Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: the five best finds of 2022

As readers who follow this series know, it's gotten harder to find "obscure" fare worth sharing, so more recently, I've taken to re-upping older features from several years ago.  But there were some good finds (at least by my light!) earlier this year.  Here's my five favorites for 2022; feel free to add yours in the comments:

Blonde on Blonde, "All Day All Night," 1968

Duffy, "Running Away," 1973

The Gods, "Farthing Man," 1968

Silverhead, "Rolling with My Baby," 1972

Steamhammer, "When All Your Friends are Gone," 1969

And one runner-up:  Sensational Alex Harvey Band, "Midnight Moses," 1972

The University of California strike ended just before Xmas

Here's a recap of what transpired.

Law & Philosophy Fellowship at University of Chicago for 2023-24

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 9

The ad is now live here.  Here's the description:

The University of Chicago Law School seeks a Law & Philosophy Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer, for the academic year 2023-24. This is a twelve-month appointment and is expected to begin July 1, 2023. Applications welcome from new or recent PhDs or tenure-stream faculty interested in spending a year at the Law School. The Fellow will co-teach the Law & Philosophy Workshop with Brian Leiter on the theme of “Advanced Topics in General Jurisprudence.” AOS:  Philosophy of law, with a focus on topics in general jurisprudence; AOC:  open. Visiting speakers will be prominent scholars working on topics like the objectivity of law, the normativity of law, methodological positivism, law as an artifact, Scandinavian and American legal realism, recent work in natural law theory, and other topics in general jurisprudence. The Workshop with visiting speakers will meet roughly 6-8 times over the course of the year, but there will be 4-6 additional sessions taught by the instructors introducing particular topics and/or  preparing students prior to the visiting speaker sessions. The Fellow will also be asked to supervise student papers, and to contribute to the intellectual life of the Law School, as well as pursue his or her research. Salary $65K + benefits + superb research environment.

Qualifications

A PhD in philosophy--with fulfillment of all substantial requirements (including successful defense of dissertation) by appointment date--is required, though in unusual cases a PhD in a related discipline, or a JD accompanied by strong training in philosophy, will be considered.

The cover letter and/or the application materials must make clear how the applicant's work and interests fit with the planned Workshop topic.

More on the deadliness of Republican rule in the Covid era

A follower on Twitter calls to my attention this remarkable graph about Covid deaths per million.

Republicans and Covid deaths

This is really stark evidence of the pathological dysfunction of this benighted country, in which one of the two major political parties is openly hostile to de minimis public health measures (recall that Americans died of Covid at a rate two to three times that [or more] of other normal countries):

[B]y far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.)

We know that unvaccinated Americans are more likely to be Republican, that Republicans in positions of power led the movement against COVID vaccination, and that hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans have died preventable deaths from the disease. The Republican Party is unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of many of its own supporters, a phenomenon that may be without precedent in the history of both American democracy and virology....

We know that as of April 2022, about 318,000 people had died from COVID because they were unvaccinated, according to research from Brown University. And the close association between Republican vaccine hesitancy and higher death rates has been documented. One study estimated that by the fall of 2021, vaccine uptake accounted for 10 percent of the total difference between Republican and Democratic deaths. But that estimate has changed—and even likely grown—over time....

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: the playlist!

Someone has compiled the full playlist of the songs featured on this blog over the years on YouTube!

Blast from the past: On academic bad manners

Way back in 2003.

Blast from the past: Should philosophers referee papers for free for for-profit journal publishers?

A lively discussion back in 2009.

The UK is falling apart, an ongoing saga

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 20--AS THE COMMENTS SADLY CONFIRM, THE SITUATION IS INDEED GRIM

I guess this is the legacy of Tory rule:

Countless harrowing incidents have called attention to the ambulance problem in Britain, including that of an elderly man whose family covered him with a tarp as he waited seven hours after falling outdoors, and a 17-year-old soccer player who waited for four hours lying on a rainy field after suffering a neck injury....

Ambulance services across the country, almost all of which are part of the National Health Service and managed by an area’s local health trust, have described a rising number of deaths linked to long waits. One English ambulance service noted that the number for its crews had risen from just one in 2020 to at least 37 in 2022.

Curious to hear from UK readers whether this grim picture is accurate.  Waiting hours for emergency help is pretty horrifying.

In Memoriam: Penelope Mackie (1953-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 15-UPDATED WITH BIRTH YEAR 

A well-known contributor to metaphysics, Professor Mackie spent most of her career at the University of Nottingham, where she was Associate Professor/Reader in Philosophy.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear. 

(My thanks to David Mackie for supplying the birth year.)

JHP Book Prize for 2022

Professor Jean-Luc Solère, book review editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, has shared the following:

The winner of the 2022 Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize for the best book written in history of philosophy in 2021 is: Arthur Ripstein (University of Toronto) for his Kant and the Law of War (Oxford University Press, 2021).

An Honorable Mention goes to Mara van der Lugt (University of St Andrews) for her Dark Matters: Pessimism and the Problem of Suffering (Princeton University Press, 2021).

 

A. Philip Randolph, a documentary

A propos last week's post:  I happened upon this very good documentary about Randolph, which taught me several things I did not know (including that Randolph, unlike Du Bois, opposed WWI--pretty embarrassing for Du Bois!):

 

Philosophy is a low-citation field

Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel looks at citation patterns across various disciplines, which confirms what casual observation would suggest:   philosophy is not a high-citation field.   As Professor Schwitzgebel notes:

Philosophy ranks 126th of the 131 subfields [by one measure of citations].  The 25th-most-cited researcher in philosophy, Alva Noe, has 3,600 citations in the Scopus database.  In the top field, developmental biology, the 25th-most-cited researcher has 142,418 citations -- a ratio of almost 40:1.  Even the 100th-most-cited researcher in developmental biology has more than five times as many citations as the single most cited philosopher in the database.

Capitalism (more precisely, the neoliberal version that currently reigns) has destroyed the humanities, and we should not pretend otherwise

A propos this, a telling observation from a longtime reader:

Remember how our generation was the “What are you going to do with that?” era, if anyone ventured to say that their major was in the humanities? Hardly anyone is now tempted by the humanities since the message that economic life in America is fundamentally precarious has been one of the few messages about reality that has been successfully imparted to young people.

Economic life in America is, in fact, precarious, so the students have gotten the correct message.  Add to that the huge cost of higher education, and it shouldn't be surprising that 1 in 4 undergraduates at the University of Chicago major in economics!  I suspect the numbers are even more skewed away from the humanities at other schools.  

UPDATE:  Some amusing observations from another longtime reader, S. Wallerstein:

Blast from the past: Farewell to the Eastern APA, Hello to Skype!

Back in 2010.  This one came to pass:  the Eastern APA no longer meets between Xmas and New Year, and it is no longer the locus of most initial job interviews, having been overtaken by Skype and then Zoom, as well as an increasing number of searches that move straight to campus visits based on the file.

Beauty is essential to the good life

Philosopher Nick Riggle comments.

Blast from the past: Regulating speech on campus

Back in 2015, but the law hasn't changed.

The point of education according to Democrats in America

On Twitter, the Secretary of Education in the Biden Administration wrote this:

Every student should have access to an education that aligns with industry demands and evolves to meet the demands of tomorrow’s global workforce.

Remember that this is a Democrat speaking, thus confirming, once again, that the Democrats are simply the party of the prudent (rather than insane) wing of the ruling class in America.   Humboldt where are you when we need you?  Not in the Biden Administration obviously!

"Alf Ross's Critique of American Legal Realism--and a Naturalistic Critique of Ross."

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 7--REVISED (AND IMPROVED!) PAPER NOW POSTED

This draft paper (which benefitted greatly from comments at the University of York conference on legal realism in October) may interest some readers; the abstract:

The new edition (by Jakob Holtermann and Uta Bindreiter) of Alf Ross’s seminal work ON LAW AND JUSTICE presents an opportunity to reevaluate Ross’s contribution to a naturalistic jurisprudence, as well as the relation of Scandinavian to American Legal Realism. I show that Ross rejects both of the main forms of American Legal Realism (Frank’s “idiosyncrasy” wing, and Llewellyn’s “sociological” wing), thus confirming, as I have argued previously, that Scandinavian and American Legal Realism have almost nothing in common. I also argue, however, that Ross’s commitment to (1) verificationism, and (2) the “Kelsenian dogma” that laws are directives to judges, creates serious problems for his naturalistic theory of law, ones that H.L.A. Hart’s theory (even allowing for Hart’s mistakes about Ross’s view) can avoid while still satisfying the generic naturalistic demand not to invoke entities or explanations inconsistent with the empirical sciences.

Richard Marshall interviews Thomas Hobbes...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Herbert Morris (1928-2022)

A longtime member of the UCLA faculty, Professor Morris made major contributions to philosophy of criminal law and moral psychology.  The UCLA memorial notice is here.   Comments are open for remembrances from colleagues and readers of his work.

(Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.)

In Memoriam: Dieter Henrich (1927-2022)

Professor Henrich, a preeminent German scholar of Kant and German Idealism, has died.  Even in the Anglophone world, his work was influential.  There is a brief notice in German here.  I will add links to other memorial notices that will no doubt appear.

(Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  A longer memorial notice, also in German.  I'm also opening comments for remembrances from those who knew Professor Henrich or who would like to comment on his philosophical contributions.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: The Frost, "Stand in the Shadows," 1969

ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 5, 2018

Part of the late 1960s Michigan rock 'n' roll scene (that also gave us Grand Funk, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, the Stooges, the MC5, and the Bob Seger System), The Frost never found as much national success as the others with their mix of "garage rock" and psychedelic themes, as on this great early number:

 

If you follow me on Twitter, please also follow me on Mastodon

That account is here.   Currently all Twitter content appears there as well, but given the way Twitter is going, I may soon post only at Mastodon (including, of course, links to the blog).

Amusingly, Twitter is now blocking any attempt to link to Mastodon accounts, a pretty clear sign that they're worried about the exodus.

 

Blast from the past: Best post-1945 Anglophone philosophers of art

Back in 2016, with a reader discussion.

A. Philip Randolph's speech at the March on Washington for "Jobs and Freedom" in 1963

MLK's speech is better-known, but I happened upon this recording (below) of the march's organizer, the great labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph.  He really had a majestic speaking voice.   And while de jure racism has been defeated by his efforts, and King's, and many others, the economic issues remain little changed:

 

Harvard's new President

"Diversity" is the theme of most of the coverage, since President Gay is black.  She is also a child of immigrants from Haiti (recall); her father was an engineer; she graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, the elite prep school, and Stanford University, earning her Ph.D. at Harvard.  What really struck me, and would concern me were I a faculty member at Harvard, was this:

“The idea of the ivory tower, that is the past, not the future, of academia,” she said. “We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it, and that means that Harvard has a duty to lean in and engage and be in service to the world.”

Harvard certainly has played a major role in sustaining class hierarchy in America, although that is perhaps not what she means.  But universities have no "dut[ies] to lean in and engage and be in service to the world":  they have duties to produce knowledge and share it with students.  That is their only service, their raison d'etre.   I conclude with an anecdote I've shared before: 

Production problems at Oxford University Press

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--COMMENTS ARE WORTH READING; FORTUNATELY, SOME AUTHORS HAVE HAD GOOD EXPERIENCES; AN OUP EDITOR ALSO WEIGHS IN; DO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN OUP (UK) AND OUP (NY) WHEN RECOUNTING YOUR EXPERIENCES

I've been hearing from philosophy colleagues at various places over the last couple of months about serious problems with the production process at OUP:   endless delays; sloppy copy-editing; in one case, failure to send marketing copies to journals for review, and so on.    Lots of enterprises were under financial pressure during the pandemic, and I've heard, but don't know details, that there was a lot of "restructuring" at OUP.   I'm opening comments for reports from readers about problems (including readers in disciplines outside philosophy), or insights any folks may have into what's going on.  (For what it's worth, the copy-editing on my Moral Psychology with Nietzsche [OUP-UK, 2019] was excellent, but that of course was before the pandemic.)

Blast from the past: "The duty of harsh criticism"

Back in 2014 (actually 1914!).

In Memoriam: Gary Iseminger (1937-2022)

Professor Iseminger, a longtime faculty member at Carleton College (where he taught from 1962 until 2004, when he became emeritus), was best-known for his contributions to aesthetics.  The Carleton memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Daniel Groll for the pointer.)

Boston University School of Public Health suspending its Twitter accounts

They give a thoughtful explanation for why they are doing so here.  Curious to hear from readers about what they are thinking about Twitter, now that the absurd and venal Elon Musk is at the helm.  To be clear, if someone wants to defend the rectitude and moral character of Mr. Musk, please take that to Twitter.  This is for readers who find Musk an appalling personage with a venal political agenda:   how does that affect your thinking about the use of Twitter?   Do take a look at the BUSPH statement before commenting please.

(Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)

2023 Colorado summer school in philosophy

Philosopher David Boonin (Colorado/Boulder) writes:

Over the last several years, you’ve helped me publicize the Colorado Summer Seminar in Philosophy by posting a notice about it on your blog when I’m ready to start receiving applications. I’ve now finalized the topic for this coming summer: “Norms and Values." And I’m ready to start accepting applications. The link to the site containing all the information is here:

https://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/events/summer-seminar

I've heard good reports over the years about this program, so undergraduates may want to take a look!

Ideological delusion watch: NY Times thinks "anticapitalism" is coming to American business schools...

...because some are adding "anti-racism" and "socially conscious" investing blather to their curricula, without noticing that both are currently profitable.  When they cease to be, they will also cease.

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

The FTX/crypto fiasco

For those wondering what exactly Sam Bankman-Fried did wrong, the civil complaint  released today is pretty informative.  (Of course, the allegations  will have to be proved, but it at least explains clearly the alleged wrongdoing.)

UPDATE:  The risk of posting on the run is that things get mixed up.  As David Wallace pointed out to me, I did not post the criminal indictment yesterday (as I originally wrote), but rather the civil complaint, which is highly informative.  Here is the indictment as well.  Note that it charges criminal conspiracy with others "known and unknown" which makes it seem likely more criminal indictments will be coming.

A fake "Philosophical Readings" journal with a fake editorial board

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 10--JUST IN CASE ANYONE MISSED IT

Steven Nadler (Wisconsin) alerted me to this fake Philosophical Readings journal with an editorial board basically cribbed from Journal of the History of Philosophy's book review advisory committee; it appears none of these philosophers agreed to be on the editorial board for the imposter Philosophical Readings.  If your name has been fraudulently appropriated, either by this fake journal or any other one, contact the legal counsel office at your university.

There is an actual Philosophical Readings journal here, edited by Marco Sgarbi at Ca Foscari in Venice.  (Unfortunately, the real journal has an "unsecure" URL, which some browsers will not access.  It would be in that journal's interest to be more easily accessible!)

Price-fixing in rental markets in the U.S.?

A philosophy graduate student calls my attention to this expose, and to the fact that at least one law firm is investigating legal remedies.  Obviously rental markets are hugely important to PhD students.  I invite comments from readers more knowledgeable about these matters.

A 1959 interview with Simone de Beauvoir...

...about existentialism, feminism, and related topics.  I haven't watched it all, just short segments, but it seems pretty interesting:

 

Blast from the past: "Who is Sam Duncan, and why does he think I stole his milk money?"

An amusing item from 2019, which also touches on a recurring confusion about free speech.

In Memoriam: Donald W. Crawford (1938-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 25--UPDATED BELOW

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was emeritus, and before that at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Professor Crawford was well-known for his work in aesthetics and the history of aesthetics.  He also served as editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

(Thanks to Noel Carroll for the information.)

Professor Crawford's former colleague Elliott Sober (Wisconsin) and former PhD student Yuriko Saito (Emerita, Rhode Island School of Design) kindly shared this memorial notice they prepared (below the fold):

Professor Hay is apparently unrepentant for her misconduct

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 14, 2022--IT'S NOW BEEN MORE THAN A MONTH, AND THE FALSE TWEET IS STILL THERE, AND NO APOLOGY HAS BEEN ISSUED

So ten days have passed since philosopher Carol Hay decided to humiliate Professor Byrne on Twitter based on a misrepresentation, and although she has resumed tweeting, the original tweet remains, without any acknowledgment that it is false and without any apology, which is all the more remarkable given that she learned of her misinterpretation at the Q&A on November 4.   The only conclusion I can draw is that Professor Hay views her behavior as professionally appropriate.  Conference organizers take note.   

Meanwhile, other dishonest philosophers have also been coming to her defense on Twitter, despite first-hand reports from people who were actually at the talk confirming what we all now know about its actual content.

"Cathod Ray Zone," a webzine of arts and letters

Here (a propos this).

Leslie Green's remarks on the occasion of the memorial for his teacher, Joseph Raz

Here.  When Raz retired from his Personal Chair at Oxford it was turned into a Statutory Chair, and the first holder was Leslie Green.

Larry Temkin takes on "Effective [sic] Altruism"

I learned of this new book only recently, but it sounds quite interesting.

The economic background of faculty

A propos last week's post, Nature also ran an article on the socioeconomic background of current faculty, which found that,

faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction.

That certainly helps explain the triumph of "race" and "gender" as topics in recent philosophy, including at elite departments, while Marxism and the Marxist tradition languishes in obscurity at most of those same places.  But it also explains the so-called "racial disparity," which, like so much else, is really a class disparity.

(Thanks to Boris Dagaev for the pointer.)

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Sam "Lightin'" Hopkins, "Baby Please Don't Go," some time in the early 1960s

ORIGINALLY POSTED OCTOBER 14, 2017

Following up on last week's Elmore James post, here's another one of the handful of African-American blues musicians responsible for the best of classic rock 'n' roll (he taught an awful lot of them how to play by example); the precise year is uncertain (if anyone knows, e-mail me), but I'm guessing early 1960s:

 

UPDATE:  This link says this video is from 1964.  (Thanks to Alan White for the pointer.)

 

Blast from the past: In praise of terminal M.A. programs

Back in 2015, and it led to a "lively" discussion!   The only point I'd make differently is that often administrators want their departments to offer the PhD (regardless of what the faculty want), even when the program would be more competitive as a terminal MA program (a point philosopher Douglas Portmore makes, correctly, in the comments).

The "diversity" mafia is insatiable

Three "diverse" scholars explain in Nature that at the current rate at which universities hire "diverse" candidates, "racial parity" (with the population at large) will not be achieved, therefore universities need to hire 3.5 times as many "diverse" candidates.  This would, of course, require a massive increase in discrimination against non-diverse candidates (beyond what already occurs, which as everyone knows is substantial), but that does not figure in the relevant conception of "equity."   No explanation is given for why "racial parity" is the desideratum,* and of course there is no discussion of the class dynamics that are central to any serious explanation for the existing racial disparity in higher education.   "Racial parity" is already an illegal criterion in hiring, and "diversity" will be unlawful within the year.  What will the insatiable proponents of "diversity" do then?  This is going to get ugly, I fear.

*One line of text asserts that, "Decades of work across policy and the social sciences have established the normative importance and empirical benefits of demographic parity in higher education."  The footnote has a couple of citations.  Authors who make claims like this are clearly counting on the fact that most readers do not actually examine the literature, which establishes nothing of the kind, and which certainly does not make the case for "racial parity."

The EU continues policing Google

They will now require Google to remove inaccurate information from search results.  Google will not go out of business as a result, although opponents of such moves always invoke doomsday scenarios to scare off meaningful regulation in the U.S.

APA announces Fall 2022 prizes

Here.  Among the more notable ones:  the "Article Prize" to Sarah Moss (Michigan); the Barwise Prize to John Etchemendy (Stanford); the Romanell Lectures to be given by Stephen Stich (Rutgers); and the Fred Berger Memorial Prize to John Oberdiek (Rutgers).

In Memoriam: Zenon Pylyshyn (1937-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 6

A leading figure in cognitive science, whose work was quite important in philosophy as well, Professor Pylyshyn taught for many years at the University of Western Ontaro, before joining Rutgers psychology in 1991, which (with Jerry Fodor and Stephen Stich, among others, in philosophy) had become a powerhouse in cognitive science.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.  Remembrances from those who knew Professor Pylyshyn, or comments on the philosophical significance of his work, are welcome in the comments.

UPDATE:   The Globe and Mail obituary.