Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

When "reasonable" Republicans at the NYT tell you that their party is going fascist, one should probably listen

That is certainly my takeaway from the essay by the NYT columnist David Brooks in The Atlantic.  Some excerpts, with interspersed commentary:

The first great project of the national conservatives is to man the barricades in the culture war. These people have certainly done their homework when it comes to cultural Marxism [sic]—how the left has learned to dominate culture and how the right now needs to copy their techniques. If I’d had to drink a shot every time some speaker cited Herbert Marcuse or Antonio Gramsci, I’d be dead of alcohol poisoning....

On the other hand, if he had to drink a shot for each person there who had actually read Marcuse or Gramsci, he would be a teetotaler.

The first interesting debate among the NatCons is philosophical: Should we fight to preserve the classical-liberal order or is it necessary to abandon it?

Funny, the Germans had that "philosophical debate" in the early 1930s, and it wasn't merely "philosophical."

Some of the speakers at the conference were in fact classical liberals, who believe in free speech, intellectual debate, and neutral government. Glenn Loury gave an impassioned speech against cancel culture, the illiberal left, and the hyper-racialized group consciousness that divides people into opposing racial camps. Loury asserted that as a Black man he is the proud inheritor of the great Western tradition: “Tolstoy is mine! Dickens is mine! Milton, Marx, and Einstein are mine!”....

But others argued that this sort of liberalism is a luxury we cannot afford.

I'd love to know who the "we" is that can't afford the "luxury" [sic].

The country is under assault from a Marxist oligarchy that wants to impose its own pseudo-religious doctrine. If you try to repulse that with pallid liberalism, with weak calls for free speech and tolerance, you’ll end up getting run over by those who possess fanatical zeal, economic power, and cultural might.

"Forgive and forget" is not their approach when it comes to Spinoza

Professor Yitzhak Melamed, the distinguished Spinoza scholar at Johns Hopkins University, kindly gave permission to share this correspondence (click to enlarge):

UPATE:  Regarding "Epicouros," a reader points me to this.

 

In Memoriam: Maj. Ian Fishback (1979-2021)

Major Fishback earned a PhD in philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and also taught philosophy at West Point.  Unlike most philosophers, however, he was actually morally courageous, exposing military abuse of prisoners in Iraq back in 2005.  His end was tragic.

(Thanks to Cheyney Ryan for the pointer.)

In Memoriam: Bernard Rollin (1943-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 21--UPDATED

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at Colorado State University, where he was emeritus, Professor Rollin was well-known for his work on animal rights and ethics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  An informative obituary here.  (Thanks to Moti Gorin for the pointer.)

New Open Access Journal: The Journal of Spinoza Studies

The Journal of Spinoza Studies (from the University of Groningen Press) will be edited by Professors Andrea Sangiacomo (University of Groningen) and Kristin Primus (UC Berkeley):

JSS is open access and authors will retain copyright under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. JSS does not charge any submission fees.

JSS will publish two issues per year. The first issue, a collection of invited short essays on the future of Spinoza scholarship, will appear on Spinoza’s 390^th birthday, November 24, 2022.

JSS is now accepting submissions for the second issue and beyond. Submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words (including references and footnotes). Although all articles will appear in English, submissions may be written in Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Please visit the JSS website for more information on the journal’s review process and language policy.

(Today marks the 389th anniversary of Spinzoa's birth!)

In Memoriam: Gilbert Harman (1938-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 14--UPDATED

Emeritus at Princeton University, where he taught for more than a half-century until his retirement in 2017, Professor Harman made significant contributions to epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and metaethics, among other areas. He also supervised many PhD students who became well-known philosophers in their own right, including Stephen Stich, R. Jay Wallace, James Dreier, Nicholas Sturgeon, Joshua Knobe, and Richard Joyce, among others. 

I am personally grateful to him for his standard practice in his undergraduate "Systematic Ethics" class of permitting students to revise their papers after receiving comments:  a great learning experience, but a lot of work for the instructor! 

The profile of him at the time he took emeritus status is informative about his work and career.

I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:  The Princeton memorial notice is here.

University of Chicago Law School will hire a Law & Philosophy Fellow for 2022-23

The ad will appear by early December (with a closing date for applications in late January).  The theme of the Law & Philosophy Workshop in 2022-23 will be "Political Realism, "covering both historical (e.g., Thucydides, Hobbes, Machiavelli) and contemporary figures and themes.   AOS:  Political philosophy, with knowledge of Workshop theme essential."  When the ad is live, I will post again about it.  Please email me with questions.

Unexplored questions in philosophy?

A rather eclectic group of philosophers addresses the topic.

Open letter in support of philosophy at Bloomsburg University

Philosopher Steve Hales at Bloomsburg has shared with me this excellent open letter to the Chancellor of the university system that he has drafted; I encourage everyone to sign, and I suspect other philosophy departments may want to adopt some of its language if they come under threat.  From the letter:

Authentic higher education is not just worker training for businesses. Philosophy has been the central discipline of universities since Plato’s Academy. We invented logic, systematic ethics, and the natural sciences—philosophy is not some ephemeral, boutique area of study but the heart of the university. Young Pennsylvanians deserve the chance to improve their lives through the study of philosophy, and not just if they are privileged enough to go to U. Penn or Swarthmore.

We are not requesting an “opportunity” to re-apply for the major, which would no doubt involve promising unattainable deliverables to meet arbitrary benchmarks. It does not matter how many students major in philosophy; we will never attract as many as fields that are the names of jobs. What matters is that students have the choice that you promised on November 5th. What matters is that Bloomsburg University retain the philosophy major as our students deserve. We request that you guarantee its continuance.

 

Why are only roughly one-third of academic philosophers women?

Interesting study summarized here; some excerpts:

Mainly because only about one third of students who either enroll in the undergraduate major or stay after introductory classes are women.  I.e., at least in North America, the main pipeline leak occurs at the first stage of a potential academic career....

Why, then, do women either not enroll in the first place or drop out after the introduction?  I.e., why is philosophy not an attractive major to women?

...The two most important factors turned out to be self-perceptions of brilliance and of belonging...

[T]he typical philosophy major perceives themselves as systematizing, as brilliant, does not value having a family, nor making money—all compared to the typical psychology major.  Fewer women than men show these self-perceptions and preferences.

The study is available from the authors, and there is lots more detail at the link, above.

 

In Memoriam: Storrs McCall (1930-2021)

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at McGill University, where he was emeritus, Professor McCall was well-known for his contributions to metaphysics and philosophy of logic, math and science.  There is an obituary here.

(Thanks to Allen Hazen for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews Mattia Riccardi (Porto) about Nietzsche's philosophical psychology...

...at 3:16 AM.

What is "Critical Race Theory" and what does it have to do with "Critical Theory" (i.e., the Frankfurt School)?

The "Critical Race Theory Scare," a bit like the old "Red Scare," has conjured up a bogeyman from a minor movement in academic legal scholarship that goes by the name "Critical Race Theory," and that is associated with law professors like Kimberle Crenshaw, Patricia Williams, the late Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and others.  As is no doubt well-known to readers of this blog, the current bogeyman "Critical Race Theory" (CRT) has only a little to do with the body of writing by law professors--indeed, as this profile of the creator of the current hysteria makes clear, the real targets are the half-baked "ideas" of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi that have been put into practice in many workplaces (and some schools):  e.g., treating race as the marker of moral and epistemic status, treating disparate impact as evidence of "racism," overgeneralizing about the supposed attributes of "whiteness" (e.g., "objectivity" is white), interpreting effects of the capitalist marketplace as "racial" effects, and so on.  The DiAngelo-Kendi schtick makes the other white victims of the capitalist marketplace into agents and instigators of morally reprehensible oppression.

DiAngelo and Kendi, in any case, cite some CRT articles, and the propagandists decided that CRT was a good stand-in for the enemy.  DiAngelo and Kendi should be consigned to oblivion, and most of the objections to the CRT bogeyman are really objections to their stupidity, as any Marxist would agree.  But CRT is not by any stretch of the imagination a "Marxist" theory (and has little to do with Frankfurt School Critical Theory), so what is it about?

"EthicsFinder" from the Australian Catholic University

Professor John Haldane (who spends part of the year at the ACU) writes:

EthicsFinder.com is a free online resource intended initially, but not at all exclusively for Catholics who want to know about ethical issues and to equip themselves to understand the ideas and arguments relating to them. 

Typing in a word or phrase, or selecting from within the list of themes takes users to a page with a brief micro-article introducing the topic, and a row of headings indicating different kinds of resources: Articles, Books, Videos and Faith. There are currently six themes: Life, Love, Politics, Ethics, Philosophy, Culture, and 120 or so topics and introductory micro-articles (of which, to declare an interest, I am the author). There are thousands of curated items: secular as well as religious, and critical as well as affirmative of Catholic positions.

Richard Marshall interviews Arthur Schopenhauer (independent scholar)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Review of a new book about Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch

Here.  Unfair to emotivism, however--because the volume is Oxford-centric,it mentions only Ayer, but not Stevenson, although Foot took on Stevenson directly (not successfully though).

Why every department should have at least one or two faculty specializing in the post-Kantian Continental traditions in philosophy of the 19th- and 20th-century (UPDATED)

Following up on this earlier post about ranked departments that, remarkably, have no specialists in these traditions, let me note the most obvious prudential reason why all departments should want to have faculty teaching in these areas:   undergraduate students are interested, really interested, in Marx and Nietzsche, and, when given the chance, in Schopenhauer and Foucault and (someone I don't like much) Heidegger.   Philosophy departments can pass off the student interest in these figures to hacks and intellectual tourists in other departments, but that will just be large student enrollments lost to the Philosophy Department.  There are now so many excellent and philosophically-informed scholars in these traditions, that there is no credible excuse any longer for not having specialists in these fields.  You can hire someone who will bring in the student enrollments for 19th-century German philosophers and still be able to talk to the epistemologists and moral psychology folks in your department.

What is philosophy and why should we do it? Readings for high school students?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCT 29--INTERESTING DISCUSSION, AND MR FOISY RESPONDS TO SOME OF THE SUGGESTIONS

Reader Matt Foisy writes seeking suggestions:

I am a high school teacher in Calgary, Canada. I am clearly not a professional philosopher, but I do read quite widely in philosophy, and I even think I can understand most of what I read! I primarily teach history and politics, but am lucky enough to teach a philosophy course (extremely rare in high schools in Canada, as I’m sure it is in the US as well). My philosophy course is part of the IB or international Baccalaureate program, which is a quite widely recognized and rigorous academic program--so much so that most major universities will offer first year credits to students who score well enough on their exams. So basically I think I am teaching what might be the equivalent of a first year undergrad philosophy course.

As I am not part of the academy it is not always the easiest thing for me to find applicable resources or works or whatever for some things that my students must do, and this is the question I have for you.

On most topics that I need to discuss there are no issues, but I am hoping for a little guidance on one topic. The students must write a paper that is basically on the purpose or role of philosophy. Or basically what philosophy is and why we need to be doing it. My students are intelligent and can do this with their own thoughts and ideas quite easily, but they must engage with the academy on questions like this. So their answers to this question must consider and evaluate the work of other philosophers in coming to their answers. I of course think that this is a great thing for them to be doing, but I also find that on this topic I am a little short on resources, and it is not always the easiest for me to find the time to do all of the reading required to find these resources. Plato and Aristotle offer some good answers to these questions, as does Thomas Nagel (in an introduction to philosophy book I think), but unfortunately I don’t have too many other resources for this type of a question.

Death...and its role in life

Philosopher Susanna Siegel (Harvard) discusses.

"Athena in Action"...

...is now accepting applications from women PhD students in philosophy for its summer 2022 Workshop.

(Thanks to Liz Harman for the pointer.)

Bourget & Chalmers on the 2020 PhilPaper survey of the views of philosophers

Here. And you can see detailed results for each question here.

A few striking results (rounded to nearest 1):  while 50% of respondents endorsed "naturalism," 73% of respondents believe there is a priori knowledge, 63% believe in the analytic/synthetic distinction (although maybe it's because they think there are trivial analytic truths), 62% are moral realists (only 26% are moral anti-realists [what an embarrassment!]), and only 11% hold the correct view about free will, namely, that there is none.  (59% are compatibilists about free will, pretty close to the figure for moral realists:  I'll bet there is some overlap here.)  Only 67% of respondents were atheists,  while 19% were theists.

77% of respondents would not enter Nozick's Experience Machine, one of the biggest majorities for a single position in the survey.

Comments are open, feel free to discuss the results that strike you.

Peter Singer's talk about "Pandemic Ethics" at Rhodes College...

...is now available via Brain in a Vat.  This is the talk, recall, that some faculty at Rhodes College wanted to cancel.

Richard Marshall interviews Will Kymlicka (Queen's U)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Applying to PhD programs: how one leading PhD program looks at applications

Philosopher Alex Guerrero (Rutgers) shares some useful information, most of which rings true to me. 

(One additional note, regarding applicants with publications in good journals:  Professor Guerrero tells me on FB that about 5-8% of applicants to Rutgers have publications, but many of those are coming out of terminal MA programs or transferring from other PhD programs.  You do not need publications to be admitted to an excellent PhD program like Rutgers!  I've written in recent years for several students who were admitted to top five PhD programs, and none of them had publications in good philosophy journals; they did, of course, have strong academic records and good writing samples!)

Comments are open for philosophy faculty who want to add anything to Professor Guerrero's advice; signed comments only (full name and valid email address).

Philosopher Kathleen Stock resigns her position at the University of Sussex

The Guardian's coverage is here.   This, alas, will be taken as a victory by the miscreants, even though, as the news article makes clear, Professor Stock had the full support of the University.

UPDATE:   Professor Stock was advised by police to stay away from campus and install security devices at her home, as a result of the latest "student" protests against her views; this was the culmination of a years-long campaign of denunciations by other Sussex academics, philosophy faculty and students in the UK and abroad, and unrelenting toxic abuse and lies on Twitter.  Professor Stock is a parent, as well as an academic; all of this must have been horrifying and frightening at times.  Despite this, the cruelty and viciousness of "professional" philosophers can't even take a break when she finally resigns her position.  Here is Professor Bryan Van Norden of Vassar College--a serious scholar who lost his mind in the last few years--purporting to explain why Professor Stock resigned her position:

In Memoriam: Lilli Alanen (1941-2021)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED AND DOB CORRECTED

A leading scholar of early modern philosophy (especially Descartes), Professor Alanen was emerita at Uppsala University.  She also did work in feminist philosophy.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Dan Kaufman [Colorado] for alerting me to her passing.)

UPDATE:   The Uppsala memorial notice.  (Thanks to Sebastian Luz and Pauliina Remes for the pointer.)

"Causation with a Human Face"

The philosopher of science James Woodward (Pittsburgh) discusses his new book at The Brains Blog.

Responses to some of the misinformation (and in some cases, outright lies) about Kathleen Stock

This is useful. It won't convince the zealots, but it may be helpful for those watching from outside the toxic polarization that dominates Twitter.

Spinoza and religion

Interesting  book review at the TLS.

Richard Marshall interviews Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge)...

...at 3:16 AM.

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

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 14--UPDATED

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!

UPDATE:  Philosopher Colin McGinn responds to an allegation in Huemer's interview.  (Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.)

A neuroscientist on "the self"

Anil Seth (Sussex) discusses his view at IAITV.

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.

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.