Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Philosopher's Annual, ten top papers from 2019

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 13:   The papers are now available at the PA website.

Here are the papers recognized this year:

Brad Armendt (Arizona State), “Causal Decision Theory and Decision Instability,” from the Journal of Philosophy

Maegan Fairchild (Michigan), “The Barest Flutter of the Smallest Leaf: Understanding Material Plenitude,” from the Philosophical Review

A Hume scholar on Hume's racism

Philosopher Paul Russell (British Columbia/Lund) comments in The Scotsman.  In an e-mail to me (which he kindly gave permission to share), he observed:

Suffice it to say that Hume would have laughed at the resemblance between the sanctimonious moralism of this woke mob (who are tormenting him in death) and the crazy nuttiness of the Christian fanatics (who tormented him when he was alive) - they are very similar psychological types.

ADDENDUM:  And here's the petition that started it all.  The original proposal was to rename the tower after Julius Nyerere, but that didn't last long, as the petition organizer quickly did a mea culpa:

A previous iteration of this petition campaigned for the name to be changed to Julius Nyerere Tower. It has been brought to my attention by multiple students that Nyerere was harmful in his own ways, both through his ties to dictatorship and through his homophobia. This petition now only campaigns for the renaming of David Hume Tower. Thank you so much to the students who contacted me to educate me. I sincerely apologize for any harm I have caused.

Relax, you didn't cause any "harm", except ultimately to the reputation of the University of Edinburgh.

 

Most influential books of philosophy of the last 20 years?

There was some chatter on Twitter about this, but here's what Google Scholar tells us about which books are being cited the most.

Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) looks to be the hands-down winner, with multiple books cited more than 1,500 times, including Women and Human Development (2001), with nearly 11,00 citations; but also Frontiers of Justice (2009), with 6,100 citations; Upheavals of Thought (2002), with 6,600 citations; and Hiding from Humanity:  Disgust, Shame and the Law (2009), with more than 2,000 citations.

Here are some other philosophy books published since 2000 with more than 1,500 citations according to Google Scholar (cite count rounded to the nearest 100):

Timothy Williamson (Oxford), Knowledge and Its Limits (2000), 5,400 citations

Miranda Fricker (CUNY Grad Center), Epistemic Injustice (2007), 4,000 citations

Cristina Bicchieri (Penn), The Grammar of Society (2006), 2700 citations

Jerry Fodor (late of Rutgers), The Mind Doesn't Work That Way (2001), 2,600 citations

Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh), Articulating Reasons (2009), 2,300 citations

"The Microfoundations of Marxism"

Philosopher Jaime Edwards (St. Norbert College) talks with philosopher Robert Gressis (Cal State/Northridge) about some of the ideas and arguments growing out of his important dissertation on this topic.  (Edwards and I are writing the volume on Marx for my Routledge Philosophers series.)

Philosopher Alastair Wilson (Birmingham) on "Natural Philosophies"...

...discussing quantum modal realism.

The life and work of Derek Parfit

Informative essay by philosopher Jonathan Dancy (Texas).

In Memoriam: Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (1932-2020)

Professor Rorty wrote very widely in moral psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of the emotions, and the history of philosopy (especially ancient).   She taught for a quarter-century at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and then later at Brandeis and Boston Universities, among other places.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

(Thanks to Geoffrey Batt for the information.)

In Memoriam: Jeffrie G. Murphy (1940-2020)

A leading contributor to philosophy of law, especially philosophy of criminal law, and moral philosophy, Professor Murphy  taught at the University of Arizona for a number of years before moving to the Arizona State University faculty in 1981; he ultimately held appointments in both the philosophy department and law school.  The ASU memorial notice is here.

2020 Hiett Prize in Humanities goes to a philosopher, Zena Hitz (St. John's, Maryland)

Announcement here.  Nice to see Professor Hitz, a fierce champion for the humanities and philosophy, recognized.

(Thanks to Scott Newstock for the pointer.)

Philosophers on Twitter lists

Amusing, although those who are sadly deceased (like Hubert Dreyfus and Roger Scruton) should be dropped.

Student-maintained Philosophy admissions for 2020-21 spread sheet...

...here.

(Thanks to Linds Whitaker for the pointner.)

Byrne's reply to controversial Dembroff paper in Phil Studies rejected

In June, philosopher Stewart Cohen (Arizona) resigned as editor of Philosophical Studies in protest after the journal published a paper by Robin Dembroff (Yale) containing personal attacks on Alex Byrne (MIT) (journal policy forbids such attacks), the author to whom Professor Dembroff was responding.  (Earlier coverage here, here, and here.)  Even by the standards of dishonesty characteristic of the "woke" in philosophy, the denial that the Dembroff paper contained personal attacks was astonishing (what else could specultion and criticism of the author's "real" motives be?).   In any case, Byrne's sur-reply to Dembroff has now been rejected by Philosophical Studies.  I inquired with Professor Byrne, who writes:

The reports didn't fill me with hope for the future of this area of philosophy. One referee helpfully urged me to "consult and engage" with the literature, advising me to "be more careful" in my "engagement with works that [I] discuss, making sure to understand them in their entirety." The other purported to prove that the thesis of my original paper was false in a few sentences, ending with "Case closed."

Evangelicals and climate denial

Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments.

Why the right needs to pretend the "left" is more powerful than it really is

Political philosopher Lea Ypi (LSE) comments.  Her point about the Gramscian pedigree of the right's rhetorical strategy is amusing.  (Her focus is Britain, but most of the points apply in the U.S. too.)

Hume and Edinburgh, once again

A propos this, longtime reader Roger Albin (Medicine, Michigan) writes with apt observations that he kindly gave permission to share:

This would be the second time Hume is rejected by the University of Edinburgh.  Hume was denied a Chair at Edinburgh by some of the ideologically “woke” of his time, conservative clergy who suspected Hume of atheism.  Other than his short time as an undergraduate, Hume had no formal affiliation with Edinburgh.  Naming a building after Hume wasn’t an effort to honor Hume, it was an effort to have some of the luster of Hume’s reputation rub off on the University that rejected him.  Hume’s reputation loses nothing by this silly gesture and the University of Edinburgh is revealed as place that capitulates to fads.

Dianoia Institute of Philosophy/Australian Catholic University now accepting applications for MPhil and PhD

There are more details here; note that the deadline is in October, and the term starts in February 2021.  Because all the faculty at the Institute hold research appointments, there are no courses, so this is degree by individual faculty supervision.  The faculty is quite narrow in its strengths (e.g., there is no history of philosophy), but very strong in several areas:  philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, metaethics in particular.  I would expect the Institute to be one of the top 3 programs in Australasia in the next PGR (perhaps even the #1 program), and will likely be among the top 5-10 programs in its areas of strength in the world.

How to evaluate history's heroes

Sensible comments from philosopher Steven Hales (Bloomsburg), and timely again given the Hume fiasco at Edinburgh.   From the concluding paragraphs of the essay:

Newton wrote to Robert Hooke that if he saw further than others it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. That was a medieval metaphor that went back to before the 12th century, when John of Salisbury wrote in his Metalogicon, “Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”

Medieval humility has been inverted in the modern era with the hubris that we are moral giants on the shoulders of the dwarfs of the past, wicked dwarfs who deserve our eternal scorn. As we tear down more monuments to former heroes and erase their names from our buildings, we ought to think about their blameworthiness by the standards and expectations of their own era. Those supposed moral dwarfs we now decry may have been giants of their time. And you don’t have to be a scientist to know that even the largest persons look small when seen from a distance.

Does morality need metaphysics?

Philosopher Simon Blackburn and others discuss.

Let's out-woke "the woke": from now on David Hume will be known as "40 George Square"

A propos this:

"As 40 George Square argues in the Treatise..."

"Kant was awoken from his dogmatic slumber by reading 40 George Square..."

"Did you know that 40 George Square was not opposed to slavery?"

"According to the 40 George Squarean theory of motivation..."

(Thanks to my colleague Agnes Callard for the idea.)

UPDATE:  Courtesy of Greg Spendlove on Twitter.

 

David Hume has now been "cancelled" at the University of Edinburgh

When I first saw this on social media, I thought it was a joke.  It's not.  If members of the Edinburgh philosophy department don't raise hell about this (some members are, alas, confirmed knuckleheads), then let's cancel them too!  Indeed, let's cancel the University of Edinburgh!  

What's bizarre about the mass delusion now gripping the Anglophone world, even outside the U.S., is that no one yet knows whether George Floyd was killed because he was Black, rather than poor, marginalized, and non-cooperative (which cops hate!), the factors that actually explain most police killings (race is largely an epiphenomenon). 

And what's even worse is that none of this has anything to do with Hume.  

Hume was a man of his time in some ways, but we don't read him to figure out whether we should invest in the slave trade.  We read him because he transcended his time, because he touched the fundamental questions about what it is to be a human being in the world:  what do we know, what should we value, what is there really?   In that regard, he is like Plato, the enemy of democracy, and Aristotle, the defender of slavery, as well as Hobbes, Kant, Marx and Nietzsche:   he speaks to all human beings, despite his parochial prejudices. 

That these analysts of human being should be erased from the landscape, because of their local prejudices, is a symptom of our times, not simply of the narcissistic stupidity of "identity politics" and the craven spinelessness of academic administrators, but, more importantly, of the reactionary forces of the moment which  will love nothing better than the erasure of the cosmopolitan ideals we have inherited:  the forces of reaction, after all, are committed to vindicating the local traditions and prejudices and customs.  They can happily join forces with the identity narcissists in eradicating those thinkers concerned with the human.

ADDENDUM:  Leave it to the Edinburgh knucklehead Aidan McGlynn to try to rationalize this.  Of course it's not strictly a "cancellation" (that's actually why I put it in quotes), since it didn't involve a living person losing their job, but it shares with that phenomenon the effort to demote someone's status in response to meritless mob outrage.  Nobody thought putting Hume's name on the building was an insult, obviously taking it off is meant to signal disapproval and demotion, even if it is, as McGlynn says irrelevantly, a "tall brown, tower block" .  (I wonder what the knucklehead's colleagues interested in Hume think about this?  Will the mob soon come for their seminars?)  Enzo Rossi (Amsterdam) points out the additional irony that the former "Hume Tower" will now be known simply as its address "40 George Square," after King George who opposed the abolition of slavery.  (ADDENDUM:   Enzo tells me now that, unlike the George Square in Glasgow, the one in Edinburgh is not named after the King.  That's fortunate considering Hume's new name!)

The end of the Chicago Palmer House hotel?

In olden times, the Central Division of the APA often held meetings at the Palmer House here in Chicago.  But the pandemic may have finished off the historic site.  Perhaps another hotel chain will acquire the property, but that seems unlikely under current circumstances.

Tasioulas from King's College London to Oxford

John Tasioulas (moral, political & legal philosophy), currently a Professor and Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law in the law school at King's College London, has accepted appointment as Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy on the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and director of the new Ethics of AI Institute.  The Oxford announcement of his appointment, and that of several younger scholars and post-docs, is here. 

(As an aside, let me note that this is a good break for jurisprudence at Oxford, an area in which Professor Tasioulas tells me he will continue to work and supervise.  With the tragic death of John Gardner, the appointment of Timothy Endicott to the Vinerian Professorship in English Law [which will take him away from his jurisprudence work towards his work in administrative law], and the appointment of a moral philosopher to the  Chair of Jurisprudence, the ranks of legal philosophers available to supervise students was thinning!)

"How the evangelical movement became Trump's 'bitch'"

Philosopher Michael Rea (Notre Dame) offers a plausible explanation.  (He also alludes in the article to an earlier  incident involving Richard Swinburne at a Society of Christian Philosophers event that we noted here.)

It's worth emphasizing that evangelical (indeed Republican) support for Trump is not instrumentally irrational.  He has, in fact, delivered on standard Republican agenda items:  e.g, conservative (sometimes reactionary) judges, tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy, undermining the Affordable Care Act (albeit failing to repeal it), and making it easier to discriminate against disfavored groups, like those who are transgender.  It is a mistake for Democrats to focus so relentlessly on his deformed personality and rude mouth, rather than the substance of his policies.

Ironically, the one issue on which Trump has not been a standard-issue Republican concerns international affairs:  he favors better relations with Russia, rather than hostility (his motivations for this are, to put it mildly, suspect, but the position is correct!); and he is adverse to putting U.S. soldiers into combat.   On these issues, he is, ironically enough, better than both the Republicans and the Democrats.

Introducing Marxism and critiques of capitalism to high school students

A high school teacher writes:

I'm a longtime reader of your blog and former philosophy student. I teach advanced high school students in English, debate, and philosophy at a public high school. 

I'm curious if you or your readers have any recommendations for essays or books I could excerpt that would (i) help the kids take Marxist thought seriously and/or (ii) help them appreciate why one might see so much infighting on the left between those supporting race-based identity politics and socialists. I plan on teaching some of Reed's articles and a few other articles you've featured on your blog, but many of those pieces don't do the more basic work of unpacking capitalism's flaws. I've taught some of Chomsky's On Anarchism and a few other short essays with some success, but they are all a bit too complicated given the straightforward and relatively easy task of outlining capitalism's flaws. 

Thanks for any help.

I'll open this for suggestions from others, but here are some thoughts of my own.  A colleague elsewhere told me he used to good effect my opening remarks at a recent debate about capitalism, socialism, and social democracy with undergraduates in an introductory PPE-type course at his university (here is a typescript version of my remarks:  Download Capitalism social democracy socialism).  Less basic, but generally accessible, is Jonathan Wolff's Why Read Marx Today (Oxford, 2002)--you'd want to pick some selections.  The essay by Randall Collins in Does Capitalism Have a Future? (Oxford, 2013) is also useful, and free of Marxist jargon although making essentially Marx's point.

Suggestions from readers?

Richard Marshall interviews John Carriero (UCLA)...

...at 3:16 AM.  It's a nice synoptic overview of his revisionary understanding of Descartes.

"Reasonably polarized"

Thoughts from philosopher Kevin Dorst (Oxford/Pittsburgh).  He writes: "The series will be the first pass at a book I've been working on for awhile, arguing that we should see polarization as due to largely rational processes. Basically, the claim is that we're all caught in a big epistemic tragedy of the commons where epistemically rational ways of processing ambiguous evidence lead to polarization."  One question I hope Professor Dorst will address is, if this is the explanation, why the epistemic tragedy of the commons is so much worse in the U.S. than many other affluent and nominally democratic nations.

In Memoriam: Philippe Mongin (1950-2020)

A distinguished French economist, Professor Mongin served as an editor of Economics & Philosophy, and did work well-known to those doing decision theoretic and other formal work in philosophy.  There is a memorial from the Society for the History of Economics here and in the journal Social Choice & Welfare here.

(Thanks to Jake Nebel for alerting me to Professor Mongin's passing.)

 

In Memoriam: Michael Redhead (1929-2020)

A distinguished philosopher of physics, Professor Rehead taught for many years in the History and Philosophy of Science program at Cambridge University and then, after his retirement from Cambridge, at the London School of Economics.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

(Thanks to Brad Wray for the informtion.)

"Team reasoning"

Philosopher David Papineau (KCL, CUNY) comments.

An online set of essays about the 1973 film of Strawson and Evans discussing truth

Put together by Huw Price (Cambridge) and hosted at 3:16 AM.

Chicago, Columbia are suspending PhD admissions for fall 2021

Chicago's announcement is here, Columbia's here.  The latter was flagged for me by a student in a terminal MA program, who wondered if others are planning to do the same.  Comments are open for additional links/announcements on that score (if you're making an announcement, please use a full name and valid email address).  That both Chicago and Columbia are out is especially unfortunate for students interested in Kant and German Idealism, both strengths of those programs.  Students with those interests should of course be looking still at Yale, Johns Hopkins, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, Syracuse, BU, and, maybe, Pittsburgh, among others.

1.5 million euro grant from the European Research Council for a "knowledge-first" approach to social epistemology...

...awarded to philosopher Mona Simion at the University of Glasgow and her "KnowledgeLab" project.

(Thanks to David Bain for the pointer.)

Richard Marshall interviews Andrew Davis (Durham)...

...at 3:16 AM.

Wide-ranging interview with Noam Chomsky...

...by Fabian Corver.  (Thanks to Mark Pavlick for the pointer.)

CNN says the F-word...

...with help from philosopher Jason Stanley (Yale).

Barbara Partee profiled...

...here.  A distinguished linguist whose work is well-known to philosophers of language, she taught for many years at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in both linguistics and philosophy.  The story of her first meeting with Chomsky as a prospective PhD student is charming!

$250,000 grant from the McDonnell Foundation to philosopher Santiago Amaya (U of Los Andes, Colombia) to study moral problem-solving

Details of the grant and the interesting project here.

New open-access journal: Philosophy of Medicine

Details here.

In Memoriam: Nicholas L. Sturgeon (1942-2020)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 25--UPDATED

Professor Sturgeon, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1967 and taught there until his retirement, was best-known for his naturalist moral realism and his contributions to the debate about "moral explanations" in the 1980s and 1990s.  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

ADDENDUM:  Philosopher John Doris, who was an undergraduate at Cornell and is now on the Cornell faculty, writes:  "Nick was incredibly generous to me when I was an undergraduate.  He was an extraordinary teacher not only of ethics, but also history, and his course on the Empiricists was a classic.  I can still see him, almost always in the same tan chamois shirt, sitting on a desk and lecturing, noteless, armed only with an impossibly battered copy of Locke's Essays."

UPDATE:  A memorial notice from Cornell.  (Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Templeton extends funding for the "Geography of Philosophy" project...

...directed by philosophers Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh) and Stephen Stich (Rutgers), along with anthropologist Clark Barrett (UCLA).

Richard Marshall interviews Darren Bradley (Leeds)...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Gerald ("Jerry") Gaus (1952-2020)

MOVING TO FRONT, UPDATED--ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 20

I'm very sorry to report that Professor Gaus, a distinguished political philosopher, died unexpectedly yesterday.   Since 2006, he was part of the powerhouse political philosophy program at the University of Arizona.  Before that, he taught at Tulane University and the University of Minnesota at Duluth, and held research and/or teaching appointments in Australia, mainly at the Australian National University.  He took his PhD in political science at the University of Pittsburgh, working with John Chapman.  You can find out more about his work here.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

UPDATE:   A memorial notice in the U of Arizona student newspaper.

ANOTHER:  A long memorial from the PPE Society, which is informative about his work.

AND ANOTHER:  A memorial notice from the ANU, where Professor Gaus began his career.

AND MORE:   A memorial notice at the Pea Soup blog with many personal remembrances in the comments.

"Consciousness Live"

A podcast hosted by philosopher Richard Brown (CUNY), in which Professor Brown talks with philosophers, scientists, and artists.

APA announces 2021 Eastern and Central division meetings will be online

Details here.

$4.4 million from Templeton Foundation for the "Honesty Project"...

...to be run by philosopher Christian Miller (Wake Forest) and psychologists at both Wake Forest and Carnegie-Mellon.

In Memoriam: Joseph D. Sneed (1938-2020)

I only just learned that the philosopher of science Joseph Sneed, a longtime member of the faculty at the Colorado School of Mines, passed away earlier this year.  Philosopher Franz-Peter Griesmaier (Wyoming), who called this to my attention, noted that Professor Sneed was "largely responsible for a particular form of scientific structuralism, which applies the Bourbaki-model from mathematics for an analysis of the structure of theories.....He was one of my teachers when I was in the MA program at CU Boulder. He was an amazing teacher and an absolutely terrific person. His work has received much more attention in Europe, especially in Germany, than in the US, which is unfortunate."

The injustice to Sarah Braasch continues: Connecticut denies her request for access to the police tapes from the night of the fake "sleeping while Black" incident

A criminal defense lawyer comments.  (Earlier coverage.)

Economics with a moral compass?

Amartya 'Sen (Harvard) and Angus Deaton (Princeton) discuss.

(Thanks to Alex Boche for the pointer.)

Philosopher Peter Ludlow interviewed...

...by a well-known "transhumanist" blogger; they cover a lot of ground, from New York in 1979 to crypto currency and crypto anarchy, from consciousness (and why Ludlow fears he might be a zombie), the external mind, and the dynamic lexicon, to why Ludlow is not a libertarian.  ("Transhumanists" are a fairly juvenile crowd, lots of enthusiasm for Ayn Rand, for example—Ludlow tries to set the interviewer straight!.).  

Richard Marshall interviews John Schwenkler (Florida State)...

...at 3:16 AM.