Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Kissinger

Here,  here (apt title), and short and sweet from Robert Paul Wolff (also an earlier personal recollection).

Crowdsourced "cancellation insurance"...

...for the "cancel culture" kind.  This appears to be real!

How "open access" turned into a cash cow for publishers

Oy veh!

(Thanks to David Velleman for the pointer.)

Philosophers in The Daily Mail?!?

And not for a social media brouhaha, but for a philosophical book on immortality (by Stephen Cave and John Martin Fischer)!

Speaking of the Wokerati...

...even broken clocks are right twice a day:

It’s become increasingly evident to me that American adolescence and young adulthood — especially for those who wind up at elite schools — now happen within a specific kind of ideological atmosphere.

It centers on a hard-edged ideological framework that has been spreading in high school and college, on social media, in diversity training seminars and in popular culture. The framework doesn’t have a good name yet. It draws on the thinking of intellectuals ranging from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the critical race theorist Derrick Bell. (For a good intellectual history, I recommend Yascha Mounk’s recent book, “The Identity Trap.”)

The common ideas associated with this ideology are by now pretty familiar:

• We shouldn’t emphasize what unites all human beings; we should emphasize what divides us.

• Human relations are power struggles between oppressors and oppressed groups.  [BL:  this of course is true in all human societies to date, which have been class-based societies; what is distinctive of the Wokerati, is that they focus mostly on epiphenomena]

• Human communication is limited. A person in one group can never really understand the experience of someone in another group.

• The goal of rising above bigotry is naïve. Bigotry and racism are permanent and indestructible components of American society.

• Seemingly neutral tenets of society — like free speech, academic freedom, academic integrity and the meritocracy — are tools the powerful use to preserve their power.

There are many teachers and administrators who believe that they best serve society not by being open and curious and searching for the truth but by propagating this ideological framework.

Blast from the past: "Generation Wuss"

Back in 2014, in the early days of the "Great Awokening."

Middle East Center at Penn prevented from showing film sponsored by progressive Jewish student group

More signs of the times.   Penn has been under pressure from rich alumni to suppress speech critical of Israel.  (This is not, strictly, an issue of academic freedom, but free expression.  Only those with a scholarly discipline have academic freedom claims, and student affinity/political groups do not represent a scholarly discipline.)

Those who know Trump best endorse him for President!

Obviously not.   But we are living in America at an odd moment, to put it mildly.  There are only two viable political parties in the U.S.  One of them is so attached to power they will support a psychologically unbalanced, vaguely senile, Mafia Don, no matter what.  This is one of those moments when American federalism--i.e., that the states have powers that the federal government cannot infringe--looks pretty good!  (The Covid catastrophe was another example of the virtues of federalism, where many states instituted public health measures that the maniac party would not support.)  Will federalism and state autonomy survive Trump's reelection?  If the monster-child is restored to the Presidency, then the fate of the country will hinge on that.

"Pragmatist quietism" in metaethics

Philosopher Andrew Sepielli offers a kind of precis of his book on the subject.  He writes:

Morality is objective, but it neither requires nor admits of a foundation. It just kind of floats there, along with the evaluative realm more generally, unsupported by anything else. Parts of it can be explained by other parts, but the entirety of the web or network of good and evil is brute. Maybe you think that’s weird and even worthy of outright dismissal. 

I'm still in the "that's weird and even worthy of outright dismissal" camp, but his very readable essay is worth a look!

 

Blast from the past: Oxford DPhil or American PhD?

A reader discussion back in 2013.

Israel/Gaza links for November 27

This Al Jazeera columnist certainly hates Israel, but his observations are not without substantial elements of truth.

Details are emerging about conditions for the hostages during their captivity by Hamas.

Peter Beinart on "anti-Palestinian" bigotry.

Gender-based violence as a "weapon of war" in the Hamas attack of October 7, from Physicians for Human Rights.

The Israeli woman who wrote the heartbreaking plea for her children held hostage (noted last week) was reunited with her freed children yesterday.

Power-hungry philosophers: a puzzle

From today's Guardian, due to logician Joel Hamkins (Notre Dame).

John Martin Fischer on the latest scientist's foray into free will

Here; an excerpt with a couple of interspersed comments:

The view that causal determinism is true is not new, nor is the view that this entails no free will or moral responsibility, but Sapolsky collates and marshals the evidence (some of it recent and cutting-edge) as it bears on these issues. The cumulative effect of the discussions and Sapolsky’s analyses can be an overwhelming sense that we might be wrong about our very foundational beliefs in free will and moral responsibility, and even our selfhood. He writes, “…put all the scientific results together, from all the relevant scientific disciplines, and there’s no room for free will” (8; emphasis in text) [footnote omitted]....

Surprisingly, in a book about free will, Sapolsky offers no definition of it (or, for that matter, determinism—or even moral responsibility!). He writes, “What is free will? Groan… I’ll do my best to mitigate the drag of this” (14). Although he does not present a full definition proper, it is clear that he holds that free will requires the falsity of determinism—by definition (not as a result of argumentation):  "[To establish free will] [s]how me a neuron being a causeless cause in this total sense. …Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will." (15)

This is problematic in various ways. First, it claims that “being a causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” would be sufficient for a choice/action’s being an instance of free will. This is however surely false; pure randomness is incompatible with the control involved in free will. (In his discussion of quantum indeterminacy, Sapolsky is aware of this.) More plausibly, we should interpret him (here and throughout the book) as contending that, as a matter of definition or “meaning,” indeterminism is a necessary condition of free will. Note that the indeterminism of “causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” is a very strong kind of indeterminism, leaving out the more appealing idea of not being fully determined by antecedent causes. (Sapolsky elides the distinction between causation and deterministic causation and thus does not consider indeterministic causal accounts of free will).

Billionaire anti-semite files frivolous lawsuit against media watchdog that points out the obvious

Story here.  The only question, I suspect, is whether he and the lawyers get sanctioned for filing this lawsuit.  I note that his regular lawyer, Alex Spiro of Quinn Emmanuel, had nothing to do with this lawsuit, probably for a reason!

Harvard Law Review "on-line" pulls article that expressed incorrect views about Israel and Palestine

What an embarrassment.   When one considers all the actual crap published by Harvard and other student-edited law reviews, the idea that this decision has anything to do with the "quality" of the essay, as opposed to its point of view, is beyond absurd.

Blast from the past: What areas are most important for a strong PhD program in philosophy?

Back in 2012, with reader discussion.   A useful data point for sociologists and historians of the Anglophone profession.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll covers: Paul Gilbert, "Great White Buffalo," 2016

Paul Gilbert is probably best-known as the guitarist for the 1990s hard rock band Mr. Big, but this cover comes from a more recent solo album.  His version of the old Ted Nugent/Amboy Dukes song is really quite good, I think (unlike Nugent, one can understand the lyrics in Gilbert's rendering--although I usually prefer not to understand rock lyrics, given the low intellectual level of the genre, to put it politely):

Feel free to add links in the comments to either your favorite Ted Nugent covers, or to your favorite Gilbert or Mr. Big songs/performances.

Dutch Le Pen wins big in election in Netherlands

Pretty wild:  

Anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders won a huge victory in Dutch elections, according to a near complete count of the vote early Thursday, in a stunning lurch to the far right for a nation once famed as a beacon of tolerance.

The result will send shockwaves through Europe, where far-right ideology is on the rise, and puts Wilders in line to lead talks to form the next governing coalition and possibly become the first far-right prime minister of the Netherlands.

With nearly all votes counted, Wilders’ Party for Freedom was forecast to win 37 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, two more than predicted by an exit poll when voting finished Wednesday night and more than double the 17 he won at the last election.

Is "far-right ideology" on the rise in Europe?   Not in Poland, where the far right party (with the Orwellian name "Law and Justice") lost recent elections.  Not in Spain, where the far right "Vox" party saw its support decline significantly in recent elections.  Portugal is still governed by the Socialist Party (and in the last elections, parties of the left, including hte communists, got a majority of the votes), while the far right party, Chega, got only 7% of the vote.  (A corruption scandal in the Socialist Party leadership may affect things in 2024, but at least now, the far right is not on the rise in Portugal.)  Only in Hungary and Italy are parties of the "far right" dominant, although it is true "far right" parties in France and Germany have gained electoral support in recent elections.

Heideger, Carnap, and nothing

Philosophy Graham Priest comments.

Blast from the past: Personal ads of the philosophers

Back in 2006 and 2005, including Kant, Nietzsche, Socrates, Hume. [Hume link fixed.]  Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Colorado summer school in philosophy for 2024

Philosopher David Boonin (Colorado) tells me the topic for 2024 will be "Natural Questions," which will deal with "questions involving the distinction between the natural and the artificial or conventional. Specific issues to be discussed may involve claims about human nature, the state of nature, or natural rights; realism about such subjects as moral principles, political authority, aesthetic judgments, quantum mechanics, mathematical truths, and ordinary material objects; the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of artificial intelligence; and the relationship between mental states and formal models in epistemology. Readings will cover a wide range of philosophical subfields and include both contemporary and historical sources."

There are more details here:   https://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/events/summer-seminar

I've heard good things about these summer seminars over the years, so I encourage undergraduate readers, especially those thinking they might be interested in graduate school, to take a look.

Goldstein from Dianoia/ACU to Hong Kong

Simon Goldstein (philosophy of language, epistemology, AI safety), currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the soon-to-be-disbanded Dianoia Institute at the Australian Catholic University, has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, effective January 2024.

(Thanks to Justin Tiwald for the information.)

In Memoriam: Jeroen Groenendijk (1949-2023)

A longtime member of the faculty at the Univeristy of Amsterdam, where he also did his degrees, Professor Groenenduk was especially well-known for the application of logical methods in the semantics and pragmatics of natural language in works that were of great interest to linguistis and philosophers of language.  The Amsterdam memorial notice is here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Groenendijk, or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

In Memoriam: David Gauthier (1932-2023)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 12--UPDATED

Via his former student Claire Finkelstein on Twitter, I learned that Professor Gauthier died on November 9.   He was emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, whose department he joined in 1980 after more than twenty years at the University of Toronto.  He was well-known for his contributions to political and moral philosophy, and its history (especially Hobbes and Rousseau).   You can learn a bit more about his work here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Gauthier, or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.  Please feel free to submit links in the comments to obituaries and memorial notices as well.

UPDATE:   A memorial notice from the University of Toronto, and another from the University of Pittsburgh.

Khalidi v. Benhabib on the "Philosophers for Palestine" letter

Philosopher Muhammad Ali Khalidi has responded to Seyla Benhabib's response (excerpted here) to the original "Philosophers for Palestine" letter (noted and discussed here).   Professor Khalidi contests certain attributions that Professor Benhabib made about what the letter signatories believe, accusing her of an "intention to mislead" and also a "smear."   I assume Professor Benhabib would argue that she was drawing implications from the positions defended in the letter (e.g., the letter called for a ceasefire, which would benefit Hamas, ergo the letter effectively supports Hamas), but I think Professor Khalidi is right to contest the accuracy of that.

Israel/Gaza links for November 20

Israel's "options" for Gaza after Hamas.  None are particularly realistic, it seems to be, but it seems increasingly clear that emptying Gaza (or most of Gaza) of Palestinians is what the Israeli right wants.  Biden has proposed an international force, to be followed by the Palestinian Authority, which "controls" the West Bank.  The latter will be bitterly opposed by the right-wing fundamentalists in Israel, who fear that will ultimately lead to Palestinian statehood.

Israeli report finds that the Hamas "pillage and murder" raid on October 7 had not planned to attack the music festival (which was only discovered after the raid began), where more than 360 were killed (a higher figure than previously reported), and 40 were kidnapped.

70-year-old grandfather defended his Kibbutz on October 7 for 12 hours with a rifle:  another remarkable story of resilience under extreme circumstances.

Head of mission for Gaza for Doctors without Borders describes the horrific medical and humanitarian situation.  

Some relatives of victims of the October 7 atrocities do not support the attack on Gaza:  “'We are just drowning in our own violence and blood,' Yonatan Zeigen, Silver’s 35-year-old son, told Al Jazeera. 'Israel won’t cure our dead babies by killing more babies.'  Silver was one among several victims known to regularly volunteer to drive sick Palestinians from the Gaza border to hospitals in Israel for treatment."

Philosopher and former Stanford Provost John Etchemendy on how Stanford confronted the Westboro Baptist Church on campus...

...and it didn't require a DEI office.

Great moments in obscure rock 'n' roll covers: Popa Chubby, "What Is and What Should Never Be," 2010

"Popa Chubby" is the stage name of Ted Horowitz, a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx, who has been active since the late 1980s as a rock blues guitarist.  This is his very fine cover of the Led Zeppelin number:

Feel free to add other Popa Chubby favorites in the comments.

Russell from Dianoia/ACU to the ANU

Gillian Russell (logic, philosophy of language & logic), Professor of Philosophy at the soon-to-be disbanded Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University, has accepted appointment as Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, effective July 2024.  Despite the best efforts of the benighted ACU Vice-Chancellor, Australian philosophy will at least retain her presence in their distinguished philosophical community!

"The Politics of Language"

Philosopher Jason Stanley talks about his new book (co-authored with David Beaver) on PBS.

America is not a civilized country, part 492: how is it possible that private individuals can purchase an AR-15?

The Washington Post has shared photos of the aftermath of an AR-15 attack (the weapon of choice in most of the mass shootings in the US); they are not for the faint-hearted.  But they do drive home the indefensible insanity of a country that permits these kinds of weapons to circulate.  No other civilized country on the face of the earth permits this.  How it is possible for a fringe group of fanatics at the NRA and their bought-and-paid-for-representatives in Congress to defy the will of the vast majority for real gun control in an alleged democracy will itself make a remarkable case study in the pathologies of "democracy" and "freedom" for future scholars. 

Israel/Gaza links for November 16

"If Gaza was in your city, how much would be destroyed?"  Some gripping visuals, to drive home the scale of the destruction.

"Does Israel have the [legal] right to defend itself [under international law]?"   An international law scholar brings out the surprising difficulties of the question.

There's more to "massive state violence" than the question of what is lawful.

Support of American citizens for Israel is declining amidst assault on Gaza.  In an actual democracy this might lead to a change in policy!  We'll see...

The latest move in the right-wing war on higher education: the "General Education Act"

The proposed text of this ideologically motivated legislation is here, and some of its, shall we say, "peculiarities" are discussed here.  It probably is constitutional for state legislatures to impose this on public universities in their states, but it would, of course, involve a massive infringement on the academic freedom of faculties to determine course conduct and requirements, but probably not one that the courts will invalidate.  Some of the mandated "general education" courses would increase demand for philosophers (although with hiring invested in a political hack chosen as Dean, this might not mean actual philosophers).  Overall, the whole thing is vaguely Orwellian I fear.

(Thanks to Jeff Roland for the pointer.)

11 philosophers you [general reader, not professional philosopher] probably don't know, but should

For "World Philosophy Day" (whatever that is?), IAITV asked Martha Nussbaum, Cheryl Misak, Peter Adamson, Andrew Bowie and others to "nominate philosophers you probably haven't heard of, but you should know about."  The resulting list is eclectic and idiosyncratic, but includes some fine nominees including Porphyry (early animal rights advocate), Frank Ramsey, Cora Diamond, and Friedrich Schleiermacher (a key figure in Romantic hermeneutics, the scholarly kind that Gadamer sadly displaced).

AFA statement of principles regarding campus protests and faculty and student speech

Here; obviously prompted by Israel/Gaza but the principles are not specific to that case, although they are being abridged because of the current events.

Harvard faculty call on President to actually support free speech and academic freedom...

...even when critical of Israel, and even when it irritates rich alumni.

(Thanks to Aaron Garrett for the pointer.)

"Loved, yet lonely"

Philosopher Kaitlyn Creasy comments.

F.I.R.E. asks U.S. Supreme Court to clarify status of "academic freedom" after Garcetti

Their brief is here.  Garcetti, and its danger for academic freedom, is explained here.   The facts of the current Porter case (in which F.I.R.E. is intervening) are ones that will likely appeal to the conservativeso n the Court, so perhaps academic freedom will emerge on a firmer constitutional footing (especially if the Court agrees with Professor Whittington's view).  But this is risky!

Williamson on logic in everyday life and beyond

This short essay by Timothy Williamson is actually pleasingly clear and introductory, and could be profitably shared with someone who wanted to know "what is logic about and why does it matter"?

Recommendations of math and physics texts for philosophy students wanting to study philosophy of physics

A reader writes (a propos this):  

I wonder whether you could use your platform to ask professional philosophers of physics for a self-study guide to the literature. Long term I would find it wonderful if students and enthusiastic laymen had something similar at hand as Peter Smith’s “Beginning Mathematical Logic: A Study Guide”. Smith has over the years compiled his various thoughts and reviews on logic textbooks resulting in an extremely helpful booklet that details a path from absolute beginner in logic to that of a very competent reader of technically advanced literature. If you could ask your readers for reading suggestions for both maths and physics textbooks, in sum amounting to a semi-detailed reading list, I am sure lots of people would appreciate it! I ask specifically for the opinion of philosophers (especially for the physics books) as lots of physics books often lack conceptual clarity or flatly misrepresent some finer points relevant to the philosophy. Jenann Ismael’s SEP entry for quantum mechanics includes a very helpful short guide and I would hope we could expand on that and gather something similar for other areas of the philosophy of physics.

I am unfortunately not very tech-savvy, so I hope that one of your readers will eventually take the task upon himself to continue this project and migrate it to his own site but I would be very willing to provide feedback over time from the perspective of the average student and his opinion on the didactical merits of some of the books.

A final list (in the far future) ideally would consist of three areas:

One for the mathematics needed (linear algebra, analysis, differential geometry, topology…), one for the physics needed, and one actually consisting of the philosophical literature (various introductions to the philosophy of physics, loci classici, etc.) with each of them ordered in terms of difficulty.

Oxford book symposium on Leslie Green, "The Germ of Justice"

You can watch it here, with remarks by Tom Adams, Julie Dickson, and Nicos Stavropoulos, and replies by Les Green.

Northwestern's Prison Education program to graduate its first class

An impressive achievement, spearheaded by philosopher Jennifer Lackey.

(Thanks to Joseph Shieber for the pointer.)

Israel/Gaza links for November 13

French President Macron calls on Israel to stop bombing babies, women, elderly in Gaza.  The pressure is starting to mount on Israel to stop the slaughter.

A Palestinian in the West Bank describes threats and terror from Israeli settlers.

Civil and political liberties within Israel under attack during the war.

The horrifying situation in Gaza's hospitals.

"Kripke against materialism 2.0"?

A self-described "avid reader of the blog" writes:

I recently came upon an important piece of news I thought you might want to share with the wider philosophical community on the blog. 

Saul Kripke offered a widely known critique against materialism in Lecture III of Naming and Necessity.  However, in a recent article published in Philosophical Perspectives Adriana Renero shows that around 1979 Kripke expanded such a critique and offered a knowledge argument against materialism.  In that argument Kripke agreed with Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and considered that "a materialist must defend not merely that any mental facts must follow from physical facts by necessity, but in addition that any mental facts follow from physical facts a priori: that the truth of everything is deducible a priori from a complete material description of the world." So, Kripke's notion of the "necessary a posteriori" as offered in Naming and Necessity would not play a role when dealing with materialism. In my view, this is a novel analysis that seems to pave the way to understand Kripke's position concerning materialism and motivates further discussion in the philosophy of mind.

Here’s a link to the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/VKDKEAMFXYPKBXVY2WHW?target=10.1111/phpe.12195

Comments from readers informed about these issues welcome.

 

Great moments in (somewhat) obscure rock 'n' roll covers: Hollywood Vampires, "Heroes," 2019

A cover band comprised of Alice Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, and actor Johnny Depp, plus a rotating cast of other well-known rock musicians, this is their version of my personal favorite David Bowie song, with Depp on vocals:

 

"Hijacking Memory: The Holocaust and the Seige of Gaza"

A webinar this coming Monday with historian Omer Bartov at Brown University, who was one of the co-authors of the "Response to October 7" letter I encouraged readers to sign.

(Thanks to Ross Hyman for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: On academic "cranks"

Back in 2010.

Israel/Gaza links for November 9, 2023

Peter Beinart talks to a Palestinian and an American Jewish  activist about where the left goes now. (Thanks to Cora Diamond for the pointer.)

An interview with a UN official about international humanitarian law in the context of Hamas, Israel, and Gaza.

Philosopher David Benatar talks about Israel and Gaza at Brain in a Vat.  (Thanks to Scott McLain for the pointer.)

Professor Omer Bartov on the "possibility" of genocide in Gaza--it is not genocide now, but the "danger" is there.  (UPDATE:  A written version of the same [thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer].)

Two news websites, with quite different perspectives, that I check periodically are that of the Times of Israel and Al Jazeera; both offer some good reporting.  Between the two, one can sometimes piece together a better sense of what is happening, but they also each shed light on how Israelis and Arabs view what is going on.  Sometimes, of course, reading them produces a real Rashomon effect.

ONE MORE:   An international law expert comments on proportionality and the attack on the Jabalia refugee camp.

The journal Utilitas to become "open access"

Utilias has long been an important journal for work in value theory in the utilitarian tradition, and this development will surely enhance its stature.

American courts are giving less deference to the academy

Law professor Steve Sanders documents the change pretty clearly in a recent CHE essay (I have linked to a non-paywalled version).  He attributes this change, in part, to the increasing number of academics (at least in the feebler disciplines) who have openly abandoned the idea that theirs is a Wissenschaft that aims to produce knowledge of truths about its subject-matter.  This strikes me as plausible, but one cannot discount the extent to which one of the two viable political parties in the United States has moved to the quasi-fascistic right.  The two feed off each other, of course.  If serious public universities in the United States want to survive, they had better rediscover the idea of "the Ivory Tower."  Universities exist to produce and disseminate knowledge; they do not exist to advocate for justice or equality.