Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

VALEP: Virtual Archive of Logical Empiricism

Courtesy of the Vienna Circle Institute at the University of Vienna.  Note that VALEP welcomes contributions to the archive from readers.

Ludlow v. Haspelmath on naturalistic inquiry, language, and generative linguistics

If, like me, you don't know who Haspelmath is, you may still find this discussion interesting.

Philosopher Claire Kirwin (Clemson) talks about value realism...

...at the great Elucidations podcast run by Matt Teichman here at the University of Chicago.

How a gay philosopher's book ended up changing Canada's law on the importation of pornography

An interesting tale.

(Thanks to Christopher Morris for the pointer.)

Great moments in live rock 'n' roll: Chicago Transit Authority, "I'm a Man," 1969

Excellent footage of the whole band on this early performance for Beat Club in 1969, before legal threats by the actual CTA forced the band to shorten their name (big mistake by the actual CTA!).  Most of the band members had been students at DePaul University in Chicago.  Gives a nice sense of how good a guitarist the late Terry Kath was.

 

Dominic Berry (LSE) once again threatening gender critical feminists

When we last heard from Dr. Berry, he was busy severing Twitter ties (seriously) with anyone who was merely "following" Nigel Warburton on Twitter--Warburton's "thought crime" had been including philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) on his podcast.  That was comical, rather than alarming, although more concerning was his threat to not tolerate gender critical feminists in his workplace.

And now a reader points out to me that he's doing it again, this time threatening to make gender critical feminists unwelcome in philosophy of science.  Amazing.  Will philosophers of science tolerate this kind of behavior I wonder?

UPDATE:   A reader calls to my attention that Lewis Powell (Buffalo)--aka, "the smear merchant," as he's known on social media--has actually come to the defense of Dr. Berry, with the curious suggestion that describing his post, above, as "threatening gender critical feminists" defames Dr. Berry.  Good luck with that theory of the case!

Blast from the past: Transparency in refereeing

A discussion, back in 2019.

Sleepwalking toward the collapse of democracy

This political scientist also thinks we're doomed:

The most destructive thing that Trump did on his way out the door was he took the Republicans’ waning commitment to democracy and he weaponized it, and he made it much worse to the point where I think that a good deal of rank-and-file Republican voters simply don’t believe that Democrats can win a legitimate election. And if Democrats do win an election, it has to be fraudulent.

So 2020 felt like a test run. The plot to overturn the 2020 election never had a real chance of working without some external intervention like a military coup or something like that, which I never thought was particularly likely. But the institutional path that they pursued to steal the election failed because they didn’t control Congress and they didn’t control the right governorships in the right places....

[2020] was a test run for a way to overturn an election with the veneer of legality. You have to give Trump and Republicans some kind of dark credit for figuring out that this is really conceivable. I think they now know that, even though it would cause a court battle and possibly a civil war, that if they can’t win by suppressing the vote and the election is close enough, they can do this if they control enough state legislatures and the Congress.

If Democrats don’t make some changes to our election laws and if they lose some races that they really need to win in 2022 and 2024, then we’re in real trouble....

"Moral Psychology with Nietzsche" should be out any day now in paperback...

...and you can preorder it now.

And from a recent review by Paul Loeb in the January 2021 Journal of the History of Philosophy:

Brian Leiter’s second book on Nietzsche brings together ideas and arguments that have already had a significant influence on the field through their earlier formulations in his articles from the past two decades. It is thus indispensable reading for anyone interested in Leiter’s evolving project of showing that Nietzsche has the correct naturalistic approach to issues in moral philosophy and moral psychology. As usual with Leiter’s scholarship, this monograph is extremely clear, densely argued, and philosophically sophisticated.

AAUP criticizes numerous schools for failure to abide by AAUP standards when terminating faculty and programs...

...including two schools we've written about here:  University of Akron and Illinois Wesleyan.  (The Akron faculty lost a procedural appeal in the Ohio Supreme Court, and are now rethinking their legal strategy.)

Laws purporting to ban teaching of "Critical Race Theory" are plainly unconstitutional

A leading Firsts Amendment scholar explains.  (I do laugh when the know-nothings on the right associate CRT with Marxism:  I wish it were true, but it's the opposite.)

Of course, the fascists proposing this legislation don't care that it's unconstitutional!

Turmoil in the Bowling Green philosophy department

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY

What a mess.  One thing not noted in the CHE article:  Kevin Vallier and Brandon Warmke are both Arizona PhDs (and Arizona is, as readers will know, a strong program), so it's not exactly unusual for graduates to prefer graduates of their own programs.  But that just scratches the surface of what seems a rather unhappy situation.  I'll say a bit more tomorrow.

UPDATE:  The more I learn about this, the less I want to try to say more about it.  The CHE article says:  "Though the investigator [brought in by the Ohio AG's office] did not find 'nefarious misconduct' or actions made in bad faith, she wrote that the rifts within the department ran deep and could at times be toxic."  Others now claim that this investigator's report was also part of the "corruption," that it ignored evidence, and so on.   It does seem the trouble in the department predated any money from the Koch Foundation, although this story will no doubt be taken as a cautionary note about accepting such money.

Since I'd rather not have to be deposed in a dispute that seems likely to end up in court (or be subpoenaed for IP information!), I will refer interested readers to the discussion being hosted at another philosophy blog (Daily Nous)--you might start here.  Professor Christian Coons from Bowling Green participates in the discussion (he figures prominently in the article), and he is challenged by other commenters.  I found the comment by Professor Molly Gardner (who had the good sense to decamp) particularly interesting.

An intellectual autobiographical interview with K.A. Appiah...

...at IAITV.

A great Bob Dylan story

Dylan turned 80 yesterday.  This delightful story is courtesy of my old friend Tommy Williams, the rock musician whom I've mentioned before.  He posted it on FB and gave permission to share it here:

I was 9 and in the 4th grade [this would be the early 1970s]. Our local paper, Newsday, had a TV Guide magazine in the Sunday edition with a Q&A column ("How do I write to Victoria Principal?" etc) in it. I wrote in asking for an address to write to Bob. They didn't print it, but sent me a postcard with a P.O. Box address in New York City. I proceeded to write a very long letter (on that no-line yellow paper they give you in grade school, with bits of wood still in it) with a lot of flowery verbiage, which would definitely be embarrassing today. I don't remember the whole thing, but I did say something like "what's the gadget that holds the harmonica? I made one from a coat hanger (found out years later that everyone had done that), but is that something you can buy at a store, or does that have to be custom-made by somebody?" I knew nothing. I sent the letter off, and being 9, promptly forgot about it.

A month or so later, a big yellow envelope arrived in the mail. Inside - oh, my God. An Elton Harmonica Holder, which in those days came in a shiny white box. On the front, in ball-point pen: "Wear this in good health - Bob Dylan." Talk about blowing a kid's mind - I still can't find the right words for it.

 

I used it once, then put it back in the box for safekeeping and bought another to actually USE (now that I knew you could buy them; I've burned through a few dozen in the years since). I kept it in storage for decades, and then my wife thoughtfully got an appropriate shadowbox frame and mounted it for me. It's now (as of today, Bob's 80th birthday) on the wall in our living room - amongst some wall-mounted guitars, of course.

 

Not many people are lucky enough to have something like that happen, but I've been massively lucky all my life, and I'm grateful for it all. There's a postscript, by the way...

 

25% of Americans think Trump is currently the "true President" of the U.S.

53% of Republicans believe that.  On the other hand, 14% of the poll respondents aren't sure whom they voted for in the 2020 election, so go figure.

3-week strike called at University of Liverpool...

...to protest the disgraceful behavior of the administration.

(Thanks to Joe Cairns for the pointer.)

New Infantilism meets apologists for Chinese authoritarianism

Check out the letter from a student group here at the University of Chicago protesting an invitation to Nathan Law, a democracy activist in Hong Kong, to speak.  Mr. Law spoke without incident; the letter itself is a disgrace.

UPDATE:   The "student group" may not be an ordinary student group, it turns out.

Nisenbaum from Boston College to Syracuse

Karin Nisenbaum (Kant, 19th & 20th-century Continental philosophy), currently an advanced Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, will become Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University this fall; she is likely to come up for tenure before long.

(Frederick Beiser, a leading scholar of Kant and 19th-century German philosophy at Syracuse University, will be retiring at the end of 2021-22 academic year.)

Schechter from Indiana to Maryland

Elizabeth Schechter (philosophy of mind and psychology), Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, has accepted a tenured appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she will begin inf all 2022.  This is the third tenured appointment at Maryland over the last two years (Cariani from Northwestern, Santorio from UC San Diego), that should propel the department back to the cusp of the top 30 at least, and will insure it continues to be a strong choice in areas like philosophy of mind, language, and cognitive science.

Helen Steward (Leeds) discusses free will and responsibility...

...with Ricardo Lopes at The Dissenter.

Academic freedom at the University of Chicago

The situation for academic freedom at the University of Chicago is light-years better than (just to take some recent cases) the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill or the University of Toronto.  At the same time, the University of Chicago has set for itself a higher bar for academic freedom than most universities.  The clearest example of that is the "Kalven Report," prepared in 1967 under the leadership of Harry Kalven (see also), a leading First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago.  The Kalven Report requires more of the University than the AAUP does with respect to academic freedom; it is a model every university in the country should adopt.  According to the Kalven Report:

A university has a great and unique role to play in fostering the development of social and political values in a society. The role is defined by the distinctive mission of the university and defined too by the distinctive characteristics of the university as a  community. It is a role for the long term.

The mission of the university is the discovery, improvement, and dissemination of knowledge. Its domain of inquiry and scrutiny includes all aspects and all values of society. A university faithful to its mission will provide enduring challenges to social values, policies, practices, and institutions. By design and by effect, it is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones. Incbrief, a good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.

The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby. 

The academic freedom scandal at the University of Toronto

Leslie Green (Oxford/Queen's U) comments.

"The Dangers of Thought Experiments"

Roy Sorensen (Texas) discusses at Brain in a Vat.

In Memoriam: Eddy Zemach (1935-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--MORE REMEMBRANCES WELCOME

A longtime member of the philosophy faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was emeritus, Professor Zemach was well-known for contributions to aesthetics, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and other areas.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Alon Harel for informing me of his death.)

Great moments in live rock 'n' roll: Led Zeppelin, "How Many More Times," 1969

Zeppelin manager Peter Grant generally kept Zeppelin off television programs, but this is rare video of a live recording for a Danish radio program of one of Zeppelin's best blues-ripoffs--complete with Jimmy Page breaking out the violin bow:

 

More fallout from the attack on academic freedom and faculty autonomy at UNC-Chapel Hill

Here.  I hope they can take some kind of collective action about this political interference into academic appointments.  It is astonishing to see the attempts to rationalize this naked attack on faculty autonomy.  The issue is not whether any particular observer thinks Hannah-Jones "deserves" this appointment; I myself have noted plenty of serious scholarly criticisms of her work on the 1619 Project, but all of that is compatible with her being an appropriate choice for this position.  She was vetted by the journalism faculty, recommended for a tenured position, and approved by all levels of the administration.  Only the Board of Trustees rejected the recommendation for political reasons.  Universities can't function in such an environment.

Judge Spiro, at center of University of Toronto hiring scandal, found by Judicial Council to have made a "serious error" and the Judge expresses "remorse" for his error

(Earlier coverage.)   From the public announcement:

The Review Panel did find...that it was an error for Justice Spiro to raise such concerns [about the faculty candidate] in the manner he did. The judge properly recognized the mistakes he made and expressed remorse. The Review Panel found this error serious but that it did not warrant removal of Justice Spiro from office.

APA announces Spring 2021 prizes...

...including the Barwise Prize, the Dewey Lecturers, the Romanell Lecture, and others.

Linguistics with cats

This is amusing.

(Thanks to David Lobina for the pointer.)

Anya Plutynski (Wash U/St. Louis) wins 2021 Lakatos Award in philosophy of science

The LSE announcement is here.

U of Essex apologizes for mishandling of talks by gender critical feminists

Interesting.

Blast from the past: "TheTwitter cesspool"

Back in 2018.  Still a cesspool, of course, though more bearable now that I don't engage with the rabble!

Academic freedom is dead at the University of North Carolina

Right-wing political pressure blocked a tenured appointment in journalism at the University of North Carolina, which is as clear a violation of the autonomy and academic freedom of a department as one can imagine.   Every member of the journalism faculty, who can, should resign and go elsewhere.  If the legislature were not under the control of Republicans, they should remove the entire Board of Trustees responsible for this violation.   What will be next?  Denying promotions to faculty with the wrong political views?

North Carolina faculty should study the experience of UT Austin in the 1960s, about which I wrote a number of years ago.  A particularly telling story:

During the civil rights era, many law faculty were involved in efforts to end segregation, expand voting rights and the like. In 1964, the Board of Regents summoned law professor Ernest Goldstein to appear before the Board to "explain" his civil rights activities, about which the Board was concerned. [Law Dean] Page Keeton and the late Charles Alan Wright (law readers will know who Wright is, but I'll just note that Justice Ginsburg called him "a colossus atop the profession") drafted a letter to the Board, and secured signatures from the entire law faculty, stating that if Prof. Goldstein were forced to appear, the entire law faculty would resign. The Board backed down.

The journalism school itself may not have that kind of clout at UNC, but they need their colleagues in other fields to join them in this kind of protest.

UPDATE:  F.I.R.E. is correct that this refusal to hire may involve unlawful viewpoint discrimination as well.

Does OUP have a "prestige monopoly" in Anglophone philosophy?

Robert Pasnau (Colorado) suggests it does, and considers the possible costs.  While OUP publishes many excellent books in philosophy, it's primary monopoly is in volume:  with 200 new books per year, OUP publishes as much as just about all the other leading presses combined.

How to include transgender athletes in competitive sports

A proposal from philosopher Chris Suprenant (New Orleans).

Somewhat lighter blogging...

...as readers may have noticed. It's the last week of the quarter here, and I've got papers to grade for graduating students, letters of recommendation to write, and lots of student appointments.   Things will start to pick up next week.  Thanks for your patience.

Blast from the past: punitiveness, justice, and proportionality

Back in 2014.   Or as Nietzsche says:  "Mistrust all in whom the drive to punish is powerful.  They are people of a bad kind and stock; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces.  Mistrust all who talk much of their justice!  Verily, their souls lack more than honey.  And when they call themselves "the good and the just," do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had--power."  ("On the Tarantulas," Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

"Review of Analytic Philosophy"

A new journal out of Japan, but with a number of Anglophone philosophers involved as well.

The use-mention distinction and the N-word

Philosopher Gerald Dworkin comments.

The work of philosopher and psychologist U.T. Place

A new page devoted to his career and contributions.

(Thanks to George Graham for the pointer.)

On what is truly important to oneself

Robert Paul Wolff reflects on the question.

The Canadian "eh" and other bits of linguistic diversity

An informative and amusing website from Yale.

Did the coronavirus escape from a virology lab in Wuhan?

Here's a detailed and sober abductive argument that it did, although it's not conclusive.

(Thanks to Roger Crisp for the pointer.)

1st NYU undergraduate philosophy conference coming up next weekend

I don't usually post announcements of these kinds of events, but this one is on Zoom and welcomes registrants from outside NYU and offers an excellent line-up of speakers, many drawn from NYU's outstanding department--so I imagine others will be interested.

(Thanks to Paul Jin for the pointer.)

Great moments in live rock 'n' roll: Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Free Bird," 1977

As long as we're on a Southern Rock theme, this performance of "Free Bird" at the Oakland Colosseum is basically the epitome of 1970s stadium rock.  Just a few months later, lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt and guitarist Steve Gaines (the one with the short beard) were killed in a plane crash.  Indeed, now the only surviving members of the band from that day are guitarist Gary Rossington (the one playing slide guitar) and drummer Artimus Pyle.  (That huge Confederate flag in the background is certainly jarring now, but it generated little controversy back then, although might have something to do with the striking racial composition of the audience!)

 

Blast from the past: Dennett trashes much of contemporary philosophy, esp. "analytic metaphysics"

Back in 2016.

In Memoriam: Louis Charland (1958-2021)

A longtime member of the philosophy faculty at Western University in Ontario, Professor Charland was best-known for his contributions to philosophy of psychiatry and mind and bioethics.  The Western memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Anthony Skelton for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: PhD admissions and the job market for "older" students/candidates

A discussion back in 2008.

In Memoriam: Jacques Bouveresse (1940-2021)

One of the most prominent analytic philosophers in France over the last half-century, Professor Bouveresse was eventually a professor at the College de France, the most prestigious academic appointment in the French academic system.  An obituary (in French) is here, and an earlier interview (also in French) is here.

University of Liverpool is still a disgrace

The latest on the mischief at Liverpool we have noted before:

Sadly, the situation at the University of Liverpool still requires our attention. This will be a shorter email than update #2, with just three essential items of information for you.

1. Please share this which lays bare the reality of mismanagement at Liverpool and the human cost: 

The reality behind “Wellbeing Week”: How the University of Liverpool is tearing the lives of its staff apart 

2. Please support the upcoming strikes which have been called at University of Liverpool, a strike directly responding to these redundancies. Please also support a boycott of the University of Leicester which has its own redundancy programme. 

Tony Benn had a line that we should pay attention to how a government treats refugees, because it shows how they would like to treat the rest of us if they could get away with it. Similarly, everyone should pay attention to how Liverpool and Leicester are treating academics, because it shows what misguided management could do to the whole sector if left unchecked. This isn’t just a story about Liverpool or Leicester, it is a threat to research culture and the integrity of Universities as institutions of scholarship and learning across the board.

3. Open Letter specifically aimed a medical and clinical practitioners

If you are a medical or clinical practitioner and would like to show support to the health and life sciences academics facing redundancy at the University of Liverpool, please click on the link below. 

Please add your name to the letter by following this link