Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"Race reductionism" threatens to doom the left

This is the best piece I've seen in Counterpunch in awhile; an excerpt:

A debate rages on the left between the practitioners of identity politics and alleged “class reductionists,” but the latter seem to be decidedly in the minority. This is unfortunate, because in order to defeat the threat of the far-right—whether it’s called white nationalism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, neofascism, or proto-fascism—we’re going to have to build a movement on the basis of class struggle. This doesn’t mean denying the legitimacy of the grievances of groups defined by race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, but it does mean incorporating them in a broader movement organized around the old Marxian dualism: the working class vs. the capitalist class.

Norbert Hornstein (Maryland) on linguistics, rationalism, Chomsky, and more

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 28--A VERY INTERESTING COMMENT FROM A LINGUIST IN RESPONSE TO MY (ADMITTEDLY) OPEN-ENDED REQUEST.  I HOPE OTHERS KNOWLEDGEABLE WILL WEIGH IN NOW.

The interview continues (earlier).  I would be interested in reactions from readers knowledgeable about these issues.

"The Life of Arthur [Schopenhauer]"

The video game!

(Thanks to Boris Dagaev for the pointer.)

Crustaceans, insects, sentience, well-being

An interesting talk by philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney) at IAITV, especially the last twenty minutes (after some initial stage-setting, much of the first ten minutes was given over to what I found a rather unsatisfying discussion of meta-ethical questions, but tastes may vary!).   Crustaceans are sentient, insects probably are, plants are probably not.  But what if we dropped sentience as the sole consideration of moral relevance, and asked about "well-being" regardless of conscious experience, perhaps, in terms of "health" or "preferences"?  That would get plants, bacteria, indeed all cellular life into the circle of moral concern.   To be clear, Godfrey-Smith does not treat that as a reductio of the position, although one could imagine someone going that route. Anyway, I found that discussion interesting and, as one would expect, empirically well-informed.

Survey on disagreement among ethicists

UPDATED (SEE BELOW)

Professor Boespflug asked me to share the following with readers:

Jonathan Spelman and Mark Boespflug are empirically measuring consensus and disagreement in ethics and they need your help to do it! They need philosophers--especially ethicists--to complete their survey on a variety of ethical issues. If you are able to spend 15 minutes completing it, they would greatly appreciate it.

You can find the survey here. 

A little more about the survey:

 

On certainty and uncertainy in our lives

Philosophers Simon Blackburn (emeritus, North Carolina and Cambridge) and Ruth Chang (Oxford) discuss, along with the owner of IAITV.

Richard Marshall interviews Eddy Keming Chen (UC San Diego)...

...at 3:16AM.  Reader comments on issues raised in the interview are welcome. (LINK NOW FIXED.)

Socialism lite

This essay excoriates (from the left) what passes for "socialism" in certain circles these days, as reflected in the recent 2022 "Socialism Conference" in Chicago, which even included some philosophers (I missed it, happily).  Some excerpts, with some interspersed observations:

The vast majority of panels were on topics related to police/prison abolition, antiracism, reproductive rights, opening borders, and other progressive movements and causes with precious little to do with socialism proper. And while there were panels billed under the categories of “labor movement” or “socialist theory and strategy” (for example, “Class Struggle Unionism,” featuring union negotiator and labor lawyer Joe Burns, and “The ABCs of Marxism”), these topics received no more time, and often far less attention, than abolitionism or various kinds of identity politics. In other words, the Socialist Conference treated the labor movement—and even socialism itself—as just one of many progressive causes, and class as just another identity around which to organize....

[M]uch of the conference was devoted to making the case that any progressive cause or movement actually is socialism. Keynote speaker Ruth Wilson Gilmore, professor and a center director at the City University of New York, claimed that abolition is communism, race the modality through which class is lived, and mass criminalization class war, pretty much all in the same breath.

On addiction...and recovery

An interview with philosopher and clinician Hanna Pickard (Johns Hopkins) about her quite important work on addiction.

A short interview with Peter Singer about his meta-ethics and some misconceptions about his views

Not philosophically deep, but interesting nonetheless.   Here's his final comment:

I wish more philosophers would work on things that matter. I regret the fact that so many very bright and hard-working philosophers spend their time on issues that are of interest only to other philosophers, and will never have any impact on anyone outside philosophy.

I guess I don't think having an impact on people outside philosophy is necessarily a good marker that the things being worked on actually "matter."  Popular uptake for certain philosophical ideas is often a symptom of current ideological peculiarities that admit of other explanations (vide "Effective [sic] Altruism").  On the other hand, I would agree that uptake by scholars in other fields (at least serious fields) is often a good indicator that the philosophical work deals with stuff that "matters."

In Memoriam: Saul Kripke (1940-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 16--UPDATED

Professor Kripke was one of the 20th-century's major figures in philosophy of language and logic (see, for example).  There are a handful of analytic philosophers who will likely be read a century from now, and Kripke is one of them.  Most recently, he taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, but he spent most of his career at Princeton University.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear. 

Twitter is a cesspool of stupidity, ignorance, malice, ressentiment, and virtue-signalling, part 319...or Kripke was not a plagiarist

What's irresponsible is to accuse someone who just died of plagiarism without having any idea what one is talking about.  Quentin Smith did not cover himself in glory with this nonsense, and it was dispatched years ago by serious philosophers of language.  Stephen Neale's authoritative assessment of the debate is perhaps the most accessible account, and is certainly decisive.

The ethics of abortion, the political & civil equality of women, Roe and Dobbs and SCOTUS

I discuss all of the preceding (and more) with Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff at Brain in a Vat.

A whole generation of the "greats" of post-WWII "analytic" philosophy is now almost entirely in the past

Kripke most recently, but since 2000, we have also lost Quine, Rawls, D.K. Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Dummett, Putnam, Davidson, B. Williams, Fodor, among others.  From that generation (born 1940 or earlier), the only philosophers of comparable stature who are still with us are David Kaplan, Thomas Nagel, and T.M. Scanlon.   I am reminded of this observation by Harry Frankfurt from a few years back:

In the United States, even after interest in William James and John Dewey had receded, there was lively attention to contributions by Willard Quine and Donald Davidson, John Rawls and Saul Kripke. In addition, some philosophers were powerfully moved by the gigantic speculative edifice of Whitehead. Heidegger was having a massive impact on European philosophy, as well as on other disciplines--and not only in Europe, but here as well. And, of course, there was everywhere a vigorously appreciative and productive response to the work of Wittgenstein.

Letters to the editor of the NY Times after the 1977 article on Kripke

I mentioned the 1977 NYT article about Kripke in connection with the memorial notice posted last week.  As it happens, that article generated a number of letters to the editor which are here; they are a curious assortment, including the usual sneering at analytic philosophers that has continued until the present.  There is a lot wrong with so-called analytic philosophy, to be sure, but taking it out on Kripke, who is as good as any analytic philosopher in the last 100 years, is bizarre:   analytic philosophy, like many other traditions, has contributed to knowledge and understanding of its topics (even if others did not care about those topics!), and Kripke contributed more than almost everyone.

University of Tulsa gets new President, and reinstates B.A. degree in philosophy

That's good news!  (Prior coverage.)

(Thanks to Jennifer Frey for the pointer.)

An interview with Norbert Hornstein (Maryland) on Chomsky as philosopher

Here.

"Marx's Economics and the Transition from Capitalism to Communism"

A draft of Chapter 4 (which, at this stage, is all my fault!) of the forhtcoming Marx book I am co-authoring with Jaime Edwards is available here.  (This is revised since presentation last week at the NYU Colloquium.)  Here is the abstract for those who might be interested:

This chapter offers an overview and interpretation of Marx’s economics and his account of why capitalism should eventually yield to socialism. Topics covered include: the background of Marx’s labor theory of value in Smith and especially Ricardo; the failure of the labor theory of value as an account of production prices; the irrelevance of the labor theory of value to Marx’s most important claims about capitalism (e.g., the pursuit of more money [profit] as the raison d’etre of all capitalists [agreeing with Milton Friedman, among others]; the unparalleled power of capitalism to produce technological development; the constant displacement of human labor by technology, etc.); “exploitation” as a technical, rather than moral notion; the “fetishism” of commodities; the failure of the “falling rate of profit” account of the demise of the capitalism; the plausibility of the mass immiseration and underconsumption model of capitalist crises; the preconditions of revolution (massive productive power, mass immiseration), which have never obtained and still do not obtain; the role of self-interest in revolution and the irrelevance of moral philosophy or appeals to altruism; and Marx’s conception of “freedom” as work freed from the necessity of laboring in order to survive (“wage slavery”). We argue that socialism (i.e., the use of massive productive power to meet human needs and free people from “wage slavery”) is not, contrary to Marx’s teleological rhetoric, inevitable, and that the choice between “socialism or barbarism” (as Luxemburg framed it) could go either way.

Martha Nussbaum discusses "The Fragility of Goodness" with Bill Moyers...

...back in 1988.

(I found this link via Matt Kramer on Facebook--I'd never seen this clip previously.)

Creativity: its sources, its varieties, and the conditions under which it appears

Philosopher Peter Carruthers (Maryland) discusses.

In Memoriam: Don Marquis (1935-2022)

Professor Marquis taught philosophy at the University of Kansas from 1967 until his retirement in 2014.  He was, of course, best-known for his widely anthologized paper "Why Abortion is Immoral" (Journal of Philosophy, 1989), and he wrote widely in bioethics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Marquis.

(Thanks to Dale Dorsey for the information.)

Martha Nussbaum discusses "disgust"...

...at Brain in a Vat.  (By chance, this just dropped two days ago.)

Martha Nussbaum wins 2022 Balzan Prize...

...for her contributions to moral philosophy.    The Balzan Prize is awarded in a number of different areas, including sometimes philosophy.  Past philosophy winners have included Emmanuel Levinas, Norberto Bobbio, Paul Ricoeur, Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, and Ian Hacking.

In Memoriam: Sydney Shoemaker (1931-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPTEMBER 6--UPDATE

Professor Shoemaker, who spent almost his entire career at Cornell University, was a leading figure in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, who trained many well-known philosophers including Richard Moran (Harvard), Susanna Siegel (Harvard), and Alan Sidelle (Wisconsin), among others.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Shoemaker.

(Thanks to Brian Ogilvie for the information.)

UPDATE:  Comments are now open, my apologies.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  The Cornell Department's memorial notice is here, and the University's memorial notice here.  (Thanks to Carl Ginet for the pointer.)

"Academic philosophy and the meaning of life"

Philosopher Helena de Bres (Wellesley) comments.  Professor de Bres earned her Ph.D. at MIT, which no doubt colors her approach to this topic, but it is one that will resonate with many trained at analytic departments.

(Thanks to Jonny Thakkar for the pointer.)

Heck on philosophy of pornography

A podcast discussion with philosopher Richard Kimberly Heck (Brown).

In Memoriam: David H. Sanford (1937-2022)

A longtime member of the Duke faculty, where he was emeritus, Professor Sanford wrote widely in metaphysics, as well as epistemology and logic.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Sanford.

(Thanks to Alex Rosenberg for the information.)

Wittgenstein, metaphysician

A.W. Moore (Oxford) comments.

Is moral responsibility an illusion?

Philosophers Galen Strawson (Texas), Massimo Pigliucci (City College of New York) and others discuss. (Link now fixed.)

Chomsky (?) on postmodernism (and Derrida in particular)

This is plausibly Chomsky, although the source is a bit peculiar; comments are open for correction or confirmation.  It certainly sounds like him, and the remarks about Derrida are exactly right.   An excerpt:

There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out....

Take, say, Derrida. Let me begin by saying that I dislike making the kind of comments that follow without providing evidence, but I doubt that participants want a close analysis of de Saussure, say, in this forum, and I know that I'm not going to undertake it. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't been explicitly asked for my opinion --- and if asked to back it up, I'm going to respond that I don't think it merits the time to do so.

So take Derrida, one of the grand old men. I thought I ought to at least be able to understand his Grammatology, so tried to read it. I could make out some of it, for example, the critical analysis of classical texts that I knew very well and had written about years before. I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain, as noted. Again, sorry to make unsupported comments, but I was asked, and therefore am answering.

"Five Questions" with philosopher and clinical therapist Hanna Pickard (Johns Hopkins)...

...by Kieran Setiya (MIT).

Links to resources for graduate students

Adam Patterson, a PhD student at Syracuse University, has compiled an extensive set of links about reading philosophy, writing philosophy, teaching philosophy, the job market, etc.  Not all the sources are of equal quality, but many are quite good, and some I'd never seen before (e.g., Connie Rosati [Texas] on how to read philosophy [aimed at undergraduate students]).

In Memoriam: Larry Laudan (1941-2022)

Professor Laudan was one of the great philosophers of science of the last fifty years, many of whose papers and books will be read, I expect, a century from now.  I had the pleasure of being his colleague at the University of Texas at Austin, as he reinvented himself as a philosopher of law, especially the law governing proof in the criminal context, which led to his splendid book Truth, Error, and Criminal Law (Cambridge, 2006).   He taught at many institutions during his long career, and co-founded with Adolf Grunbaum, the history and philosophy of science department at the University of Pittsburgh.  There is a splendid and informative memorial notice here.  You can get a sense of the breadth of his work, and its impact, from his Google Scholar page here.

Stephen Darwall (Yale) talks about morality, moral obligation, objectivity, and other topics...

...at The Dissenter.

Just to put journal submissions in perspective

It turns out one of the papers recently selected by the Philosopher's Annual as one of the "ten best" of the year was, in fact, desk-rejected by one of the handful of very top journals, and then rejected, after R&R, by another top journal, before finally landing in a different top journal!  So from desk rejection, to R&R rejection, to one of the "ten best" papers of the year!  As the author aptly remarked:  "opinions about he merits of philosophical work can vary."  Indeed!

Virtual dissertation groups, redux

Joshua Smart (SIU-Edwardsville) asked me to share this announcement:

Virtual Dissertation Groups are back for Fall 2022. Open sign-ups through Wednesday, September 7^th at www.jasmartphilosophy.com/virtual-dissertation-groups.

What it is: Virtual Dissertation Groups is a free service for those currently working on their doctoral dissertations in philosophy departments (or philosophy of science or the like). Since 2014, VDG has connected students from over 30 countries to provide peer feedback on dissertation work with a minimal time commitment.

How it works: Each dissertator is placed in a group of three on the basis of a short survey about their project/area of work. Toward the end of each full month of the semester, one member will send some work (3k – 6k words) to the other two, who then return feedback in a week or so. (Usually these are written comments, though some groups choose to have video discussions.)

Philosopher's Annual, 2021

Editor Patrick Grim has shared the results (I've added institutional affiliations).  I'll just say I'm disappointed that only one history of philosophy paper was chosen this year; some other very good ones were nominated (and not only by me, I should add):

 

The Philosopher’s Annual volume 41

from the literature of 2021

 

Louis deRosset (Vermont), “Hollow Truth,” from the Philosophical Review

Dmitri Gallow (Australian Catholic U), “A Model-Invariant Theory of Causation,” from the Philosophical Review

Alan Hájek (ANU) and Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund), “Degrees of Commensurability and the Repugnant Conclusion,” from Noûs

Tom Hurka (Toronto), “Against ‘Good For’/’Well-Being’, For ‘Simply Good’,” from the Philosophical Quarterly

 Matthew Mandelkern (NYU), “If P, Then P!” from the Journal of Philosophy

Stephen Menn (McGill), “Aristotle on the Many Senses of Being,” from Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy

 Shyam Nair (Arizona State), “‘Adding Up’ Reasons: Lessons for Reductive and Nonreductive Approaches,” from Ethics

Theron Pummer (St Andrews), “Impermissible yet Praiseworthy,” from Ethics

Una Stojnić (Princeton), “Just Words: Intentions, Tolerance and Lexical Selection,” from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Monique Wonderly (UC San Diego), “Forgiving, Committing, and Un-forgiving,” from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

 

When the University of Sydney philosophy department "split" apart for political reasons in the 1970s

This article (from Honi Soit) has been making the rounds on social media; I asked one of the protagonists in these events, philosopher Michael Devitt (now at the CUNY Graduate Center) for his take on the article.  He kindly gave permission to share the following:

This is a good article in Honi Soit, and quite accurate. It mentions the undergraduate history honors thesis by David Rayment. This gives the most thorough account of the saga that I know of. There is, however, a good chapter on it, “The Sydney Disturbances”, in James Franklin’s book, Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia (Macleay Press 2003). (I supplied both authors with a lot of the original documents – oddly, I was the only participant on Left or Right who kept significant records.)

Class is not an identity

Instructive discussion by Daniel Burnfin, a recent PhD in Philosophy and German from University of Chicago, with whom I've had the benefit of discussing many issues in Marxist economics over the last couple of years.  An excerpt from the beginning:

Ascriptive identity is a category that names different types of relatively immutable properties of individuals, whom it then groups according to those properties. Ascriptive identity concerns the properties with which individuals identify, ‘as’ which they identify themselves, or as which others identify them. That is, ascriptive identity concerns what individuals consciously think that they ‘are’ or what others think that they ‘are’. It concerns gender, race, ethnicity, ability, and so on. Moreover, ascriptive identity is primarily discursive. And it is the basis for so-called “identity politics”. Many leftists today treat class as though it were one identity among others; as though class politics were a subset of identity politics. For example, the “working class” understood as an identity might designate white, heterosexual male, denim-clad manual laborers, who listen to rock and roll and prefer lite beer. Of course, this is a caricature. But it illustrates the way in which class is distorted beyond recognition when it is understood as though it were an identity.

The Marxian concept of class does not concern the properties of individuals, or what they or others think that they ‘are’. Rather, it classifies individuals according to what they ‘do’ or the functions that they perform in a socio-economic system such as modern capitalism....

Best "general" journals of philosophy, 2022, via the Condorcet method and via an average of both methods

The results of the most recent poll (with 479 votes) are below the fold.  Contrary to what I had thought, however, it turns out that there are ways for sophisticated Internet users to vote multiple times in this poll, just as in the earlier pairwise poll (where it is easy to do so, but one has to vote a lot to have an impact).  Despite that the results were fairly stable across both kinds of poll (a striking exception was Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society).  So here is a ranking based on the average rank of each journal in both polls (avg. in parentheses), each of course subject to the limitations of on-line polling:

1.  Philosophical Review (1)

2.  Nous (2.5)

3.  Mind (3)

4.  Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (3.5)

5.  Journal of Philosophy (5)

6.  Australasian Journal of Philosophy (6)

7.  Philosophers' Imprint (7.5)

7.  Philosophical Studies (7.5)

9.  Philosophical Quarterly (9)

10. Synthese (10.5)

11. Analysis (11)

12. Canadian Journal of Philosophy (12.5)

12. Ergo (12.5)

14. Erkenntnis (14.5)

15. European Journal of Philosophy (15)

16. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (16.5)

17. American Philosophical Quarterly (17)

18. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (17.5)

19. Inquiry (18.5)

19. Journal of the American Philosophical Association (18.5)

Runners-up for the top twenty:  The Monist (21.5) and Philosophical Perspectives (21.5)

A Condorcet poll of the best "generalist" journals of philosophy

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY (SUNDAY) AFTERNOON--MORE THAN 300 VOTES ALREADY(THANKS!); THE POLL WILL REMAIN OPEN UNTIL TOMORROW.

The poll is here.  Condorcet is much harder to game than the pairwise poll scheme, and it is also difficult to vote more than once, since it tracks IP addresses.  "Generalist" journals means journals that publish in several, but not necessarily all, areas of philosophy:  e.g., M&E/Language/Mind, science, value theory, history, logic.  Omissions from the last pairwise poll have been corrected.  Go to it!

Free online lecture and seminar series on Chinese and comparative philosophy from East China Normal University

There is a fuller description here.   The lecture schedule is here, and the seminar schedule here.   The lectures are 90-minute talks, the seminars are short-courses that run anywhere from 2-6 weeks, meeting 2-3 times a week for two hours. 

In Memoriam: Terence Parsons (1939-2022)

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 30--UPDATED AGAIN

Well-known for his work in philosophy of language and metaphysics, Professor Parsons was emeritus at UCLA, where he spent the last twelve years of his career.  He taught before that at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of California at Irvine.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Dom Lopes for the information.)

UPDATE (8/2/22):  Ed Zalta (Stanford) kindly shared this remembrance:

I was extremely saddened to hear that Terry Parsons passed away. Though I hadn't been in regular contact with Terry for some time, he had a significant impact on my philosophical development.  I took three classes from him while I was a graduate student at U. Massachusetts/Amherst (1976-1980): one on Frege, a graduate seminar on Tense and Aspect (co-taught with Barbara Partee), and a graduate seminar in which we read through the manuscript of his then forthcoming book Nonexistent Objects.  His classes were always insightful and helped me to get a sense of what was really going on in the texts we were studying. But it was his seminar on nonexistent objects that changed my thinking in radical ways.  I learned how to do axiomatic metaphysics in that class and though I started to work on an alternative to his theory of nonexistents, Terry agreed to supervise my thesis when I approached him about a dissertation.

Would you take an immortality pill?

John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) discusses the question at Brain in a Vat.

Honoraria for Zoom talks?

Philosopher Peter Vallentyne (Missouri) writes:

In 2014, you had some useful discussion of the role of honoraria for philosophy talks. I’m now wondering about whether people think that honoraria (e.g., $100-$300) should be paid for non-recorded virtual (e.g., Zoom) philosophy talks to other, roughly peer, philosophy departments. On the one hand, there are no travel-time burdens (the hassles of getting from A to B, downtime in the host city, etc.). Of course, valuable informal discussion with members of the host department may be lost, but there will also (at least sometimes) be a gain of avoiding non-valuable informal discussion.  Overall, it seems to me that the burdens of giving a virtual talk are generally significantly lower than those for a live talk. A small honorarium would still be appropriate, but, given the hassles of filling out the forms to provide an honorarium, it may not be worth it. I’m interested in readers thoughts on this issue. I focus on non-recorded talks, since there are separate issues for recorded talks.

My own view is that honoraria for Zoom talks are not warranted, but comments are open!

In Memoriam: Donald W. Crawford (1938-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 25--UPDATED

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was emeritus, and before that at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Professor Crawford was well-known for his work in aesthetics and the history of aesthetics.  He also served as editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

(Thanks to Noel Carroll for the information.)

Professor Crawford's former colleague Elliott Sober (Wisconsin) and former PhD student Yuriko Saito (Emerita, Rhode Island School of Design) kindly shared this memorial notice they prepared (below the fold):

Have things really changed in philosophy since the 1990s when it comes to publication pressure and narrowness of specialization?

On the earlier thread, philosopher Gary Kemp (Glasgow) asks:

When I was coming up in the 1990s, the complaints were: Pressure/requirements to publish, and overspecialisation. I take it that the readers here think this has grown worse. What sort of evidence do we have?

This is a good question, and I'll open it for discussion.  I also "came up" in the 1990s, and it does seem to me that publication prior to entering the job market is almost de rigeur in a way it was not thirty years ago.  Specialization is more difficult to assess.  Specialization is the hallmark of the modern academy, as Weber observed more than a century ago, and it stands to reason that as more and more universities produce more and more scholars, the need to specialize even further (in order to make the proverbial "contribution to knowledge") will grow.  But that isn't exactly "evidence" for the phenomenon, just a reason for thinking it would occur.  Readers comments welcome.  Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

Mind, body, and illness

Philosopher Tom Stern (UCL) comments.  (Some readers will recall I am not a fan of his Nietzsche work, but I quite enjoyed this essay.)

In Memoriam: Paul Humphreys (1950-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SATURDAY, AUGUST 13--UPDATED

Well-known for his wide-ranging work in philosophy of science, Professor Humphreys taught philosophy at the University of Virginia from 1978 until his death, where he rose to the rank of Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy.  There is a full list of his publications here, and an obituary is here.  I will add links to other memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  The UVA memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Harold Langsam for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews Matthew D. Walker (Yale-NUS)...

...at 3:16 AM.