Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Trouble for ethical vegans and vegetarians

Plants "cry" (and animals hear them!).

(Thanks to Joshua Selby for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: Descartes and Teresa of Avila

Back in 2017, with expert reader discussion of the relationship.

Bidadanure from Stanford to NYU

Juliana Bidadanure (political philosophy), Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University,  has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) at New York University, effective this fall.

Maley, Robins from Kansas to Purdue

Corey J. Maley (philosophy of computation, cognitive science, and neuroscience) and Sarah Robins (philosophy of mind and cognitive science), both Associate Professors of Philosophy at the University of Kansas, have accepted appointment as Associate Professors of Philosophy at Purdue University.  A good set of appointments for Purdue, which should help propel the department into the U.S. top 50.

Blast from the past: A conversation about guns

Back in 2012, still relevant of course given that America is still nuts on this subject.

Enemies of academic freedom watch: Michael Berube edition

Professor Berube is a partner-in-crime with another serial enemy of academic freedom, Jennifer Ruth (we noted awhile back a critical discussion of their terrible [indeed, incompetent] book putatively on academic freedom).   A mutual friend on Facebook alerted me a few days ago to the fact that at a recent talk at Smith College, Professors Berube and Ruth took issue with some comments of mine back in 2009 about calls to fire John Yoo at Berkeley (longer discussion here).  Professor Berube, who teaches English at Penn State, assured his friends that this was "a colossally bad argument by philosopher Brian Leiter."   Do read what I wrote then, which was and is still correct, at least if you're not an enemy of academic freedom.

Here is Professor Berube's contribution to the Dunning-Kruger Effect literature (I intersperse some comments):

[Leiter's] argument is one of those blog-standard and now-ubiquitous conflations of academic freedom and free speech, under which academic freedom covers work that is "implausible, badly argued and morally odious" so long as that work does not involve research misconduct or intellectual dishonesty.

This is itself an absurd conflation of two separate issues:  one concerns what academic freedom protects; the second concerns the grounds on which Berkeley will sanction a faculty member.  Regarding the latter, Berkeley is explicit that it can  sanction a faculty member based on a finding of research misconduct or dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism), as well as a court judgment involving certain kinds of criminal misconduct.  There were no such findings against Yoo:  he engaged in no plagiarism, research misconduct, or legally adjudicated criminal misconduct.  The calls to fire him were calls for Berkeley to adjudicate the question whether he violated any laws, which universities are not equipped to do (thankfully).

"On the impractical gifts of an intellectual life"

An interview with philosopher Zena Hitz.

In Memoriam: Maria Rosa Antognazza (1964-2023)

A longtime member of the philosphy faculty at King's College, London, Professor Antognazza was especially well-known for her work on Leibniz, on epistemology and on philosophy of religion.  The KCL memorial notice is here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Antognazza or who wish to comment on the significance of her work.

Oxford's other "diversity crisis": it helps to be rich to become an academic

A story at The Economist (behind their paywall alas); an excerpt:

Notably, Oxford does not publish data on the socio-economic backgrounds of its permanent academics. But I found, in nearly 30 interviews with fixed-term, permanent and former academics, that those who were not from affluent families found it difficult to withstand the precarity imposed by the academic gig-economy. These pressures seemed to be particularly acute for women and people from ethnic-minority backgrounds.

Casualisation, as this proliferation of insecure contracts has become known, works as a filter favouring the “gentleman academic” – someone who is rich enough to navigate the instability, poor pay and opaque hiring processes for permanent roles. “This is what it used to be in the 18th and 19th century where if you had money then you could have a sort of leisure job,” one academic who grew up in the care system told me. Although she continues to teach at Oxford, she is prioritising a secondary career in order to make ends meet. 

On the "normativity" revolution in philosophy

I was out at Stanford a couple of weeks ago, giving a talk (about ideology) in the philosophy department.  I corresponded a bit afterwards with philosopher Jorah Dannenberg, who had asked me a good question at the workshop.  In the course of our correspondence, he pointed me to his paper on the ubiquity of "normativity" talk in philosophy, and his skepticism about it, which is coming out in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. (UPDATE:  the published version is here.)  Here's a taste:

Many philosophers thinking about morality evidently do believe this recent turn toward talking in terms of ‘normativity’ constitutes real
progress. My aim is to encourage much more skepticism and circumspection concerning whether this is so, particularly as compared to the optimism right now being enforced throughout our profession.

I really do mean enforced. Indeed, I invite you to think in a more “political” register while reading this paper, than you are perhaps accustomed to when reading a piece of contemporary analytic philosophy. For what is ultimately at stake in the question about how we choose to use the term ‘normativity’ is, I think, how power is wielded within our discipline: the complex ways it is exercised and justified, both within and across the various branches and subfields of academic philosophy, as these are now identified and defined. Ideas about ‘normativity’ and its importance or relevance in thinking about morality, when operationalized within the discipline, becomes claims to various forms of intra-disciplinary authority, made on behalf of those studying or debating ‘normativity’. Their work-product, it is supposed, is of great value or import for the rest of us.

The sociology (or politics, if you prefer) of the discipline is, alas, far more relevant to explaining the content of what gets discussed than philosophers like to admit.  I am glad to see Professor Dannenberg calling attention to this in one important context.

Yes, I work with PhD students here

Periodically I get asked, so let me reiterate in public that I work regularly with PhD students here at Chicago (and some elsewhere), mostly in philosophy.  (Indeed, I worked closely with 3 of the 4 Chicago PhDs who got tenure-track jobs this year.)   If you have questions, shoot me an email.

Blast from the past: Another keynote speaker rebuked, this time at the midwest meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers

Back in 2016.  Happily, this kind of stuff has not happened recently to my knowledge.

I do wish certain humanities professors would stop embarrassing the academy with pointlessly inflammatory social media posts

The latest culprit is Steven Shaviro, an English professor at Wayne State, who posted on Facebook his view that it would be better to kill bigoted speakers rather than simply protest them, offering this analogy:

The exemplary historical figure in this regard is Sholem Schwarzbard, who assassinated the anti-Semitic butcher Symon Petliura, rather than trying to shout him down. Remember that Schwarzbard was acquitted by a jury, which found his action justified.

The idiot right (like the site linked above) glossed this bizarre post as Shaviro advocating murder "for those he disagreed with," but as the analogy with Schwarzbard suggests, "disagreement" is not sufficient:  after all, he murdered someone who was a butcher of Jews in Ukraine.  What's slightly nuts about Shaviro's post is analogizing mass murder to the expression of racist views:  speech and action aren't the same, despite the best efforts of many folks to confuse the two.  (Being an English professor, Shaviro throws in "transphobic" views to the list of views that warrant murder!)  Anyone who decides to kill a bigot will not be acquitted.  So Shaviro's post is idiotic and ignorant on many levels.

Blast from the past: The sexual harassment crisis in philosophy, the poll about student disruption of teaching and the sometimes toxic cyber-environment in which these issues are discussed

Back in 2014.   The concluding paragraph of that post was more prescient than I would have liked it to be.  (An earlier version of the post had referred to Rachel MacKinnon as "singularly unhinged," which back then was "controversial," although everything since has confirmed the aptness of the characterization.)

ChatGPT4: still not very good at logic puzzles

Philosopher Ned Hall (Harvard) tried again:  Download Ned Hall GPT4 logic puzzle attempt 3-26-23.  (Earlier try.)

For what it's worth, I gave GPT3 my jurisprudence exam question from last year; the answer was failing, and not even close.

Richard Marshall interviews Jean-Jacques Rousseau...

...at 3:16 AM.

"Using AI to fight crime"

Philosopher David Boonin (Colorado) discusses at Brain in a Vat.

Massive protests in Tel-Aviv and elsewhere in Israel

Live updates here.  Comments are open for readers with more information about what's going on.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Atomic Rooster, "Devil's Answer," 1971

British hard/progressive rock band of the early 1970s, this tune was a hit in the U.K., but never made it in the U.S.:

 

Blast from the past: the 20 most important philosophers of all time

Results of a poll back in 2009, along with reader comments. 

Noam Chomsky talks about the history and philosophy of linguistics...

...at Robinson's Podcast.

On the situation at Bowling Green

I try not to comment on internal departmental matters, unless there is substantial information in the public sphere (or I have substantial information that I have permission to share).  Thus, while I have noted some developments at Bowling Green, I have not weighed in on the merits, because there simply is not enough public information for doing so.  Alas, this has not stopped others, for example, here and here.  These accounts both adopt the perspective of Professor Christian Coons, whose job is on the line at Bowling Green.  His perspective may, in fact, be wholly correct, I simply do not know (it wins support from other public comments on social media by former faculty [Molly Gardner] and graduate students [David Faraci]).  What gives me pause is the following information that is also in the public record:

Q(uirky) S(illiness) philosophy rankings for 2023 are here

As usual, the primary explanation for the results is the geographical distribution of the respondents (which they won't disclose), and it would seem this year, the areas of respondents (formal philosophers/philosophers of science were probably over-represented--although, again, there is no disclosure).  QS is a dubious operation, as I've noted before, and it really is a shame that this stuff is probably influencing student decisions.

Stanford Law Dean issues detailed statement regarding the disruption of a talk by a federal judge...

...and it's a model for administrators dealing with student disruptions and free expression issues on campus.

Sober wins PhilInBioMed Award from the University of Bordeaux

Dr. Thomas Pradeu (Boredeaux) writes:

The PhilInBioMed Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the advancement of biology or medicine through the use of philosophical and theoretical tools. To complement this recognition, the laureate receives a prize of €5,000, which is awarded by the PhilInBioMed Institute in Bordeaux, France. 

We are pleased to announce that the first laureate of the PhilInBioMed Award is Elliott Sober, who is the Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. 

The ceremony will be held at the University of Bordeaux, France on June 12^th, 2023.  

Issues with the Marie-Curie postdoc from the European Commission?

A young philosopher elsewhere writes:

I was awarded a (Global) Marie-Curie Postdoctoral fellowship by the European Commission. ("Global" here means that there is an outgoing phase - of two years - outside the EU and then a return phase inside the EU.) The participation of UK institutions in the program was contingent on the UK signing an agreement with the European Commission. They failed to do so in time (and as far as I know, they still haven't signed it.) As part of a contingency plan, UK Research and Development took over the funding of all the fellowships which had been awarded to researchers whose host institutions were in the UK. As my host institution in the EU is based in the UK, UKRI is funding my project. I have met/I am meeting a variety of challenges.

I would think that other philosophers who have been awarded the same fellowship have their host institution in the UK. I would be interested in hearing from your readers about this. Do they know about someone who is in the same situation/are they in the same situation? I would also be interested in knowing what kind of challenges they have had/have to meet.

Comments are open.  Readers may post anonymously, but please use a real email, which will not appear.

What is it like to be a philosopher? Gregg Caruso edition

Here.

Blast from the past: the surprising positives/negatives about becoming a professional philosopher

Back in 2015, with many comments from readers.

Paul Woodruff discusses philosophy and war...

...at Robinson's Podcast.  Professor Woodruff, now emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught for nearly fifty years, served in the army in Vietnam.

Philosopher Ann Cudd as Provost at Pitt

As recently noted, she will soon become President of Portland State University.  At Pittsburgh, she had a rough run.  A reader at Pittsburgh also flagged the following for me:

Ann Cudd, philosopher, University of Pittsburgh provost, and soon-to-be president of Portland State University, responded publicly today to demands to cancel campus events featuring controversial speakers. The decision, for now, is the right one, and Provost Cudd seems to grasp the correct rationale for it. But the statement quickly veers into a familiar sort of DEI homily. Provost Cudd openly advertises her political views and implies that the university itself condemns the speech in question (at one point suggesting it represents a "misunderstanding"). The statement culminates in the following fervent pronouncement:

“One fact is unshakable and unchangeable: Before, during, and after these events, our touchstones—the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion—will continue to not only persist and sustain us but will gain even more strength."

Now Pitt's mission statement doesn't so much as mention these so-called touchstones. That aside, I was struck by the religious quality of the statement. I did time at a conservative, religious-affiliated university. To my ear, the grandiose, moralizing tone is unmistakable. I hope that Provost Cudd, and whoever follows her at Pitt, will continue to uphold free expression on campus. This kind of official sermonizing, which in effect raises the stakes for students who oppose the DEI line, does not inspire confidence. 

Santana from Utah to Penn

Carlos Santana (philosophy of science [esp. biology, cognitive science, and linguistics], environmental philosophy), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah, has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania (where he did his PhD), effective this fall.   He will join Michael Weisberg and Quayshawn Spencer at Penn, making for one of the strongest philosophy of biology groups in the U.S.

More on the case of Professor Wax at Penn...

...at my law school blog.

20 years ago, the U.S. launched the criminal war of aggression against Iraq...

...and its perpetrators are still free, having never been punished.   Here's what I wrote about the whole insanity back in 2004:

Less than nine months after fundamentalist religious zealots inflicted mass casualties on the civilian population of the United States, and only about six months after the U.S. toppled the regime that harbored them, a country of no consequence or relevance to the safety of the United States--a country hated by the fundamentalist religious zealots for its secular ideology and its Western treatment of women, a country with a devastated economy and crippled military, a country that the U.S. and Britain regularly bombed (since it didn't even have sovereign control over all its own terriroty), a nation half of whose population were children, a country which the US outspent on military might 400 to 1--this country was suddenly declared the most pressing threat to the U.S. and world peace.

Less than nine months after fundamentalist religious zealots inflicted mass casualties on the civilian population of the United States, and only about six months after the U.S. toppled the regime that harbored them, a country of no consequence or relevance to the safety of the United States--a country hated by the fundamentalist religious zealots for its secular ideology and its Western treatment of women, a country with a devastated economy and crippled military, a country that the U.S. and Britain regularly bombed (since it didn't even have sovereign control over all its own terriroty), a nation half of whose population were children, a country which the US outspent on military might 400 to 1--this country was suddenly declared the most pressing threat to the U.S. and world peace.

Canary in the coal mine: threats against federal judges on the rise...

...as judges seek to scrub personal information from the Internet.

Richard Marshall interviews Hermann Cohen (the NeoKantian)...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Fred F. Wilson (1937-2023)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 15--SOME REALLY INTERESTING REMEMBRANCES OF PROF. WILSON

Professor Wilson, a longtime member of the philosophy faculty at the University of Toronto (where he was emeritus), died in January.  He wrote widely on issues in the history of modern philosophy and science.  The Toronto memorial notice is here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Wilson or who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Will Sweet for the pointer.)

BJHP "Best Article" prize for 2022

Alix Cohen, co-editor of the British Journal of the History of Philosophy, shared this announcement [link to Prof. Kremer fixed, I had copied and pasted what was sent]:

The British Journal for the History of Philosophy has awarded the 2022 Rogers Prize—its annual prize for the best article it publishes—to Michael Kremer (University of Chicago) for his paper “Margaret MacDonald and Gilbert Ryle: a philosophical friendship”

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll: Savoy Brown, "Leavin' Again," 1970

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 17, 2016

Part of the British blues explosion of the late 1960s, Savoy Brown enjoyed some modest success in both the UK and the US circa 1969-1972, before three members of the band (Dave Peverett, Roger Earl, and Tony Stevens) left and went on to greater fame and fortune in the mid-1970s with Foghat.  This tune was re-recorded by Foghat, but this is the Savoy Brown version.

 

 

"Woke" explained

A very perceptive essay by Freddie deBoer, a man of the actual left:

“Woke” or “wokeness” refers to a school of social and cultural liberalism that has become the dominant discourse in left-of-center spaces in American intellectual life. It reflects trends and fashions that emerged over time from left activist and academic spaces and became mainstream, indeed hegemonic, among American progressives in the 2010s. “Wokeness” centers “the personal is political” at the heart of all politics and treats political action as inherently a matter of personal moral hygiene - woke isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. Correspondingly all of politics can be decomposed down to the right thoughts and right utterances of enlightened people. Persuasion and compromise are contrary to this vision of moral hygiene and thus are deprecated. Correct thoughts are enforced through a system of mutual surveillance, one which takes advantage of the affordances of internet technology to surveil and then punish. Since politics is not a matter of arriving at the least-bad alternative through an adversarial process but rather a matter of understanding and inhabiting an elevated moral station, there are no crises of conscience or necessary evils.

Philosopher Dirk Baltzy on Stoicism...

...at rhizastance.

Philosopher David Enoch (Hebrew U) arrested during protests against the government's attack on the judiciary

Photo and details here (in Hebrew, but the "translate" function gives you a pretty good sense for what transpired).  Professor Enoch went to jail on a prior occasion for refusing to be called up as a reservist in protest over Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.

(Thanks to Ori Herstein for the pointer.)

Israel's "constitutional crisis": the "Alon solution"

Alon Harel (Hebrew U) and Alon Klement (Tel-Aviv U) propose a solution:  Download Separating substance from procedure (1) (003)

Reader comments on their proposal are welcome from interested readers.  Signed comments (full name, valid e-mail address) will be strongly preferred.

"Philosophy of Science Office Hour" sponsored by the PSA

This is a nice idea:

[T]he PSA is introducing the ‘PSA Office Hour’ as a pilot project. Each month, for some months of the year, a philosophical theme will be chosen and two influential philosophers working within that theme will be made available, individually, to graduate students via Zoom through online sign-up sheet posted on the PSA member website The students will select from the following categories that which best describes what they seek out of the opportunity:

• Input on dissertation topic choice
• Guidance on a problem occurring in own research
• Clarification on an issue within professor’s research
• Other (please describe)

and be invited to write a short paragraph in which they describe in more detail what they would like to discuss with the professor. Up to 6 students will be selected to participate in the office hour, where the selection will be made to maximize thematic cohesion and promote resource redistribution. Office hours will last up to 90 minutes and participants must be current members of the PSA. This opportunity is primarily for graduate students, but postdocs are free to apply as well.

Do any other philosophy organizations do this?

Blast from the past: how should we respond to "analytic metaphysics"?

Back in 2016.

Libet, free will, and more

Philosophers Julian Baggini, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and others discuss at IAITV.

Noam Chomsky (and colleagues) express skepticism about ChatGPT

Here; an excerpt:

The human mind is not, like ChatGPT and its ilk, a lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching, gorging on hundreds of terabytes of data and extrapolating the most likely conversational response or most probable answer to a scientific question. On the contrary, the human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant system that operates with small amounts of information; it seeks not to infer brute correlations among data points but to create explanations.

"Human Nature Forum"

A new website of videos, projects, and discussion fora (via Edouard Machery).

In Memoriam: Ernst Tugendhat (1930-2023)

Professor Tugendhat was an early and influential proponent of "analytic" style linguistic philosophy in Germany, but also wrote influentially on Husserl and Heidegger.  He taught at a number of German universities during his career, including Heidelberg and the Free University of Berlin. There is an obituary in English here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Tugendhat or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

UPDATE:  A statement of condolences regarding Professor Tugendhat from the German President!  (Thanks to Christian Beyer for the pointer.)

Philosopher Susan Wolf on happiness and the meaning of life...

...at rhizastance.

The war on universities and academic freedom comes to Texas

This Texas Tribune article gives a useful overview of the mischief afoot; here are the three main legislative initiatives:

A bill filed Friday in the Texas Senate would prohibit public colleges and universities from awarding tenure to professors hired after September, legislation that critics have said would make it extremely difficult for the state to recruit top faculty and negatively impact the reputation of its higher education institutions.

The bill, filed by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, is one of three pieces of legislation in Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s list of priorities for higher education this session.

Creighton also filed a bill that would prohibit Texas’ higher education institutions from considering diversity, equity and inclusion when hiring new employees. The third bill, filed by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would prohibit faculty members from teaching that any race, ethnicity, sex or political belief is "inherently superior to another."

Only the second bill would actually promote academic freedom; the fact that it keeps company with the other two bills makes clear that academic freedom and free expression are not the goals at all:  the goal is to suppress perceived "liberalism" in the universities, the First Amendment be damned.