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The world's most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
In a bit less than 24 hours, we got about 400 responses to the poll on how readers use Facebook; here are the results:
Which of the following best describes how you use Facebook?
Selection
Votes
Almost entirely for sharing personal stuff: photos, family news, etc.
37%
149
Almost entirely for professoinal purposes: networking, sharing my work, intellectual interchange
2%
8
Almost entirely as my political platform: sharing my political opinions and outrage, news, op-eds
2%
9
A mix of personal, professional, and political
22%
89
Mostly personal, some of the others
28%
113
Mostly professional, some of the others
4%
15
Mostly political, some of the others
4%
15
398 total
A couple of readers wrote to say they don't use Facebook at all ("it's evil" said one philosopher!). I have to say that it's not the case that one-third of my FB friends use it "almost entirely for sharing personal stuff." In any case, comments are open for folks to opine about why they avoid Facebook, or about how they use it, or about what they make of these results and so on. (Folks who commented at the poll site should feel free to repost their comments here.)
When I joined Facebook, I conceived of it mainly as a way for sharing "personal" stuff: photos from vacations, funny stories, family news, that kind of thing. That's one reason I try to only friend people I know "in real life." But as Facebook has evolved, it is clear that many, perhaps most, of my friends are using it for other purposes: political venting and discussion, professional self-promotion and networking, and so on. Facebook has become for a lot of people "their blog." Now I have a blog for all that stuff, so of course I don't feel inclined to use Facebook that way. But I'm curious to hear from readers who are also on Facebook how they are using it. Please choose the option that best fits.
Following a suggestion of a reader earlier in the summer, when my reduced summer blogging began, I thought I'd list a few things I'm glad to have accomplished with the blog over the years.
1. In 2009, I shone the first very public light on the sexual harassment problem in philosophy in advice to prospective students--this was before any of the now notorious cases made the headlines, and the topic had been for too long a matter of sotto voce discussion. I heard from many faculty and students that they were glad for the attention given to this and the warning.
2, I helped support the movement for the APA to really enforce its existing policies against anti-gay discrimination--it started with this post in 2007, but really took off after this post and the subsequent petition. See also here and here .
7. Related to #6, I have also been glad to stand up consistently for academic freedom in cases ranging from John Yoo to Steven Salaita to Lawrence Torcello, as well as to defend authors against editorial misconduct, whether bySynthese or by Hypatia.
This anniversary also seems like an apt time to reflect on how the philosophy blogosphere has evolved, since it has both exploded and then contracted since I started posting back in August 2003.
Haven't run one of these in awhile, but I got this nice note last week from a younger philosopher who had written me with a news tip:
By the way, I think your blog is great. This is not a new sentiment of mine, but I just thought I’d pass it along given this opportunity. I admire your intellectual and emotional honesty, even in the face of some rather aggressive sanctimonious witch hunts. And not to mention, I find myself in agreement with most of your views. Nevertheless, the former stands even when the latter does not hold.
I've got a new personal homepage, courtesy of graphic designer Patrick Hennessey. If you like his work for academic homepages (see also Monique Wonderly's page, which he also designed), consider hiring him: more information, including contact information here.
...announced here begins today. Berit Brogaard and Christopher Pynes, who both have posting privileges here, are likely to be posting PGR-related items throughout the summer as well.
Back in early January, I announced an intention not to blog this summer. I heard from a lot of unhappy and/or concerned readers about this! This response from a philosopher elsewhere--whom I've never met (that I can recall), though I have admired her work for a long time, so it was especially nice to hear from her--is representative:
I just wanted to write a quick note, since I know (from your remarks this morning on your blog) that you are reassessing things. I wanted to say how valuable and positive your blog has been for me personally. It's the only one I've ever read (literally, the only one i have bookmarked and the only one i can remember actually logging onto, aside from a few physics things, for special reasons). I know you hear from lots of folks, but I'll miss it if you don't post regularly. There's lots of folks like me, I expect.
Others were unhappy at the prospect that the only audible "voices" in the philosophy blogosphere would be that of the New Infantilists, the politeness police, the thought police, etc. In any case, I've decided on a somewhat revised summer plan: I will plan on posting some material on Mondays and Fridays during the summer, perhaps more often when warranted. I may also invite some guest-bloggers to contribute. Summer advertising rates will be, accordingly, cut in half: top spots will be $350, 2nd from the top $300, and 3rd from the top $250 per month.
Thanks to all who wrote to me and to all who read!
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO VOTE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!
These posts vary quite a bit--from students seeking advice about programs and applications, to faculty seeking advice about publishing, and so on. They've been a feature of the blog going back to near the beginning. They are also posts that always feature open comment sections, since reader input is being sought.
UPDATE: So with over 600 votes, here's what readers had to say:
As a reader of the blog, how important to you are the "readers seeking advice" threads with open comment sections?
Selection
Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog.
As a reader of the blog, how important to you is coverage of "philosophy in the news," e.g., links to interviews with philosophers, popular articles about philosophers or philosophical topics, and the like?
Selection
Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY: PLEASE VOTE, IF YOU HAVEN'T, I'LL LET THIS RUN THROUGH THE EVENING
UPDATE: So with over 900 votes, here are the results:
As a reader of the blog, how important to you is political commentary and related links?
Selection
Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog
29%
267
Importnat, I like/enjoy the political commentary and related links
33%
306
Unimportant, I read the blog for other reasons
39%
363
936 total
This is useful information me--there is a higher level of interest in the political blogging than I would have anticipated. I trust those with no interest in that find it easy enough to skip or ignore it.
UPDATE: So this poll has been running for a bit more than 24 hours, and the results are instructive. I did not realize how much interest there was among readers in academic freedom issues!
As a reader of the blog, how important to you is coverage of and commentary on academic freedom issues?
Selection
Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog
38%
289
Important, I like to read this coverage and commentary
As I mentioned awhile back, I am going to be polling the readership to get a sense of which content is particularly important to readers. This first poll concerns postings about "faculty news," such as hires, moves, awards and the like. (There will be a separate poll for links to articles by philosophers, interviews with philosophers etc.--this poll just concerns things like who is moving from where to where, who is retiring, who received an important prize etc.) My old polling service seems to have disappeared from the web, so I'm trying a new service for this first one.
UPDATE: So over 700 readers voted during the last 12 hours (you other 8-9,000 free riders still have a chance!), and here's the results:
Selection
Votes
Very important, one of the main reasons I read the blog
36%
256
Important, I like to have this information
36%
261
Unimportant, I read the blog for other reasons
28%
201
718 total
I'll let this run another day, but this is a useful response, confirming what I suspected based on earlier polls about how many readers were in academic philosophy, and how many not. Thanks!
Unsurprisingly, philosophy was the primary academic field of readers (with over 700 votes, accounting for not quite two-thirds of the responses). 5% come from law (59 votes), while 14% are neither faculty nor students (135 votes). 3% (33 votes) study or teach English, Comparative Literature or foreign languages & literatures, while 2% (28) come from Political Science or Public Policy. The 1% in many other fields conceals differentials in vote totals, ranging from 17 votes in each of History, Medicine, and Psychology/Cognitive Science, to just 6 in Computer Science. I'm pleased that the blog is of interest to a significant number from other academic disciplines, as well as to those outside the academy.
It's now on-line, and will be taking me to to the cities/towns of Hamilton, Vienna, Belgrade, Toronto, Syracuse, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Durham (North Carolina), Iowa City, and Ann Arbor, among other places--sometimes to law faculties, sometimes to philosophy, sometimes both. I look forward to meeting readers I may not have met previously! Please introduce yourselves.
A couple of weeks back, I had the privilege of visiting Springfield, Missouri, for a public lecture on "Why Tolerate Religion?", and then meetings with students at the three colleges there: Missouri State University; Drury University; and Evangel University. (As a sidenote, it was the Templeton Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies that made my visit possible, plus the excellent organizing of Prof. Brandon Schmidly from Evangel. And if you're in Springfield, make sure to go to Bruno's, great linguine & clams, and apparently everybody else enjoyed their pizzas, calzones etc. [thanks to Daniel Kaufman from MSU for taking us there!].)
In any case, Prof. Schmidly has now made available a video of the public lecture, as well as a video in two parts in which he interviewed me (part 1 is mainly about philosophy, part 2 about the PGR and blogging).
I'll be on Gurvey's Law tomorrow (Saturday) from 2-3 pm Pacific time, 790 KABC talk radio. Not sure whether it is live-streamed. I had an enjoyable conversation with Mr. Gurvey, who studied philosophy as an undergraduate Brown (wrote a senior thesis with Dan Brock I learned on omissions and consequentialism) before becoming a lawyer. We cover a lot of territory, from Nietzsche to legal positivism and more.
On Facebook, I've got, broadly speaking, three "kinds" of friends: academic lawyers, academic philosophers, and regular people (the latter category including some lawyers, relatives, neighbors etc.). The FB habits of these three groups are strikingly different.
Regular people use FB the way I thought it was supposed to be used (and the reason I joined): to post photos of kids and pets, recent vacations, occasionally a bit of personal or professional news. Academic philosophers do a little of that, and so do academic lawyers, but for most of them, that's only a small portion of their posting.
Academic philosophers increasingly treat FB like a blog, a forum for pontification about everything from real politics to academic politics. Until I realized I could "unfollow" people without "unfriending" them, I dumped a fair number of academic philosophers because their pontifications were so tiresome. My advice: get a blog! Anyone who wants to read me pontificating, can come here, but I don't impose it on my FB friends.
Academic lawyers do a fair bit of pontificating too, though not nearly as much as the academic philosophers, and theirs is almost always confined to real politics. The really revolting aspect of some academic philosopher behavior on FB is its "high school with tenure" quality: back-stabbing, preening and posturing, endless displays of righteousness and "pearl clutching", faux solidarity with all the oppressed and "wretched of the academy" (less often the actual wretched of the earth), and so on. An awful lot of academic philosophers on FB come across as teenagers desperately seeking approval and affirmation. I've managed to "unfriend" most of the offenders, but it was really a kind of depressing and sickening spectacle while it lasted.
It's evidence of how little I know about blogs that I didn't realize there wasn't an option for subscribing to a "feed" for this blog. Now there is here. You can also get to it via the link, "Subscribe in a reader" in the left hand column, below all the ads and links.
MOVING TO FRONT FROM DEC. 22--FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT DURING THE HOLIDAY PERIOD AND MIGHT BE INTERESTED
Many thanks to Clifford Sosis for his patience and diligence in putting this together. It was a lot of fun to be indulged in recounting all these memories.
A couple of readers have inquired about the Sitemeter stats, which now report this blog as having over 100,000 hits per day (compared to about 9,000 hits per day before it went mad, which is still above average for summer). The recent Sitemeter reports are inaccurate, and we still can't figure out what happened. For those interested, Statcounter appears to be giving accurate reports--click on "Public Stats" in the lower left column.
Bear that in mind the next time you hear talk of the right-wing "Chicago School." Even David Bernstein (George Mason), right-wing defender of the Jews against everyone (including other Jews), has noted our political diversity (scroll down to the update of his latest rant).
11% of readers are adjunct faculty, while 27% are tenure-stream. I was struck by the large number of readers in other professions, such as law and computing. I'd be curious to hear what some of the readers who chose "none of the above" do. Comments are open.
I'm interested to hear how some of the "none of the above" would describe their political ideology or outlook. I note the results aren't that different from a similar poll about 4 1/2 years ago--slight decline in fascist readers, though!
MOVING TO FRONT (POLL ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 7) AND OPENING COMMENTS FOR DISCUSSION (AT REQUEST OF VARIOUS READERS)
Report only your income from all sources (stipends, teaching, royalties, investments, etc.); if you have no income of your own (e.g., because you are supported by parents or a spouse) then choose the first option.
UPDATE: So with almost 1700 votes, here are the results:
No annual income: 8% (135)
Less than $20,000: 19% (326)
$20,001-$30,000: 14% (236)
$30,001-$40,000: 7% (123)
$40,001-$50,000: 5% (92)
$50,001-$75,000: 16% (270)
$75,001-$100,000: 12% (200)
$100,001-$150,000: 8% (138)
$150,000-$200,000: 3% (58)
$200,001-$300,000: 3% (50)
$301,000-$500,000: 1% (22)
Over $500,000: 2% (38)
Put differently (and assuming, perhaps wrongly, that all income levels responded proportionately to the poll): 26% of readers earn between $20,000 and $50,000, and 16% of readers earn more than $100,000.
Choose the category below that best fits your religion (or non-religious) beliefs/commitments:
(UPDATE: I made an error below for the Muslim choices: "Shia Muslin" should have been "Sunni Muslim." If you identify as a Shiite Muslim, choose that one, and if you identify as a Sunni Muslim please chose "Shia"--sorry about that, but once the poll starts, I can't edit it without losing all the votes.)
ANOTHER UNFORTUNATE OMISSION: the Eastern Orthodox Church. Sorry about that. I'd urge readers to choose Catholic, since I can not edit the poll at this point.
UPDATE: So with almost 1900 votes, here's the reader breakdown:
70% of readers are either atheists or agnostics (52% atheist [978 readers], 18% agnostic [336 readers]).
Religions with at least 1% of the readership:
Catholic: ` 9% (165)
Other Protestant: 5% (97)
Episcopalian: 3% (64)
Jewish: 3% (60, with roughly 1% each in Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism)
Calvinist: 2% (39)
All of the following had 1% (with number of readers in parentheses): Baptist (16), Lutheran (28), Mormon (16), Shiite Muslim (11), Buddhism (27), and Jainism (14).
UPDATE: So with over 1500 votes cast since Friday, 89% of respondents were male, 11% were female. About 16% of tenure-stream faculty are female (at least in the US), though my impression is a higher percentage of current graduate students are female. It would be interesting to know the gender breakdown at other blogs. (Far more than 11% of commenters here are female, interestingly.)
In January 2014, there were (according to Sitemeter) 306,464 visits to this blog and 438,846 page views.
In January 2015, there were (according to Sitemeter) 305,995 visits to this blog and 461,506 page views.
(According to StatCounter, which I added in late 2014, there were, in January 2015, 335,902 visits and 458,827 page views--I've no idea what explains the small differences.)
...both the Law School and Philosophy Department for having me out the last few days, I had a great time in both places, and not only because of the lovely weather! I got excellent questions and feedback at both units on two different papers, and was grateful for the terrific hospitality on top of that. I also had a chance to have a long talk with my co-editor, Brit Brogaard, about the future of the PGR, and we should have some announcements before too long about plans going forward.
Students and colleagues periodically pointed out that my academia.edu site was several years out of date; I finally got around to updating it with a current CV and a list of recent and upcoming talks, for anyone who is interested.
...but I've been on the road (in California) first here and then here.
Visiting the wonderful UCR Department, as I've been fortunate to do several times in recent years, prompts some reflections on our field and also on the interests in the Continental traditions that I share with many others. There are, fortunately, lots of good places in the U.S. these days for students interested in Kant and post-Kantian European philosophy--Columbia, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Brown, BU and, in many ways, Chicago--but UCR is as good as any of them, and may be the best. It's not just that they have a first-rate group of scholars working on Kant and post-Kantian European philosophy (Clark, Keller, Reath, Wrathall)--and an impressive group of grad students as well--but that everyone in the Department is interested in philosophy, meaning that those with primarily "Continental" interests are conversant with "analytic" philosophy and other parts of the history of philosophy, and vice versa.
The term "pluralism" has, alas, been debased to the point that everyone now knows it is usually a code word for "crappy philosophy is welcome here." But if it had not been devalued, then it would apply to UCR, though I think the more appropriate appellation is that UCR is an actual philosophy department, in which everyone is interested in philosophy, even if different figures or themes are more important for some than others. When I left UT Austin some six years ago, part of the reason was that it had ceased to be a department of philosophy and had become something more like a "Department of Logic & Metaphysics," where that meant recent logic and metaphysics. That's fine, UT Austin has become a leading Department of "Logic & Metaphysics" in the recent 'analytic' tradition. I am (to the annoyance of my critics) a fan of the "analytic" tradition, but mostly I am a fan of philosophy, and most of the really important philosophy is not, by my lights, to be found in "recent logic and metaphysics".
The field needs more places like UCR. (The world needs more places with decent weather, but that's a separate issue!)
UPDATE: One current PhD student at UT Austin not working in M&E/Language/Mind/Logic wrote to say he felt the department was more supportive of his work than my commentary would suggest. I am happy to hear that, and I hope other students feel the same way.
The good, the bad, and the ugly. (This is a comment on the quality of the reviews, not the verdicts they reach!) You would think a very clear, 185-page book would generate more consistently competent reviews, but the topic of religion, alas, seems to be an obstacle.
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