Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Why it pays to be an overconfident undergraduate in philosophy

Plausible speculation by philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside).

Dolan reads Pinkard reading Sartre's "Critique of Dialectical Reason"

Interesting, especially considering how spectacularly difficult Sartre's late text is.

The backlash to U Mass/Boston's proposal to cease being a university in favor of becoming an "anti-racist" institution

We noted this embarrassment previously (here and here), and now CHE has an article:

An early draft of the statement, which would commit the university to becoming “an anti-racist and health-promoting institution that honors and uplifts the cultural wealth of our students,” has drawn sharp criticism both on and off campus, even as some applaud the effort.

As of March 11, some 75 faculty members at the university had signed an open letter of opposition written by some colleagues from the College of Science and Mathematics, which called the draft statement “deeply flawed in content, direction, and representation.” The letter argues that “the fundamental role of the public university can neither be political nor ideological activism.” A growing number of supporters from other colleges have also signed the letter of opposition online. A Boston Globe column characterizing the draft as reeking of “woke indoctrination,” has added fuel to the conflict.

Eastern Orthodox Christians reject "the Russian Teaching"

This is interesting, even if it is an intra-sectarian dispute within the Eastern Orthodox Church and even if, as everyone knows, organized religion has usually not only made its peace with tyranny, but facilitated it, as the Russian Orthodox Church is obviously doing.  Comments welcome from those knowledgeable about the relevant religious traditions.

Who will be a public school teacher in a "red" state...

...if craziness like this continues?

All objections to the PGR and the work I do on this blog are principled and objective, and never self-serving (never!)

For example, here is philosopher Helen De Cruz on Twitter, making a principled objection based on racial and gender bias to my noting last year that Saint Louis University's loss of John Greco to Georgetown "may" lead to the department dropping out of the top 50, notwithstanding having hired De Cruz:

Clearly the only possible explanation for my prediction was that Greco is a white man, and De Cruz is not.  The fact that Greco is much more senior than De Cruz, and that his work has had much more impact than that by De Cruz (in part, at least, because he's much more senior) had nothing, of course, to do with the prediction--which, as it happened, came true.  Go figure!

"Tactical Nuclear Weapons"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 9--SOME QUITE INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE DISCUSSION WELCOME

Since the media chatter about their use in Ukraine continues, readers may find this 2002 piece from the Nuclear Threat Initiative informative.   More information about tactical nukes welcome in the comments.

Great moments in British rock 'n' roll that remain obscure in the U.S.: Slade, "Goodbye T'Jane," 1972

Slade remains a mystery to me:  they repeatedly topped the British charts in the 1970s as part of the "glam rock" phenomenon (think early 1970s David Bowie) with songs I find mostly unlistenable, and which most Americans did too:  a few cracked the top 100, but Slade never scored a (barely) top 20 hit in the U.S. until the 1980s.   Here's what seems to me the best of the 1970s singles that were big hits in the UK (and much of Europe):

 

More on "tactical nuclear weapons"...

...at The Atlantic; an excerpt:

From an American perspective, tactical nuclear weapons became less important as we closed the conventional-military gap with Russia. By the end of the Cold War, the balance of power had shifted decisively. NATO possessed overwhelming conventional strength. Russia was the inferior conventional power, as it remains today.

But it’s not inferior throughout its force. Today, Russia is the power that holds a dramatic advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Russia possesses close to 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons. The U.S. stores roughly 100 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. As we gained the conventional advantage, we essentially gave up on our tactical nuclear force. Russia did not.

An "open letter" from Professor Corlett at San Diego State regarding the allegations about his teaching

Professor Corlett kindly shared this letter regarding the events that led San Diego State University to violate his academic freedom:  Download Corlett Open Letter

Blast from the past: Christopher Pynes reflects on APA Committee service

Back in 2016.

"Naturalism and Its Challenges," redux

The Iranian Institute of Philosophy has posted videos of all the talks from the conference earlier this week.  The videos aren't labelled, but many readers will no doubt recognize many of the speakers, including Timothy Williamson, Philip Pettit, Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Daniel Dennett, and others.

Supporting Ukrainian refugees in Poland

As most readers will know, Poland is receiving the largest number of refugees fleeing the illegal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.  Because all men ages 18-60 are being forbidden from leaving Ukraine, the refugees are overwhelmingly women with younger children (and, to a lesser extent, the elderly).  I asked a friend and colleague in Poland about organizations assisting the refugees that are accepting donations.  Here are the three he recommended:

https://www.pah.org.pl/en/ukraine/

https://pmm.org.pl/en/donate

https://voices.org.ua/en/?fbclid=IwAR2_gGZ93f8ywjpCtSZhBNWQpfCja0odfyy98sx1VK8KvysjcNyy4iltkuc

There are others, but these three have English language pages that explain their work.

What is a "law of nature"?

Philosopher Marc Lange (North Carolina) discusses at Aeon.

Yale's "diversity and inclusion" initiative

It's really quite dramatic in its scope, and while some of the initiatives are probably just public relations, and some are probably salutary, some others look like they may affect academic freedom. 

For example, the plan for Yale Arts & Sciences includes an initiative to "increase curricular breadth for addressing racism and supporting DEI and belonging."   Race and racism are scholarly topics in many fields, but each discipline needs to decide, according to its disciplinary standards, whether "race" and "racism" are suitable units of analysis, and, if they are, whether faculty have any interest in teaching and research in those areas.  Will this initiative respect those essential elements of academic freedom, or will there be an expectation that every department must "increase curricular breadth for addresing racism"?

Richard Marshall interviews Soren Kierkegaard (independent scholar)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Columbia math professor dissects his university's high ranking in the US News ranking of universities

Amusing, and telling about the idiotic and inexplicable formula that USNews.com uses to rank colleges and universities.

University of Missouri finds new way to undermine tenure: claims authority to cut salaries of tenured faculty by up to 25%...

...based on productivity or enrollments.   This will end badly.

War involves human beings

And here two of them describe their experiences, one a Ukraiinian scholar fleeig the illegal war of aggression, another from Russia, protesting that same war.  Worth reading.

(Thanks to Katalin Balog for the pointer.)

AFA letter to San Diego State University regarding its violation of Professor Corlett's contractual and constitutionall rights

Excellent letter, as usual.  It's impressive how quickly the AFA got this letter out, since they only learned of this incident yesterday.   Having an efficient academic freedom watchdog is more important than ever in the United States, and those of us in the academy are all indebted to the work of the Academic Freedom Alliance.

Blast from the past: Is philosophy in the doldrums? Poll results and discussion

Back in 2015.

How the West became WEIRD

An interview with psychologist Joseph Heinrich.  His explanation is pretty implausible, but amusing.

Russell vs. Hegel

A retelling of the story, more favorable to Hegel, by philosopher Paul Redding (Sydney).

Transgender athletes

Sensible comments by my colleague, the biologist Jerry Coyne.

More on the violation of Professor Corlett's academic freedom at San Diego State University

Regarding the story earlier today, a reader points out that just last month, Professor Corlett was (correctly) outspoken in opposition to a proposal to mandate that all faculty include an acknokwledgment of native peoples on their syllabi:

In 2019, the Senate approved a resolution that created a land-acknowledgement statement recognizing that the university’s campus exists on the ancestral land of the Kumeyaay. The next year, the Senate voted to require faculty members to include the land statement in their course syllabi....

The acknowledgment takes two forms, an abbreviated statement and a full version. The abbreviated version reads: “For millennia, the Kumeyaay people have been a part of this land. This land has nourished, healed, protected and embraced them for many generations in a relationship of balance and harmony. As members of the San Diego State University community we acknowledge this legacy. We promote this balance and harmony. We find inspiration from this land; the land of the Kumeyaay"....

J. Angelo Corlett, a professor of philosophy and ethics, was at the Senate meetings where the land acknowledgment and syllabi policy were discussed. He says Senate policy is very clear in stating faculty members are entitled to their own beliefs and shouldn’t be forced to include anything in their course syllabi.

San Diego State University violates academic freedom of philosophy professor for mentioning racial epithets in a course on racism!

This is remarkable:

The...incident involves J. Angelo Corlett, a tenured philosophy professor who last week was relieved of his duties teaching two courses, one on critical thinking, the other on race and racism.

Corlett told the San Diego Union-Tribune he used an informational slide in both classes that listed 10 to 12 epithets that have been used against Black, Hispanic, Latino, Asian and white people.

"You have to mention the words in order to explain why they are racist and should not be used," said Corlett, a 63 year-old Latino. "Some students are confused about what counts as racism. And some are more concerned about being offended than learning about the logic and science of language...."

Carroll from Caltech to Johns Hopkins

Sean Carroll, a philosophically-minded physicist who is currently Research Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, has accepted appointment as Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, where he will teach in both the Department of Physics & Astronomy, and the Department of Philosophy.  Professor Carroll says more about the nature of the appointment here.

On the meanings of Schrodinger's cat

Several philosophers (including Jenann Ismael [Columbia], Tim Maudlin [NYU], and Alyssa Ney [UC Davis]) are among those commenting.

Great moments in British rock 'n' roll that remain obscure in the U.S.: Status Quo, "Paper Plane," 1972

For the next few weeks, we'll take a break from our usual utterly obscure features in favor of the curious phenomenon of bands that were hugely successful in the UK, but never really made it in the U.S.  We start with Status Quo, which was one of the most successful rock bands in Britain from the early 1970s onwards, yet after their brief psychedelic period in the 1960s, they never again cracked the U.S. charts.   Here's one of their many well-known hits from the 1970s:

 

"Naturalism and Its Challenges"

An online conference organized by the Iranian Institute of Philosophy in Tehran has already begun today (with sessions in Persian), with many sessions in English beginning tomorrow.  The full program is here.  I will be talking about Nietzsche on Sunday, March 6 at 9:30 am Chicago time for those who are interested, but for those with no interest in Nietzsche there are plenty of other sessions that look to be excellent.

Banning Dostoevsky to punish Putin?

A university in Milan had that stupid idea, but it looks like the decision will be reversed.  This is, indeed, a very good time to be reading Dostoesvky, who understood human beings, not to mention Russia, better than most.

(Thanks to Blake Myers for the pointer.)

Susanna Newcome, early 18th-century utilitarian

Interesting.

Misak on Lipscomb on Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch

This is one of the more philosophically substantial reviews I've seen; an excerpt:

Those in the grip of the picture that is supposed to result in inaction on the ethical stage were progressive socialists for the most part, heavily involved on the ground in political and ethical matters. Ayer was a left-wing activist and agitated against appeasement. The members of the Vienna Circle objected, in strong words and actions, to Nazism. Those who manged to flee (often to America) were engaged in progressive politics there. Hare had been a prisoner of war, building the Burma-Thailand railway under inhuman conditions, doing countless good deeds for his fellow POWs along the way. He worked out his philosophical theory during this time and would become a leading utilitarian in the 20^th century, a philosophical project deeply committed to social reform and individual improvement. He wrote papers on topics ranging from slavery to abortion to whether we shouldn’t eat animals.

Do we not require an explanation for how the [proponents of a philosophical outlook]...so apparently bloodless for ethics, could be believed by philosophers acting so powerfully at the moral coalface, at the place where whatever views they had about ethics met practical problems?...

Here’s [one] possible answer. Ayer and the members of the Vienna Circle found it liberating to distinguish fact from value, so that they could escape the constraints of the so-called ethical facts, which were lodged within a religious framework that dictated what was right and what was wrong.

Blast from the past: on the proposition that "there was no persuasive moral case agianst the Iraq war"

Back in 2006, but relevant again given some of the strange claims about the Iraq war now being made in the Ukraine thread!

"Philosophers for Ukraine"

Peter Singer calls to my attention this campaign by philosophy faculty and students in Ukraine:

With colleagues we launched an initiative to engage the philosophical community to speak against Russian aggression in Ukraine....

We call on the entire philosophical community to speak out in support of Ukraine and become ambassadors of peace and justice.

So what can you do?

• Create a column (up to 300 words) about the situation in support of Ukraine now
• Send it to [email protected], to be published at our platform https://philosophersforukraine.com.ua (no publications yet, we have just started the campaign) and social media, and spread around the globe

You thought Jesus Christ was a great teacher...

...but in fact his teaching evaluations were terrible!

Richard Marshall interviews Friedrich Schelling (Berlin)...

...at 3:16 AM.

University of California was wrong to eliminate the SAT

So argues an emeritus professor of economics at UC Santa Cruz.  He certainly makes some good and well-supported points, but I had two doubts:  (1)  the real worry about the supposed "bias" of the SAT against lower socioeconomic-status students is that they get lower scores (perhaps because they cannot afford exam prep courses) so don't even get admitted, not how they perform once admitted compared to higher socioeconomic status students; and (2) one suspects the real motivation for the change has nothing to do with socioeconmic status, but rather race and ethnicity (African-Americans and Hispanics get lower SAT scores on average compared to whites and Asians), which can't, however, be the official consideration given California law.

How to write a narrative CV

Philosopher Marc Lange's very funny one is making the rounds on Twitter.

God bless Australia

A golf course near Brisbane has bull sharks in a lake in the middle of the course.   And they  weren't put there by someone, either.

(I learned of this on Facebook via Ian Farrell.)

Might Putin use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine?

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 27--MANY VERY INTERESTING COMMENTS (see, e.g., 2, 7, 10, 11, 18, 33, 3, 38, 41, among others)

Perhaps if Russia is losing, sanctions are hurting:  see this and this by two different political science professors.  What is already a bad situation could get disastrously bad if Russia were to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.  Recall Nixon contemplated the use nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and U.S. military leaders contemplated using nuclear weapons during the Korean War.   Note that Ukraine is far more important to Russia than either Vietnam or South Korea were to the U.S.

Meanwhile, philosopher Paul Russell (UBC/Lund) calls my attention to information about how readers can help the Urkainians.

Comments are open for links to similar sites about Ukrainian aid, or more information/perspectives on the nuclear risks.

ADDENDUM:  Here's a related piece on the nuclear issue.  And this analysis is useful on the actual state of the invasion so far.

What happened in Grozny in 1999-2000 is probably a warning about what awaits major Ukrainian cities

The Russians have fought this kind of war before, and how they fought it was horrific.  The world mostly looked the other way then (Chechna was part of Russia, and the victims were mostly Muslims).

Waterstones, the British book chain, acquires Blackwell's

Should we be worried for the fate of Blackwell's?  Waterstones used to be a rather good book chain, but I haven't been in many years now.

(Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)

Alyssa Ney DID like Jessica Wilson's book

I've featured wicked book reviews over the years, in part because they're amusing and in part because cowardice and puffery are the norms in book reviews.  Awhile back, philosopher Colleen Murphy (Illinois/Urbana-Champaign) suggested I should also features some really positive reviews, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to this.  I'll feature some book reviews from fields that have high standards for book reviews, or reviewers who are particularly severe (yes, I'm guilty, but my fields need help).   In any case, Alyssa Ney (UC Davis) really did like the recent book by Jessica Wilson (Toronto):

In case it is not already clear from what has been said so far, this book is a staggeringly impressive work of a philosopher at the very top of her game. Its main significance will be in providing an authoritative and comprehensive conceptual framework for metaphysical emergence that should be used to formulate claims of emergence across science and philosophy going forward. This remains the case even if the taxonomy turns out not to be exhaustive. This book should also be essential reading for those engaged with specific debates about the metaphysical emergence of complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will. Wilson’s book lays new conceptual foundations that provide hope for progress in all of these debates.

"How the U.S. created Putin"

This is a fascinating lecture, from 2018, that a reader linked to in the earlier thread.  I recommend listening to it, for those who forgot, for example, that Putin wanted to join NATO in 2000, or that the Soviet Union was promised by the U.S. that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe.

 

This is what war looks like

This Ukrainian news twitter feed has some pretty shocking images.  Fortunately for the U.S., there were no Twitter feeds documenting the last major illegal war of aggression, the one against Iraq.

"Moscow Times"

Several years ago, Martin Kusch (Vienna) called my attention to this independent, English-language newspaper in Russia, which is certainly not pro-Putin, but also offers news and perspectives less common in the Western media.  It makes for some interesting reading right now.

The Frankfurt School critique of "science" is not shared by Marx...

...but this author doesn't realize that. He writes:

Influenced by Karl Marx, Frankfurt School philosophers such as Adorno and Horkheimer were alarmed at how industrial capitalism had undermined the Enlightenment....

Disciples of Marx, Adorno and Horkheimer diagnosed the failure of Enlightenment, evidenced by the dark events of the twentieth century, as stemming from a division of reason into objective and instrumental reason. Objective reason involves an autonomous assessment of the intrinsic value of the ends we pursue. Instrumental reason involves figuring out the most effective means to achieve those ends. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that instrumental reason eclipsed objective reason in the age of industrial capitalism. People no longer asked themselves whether the ends they were pursuing were intrinsically valuable.

This is not a bad gloss on Adorno and Horkheimer, but it has almost nothing to do with Marx:  A&H were certainly influenced by Marx, but they weren't disciples, in part because, unlike Marx, they had not overcome Hegel.  The idea that the "dark events of the twentieth century" arose from "a division of reason into objective and instrumental reason" is the kind of nonsense only a Hegelian could believe, but certainly not Marx after he cured himself of Hegelian idealism in favor of a naturalistic method (eschewing Hegelian internal critique in favor of something like inference to the best explanation) for doing philosophy.   Althusser had a crude and obscure version of something like these ideas about Marx, but Anglophone philosophers have, quite reasonably, ignored that; what will be the decisive reading along these lines is now due to Lawrence Dallman, a recent PhD from here, which will reframe the philosophical reception of Marx. (Of course, one cannot fault a writer for the online Areo Magazine for having a simple-minded understanding of these issues.)

Dissent is not treason

The latest from the U.S. Free Speech Union.  Tucker Carlson is usually a despicable fascist, but everything the Free Speech Union say here, including about Carlson, is correct nonetheless!

"The Varieties of Bullshit"

Philosopher Peter Ludlow discusses some of the limitations of Harry Frankfurt's well-known analysis.