Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Richard Marshall interviews John Locke...

...at 3:16 AM.

"My Dinner with Kanye"

This little cut-and-paste from My Dinner with Andre certainly does a deserving number on the insane Mr. West:

(Thanks to Peter Kail for the pointer.)

Nietzsche on selflessness

Philosopher Guy Elgat comments at IAITV.

"Diversity" madness comes to academic psychology

This is a bizarre story, with this anecdote, in particular, being telling about Professor Roberts, the psychologist from Stanford:

In his paper responding to Hommel and Roberts, [Lee] Jussim employs an analogy, drawn from a quote in Fiddler on the Roof, about a horse and a mule. He writes that mixing science and ideology is like selling someone a mule when what you promised was a horse. Because Roberts’s paper is both scientific and ideological, according to Jussim, it is a rhetorical hybrid — i.e., a mule.

Roberts, who identifies as Black and multiracial, writes in his paper that comparing people of color to mules is a “well-documented racist trope,” though he gives Jussim the “benefit of the doubt” and doesn’t directly assert that Jussim is advancing that view. I spoke with Jussim, who told me he was unaware of that history, and he points out that his paper begins by quoting the well-known musical. “It’s absurd because obviously the origin is Fiddler on the Roof,” Jussim says. “It refers to an idea. It doesn’t refer to people.”

Jussim is obviously correct, and Roberts should apologize to him.

 

 

Nebel from Southern California to Princeton

Jake Nebel (normative ethics), currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, effective January 2023.

"Philosophy in Focus" from OUP: 20th-century philosophy

OUP is making available free many articles (including mine on Williams's alleged debt to Nietzsche, which is how I learned of this).  The contributions range widely, covering Anscombe, Adorno, David Lewis, Frege, and many others.

Blast from the past: the best Western philosophers of all time?

Back in 2017, with reader discussion.

Another triumph for AI

A follower of mine on Twitter shared yet another example of the awe-inspiring intellectual power of the new AI toy:

"What is the value of philosophy"

Excerpts from interviews with a fairly eclectic group of mostly Anglophone philosophers, junior and senior, although clearly skewed towards those working in Mind/Language/Metaphysics/Epistemology (and relatively few value theorists and historians of philosophy) and including some non-philosophers (like Stanley Fish and Steven Pinker); among the contributors are Brian Skyrms, Tyler Burge, Timothy Williamson, Susanna Siegel, Roy Sorensen, Terence Horgan, Tim Maudlin, Frank Jackson, and many others.

 

A substack devoted to "New Work in Philosophy"

It's the creation of philosophers Marcus Arvan and Barry Maguire, and is a forum for philosophers to promote their own work but also for established philosophers to call attention to work of younger and less-established philosophers (who aren't their students or colleagues!).  Note that philosophers can either write up a description of the work or prepare a short video explaining the work.

According to a 2007 study, 41% of Black first-year students at Ivy League universities are immigrants or children of immigrants...

...rather than descendants of slaves.   I would guess the figure is higher now.  This is a clear indication of the extent to which the remedial purposes of affirmative action have been undermined in the era of "diversity," an era that is itself about to end.

Who said it: Adolf Hitler or Kanye West?

This is from 13 years ago (so long before the current grotesque behavior):

 

Martha Nussbaum talks about her new book on "Justice for Animals"...

...in the NYT.

"Flopping" in football (soccer) is wrong!

Philosopher David Papineau explains in the pages of the NYT.

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

Does AI language learning count against the hypothesis of "Universal Grammar"?

This popular piece suggests it does.  I'm curious to hear from experts, so comments are open.

Cambridge philosopher who defends free speech appointed to UK Equality and Human Rights...

...which is apparently controversial:

A Cambridge philosophy professor who caused a row by inviting a gender-critical author to speak at the university has joined the equalities watchdog.

Arif Ahmed was one of two appointments to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, has announced.

The professor at Gonville and Caius College provoked a dispute in October when he invited Helen Joyce to speak. Professor Pippa Rogerson, the college master, said at the time she would not attend the event because she found the Irish journalist’s views “offensive, insulting and hateful”.

Ahmed, 48, has also begun a series of sessions at the college in which he organises debates around the history and importance of freedom of speech....

Some will regard Ahmed’s appointment as controversial because he has campaigned against what critics see as a move among university student unions and faculties to shut down free speech around sensitive issues.

(Thanks to Neil Webb for the pointer.)

AI philosophy "poems"

Philosopher Blake Myers (recall this earlier item) writes:

I was recently testing the new version of GPT-3 that just came out…mainly looking at its ability to capture well-known people’s views, as well as its ability to formulate such views in different styles. So, just for fun, I asked it to write a poem about your views on Derrida, Trump, and Nietzsche. The input I gave is the part at the top , and GPT-3’s output follows. Kind of funny/entertaining, and perhaps not too far off.

Here it is:

Input:

Write a poem about Brian Leiter. Include his views

about Derrida in the first stanza, his views about

Trump in the second stanza, and his views about

Nietzsche in the third stanza.

Blast from the past: Best post-WWII Anglophone scholars of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy

A poll back in 2016, with discussion.  (Only living scholars over the age of 60 were included.)

Visualizations of Philosophical Gourmet Report results

Philosopher Frank Saunders, Jr. (Yonsei University, South Korea) has produced these quite neat "visualizations" of the results of the 2021 PGR.  Thanks to Professor Saunders for this nice work!

Kanye West and Hitler

To the extent I even noticed Mr. West previously, he struck me as a talentless, ignorant buffoon, like many successful purveyors of "popular" music.   His recent forays into anti-semitism and Nazi sympathizing have put this absurd person back into the news.  One of the better commentaries on this grotesque  display comes from John Ganz; an excerpt:

While all these far-right goonies play constant games, equivocate, make bad faith disavowals, or employ euphemisms, Kanye doesn’t have the time, inclination, or ability to do all that. He just says the underlying truth of this kind of politics: he likes the Nazis! Yes, he pretty much said this verbatim, “I like the Nazis.” It was too much even for [Alex] Jones.

Caricatures of philosophers and other intellectuals

John Holbo (NUS) draws them, and they're pretty good!

Online, open access philosophy journals

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED NOV 26-MANY MORE OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS THAN I KNEW ABOUT!  IF YOU CONTRIBUTE, MAKE SURE THE JOURNAL ISN'T ALREADY MENTIONED, AND INCLUDE A URL FOR THE JOURNAL HOMEPAGE (NOT NECESSARY TO FORMAT IT)

Philosophers' Imprint was the first mover here, and has been quite successful; more recently it has been joined by Ergo, another generalist journal.   There are several specialty journals:  I believe Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy was first; there's also Journal of Modern Philosophy, and now Philosophy of Physics.  I imagine I'm forgetting some.  If you know of other online, open access philosophy journals, please post links in the comments.

Philosopher of science Winsberg to take up 4-year British Academy Global Professorship at Cambridge University HPS

Eric Winsberg (philosophy of science, philosophy of climate science, philosophy of physics), Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, will spend the next four years at Cambridge University as a British Academy Global Professor in the HPS program, where he will also accept doctoral students.  There is an announcement here.

"Ideology" conference

I'll be participating in the Social Philosophy & Policy conference on "Ideology" at the University of Arizona starting tomorrow, so there will be less posting until next week.

Richard Marshall interviews Ralph Cudworth (Cambridge)...

...at 3:16 AM.

The "for-profit" hospice industry sounds like bad news

This is a rather depressing report, but it's worth reading fora nyone who is confronting end-of-life decisions for someone.

"Performative woundedness"

A reader just flagged for me an old tweet by smarmy Jonathan Ichikawa, in which he purported to be in search of examples of this phenomenon:

One might have thought he did not have far to look!