Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Summer blogging plans, and thereafter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 1--UPDATED

As usual, I'll be posting somewhat less in June (a few times per week), and even less in July and August (maybe once or twice per week, depending on what's happening).  August 3, 2023 will mark the 20th anniversary of the blog, and I am thinking that I will scale back my blogging going forward, although I won't stop altogether.   I'm still debating how much I will cut back (and how I will adjust the advertising rates for next year in light of that).  I'll make an announcement in August, perhaps on or around the 20th blog anniversary.   I sincerely appreciate all the intelligent readers I've been fortunate to attract over the years, and I've enjoyed the opportunity to correspond with many of you and to meet others in person.  While Twitter has taken a toll on blogs generally, this one is still going remarkably strong, averaging well over three million unique visitors per year, so it seems a good time to begin phasing into blog retirement while it's still widely read and influential (much to the chagrin of the Wokerati, of course).  But it will be a multi-year phasing, and come September I am sure I will still be posting a few times each week, but nothing like the volume in the past.  

Thanks, as always, for your interest and indulgence over many years!

UPDATE (6/6/23): Thanks to the many readers who wrote me after last week's post.  I should clarify that my phased blogging retirement may last a long time--I won't wholly abandon the philosophy blogosphere to the Wokerati and those hell-bent on destroying the field!  And as the enemies of academic freedom become more aggressive, I will continue to shine a light on those issues.   It's even possible that when I do retire from my actual job in 15 years, I may resume a more active blogging schedule.  I still haven't decided what the new schedule for September will look like, but it will be reduced from that of past years.

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.

 

"Feedburner" is defunct

For those who enjoy receiving blog posts delivered to your email account each day, I'm sorry to report that the service known as Feedburner has been discontinued by Google.  As an alternative, you can use an RSS reader, and still subscribe to this blog via Feedly, NewsBlur, or Inoreader.

New York City these days

MOVING TO FRONT FROM THIS MORNING:  UPDATED (AND COMMENTS OPEN FOR THOSE ALSO FAMILIAR WITH NYC OVER TIME TO SHARE THEIR VIEWS)

Last week I was at the NYU Colloquium in Legal, Social & Political Philosophy presenting work on Marx (that was great, the best intellectual experience I've had in a long time [special thanks to Sam Scheffler and Jeremy Waldron for making it so!]), and as part of the invitation NYU kindly gave us an apartment for the week, which was the first time my wife and I had been in NYC together in quite a number of years (it was also the first time I was there since the pandemic).   Now I was born in Manhattan, and still have distinct traces of the Brooklyn/Manhattan accent I acquired from my father and listening to a lot of Lenny Bruce as a kid, and I later practiced law in NYC and lived there again between 1991-1993 with my wife while finishing my PhD.  So I have warm feelings towards my hometown, although it has changed a lot since the 1960s/early 1970s of my youth.  (Films that give you a feel for the "look" of Manhattan then include Serpico, The 7-Ups, and, most notoriously, Death Wish.)   

Travels abroad, and some observations about philosophy

In June, I traveled overseas for the first time since 2019 (and I managed not to get Covid!).  London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and Bucharest were my airport destinations; Oxford University, University College Dublin, University of Amsterdam, and Dimitri Cantemir Christian University my academic hosts.  The events were ISNS in Oxford; a mini-conference on Nietzsche at UCD (papers by me, Tsarina Doyle [NUI-Galway] and Brian O'Connor [UCD]), and then an afternoon workshop on draft chapters of my co-authored Marx book; an anti-moralist conference on capitalism in the 21st-century in Amsterdam; and the IVR (international legal philosophy event) in Bucharest.

I'll start with travel stuff, which may be of some practical value to readers, and then move to intellectual substance.

May blogging

As I mentioned awhile back, this is a very busy month--with the end of our Spring quarter looming, grading, and various other deadlines.  As a result, I will be doing less blogging this month, although I will still put things up.

Email apologies

I do try to reply to emails, but this quarter I''m not doing so well.  One of my two courses involves a new preparation this quarter, in addition to other obligations.  My apologies if your email is greeted with silence.

Mysteries of Twitter

This funny photo that I posted on Twitter went "viral" as they say:  more than 11,000 retweets, 65,000 "likes," more than 350 comments, and, according to the fake Twitter data, nearly 4,000,000 "impressions" and more than 330,000 "engagements."  (The "impressions" data is much inflated, and should really be called "possible impressionns"; "engagements" is a better metric of those who actually saw it.)  What a strange medium!   As I've mentioned before, you can follow me on Twitter for links to blog posts, plus some Twitter-specific comments and gags.

After a two-year hiatus...

...my homepage is updated, for anyone who's interested--that includes talks (many of which were obviously derailed by the pandemic), video and audio interviews, former students, etc.

Best of the summer blog

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--LINK FIXED, BELOW

Here are some popular blog posts from the summer months you may have missed:

June

The Stone blog at the NY Times is dead

"Two Pessimisms in Mill"

The final nail in the coffin for the failed science of "implicit bias"?

July

Michigan Philosophy not accepting PhDs apps this fall, but will resume next year

Adoph Reed on Robin DiAngelo and the political economy of "race" politics (link fixed)

Percent of tenure-stream faculty who are female in PhD programs in philosophy increased about 40% since 2004

In Memoriam: Bob Moses (1935-2021)

August

Ranked philosophy departments that have no faculty specializing in the Continental traditions in philosophy after Kant

In Memoriam: Sarah (Waterlow) Broadie (1941-2021)

"Realism, Disagreement, and Explanation"

"The whole country is the Reichstag"

Philosophers Annual, ten top papers of 2020

The end of Oxford's dominance in jurisprudence:  Leslie Green to leave Oxford

"Moral Psychology with Nietzsche" should be out any day now in paperback...

...and you can preorder it now.

And from a recent review by Paul Loeb in the January 2021 Journal of the History of Philosophy:

Brian Leiter’s second book on Nietzsche brings together ideas and arguments that have already had a significant influence on the field through their earlier formulations in his articles from the past two decades. It is thus indispensable reading for anyone interested in Leiter’s evolving project of showing that Nietzsche has the correct naturalistic approach to issues in moral philosophy and moral psychology. As usual with Leiter’s scholarship, this monograph is extremely clear, densely argued, and philosophically sophisticated.

Somewhat lighter blogging...

...as readers may have noticed. It's the last week of the quarter here, and I've got papers to grade for graduating students, letters of recommendation to write, and lots of student appointments.   Things will start to pick up next week.  Thanks for your patience.

"Derrida made simple" and other Twitter delights

As I've noted before, I do post links to items on the blog on Twitter, so you can follow the blog there (if you participate in that godforsaken medium of the resentful and never-ending condescension from below!).  And I post a few other things that don't make it to the blog, like "Derrida made simple."

Alexa rankings of philosophy blogs, redux

We first noticed these a few months ago, so I took a more recent look to see if there were any changes for the philosophy blogs/sites (there were some in the overall rankings, but not many in the order):

Leiter Reports:                    340,106

Daily Nous:                          556,133

APA Online:                         918,916

Philosopher's Coccoon:      1,047,537

Digressions, Impressions:   1,404,354

PeaSoup (ethics blog)        2,469,935

Talking about Marx tomorrow...

...with Dr. Donna Lyons (Law, Trinity College Dublin) and Prof. Brian O'Connor (Philosophy, University College Dublin).  Details.

January 2021: another record

As I noted last month, 2020 was a banner year for blog readership.   And that continued last month:  January 2021 saw 346,000 visits (and more than 435,000 page views), compared to 300,000 visits (and 371,000 page views) in January 2020.  The blog is currently in its 18th year, so it's gratifying that readership continues to grow.  Thanks, as always, for reading!

(A note on the terminology:  every visit counts as one page view; but if during a visit, one clicks on a "continue reading" for a post because some of it is "below the fold", that counts as another page view; so too if one follows a link to another page on the blog, that counts as another page view.   One can maximize page views by putting the content of almost every post below the fold [so every visit ends up being at least two page views]; obviously I don't do that so, e.g., one can read multiple posts in a single visit, and that will all count as one page view.)

Joe Walsh meets Xmas

40 years ago, in my misspent youth, I had planned to be a rock star, as it were.  I played a passable rhythm guitar, I sang more in tune than Bob Dylan or Neil Young (not by much), and I wrote lots of songs.   I was also fortunate to know a real rock musician, Tommy Williams. Tommy took my simple songs, arranged them, and added lead guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and lead or backing vocals.   Some weren't bad, and once we get around to digitizing them, I'll put them online.   Unlike me, Tommy has made a real career as a musician, since he is a very good one.  Anyway, all this is a prelude to the main point:  each Xmas, Tommy and his wife and son, record Xmas versions of well-known rock songs, in this case, Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way."  Tommy is playing all the guitars--do check out his Xmas twist on the famous guitar "talk box" solos.

(You can find this song and more at Tommy's YouTube channel.)

Alexa site rankings

Browsing wikipedia, I discovered an entry for the Daily Nous blog run by philosopher Justin Weinberg (South Carolina), to which we occasionally link.   In that entry, there was a link to the Alexa ranking, which in turn took one to Alexa traffic rankings for other philosophy-related sites.  I don't know how accurate these are, but according to Alexa here's how several philosophy blogs/sites rank worldwide:

Crooked Timber              197,362 (group blog, including some philosophers)

Leiter Reports                224,454

APA website                   405,598

Daily Nous                      529,875 (although 90 days ago, it ranked #362,241)

Philosophers' Cocoon       547,311

Digressions, Impressions  939,895

Pea Soup (ethics blog)   1,573,961

By way of comparison, The New York Times website ranks #76, Pornhub ranks #56 (!!!), The New York Review of Books site ranks #46,383, while the London Review of Books site ranks #94,741.

This blog averages over 10,000 unique visits per day, but I don't know how that translates into differences in ranking, assuming they are actually sensitive to differences in traffic.  (The odd fluctuation for the Daily Nous blog leads me to think either that Alexa isn't reliable or that small differences in traffic have huge effects on a site's rank; on the other hand, this blog was ranked only slightly higher, around 216,000, three months ago according to Alexa).

 

Drudge Report had only 1.4 million unique visitors in August

That detail is buried in this NYT story (the subject of the latter was obviously lifted from this blog!).  According to my public stat counter, this blog had a quarter-million unique visits in August (and that was coming off my July hiatus when I only posted a few times), and 300,000 last month.  In a typical year, there are several months with 360,000 to 400,000 unique visits.  Somehow it seems like I should be a lot richer given these numbers!

Belated blog annivesary post

I started the blog 17 years ago on Monday, August 3--I forgot!   Reflections on the 14th and 10th anniversary are still relevant. I note that at the 10-year mark the blog had averaged 2.3 million visits and 3 million page views per year.  In the last five years, the blog has averaged more than 3.5 million visits and more than 4.5 page views per year. 

Thanks for reading--some of you for a very long time!  

Twitter redux

With some more regular blogging resumed, I will also resume linking posts here on Twitter, for those who prefer to follow the blog that way.  In addition, I also post some things exclusively on Twitter (e.g, making fun of America's current most malevolent jackass, Alex Berenson, or choice quotes, and even bits of philosophy).

Reminder about my July blogging hiatus

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 28

Just a reminder that I'm taking a break from blogging for July (so starting Wednesday), so as to make progress on a book and deal with some other matters.  I'll resume a reduced blogging schedule in August.   If there's something very time-sensitive I may post something in July, but otherwise please don't send me stuff for the blog until the very end of July.  Thanks as always for reading.

Coronavirus in Chicago (and Illinois): a timeline

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 14--VARIOUS UPDATES, MOSTLY FOR CHICAGO/ILLINOIS, FEWER NOW FOR NEW YORK CITY

Just a snapshot of what's going on in one metropolis, that hasn't (yet!) been hit as bad as NYC or Seattle or parts of Northern California; I'll update this periodically.  Illinois is doing a fair bit of testing, but not nearly enough.  Technically these are the numbers for Illinois, but almost all the cases are in the Chicago metropolitan area (9.5 million people are in the Chicago metro area, Illinois has 12.5 million altogether, Cook County, where Chicago is, has 5.2 million people; the data is broken out starting March 18):

Threadgill's in Austin closes

I saw the sad news from a friend on FB.  Janis Joplin sang here when she was a student at UT Austin in the 1960s, but, more importantly, the place served up really good Southern cooking (chicken-fried steak anyone?), and it was inexpensive and fun.  When we lived in Austin, from 1995 to 2008, we used to go there often with our kids, since as loud as they were, Threagill's was louder, plus it had tons of stuff they liked too.

A nice note from a philosopher in New York City, with two interesting twists

A NYC philosopher writes:

Just a quick note to thank you for the helpful information on your blog.  Even my upstairs neighbor, an immunologist in the thick of things, often finds your links helpful. It’s interesting to reflect on all the ways your blog has helped over the decades, going far beyond its original purpose.

I got a kick out of the fact that even the immunologist neighbor finds some helpful links!   And "over the decades":  I guess it's true, I did most of the aughts, all of the 10s, and now we're into the 20s.   And while I can recall covering the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and other fiascos, this one really is in a league by itself.

Attention Democratic Party: the blog readers have spoken!

So with more than 800 votes since yesterday afternoon, here are the results:

Bernie Sanders:        49%

Elizabeth Warren:    20%

Amy Klobuchar:       12%

Mike Bloomberg:      10%

Pete Buttigieg:          6%

Joe Biden:                 2%

Tom Steyer:               1%

I've notified the DNC that the people who count have spoken! 

For those who use Twitter...

...I'm continuing my practice of tweeting out links to new posts on the blog, so you can follow the new links there.  I occasionally tweet out other stuff as well unrelated to the blog.

The rise of Twitter and Facebook as social media platforms...

...is often invoked as explaining the general decline of blogs, something we have certainly seen in the philosophy blogosphere.  With another year of blogging behind us, it's striking how stable things have been here, however.  

2019 saw almost the exact same number of visits to the blog as in 2018:  3,566,545 in 2019 compared to 3,566,762 the year before, so an average of nearly 10,000 visits each day, and that's including the lighter blogging summer months.  That's all the more striking (at least to me!) given that 2018 was the year of L'Affaire Ronell, which saw multiple newspapers and magazines link to the blog for the scandal we first exposed, while 2019 had nothing so sensational.  2019 even had slightly more visits (about 3%) than in 2017.

On the other hand, 2019 did see a small decline (about 5%) in total page views from 2018, but there were still 4,555,275 page views last year.  (Each visit counts for one page view, as I understand it, but every additional page viewed in the same visit (such as following an internal link, or going into the comments section) adds another "page view.")   Fewer comment sections would probably suffice to depress that number, and I have generally been running fewer of those over the years because of the time required to moderate them.

In any case, I'm pleased and grateful to you, dear readers, for contributing to the more than 3.5 million visits and more than 4.5 million page views last year.   Thanks, as always, for reading.

Papers posted on-line in 2019

For those interested, here are links to the new and revised papers I posted on-line in 2019:

"The History of Philosophy Reveals that 'Great' Philosophy is Disguised Moral Advocacy:  A Nietzschean Case Against the Socratic Canon in Philosophy"

"Culture and Value in Nietzsche"

"Nietzsche's Naturalism:  Neither Liberal Nor Illiberal"

"Bernard Williams' Debt to Nietzsche: Real or Illusory?"

"Foucault as a Kind of Realist:  Genealogical Critique and the Debunking of the Human Sciences"

"Marx and Marxism" (with Lawrence Dallman)

"Legal Positivism as a Realist Theory of Law"

Reader poll: Do you use Twitter to follow this blog's content?

I try to post Twitter links to all new blog posts on my Twitter account, but I'm wondering how many readers rely on that for accessing blog content.  Let me know, thanks, by participating in this poll, whether you use Twitter or not (please, even if you don't use Twitter at all, please respond to the poll).

Do you use Twitter to follow the blog?

Yes: always, very often

 

Yes: sometimes, occasionally

 

No

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE:   So here are the results of voting over the last six hours, roughly:

Selection		Votes
Yes: always, very often	5%	20
Yes: sometimes, occasionally	8%	34
No	87%	375

Now during this same period of time, there were about 2,500 visitors to the blog, so obviously most didn't respond to the poll (there's still time!).  But these proportions have been steady for a couple of hours now, and my guess is Twitter users are likely responding at higher rates.  In any case, it's clear that a minority makes regular or somewhat regular use of the Twitter links, and since they're easy enough to create I expect I'll continue them.

 

News of world-shattering importance

Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago is located, now has a really good Italian restaurant--please go there!  Nella Pizzeria is also excellent, but not as ambitious in its dishes.   For the local bourgeoisie, these are very good developments.

Talks, syllabi, CV, links etc...

...are all updated at my personal page, for anyone who's interested.  I look forward to meeting readers at some of my talks this coming academic year!

Belated 16th Blog Birthday

I've been so overwhelmed lately (see here)  that I forgot the blog turned 16 last Saturday, August 3 (and, even more seriously, I forgot to post a new "Great Moments in Obscure Rock 'n' Roll" video!).  You can see a bit about the blog's visibility here.   The 14th anniversary post noted some highlights of topics covered here over the years.  The 10th anniversary post includes some background about me and how the blog started.  Thanks, as always, for reading.

 

Light posting the next couple of days...

...lots of teaching, plus a family emergency.  Thanks for your understanding.

QUICK UPDATE:  Thanks to readers who have written; this does not involve my father (who is doing fine), and I'm hopeful things will work out fine in the next few days.  I appreciate your concern.

Blog traffic and the rise and fall of blogs

I see a lot of references, both in cyberspace and sometimes in traditional media, to the decline of interest in blogs.  This is attributed to two main factors:  the current popularity of Twitter and the growth of Facebook, which many users treat as de facto blogs.  Certainly in philosophy, relatively few blogs have survived the long haul, and in academic law, many once popular blogs have closed entirely.

Meanwhile, we trudge along.  Traffic is, I'm pretty sure, somewhat down from the highs of 2012-2013--peak blog readership generally--but unfortunately I had to change stat counters in 2015 as the old one ("sitemeter" I think) went beserk, so I no longer have official, comparble stats from then.  Here's the yearly data on visits from 2015 through 2018 according to the new StatCounter; note that "returning visits" can only be measured for readers who visit from the same computer, which no doubt many do, but many others don't.  But since StatCounter (click on "public stats" at the bottom of the left column) includes those figures, I include them here (note that 2017 was the first year I began my reduced summer blogging schedule, although its effect on traffic was only slight):

	Returning Visits	Unique Visits	Page Views
2015	1,686,680	3,686,038	4,972,397
2016	1,768,696	3,564,079	4,835,466
2017	1,651,053	3,455,946	4,747,474
2018	1,688,305	3,566,762	4,860,347

Returning visits in 2018 topped the 2015 figure, but missed the 2016 high.  Unique visits in 2018 were higher than the prior two years, but lower than in 2015--and the same for page views.  All the changes were surprisingly small year-in and year-out.

Anyway, I owe thanks to you loyal readers, some of whom I know have stuck with the blog for many years!

Reactions to "The Twitter Cesspool"

Two funny reactions to last week's post.

First, from a philosopher in the UK:  "The dumb outbursts you quoted in your post establish that not all imbalances of power are injustices. Some people really should be powerless!"

Second, a somewhat longer response from a political theorist in the US:

Although I ended up in Political Science, I used your Gourmet when looking at grad schools back in 2001.  I've been a regular reader of your blog since 2003.  We are very much on different sides of many issues (I am a rather traditional Catholic, trained as a Straussian, etc.)  Nonetheless, I have always found you to be an enlightening voice of sanity and have been very grateful for your many contributions.  (When I teach Nietzsche, I always refer my students to your book. And I agree with you about Lampert's reading of Nietzsche.)

I say all this because I read your post about the attacks on you in Twitter and I was just shocked, though not surprised.  What a bunch of idiotic condescending assholes!

So, even though I am not in your field, and even though we probably disagree about more than we agree about, I wanted to thank you for the many years of service that you've given to academia, not only as a scholar but as public voice of reason (though not a voice of "public reason!").  I know you are more than capable of holding your own against these canailles (as Nietzsche would probably have called them), but damn it it's time for those of us who have profited from your labors to at least thank you for it.  So thank you!

Reader mail

From a young philosopher in Europe:

Your blog and Gourmet Report have helped me a lot over the years. They guided my grad school applications and final decision and are probably a large part of why I'm employed today. I don't always agree with everything you say, but I applaud you for saying it and for using your position and power to defend some of the saner positions in the profession that many junior people feel too professionally vulnerable to voice.

I am grateful for such missives.  Thank you!

Typepad has upgraded the "security" of all its websites (including this blog)...

...meaning that the address is now:   https://leiterreports.typepad.com/.   If you know readers who had the site bookmarked at the old address (without the "s"), let them know please!

Where blog readers live

Thanks to the nearly 1500 readers who participated in the poll about where readers live.  Here are the results (remember that "Scandinavia and Norway" should really be "the Nordic countries"):

Readers, where do you live?
Selection		Votes
United States	50%	724
United Kingdom or Ireland	10%	149
Canada	9%	130
Australia or New Zealand	4%	53
Germany or Austria	5%	66
France	1%	20
Italy	1%	12
Scandinavia or Norway	4%	56
China	1%	15
Japan	1%	11
Russia	1%	9
Mexico	0%	7
Brazil	1%	10
Israel	1%	10
India	1%	11
Pakistan	0%	6
Singapore	1%	16
Other European country	5%	79
Other Central or South American country	1%	9
Other Asian country	2%	24
Other Middle Eastern country	1%	10
Africa	1%	17
1,444 total

I see I didn't entirely gauge correctly the countries to feature.  I was pleasantly surprised by the large minority of German-speaking readers.  I'd love to hear from those in Africa and the "other" categories what country you do live in.  Thanks to all for reading!  (Typepad, the blog service provider, isn't working very well today, so submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.)

Readers, where (in what country) do you live?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY:  Thanks to the more than 1100 readers who have already voted; if you've not yet participated, please do so!  Thank  you.

=========

I chose particular countries to list based on the data I do have about where readers come from; apologies to those readers whose individual countries are not listed.  Please choose the relevant region of the world instead; I'll open comments after the poll is closed for readers to identify the specific countries.  Thank you.   (CORRECTION:  I got confused about "Scandinavia," which I thought included Finalnd but not Norway, but it's the reverse--so please just treat that category as "the Nordic countries":  Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.  I can't fix it in the poll itself once it starts, unfortunately.)

Readers, where do you live?

United States

 

United Kingdom or Ireland

 

Canada

 

Australia or New Zealand

 

Germany or Austria

 

France

 

Italy

 

Scandinavia or Norway

 

China

 

Japan

 

Russia

 

Mexico

 

Brazil

 

Israel

 

India

 

Pakistan

 

Singapore

 

Other European country

 

Other Central or South American country

 

Other Asian country

 

Other Middle Eastern country

 

Africa

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

Professions of the non-academic readers of the blog

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 16--MORE READER RESPONSES WELCOME!

Thanks to more than 600 non-academic readers who responded to the earlier poll; here are the results

on-academic readers, what is your field or profession?
Selection		Votes
Medicine or medical profession	4%	23
Journalism	2%	14
Law or legal profession	20%	122
Librarian	3%	21
Teacher (not at the university level)	8%	47
Engineer or scientist	7%	43
Religion (e.g., minister, rabbi, theologian)	2%	14
Information technology	13%	81
Business or finance	10%	59
Politics or government	6%	39
Writer (fiction, non-fiction, poetry)	4%	27
Other profession	14%	84
None	6%	34

I'll invite comments from readers on a couple of things.  First, I''m curious to hear about the "other professions" that I left out among my choices.  Second, I'd be interested in more details about, e.g., the government work or the IT work etc. that you'd care to provide, since the categories were obviously broad.  Finally, if anyone cares to say why they read (did you study philosophy at one point?  are you here for other stuff?), I'd find that useful.

Non-academic readers, who are you?

Here's a poll for my non-academic readers; you don't need to have participated in the last poll to particiapte in this one:  any non-academic readers are welcome to submit an answer. 

UPDATE:  If you're retired, you should check the profession you are retired from--sorry for the ambiguity in that regard.  Thanks to Henry Cohen for pointing it out.

Non-academic readers, what is your field or profession?

Medicine or medical profession

 

Journalism

 

Law or legal profession

 

Librarian

 

Teacher (not at the university level)

 

Engineer or scientist

 

Religion (e.g., minister, rabbi, theologian)

 

Information technology

 

Business or finance

 

Politics or government

 

Writer (fiction, non-fiction, poetry)

 

Other profession

 

None

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

Readers: who are you?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY:  Over 1600 responses (thank you!), more welcome!  Please take a moment if you haven't already responded.  Thanks!

=======

This is the first of a couple of polls I'm going to run, in light of the noticetable up-tick in readership since August (the blog is getting about 15-20% more traffic than this time last year most days).  This first poll asks my academic readers (i.e., those who are faculty or students) to indicate their primary academic field; non-academic readers, please check the last option in the poll.  I'll do a separate poll aimed at non-academic readers. 

Thank you!  (I neglected to put Medicine as a field of choice--folks in academic Medicine, please choose "other natural science" field.)

ADDENDUM:   After the poll started, I realized I should have had a category for academic librarians--apologies to the many readers in that category.  I suggest you choose your field of focus as a librarian from the choices below.

What is your academic field (if you are a student or faculty member)?

Philosophy

 

Biology

 

Chemistry or Physics

 

Computer Science

 

Economics

 

English or Comparative Literature

 

History

 

Law

 

Linguistics

 

Mathematics

 

Political Science

 

Psychology

 

Other humanities field

 

Other social science field

 

Other natural science field

 

I am not in academia (neither faculty nor student)

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

Summer cyber amusement

The precious bourgeois journalists at the NYT have linked to my blog many times over the years, but the Ronell story marks the first time, as I recall, that it was a front-page story in which they included a link.   Since I'm doing less frequent blogging this summer, daily traffic is down to about 8K visits on weekedays, but today already is over 22K, and the day isn't over (and yesterday, when the story first appeared late in the day, was over 13K).   My reduced-rate summer advertisers may send a "thank you" note to Prof. Ronell for the extra exposure!

As a more relevant aside, the irony about Trump's "Fake News" epithet is that, in fact, most of what the NYT reports is inaccurate, unreliable, and incomplete in serious ways:  of course, this is not what Baby Trump means, since by "Fake News" he means "any facts unflattering to me."   But this is worth keeping in mind:  NYU may have found Prof. Ronell guilty of sexual harassment, as the NYT reports, but I'm sure there is still much more to the story--some of which may be even more unflattering, of course, and some of which may prove exonerating.

This blog was 15 years old last Friday...

...and I forgot (I am a bit busy with some paper deadlines)!  I don't have much to add to what I said on the 14th and 10th anniversaries, so I'll invite any interested readers to peruse those posts (Cyber Brian vs. Real Brian in the 10th anniversary post remains especially apt).  Thanks for reading!

'Disagreement, Anti-Realism about Reasons, Inference to the Best Explanation'

A new draft paper on-line at SSRN; the abstract:

I revisit, refine and defend an inference to the best explanation (IBE) argument for anti-realism about reasons for acting based on the history of intractable disagreement in moral philosophy. The four key premises of the argument are: 1. If there were objective reasons for action, epistemically-well-situated observers would eventually converge upon them after two thousand years; 2. Contemporary philosophers, as the beneficiaries of two thousand years of philosophy, are epistemically well-situated observers; 3. Contemporary philosophers have not converged upon reasons for action; 4. Conclusion: there are no objective reasons for action (IBE from the first three premises). The key premises of the IBE are (1) sentimentalism; (2) non-cognitivism about basic affects; and (3) philosophical arguments for what our reasons for action are always involve a premise that depends on a basic intuitive moral judgment (that can be explained in terms of a basic non-cognitive affect). All these premises are explored in detail, and various objections addressed.

 Comments welcome from those who work on these issues; this version will be presented at a conference in Rome in September, and I won't undertake revisions until after that.

BrianLeiter.net updated

My personal page has been updated for 2018-19, with new additions under CV, talks, and former students, for anyone whose interested.  Talks scheduled so far for 2018-19 will take me to Rome, Los Angeles, Boston, Stockholm, Singapore, Paris, Lund, and Genoa, among other places.  If you're a reader, please introduce yourself if you are able to attend any of these events.

Less than usual, even by summer standards, through the end of the month

I've got one PhD student defending today, another defending a week from Friday, plus various paper deadlines by the end of the month...as a result, expect less here.  Thanks.

Note to readers re: my academia.edu page

I created one early on, but never use the site any longer, because they're hucksters and they want too much information just to utilize it.  I mention this because I recently discovered many messages there, going back years.  Folks who want to reach me need to e-mail me at my university e-mail.  Thanks.

Light posting...

I am hosting a conference on "New Directions in Marxist Philosophy" ( Download Public NEW DIRECTIONS IN MARXIST PHILOSOPHY_Revised 2.2.18) today and tomorrow, and even though the capitalist gods have been trying to disrupt it by dumping 8 inches of heavy snow on Chicago, I believe we will go forward!  In any case, there won't be much from me for a bit.