Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"Athena in Action"...

...is now accepting applications from women PhD students in philosophy for its summer 2022 Workshop.

(Thanks to Liz Harman for the pointer.)

University of Florida now says faculty can testify if they aren't paid for their testimony

Story here.  Why that is supposed to make a difference, as a matter of academic freedom or constitutional law, is, at this point, unclear.

(Thanks to Benjamin Schwarcz of the US Free Speech Union for alerting me to this development.)

UPDATE:  AFA sends second letter to University of Florida, arguing that the distinction between paid and pro bono testimony is irrelevant to the constitutional rights of the faculty members.

Bourget & Chalmers on the 2020 PhilPaper survey of the views of philosophers

Here. And you can see detailed results for each question here.

A few striking results (rounded to nearest 1):  while 50% of respondents endorsed "naturalism," 73% of respondents believe there is a priori knowledge, 63% believe in the analytic/synthetic distinction (although maybe it's because they think there are trivial analytic truths), 62% are moral realists (only 26% are moral anti-realists [what an embarrassment!]), and only 11% hold the correct view about free will, namely, that there is none.  (59% are compatibilists about free will, pretty close to the figure for moral realists:  I'll bet there is some overlap here.)  Only 67% of respondents were atheists,  while 19% were theists.

77% of respondents would not enter Nozick's Experience Machine, one of the biggest majorities for a single position in the survey.

Comments are open, feel free to discuss the results that strike you.

US Free Speech Union letter to MIT about the Abbot case

Another strong letter to the MIT leadership (which correctly excoriates them), which has really embarrassed itself.

Grants, selection committees, and academic freedom

Philosopher Jason Bell (New Brunswick) writes, a propos the SSHRC issue we recently discussed, with a useful suggestion:

One of the valuable things that world philosophers can do to promote academic freedom is to apply for grants. When they win, they later on get put on the committees that judge research. There they can be important voices for excellent research and academic freedom.

If your blog ever has the chance to pitch the idea of grant-writing to your readers, I would certainly appreciate it. It will help out the cause of academic freedom in the long run.  In my experience, philosophers are under represented on judging committees because we don't tend to apply for grants.

Even 'failed' grants help as a draft of a new area of research; and the chances of winning some grants is actually quite good (e.g. some SSHRC competitions are around 25% success). When you do win, money can go to funding student research, travel, etc., and help to develop a scholar's research profile. 

AFA denounces University of Florida's barring faculty from testifying

AFA letter here, regarding this.  I certainly hope the AFA view prevails, in the courts if necessary.

Peter Singer's talk about "Pandemic Ethics" at Rhodes College...

...is now available via Brain in a Vat.  This is the talk, recall, that some faculty at Rhodes College wanted to cancel.

PGR deadline extended 72 hours

There's been a flurry of new responses since the update less than 48 hours ago, and since dozens of folks are still trying to finish, Professor Pynes tells me he will extend the deadline for PGR survey submissions 72 hours, until Thursday, November 4  at 11:59 pm Mountain time.  Among the philosophers who completed the surveys since the last update are Mitzi Lee (Colorado), Brian Leftow (Rutgers), John Doris (Cornell), Roger Crisp (Oxford), Ernest Sosa (Rutgers), Katja Vogt (Columbia), Timothy Williamson (Oxford), Christopher Shields (Notre Dame), Scott Soames (USC), Peter van Inwagen (Duke), Elinor Mason (UC Santa Barbara), Wesley Holliday (Berkeley), and Becko Copenhaver (Wash U/St. Louis), among many others.

Richard Marshall interviews Will Kymlicka (Queen's U)...

...at 3:16 AM.