for "Mrs. Geach" (i.e., Anscombe)

Amusing.

Catholic jihad

Speaking of reactionary Catholics (e.g.), here is another, law professor Adrian Vermeule (Harvard) (he wasn't always one--when I wanted to hire him at Texas twenty years ago, he was simply a run-of-the-mill legal conservative):

Progressive liberalism has its own cruel sacraments—especially the shaming and, where possible, legal punishment of the intolerant or illiberal—and its own liturgy, the Festival of Reason, the ever-repeated overcoming of the darkness of reaction. Because the celebration of the festival essentially requires, as part of its liturgical script, a reactionary enemy to be overcome, liberalism ceaselessly and restlessly searches out new villains to play their assigned part. Thus the boundaries of progressive demands for conformity are structurally unstable, fluid, and ever shifting, not merely contingently so—there can be no lasting peace. Yesterday the frontier was divorce, contraception, and abortion; then it became same-sex marriage; today it is transgenderism; tomorrow it may be polygamy, consensual adult incest, or who knows what. The uncertainty is itself the point. From the liberal standpoint, the essential thing is that the new issue provokes opposition from the forces of reaction, who may then be conquered in a public and dramatic fashion by the political mobilization of liberal forces....

If we are to be entirely flexible about means, to what ends? The ultimate long-run goal is the same as it ever was: to bear witness to the Lord and to expand his one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church to the ends of the earth. In global perspective, the situation is actually quite promising. The twin ideas that we live in a secular age and that Christianity is shrinking apply mainly in the liberal redoubts of the West, and not even all of them. Secularism is actually in decline, chiefly because secular materialists have so few children. The culture of liberalism, having attacked the family, proves incapable of reproducing itself. (Deus non irridetur.)...

Strategically, the Church can be flexible as necessary on all dimensions save one—the gospel teaching and sacramental practice of the magisterium, which perpetuates itself by apostolic succession. Like Paul, in the service of the universal Gospel, the Church can be “all things to all men,” politically speaking, precisely because political forms are merely possible means for carrying the core mission into execution. From the Church’s standpoint, many (although not all) political forms lie within the space of the determinatio—certainly a far broader range of political forms than liberalism permits.

This radical political flexibility as to means, decried by Macaulay and justified by Schmitt, is a hard counsel; it means that ultimate allegiances to political parties, to the nation, even to the Constitution, may all have to go if conditions warrant it. It is not that the strategic Christian may not respect, support, and participate in upholding such things—that is of course often sensible, indeed mandatory (as St. Peter instructs us), when and so long as there is no conflict with the Church’s teaching and mission. Alliances of common goals, as opposed to allegiances, are useful and appropriate, depending upon local conditions. But politically speaking, there can be no “progressive Christians” or “Republican Christians” or even “American Christians.”

All of which brings to mind the astute observation of RAWA.

(Thanks to Tom V. for sending this gem along.)

ANOTHER:  Law professor Rick Hills (NYU) comments on Professor Vermeule's odd turn here.  And some amusement via Twitter.

AND ONE MORE:  A former student points out that earlier this week, Professor Vermeule accused me, based on no evidence, of being likely to engage in unlawful and unprofessional employment discrimination.  Amazing.  By that logic, one would predict that Professor Vermeule's recent writings will give legal ammunition to every atheist or Jew or Muslim he votes against for appointment or tenure.

Blast from the past: John Yoo and academic freedom

Back in 2009.

Job ad specifies candidate sought for the position

A job seeker (not the one named in the ad) calls this funny ad to my attention:

PLS, Visiting Assistant Special Professional, Bugyis, Eric-Preferred Candidate

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

 

Location:

Notre Dame, IN

 

Category:

• Faculty - Liberal Arts - Philosophy
• Faculty - Liberal Arts - Religious Studies and Theology

 

Posted:

01/14/2019

 

Type:

Full-Time

 

PLS, Visiting Assistant Special Professional, Bugyis, Eric-preferred candidate

Location: University of Notre Dame
Open Date: Jan 11, 2019
Deadline:

Description:Teaching in:4:4 course load in PLS, Philosophy, and Theology.

Qualifications:

To apply, visit https://apply.interfolio.com/59442

This appointment is contingent upon the successful completion of a background check. Applicants will be asked to identify all felony convictions and/or pending felony charges. Felony convictions do not automatically bar an individual from employment. Each case will be examined separately to determine the appropriateness of employment in the particular position. Failure to be forthcoming or dishonesty with respect to felony disclosures can result in the disqualification of a candidate. The full procedure can be viewed at https://facultyhandbook.nd.edu/?id=link-73597.

Equal Opportunity Employment Statement
The University of Notre Dame seeks to attract, develop, and retain the highest quality faculty, staff and administration. The University is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to building a culturally diverse workplace. We strongly encourage applications from female and minority candidates and those candidates attracted to a university with a Catholic identity. Moreover, Notre Dame prohibits discrimination against veterans or disabled qualified individuals, and requires affirmative action by covered contractors to employ and advance veterans and qualified individuals with disabilities in compliance with 41 CFR 60-741.5(a) and 41 CFR 60-300.5(a).

jeid-08c2583cef6ab14fb02971d32a8b0723

UPDATE:  More details on how the erroneous ad got placed here.

Making decisions...

...in The New Yorker, discussing the views of philosophers Agnes Callard (Chicago) and Laurie Paul (Yale), among others.

Jeff McMahan (Oxford) on "no-platforming"

This is timely; it appears in a new philosophy series at The New Statesman run by Aaron Wendland.

Philosopher Bence Nanay (Antwerp) discusses "The Fractured Mind"...

...at the recent HowtheLightGetsIn conference.

Oxford political theorist Sophie Smith on the Finnis case

Although she comes down on the right side of the question, she too manages to muddy the core academic freedom issue--you can't punish faculty for the offensiveness of their published research, full stop.  But I'm sympathetic with some of her frustration at the responses by other legal philosophers.  I don't think she or anyone needs to engage "respectfully" with Finnis's writings on homosexuality or most other matters:  he is a Catholic philosopher, the dogma determines the answers, and the arguments are awful or absurd unless you start with the dogmatic premises he accepts.  Ignoring that work is the best policy unless one is working within the Catholic tradition.  (Academic freedom also protects the rights of Catholic philosophers!)  Is Finnis a "legal giant"?  His corpus testifies to the bankruptcy of his version of natural law theory, his main arguments having been demolished so many times as to make the exercise tedious.  (If natural law theory has any hope qua theory of law it will be in Mark Murphy's work, which clearly recognizes the faults in Finnis's arguments.)  Finnis is a giant of Catholic philosophy, an excellent expositor of the natural law tradition and of Aquinas in particular, and he was the first such philosopher to meaningfully engage the post-Hartian tradition in legal philosophy:  kudos to him for all of that.  (I teach Chapter 1 of Natural Law and Natural Rights all the time, but like everyone else, I explain why that argument fails to challenge the positivist approach to jurisprudence--indeed, I often have students read Murphy's concise explanation of this point!)

Professor Smith writes, "Academic freedom is a principle worth defending, but it is foolish to ignore its costs, and who (disproportionately, quietly) bears them."  But there are no costs to the principle in this case, unless one thinks that knowing that Oxford employs an emeritus professor with reactionary Catholic views to do some teaching is harming someone.  But how could one seriously think that?  To quote another Oxford professor of jurisprudence, John Gardner:  "That something offends you, or more generally makes you feel bad, does not show that it does you any harm. We all feel bad about something most days and come out of it unscathed, just as we come out of most physical pain unscathed. Of course there may be harms that are consequences of offence and pain. Torture harms people by the use of pain. Upset may turn to depression and may then be disabling."   Knowing that an emeritus professor holds loathsome views is precisely the kind of "harm" Millian liberals did not want to countenance.  So the talk of "costs" (like Professor Smith's talk of "hate speech"--there is no statutory prohibition on hate speech I am aware of that would encompass Finnis's writings) is just a distraction from the core, and simple, academic freedom issue:   a university that respects academic freedom does not remove someone from the classroom because their research expresses offensive views (that is true whether they are a "giant" or "midget").  The only folks trying to present the issue as "complicated," I fear, are those who don't really care that much about academic freedom.

Virtual Dissertation Groups, once again

Joshua Smart (Ohio State) asked me to share this announcement, which I'm happy to do:

Virtual Dissertation Groups

VDG is a free service that connects graduate students to provide feedback on dissertation work. Members are grouped with two others working in the same general area of philosophy. About once a month, one member sends some work (3-6K words) to the others, who return feedback and comments in a week or so.

While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one’s work with peers in a lower-stakes environment, and it can be particularly enlightening to do so with those who take a different approach, outlook, or focus. Not only that, but there is evidence from psychological research that thinking about problems in relation to persons who are geographically distant can increase creativity. With students in programs from many states, countries, and every continent with a philosophy Ph.D. program, Virtual Dissertation Groups is a great way to capture some of these benefits!

You can sign up to participate here. Open signups through Sunday, January 20th [Afterwards, new dissertators are accepted conditional on available spots]

The situation for women in economics

It sounds worse than in philosophy (where things, at least, have gotten better in the last decade).

Blog traffic and the rise and fall of blogs

I see a lot of references, both in cyberspace and sometimes in traditional media, to the decline of interest in blogs.  This is attributed to two main factors:  the current popularity of Twitter and the growth of Facebook, which many users treat as de facto blogs.  Certainly in philosophy, relatively few blogs have survived the long haul, and in academic law, many once popular blogs have closed entirely.

Meanwhile, we trudge along.  Traffic is, I'm pretty sure, somewhat down from the highs of 2012-2013--peak blog readership generally--but unfortunately I had to change stat counters in 2015 as the old one ("sitemeter" I think) went beserk, so I no longer have official, comparble stats from then.  Here's the yearly data on visits from 2015 through 2018 according to the new StatCounter; note that "returning visits" can only be measured for readers who visit from the same computer, which no doubt many do, but many others don't.  But since StatCounter (click on "public stats" at the bottom of the left column) includes those figures, I include them here (note that 2017 was the first year I began my reduced summer blogging schedule, although its effect on traffic was only slight):

	Returning Visits	Unique Visits	Page Views
2015	1,686,680	3,686,038	4,972,397
2016	1,768,696	3,564,079	4,835,466
2017	1,651,053	3,455,946	4,747,474
2018	1,688,305	3,566,762	4,860,347

Returning visits in 2018 topped the 2015 figure, but missed the 2016 high.  Unique visits in 2018 were higher than the prior two years, but lower than in 2015--and the same for page views.  All the changes were surprisingly small year-in and year-out.

Anyway, I owe thanks to you loyal readers, some of whom I know have stuck with the blog for many years!

A list of Trump's made-up conversations he never had

It's quite a list, although I don't find it unsettling, since it is of a piece with his pathological lying about everything.

Philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT) on the idea of "gender identity"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MORNING OF JANUARY 11, IN CASE PEOPLE MISSED IT

Since he picks it apart pretty thoroughly, he will no doubt be added to the list of wrong-thinking villains like Kathleen Stock, Leslie Green, and mild-mannered me.  Fortunately, since those who keep lists of wrong-thinking villains are increasingly the objects of the ridicule and obstracization that they had tried to inflict on others, we can expect that Professor Byrne's list will soon be the "place to be."

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Sir Lord Baltimore, "Hard Rain Fallin'," 1970

Brooklyn-based proto heavy metal band, this song comes from their debut album, which just barely cracked the Billboard top 200.