Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Philosophy PhD applications spreadsheet

Several readers have sent along this useful spread sheet, produced by a user at the "Grad Cafe" discussion board.

Schwenkler on Anscombe...

...at Commonweal.

In Memoriam: Kenneth Taylor (1954-2019)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

I'm very sorry to report that Professor Taylor, a longtime member of the Stanford faculty and an expert in philosophy of language and mind, has passed away unexpectedly.   I will add links to memorial notices and more information as they become available.

UPDATE:  The Stanford memorial notice.  And here is a tribute from his Stanford colleague and co-host of Philosophy Talk, John Perry.

On Hume's idea that where philosophy and argument end, psychology begins

An interview with philosophical novelist Rebecca Goldstein at IAITV.

Richard Marshall interviews Michael Shaffer (St. Cloud State)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Marshall Cohen (USC) on his Harvard classmate Stanley Cavell...

...at the LARB.  He does a very good job capturing why so many philosophers (I among them) never warmed to Cavell.  An excerpt:

In 1980, [Cavell's book The Claim of Reason] was the subject of a symposium at the American Philosophical Society (at which I was present); the occasion proved a fiasco for Cavell. Barry Stroud, a distinguished epistemologist and former Berkeley colleague, offered a careful, penetrating examination and critique of Cavell’s approach to skepticism and to Cavell’s use of the concepts of acceptance and acknowledgment. Cavell responded abusively and unprofessionally to Stroud’s highly professional, respectful paper. In reflecting on the event, Cavell concludes that his work creates infectious ill will among an imposing body of philosophers who know of it.

I believe Stroud bore Cavell no ill will and displayed none on this occasion, but there are certainly many who have been put off reading Cavell by the eccentricities of his prose and the obstacles put in the way of gaining a clear understanding of his arguments and positions. This is true even of many who acknowledge the fact that he is also capable of great eloquence and deep insight. I believe Cavell paid a great price for persuading himself, as he says in the memoir, that one can no more choose how one writes than one can choose what makes one happy. This is a preposterous claim and one that an Emersonian friend (editor, analyst, professional colleague) might have helped him abandon.

Siena philosophy professor Emanuele Castrucci is a Nazi sympathizer

What an embarrassment.  I am unsure of the legal status of pro-Nazi speech in Italy, although I would not be surprised if, as in many European countries, it is illegal.  In any case, it appears that academic freedom in Italy does not protect extra-mural speech.  There's more here (in Italian).

UPDATE:  Some of this maniac's creepy musings and comments are translated here.   And more news coverage (in English).

New Books in November

Authors and/or publishers sent me these new books this month:

The World Philosophy Made:  From Plato to the Digital Age by Scott Soames (Princeton University Press, 2019).

The Ethics of Hooking Up:  Casual Sex and Moral Philosophy on Campus by James Rocha (Routledge, 2020).

Measuring Social Welfare:  An Introduction by Matthew D. Adler (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Transitional Subjects:  Critical Theory and Object Relations edited by Amy Allen & Brian O'Connor (Columbia University Press, 2019).

The Rise of Analytic Philosophy, 1879-1930 by Michael Potter (Routledge, 2020).

Justice and the Meritocratic State by Thomas Mulligan (Routledge, 2018; paperback, 2019).

The Philosophy of Legal Change:  Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Processes edited by Maciej Chmielinski & Michal Rpuniewski (Routledge, 2020).

Philosophy of Human Rights:  A Systematic Introduction by Anat Biletzki (Routledge, 2020).

In Memoriam: Jaegwon Kim (1934-2019)

One of the most influential contributors to metaphysics and the philosophy of mind of the last half-century, Professor Kim taught from 1963-1967 and then from 1987 onwards at Brown University (where he was emeritus), but also spent some two decades at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with briefer stints as a tenured faculty member at both Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities.  Although I did not study directly with Kim, I always viewed his work as a model of analytic philosophy in the post-WWII period at its best.  He inherited from his teacher Carl Hempel a concern for precision and clarity of argumentation rivaled by only a handful of his contemporaries.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  Reader Robert Allen kindly shared this charming story:

Everyone knows Jaegwon Kim was an immortal philosopher.  But I had the good fortune of seeing what a kind-hearted man he was.  He came to Wayne State University in the late 80s on the occasion of Professor Richard 'Brad' Angell's retirement.  A sad day.  The department chair introduced him before his lecture, concluding with the title of his paper, something technical like 'Supervenience and Reduction'.  Professor Kim responded 'Thank you, Mike, for the generous introduction, but you got one thing wrong.  The title of my paper is, An Essay in Honor of Brad Angell.'

Philosopher Mark Johnston (Princeton) interviewed...

...at the Oxford Review of Books.  It's quite entertaining!  I had Johnson the Spring of my senior year in the first course he taught at Princeton, on "Personal Identity."  He was very tolerant of my irresponsible behavior with respect to deadlines that semester!

 

Where untenured tenure-track faculty at the U.S. "top 20" programs got their PhDs, 2019-20

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 22--UPDATED       

As prior studies have confirmed, PGR rank is a rather good predictor of professional outcomes, even though that's not what the PGR suveys measure. (Of course, NYU and Rutgers placement, below, would have been wholly predictable from PGR rankings of faculty quality in years past!) 

I look here, as I've done before, only at the untenured tenure-stream faculty at the top American PhD programs.  This is misleading in some obvious ways.  One of the most important is that tenure-stream jobs at liberal arts colleges may be the best jobs in American higher education:  teachers enjoy excellent students, good salaries, and research support.  My anecdotal impression is that tenure-stream faculty at leading liberal arts colleges in the U.S. (places like Pomona, Reed, Colgate, Wesleyan, Carleton, Macalester, Swarthmore, Grinnell, Bowdoin, etc.) are rather happy, and often have research qualification comparable to faculty at research universities.

With those caveats, here is where tenure-stream but untenured faculty at the "top 20" U.S. programs earned their PhD:

1.  New York University (9)

2.  Rutgers University, New Brunswick (8)

3.  Princeton University (7)

4.  University of California, Berkeley (5)

5.  Harvard University (4)

5.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4)

5.  Yale University (4)

8.  Cambridge University (2)

8.  Columbia University (2)

8.  University of California, Irvine (2)

8.  University of California, Riverside (2)

8.  University of Chicago (2)

8.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2)

1 each:   DePaul University; Oxford University; Stanford University; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Leeds; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Paris I (Sorbonne); University of Southern California; University of Texas, Austin; University of Toronto; University of Western Ontario; University of Wisconsin, Madison; York University (UK).

Top 20 programs with 0:   University of Pittsburgh; City University of New York; Brown University; University of California, San Diego; University of Notre Dame.

Berkeley, once again, is a star performer relative to its (very good but not "top 5") PGR ranking over the last decade, a credit I suspect to the quality of the training.  The UC Irvine and Riverside PhDs were specialists in areas where those programs are quite strong, as reflected in the PGR.  Both Cambridge PhDs were hired at Notre Dame.  Both Chicago PhDs were hired at Columbia or Barnard (tenure-stream Barnard faculty are part of the Columbia graduate program faculty).  I was surprised at how few Oxford DPhils there are.  There is a widely shared sense that Oxford is in decline (and not just because of Brexit, although that can't help), but in past iterations of these snapshots, Oxford fared much better.

Below the fold, a list of PhDs by school (corrections welcome, of course):

"[W]hen it comes to global-scale issues, what individuals do is somewhere between 100 percent pointless and 99.9999999 percent pointless" (UPDATED)

Impotent moralistic scolding is a favorite pasttime of philosophers, but when it comes to something like climate change, it's particularly absurd, as philosopher Steven Hales (Bloomsburg) argues (link now fixed):

We like to believe that when it comes to the great global issues of our time—climate change, pollution, poverty, mass extinction—that we each can make a difference. A small one maybe, but a real and significant difference, nonetheless. If we don’t try, or don’t try hard enough, we should feel culpable, and we have a concomitant moral responsibility to shame our lazy neighbors who refuse to make an effort. That’s a mistake. It not only makes us guilt-ridden and worse off psychologically, but even more harmfully it also provides only the illusion of effective action, thereby allowing global problems to fester without a proper solution.

Even professional ethicists are largely getting this wrong. I recently attended an international ethics conference, and the overwhelming take-away was the realization that philosophical ethics remains obsessed with individuals—trolley cases, what you should do, how you should act, who you should become. It is not appreciated that all the really serious moral issues of our time are collective action problems, and have nothing to do with you in the sense that they have nothing to do with individuals at all. The talks that did address collective action issues were keen on making them ultimately a matter of individual responsibility or blame....

In Memoriam: James Griffin (1933-2019)

A moral philosopher and philosopher of human rights, Professor Griffin spent most of his career at Oxford University, where he was Emeritus White's Professor of Moral Philosophy.   There  is a brief memorial notice from Keble College, Oxford here.  (Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer.)  I will add links to other memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  Oxford Philosophy's memorial notice is here.  (Thanks to Grant Lamond for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews John Dupre (Exeter)...

...at 3:16 AM.

All the bad arguments against impeaching Trump disposed of...

...succinctly by philosopher Michael Huemer (Colorado).

The ethics of drone use

Philosopher Trish Glazebrook (Washington State) comments.

The real history of "pragmatism" as a philosophy

An illuminating essay by two leading experts, Cheryl Misak (Tornoto) and Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt).

Richard Marshall interviews Hallvard Lillehammer (Birkbeck, London)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Philosophy and computing, digital resources, artificial intelligence and more

An interview with philosopher David Bourget (Western Ontario).

Near-death experiences?

Philosopher John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) discusses the topic.

"How the 2010s changed physics forever"

Hype aside, I'd be curious to hear from knowledgeable readers about how accurate this article is.  Submit your comment just once, it may take awhile to appear.

Philosopher Tim Maudlin (NYU) interviewed about quantum mechanics...

...at IAITV.  (Don't be thrown by the fact that at the beginning there appears to be a naked man in the water in the background!)

Philosophy graduate student at Berkeley gratuitously (and rather stupidly) insults rural Americans...

...and faces a predictable right-wing lapidation.  Having occasionally come across Mr. Kernion on social media, where he  seems a sanctimonious scold, I'm not wholly surprised by his outburst, which says more about his class position than about residents of rural America.  But I'm even less surprised that the usual suspects have pounced on this; I hope and expect Berkeley will do the right thing, and continue to make "no comment."  Mr. Kernion's speech is lawful, however foolish, and it is none of the university's business.

I'll give the final word to a correspondent from the UK who flagged this episode for me yesterday:  "Yet another junior scholar bringing shame to the profession on social media, but this one stands out for his utter ignorance of how countries and economies work. Conservatives are pointing to him as just another philosopher who is clueless about the 'real world.' And in this case they are correct!"  But let's remember that Mr. Kernion, like anybody, is a lot more than some unfortunate and ill-considered tweets.

On being an American philosopher in China

This is an interesting account.

Richard Marshall interviews Jeremy Avigad (Carnegie-Mellon)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Barry Stroud memorial service

Julie Stroud kindly called to my attention the recent memorial for Professor Stroud, which includes remarks by a number of philosophers, including Jason Bridges (Chicago), Janet Broughton (Berkeley), Niko Kolodny (Berkeley), Thomas Nagel (NYU), Antonia Peacocke (Stanford), Samuel Scheffler (NYU), and his daughter Sarah Stroud (North Carolina).  The linked website also includes many lovely photos and other material of interest to admirers of Professor Stroud.

"OK boomer" and "I know you are, but what am I?"

Thoughts from philosopher Daniel Kaufman (Missouri State); an excerpt:

What it signals is that there will be – can be – no genuine youth rebellion from this generation; that the kids who in previous eras would have risked being hung from a tree, while trying to register black southerners to vote, or face being shot in the face by National Guardsmen while protesting an unjust war, have been bamboozled by their corporate masters into thinking that typing “OK Boomer” into their Apple I-Phones™ and broadcasting it through the medium supplied by Twitter,™ and selling t-shirts, printed by PrintCorp™, and proliferating hashtags and virtual-cancellations through numerous other corporate platforms, run and financed by “Boomers,” that they are actually rebelling; doing something; contributing.  And if organs like the New York Times and the Washington Post are stupid and gullible (or cynical) enough to cheer it on, what chance is there that anyone to whom anyone is going to listen is going to call it out for the pitiful bullshit that it is?

What makes science trustworthy?

Philip Kitcher (Columbia) discusses a recent book, and there is lots to learn here, especially for those not familiar with the history and philosophy of science.

Horrifying!

But why?  Philosopher David Livingstone Smith (New England) comments.

Christian List (LSE) on free will

Professor List continues the detailed precis of his recent book at the LSE Philosophy blog.

Kripke on the "Dogmatism Paradox"...

...at IAITV.

Pedigree and quality

It's rational for hiring schools to consider pedigree, as we've discussed on many prior occasions.  In the PGR era, everyone knows that an Ivy League name is compatible with being a top 30 or a top 5 department, and students and more faculty know that excellence in various specialties does not track "brand name" of the university, but rather faculty excellence in the subfield.

Harvard, because it has the "brand name," has perhaps had more latitude in ignoring pre-PGR pedigree factors than other departments, and has done so with remarkable success.  Consider that the current tenure-track faculty includes PhDs from Wisconsin and UC Riverside, and mid-career tenured faculty with PhDs from Penn and UC Irvine.  I know of no other top ten department with as many faculty with PhDs from non-top 10 programs.  Yet in most of these cases, the faculty were hired from programs that were at the very top in the PGR specialties at the time (e.g., UC Riverside in Continental philosophy, UC Irvine in early modern).

Transparency about refereeing

MOVING TO FRONT AGAIN, ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 1--QUITE INTERESTING SET OF COMMENTS; MORE WELCOME

A junior philosopher elsewhere writes:

I've been meaning to write to ask if you might be willing to discuss journal review practices again on your blog. Some of your prior posts on the subject have been so useful. It would be good practice for journals to make much more explicit whether they are (and historically have been) triple blind, double blind, or neither, including publications based on conference proceedings (I'm thinking of the "Oxford Studies " series, for example). The lack of transparency is troubling, especially given that journals seem to change their review practices over time. Several publications I assumed were triple blind turned out not to be; and as a young scholar, one may not want to waste one's time with journals that are less than fully blind. It might also be worth pointing out that a publication's reputation in the discipline should be based on complete and accurate information regarding its review practices. 

"Triple blind" means, I take it, that the editors who pick referees do not know who the author is; the referees do not know who the author is; and the author does not know who the referees are.   "Double-blind" (author and referees are unknown to each other) is fairly common I think; my impression is many of the Oxford Studies volumes are single-blind (authors don't know the referees).   It would be interesting to know which journals are now triple-blind, so feel free to post links in the comments (or to comment on any related aspect of this issue).  Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

 

The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy deserves a Beggruen Prize

Legal philosopher John Tasioulas (King's College, London) made this excellent suggestion on Twitter.  Of course, the Beggruen Prize lost most of its credibility with this year's choice, but giving a million dollars to SEP would actually serve a real purpose in the Internet era of making high quality philosophical work available across the globe!   This would restore philosophers' enthusiasm and do something actually worthwhile, since none of the previous recipients needed the money, but SEP would!

Does experimental philosophy have a P-hacking problem?

It appears not.

UPDATE:  Another article comparing psychology and x-phil.

Anscombe papers go to Penn

A catch for Penn, but is she really "the most important" 20th-century female philosopher?  De Beauvoir?  Murdoch?  Ruth Barcan Marcus?  Philippa Foot?  Marjorie Grene?  Susan Stebbing?   Some of these folks are less read now than Anscombe, to be sure.   And Anscombe had greater breadth than some of these figures.  (I've commissioned volumes on Anscombe, and on DeBeauvoir, for the Routledge Philosophers series, but none of the others at this point.)

UPDATE:  A couple of readers rightly mention Hannah Arendt (about whom I have commissioned a volume in the Routledge Philosophers series), although Arendt is less read than Anscombe in the confines of what remains of "analytic" philosophy.

Richard Marshall interviews Dan Arnold (Chicago)...

..about Buddhist philosophy of mind, at 3:16 AM.

New Books in October

Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month:

Bergson by Mark Sinclair (London:  Routledge, 2020) (this is in the Routledge Philosophers series)

Merleau-Ponty, 2nd edition by Taylor Carman (London:  Routledge, 2020) (this is in the Routledge Philosophers series)

Leibniz, 2nd edition by Nicholas Jolley (London:  Routledge, 2020) (this is in the Routledge Philosophers series)

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, volume 16:  Unpublished Fragments (Spring 1885-Spring 1886) trans. with afterword by Adrian Del Caro (Stanford University Press, 2020).

 

Letters of recommendation are essential...

...even if some people write useless letters, as they do.  But the arguments here are not sensible (for example, "prestige bias" is a canard, as we've noted before).  As a senior philosopher elsewhere wrote to me last week:

In many years on hiring committees I have found these letters extremely valuable in distinguishing the A candidates from the A- candidates.  Maybe they aren’t so helpful though in distinguishing the B+s from the Bs?  I can’t think of another explanation for why someone would make such a bizarre anti-meritocratic suggestion.  Another oddity is that she seems to think that the ostensible purpose of these letters is to “contextualize” the candidate.  I have no idea what that means.

I concur.  In winnowing down an applicant pool, I look at three things:  (1) where was the applicant trained; (2) is the applicant a good fit for the position (based on training, interests etc.); and (3) the letters of recommendation.   I'm sure I am not alone in such an approach to figuring out which applicants warrant closer scrutiny of their writing samples.   Although, as we have noted before, too many letters are written in code, with time and experience, one can learn to decipher the code (and one also learn which letter writers are utterly unreliable).  And, happily, letters increasingly provide comparative assessments, which are far and away the most meaningful data point.

G.A. Cohen does Gilbert Ryle

Being reminded this morning of G.A. Cohen's brilliant impersonations and comedy routines, I happened upon one I had not see before, which is a gem:

 

Marxian economist/philosopher John Roemer (Yale) interviewed

Here.   This gives a nice overview of the different dimensions of his work over time.

UPDATE:  And let's not forget G.A. Cohen's "Marxist Boxing Match:  Roemer v. Habermas."  Don't miss what referee Leon Trotsky tells the fighters.  (Thanks to Jeff  Ketland for the pointer.)

Philosopher Susan Schneider (UConn) on the BBC...

...talking about our robot overlords of the future!  Since they will have advanced intelligence, they will presumably be Marxists, so this could work out well!

"Are you a moral grandstander?"

Some folks in philosophy should definitely read this (you know who you are!).

While Heidegger joined the Nazis, the Vienna Circle...

...opposed them.  Unfortunately, the evidence of their experience suggests that logic, scientific standards, and rigor were not adequate to the challenges they faced.

Richard Marshall interviews Guy Longworth (Warwick)...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Karola Stotz (1963-2019)

A philosopher of science, biology, and cognitive science, Professor Stotz was at the time of her death Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Macquarie University.  There is a lovely memorial notice from philosopher Colin Allen (Pittsburgh) here.

In Memoriam: Michael Detlefsen (1948-2019)

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED OCTOBER 21--UPDATED

Professor Detlefsen, a longtime member of the philosophy faculty at the University of Notre Dame, was a a distinguished and influential contributor to the philosophy of mathematics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  A memorial (in French) from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the CNRS in Paris.  (Thanks to Marco Panza for the pointer.)

ANOTHER:  The Notre Dame department's memorial notice is here.

AND MORE:  The University's news release is here.

FUNERAL INFORMATION:  Visitation will take place on Oct. 26th (Saturday), from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., at McGann Hay Granger Chapel.

Services will be held at 3:00pm on Sunday, Oct. 27th (Sunday), at Church of the Savior in South Bend. Friends may visit with the family one hour prior to the service.  

Berggruen decides philosophers aren't really worth $1 million after all

This is what happens when you let the idle rich decide who and what is worth honoring.   The Berggruen Prize, as originally announced, was supposed to recognize,

"a thinker whose ideas are of broad significance for shaping human self-understanding and the advancement of humanity. It seeks to recognize and encourage philosophy in the ancient sense of the love of wisdom and in the 18th Century sense of intellectual inquiry into all the basic questions of human knowledge. It rewards thinkers whose ideas are intellectually profound but also able to inform practical and public life across the range of world civilizations." The funder, Nicolas Berggruen, is quoted as observing that, "Ideas have had a greater impact on human history than anything else. We still live in a world that was shaped by Socrates, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Mohamed and Karl Marx, to name a few."

It turns out there were only three living philosophers worthy of this honor, so now it has gone to a judge, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court.  As a Justice, Ginsburg's tenure is notable only because she is a moderate on a court filled with reactionaries.   Her most significant contributions to the law were in the 1970s, when she pioneered arguments, in both the law reviews and the courts, for ending gender-based discrimination.   This was important work, but a far, far cry from the original declared purpose of the prize.  (Catharine MacKinnon would have been a more plausible choice, since she has both a more substantial theoretical corpus, and substantial practical impact as well.)

So a prize that began as a way of recognizing living philosophers has now become a confirmation of their irrelevance.   I'm surprised that professional philosophers continue to be involved with this charade, but as we saw with Jeffrey Epstein, academics, I guess, like to be around money.

In Memoriam: Rom Harré (1927-2019)

A longtime member of the Oxford faculty, who subsequently taught for many years at Georgetown, Professor Harré made extensive contributions to philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology, and then to psychology itself.  The Oxford memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to John Greenwood for the pointer.)

Someone really doesn't like Wittgenstein

This is funny, if a bit insubstantial.

(Thanks to Michael Magoulias for the pointer.)

UPDATE:   Daniel Kaufman presses Sartwell about his Wittgenstein-hatred here.