Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Gods, "Farthing Man," 1968

We've featured this British band (that included Ken Hensley and Lee Kerslake in their pre-Uriah Heep days) before, but this tune, from their first album, may be my favorite:

 

Reed on Black Lives Matter

Here; bracing, no-nonsense stuff as usual.  An excerpt:

There never was a coherent politics there; nor was there any objective reason to assume there could be—especially considering that it was always a wan replay of Black Power in its faith that a generic slogan and some, often Potemkin, street action could generate a mass movement, and with what agenda exactly? To be sure, BLM helped to focus public attention onto police brutality and killings of black people, but no broader left politics necessarily follows from that. And to the extent that BLM projects and insists on a race-reductionist account of that injustice, its critique does as much to obscure the systemic foundations of the police behavior as it does to illuminate the behavior itself. Moreover, BLM, and contemporary antiracist politics in general, was always ripe for articulation toward entrepreneurialism, etc., not least because the personalities most visibly associated with it were careerist race ventriloquists and corporate media operatives. Did you see Van Jones collapsing with tears of joy after Jeff Bezos gave him $100 million? Or Kimberlé Crenshaw’s declaration, in yet another attack on Sanders, that “every corporation worth its salt” had done more to support antiracist causes than the Democrats or the left?...

A free online introduction to utilitarian moral theory...

...courtesy of a leading young utilitarian moral philosopher Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami).  Strong endorsements for this resource, as well, from leading philosophers!

Ireland's experience with a constitutional abortion ban

Interesting piece at NYRB (behind their paywall, however); an excerpt:

In 1985, after the Eighth Amendment [banning abortion] had passed, 3,888 Irish women were recorded as having abortions in Britain. By 1991 the number was 4,154; by 2001 it was 6,673. The numbers began to diminish somewhat thereafter, but only because Irish women were finding ways to procure abortion pills without leaving the country. If the purpose of abortion bans is to actually reduce the rate at which women terminate pregnancies, the Irish experience shows how utterly ineffectual they are. Some poor, vulnerable, or very young women and girls can be forced to carry babies they do not want, but a policy that depends for its success on female impoverishment and powerlessness is not easy to sustain in an open society.

Richard Marshall interviews Charles Travis (Porto)...

...at 3:16 AM.  An interesting bit:

One reason I don’t see Frege as a philosopher of language is that he explicitly says that is not his topic. It seems to me that for a long time now (probably since the Vienna Circle, but I suspect much longer than that) philosophers have tended to see too much in common between language and logic, as if language (if properly done) would just be a sort of less topic-neutral language. This, I think, is responsible for huge misperceptions as to the shape of philosophical problems.

A new pairwise comparison poll: specialist journals that publish the best articles in moral and/or political philosophy...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SEE UPDATE

...both theoretical and applied.  Note that you can choose "I can't decide," and then are given several choices, such as "don't know enough about either" or "think they're both the same" etc.

ADDENDUM:  As some readers have poitned out, some journal names are rather similar.  For example, Social Philosophy & Policy versus Social Theory & Practice.  And Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy versus Journal of Ethics verus Journal of Social Philosophy.

UPDATE:  I've closed this poll, since there was some indication on social media of folks rallying votes.  The top six were pretty consistent with last time (Ethics, PPA, J. of Political Phil, J. of Moral Phil., J. of Ethics & Social Philosophy, Utilitas), but after that I'm less sure the results weren't affected.  Pairwise comparison is more vulnerable to strategic voting than Condorcet, alas, although in the past Condorcet also had problems. I'll try running a Condorcet version of this poll next week, and see how that comes out.  Thanks to those who voted, and stay tuned for another stab at this next week.

Fetterman, the Democrat for Senate in Pennsylvania

You have to like a candidate whose "first" issue is a pro-union message.   Fetterman is basically a social democrat, like Bernie Sanders.  Fortunately, he's younger than Bernie, and he is also very social media savvy.  He's also very down to earth, which probably has something to do with how this unconvential politician made it to Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania. He's also tall, which would make him the perfect Democrat to go up against Trump in 2024 (seriously, don't underestimate the pure impact of physicality, of a Democrat towering over Trump, and calling him on his non-stop bullshit).  I'm hopeful he will be the next Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania and the Democratic nominee in 2024.

(His Twitter feed and ridicule of his ridiculous opponent Dr. Oz is very amusing too.)

Why try to rank journals, even in this unsystematic way?

A senior philosopher with tenure expressed puzzlement (on Twitter, of course) about these rankings.  A junior philosopher responded:

For those of us whose professional futures depend on the snap judgments of people reading 100s of CVs, it is really important to have a rough idea of where people tend to rank different journals.

Amusingly, this senior philosopher was unaware that rankings are very common in many other disciplines, including economics, chemistry, political science, physics, etc.  Indeed, others have used the h-index to rank philosophy journals in the past.

Canadian academic freedom organization challenges mandatory "diversity" statement at McGill University

The letter here concerns a search in computer science.  I don't know what the relevant law is governing the use of such statements in Canada; in the U.S., they are pretty clearly instances of unlawful viewpoint discrimination (despite the shoddy arguments of some dissemblers to the contrary!).

Those knowledgeable about the relevant Canadian laws are invited to comment.

Another triumph for diversity: 4 of the 5 leaders of the major corporations at the center of America's military-industrial complex...

...are women.  What a relief!

Best "general" philosophy journals, 2022

So with not quite 1,000 participants, and nearly 90,000 votes on comparisons cast, here are the top 25 (the score in parentheses reflects the odds of the journal prevailing in a comparison):

1.  Philosophical Review (89)

2.  Nous (87)

3.  Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (86)

4.  Mind (85)

5.  Journal of Philosophy (84)

6.  Australasian Journal of Philosophy (75)

7.  Philosophical Studies (74)

8.  Philosopher's Imprint (73)

9.  Philosophical Quarterly (69)

10. Analysis (65)

11. Synthese (62)

12. Canadian Journal of Philosophy (54)

12. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (54)

14. Ergo (51)

14. Erkenntnis (51)

16. European Journal of Philosophy (49)

16. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (49)

18. American Philosophical Quarterly (48)

19. Journal of the American Philosophical Association (46)

20. Inquiry (40)

21. Philosophical Perspectives (39)

22. The Monist (37)

23. Thought (36)

24. Philosophical Issues (33)

25. Philosophical Topics (30)

25. Ratio (30)

One error of omission was Analytic Philosophy, which might well have made the top 25 (as it did in 2018).  You can see the 2018 results here.  Online surveys probably have a slight bias in favor of online journals, like Philosopher's Imprint and, more recently, Ergo, although the former has been clearly among the top ten for quite some time now, and justfiably so it seems to me. Constructive comments/observations about the results are welcome.

 

Narratives that engage the emotions, not arguments, are more effective at producing charitable behavior

Interesting study, confirming what all Humeans and Nietzscheans already suspected.  As Nietzsche quips (in Twilight of the Idols), "Nothing is easier to erase than a dialectical effect."

UPDATE:  More thoughts, on Twitter, from philosopher Matt Lindauer (Brooklyn Coll/CUNY).  (Link now fixed.)

A new survey on the best "general" philosophy journals

The last survey was in 2018.  This new survey uses the pairwise comparison method.  "General" here means journals that publish in several different areas (if not all of these):  e.g., value theory, metaphysics & epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of logic, history of philosophy.  If this works, I'll run some more pairwise comparison surveys about journals in particular areas of specialization.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll, The Third Power, "Like Me Love Me," 1970

Another heavy number from the Detroit trio we featured a few weeks ago:

 

Philosophical writing with a "moral" or "political point" is now almost exclusively written for academics...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 20--SOME INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

...but that was not always so.  Mill, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Marx, Aristotle et al. were not writing for other academics (in some cases, the category "other academics" did not exist).  How has this changed philosophy with a moral or political point (including moral and political philosophy), for better or for worse?

Trump's plan to fill the federal civil service with lackeys in a second term

This is how fascism works at the micro-level.

Five philosophers elected to British Academy

They are:   Richard Bradley (LSE) and Quassim Cassam (Warwick), as Fellows; and Pauline Kleingeld (Groningen), Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech), and Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund), as Corresponding Fellows.

When you can't tell what's a parody and what isn't

This exchange has been circulating on social media.  My first reaction was that this had to be a parody of mindless identity politics, but in fact the participants actually believe their nonsense.   God help the universities if too many people like this gain a foothold.

(No doubt there are instances of "indigenous knowledge" that are actual cases of knowledge. But do they really add up to a Wissenschaft?  Maybe some do, but repetitive assertion of the point doesn't inspire confidence.   It's downhill from there in this Twitter exchange....)

On growing up in communist Albania, and the aftermath

Lea Ypi (LSE) is interviewed about her recent book.

Blast from the past: co-authorship in philosophy

A discussion, back in 2013.

Robert Cummins, the philosopher of mind and psychology, has made his articles available for free...

...at his website (scroll down).  It includes such gems as his amusing critique of reflective equilibrium as a method.

Penn Dean calls for "major sanctions" (which could include termination) against tenured law professor

The Dean's letter is here:  Download Request for Hearing Board Formation for Amy Wax-- PENNCHARGES.   The AFA has now sent a letter to the Penn President in response.   A few observations of my own:

1.  The AFA is correct that the bulk of complaints in Dean Ruger's letter pertain to extramural speech by Professor Wax, speech that is clearly protected under Penn's own rules, which incorporate the AAUP definition of academic freedom.  Offensive extramural speech--of which there is a lot in this case--can not be the basis for sanction under AAUP rules.  Many opinions academics hold are offensive to small or large segments of the general public.  If that is to suffice for discipline, then academics will have no right to extramural speech on matters of public interest. 

Pebbles can make landslides

Nice reflections from Robert Paul Wolff on his life and activism.

More signs of the times: actual left policy analyst leaves Center for American Progress for AEI...

...because the Center for American Progress is suffering from neoliberal wokeness (much like the academy in this regard, and recall this and also this):

“My perspective is, the single most important thing to focus on in the social system is the economic system,” he tells me. “It’s class"....

To hear Teixeira tell it, CAP, and the rest of Washington’s institution-based left, stopped being a place where he could do the work he wanted. The reason, he says, is that the relentless focus on race, gender, and identity in historically liberal foundations and think tanks has made it hard to do work that looks at society through other prisms. It also makes people nervous about projects that could be accused of giving short shrift to anti-racism efforts.

“I would say that anybody who has a fundamentally class-oriented perspective, who thinks that’s a more important lens and doesn’t assume that any disparity is automatically a lens of racism or sexism or what have you … I think that perspective is not congenial in most left institutions,” he says....

 

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Hollywood Brats, "Then He Kissed Me," 1973

Another British "glam rock" and proto-punk band of the early 1970s that had little success, although remains well-known among afficionados of the genre; this is from their one and only album:

 

"In Defense of Linguistic Luddism"

Gorin v. Manne.  Rather amusing.  (On Twitter, Oliver Traldi [Notre Dame] has coined the term "Mannesplaining" for Professor Manne's style of scolding/instructing.)

Ivana Trump (the monster child's first wife) has died, and Sarah Palin was a fan...

...back in 1996!   This article (as far as I can tell it is genuine) has been circulating on social media.

Travels abroad, and some observations about philosophy

In June, I traveled overseas for the first time since 2019 (and I managed not to get Covid!).  London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and Bucharest were my airport destinations; Oxford University, University College Dublin, University of Amsterdam, and Dimitri Cantemir Christian University my academic hosts.  The events were ISNS in Oxford; a mini-conference on Nietzsche at UCD (papers by me, Tsarina Doyle [NUI-Galway] and Brian O'Connor [UCD]), and then an afternoon workshop on draft chapters of my co-authored Marx book; an anti-moralist conference on capitalism in the 21st-century in Amsterdam; and the IVR (international legal philosophy event) in Bucharest.

I'll start with travel stuff, which may be of some practical value to readers, and then move to intellectual substance.

Nagel on Wittgenstein's "Private Notebooks, 1914-1916"...

..in The New Statesman.

(Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: the Ward Churchill case, the First Amendment, and academic freedom

Here (2005), here (2007), and here (2009).

On living in the midst of "gun culture"...

...in this case in Kentucky.  Quite remarkable.  (It may be behind the Washington Post firewall, however.)

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder

Many readers skeptical of the realist interpretation of events in Ukraine (which I have emphasized, since they are the correct ones, as they tend to be everywhere) have pointed me to the writings of Snyder, an historian of Central and Eastern Europe at Yale.  His writings have mostly struck me as naive (treating every bit of Russian domestic propaganda literally) and moralistic psychologizing (Putin is an evil man influenced by evil people!).  Dr. Roger Albin, a longtime reader, called my attention to this striking review of Snyder's Bloodlands by Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian:

The fundamental reason…for the book’s failure to give an adequate account of the genesis of the Final Solution, is that Snyder isn’t seriously interested in explaining anything. What he really wants to do is to tell us about the sufferings of the people who lived in the area he knows most about. Assuming we know nothing about any of this, he bludgeons us with facts and figures about atrocities and mass murders until we’re reeling from it all…

Equally anonymous [as the victims] are the men who planned and executed the atrocities. Snyder shows no interest in their character or motivation, in what turned them into torturers and killers. Nor does he have much to say about ideology, despite the fact that this was the driving force of mass murder in both the Nazi and Soviet cases. And the book gives us no sense at all of the ‘bloodlands’ as a region; its physical, social and cultural features are nowhere described; it too has no real identity here. That’s because it’s an entirely artificial construct – a label for the location of mass murder, nothing more.

GPT-3 or Daniel Dennett?

Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) and colleagues are conducting an experiment.

PhD application advice?

A prospective graduaute student writes:

As an undergraduate student who is preparing to apply for graduate programmes in the UK and US, I thank you for founding the PGR, which has been a very helpful resource in the application process. Thanks as well for your blog, which often provides professionally and philosophically interesting materials.

Here is a question I venture to put to you (and your readers, if you think appropriate): is there any application advice (especially concerning writing samples and personal statements) which most applicants would benefit from, or which many applicants get wrong? Professor Guerrero at Rutgers gave his advice here: https://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1011404/28477892/1635443782310/Tips+for+applying+to+PhD+Programs+in+Philosophy2.pdf

I don’t know if you or your readers have seen this, and if so, what your opinions are.

Overall, I think Professor Guerrero's advice is good, but one needn't follow it precisely to succeed in applications at highly competitive programs.  On writing samples, I think the best bet is to use a piece of writing that got a very good grade in a course, and that you can then polish a bit more.  It is also fine to submit a paper offering exegesis of an important historical figure, especially if history is a primary interest.  (Rutgers is a fairly ahistorical department, so that is no doubt why Professor Guerrero doesn't say much about that.)

Comments are open for thoughts from readers.  Differences in UK programs might be particularly worth discussing, since Guerrero's advice works pretty well for most leading American programs.

Los Angeles returns beachfront property to descendents of Black family from whom it was stolen a century earlier

Under capitalism, this is exactly what compensatory justice demands.  Affirmative action, in its original conception was also a version of this--although not as precise in identifying the injured parties--until the super-legislature turned it into diversity blather in 1978.  Next year, the super-legislature will also put the "diversity" rationale to rest.

A poll about Covid

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY

A lot has changed since Spring 2020 in terms of the Covid disaster.  Academic readers are, as a class, more careful than most.  I'm curious about the experience of readers of this blog with Covid, whether you've had it and how many times.   If you were sick but couldn't get tested (very common early on), you'll have to decide whether you think it was Covid or not based on the symptoms.  Please respond, I imagine I'm not the only one curious about how one segment of academia has been affected by the pandemic and especially by the phenomenon of repeat infections.

How many times have you had Covid?

Never

 

Once

 

Twice

 

Three times or more

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE 7/11 8 am:  A strikingly good response to a poll posted on a Sunday afternoon in summer; here's the results:

How many times have you had Covid?   Selection   Votes  Never  53% 463  Once  41% 360  Twice  5% 46  Three times or more  1% 12  881 total

In the U.S. about 40% of the population has not been infected; I don't know what the numbers are elsewhere, and since the readership is international the comparison may not be too illuminating.  Some interesting comments at the poll site, and I'll open comments here too.  Some wondered whether those with multiple infections also had received vaccinations or boosters.  I'd be curious to hear (anonymously is fine of course) from those who had it twice or thrice whether it was less severe in the subsequent cases. Any other comments on Covid-related experiences also welcome.

Still more on Russia and Ukraine

A propos this, philosopher Jozef Müller (UC Riverside) kindly gave permission to share his interesting observations(I have not seen this point elsewhere):

I just read the post on your blog about the cause of Ukraine conflict (lecture by John Mearsheimer). One thing I keep somehow not seeing in the discussions, his including, is the issue of gas/oil which seems rather obvious to me. The former Soviet republics around the Caspian sea have large reserves and they have been trying to supply Europe without relying on Russia as a transport route (which it uses as a political leverage). Azerbaijan has recently succeeded – by the pipeline that goes through Georgia to Turkey and Turkmens want to join (but Russia is preventing the building of that connection through the Caspian sea – they also invaded Georgia at the time this pipeline was an issue I think). Russia has had to pay Ukraine for transport and it has been trying to circumvent it – Nordstream I and II, for example and it’s been squabbling over it with Ukraine for decades. However, Ukraine now has proved oil and gas reserves that it could sell to Europe on its own – with already some built infrastructure (see e.g. https://hir.harvard.edu/ukraine-energy-reserves/) but still in need of large investment. Much of it is in the Donbas region. This is, long term, a threat to Russia’s gas and oil business – it could significantly lower Europe’s dependence on it. So by annexing it, they get to control the future (or much of it) and they also get to cut their expenses to pay for transport of it to Europe. Given Russia’s dependence on gas and oil, this seems to me a pretty obvious motive (though I don’t want to claim the motive – probably there is a lot of causes).

Comments from informed readers welcome; they will, of course, be moderated for relevance!

 

APA to experiment with one virtual meeting (and two in-person meetings) each of the next three years

Announcement here.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Incredible Hog, "To the Sea," 1973

British hard rock trio of the early 1970s, this is a pretty good tune from their one and only album:

 

Columbia removed from USNews.com college rankings after questions raised about data reported

We previously noted a Columbia math professor who raised serious doubts about the data the university reported to USNews.com for its college rankings; now USNews.com has removed Columbia from its number 2 spot last year.  The real scandal here is not what Columbia did or didn't do; it's that USNews.com makes no effort to audit self-reported data.   As Professor Thaddeus, the Columbia mathematican, is qouted as saying:

“What is clear is there’s no third-party vetting,” Dr. Thaddeus said. “At some point there has to be third-party auditing since these data are so important and so many people are making final decisions based upon the data. It won’t do to say these data are self-reported and there’s no way to check them.”

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

An update on philosophy at Potsdam: some reasonably good news!

The full update is here (earlier coverage); an excerpt:

Before she left the college the Dean formally recommended that the philosophy program “be removed from provisional status once curricular work outlined in the alignment plan and a merger has been accomplished.” The curricular revisions referred to are the creation of a Philosophy of Justice course to support the Criminal Justice program (once a regular offering, it has not been offered since the retirement of Dr. Tartaglia), and the creation of an Animal Minds course.

She also recommended that we be merged with the Interdisciplinary Studies department and that Dr. Murphy [a philosopher] serve as chair of the merged department (whose chair recently resigned). In her letter to the Provost and Dr. Murphy she recommends that “Details of this merger—including but not limited to the renaming of a shared department, bylaws, and allocation of service obligations—would need to be worked out between stakeholders from both departments and should be completed by October 15th, 2022.” These recommendations were accepted by the Provost.

"The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED WITH AN INTERESTING RESPONSE

The EUI has made available a video of a recent lecture by John Mearsheimer (Chicago), which is a good antidote to the hysterical and moralizing nonsense that dominates American and much Western coverage of and commentary on the Russian war of aggression, even that by some allegedly informed academics.

UPDATE:  Professor Mearsheimer kindly gave permission to share the text of his talk:   Download Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis.National Interest

ANOTHER:  A well-informed response from a longtime reader:

I think Mearsheimer makes some misleading claims in the speech you shared on your blog. In general, I appreciate Mearsheimer’s perspective and critique of US policy, but he overstates his case. 

The University of California is not bound by Kalven Report principles...

...and it shows.

More on the Katz case at Princeton

Classicist Clifford Ando (Chicago) excorciates Princeton and its President, Christopher Eisgruber, in many respects quite rightly; an excerpt:

Princeton is not particularly interested in violations of policy in respect to sex between professors and undergraduates. For example, so far as I can tell, no effort has been made to survey students (or professors) as to whether any other professor, in classics or any other department, had sex with students — in that era or earlier or more recently. (I graduated from the department in 1990, and have consulted with a cross-section of alumni and alumnae of my own and other generations.) It is worth remembering that the first investigation of Katz was conducted and concluded without comment from the student in the relationship. On the contrary, the first investigation appears to have been motivated by, and satisfied with, the testimony, on the complainant side, only of a student (or more than one) from the period of the relationship. On that standard, the university could and should survey all students as to whether they know of any relationship that they deem inappropriate, even one that is consensual and not in violation of Title IX. But Princeton is not interested in protecting students from inappropriate conduct by professors, if its choice not to know is any indication. The invocation of policy and imposition of punishment in this case appears to have had another cause.

 

The judge who presided over a successful Establishment Clause challenge to an attempt to insert "intelligent design" creationism into a public school curriculum...

...comments on the super-legislatures latest evisceration of the increasingly attenuated "separation" between church and state.

(Thanks to Glenn Branch for the pointer.)

The super-legislature's power grab in the case of environmental law

An informative analysis by a longtime Washington, D.C. lawyer.

Blast from the past: Dora Russell, Bertrand's second wife, feminist activist and sex radical

Back in 2014.

The latest reminder that the U.S. is a barbaric nation

The massacre of innocents near Chicago.

In Memoriam: Richard J. Bernstein (1932-2022)

A longtime member of the faculty at the New School for Social Research in New York City, Professor Bernstein taught for more than two decades before that at Haverford College, and before that at Yale University, where his denial of tenure in the 1960s was controversial.  Bernstein was best-known for synoptic works exploring connections between themes in American pragmatism and sometimes analytic philosophy, and various currents in 20th-century Continental philosophy such as hermeneutics and critical theory.  The Wikipedia entry is, surprisingly, fairly informative.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

"We learn about a face by drawing it. What can that tell us about how we learn the truth by thinking?"

Philosophy graduate student Michael Thorne (UCL) discusses at The Raven.