Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Great moments in the blues and their rock 'n' roll covers: Robert Johnson, "Cross Road Blues," 1936

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) may be the most famous of the bluesmen of the first half of the 20th-century, and many of his songs have been recorded by rock musicians from the 1960s onwards.   Here's the original of the song Cream made famous for a new generation:

And the cover, by Cream, live in 1968:

Spinoza's death mask...

...discovered by a Barnard undergraduate, who is also the daughter of philosopher Paul Franks (Yale).

University of Mississippi reaches confidential settlement with fired outspoken history professor

News story here; earlier coverage.

Richard Marshall interviews Robert Gressis (Cal State/Northridge)...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Richard Double (1948-2021)

Professor Double, who taught for many years at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where he was emeritus, was best-known for his work on issues related to free will.   The family shared this obituary:

Richard Double, emeritus  professor and former chair of philosophy at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania,  died on July 29, 2021.

Double was a tireless teacher and generalist who wrote provocatively across many areas of philosophy, specializing in ethics and free will.  Double‘s work is cited in six sections of the 2003 Stanford online Encyclopedia of philosophy: moral responsibility, autonomy in moral and political philosophy, personal autonomy, free will, Chinese room, and impartiality. His unique contribution to the free will problem was meta-level subjectivism, which argued that metaethical subjectivism in ethics showed that none of the familiar lower-level theories of moral responsibility could be true.  

His works included four books:  The Non-Reality of Free Will (1991), Metaphilosophy and Free Will (1996), Beginning Philosophy (1999) (all published by Oxford University Press), and Metaethical Subjectivism (Routledge, 2006).  He also publihsed 58 articles and 23 reviews.

Infection and vaccination in Singapore

Bear in mind that Singapore has fairly high vaccination rates (55% are full vaccinated, 75% have had at least one shot).  From the article:

Vaccinated individuals [BL:  not all fully vaccinated] accounted for three-quarters of Singapore's COVID-19 infections in the last four weeks, but they were not falling seriously ill, government data showed, as a rapid ramp-up in inoculations leaves fewer people unvaccinated.

While the data shows that vaccines are highly effective in preventing severe cases, it also underscores the risk that even those inoculated could be contagious, so that inoculation alone may not suffice to halt transmission.

In Memoriam: José A. Giannotti (1930-2021)

An important figure in Braizlian philosophy for many years, Professor Giannotti wrote very widely on both the Anglophone and Continental traditions in philosophy, including books on Mill, Marx, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, among others.  He spent most of his career at the University of Sao Paulo.   The Portuguese wikipedia page gives information about his life and work.  I will add memorial notices in English if and when they appear.

Blast from the past: Jason Stanley on the idea of "pluralism" in philosophy departments

Back in 2007, with comments from others.

Philosopher Thaddeus Metz (Pretoria) discusses "Meaning in Life"...

...at Brain in a Vat.

"The Long Haul of Long Covid"

Philosopher and bioethicist Gregory Pence (Alabama) comments.

UChicago's MA programs in humanities and social sciences

Students thinking about these programs ought to read this.  Students wanting to continue on for a PhD in philosophy would generally be much better off at one of the good terminal MA programs in philosophy.

(Thanks to Chris Morris for the pointer.)

Philosopher Amia Srinivasan (Oxford) profiled...

...in British Vogue no less!

Against moral philosophy (and morality)

From an essay by philosopher Ronald DeSousa (emeritus, Toronto):

Morality, I now believe, is a shadow of religion, serving to comfort those who no longer accept divine guidance but still hope for an ‘objective’ source of certainty about right and wrong. Moralists claim to discern the existence of commands as inescapable as those of an omniscient and omnipotent God. Those commands, moral philosophers teach, deserve to prevail over all other reasons to act – always, everywhere, and for all time. But that claim is bogus.

In Memoriam: Bob Moses (1935-2021)

One of the great figures of the Civil Rights movement, a man of extraordinary courage and moral clarity, Moses had studied philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate student, before more pressing matters commanded his attention.   The NYT obituary is here.  Philosopher Michael Wedin (emeritus, UC Davis), who wrote me last night about his passing, kindly gave permission to share his remembrance:

Just to let you know that Bob Moses has died. It was the greatest privilege of my life to work with him in the summer of 1964 in Mississippi. The news has hit me hard, somehow I expected him to live forever. In the spring of 1964 we organized the "West Coast Civil Rights Conference" at Stanford -- sole purposes were to raise money for and recruit volunteers for the Mississippi summer project. We got MLK to keynote the thing and convinced Bob to come out, which he did by car with four of his field workers. King was the big name but the real draw was Bob Moses. Not prone to King's style of elevated rhetoric, Bob really just held a conversation with the audience. But it was riveting--five hundred in the auditorium and you could hear a pin drop. Did not talk much philosophy with him, but he did say he'd been working on Wittgenstein before he left Harvard for Mississippi. There we were involved in getting a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation selected to challenge the regular group and the national meeting. Lost track of him after Mississippi but years later was informed by Hilary Putnam that he'd returned to Harvard to complete his Ph. D. and that Quine has given him all of his correspondence with Carnap. Won't even besgin to talk about his extraordinary work in the south.

Blast from the past: L'Affaire Swinburne and the now-defunct "Rightly Considered" blog

Back in 2016; this bit is worth quoting again:

[L]ife is short, the world is fully of idiotic arguments that depend on absurd premises, this is particularly true when it comes to arguments inspired by religious dogma, therefore adults with real jobs and limited time devote their time to challenging arguments.  Of course, it's possible that I'm wholly wrong in treating Swinburne as an  instance of awful arguments for bigotry.  It is also possible, as Quine says in Pursuit of Truth, that telepathy works and empiricism is false.  Many things are possible, but efficient allocation of effort is a virtue, and not only in matters of intellectual labor.

Deleuze did not like Wittgenstein

Amusing:

(Thanks to Guy Elgat for the pointer.)

 

Review of Tom Stern's "Nietzsche's Ethics" now out at...

...Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Only a few minor edits from the version posted earlier.

Percentage of tenure-stream faculty who are female in PhD programs in philosophy increased about 40% since 2004...

(MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 22--SOME CORRECTIONS TO THE ADDENDUM)

...with some variation depending on the caliber of the program:  top analytically-oriented departments saw significant increases (18% of tenure-stream faculty were female in 2004, now 26% are), but still do not have as high a percentage of female faculty as programs in the SPEP universe of nominally "Continental"-oriented departments.   Since the "analytic" departments identify more closely with math and the natural sciences, it's not wholly surprising that female representation is more like what we find in those latter fields; by contrast, the SPEP departments tend to be more closely allied with humanities fields like English, which have higher proportions of female representation in the faculty ranks.  Given current hiring trends, and the pattern of recent retirements (overwhelmingly men), I expect female representation in tenure-stream philosophy positions will continue to increase.

ADDENDUM:  Regarding recent retirements (i.e., since the 2017 PGR),there were 37 retirements, phased retirements, or announced impending retirements, of which 7 were women, and 30 men.  The full list is below the fold:

Great moments in the blues and their rock 'n' roll covers: William "Big Foot" Harris, "Bullfrog Blues," circa 1927-29

Little is known about William "Big Foot" Harris, who recorded a dozen or so songs in the late 1920s, of which this has become the best-known over time:

The greatest covers of this number are all by Rory Gallagher, of which there are many versions on YouTube.  Here's one of my favorites, from 1976:

2020-21 Update for U.S. schools for the 2017 Philosophical Gourmet Report

MOVING TO FRONT from May 26, 2021, UPDATED (MOST RECENT:  9/2/2021)--ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 24, 2020 (recent updates [retirements] to Columbia, Cornell, Wash U/St. Louis).

Since the 2020-21 PGR has been delayed, this is a summary of changes at the tenured (or almost tenured) ranks at roughly the top 50 PhD programs in the U.S. since the 2017 Philosophical Gourmet Report; more precisely, these are changes that were not reflected in the faculty lists evaluators saw for the 2017 PGR surveys (some moves that weren't official until 2018 were reflected in the faculty lists for the 2017 surveys).  (Please e-mail me any corrections or additions, thanks.) 

At the end, I give a rough guesstimate of the new rankings in light of these changes if surveys were done this fall.

New York University (#1 in 2017 PGR):  Lost Jim Pryor (epistemology) to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Richard Foley (epistemology) and Beatrice Longuenesse (Kant, post-Kantian Continental philosophy), both of whom retired (or are about to retire), and David Velleman (ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action), who also retired and took up a Research Professorship at Johns Hopkins University.  Will probably remain #1 despite these significant losses.

Rutgers University, New Brunswick (#2 in 2017 PGR): Losing Anthony Gillies (philosophy of language, epistemology) to the University of Arizona.  Hired Karen Bennett (metaphysics) from Cornell, Derrick Darby (social & political philosophy, philosophy of race) from Michigan, Nir Eyal (bioethics) from the Harvard School of Public Health, Michael Glanzberg (philosophical logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics) from Northwestern University, Brian Leftow (philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy) from Oxford University, and Michael Otsuka (political philosophy, ethics) from the LSE.  Daniel Hausman (philosophy of social science, ethics), who has retired at Wisconsin, has accepted a six-year appointment with the new Rutgers bioethics center, that will also include regular teaching in philosophy for the next six years.  Rutgers was already one of the very top programs in both metaphysics and philosophy of language, and will now be close to tops in philosophy of religion as well and a good choice for philosophy of race and also bioethics (with Frances Kamm, in addition to Eyal).  These appointments largely play to strengths, but will close the gap with #1 NYU somewhat (NYU's big advantage in terms of the overall rankings has been its broader coverage of philosophy, especially history of ancient and modern philosophy, including the post-Kantian Continental traditions).

Princeton University (#3 in 2017 PGR):  Lost Johann Frick (moral & politcal philosophy) to Berkeley and Alexander Nehamas (ancient philosophy, Nietzsche, aesthetics) to retirement; hired Lara Buchak (decision, game & rational theory) from the University of California, Berkeley and Andrew Chignell (Kant, philosophy of religion) (primary appointments in Religion and Center for Human Values) from the University of Pennsylvania.  Also added junior lateral Una Stojnic (philosophy of language, philosophical logic) from Columbia University.  Should remain squarely in the top three.

Two philosophers elected Fellows of the British Academy

They are:   Richard Holton (Cambridge) and Helen Steward (Leeds).  In addition, Philip Kitcher (Columbia) was elected a Corresponding Fellow.

ADDENDUM:  Professor Holton kindly calls to my attention that David Dyzenhaus, on the law and philosophy faculties at the University of Toronto, and well-known for his work on Carl Schmitt, was also elected a Corresponding Fellow.

Justin Garson (Hunter/CUNY) discusses madness...

...at Brain in a Vat.

Philosopher Craig Callender (UCSD) talks about "scientific freedom"...

...at IAITV.

Farewell Delta variant, hello Gamma variant

The Gamma variant of the coronavirus--responsible for the devastating second outbreak of COVID in Manaus, Brazil earlier this year--is already four times more common than Delta in, for example, Illinois.  And while initial evidence is that the RNA-based Pfizer vaccine protects against Gamma, the CDC released yesterday an alarming report out of South America:

The actual left in America has always supported robust civil liberties...

...unlike the New Infantilist left in the universities, on social media today, and even in some of the leftist media.  This piece is a useful reminder; an excerpt:

The founders of Dissent were fiercely anticommunist, yet you’ll find them repeatedly, heatedly, defending the free speech rights of Stalinists.

I’ll cite just one example. In an article about the state of liberalism in 1955, Irving Howe criticized Americans for Democratic Action for passing a resolution that supported “the right to advocate unpopular political proposals.” Why would Howe have objected to this? He objected because the ADA had changed the wording of a previous draft, which supported “the right to advocate unpopular political proposals, including communist ideas.” They’d taken out “including communist ideas.” In other words, he was attacking them for the failure to explicitly affirm the free speech rights of communists.

The early editors of Dissent, defending the free expression rights of a political group they loathed and feared, were in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg, who said, “Freedom is always and exclusively the freedom of the one who thinks differently . . . all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political life depends on it"....

Contemporary skepticism about the idea of free expression seems to rest on two pillars.

 

"Moral Injury and Stoic Resilience"

Philosopher Nancy Sherman (Georgetown) discusses.

Blast from the past: the QS university rankings, a debate with their PR person

Back in 2013.

PGR Update

Philosophers Berit Brogaard (Miami) and Christopher Pynes (Western Illinois), editors of the PGR, asked me to share the following:

We are working to have a 2021-2022 report available for later this year.  The timeline for the survey isn't fixed yet, but the plan is for it to be early in the fall.  If folks have specific questions, they can email the editors.

Adolph Reed on Robin DiAngelo and the political economy of "race" politics

Amusing interview; an excerpt:

Reed:  One of the interesting things I think that we’ve experienced over the last half century or so, and our reasons for this too and get into maybe, or maybe not maybe later, that racism as a category has expanded. The currency of what counts as racism has inflated like the Deutschmark in the late 1920s. So anything can be racist, and racism becomes the sole explanation, or sole explanatory category, for making sense of any inequality or seemingly inappropriate or unjustifiable inequality that involves black people or other non whites in any way....

Combating racism becomes a convenient alternative to attacking inequality and inequality, even those inequalities that appear or the manifest themselves as racial disparities. Because the struggle against racism is exactly parallel to the struggle against terrorism… It can go on forever, because the enemy is an abstraction that you can define however you want to define it, at the moment that you wanted to find it....

COVID vaccines on campus

Many readers will  probably have seen that Indiana University's mandate for vaccination has survived a legal challenge, which is not surprising given that the Supreme Court has recognized the constitutionality of state-mandated vaccination more than a century ago.  Meanwhile, Boston College, a private Catholic university, is facing backlash because it has taken the reasonable and correct position that being Catholic is not grounds for a religious exemption from vaccination:

BC said in a statement that because Pope Francis told Catholics they have a moral obligation to take the vaccine, an exemption is not being granted to members of that faith. Other religious exemptions will be reviewed case-by-case.

All I can say is:  God bless them!  Exemptions from mandatory vaccination schemes are a classic case of burden-shifting exemptions, ones that imposes risks on others.   Very few religious traditions actually object to vaccination, and Catholicism is not one of them.

The inflation of trauma

A former student, Mark Engleson, who is autistic, writes:

I recently got embroiled in a bit of go-round on Twitter (do not recommend). The background: the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts uses shock collars on autistic children to make them more compliant. The FDA tried to ban this use of the device, and a federal court threw it out.

On Twitter, someone posted a poll asking fellow autistics how traumatized they were by the knowledge that this is happening. I objected that this is a misunderstanding of trauma: the trauma here is clearly the children being shocked, not other people hearing about it. 

The problem with this language and this line of thought is that some went so far as to say that the problem with this whole situation is how it makes other autistics feel. Now, this situation disturbs me, but that's not why it's wrong: it's wrong because they're using shock collars on children. My feelings have nothing to do with it; if no one knew this was going on, it would still be horrific.

Blast from the past: inflated letters of recommendation

Back in 2011, with a discussion by readers.

Alex Berenson, the world's dumbest journalist, redux

A good overview of the serial misinformation emanating from this malevolent buffoon, whom we've noted before.   Karl Kraus:  "No ideas the ability to express them:  that's a journalist!"

Great moments in the blues and their rock 'n' roll covers: Blind Willie McTell, "Statesboro Blues," 1928

Blind Willie McTell (1898-1959) was a prolific bluesman from Georgia, who continued performing into the 1950s.  My favorite song of his is one I featured a few years ago, but this song became, posthumously, his most famous number, thanks to the covers:

Surely the most famous (and probably the best) cover was by the Allman Brothers, heard here live at the Filmore East in 1971:

An overview of research on vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant

Mostly good news, although it's clear that the vaccines do not work as well against Delta as they did earlier variants.

Blast from the past: editors removing philosophers from a book based on "allegations" of sexual misconduct

Back in 2016.  I imagine these  kind of star-chamber judgments are still affecting the editing of books and maybe even journals.

Against utilitarian thinking during a pandemic

Philosopher Anna Whiston (Oxford) comments.

In Memoriam: Jorge J.E. Gracia (1942-2021)

Professor Gracia was a longtime member of the philosophy department at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where he retired in 2019.  He wrote widely in metaphysics, medieval philosophy, Latin-American philosophy, philosophy of race, and other areas.  The Buffalo memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Adam Taylor for the pointer.)

 

Staff union calls for international boycott of University of Liverpool...

...as a response to the bad behavior by the Administration in firing academic staff based on citation counts and recent grant capture.  I encourage all readers to honor this boycott:  if the Liverpool Admin gets away with this crap, it will spread.

Richard Marshall interviews Lee McIntyre (BU Center for Phil & Hist of Science)...

...at 3:16 AM.

"The Edge of Democracy"

I recommend this Netflix documentary about the assault on democracy in the wake of Lula's social democratic revolution in Brazil, an assault that led to the rise of the fascist Bolsonaro.  I've been to Brazil several times, and have many academic friends there, so have followed these matters for awhile.  This documentary taught me a lot more.

Evanston public school teacher sues school district for race discrimination based on its curriculum and "anti-racist" [sic] training

A friend who is a Chicago lawyer sent me the complaint. Evanston is the town just north of Chicago, where Northwestern University is located.  The "training" and "teaching materials" described in this complaint are rather insane, and consistently confuse race with class in a way that will miseducate the students.  It is less clear to me how precisely the plaintiff has been injured, although the "hostile environment" claim may be the strongest.  It will be interesting to see what the courts do with this.

(As an aside:  while very little of the insane materials and training described in the complaint have anything to do with Critical Race Theory [CRT] as it evolved in Amercian law schools in the 1980s and 1990s, the connection to the hucksters Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi is clearer.  I'll say a bit more about CRT next week.)

Cornel West not being granted tenure at Harvard="shadow of Jim Crow"

When your narcissism is encouraged by traditional and social media, I suppose this is what results.   The"shadow of Jim Crow" didn't stop him from bouncing back and forth for decades between positions at Harvard and Princeton.  It's not implausible that his political advocacy, including for the Palestinians, played a role in Harvard's refusal to give him tenure (although, recall, they did offer him a multi-year contract).  More likely, of course, is that (1) he hasn't done notable academic work in awhile, and (2) he was a victim of age discrimination (he is 68).  I bet he could prevail on a lawsuit over the latter!

Survey on "human extinction"

Philosopher Phil Torres is interested in having blog readers respond to a survey; he writes:

I'm conducting a survey with a colleague of mine, Bruce Tonn, on the topic of human extinction -- specifically, on what philosophers think about the ethical/evaluative implications of our permanent disappearance. Would it be good, bad, or neutral? How wrong, or right, would bringing it about be?  It's here: https://philosophersurvey2.questionpro.com/

Sanders and Templeton Foundations to sponsor a "Philosophy in the Media" initiative

Details here; briefly:

The initiative aims to increase the presence of philosophy in print, audio, and video media by training philosophers to write and produce for the public and by connecting philosophers to editors and commissioners in the media industry.

For the first stage of the initiative, up to 30 philosophers will be selected to be MSF Media Fellows. Fellows will receive workshop training, connection to industry professionals, and a $1500 honorarium.

I just hope that, unlike so much "public" philosophy, this program attracts some good philosophers.

(Thanks to Barry Lam, whose podcasts are a nice example of succcesful public philosophy, for the pointer.)

In Memoriam: Richard Lewontin (1929-2021)

A few readers now have suggested I should note the passing of the great evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, whose work was very influential in philosophy of biology and with whom many philosophers of science studied at one point or another.  The NYT obituary is here, and there is a rich and very personal memorial by one of his best-known students, the biologist Jerry Coyne (Chicago).   Comments are open for those who want to comment on the significance of Lewontin's work for philosophy.

Which philosophy journals accept longer papers?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 8--MANY USEFUL COMMENTS SO FAR, MORE WELCOME

A philosopher elsewhere was wondering if there are journals that typically will consider and publish papers longer than, e.g., 12K words.  Maybe there is a list somewhere?  Otherwise, please post names of journals that are open to longer papers.

In Memoriam: Gerasimos Xenophon Santas (1931-2021)

Professor Santas, a scholar of ancient Greek philosophy who was emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, passed away on June 20.  Born and raised on the island of Lefkada, he had a long and distinguished academic career that included teaching at UC Berkeley, Brandeis, Wellesley, Johns Hopkins, Claremont Graduate, Stanford, and finally UC Irvine.   He had far-reaching and multi-disciplinary intellectual interests, including in psychology, genetics and evolution.  He is especially well-known for his many influential publications on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

(Thanks to Philip Mitsis [NYU] for the information.)

Blast from the past: What is analytic philosophy? Thoughts from Fodor

Way back in 2004.

"How Not to Read Nietzsche's Ethics: The Case of Thomas Stern"

This review, which will appear in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, concerns a very weak volume in the Cambridge Elements series; I assume other volumes in that series are more serious and more helpful to students.  (On Stern's prior efforts, see this.)  The first paragraph, a middle paragraph, and the last paragraph of the review:

This thin book, in the new Cambridge Elements series, purports to “introduce” Nietzsche’s ethics in his “late works,” meaning from 1886 until his breakdown in early January 1889.  This period includes such major works as Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, as well as very late works that show some signs of impending insanity, like The Antichrist.  Stern never argues that the “late ethics” is discontinuous with Nietzsche’s pre-1886 writings about morality, he simply asserts it.   According to Stern, Nietzsche’s late ethics consists of a descriptive thesis (“Power seeking….is biologically essential” for “living things” [6]) and a normative command (“it is ethical to further the goals of Life and it is unethical to impede them” [11]) [the "Life Theory"].   No text is ever adduced in which Nietzsche says the latter; we return to the ambiguous evidence for the former.  Stern also claims, without any argument or evidence, that the “power-seeking force” is what Nietzsche variously calls “’Life,’ ‘nature,’ ‘will,’ ‘will to life’’ or the organic realm” (6) [footnote omitted]....