Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Classroom policies/strategies for free expression and inclusion?

Philosopher Jason Swartwood (Saint Paul College) writes:

As a reader of your blog, I appreciate the discussions of free expression and academic freedom that often take place there.  One aspect I haven't seen much discussion of is classroom policies in which instructors explicitly state and discuss with students the value of free expression in their classroom so as to encourage productive discussion.  Since I teach mostly controversial topics (in Ethics, Bioethics, and Feminist Philosophy courses, especially), I find it very helpful to explicitly discuss what will be our shared standards on the first day of class.  This has so far (fingers crossed!) helped students deal productively with their discomfort even when we're discussing things such as (to pick probably the most inflammatory examples) gender critical views of gender or Tuvel's transracialism analogy.  

I thought it would be nice to have a discussion of what other faculty do to proactively head-off misguided attempts to stifle free expression in the classroom while also promoting an inclusive classroom atmosphere.  As an example of what I mean, I have a classroom policy I use posted on my website, along with exercises I do on the first day to get students talking about it.  Given the volatile climate we live in, I thought it would be useful to share ideas about how we proactively promote and model important values like free expression and inclusion.

Comments are open for suggestions and ideas from readers.

Still more on Professor Stock's situation at Sussex

This bit from the article was especially striking:

Three of Stock’s four fellow professors of philosophy at Sussex told me that they supported her academic freedom, but none would say so publicly, despite more than 200 UK academic philosophers signing an open letter supporting Stock’s and others’ “right to raise concerns on this matter”.

Hi-Phi Nation is starting a series of podcasts on David Lewis

You can listen to the first one here.

No wonder Schopenhauer was a pessimist!

This is the famous letter to a young Arthur from his Mom:

Social Epistemology, and the Epistemology of the Media and the Internet

Philosopher Joseph Shieber (Lafayette) has a fair-minded and interesting discussion of my recent paper.  I agree with a number of points he makes, including, as I argue in the paper, for the need for a restored Fairness Doctrine in the traditional media. I think Professor Shieber understates the distinctive contribution of the Internet to mayhem and ignorance (which I discuss, in particular, at pp. 20-23), but that's certainly arguable.

The "cloak and dagger" campaign against Professor Kathleen Stock

The Times of London reports; an excerpt:

Rio Jacques, 23, a second-year history student at the university...is the first activist from the campaign to speak openly, added: “It’s very much cloak and dagger, but that’s not the way we want it to be. The masks — it’s not meant to be threatening. It’s just for the protection of the people that want to be vocal.

“No one wants to lose their place at university, but at the same time we don’t want to sacrifice our right to defend ourselves with our words.”

Jacques, who is transgender, is one of the leaders of Reclaim Sussex and is involved with Anti Terf Sussex, the two most prominent groups spearheading the campaign....

The group’s suggested reading includes an essay by Christa Peterson, a PhD student at the University of Southern California. For the past two years years, Peterson has led a Twitter campaign against Stock, culminating in the essay published earlier this year.

In praise of anger

A discussion of the new book by philosopher Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) at The New Yorker.

(Thanks to John Martin Fischer for the pointer.)

More on the academic freedom crisis at Yale

Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley comments on the events we have recently noted.

What is it like to be a philosopher? Mike Huemer (Colorado) edition

Here.  An amusing interview, as one would expect.  He thinks there's not enough substantive philosophy on blogs like this one, but I guess the evidence suggests that trying to do actual philosophy on blogs doesn't always go well!

Talking about the Chinese Room argument with a chatbot

Philosopher Blake Myers works "on issues at the intersection of philosophy, artificial intelligence, and data science."   He continues:

Most recently, I have been working with deep learning AI chatbots to assess their abilities with respect to self reports. One of these chatbots is GPT-3, which is arguably the best chatbot in existence right now, and one that has attracted the attention of some philosophers. Below I have copied and pasted a recent dialog session that I had with GPT-3 that I found interesting, and I thought your readers might enjoy reading it, as well.

There's more at Dr. Myers's homepage.   The dialog is below the fold:

Open letter from UK philosophers in support of academic freedom for Prof. Kathleen Stock and at the University of Sussex

Here.  Additional UK-based philosophers (faculty and graduate students) are invited to sign.  A distinguished group of signatories already, including Crispin Wright, Timothy Williamson, David Papineau, Helen Beebee, Samir Okasha, James Ladyman, Quassim Cassam, Mary Margaret McCabe, Emma Borg, Mike Martin, Christopher Janaway, and many others.

(Thanks to Mary Leng for the pointer.)

"Harry Frankfurt and the Senate Parlimentarian"

Philosopher Ben Burgis comments in Jacobin.

(Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.

Google is hiring philosophers...

...to work on ethical issues related to artificial intelligence.  Since Google is, like very capitalist enterprise, fundamentally about profit maximization, we'll see how much ethics they can abide!  But the job might interest some readers out there.

ADDENDUM:  As philosopher Sebastian Lutz (Uppsala) reminds me, Google has had a vexed history with its ethicists.

Richard Marshall interviews Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern)...

...at 3:16 AM.  Professor Zuckert has done important work on Kant, especially his aesthetics, and, more recently on Herder.

Albania, before and after Stalinism

Political philosopher Lea Ypi (LSE) talks about her autobiographical book at The Guardian.

"The Epistemology of the Internet and the Regulation of Speech in America"

A draft of this paper is now available, which will be presented at Georgetown next month.  It picks up on some ideas first mentioned in an earlier blog post and presentation in Turin, which generated a lot of interest:  finally there is a shareable paper. Here is the abstract:

In Memoriam: Salvatore Veca (1943-2021)

Professor Veca was an important and influential figure in political philosophy in Italy, where he taught at several universities, and held professorships at the Universities of Florence and (from 1990) Pavia.  There is a brief obituary in English here and there is much more about his career and work at the Italian Wikipedia page.

The wicked never rest, University of Sussex edition

Here we go again:  this time an anonymous alleged group of students at the University of Sussex (who knows?  they're anonymous) is not content simply to argue against philosopher Kathleen Stock, to protest the LGB Alliance with which she is involved, to protest in support of trans students--instead, like all fascist wannabes, they want her fired from her job.  The University, so far, has stood firm.  But what disgraceful behavior, complete with the false claims about "harm" and "safety" that we're all familiar with when "childish authoritarian idiots" (as philosopher Alex Byrne [MIT] aptly called them) go on one of their rampages.   Hopefully, the University will continue to stand firm. 

Virtual memorial for Charles Mills this Sunday

Details, as well as much information about his life and work, here.

More Charles Mills

MOVING TO FRONT (ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPT. 29)--A LIVELY DISCUSSION CONTINUES IN THE COMMENTS

Via Jason Stanley, I came upon this very funny video clip of Mills talking about "The Whiteness of John Rawls."  The NYT has also published its obituary, which contains this useful summation of his critique of liberalism in The Racial Contract:

In it he argued that white supremacy, far from being a bug in the Western political tradition, was one of its features, and that racism represented a political system every bit as coherent and intentional as liberal democracy.

“White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today,” he wrote in the book’s first sentence.

He posited that one of liberalism’s core tenets, the “social contract,” a theoretical agreement in which individuals ceded some rights in exchange for protection by the government, was designed explicitly to exclude people of color. (He readily noted the debt he owed to feminist political theory, especially the philosopher Carole Pateman and her 1988 book “The Sexual Contract.”)

“What Mills does is to deconstruct the domain of white political theory by showing that Black people and people of color were never meant to be included,” George Yancy, a philosopher at Emory University in Atlanta, said in an interview....

I am far from being a Rawlsian liberal, but my impression is that Rawlsian liberals have found this critique wholly unpersuasive, as involving misunderstandings of the theory.  But what say the experts?   I will prefer signed comments, but you must at least include a valid email address, which will not appear.

"Social media as the 'false representative class'"

Another amusing essay by philosopher Justin Smith (Paris VII); an excerpt:

It is of course fitting for politicians to say something when, e.g., the president of the US has a military opponent assassinated by drone strike. By contrast it is troubling when ordinary private citizens are expected to withhold whatever they might have planned to tweet about their recent Netflix experiences because something big just happened in Afghanistan, and some nebulous pressure obliges them to speak only of this, or, if they are aware of their own ignorance, to simply remain silent. But what is the nature of this pressure? It cannot be noblesse-oblige, because they are not nobles; it cannot be the dignity of the office, because they hold no office.

Philosopher Kristin Andrews (York U/Toronto) talks about animal minds and animal ethics...

...with Ricardo Lopes at The Dissenter.

An empirical study of philosophers' views about "moral expertise"

Here; not much that is surprising, although I found this amusing:

Notably, philosophers in the field of moral philosophy, and those who are publicly involved in advisory activities, tend to evaluate philosophers’ moral judgment capacity as stronger, while analytic philosophers tend to reject this view.

Far be it from me to pretend to "moral expertise," but this finding does suggest that moral philosophers are prone to rather self-serving assessments!

(Thanks to Michael Magoulias for the pointer.)

Jeffers on the later DuBois

Philosopher Chike Jeffers (Dalhousie) talks about some of DuBois's later works, many of which are less-known than his famous The Souls of Black Folk from 1903.  (Professor Jeffers, happily, is writing the volume on DuBois in my Routledge Philosophers series.)

Two British philosophers discuss teaching philosophy in prisons

Quite interesting.

In Memoriam: Charles W. Mills (1951-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 21--UPDATED

Professor Mills, a leading figure in political philosophy and philosophy of race, was, since 2016, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, before that having spent more than a quarter-century in the Chicago area, first at the University of Illinois at Chicago and then Northwestern University.  His best-known work was undoubtedly The Racial Contract (1997), although he wrote influential books and articles on Marxist philosophy, Africana philosophy, and other topics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  A brief memorial notice from the APA.

ANOTHER:  A memorial from the CUNY Graduate Center.

AND ANOTHER:  A charming and evocative "personal tribute" from philosopher Liam Kofi Bright (LSE).

STILL MORE:  A NYT columnist on Mills.  And an obituary from the Jamaica Observer.

A PHILOSOPHICAL APPRECIATION:  From philosopher Jason Stanley (Yale).

"Agency and Responsibility Research Group"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 21--UPDATED

Here, courtesy of philosopher Thomas Nadelhoffer (Charleston).

UPDATE:   Upcoming talks this semester are by Derk Pereboom (9/30), Christian List (10/27), and Carolina Sartorio (12/03).

Philosopher Arif Ahmed on challenges for academic freedom at his school, Cambridge University

Here, and with lessons for those who teach elsewhere.

Richard Marshall interviews Paul Thagard (Waterloo)...

...at 3:16 AM.

The philistinism of the philosophers

From an essay by philosopher Justin Smith (Paris VII):

The political philosopher Jake McNulty reminded me recently of a wonderful observation of Adorno’s: that it was not the artists with firm political convictions expressed through their art, such as Bertolt Brecht, who ended up truly revolutionizing their historical moment, but those such as Samuel Beckett, whose work is infinitely ambiguous, non-committal, and open to endless interpretation. The one gave us Tin Pan Alley retrofitted with revolutionary slogans, the other gave us his own sort of revolution. One fears that the closest thing we have to intellectuals today are so disengaged from even the ideal of an avant-garde that they know only how to scan a work for its manifest content, and thus today’s descendants of Brecht are deemed good because they are “on message”, while today’s descendants of Beckett, if there were any, would be deemed irresponsible for failing to state explicitly enough their commitment to antiracism.

"Anti-realism" and the analytic-continental divide

Philosopher Lee Braver (South Florida) comments.  Of course, Derrida really is a charlatan, but he is the exception and not the norm in the post-Kantian traditions in Continental European philosophy.

"The Need for Socially Distanced Citizens"

Philosopher Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) comments.

New editors for the Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism

Jonathan Gilmore and Sandra Shapshay, both at CUNY.

Political orientation, science denial, and COVID vaccinations

Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments.

Interview with Prof. Jeremy Fischer who resigned his post at Alabama/Huntsville over their inadequate public health measures

Here; an excerpt:

EA: In your resignation letter, you said you did not want to be complicit in a “moral atrocity.” Can you elaborate on what you consider to be the “moral atrocity” in this situation? Is it limited to UAH? What does it mean on a world scale?

JF: There is a good chance that classes and other in-person events on campus will accelerate COVID transmission in the wider community. This is a huge problem for a state like Alabama, in which only about 76% of senior citizens are fully vaccinated. (Compare that number with 99% in Vermont, 98% in Maine, 96% in Washington State and 95% in Maryland.) Already, as the school year begins, Alabama hospitals are packed with COVID patients and running out of ICU beds (and workers to staff them ).

In such circumstances, large institutions like schools and universities need to take all reasonable steps to minimize coronavirus transmission. (See, for example, the possible mitigation policies, numbered (1)-(8) above, as well as our petition demand to move at least some classes online and implement C.D.C.-recommended social distancing guidelines.) But, despite their modest efforts, the UA System failed to take even most of these steps. In my judgment, this failure is morally atrocious.

Philosopher Nathan Jun has resigned his tenured position at Midwestern State University

We noted Professor Jun's ordeal last year.  He has now sent out an email to me and others as follows:

I am writing to let you know that I have been forced to resign from Midwestern State University. As a result of last year's scandal I ended up developing severe PTSD for which I have since been hospitalized on three separate occasions. Having already thrown me under the bus in October 2020 by publicly condemning me and refusing to defend my safety and reputation against attacks by a white supremacist mob, the university subsequently saw fit to deny the accommodations I had requested under the ADA. Faced with the choice of being terminated or resigning, I ultimately opted for the latter.

Long story short: the far right--in concert with the soulless, amoral administration of Midwestern State University--has succeeded in destroying my academic career and, frankly, my life. 

I do know that he has resigned, but I do not know any further details beyond what Professor Jun reports.  If readers learn more, please email me, and I will update this post.

A call for greater opportunities for non-native speakers in "analytic" philosophy

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--SOME READERS ASKED ME TO OPEN COMMENTS, WHICH I HAVE NOW DONE (couldn't moderate them yesterday)

Dubbed the "Barcelona Principles" by its creator, philosopher Filippo Contessi, it adopts the currently trendy language of "inclusion," but its basic point is sound:  insofar as analytic philosophy tries to be a Wissenschaft, it should be open to scientific contributions from researchers across different linguistic cultures.  It seems to me doubtful, however, that one can evaluate "publications, presentations, proposals and submissions without giving" weight to their authors' "linguistic style" and "fluency," since the latter are often inextricable from the substance.  (One can, certainly, as the principle proposes, disregard accent.)  Far better, it seems to me, to invite non-Anglophone philosophers on the merits of their work and then help them, as needed, with their English expression.  (With the four volumes [so far] of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, we have solicited a number of important legal philosophers outside the Anglosphere, and, when necessary, helped edit their English.)

"How We Argue Now"

Philosopher John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) comments.

Memorial for Joseph Margolis this Friday

Philosopher Espen Hammer, Chair of the Department at Temple, writes:  "The Temple philosophy department will be hosting a memorial event for Professor Joseph Margolis. The event will take place 3-5pm (EST) on Friday, September 17. Please click here for the zoom link!"

"Against Effective Altruism"

Philosopher Alice Crary (New School/Oxford) comments. What Professor Crary calls "the institutional critique" is the really decisive one it seems to me; here is her useful summary of it:

This critique attacks effective altruists for operating with a damagingly narrow interpretation of the class of things that are assessable as right or wrong. It targets effective altruists’ tendency to focus on single actions and their proximate consequences and, more specifically, on simple interventions that reduce suffering in the short term. Advocates of the institutional critique are on the whole concerned to decry the neglect, on the part of EA, of coordinated sets of actions directed at changing social structures that reliably cause suffering. EA’s metrics are best suited to detect the short term impact of particular actions, so its tendency to discount the impact of coordinated actions can be seen as reflecting ‘measurability bias’. A leitmotif of the institutional critique of EA is that this bias is politically dangerous because it obscures the structural, political roots of global misery, thereby contributing to its reproduction by weakening existing political mechanisms for positive social change

Paul Pietroski (Rutgers) interviewed about his work in semantics and cognitive science...

...here.

(Thanks to Norbert Hornstein for the pointer.)

Philosopher Peter Singer to donate all of $1 million prize to charities

This, of course, is what he should do, given his ideas and arguments, so kudos to him.  If he were not a proponent of "effective [i.e., measurable in the short-term] altruism," he might choose different beneficiaries for the money, but that's a separate debate.  

2200 students enrolled in logic at the University of Sydney!

I learned of this "rock star" logic teacher at Sydney (Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson) via my former student Michael Sevel (a legal philosopher at Sydney) on Twitter.

Reflections on the Jan Boxill case at UNC...

...at CHE.  (Earlier coverage.)

Fantasy or reality in narrative?

Philosopher Noel Carroll (CUNY Grad Center) and others discuss at IAITV.

In Memoriam: Alex Orenstein (1936-2018)

Philosopher David Rosenthal (CUNY) recently learned that Professor Orenstein (who had retired from CUNY a decade ago and moved away) had passed away in 2018, something others at CUNY and Oxford, where Professor Orenstein also spent time, had not known.  He shared this memorial notice:

Alex Orenstein, professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center and Queens College of the City University of New York, died of cancer in June 2018 at the age of 82, while in the care of close family in Las Vegas, having lost contact with academic colleagues and friends the preceding year.

Alex Orenstein was born in New York City on March 5, 1936.  He earned an A.B. from Hunter College in 1956, and was a Lecturer in Philosophy there from 1957 to 1960.  He then worked for three years as a computer programmer and systems analyst, returning to philosophy in 1964 to pursue a Ph.D. at NYU, which he completed  in 1972.  In 1968 he began teaching at Queens College and in 1974 joined the philosophy faculty of the Graduate Center of CUNY, teaching at both places until his retirement in 2011.

Is radical political action like brain surgery or a landslide?

Robert Paul Wolff comments; an excerpt:

Let me begin with the distinction, which I am sure I have several times drawn before on this blog, between two very different images of progressive or transformative political action: brain surgery and a landslide. If you think that radical political action is like brain surgery, then you will suppose that it is a precise and delicate matter in which it is desperately important to perform the operation in precisely the correct manner – one wrong move can leave the patient paralyzed or, worse still, dead. For the past 200 years, a good deal of debate on the left seems to have been motivated by this image of political action. I saw this up close at the University of Massachusetts almost 50 years ago when five young Marxist economists were hired simultaneously into tenured positions in the economics department and almost immediately split into three factions.

"I-reasoning" and "We-reasoning" during the COVID crisis

Philosopher Anne Schwenkenbecher (Murdoch U) comments.

What did authoritarian rulers study at university?

Philosopher Paul Raymont took a look; law and engineering were popular, but there were a few who studied philosophy.

In Memoriam: Kenneth Kipnis (1943-2021)

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he was emeritus, Professor Kipnis was well-known for his work in applied ethics, especially (but not only) with regard to medical issues.   There is an obituary here.