Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Condolences to the United Kingdom

Rather bitter election results, which will no doubt produce lots of mostly baseless attributions of blame.   My British friends should read Achen and Bartels' book Democracy for Realists, written before Trump, but they got him and his effect on Republicans exactly right, but their evidence is not limited to the United States.   Many group identities in the U.K. are now tied to Brexit, and the Tories were the party of Brexit.  The smear campaign against Corbyn surely didn't help, but I would be surprised if evidence emerges that it played much of a role in this outcome.   The supremacy of Parliament, including in constitutional matters, bodes ill for the future now that the Conservatives have a commanding majority.

ADDENDUM:  Some of the charts here are revealing:  in particular, the collapse of the UKIP vote since 2015 basically tracks the gains for the Conservatives in 2019; it's a reasonable hypothesis those voters migrated to the Tories.

 

In Memoriam: Jaegwon Kim (1934-2019)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 30:  UPDATED

One of the most influential contributors to metaphysics and the philosophy of mind of the last half-century, Professor Kim taught from 1963-1967 and then from 1987 onwards at Brown University (where he was emeritus), but also spent some two decades at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with briefer stints as a tenured faculty member at both Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities.  Although I did not study directly with Kim, I always viewed his work as a model of analytic philosophy in the post-WWII period at its best.  He inherited from his teacher Carl Hempel a concern for precision and clarity of argumentation rivaled by only a handful of his contemporaries.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  Reader Robert Allen kindly shared this charming story:

Everyone knows Jaegwon Kim was an immortal philosopher.  But I had the good fortune of seeing what a kind-hearted man he was.  He came to Wayne State University in the late 80s on the occasion of Professor Richard 'Brad' Angell's retirement.  A sad day.  The department chair introduced him before his lecture, concluding with the title of his paper, something technical like 'Supervenience and Reduction'.  Professor Kim responded 'Thank you, Mike, for the generous introduction, but you got one thing wrong.  The title of my paper is, An Essay in Honor of Brad Angell.'

UPDATE:  A memorial notice from the  Brown Department:

It is with great sorrow that the Department of Philosophy of Brown University reports the passing of Jaegwon Kim, William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy emeritus, on November 27, 2019.  Professor Kim was eighty-five years old.

Blast from the past: what to do when publication year and copyright year don't coincide?

Back in 2014.

Do philosophical intuitions vary across demographic groups? Knobe v. Machery & Stich

It's the battle of the X-Phil titans!   Joshua Knobe (Yale) recently argued that the experimental results show little variation in philosophical intuitions among different demographic groups, while Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh) and Stephen Stich (Rutgers) contest Knobe's interpretation of the data:  you can read their draft paper here:  Download Reply to Knobe -- Demographic Difference in Philosophical Intuition - 11-3-2019; and you can look at the data regarding different X-Phil studies here:   Download Copy of TABLE 1 - Knobe Reply - Spreadsheet - 10-14-2019.  I'm hardly an expert, although on my read Machery & Stich are closer to the truth here.  What do readers think?  (Thanks to Stephen Stich for flagging this debate and sharing the papers and data.)

UPDATE:   Professor Knobe has kindly shared his lengthier reply to Professors Machery and Stich.

Petition in support of faculty and librarians whose positions are threatened at St. Cloud State University

Following up on earlier coverage, there is now this petition, which I urge readers to sign.

(Thanks to Tina Gross for the pointer.)

A friendlier take on the "1619 Project"

A relatively brief (15 minutes) interview with historian Eric Foner (Columbia).  It doesn't really engage any of the doubts raised by the other historians we have noted over the last week, but it captures pretty well my own initially favorable reaction to the series until I began reading the preceding interviews.

(Thanks to Barbara Herman for the pointer.)

Is immortality worse than death?

Philosopher Adrian Moore (Oxford) comments.

Today in Trump's fascist initiatives

An effort to sanction and suppress criticism of Israel.  What else is new in America?

Biologist Jerry Coyne on Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's paper on "white empiricism"

Professor Coyne is very patient in going through this stuff.  (We encountered Professor Prescod-Weinstein once before.  You can read her demand for honoraria here.)  An excerpt from near the end of Coyne's piece:

I am growing weary, for I have dissected papers like this before—papers on white glaciology, the racism of Pilates, lattes, and pumpkins, and so on. The difference here is that Prescod-Weinstein is a working physicist with respectable accomplishments in the field. It is a sad testimony to the power of ideology, though, that her interpretation of what science is has been so severely distorted by her anti-white feminism.  Instead of arguing, as I’ve said, on moral grounds, she argues that the objectivity of science itself is in conflict with the supposed dismissal of black women’s experiences of racism, and that such an attitude is not just racist but anti-science.

In view of the paucity of black women physicists with a Ph.D. (there have been only a few dozen in history), what should we do? I agree that there may be a problem here, and my solution is, as always, twofold. First, rectify any inequality of opportunity starting at the ground—the limited opportunities afforded to minorities by living conditions and poor schooling, themselves byproducts of racism. Second, for the time being practice a form of affirmative action, realizing that diversity in the physics community is an inherent good for several reasons (providing role models to eliminate roadblocks to opportunity, for one).

More evidence for the relativity of moral judgments, this time in the form of cross-cultural responses to variations on the Trolley Problem

Of course, moral realists will have their usual question-begging accounts that explain away these divergent responses, but putting the parochialism of Anglophone moral philosophers to one side, here are the results:

The researchers found that countries’ preferences differ widely, but they also correlate highly with culture and economics. For example, participants from collectivist cultures like China and Japan are less likely to spare the young over the old—perhaps, the researchers hypothesized, because of a greater emphasis on respecting the elderly.

Similarly, participants from poorer countries with weaker institutions are more tolerant of jaywalkers versus pedestrians who cross legally. And participants from countries with a high level of economic inequality show greater gaps between the treatment of individuals with high and low social status.

 

Deranged UT Austin students now harassing classics professor at his home

They're proud of it!   This faculty member's "crime" is his scholarship.  The students should be prosecuted under any applicable criminal statutes, and Professor Hubbard, the victim of this abuse, should bring a civil action against the students (including for defamation:  calling someone a "pedophile" when they are not is per se defamatory, meaning he won't even need to prove damages).   I will be glad to raise money for his legal action if there is one.

(Thanks to Joel Pust for the pointer.)

"Feminism for the 1%"

This is a smart essay. 

Blast from the past: the former Associate Editors of Hypatia learned nothing from their defamatory attack on Rebecca Tuvel

Back in 2017.

Richard Marshall interviews Mark Kalderon (UCL)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Historian James Oakes on "diversity" in the academy and in history departments in particular

Another interesting bit of the interview noted the other day:

Q. Can you address the role of identity politics on the campus? How is it to try to do so serious work under these conditions?

A. Well, my sense is that among graduate students the identitarians stay away from me, and they badger the students who are interested in political and economic history. They have a sense of their own superiority. The political historians tend to feel besieged.

The reflection of identity politics in the curriculum is the primacy of cultural history. There was a time, a long, long time ago, when a “diverse history faculty” meant that you had an economic historian, a political historian, a social historian, a historian of the American Revolution, of the Civil War, and so on. And now a diverse history faculty means a women’s historian, a gay historian, a Chinese-American historian, a Latino historian. So it’s a completely different kind of diversity.

On a global scale the benefit of this has been tremendous. We have more—and we should have more—African history, Latin American history, Asian history, than we ever have. Within US history it has produced narrow faculties in which everybody is basically writing the same thing. And so you don’t bump into the economic historian at the mailbox and say “Is it true that all the wealth came from slavery,” and have them say, “that’s ridiculous,” and explain why it can’t be true.

The latest attack on freedom of thought and expression in academic philosophy...

...this time involving one of the philosophy editors of OUP, Peter Ohlin--rather disappointing!

UPDATE:  I suppose one shouldn't be surprised that Carrie Jenkins and Kate Manne both think this is wonderful!

The best introductory texts to metaphysics and epistemology

Reader Alfred MacDonald called my attention to this old blog post and wondered whether I might solicit something similar here for various subfields of philosophy.  So let's start with recommendations for introductions to metaphysics and/or epistemology.   Don't just name a text, but say something about why you think it's particularly notable or valuable.

Law & Philosophy Fellowship at University of Chicago for 2020-21

The ad is now up; I paste the description of the position below:

The University of Chicago Law School seeks a Law and Philosophy Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer, for the academic year 2020-21. This is a twelve-month appointment and is expected to begin July 1, 2020. 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 “New Directions in Political Philosophy,” which will focus on political realism, the debate about ideal vs. non-ideal theory, and, more generally, reactions to the Rawlsian hegemony in Anglophone philosophical work of the past fifty years.   AOS:  Political philosophy, with knowledge of Workshop themes essential; AOC:  open.  Visiting speakers will be prominent scholars working on these issues.  The Workshop with visiting speakers will meet roughly 8-10 times over the course of the year, but there will be initial sessions devoted to discussing Rawls’s work with enrolled students and occasional preparatory sessions for students prior to some visiting speakers.  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 $60K + benefits + superb research environment.  To be considered a candidate for this position you must apply on-line through the University website at apply.interfolio.com/71893 by January 24, 2020. 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 24, 2020.

The author of the "1619 Project," Nikole Hannah-Jones...

9/21 UPDATE:   Apparently Richard Painter--whose own law school colleague had to call out his lies about me--is still linking to this post from two years ago.   He knows I have a low opinion of journalists generally, and have excoriated many of them, not just Ms. Hannah-Jones:  James Bennet, Thomas Friedman, Bret Stephens.  He knows this, but doesn't mention it because he wants to smear me as a racist (oh the irony!), even though he's the one who reacted to an article that proposed raising tenure standards in law schools by declaring (incorrectly) that African-Americans would not meet the new standard.  I hope some of you follow the links, below, to the many major American historians who have raised serious criticisms of the 1619 Project.  And if you want the background to Richard's unhinged vendetta against me, and to learn what his law school colleague really think of him, read this.  And if you want to see what an unscrupulous and sadistic person he is, read this.

==========

...is a journalist (Karl Kraus, where are you?), not even an historian, and she puts on quite a display on Twitter (e.g., announcing that as a Black person in America she doesn't have to consider historians like James McPherson "preeminent").  Most striking is her main line of defense against the criticisms we've noted the last few days:  "there is no such thing as objective history so complaints that the 1619 is an illegitimate reframing of history deny that all history is framed."   There may be no uniquely correct account of historical events, but there are certainly better and worse ones, correct and incorrect ones, and the objections are that the 1619 Project makes a number of contentious, and indeed false, claims about the history.   It's hard to believe an imbecile like this is writing for the NYT (or maybe not?)

(Thanks to a young philosopher on the job market for calling this to my attention.  Because of the culture of open debate and tolerance for competing views in academic philosophy, this student did not want to be named.)

Blast from the past: Clark Glymour's "brief" for Carnegie-Mellon

Back in 2011.

Scholarship by classics professor with "incorrect" views is now as bad as sexual harassment according to students at UT Austin

I'm glad the university has rebuffed these benighted students, but it's no doubt a symptom of what's to come as the campaign against actual sexual harassment gets mixed up with the general New Infantilist hysteria about "harmful" ideas:

A group of students at the University of Texas are calling for the firing of a classics professor who has written extensively on “pederasty”—socially acknowledged romantic relationships between adult men and teen boys—in ancient Greece....

“Contemporary American legislation premised on children’s incapacity to ‘consent’ to sexual relations stems from outmoded gender constructions and ideological preoccupations of the late Victorian and Progressive Era,” Hubbard reportedly wrote in the peer-reviewed journal Thymos: Boyhood Studies. “We should consider a different ‘age of consent’ for boys and girls"....

A group called Students for Safety issued a press release last month which claimed that Hubbard “has used his position to further a community of individuals hoping to prey on underage boys” and that his writings “encourage these illicit acts.”

It appears this fellow doesn't care for Boris Johnson

Very amusing and apt:

 

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Frost, "Little Susie Singer," 1969

Michigan in the late 1960s was a fertile ground for rock music, producing, among others, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the MC5, Grand Funk, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, and, the least successful of them all (but arguably more talented than some of the others), The Frost, a band we've not featured since last year.  Here's another number from their debut album:

 

Historian James Oakes (CUNY) interviewed about the NYT "1619 Project"

Another illuminating interview; an excerpt:

Q. [A] point we made in our response to the 1619 Project, is that it dovetails also with the major political thrust of the Democratic Party, identity politics. And the claim that is made, and I think it’s almost become a commonplace, is that slavery is the uniquely American “original sin.”

A. Yes. “Original sin,” that’s one of them. The other is that slavery or racism is built into the DNA of America. These are really dangerous tropes. They’re not only ahistorical, they’re actually anti-historical. The function of those tropes is to deny change over time. It goes back to those analogies. They say, “look at how terribly black people were treated under slavery. And look at the incarceration rate for black people today. It’s the same thing.” Nothing changes. There has been no industrialization. There has been no Great Migration. We’re all in the same boat we were back then. And that’s what original sin is. It’s passed down. Every single generation is born with the same original sin. And the worst thing about it is that it leads to political paralysis. It’s always been here. There’s nothing we can do to get out of it. If it’s the DNA, there’s nothing you can do. What do you do? Alter your DNA?

Who knew Lutherans were into "identity politics"?

Rev. Bruce Foster, a retired minister and a longtime reader of the blog, writes:

Your collection of responses to the 1619 nonsense at the Times is very useful. Of course if you weren’t an atheist but rather a member of a progressive Protestant church body all these arguments would be old hat to you. For at least five years my church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has constantly stressed that all white people are racists, racism is the original sin of the USA and that White Privilege (always capitalized) must be confessed. These are not items up for debate or even discussion. They are to be repeated with all the passion and conviction that once was used for the Nicene Creed.  Yes, there are some people who try to protest, but if they are lay people they are never listened to, and if they are pastors and annoy their bishops enough their next church will be in Twisted Walnut Iowa (with the added punishment of every four years having ten visits by the likes of Peter B or Kamala H). But in fact these threats are rarely needed. In place of Two Minutes of Hate we have communal confessions of our joint sins and everybody feels better for it.

"Nietzsche, Trump, and Brexit"

You probably weren't expecting to find those three items together, but they are put there by my friend the philosopher Ken Gemes (Birkbeck/London) in this interesting talk.   Note that the introduction is in German, but Gemes delivers the lecture in English.   I think he gets one thing wrong about Nietzsche:  the fundamental problem for human beings is to find a meaning for inevitable suffering, not to find a meaning simpliciter, as Gemes claims.

Philosophy PhD applications spreadsheet

Several readers have sent along this useful spread sheet, produced by a user at the "Grad Cafe" discussion board.

Rep. Devin Nunes, Trump hatchet man

This is a real billboard:

The perfect holiday gift for your wife

This is hysterical (inspired by this nonsense).

Schwenkler on Anscombe...

...at Commonweal.

Historian Gordon Wood interviewed on the NYT "1619 Project"

Here.  The New York Times owes the public an apology. An excerpt:

Q. Let me begin by asking you your initial reaction to the 1619 Project. When did you learn about it?

A. Well, I was surprised when I opened my Sunday New York Times in August and found the magazine containing the project. I had no warning about this. I read the first essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, which alleges that the Revolution occurred primarily because of the Americans’ desire to save their slaves. She claims the British were on the warpath against the slave trade and slavery and that rebellion was the only hope for American slavery. This made the American Revolution out to be like the Civil War, where the South seceded to save and protect slavery, and that the Americans 70 years earlier revolted to protect their institution of slavery. I just couldn’t believe this.

I was surprised, as many other people were, by the scope of this thing, especially since it’s going to become the basis for high school education and has the authority of the New York Times behind it, and yet it is so wrong in so many ways....

In Memoriam: Kenneth Taylor (1954-2019)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

I'm very sorry to report that Professor Taylor, a longtime member of the Stanford faculty and an expert in philosophy of language and mind, has passed away unexpectedly.   I will add links to memorial notices and more information as they become available.

UPDATE:  The Stanford memorial notice.  And here is a tribute from his Stanford colleague and co-host of Philosophy Talk, John Perry.

More on the NYT fraudulent "1619 Project": an interview with historian James McPherson

Also interesting; an excerpt:

Q. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the lead writer and leader of the 1619 Project, includes a statement in her essay—and I would say that this is the thesis of the project—that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”

A. Yes, I saw that too. It does not make very much sense to me. I suppose she’s using DNA metaphorically. She argues that racism is the central theme of American history. It is certainly part of the history. But again, I think it lacks context, lacks perspective on the entire course of slavery and how slavery began and how slavery in the United States was hardly unique. And racial convictions, or “anti-other” convictions, have been central to many societies.

But the idea that racism is a permanent condition, well that’s just not true. And it also doesn’t account for the countervailing tendencies in American history as well. Because opposition to slavery, and opposition to racism, has also been an important theme in American history.

On Hume's idea that where philosophy and argument end, psychology begins

An interview with philosophical novelist Rebecca Goldstein at IAITV.

Blast from the past: The report on Ward Churchill's "research misconduct"

Back in 2007.   Along with the Salaita case, this ranks as one of the most outrageous attacks on academic freedom and tenure in the last twenty years.

Twin Earth's XYZ revealed!

Classical philosophy scholar Catherine Atherton (UCLA) writes:

I must share with you a vital new discovery: Hilary Putnam was quite wrong about XYZ. Here are its real constituents (item no. 79):

No wonder we have never seen anything of the inhabitants of Twin Earth—they must be incapable of walking most of the time, let alone flying a space-ship. I have to admit I wouldn’t mind a few days’ R&R there myself.

 

An interesting interview with Adolph Reed...

...at Current Affairs.  As usual, his perspective is an important one.

Richard Marshall interviews Michael Shaffer (St. Cloud State)...

...at 3:16 AM.

"The History of Philosophy Reveals that 'Great' Philosophy is Disguised Moral Advocacy: A Nietzschean Case Against the Socratic Canon in Philosophy"

This paper appeared last year in Marcel van Ackern (ed.), Proceedings of the British Academy 214:  Philosophy and the Historical Perspective (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 185-199; the British Academy would not permit it to be posted until a year after publication, which time period has now elapsed.  Here is the abstract:

Instrumentalists think the history of philosophy is as relevant to philosophy as the history of physics is to physics: if past philosophical or physical theories are true, or help us get to the truth, then we should know about them, otherwise not. Skeptical instrumentalists think history fails on these counts, optimistic instrumentalists think it does not. By contrast “anti-philosophical” instrumentalists—like Marx, Nietszche, and Wittgenstein—are not simply skeptics, because the skeptics still believe there is something for philosophy to do, some knowledge it can produce, some truths it can reveal. The anti-philosophical philosophers think we should give up philosophy as traditionally conceived: the real lesson from the history of philosophy is that philosophy is “garbage,” or, as Nietzsche thought, disguised moral advocacy. For Nietzsche, this is the real lesson of the history of philosophy.

The discussion of Carnap's admiration for Nietzsche (in the course of his famous polemic against Heidegger) may interest a number of readers.

Marshall Cohen (USC) on his Harvard classmate Stanley Cavell...

...at the LARB.  He does a very good job capturing why so many philosophers (I among them) never warmed to Cavell.  An excerpt:

In 1980, [Cavell's book The Claim of Reason] was the subject of a symposium at the American Philosophical Society (at which I was present); the occasion proved a fiasco for Cavell. Barry Stroud, a distinguished epistemologist and former Berkeley colleague, offered a careful, penetrating examination and critique of Cavell’s approach to skepticism and to Cavell’s use of the concepts of acceptance and acknowledgment. Cavell responded abusively and unprofessionally to Stroud’s highly professional, respectful paper. In reflecting on the event, Cavell concludes that his work creates infectious ill will among an imposing body of philosophers who know of it.

I believe Stroud bore Cavell no ill will and displayed none on this occasion, but there are certainly many who have been put off reading Cavell by the eccentricities of his prose and the obstacles put in the way of gaining a clear understanding of his arguments and positions. This is true even of many who acknowledge the fact that he is also capable of great eloquence and deep insight. I believe Cavell paid a great price for persuading himself, as he says in the memoir, that one can no more choose how one writes than one can choose what makes one happy. This is a preposterous claim and one that an Emersonian friend (editor, analyst, professional colleague) might have helped him abandon.

The neoliberal turn in British higher education and the current staff strike

This is useful.  The pattern described in Britain will be familiar to any observer of "public" education in the United States since the 1980s.  The main difference is that a highly competitive "private" sphere of higher education has checked some of the worst excesses of bureaucratic meddling that weighs down on British academia.

(Thanks to Paolo Sandro for the pointer.)

Jimmy Hoffa, union man

This is a friendly and balanced look at Hoffa's achievements on behalf of truck drivers and other working people, prompted by the Scorcese film The Irishman (which isn't bad, but it's just standard Scorcese mafia fare and does no justice to Hoffa's actual work).

Siena philosophy professor Emanuele Castrucci is a Nazi sympathizer

What an embarrassment.  I am unsure of the legal status of pro-Nazi speech in Italy, although I would not be surprised if, as in many European countries, it is illegal.  In any case, it appears that academic freedom in Italy does not protect extra-mural speech.  There's more here (in Italian).

UPDATE:  Some of this maniac's creepy musings and comments are translated here.   And more news coverage (in English).

A critique from the actual left of the NYT "1619 Project"

Via Samuel Moyn, I discovered this powerful critique of the "1619 Project" series at The New York Times, ; from the introduction:

“The 1619 Project,” published by the New York Times as a special 100-page edition of its Sunday magazine on August 19, presents and interprets American history entirely through the prism of race and racial conflict. The occasion for this publication is the 400th anniversary of the initial arrival of 20 African slaves at Port Comfort in Virginia, a British colony in North America. On the very next day, the slaves were traded for food.

The Project, according to the Times, intends to “reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

Despite the pretense of establishing the United States’ “true” foundation, the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history. Its aim is to create a historical narrative that legitimizes the effort of the Democratic Party to construct an electoral coalition based on the prioritizing of personal “identities”—i.e., gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, and, above all, race....

How does Berkeley evaluate "diversity" statements from faculty candidates?

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED NOV. 27--A NUMBER OF INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

They are explicit about their criteria, which confirm Professor Thompson's comparison of this to a loyalty oath.  It's really quite shocking, especially if this grading system has any impact on hiring decisions.  Does anyone know how these "grades" on diversity statements are actually used?  You may post anoymously, but use a valid e-mail address (which will not appear).