Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

In Memoriam: Benjamin Ross Tilghman (1927-2023)

Professor Tilghman spent much of his career at Kansas State University, where he also served as Chair for thirteen years and is credited with developing KSU's strong research reputation.   He wrote widely on Wittgenstein and aesthetics, among other topics.  The KSU memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to James Hamilton for the pointer.)

One philosopher is not worried about ChatGBT

Philosopher Larry Shapiro (Wisconsin) writes in the Washington Post:

Here’s what I plan to do about chatbots in my classes: pretty much nothing. Let me say first that as much as I value the substance of what I teach, realistically my students will not spend more than a semester thinking about it. It’s unlikely that Goldman Sachs or Leakey’s Plumbing or wherever my students end up will expect their employees to have a solid background in philosophy of mind. Far more likely is that the employees will be required to write a letter or an analysis or a white paper, and to do this they will need to know how to write effectively in the first place. This is the skill that I most hope to cultivate in my students, and I spend a lot of time reading their essays and providing them with comments that really do lead to improvements on subsequent assignments. In-class exams — the ChatGPT-induced alternative to writing assignments — are worthless when it comes to learning how to write, because no professor expects to see polished prose in such time-limited contexts....

But what about the cheaters, the students who let a chatbot do their writing for them? I say, who cares? In my normal class of about 28 students, I encounter one every few semesters whom I suspect of plagiarism. Let’s now say that the temptation to use chatbots for nefarious ends increases the number of cheaters to an (unrealistic) 20 percent. It makes no sense to me that I should deprive 22 students who can richly benefit from having to write papers only to prevent the other six from cheating (some of whom might have cheated even without the help of a chatbot).

Professor Shapiro makes an important point.  It's of course galling to grade "fake papers" produced by AI, but most of our students still need our feedback on their writing.  I imagine lots of readers would benefit from hearing how other faculty are thinking about this. 

Carpenter from NUS to Boston University

Amber Carpenter (ancient Greek and Indian philosophy), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale/National University of Singapore College, has accepted a Chair in "Classical Greek Studies" at Boston University, starting this fall.

U.N. chief is worried too

A propos our recent thread, the head of the U.N. is worried too:

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned nations Monday that he fears the likelihood of further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict means the world is heading towards a "wider war"....

 

Top of the list [of threats] was Russia's war in Ukraine, which is approaching its one-year anniversary.

 

"The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing," he said.

 

"I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open."

Inviting waitlisted prospective graduate students to visit?

A philosopher elsewhere writes:

Does it ever make sense for a department to invite waitlisted prospective graduate students to visit?

I am aware of a department that invites all accepted and waitlisted students to visit, offering to pay for the accepted students' travel but not for the waitlisted students'. On the one hand, this gives the waitlisted students an opportunity to make a more informed decision, which can benefit both the student and the department. On the other hand, it risks a host of logistical complications and social tensions during the visits (both because waitlisted students might feel awkward being around accepted students and vice versa, and because the waitlisted students may feel the need to perform—or worse, compete—in hopes of improving their standing), and it may even make waitlisted students feel that their best chance at admission is to visit, even if doing so is financially perilous.

I know of other disciplines that invite waitlisted students, but they pay for them to visit.   Inviting waitlisted students to admission events without paying for them is perverse and exploitative in the way my correspondent worries.  Comments are open:  please use a real email (which will not appear), and in your comment indicate your position in the academy (e.g., philosophy professor, graduate student, professor in phyics, etc.).

How does ChatGPT work?

A computer science professor at the U.S. Naval Academy explains.  (The core explanation starts around 7:30, although there is interesting stuff before that, including that ChatGBT can write simple computer programs!)

(Thanks to Joe Hatfield for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: The importance of doing unfavorable tenure reviews

Back in 2012, with reader discussion.

JHP article prize for 2022

Philosopher Deborah Boyle, editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, writes:

The Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded the prize for the best article published in the journal in 2022 to Karolina Hübner’s “Representation and Mind-Body Identity in Spinoza’s Philosophy” (JHP 60.1 [January 2022]: 47–77). The prize comes with an award of $1500. The article can be read here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/846364

Trump, the Mafia Don, redux

Philosopher Steve Sverdlik calls to my attention this review of a new book, which confirms my original diagnosis:

“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Mr. Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”

"Western philosophy" and "Eastern philosophy"

A philosopher at a liberal arts college writes:

I’m writing to suggest a topic for a possible blog discussion that may be of potential interest to your readers. 

At my college I have proposed the creation of a new 100-level course entitled Ancient Wisdom: East & West, whose course description reads:

"An introductory exploration of ancient classics of Western and Eastern Philosophy. Topics to be explored include accounts of personhood and the self, definitions of happiness, the nature of right and wrong, and the place of humanity within the larger universe. Readings will be drawn from Greek sources such as Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Stoics; Indian sources such as the Upanishads, Vedanta, and the Buddha; and Chinese sources such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism."

My proposal got rejected in its current form by my school’s Curriculum Committee. In describing their objections, they wrote,

Kripke memorial conference at CUNY Graduate Center in May

Details and information here.

Great moments in (extremely) obscure rock 'n' roll: Creepy John Thomas, "Gut Runs Great Stone," 1969

Following up last week's discovery, I've been listening to his first album, which has many good tunes. This is the lead number:

 

The latest escalation of the war in Ukraine

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JANUARY 31--A LIVELY, AND GENERALLY QUITE INTERESTING DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS, AS BEFORE

Provision of tanks to Ukraine in the West's proxy war against Russia is another dangerous escalation of the conflict.  We haven't discussed the Ukraine situation, and the risk of nuclear conflict, in awhile, and reader Brendan Moran suggested another discussion might be illuminating.  So what do readers make of these developments?  Do they bring us closer to nuclear conflict?  Will they "help" end the conflict or prolong it?

Raz memorial service at Balliol, Oxford...

...is now available online.

Why British university faculty are striking

A pretty grim state of affairs.  What the author does not note is that the so-called "marketisation" of higher education in the UK was actually the worst of both worlds:  universities continue to be under the control of state bureaucrats, and can't charge "market" prices," only state-set prices.  The state can then justify spending less on universities, while still meddling in every aspect of university life.

Comments are open for reactions to this piece, especially from UK faculty.

(Thanks to Paolo Sandro on twitter for calling this to my attention.)

"Endings," professional and personal

Philosopher Daniel Kaufman comments, and it's a very interesting read.

A documentary about "free will"

The trailer:

Among those I recognized were the philosophers Daniel Dennett, Robert Kane,and Gregg Caruso, as well as the physicist Sean Carroll and biologist Jerry Coyne.  Oddly, the trailer features Dennett saying, incorrectly, that we have had the problem of free will since the Prescoratics.  But our concept of free will comes much later, and dates from the Stoics, not the Presocratics, as Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede have shown (although they have some disagreements about which Stoics).

 

Blast from the past: when Jordan Peterson threatened to sue philosopher Kate Manne....

...back in 2018 (with a guest appearance by the dishonest weasel Jonathan Ichikawa).

Richard Marshall interviews Ludwig Büchner...

...at 3:16 AM.  Büchner was something like the Richard Dawkins of his day, a proseltyzer, not for Darwin, but for physiology and materialism.  His Kraft und Stoff was the best-selling book in Europe in the second half of the 19th-century after the Bible.  A young Einstein reportedly read it and was inspired by it.  Büchner is also the "old doctor" Nietzsche derides in Beyond Good and Evil, although as usual with Nietzsche it was a matter of the narcissism of small differences:   Nietzsche was deeply influenced by the German materialists, but rejected wholly their eliminativism about psychological phenomena.

Charlie Kirk "solves" the Euthyphro dilemma

It's not fair to idiots to observe that Mr. Kirk is one, but this video certainly drives it home:

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)