Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

On the radio in Los Angeles tomorrow, Saturday, June 18

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.

Three cultures of Facebook

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.

Blast from the past: reflections on the 10th anniversary of the blog...

...back in August 2013.  All of it still rings true today.

Subscribe to a "feed" for this blog

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.

According to "The National Jurist" magazine...

...I'm the 4th "most influential" person in American legal education.  Maybe, but who is the most influential in "philosophical education," that's what we all want to know.

What is it like to be a philosopher? Brian Leiter edition

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.

Barring the unexpected, a hiatus until the weekend...

...dog days of summer, and all that.

After a two-year hiatus, brianleiter.net...

...is finally updated with everything you didn't want to know.

Sitemeter has gone crazy

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.

University of Chicago turned Bernie Sanders into a socialist

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).

Brian Leiter watch

Graphic designer!

The blog just had it's 30 millionth visit in the last few minutes...

...thanks for reading.  My reflections at the 10 million mark.

Reader poll #7 results: what is your primary occupation

So with not quite 1800 votes, here are the results: 

What is your primary occupation?

Tenure-track philosophy professor    21%379 Tenure-track professor in another field    6%101 Non-tenure-track philosophy teacher    9%168 Non-tenure-track teacher in another field    2%38 Academic administrator    1%22 Independent scholar    2%32 Student    36%648 Lawyer    4%69 Doctor    1%13 Engineer    1%13 Journalist    1%15 Finance industry    1%25 Computer industry    2%42 Unemployed, seeking work    2%32 None of the above    10%181

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.

Reader poll #6: What is your native language?

The choices were offered partly with an eye to what I know about the countries of readership.

QuestionPro

Reader poll #5: the results for political ideology/outlook

So with not quite 1400 votes, here are the results:

Which best describes your political ideology or outlook?

---

Marxian left
13%181
Social democratic left
40%560
American liberal
12%168
American moderate Democrat
7%91
American Republican
1%10
Burkean conservative
4%59
Social/religious conservative
3%43
Libertarian
7%100
Fascist/Authoritarian Right
3%39
None of the above
10%140

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!

Reader poll #3: your income

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.

QuestionPro

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.

Reader poll #4: your religious identity

MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 10--RESULTS BELOW

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.)

 

QuestionPro

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).

 

Reader poll #2: gender

Readers, what is your gender?

QuestionPro

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.)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

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.)

Thanks for reading.

Thanks to University of Miami...

...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.

https://chicago.academia.edu/BrianLeiter

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.

LA Review of Books reviews a new novel by Ian McEwan...

...and Why Tolerate Religion? together!

UVA bound...

...for what promises to be an interesting event.  So a bit less posting until the weekend.

Some papers posted on SSRN during the summer...

...in case they're of interest to anyone who took a vacation from blogs during the summer:

"The Case Against Free Speech"

"Marx, Law, Ideology, Legal Positivism"

"Reply to Five Critics of Why Tolerate Religion?

Tweet, tweet

I'm doing a bit more of it this summer.

"Why Tolerate Religion?" reviewed in Phil Review

Here.

Sorry for the dearth of posting...

...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.

Recent reviews of "Why Tolerate Religion?"

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.

Philosophy Talk radio on Sunday

I'll be discussing Why Tolerate Religion? with John Perry and Ken Taylor.  10 am California time, noon in Chicago, 1 pm on the East Coast.

ADDENDUM:  I last did Philosophy Talk nearly a decade ago, that time, on Nietzsche.

Davidson College will find out that "The Truth is Terrible"

Later today!  (The paper is here.)

Progress in Philosophy Revisited

Two years ago I took part in panel in a conference on progress in philosophy.  (The contributions of me, Jennifer Nagel  and Dave Chalmers  are still online -- I had a tech fail in recording Pettit’s contribution).  My view was and is that philosophical progress is robust – the growth is Fibonacci (think of a tree branching).  Just speaking from what I’ve seen in areas of philosophy that I am familiar with, the grown and development has been astounding over the last thirty years.

Fibonacci growth is impressive, but is it enough?  The second part of my talk was that it is not nearly enough.

Many people are familiar with Kurzweil’s thesis about the exponential growth in technology leading to a kind of technological singularity.   Singularity happens when you hit the elbow in the exponential curve and the curve effectively shoot straight up (or appears to).  If that is right, then the technological curve is pulling away from the philosophy curve very rapidly and is about to leave it completely behind.  What that means is that our technology is going to leave our critical thinking skills behind.  You may think that is already happening, and I agree: I’m just saying the problem is about to get much worse.

It doesn’t have to get worse.  The only reason that technology grows exponentially is that we keep feeding it resources.  The only reason philosophy doesn’t is that we starve it for resources (we don’t have enough bodies to throw at philosophical problems).  I say we need to seriously think about redistributing resources away from technological development and into philosophy, and allow philosophy departments to grow new programs that focus on new technologies and their development.  Why would anyone do this?  Well, someone needs to make vivid what can go wrong if we don’t.  One idea is that if we don’t understand technology we become alienated from it – a view that I floated yesterday. 

So here are some questions for discussion.  Is philosophy making the kind of progress I believe it is?  Is technology pulling away from us as Kurzweil believes it is?  Is this a problem?  Can we fix it?  If so, how?

"Nietzsche Brian Leiter"

A journal recently sent me an automated request to referee a manuscript, which, unfortunately, I could not do within the parameters offered.  From the salutation, I learned how the editors keep track of me:

    "Dear Nietzsche Brian Leiter,"

Who reads this blog?

So with not quite 2800 responses, here's the breakdown:

Philosophy faculty member   32%900 Philosophy graduate student   30%848 Philosophy undergraduate student   6%181 Faculty member in another field   7%200 Graduate student in another field   6%163 Undergraduate student in another field   1%38 School teacher (high school, middle school, elementary)   1%29 High school student   0%9 Journalist   0%10 Lawyer   3%83 Doctor   1%14 Other professional outside academia   6%157 Other   6%161

Of course, I don't know if particular groups responded at differential rates.  But on the assumption this is a representative sample, 68% of respondents are in philosophy, as faculty or students; 39% of readers are academic faculty in one field or another (40% are teachers of some kind); and the non-academic readership is somewhere around 10-15%.  I appreciate all the comments from readers, especially those who chose 'other,' and I find it very gratifying that these readers find a way to stay connected with philosophy via this site.

Readers: who are you?

A propos yesterday's post, it occurred to me I should do one of these threads, which I hadn't done in years.  (Ed.: Post-docs should pick the 'faculty' category.)

 

I'm also opening comments. No need to sign your name, though please use a distinctive 'handle,' so we don't have a thread full of "anons" (e.g., "Indiana undergrad in philosophy," or "Jerry B" etc.).  Feel free to offer a bit more detail than the poll above permits (esp. if you check 'other')  and/or to say what you mostly come here to read.    Thanks.

10th Anniversary of the Blog

This blog is, remarkably, ten years old today. It's the most widely read philosophy blog in the world, as best I can tell, with nearly 23 million visits and more than 30 million page views during its decade of life (I recall how surprising it was the first time it got 200 hits in one day way back in 2003!  Now, even in the summer, it's running an average of 10,000 hits per day).  Issues raised here have made it into The New York Times, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, The Boston Globe, and many other traditional media.  My thanks to all you readers for making it a success and making it worth continuing. 

Here's three things I never would have guessed way back in 2003:

1.  The extent to which blogs would become part of the mainstream of the profession.

2.  The extent to which academic philosophers, though overall a more enlightened group, would still have representatives of every political and moral pathology of the United States.  (I shall have to do another survey of the readership like this one from a few years ago.)

3.  The extent to which airing on the Internet the kind of moral and political views I express all the time to friends and colleagues would make me an object of widespread cyber-vilification--yes, in retrospect, I realize that was naive.  Cyberspace, alas, enables an extraordinary amount of shameless defamation by people with political or philosophical axes to grind; and American libel and cyber-law mostly gives them cover.

I've posted some reflections at various milestones in the past, but the realization that ten years have passed inspires more verbosity.  I've put most of it below the fold, to spare those of you who are not interested.

"Why Tolerate Religion?" at the Center for Inquiry in Washington, DC

The video.

Sales of "Bruce" Leiter's book are booming...

...either because of this or this, not sure which.  Money quotes:

"[O]ne of the most troubling and intellectually discreditable books by a serious American scholar in some time."--Family Research Council

"Students and scholars likely will be citing Leiter's clear and powerful arguments for many years."--Choice

(For non-US readers:  Choice is widely used by libraries in deciding what to purchase; the Family Research Council is the main policy arm of the far right Christian movement in the U.S.)

UPDATE:  My thanks to Brandon Conley for posting a sensible reply at the FRC blog.  Still, I am trying to persuade PUP to use the FRB blurb, above, in promotional materials!

ANOTHER (May 5):  There was a second comment pointing out the obvious, that the FRC author had not read the book, but that comment has disappeared.  So just in case, here is Mr. Conley's comment from the FRC site, which, happily, is still there:

This review willfully misrepresents Leiter's aim as one of criticizing freedom of religious practice without persecution when Leiter's actual target is the idea that religious practices should receive preferential treatment by being exempted from laws designed for the common good. Here's a quote from an honest synopsis of the book displaying the kinds of questions it tackles:

" Why, for example, can a religious soup kitchen get an exemption from zoning laws in order to expand its facilities to better serve the needy,  while a secular soup kitchen with the same goal cannot? Why is a Sikh  boy permitted to wear his ceremonial dagger to school while any other  boy could be expelled for packing a knife? Why are religious obligations  that conflict with the law accorded special toleration while other  obligations of conscience are not?"

In other words, Leiter is arguing for equal treatment of all claims of conscience, whether secular or religious. Since by far the most persecuted religious affiliation in the U.S. is atheism (in many states it is illegal for an atheist to hold public office), these questions are important to ask.  The FCR is employing the all to common tactic of painting an argument against special treatment as an argument for persecution.

For those concerned about the future of this blog...

...I want to confirm that I have withdrawn from consideration for the vacant position in Rome.

UPDATE:  Michael Otsuka (UCL) writes:  "Since the last pope had a twitter account, I think the next pope will be a blogger. And you could have declared that everything you post is ex cathedra, in order to shut up Vatican censors."

"Why Tolerate Religion?" on the radio...

...in London from the fall (that segment runs from 32:45 to 42:15).

"Why Tolerate Religion?" Redux

So Princeton University Press tells me they have ordered a new printing of 1,000 more copies of Why Tolerate Religion?, in addition to the 2,000 initial run from October--so while I won't be retiring on the royalties, I must say it's quite a remarkable experience to be on the verge of selling 3,000 hardcover copies of an academic book!  Thanks to those of you out there who have bought a copy!  

In addition to the event in DC in April, I'll be doing something similar for the Center for Inquiry in Los Angeles in early October; more details on that to come.

The book sales have undoubtedly been helped by some favorable publicity in media with a broader reach, like The New Statesman in England and Stanley Fish's New York Times blog.  There was even a surprisingly positive review in the right-wing Jerusalem Post of all places (by Cornell historian Glenn Altschuler) and also a favorable and fair-minded review from David Gordon at the Mises Institute (who raised the reasonable anarchist objection to my final position).  But I have to admit this is the first time I've ever been mentioned in a review of a rock 'n' roll band!   I have not yet signed on as the opening act, but we'll see.

"Why Tolerate Religion?" comes to DC in April

Here.  Sorry there's such a substantial fee, not my doing!

Twenty Million Visits

It was only in February 2010 that this blog crossed the ten million threshold, and now today we crossed the twenty million visitor mark.  It took not quite seven years to hit ten million visits, and less than three years to add another ten million, a tangible indication that, even as the philosophy blogosphere has become busier and more lively, blog readership is not a zero-sum game:  more and more philosophy students and faculty (as well as others) continue to read, and to read more blogs.  I've nothing really to add to my reflections from the 10 million mark, but I will reiterate my thanks to you, the readers, and to the many who send me interesting material and links, which makes it feasible to keep the blog going while doing my actual job!

If you're interested in Google Scholar...

...I've added a few updates from readers to the last post.

Why Tolerate Religion?

The Facebook page, courtesy of PUP (!).  The book will be out in early October.

The mystery of June blog traffic

Usually as summer starts, blog readership declines, but not this month--as of this morning, the blog had already had over 300,000 unique visits and over 445,000 page views during June, compared to figures, respectively, of 283,000 and 421,000 a year ago.  (June traffic is double what it was four years ago, but that is part of a general trend in the readership.)  June traffic this year has been higher than September 2011 traffic, also surprising.  One thing I've noticed is that as the number of philosophy blogs has increased in recent years, overall readership here has gone up--my best guess is that the increasing number of philosophy-related blogs brings more readers with philosophical interests on-line.

Anyway, whatever the explanation, thanks for reading!

Facebook mischief

There is a "Brian Leiter 'interest'" page on facebook, for which I bear no responsibility!  I'm not sure why it's there, except it seems to have its source in Wikipedia mischief.  If you "like" the interest page on FB, then I will be able to skip purgatory and go straight to Heaven.  If you don't like it, then life will go on.  Thank you for your consideration for my eternal soul.

Why Tolerate Religion?

In Milan! 

The 15 million visits mark...

...was passed some time in the last couple of hours according to the Site Meter gods.  It seems like ten million was only yesterday!  Thanks, as always, for reading.

Imagine my surprise...

...to come home on Sunday from a (great) philosophy conference on Friday and Saturday to find that the blog had been deluged with visitors, some sent by right-wing scolds loyal to the plutocracy (reacting to this) and some sent by a liberal blogger loyal to his former teacher Warren Goldfarb (and to Thomas Kuhn!).  Cyberspace is truly weird!

Guess who finally has a personal homepage?

Brian Leiter, that's who--everything you didn't want to know, and a Steve Pyke photo!   Another Brian Leiter (really, some guy in Maryland) got the .com, so I got the .net.  (It appears the .com has been colonized by advertising connected to the .net Leiter, however!)