Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

In Memoriam: Paul Woodruff (1943-2023)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 25--SOME VERY NICE REMEMBRANCES OF PAUL IN THE COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

A longtime faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was only recently emeritus, Professor Woodruff was best-known for his work on Greek philosophy (especially Socrates, the Sophists and Thucydides), and the philosophy of theater.  There is an informative obituary here, and you can read about his final, forthcoming book here. (Thanks to Curtis Sparrer for the pointers.)

Professor Woodruff wrote about his illness, and about life, here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Woodruff or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

Why numbers are not objects, and other topics in philosophy of mathematics

An interview with philosopher Alexander Paseau (Oxford).

Panpsychism makes it to "Scientific American"

Yikes!

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Lederman on the tasks for Chinese philosophy scholarship

Philosopher Jeremy Goodman calls to my attention this essay by philosopher Harvey Lederman (who does formal work, but also works on Chinese philosophy) on the tasks confronting Chinese philosopy, and suggested it might make a good topic for discussion; an excerpt:

The meat that scholars of Chinese philosophy have in our mouths are these curious, beautiful,
and inspiring texts. As I see it, our job as scholars is to tell the story of these texts: to understand the people who wrote them as well as the people who read them; to bring to life their ideas, regardless of whether they seem familiar or unapproachably strange; and to determine as best we can which of these ideas are plausible and which are not. Our job is to teach students to read these texts with care, with reverence 敬, but also with a critical, skeptical eye. In both our writing and in our teaching, our job, like the impersonator 尸 of the dead at a ritual, is to bring these ideas to life in a very literal sense, to make it possible for others to have a real conversation with them, in the hope that all of us can better understand their authors’ beliefs and the challenges they faced as they sought to live virtuous lives in often quite challenging political circumstances.

I am afraid that this job is not glamorous or easy. It requires humility, patience, and an exacting
discipline. The texts often do not speak to the most exciting recent trends. But our job is still to impersonate them, even when they don’t talk about what we most wish they did. This job can be a lonely one. We wake up in the morning and wonder if we really need to re-read hundreds of pages of challenging, confusing passages again, and the only person who says we need to isourselves. The job is also slow. We watch our colleagues (or perhaps another half of ourselves) produce dozens of papers or books in other areas. But our jobs cannot be done quickly—we cannot write those dozens of books—since we must respect, reread, and rethink, our texts. Our work has only the slow glory that belongs to the miniaturist, a glory realized in details, which appears in long-labored works only to those who are willing to look closely themselves.

This is well-said, and not at all specific to the study of Chinese philosophy it seems to me.  Comments are open for reader reactions.

New "Technology Ethics" podcast

Philosopher Sven Nyholm (LMU Munich) writes:

John Danaher (Senior Lecturer, University of Galway's Law School) and I--Sven Nyholm (Professor of the Ethics of AI, LMU Munich) - have just started a new podcast series on the ethics of technology, which will run for one season consisting of nine episodes: the "technology ethics podcast". The podcast follows the structure of my recent book This is Technology Ethics: An introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023). The intended audience for the podcast: professors teaching courses on technology ethics, students taking courses in the subject, or anybody who might be interested in the ethics of technology. The podcast is as of today available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, etc, and it also has its own website: https://technologyethicspod.wordpress.com

What does "tenure" really mean in Australia?

With the bloodbath at ACU, and the dubious reasons given for it, one has to wonder whether having a "tenured appointment" at an Australian university means much or creates any meaningful legal rights or entitlements?  Consider what happened at ACU:   starting in 2019, philosophers were recruited, often from tenured positions around the world, to a new research Institute devoted to "core" analytic philosophy; they were offered the Australian equivalent of tenure; in 2021, a new Vice-Chancellor came on board, the "unreconstructed Hegelian," and two years later their jobs were gone.   Is this what tenure means in Australia:  you have it as long as the Vice-Chancellor appreciates your research?

One ACU philosopher noted on Twitter that the provost of the Australian Catholic University, Meg Stuart, told him "that being sacked from a continuing contract less than a year after moving to the country is normal for universities in Australia, which must remain 'agile.'"  Is this "normal"?  If so, then tenure does not exist in Australia.

Comments from readers knowledgeable about Australian employment law and tenure practices welcome.

 

In Memoriam: Gianni Vattimo (1936-2023)

A longtime professor at the University of Turin, where he was emeritus, Professor Vattimo was a leading exponent and defender of "postmodern" philosophy in Italy and in Europe, although somewhat less-known in the Anglosphere.  There is an obituary in Italian here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Vattimo, or from those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Mattia Riccardi for the pointer.)

In Memoriam: Michael Scriven (1928-2023)

Professor Scriven had an eclectic career that ranged widely in both topics and institutions.  He wrote well-known papers on the philosophy of scientific explanation (including famous counter-examples to Hempel's covering law model of explanation), and later became a prominent figure in philosophy of education with his work on "evaluation."   He taught during his long career at Berkeley, Indiana/Bloomington, Western Michigan University, Western Australia, and finally at the Claremont Graduate School, where he was emeritus.  The CGS memorial notice is here and from the American Educational Research Association here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Scriven, or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

ADDENDUM:  There's a charming anecdote about meeting Scriven from Bas van Fraassen here.

Hermann Helmholtz talks to Richard Marshall...

...at 3:16 AM.

Fragments by Maimonides discovered in Cambridge University library

Story here.

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

Statement by Dianoia Institute of Philosophy on Proposed ACU Change Plan

The following statement from the Dianoia Institute at the Australian Catholic University was shared with me:

The Australian Catholic University has recently proposed a change plan that includes the disestablishment of the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. After the creation of the Dianoia Institute in 2019, ACU’s PhD programme in Philosophy became the second highest ranked amongst Catholic institutions in the English-speaking world (after the University of Notre Dame). With its disestablishment, scholars who were convinced to join ACU in building a centre for world-class philosophy research (often leaving permanent positions at more stable universities and uprooting their families in the process) will be made redundant.

This change plan targets for redundancies 13 philosophers as well as 35 academic positions in history, political science, and theology and religious studies. The rationale offered for these draconian cuts is financial. But spending on academic staff at ACU has remained flat from 2017 to 2023, during most of which the university was enjoying surpluses. It is only in 2022, after a change in administration, that the university began running deficits. The academics in positions marked for redundancy did not cause these budgetary problems, but will bear the brunt of cuts whilst the university administration that turned a streak of surpluses into deficits retain their jobs.

According to ACU’s mission and identity statement, “Within the Catholic intellectual tradition and acting in Truth and Love, Australian Catholic University is committed to the pursuit of knowledge, the dignity of the human person and the common good.” The Catholic Church has repeatedly emphasized – from Aeterni Patris in 1879 through to Fides et Ratio in 1998 – the centrality of philosophy to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and to the mission of Catholic colleges and universities. This change plan would vitiate philosophy and other humanities at ACU, do lasting damage to its reputation, and run counter to the moral ideals the university holds itself to in its commitment to human dignity and the common good.

We ask you to oppose this change plan by signing the petition to Save the Humanities at ACU and the National Tertiary Education Union’s petition; and by emailing Vice-Chancellor Zlatko Skrbis ([email protected]), the DVC-Research Abid Khan ([email protected]), Acting Provost Chris Lonsdale ([email protected]), the email address set up for consultation on the change plan ([email protected]), and members of the University Senate ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]).  Please also cc: the Minister of Education Jason Clare ([email protected]).

Cc'ing the Minister seems particularly important:  this whole fiasco sends the message to the world that tenure means nothing in Australia, even for distinguished academics!  If ACU is permitted to follow through on this treachery, it will hurt all Australian universities in their efforts to recruit academics from overseas.

"Save the Humanities at Australian Catholic University"

Professor Finlay calls to my attention a new petition on behalf of all the programs and faculty targeted by the "restructuring" plan.

How to support the philosophers at the Dianoia Institute at ACU

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM THIS MORNING--MULTIPLE UPDATES (COMMENTS ARE ALSO NOW OPEN FOR MORE INFORMATION)

See the comments by Stephanie Collins and Stephen Finlay on the earlier thread (and scroll down) for information about how to voice your support for the Institute and the philosophers whose livelihood is being threatened.  The faculty union has also launched a petition here, which readers should sign.

As the petition makes clear, the villain in this story is ACU Vice-Chancellor Zlatko Skrbis, who came to ACU in 2021 (so after the creation of Dianoia) and seems to have a robust commitment to mediocrity.  His PhD is in sociology from Flinders University, and his scholarly profile suggests he thinks of himself as a philosopher, albeit not in the Dianoia mode.  I suspect his "leadership" [sic] lies behind the particular animus towards philosophy in the restructuring plan.

ADDENDUM:  An administrative contact at ACU, who had handled their previous blog advertising, asked yesterday that the ad for PhD applications for Dianoia be removed from the blog, for understandable reasons.  ACU had paid for the ad, but given the recent developments, it does not make sense to be recruiting PhD students to an Institute that is about to be "disestablished."

The downsides of virtual reality

Philosopher of science James Ladyman (Bristol) discusses these and other issues in connection with David Chalmers's recent book:

(Professor Laydman flags for me two errors: Erik M Conway is the co-author of Merchants of Doubt. Also the term ‘digital enclosures’ comes from sociology, specifically Mark Andrejevic:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10714420701715365?journalCode=gcrv20.)

Australian Catholic University proposes to "disestablish" its Dianoia Institute of philosophy... (UPDATED)

...and eliminate 11 faculty lines, although these faculty can compete for just four positions that will now be located in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (another research institute that is surviving this process).  (The draft plan--which I've been unable to upload--was sent to me by someone not in philosophy or even at the ACU.)  ACU's budgetary problems have been apparent for awhile, but these proposals are pretty dramatic.  In the last PGR, ACU, thanks to Dianoia, emerged as the third best philosophy program in Australasia, and tied for 32nd best in the Anglophone world.   If the plan, which must still go before the faculty senate, is approved, I would expect ACU to drop off the map.

The situation in Israel: "what's all the fuss about?"

Philosopher David Enoch explains in this video:

 

Peter Ludlow asked ChatGPT to rank philosophers and departments...

...and the results are entertaining (and not wholly ridiculous, either, although some answers are bizarre):  Download ChatGPT philosophy rankings

Mistranslation of Newton's First Law discovered after nearly 300 years...

...by philosopher Daniel Hoek at Virginia Tech!

Philosopher's Annual, ten top papers from 2022

From Patrick Grim:

The Philosopher’s Annual volume 42

from the literature of 2022

James Allen (Toronto), “Radicalism and Moderation in the New Academy,” from Phronesis

Elizabeth Barnes (Virginia), “Gender without Gender Identity: The Case of Cognitive Disability,” from Mind

Richard Bradley (LSE), “Impartial Evaluation under Ambiguity,” from Ethics

Sarah Buss (Michigan), “Personal ideals and the ideal of rational agency,” from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Eddy Keming Chen (UC San Diego), “Fundamental Nomic Vagueness,” from the Philosophical Review

Karolina Hübner (Cornell), “Representation and Mind-Body Identity in Spinoza’s Philosophy,” from the Journal of the History of Philosophy

Yoaav Isaacs (Baylor), John Hawthorne (Southern California & Australian Catholic U), and Jeffrey Sanford Russell (Southern California), “Multiple Universes and Self-Locating Evidence,” from the Philosophical Review

Chunghyoung Lee (Pohang University), “I Am Not the Zygote I Came from because a Different Singleton Could Have Come from It,” from the Philosophical Review

Jake Quilty-Dunn (Rutgers), Nicolas Porot (Mohammed VI Polytechnic U), and Eric Mandelbaum (CUNY), “The Best Game in Town: The Re-Emergence of the Language of Thought Hypothesis Across the Cognitive Sciences,” from Behavioral and Brain Sciences

 Francesca Zaffora Blando (Carnegie-Mellon), “Bayesian Merging of Opinions and Algorithmic Randomness,” from The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

 

Does font affect writing?

Nathan Ballantyne talks to Daniel Stoljar at The Workbench.

Reader experiences with peer review?

A reader writes:

How do people feel about peer review? Does it really help? Has it made papers better in authors’ experience? There is an overwhelming amount of commentary about how peer review is no longer in any sense the guarantee of quality that it is often assumed to be. The publishers have not wanted to take this message on board – much like they didn’t want to take open access seriously – but within the academy, I’m seeing critiques from all disciplines, and particularly from the sciences, which drove the uptake of peer review for the social sciences and humanities.

In my view, the fundamental problem is the way that the modern university fetishizes “output” in terms of journal publication (and books depending on the discipline), which creates enough perverse incentives that lead to mediocre writing, plagiarism and outright fraudulence, which to be fair, can’t be detected in most cases by peer reviewers.

Here is a good and representative summary of the various discontents.

 https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review

The main pernicious effect of peer review in philosophy (but probably in other disciplines) is to encourage conformity and conservativism.  That may be unavoidable, and built into the idea of a Wissenschaft.

Thoughts from readers on peer review?   Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

Nagel on J.L. Austin and his role in WWII...

...at the London Review of Books.  A side of Austin most won't have known!

(Thanks to Christopher Morris and David Zimmerman for pointers.)

More on the film about Spinoza's ex-communication

From an Israeli newspaper.  (Earlier coverage:  here and here.)

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

Article on whether U.S. legal system is ready for the "challenge of A.I. to human values" includes citations that seem to have been made up by Chat GPT!

Legal philosopher Matthew Kramer (Cambridge) called this article to my attention; Professor Kramer explains:

[T]here is a citation to the book LEGAL POSITIVISM: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION by Matthew H. Kramer and published by the Edinburgh University Press. The problem is that no such book exists. I have not published a book with the specified title and subtitle, nor has anyone else done so. None of my books has been published with the Edinburgh University Press.

 

I proceeded to look up the non-existent volume on the Web, and I discovered that a request to a chatbot had been made a few months before the dissemination of the paper in which that imaginary book is cited. The request asked the chatbot for references to works on legal positivism and natural-law theories. The chatbot provided three references, including the one to the non-existent book by Matthew Kramer. The researchers at the University of Washington apparently made no effort to verify the actuality of that book, and they obviously made no effort to read it. Instead, they simply cited it for the edification of their readers.

 

Legal philosopher Matt Lister (Bond University) then pointed out to me that the article also cites the make-believe book, "Brian Leiter, Jurisprudence: Realism in theory and practice. Oxford University Press, 2007."  My Naturalizing Jurisprudence was published by OUP in 2007, and Karl Llewellyn, whose work is discussed in my book, did write a book in 1962 called Jurisprudence:  Realism in Theory and Practice.  Chat GPT, as readers by now probably know, simply predicts the next word likely to follow based on its analysis of its database.  (Professor Kramer, too, has written books on legal positivism, but not the make-believe book!)  This is why it makes up citations, as a lawyer in New York learned the hard way.  The faculty, all at the University of Washington, responsible for this should be embarrassed by their carelessness.  I trust they and others will do better in the future.

MacIntyre on the moral philosophy of the 20th-century...

...and a synoptic account of the evolution of his own views.  I found his explanation of the relevance of Marxism to his intellectual evolution particularly interesting:

Marx and Engels had argued that every morality is the morality of some particular social and economic order and that every moral philosophy articulates and makes explicit the judgments, arguments, and presuppositions of some particular morality, either in such a way as to defend both that morality and the social and economic order of which it is the expression, or in such a way as to undermine them. And my acknowledgment of the truth of this thesis was reinforced by my encounters with social anthropology, especially first with the work of Franz Steiner and later with that of Rodney Needham. I therefore asked: What is the distinctive morality of this social and economic order that I inhabit, and how does contemporary moral philosophy stand to that morality? And in pursuing an answer to this question I was guided not only by Marx and Engels but also by John Anderson, who had urged that, if we were to understand social institutions and relationships, we should ask not what function or purpose they serve but to what conflicts they give expression. This suggested that both the morality and the moral philosophy of the present age are best understood as milieus of conflict, sites of disagreement. But those disagreements find significantly different expression in the arenas of philosophical debate on the one hand and in those of everyday moral and political practice on the other.

In Memoriam: Stephen Gaukroger (1950-2023)

Emeritus at the University of Sydney, Professor Gaukgroger was a leading scholar of early modern philosophy and science.  His Google Scholar page gives a good sense of the range of his work and erudition.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Gaukroger or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.  Please submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

Nearly $3 million from Templeton Foundation to Notre Dame...

...to develop courses on "human flourishing," under the direction of philosopher Meghan Sullivan.

"Why AI isn't funny"

An amusing piece by philosopher David Shoemaker.

Levinas on the Trump mugshot (sort of)

Curious and somewhat interesting.

(Thanks to David Livingstone Smith for the pointer.)

Conference in honor of Kenneth Winkler on his retirement from Yale

This October, and participation via Zoom is an option.

Did Oxford really "dominate philosophy" in the 20th-century?

So claims a review of three recent books about Oxford philosophy and philosophers.  Even if one limits the claim to Anglophone philosophy, it's not at all obvious this is correct.  Cambridge University, after all, was home to G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein (for a time), Frank Ramsey, G.E.M. Anscombe, and (for periods of time) Bernard Williams, Myles Burnyeat, and others.  (The review says, falsely, that analytic philosophy "began at Oxford in the 1920s," Russell and Moore be damned apparently!)  Then there was Harvard with W.V.O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, John Rawls, Nelson Goodman, Robert Nozick, C.I. Lewis, Alfred North Whitehead, T.M. Scanlon, and others.  Just since WWII, Princeton boasted Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Carl Hempel, Gregory Vlastos, Gilbert Harman, and, for periods of time, Donald Davidson, Stuart Hampshire, Alonzo Church, T.M. Scanlon, and Thomas Nagel.  And then UCLA after WWII:  Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, Richard Montague, David Kaplan, Tyler Burge, Philippa Foot for a long period of time, and others.

Einstein on philosophy and science

An intelligent, short popular piece by the always good Kenan Malik in The Guardian.

On beauty and morality

An interview with philosopher Alexander Nehamas at The Point.

Sussex declares philosophy lecturer "redundant" then advertises for the courses he teaches! (UPDATED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 22 WITH VARIOUS UPDATES

This looks bad:  the whole point of "redundancy" in the UK is the claim that the position is not needed, but this suggests the opposite.

UPDATE:   Philosopher David Wallace writes: 

I think this is more complicated than it looks. The new position at Sussex isn’t at all the same as the lecturer’s current position: he’s on a part-time, UG teaching only position, whereas this is a full academic appointment with research/grad teaching responsibilities. It looks to me as if he applied for the new post and didn’t get it (the decision would have been mostly based on research). See the job ad (https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b3cc34_4721e07a3b0a4374abffae5f66118097~mv2.jpg).

ANOTHER:  Philosopher Mike Otsuka writes:

Even if David Wallace is right that “The new position at Sussex isn’t at all the same as the lecturer’s current position: he’s on a part-time, UG teaching only position, whereas this is a full academic appointment with research/grad teaching responsibilities”, it doesn’t follow that his employer is justified in dismissing James Furner “by reason of redundancy”. See this blog which the union which represents him has posted today:

https://www.ucusussex.org.uk/post/sussex-ucu-condemns-supposed-justification-for-james-furner-s-redundancy

Comments are now open for those with additional information.

Nathan Oseroff-Spicer still defaming philosophers: this time he falsely accuses a philosopher of plagiarism

Susan Neiman wrote a book, Left is not Work, that we noted here.  Mr. Oseroff-Spicer, familiar to longtime readers as a paragon of crazed wokeness in philosophy, was bound not to like this book.   That's not notable.  What is notable is that his review falsely accused Professor Neiman of plagiarism!  This led the editor to append the following to the review at the end (below the fold):

Memorial conference at Princeton for Gilbert Harman

September 30-October 1.

Hurka Fest at the University of Toronto

Coming up September 8-9, in honor of his retirement.

(Readers know that I do not generally post conference announcements, but I do make an exception for memorial events and for events like this in honor of distinguished senior figures in the field.)

Suspicious job search in philosophy at the University of Genoa

A philosopher in Italy (not in Genoa) called these search materials to my attention, referring to the outcome of the search as an "academic scandal."  (My thanks to this philosopher for help translating the materials).  Briefly, the Department of Philosophy at Genoa advertised a position in history of philosophy.  There were 32 applicants, including two philosophers (with permanent academic posts outside Italy) who had published major scholarly monographs with Cambridge University Press (on Kant) and Oxford University Press (on Nietzsche); only one of these was even chosen as a finalist! But he too was passed over in favor of a person working as a support teacher in a high school in Genoa, who had published a book on Wittgenstein with an Italian press (I confess I've never heard of the press, and I'm told it is not a major press), but who had spent their entire career at Genoa (i.e., all their degrees and teaching).  (As an aside, I know the work of one of the finalists well--an Italian now teaching in Portugal, previously in Germany--who is quite clearly the preeminent philosophical Nietzsche scholar in Europe, and one of the leading scholars internationally.  If he'd lost to the Kant scholar, whose work I do not know, this would at least have been explicable.)

This really is an embarrassment for the University of Genoa.  (Ironically, Genoa has probably the best legal philosophy group in Italy, based in the law faculty, and with a high degree of international visibility.)

First the "heckler's veto," now the "lone wolf's veto"

SUNY Fredonia still does not want to let philosopher Stephan Kershnar (earlier coverage) back on campus, arguing in court that "the potential unseen threat from some lone 'pseudo warrior' quietly planning a violent attack on campus – triggered by Kershnar’s return" justifies excluding him:

Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Metzger Kimura, representing the university, said the university’s decision to bar him from campus was not made because of the content of his speech but in response to the aftermath of his podcast comments that kicked off a social-media firestorm and disrupted operations.

Philosopher Edward Halper talks about Aristotelian metaphysics...

...with Richard Marshall at 3:16 AM.

Could LLMs become conscious?

Philosopher David Chalmers, a leading philosopher of mind, explores the question.

Northeast Normativity Conference offering a paper prize funded by submission fees

I haven't seen this before:  those who submit papers to the conference pay a fee ($22), which is used to generate prize money.   Conference participants review and then vote on which paper deserves the prize.  I'm curious what readers think of this approach? I can imagine some preferring not to have to pay a fee, and just participating in the conference without it also being a competition.  But maybe there is demand for this?

(Thanks to Nate Sharadin for the pointer.) 

Philosopher Aaron Preston talks about the history of analytic philosophy and "personalism"...

...with Richard Marshall at 3:16 AM.

Changes to philosophy pedagogical practices in light of AI?

Philosopher Klaas Kray (Toronto Metropolitan University) is collecting information from philosophy teachers.

"The Indian Pragmatist"

Here.

Laurie Paul talks to Sam Harris...

...about "transformative experiences" and Derek Parfit's "weird" intuitions (amen to that!).

In Memoriam: Jennifer A. McMahon (1956-2023) (UPDATED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 20--UPDATED AND CORRECTED

Best-known for her work in aesthetics and on Kant, Professor McMahon was emerita at the University of Adelaide, where she spent her academic career.   Comments are open for remembrances from colleagues who knew Professor McMahon, or for those who wish to comment on the significance of her work.  Please feel free to add links as well to memorial notices and obituaries.

(Thanks to Mohan Matthen for the information.)

UPDATE:  My thanks to Dr. Brendan Ryan for permission to share this obituary:  Download Jenny's obituary in The Age (advertising removed)

ANOTHER:  The ASA Newsletter for summer 2023 has several memorial essays for Professor McMahon, from Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Mohan Matthen, and others.

Philosophers and political theorists elected as Fellows or Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy

They are:   Helen Beebee (Leeds), John Skorupski (St Andrews), Jonathan Wolff (Oxford), Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt U/Berlin), and Wolfgang Kuenne (Hamburg).  Also elected in cognate fields (such as Political Studies and Law) were:  Emilios Christodoulidis (Glasgow), David Owen (Southampton), John Dryzek (Canberra), and Alison Wylie (British Columbia).

(Thanks to Matt Kramer for the pointer.)

"Entanglement" in the quantum world

Philosopher Huw Price and a physicist offer a simple explanation.

The "logic gallery" by David Marans...

...has a new location.