Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

A new shade of blue

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 28:  UPDATED

Who knew it was possible?

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Philosopher Mark Eli Kalderson (UCL) writes:

Just a quick comment. The discovery of a new blue pigment is not the discovery of a new shade of blue. The former is some material stuff, the latter is a property. This distinction was drawn by Aristotle and the Peripatetic author of De Coloribus (both claim that color mixture is not to be understood on the model of mixing pigments.) So the relevant conceptual distinction has been in place for over two millennia. It remains newsworthy that the first new blue pigment has been discovered in centuries. But a new shade of blue? Fake News!

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Mohan Matthen (Toronto) writes:

Mark Kalderon is clearly correct to say that there is a distinction between shades of blue and blue pigments. He’s probably also right to say that YInMN blue is not a new shade. 

But (and no doubt this is not what Mark was suggesting) it’s not impossible to discover new shades. Vantablack is a shade of black that had never been seen before. Presumably, it existed in the Platonic world of possibles, but being absorbent beyond any pigment or natural substance ever seen before, it was indeed a new shade, at least as far as colours realized on this planet go. It’s possible that YInMn blue is new in this sense. It’s supposed to be extremely brilliant.

I'll open this for further comments from philosophers and others knowledgeable about the metaphysics and science of color.  Signed comments (full name, valid e-mail, which will not appear) will be strongly preferred.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Bolder Damn, "BRTCD," 1971

This is the lead number from the one and only album of this Florida hard rock band:

 

2021 Rescher Medal for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy to go to Thomas Nagel (NYU)

Past winners include Ernest Sosa, Alvin Plantinga, the late Hilary Putnam, Ruth Millikan, and Philip Kitcher, among others. The 2021 Rescher Medal lecture will be held on February 5, 2021.  For more information, please contact Thomas Berry at [email protected].

On being the victim of a stalker, and then being defamed for the stalker's crime

In 2016, I was the victim of a stalker who tried to frame me for a crime; I sought help from the police and spent time and money on lawyers and forensic investigators trying to identify the perpetrator, without success. Anyone paying attention at the time realized that I was also a victim, but, unfortunately, plenty of folks on social media still recklessly defame me for the stalker's crimes.  Some of them, happily, recant when confronted with the evidence.  Hopefully, by putting the evidence in one place (below), others will be more careful. 

In 2014, I was involved in a dispute with several other philosophy professors about my well-known philosophy rankings; the details of the dispute do not matter, but they are here for anyone curious. 

Nearly two years after this dispute, some maniac decided to send excrement in the mail to several of those involved in the 2014 dispute with me.  (The best news account came from the CBC.)   One of the envelopes had a return address of my law school; it was mailed on June 23, 2016 from the very large Chicago zip code that includes O'Hare airport.  Put aside that criminals usually don't volunteer their work address.  It was a matter of public record that I was speaking at a conference in Germany on June 24, so the person stalking me obviously thought it would further help frame me to post it the day before.  What the stalker didn't know was that I had left for Germany on June 22, so was not even in the country on June 23.

To those without malice towards me, it was obvious I had nothing to do with this vile stunt.   The philosopher David Velleman (then at NYU), who had the misfortune to get such a package, was the first to alert me to it in an August 27, 2016 e-mail:

A few people have received packages of excrement from someone using your law-school address.... I assume it can't be you -- which means that someone is trying to embarrass you. I don't know if there's anything you can do about it, but I thought you would want to know. Some of the recipients have reported the packages to the police.

The philosopher David Wallace (Pittsburgh), responding to reckless anonymous accusations against me on another blog, wrote:  

Are people seriously supposing either that, (a) Leiter himself is sending offensive and illegal packages to his adversaries and including his own return address; or that (b) overly radical allies of Leiter, inspired by and in agreement with his views but thinking that he’s being too moderate in his actions, decide to act on his behalf *and to frame him for the action*?  

I don’t really see any plausible way of interpreting this as anything other than third-party malice....

A law blogger at the Washington Post, noting the same facts as Wallace, agreed that someone was "trying to frame or embarrass" me, since "whoever sent the packages was quite ham-handed in their efforts to connect them to Leiter."

Several recipients, correctly, reported these packages to the police.  The police never contacted me about this, since I was never a suspect.  My lawyers also retained a forensic handwriting expert who confirmed from media photos of two different envelopes that the handwriting was the same.  Further investigation led us to try to secure handwriting samples from three individuals.  Only one complied:  philosopher David Barnett, formerly of the University of Colorado.  Barnett had admitted to others (and subsequently to me) that he had sent excrement in the mail in the past (seriously!).   His handwriting was not, however, a match to that on the envelopes.  Another person my lawyers contacted was an alleged recipient of one of the envelopes, who never responded.  A final person, someone connected to both law and philosophy (and Chicago), first lied to my lawyers about his history of cyber-stalking me, then, subsequently, refused to provide a handwriting sample as well.  For additional details, see the last update here.  My lawyers advised me that we did not yet have enough to proceed against anyone. 

Falsely accusing someone of a crime is defamation.  It's also unethical and malicious, adding insult to injury.  I hope it stops.

Danks, Harrell from Carnegie-Mellon to UC San Diego

David Danks (philosophy of science and cognitive science, machine learning, ethics of AI), Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University, and Mara Harrell (philosophy of science, philosophical pedagogy), Teaching Professor of Philosophy at CMU, have both accepted tenured offers from the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.   Danks will be half in Philosophy and half in the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute; Harrell will be split between Philosophy and the new School of Public Health. Both will also be part of UCSD's Institute for Practical Ethics. They are expected to begin in fall 2021.

Another COVID study: for Pfizer 2-dose vaccine, majority can still be infected after just one shot

Here; the crucial bit: 

Last week, Israel released preliminary data on the effects of vaccination for infection. Early indications suggest that after vaccination, as many as 70% of people can still be infected by SARS-CoV-2 after the initial dose of the Pfizer vaccine. More data is needed to confirm the effects on transmissibility among the vaccinated. 

(Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

Biologist Jerry Coyne encounters the New Infantilism

It's a central tenet of the New Infantilism that if a student says something in public, only other students can comment critically.   If a professor criticizes a student's public words or deeds, that is "bullying."  The well-known evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne describes his encounter with the New Infantilism.

America is doomed, part 421: the millions of "seditionists" in our midst

This makes for a bracing read:

For want of a better term, I’m calling all of them seditionists—not just the people who took part in the riot, but the far larger number of Americans who are united by their belief that Donald Trump won the election, that Joe Biden lost, and that a long list of people and institutions are lying about it: Congress, the media, Mike Pence, the election officials in all 50 states, and the judges in dozens of courts.

In December, 34 percent of Americans said they did not trust the outcome of the 2020 election. More recently, 21 percent said that they either strongly support or somewhat support the storming of the Capitol building. As of this week, 32 percent were still telling pollsters that Biden was not the legitimate winner.

Blast from the past: "What not to read" if you're a conservative Republican

Back in 2013.  A number of philosophers are verboten.

The latest in mysterious rankings

Reader Steve Kreizl kindly called my attention to the "Academic Influence" website.  Even after reviewing their supposed "methodology," I can't figure out the results.   Whatever it is, it is not a ranking of influence in the field of philosophy (otherwise Saul Kripke and Timothy Williamson would not be runners-up for the top twenty-five).  It's also not exactly cross-disciplinary influence either, although that goes some distance towards explaining the list (e.g., David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett and Martha Nussbaum in the top ten).   It clearly gives a lot of weight to references in the popular media, the only way to explain, e.g., George Yancy being in the top ten (he has published extensively at the NYT blog, "The Stone").  Yancy ranks ahead of Joseph Raz and Charles Taylor, for example, who don't write for the NYT blog (nor do I needless to say).   Who, one wonders, is the audience for this?

The mysterious "top 25" below the fold:

Richard Marshall interviews David Detmer (Purdue Northwest)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Classic works of philosophy, shorter versions

Philosopher Fred Rauscher (Michigan State) "won the Internet" yesterday with his contribution to the thread on "abridged classics."  His contribution deserves separate posting:

Heraclitus, Fragments:
Man unwittingly makes same point twice

Plato, Meno:
Geometry lesson somehow requires ghostly realm

Plato, Republic:
Conversation, conversation, spelunking, more conversation

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics:
Philosopher asks which life is best, answers “mine”

Augustine, Confessions:
Man has fun, finds God, becomes bore

Lectures recorded because of COVID that might be available to the public?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 21--SOME INTERESTING CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE COMMENTS,  MORE WELCOME

Reader Neil Webb writes:

One of the consequences of Covid is that lectures have been delivered online.

While many of those lectures will only be available to students within an institution some are available to anyone with internet access.

Would you mind asking those who do have lectures available and are happy for them to be shared more widely to provide a link so that others can benefit from them?

As I explained to Mr. Webb, often these lectures can not be shared outside the university (that is the rule here, for example).  Often student privacy rights under FERPA are implicated in sharing recordings, another obstacle.   But readers can post links to lectures being recorded during COVID that are widely available (maybe there is already an archive with such links somewhere?).

Blast from the past: In praise of terminal MA programs

Back in 2015.  This post generated a generally high quality discussion in the comments as well.

New philosophy magazine: "The Raven"

Philosopher David Velleman (Johns Hopkins) writes:

I am writing to announce the launch of The Raven, a new magazine of philosophy edited by me and David Johnson with support from the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins. Our mission is to publish original philosophy written for intellectually curious readers with or without academic training in the discipline, reviving an essayistic style of philosophy that was more common in academic venues as recently as thirty years ago but has gradually disappeared.

More information about the magazine and its editorial board is available on our site:

        https://ravenmagazine.org

"Consciousness Live" with philosopher Richard Brown (CUNY)

Professor Brown has announced the line-up for season 4.

Vaccines are working: the case of Israel

Three weeks after the first shot, there's been a 60% drop in hospitalizations for those sixty years old or over.  Israel has been vaccinating aggressively and more quickly than most countries.

ADDENDUM:  An article appeared today in the NYT about Israel and the vaccine with additional details.

Classics of Western literature: shorter versions

(Click on the image if the margins are cut off on your screen to see it all, or choose "view image".)

On Twitter, Jesse Showalter suggested a shorter version of Plato's Apology:  "Pro se defendant on trial for his life gives rousing speech. Loses. Receives death sentence."   Others welcome in the comments.

Brace yourselves: we may be years away from not worrying about the coronavirus

The South African variant is leading major vaccine makers to update their vaccines.   We are, I suspect, looking at at least yearly vaccines to protect against this virus.   Perhaps, as with influenza, vaccines that are not wholly effective will nonetheless protect against serious illness and mortality from the virus.   I'm as hopeful as the next person that the current vaccinations, which are just barely beginning in the U.S., will dramatically reduce mortality.   But I fear we are a very long time away from "normal" life. 

Using images to persuade COVID skeptics

Philosopher Nathan Ballantyne (Fordham) and others discuss.

"Why Trump isn't a fascist"

This is right as far as it goes.  He of course had an authoritarian mindset and contempt for democracy and democratic norms.  The analogy made to the fascism of the 1930s may be highly imperfect (it is), but the fact that there are any points of similarity is bad enough, and there is plenty of potential for world-historic wickedness and disaster without being just like Hitler.

(Thanks to David Lobina for the pointer.)

Empathy as a basis for morality?

Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen & Oxford) discusses the problems.

Petition calling on University of Kansas *not* to implement the Regents' policy purporting to suspend tenure

The petition is here, and I urge readers to sign.  (Earlier coverage.)   It's worth noting that four of the six state universities (including Kansas State University) have announced they will not make use of the new policy.  The University of Kansas should follow suit.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Steamhammer, "Contemporary Chick Con Song," 1969

Part of the British blues explosion in the 1960s, this is far and away their best-known number, and what a great one it is (you'll have it on replay I predict):

 

New COVID worries: the new Brazilian and South African variants of the coronavirus

Here; an excerpt

The more transmissible variant, B.1.1.7, is already spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark, and probably in many other countries. But scientists are just as worried about 501Y.V2, a variant detected in South Africa. Some of the mutations it carries, including ones named E484K and K417N, change its surface protein, spike, and have been shown in the lab to reduce how well monoclonal antibodies combat the virus. In a preprint published earlier this month, Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, showed that E484K also reduced the potency of convalescent sera from some donors 10-fold—although he is quick to add this does not necessarily mean the mutation would cause people's immunity to the new strain to drop 10-fold.

P.1 [the Brazilian variant] adds to the concerns because it appears to have hit on a similar constellation of mutations and has emerged in a place with a high level of immunity. “Anytime you see the same mutations arising and starting to spread multiple times, in different viral strains across the world, that's really strong evidence that there's some evolutionary advantage to those mutations,” Bloom says....

(Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

Widespread political protests in Russia

Remarkable.  Some accounts suggest they are bigger than any protests during the Putin era.

Efficacy of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines on the new variants of the coronavirus

This paper suggests the vaccine is likely to need updating at various intervals for maximum effectiveness.  If that's right, it means the current mass vaccinations which are just getting started may need to be undertaken again next fall.  If I'm misunderstanding the paper, or if readers have links to other helpful information about this issue, please comment, below.

(Thanks to Bob Matthews for the pointer.)

Cancel culture redux: think tank fires VP for funny tweet that offended Repugs

Story here.  I thought that was a pretty good joke, actually, and Mr. Wilkinson should not have apologized.  But for God's sake, everyone on Twitter posts jokes that fail or tweets something off the cuff they later regret.  Shame on the Niskanen Center.

(Longtime readers may recall Mr. Wilkinson from when he was more of a "free market" utopian:  see, e.g., here or here.)

UPDATE:  This is amusing.  Hypocrisy, thy name is Jerry Taylor!

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Jerry Dworkin (UC Davis) writes:  "I also was involved years ago with a critical correspondence with him [Wilkinson] about libertarian issues.  I was pleasantly surprised by his definite shift to more reasonable views at Nikansen. This latest firing is abysmal. That Taylor tweet is hilarious in light of his actions."

In Memoriam: Jim Edwards (1939-2021)

A longtime member of the department at the University of 'Glasgow, Professor Edwards was well-known for his work in philosophy of language and epistemology.  The Glasgow Department has posted some memories from friends, colleagues, and former students here.

(Thanks to David Bain for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: On New York bluntness...

...and other offenses to "WASP decorum" (back in 2017).

University of Kansas Regents seem to think they can unilterally breach the university's contract with tenured faculty

As philosopherJohn Symons (Kansas) notes on Twitter, the Regents voted to "approve allowing university CEOs power to dismiss, suspend or terminate employees incl tenured faculty."   If they do so, this will end up in court.

The East Timor genocide

Indonesia was the immediate perpetrator, the U.S. was one of many international supporters.  45 years ago.   Worth remembering.

UPDATE:  Dr. Roger Albin (Michigan) writes:  "An excellent complement to the link you posted on the East Timor genocide is Geoffrey Robinson’s The Killing Season, a first-rate monograph on the slaughter that brought the Suharto regime to power.  It contains abundant documentation of American complicity in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians."

Can people vaccinated for COVID still be contagious?

A nicely done news article about what we do and don't know at this stage.   From the conclusion:

In the end, the vaccines likely limit transmission in two ways:

 

1. Preventing some percentage of infections totally, even asymptomatic ones. This prevents the body from replicating the virus and having enough to share with others.

 

2. Turning a further percentage of what would have been symptomatic infections to asymptomatic ones, thus preventing the body from coughing, sneezing and generally shooting the virus long distances.

 

Overall, I think it would be reasonable to estimate that vaccines reduce transmission from anywhere from 30% to 90% — a huge range, to be sure, but it depends on the vaccine used and the accuracy of these studies with limited sample sizes.

 

That result would be both good and bad. On one hand, it’s not total sterilizing immunity — someone who has been vaccinated still has a reasonably high likelihood of picking up the disease at a party and giving it to their immunocompromised friend later in the week. That means the vaccinated probably shouldn’t go to parties where there are unvaccinated people while the pandemic rages.

Now that the monster-child is gone...

...I give him credit for not annihilating civilization in a nuclear war.   He exceeded my low expectations in this very important respect.  Kudos!

Richard Marshall interviews Walter Horn...

...at 3:16 AM.

How the Wokerati talk: a guide

This was a rare gem from one of the old metablogs; it's a shame the author can't be given credit for their guide to the special (mis)use of language by the "woke":

The vocab is hard to keep up with. Should we start a running glossary?

"Problematic": adj. (of arguments) false; (of pratices) must be banned; (of utterances) must be retracted and apologised for; (of tweets) must be deleted;

"Free speech": n. a problematic concept [see above]

"Censorship": n. the alleged suppression of problematic ideas, a largely mythical practice. [compare "silence"]

"Silence": v. (1) to ignore, not talk about. (2) to disagree with (3) to discuss a marginalized individual [see below] in terms they would prefer not to be discussed

"erase": v. synonym for silence

"identity": n. an (esp. marginalised) individual's conception of themself. NB all other definitions, such as those which have been explored by philosophers over the past two millennia, are problematic [see above]

Blast from the past: "Expanding notions of harm in psychology"

Back in 2015, but still relevant.

Is anyone surprised that a Trump-appointed commission about how to teach American history...

...produced reactionary garbage?  I assume not!

Why is the new variant of the coronavirus more transmissible (if it is)?

It's been hard to find a clear answer to this in the media.   The most common surmise I've seen is that the new variant reproduces more in the nose and throat, and so people expel more of it when they sneeze or cough.   But a recent NYT article suggests these as possible explanations:

In a typical coronavirus, the tip of the spike protein is like an ill-fitting puzzle piece. It can latch onto human cells, but the fit is so loose that the virus often falls away and fails to infect the cell.

The N501Y mutation seems to refine the shape of the puzzle piece, allowing a tighter fit and increasing the chance of a successful infection....

One mysterious [additional] mutation in the B.1.1.7 lineage [of the coronavirus] deletes the 69th and 70th amino acids in the spike protein. Experiments have shown that this deletion enables the coronavirus to infect cells more successfully. It’s possible that it changes the shape of the spike protein in a way that makes it harder for antibodies to attach.

I'd be curious to know what other accounts of the mechanism readers have seen.  I'll conclude with observations by longtime reader Dr. David Ozonoff from the Boston University School of Public Health, with whom I've corresponded a bit about this:

I don’t think we know how (or truthfully even whether) the virus is more transmissible. Transmission is very complicated and depends on characteristics of the host (us), the environment (social behavior, season, etc.) and the virus itself. The evidence so far available does suggest increased transmission is very plausible but I don’t believe the evidence is ironclad (but it doesn’t have to be). In this context the exact mechanism (which is what you seem to be seeking) is just speculative and increased viral load is a reasonable speculation. Increased affinity for the ACE-2 receptor and increased infectivity of younger age groups has also been mentioned. I don’t think we can say what the exact mechansm or mechanisms is/are at work here.

UPDATE:  Dr. Ozonoff just sent along this informative new article from the generally excellent STAT.

Blast from the past: the most significant moral philosophers in the history of Western philosophy?

A poll, and discussion, back in 2013.

New study suggests COVID immunity appears to be longlasting

An account here; an excerpt:

Covid-19 patients who recovered from the disease still have robust immunity from the coronavirus eight months after infection, according to a new study....

[T]he new study does show that a small number of recovered people do not have long-lasting immunity. But vaccination ought to offset that problem by ensuring herd immunity in the larger population. 

The new paper studied blood samples from 185 men and women who had recovered from covid-19—most from a mild infection, although 7% were hospitalized. Each person provided at least one blood sample between six days and eight months after their initial symptoms, and 43 of the samples were taken after six months. The team that ran the investigation measured the levels of several immunological agents that work together to prevent reinfection: antibodies (which tag a pathogen for destruction by the immune system or neutralize its activity), B cells (which make antibodies), and T cells (which kill infected cells). 

MLK's philosophy of "Personalism"

Interesting essay by philosopher Aaron Preston (Valparaiso), about an aspect of King's thought I was not familiar with.

What the right-wing crazies may be planning for inauguration week

This is creepy beyond belief.

(Thanks to Jason Stanley for calling it to my attention.)

Ithaca College announces plans for draconian cuts, including in Philosophy

Here.  (Earlier coverage.)  Comments are open for those with more information, additional links, etc.  Submit comments only once, they may take awhile to appear.

(Thanks to Zena Hitz for the pointer.)

Footage from inside the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol

This is pretty remarkable and appalling.  Although most Capitol police did their job, a few were clearly on the side of the rioters.

Another perspective on the open letter on academic freedom opposing the anti-Stock letter

Philosopher Teresa Marques (Barcelona) writes with an interesting observation:

The importance of this letter is not the in-fighting among factions in philosophy, but the broader conflict of rights at issue, and threats to academic freedom in universities around the world across a range of academic areas. The letter has been signed by more than 450 people, from clinicians and psychologists to sociologists, chemists, historians, surgeons, journalists, school teachers, etc., and by people based in more than 30 countries. Had it been open to signatories a bit longer it would have reached more people in Latin America, the south of Europe (although there were already 10 people based in Spain who signed it), and Eastern Europe. I've been contacted by many people who wanted to sign it and were surprised to see it closed.

For a Saturday evening change of pace

Today would have been my father's 88th birthday, had he not been an early victim of the COVID disaster in the United States.  In lieu of the usual "obscure" rock 'n' roll, I thought I would post instead one of my father's favorite pieces of music:  Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, K 581.  I hope you enjoy it and also that you are spared the sorrow and tragedy of COVID in your lives.

 

Philosophy summer programs for "diverse" undergraduates

A list of programs here.  (What each program counts as "diverse" varies a bit, so do read the descriptions.)

Trump, social media, the future of democracy

A good piece of writing by journalist Ross Barkan; an excerpt:

Many on the left cheered Trump’s banishment from social media and the quick move by Amazon to dump Parler, the right-wing Twitter-like app, from its cloud computing services. Greg Bensinger, a member of the New York Times editorial board, praised the decisions from Facebook and Twitter, calling for “more direct, human moderation of high-profile accounts; more prominent warning labels; software that can delay posts so that they can be reviewed before going out to the masses, especially during moments of high tension; and a far greater willingness to suspend or even completely block dangerous accounts like Mr. Trump’s.”

This was general consensus. The problem wasn’t that the ban had come—it was that it had come so late. Trump, of course, had four years to incite violence and hatred from his Twitter account. Imagine what would have happened if the tech elites in Silicon Valley decided to neuter him back in 2017. Imagine the weakness of that presidency....

Chapman law professor and right-wing activist John Eastman spoke at the rally before the stormtrooper riot...

...and now some faculty want him fired.   The problem is he didn't commit a firing offense (as the University President recognizes).  He has not been convicted of a crime, only of world-historic stupidity and venality.  Lisa Leitz, a Chapman professor of peace studies, is calling for him to be fired because "his appearance at the rally and his past Trump campaign activities have scarred the university's reputation...it undermines the credibility of every faculty member."  Professor Leitz has obviously not thought very carefully about what she is saying.   No one, including her, would enjoy any academic freedom were the standard for termination "speech that, when it enters the public eye, 'scar[s] the university's reputation.'"   That standard would have surely justified the illegal firing of Steven Salaita, to take but one example.

Chapman has since announced that Eastman is retiring, and has agreed not to take legal action against the university.  (Eastman is 60 and has taught at Chapman for about 25 years.)   In other words, he and the University reached a settlement involving mutual release of legal claims, his agreement to retire, and in all likelihood a financial payout to Eastman to get him to retire.