Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Philosopher and logician Hannes Leitgeb recevies the Leibniz Award in Germany...

...one of the most prestigious academic honors in the country.

The therapeutic power of placebos?

Philosopher Dien Ho comments.  Curious what those knowledgeable about this topic make of this.

In Memoriam: Martha Brandt Bolton (1943-2024).

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SATURDAY, FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT

Professor Bolton, a longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where she was emerita, was well-known for her work on Locke and Leibniz, among other figures in early modern philosophy.  (Her husband, the philosopher Robert Bolton, died earlier this year.)  Dean Zimmerman, Chair of the Department, kindly shared the memorial notice posted below the fold.  Comments are also open for remembrances form those who knew Professor Bolton or for those who would like to comment on the significance of her work.

"Why must philosophy writing be so bad?"

Philosopher Steven Hales comments, with some amusing examples.

Two million Euro grant from ERC to philosopher Ruth Boeker...

...at University College Dublin for a project on "New Histories of British Moral Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century (c.1690–1800)."

An interview with T.M. Scanlon about his moral philosophy

Here.  This I found particularly striking and interesting:

AR: You were part of a discussion group of maybe 10 to 12 people back in your Princeton days, with luminaries such as Tom Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, Nozick, and many others. In an interview with The Utopian, you called this the most important thing in your philosophical development. What made it so important? 

TS: Well, it was like having this gang of great teachers, for one thing. In my career, I was mainly doing logic, philosophy, mathematics, things like that, although I was interested in moral and political philosophy, and I got more drawn into it because I was doing a lot of teaching in that area. So this was partly a way of developing more expertise in the field because I was just in the process of getting into it. Second, it was something that provided me with confidence in two ways: One, there really was a subject matter there that you could learn more about because in the 1950s, moral philosophy had a kind of skeptical air to it. It was sort of conventionalist or emotivist, non-cognitivist, and so on, and so we were drawn together by the fact that most of us in the group tended to think that there were real facts about right and wrong, and that just by thinking really hard and clearly about them, you could make progress, and that wasn’t what was going on in most of philosophy at the time. It wasn’t where the action was in philosophy; it was mostly in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, things like that.

So the group gave me confidence that there were other people who think that we’re not just banging things up, that there’s something there. And second, that gave me confidence in myself, because these people were willing to talk to me, and so I could be a member of this group, which was amazingly flattering. I was kind of a junior partner in the group, so I felt, wow, this is amazing. So it really was important in my philosophical development in those ways, giving me confidence in the subject, and, to some degree, confidence in myself.

Dupre on Dawkins...

...at the Los Angeles Review of Books.  A good read.

Philosopher Laurie Paul profiled...

...at The New Yorker.  It's a nice write-up!

 

The rise and fall of "The Future of Humanity Institute" at Oxford

Interesting account of the mostly bad scifi passing as philosophy.   "Effective [i.e., short-term, measurable] altruism" also makes an appearance.

An interview with Simon Blackburn about moral philosophy and quasi-realism in particular

Here.

A review of the Edmonds biography of Parfit...

...in The Philosopher's Magazine.  The review starts by sounding a Nietzschean note:  "Philosophers tend to tolerate a high degree of personal strangeness in one another. More specifically, they tend not to worry – at least explicitly or on the record – about whether the weird philosophical beliefs and the weird non-philosophical actions of a colleague might have a common source."  For Nietzsche, of course, the philospohical systems of at least the great philosophers admit of psychological explanation.  Regarding the Edmonds biography, the reviewers note that,

The book is largely an entertaining, and highly revealing, exercise in psychological portraiture by means of anecdote. Parfit, Edmonds tells us, would peddle in the nude on his exercise bike, reading philosophy; he would brush his teeth for hours, reading philosophy; every day he would eat the same breakfast of muesli and yoghurt and the same dinner of carrots, cheese, lettuce, and celery, to maximise his time for philosophy; he would make coffee using water straight out of the tap, to maximise his time for philosophy; he would take a mixture of vodka and pills every night to help him sleep, since he couldn’t stop thinking about philosophy.

In Memoriam: Arnold Koslow (1933-2024)

A longtime member of the philosophy faculties at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he was emeritus, Professor Koslow wrote widely in philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and logic. He died last month.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Koslow or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Mark Zelcer for the pointer.)

 

Boston University suspends PhD admissions across humanities (including Philosophy) and social sciences...

...it appears because graduate students won higher wages.  I supsect concern about what the Trump Administration has planned for higher education may also be in the background of their concerns.

If you are staying on Twitter/X, why?

Philosopher Jc Beall raised a question which I also wonder about:  "It would be very interesting to know whether any philosophers are staying on Twitter and -- this is what I'm curious about -- *why*."  So readers who use social media, if you're staying with X, what are your reasons?  This is asked out of genuine curiosity; I can imagine reasons, but would like to hear what philosophers are thinking.

 

Political theorist Paul Sagar on adjusting to severe paralysis after a climbing accident

A gripping read about a horrible situation.

Heidegger against the philosophical tradition

A pleasingly clear short essay at IAITV, that has some affinities with the Dreydegger familiar in the Anglophone world, but is also importantly different and probably closer to the spirit of Heidegger.

 

James Woodward receives 2024 Hempel Award...

...from the Philosophy of Science Association to recognize lifetime achievements in the field.  Woodward is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

(Thanks to Edouard Machery for the information.)

"The Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams" by Alan Thomas

Free to download from CUP for the next few weeks!

Jaime Edwards and I talk about our Marx book...

...at The Dissenter, with Ricardo Lopes.

In Memoriam: George E. Smith (1938-2024)

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at Tufts University, where he was emeritus, Professor Smith was well-known for his contributions to philosophy of science.  Professor Smith came to philosophy later than most; there is more information about his career and work here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Smith or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Eric Schliesser for the information.)

The new Republican initiative for higher education in states they control: "Western Civilization" centers (sometimes called "civics" centers or variations on that)

They have been created at the University of Florida at Gainesville, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Often they reference the "principles of a free society," meaning a capitalist society, not a society free of wage slavery.  The motivation for creating them is plainly political, but in the abstract it's hard to quarrel with more money for faculty lines to teach ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and the history of modern philosophy.  Republican legislators are sufficiently ignorant that they do not realize how politically radical many of the so-called "Great Books" are, so the more teaching of them, the better one might think!

The difficulty, of course, is that many of the hires at these programs make them look like they are also using a political litmus test, which is unlawful for the same reason that "diversity statements" are unlawful in faculty hiring at public universities:  public universities cannot discriminate based on the political viewpoint of applicants.   So if you advertise for scholars to teach ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, a red flag should go up if everyone hired turns out be a political conservative or libertarian.  Sooner or later, some rejected candidate will have to sue, and the actual hiring process will be subjected to the sunlight of discovery.

Wenar on "effective [sic] altruism" and his critics

Philosopher Leif Wenar wades into the fray again, responding in part to critics of his earlier piece.  I'm sympathetic to much that Professor Wenar says, although it touches only indirectly on the main difficulty, namely, that "effective [sic] altruism" really only concerns "altruistic actions with fairly immediate and measurable short-term effects," which is not the same as making people better off, regardless of one's motive.  (Wenar's criticism of the unintended effects of aid on non-recipients is relevant to this issue, but it's just the tip of an iceberg of consequences that are never considered by members of the church.)

More stories of "first-generation" philosophers

Alfred Mele and Nadia Ruiz, among others.  This from Dr. Ruiz's essay was particularly striking:

It was at this point that the hidden curriculum of higher education—the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school—first began to reveal itself to me. These lessons include norms, values, and beliefs that are conveyed in the classroom and in one's social environment without explicitly being taught. As a first-generation college student, I was often unaware of these unspoken rules and expectations. For example, I didn't know about the importance of building relationships with professors, attending office hours, or the various support programs available. The fact that this curriculum remained hidden from me longer than it did for my non-first-generation peers created a significant barrier, making it difficult to navigate the academic landscape and access the resources necessary for success. Most first-gen students discover or find out about these resources on the fly, if at all: this keeps us behind.

Both my parents were college graduates, but I have to admit it took me awhile to figure some of these out too.  But it is definitely even more foreign territory for those who have never been part of bourgeois society, of which academia is an importance instance.

 

In Memoriam: Bernard Manin (1951-2024)

An influential political theorist, Professor Manin was probably best-known among philosophers for his contributions to democratic theory.  The political theorist Melissa Schwartzberg, Chair of the Department of Politics at NYU, kindly shared this memorial notice (below the fold):

Asymmetries between blame and praise?

A free chapter from David Shoemaker's new OUP book.  (The chapter includes several references to this excellent paper by Dan Telech, who did his PhD here with Agnes Callard and me.)

In Memoriam: Alan Montefiore (1926-2024)

An emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, Professor Montefiore was one of the early Anglophone analytic philosophers to take a serious interest in post-Kantian German and French philosophy.  Among his other contributions, he was one of the co-founders and editors of the Cambridge University Press "Modern European Philosophy" series which published many important books in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Montefiore or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Matt Kramer for the information.)

In Memoriam: Michael Ruse (1940-2024)

Professor Ruse, a leading figure in philosophy of biology, died this morning.  He was emeritus at Florida State University, where he had taught since 2000; before that, he was a faculty member for more than three decades at the University of Guelph.  The Wikipedia page has useful information about his involvement in various public controversies about the teaching of evolution in the schools.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Ruse or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

"Philosophy Admissions Spreadheet" for 24-25

Linds Whittaker, a graduate student at the University of Washington, shares this year's spreadsheet.  He writes:"This year the TOEFL/English Language requirements have been added along with writing sample requirements when possible. It sounds like several universities may not be accepting applicants this year (Columbia, Wash University in St. Louis, maybe Bowling Green) and I will be adding additional information about any admissions pauses I find over the next few weeks."

Suspended admissions were more common during the pandemic; I wonder whether anyone knows why Columbia (usually a top 10-15 program) and Wash U/St. Louis (usually a top 25-30 program) are suspending admissions this year?

"Meaning, Reference, and Modality," a conference on the work of Nathan Salmon...

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

...marking his retirement from UC Santa Barbara, and featuring Scott Soames, David Braun and others.  Zoom access will be possible!  Details for Zoom participation will be supplied at the website closer to the date of the conference (which starts November 9).

UPDATE:  Here is the Zoom link:   https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/86290086789

"Computers plainly can't think"

Philosopher Alva Noe comments; an excerpt:

[T]here is another origin of our impulse to concede mind to devices of our own invention, and this is what I focus on here: the tendency of some scientists to take for granted what can only be described as a wildly simplistic picture of human and animal cognitive life. They rely unchecked on one-sided, indeed, milquetoast conceptions of human activity, skill and cognitive accomplishment. The surreptitious substitution (to use a phrase of Edmund Husserl’s) of this thin gruel version of the mind at work – a substitution that I hope to convince you traces back to Alan Turing and the very origins of AI – is the decisive move in the conjuring trick.

What scientists seem to have forgotten is that the human animal is a creature of disturbance. Or as the mid-20th-century philosopher of biology Hans Jonas wrote: ‘Irritability is the germ, and as it were the atom, of having a world…’ With us there is always, so to speak, a pebble in the shoe. And this is what moves us, turns us, orients us to reorient ourselves, to do things differently, so that we might carry on. It is irritation and disorientation that is the source of our concern. In the absence of disturbance, there is nothing: no language, no games, no goals, no tasks, no world, no care, and so, yes, no consciousness....

Lori Gruen named SWIP Distinguished Philosopher of the Year for 2024

Philosopher Louise Antony kindly shared the following announcement:

The Steering Committee of Eastern SWIP is delighted to announce that the SWIP Distinguished Philosopher of the Year for 2024 is Lori Gruen!  Please feel free to share this news. 

Lori will be honored at a session at the Eastern Division APA Convention: Session G 10 B, on Friday, Jan. 10, from 9 - 10:50 AM. 

Here's how philosophers can make a difference beyond voting: work a phone bank!

Philosopher Colin Marshall has some interesting anecdotes and great advice.

Others with phone bank experience are welcome to add their own suggestions.

In Memoriam: Christopher Hookway (1949-2024)

Emeritus at the University of Sheffield, Professor Hookway, who was afflicted with early onset dementia, has died.  He wrote widely and influentialy on pragmatism, epistemology, Peirce, and Quine, among other figures and topics.  (I can attest that his Quine book is terrific.)  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Hookway or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to David Gordon for the pointer.)

Measuring pain "objectively"?

Interesting work, curious to hear what those better-informed about these issues make of this approach.

(Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)

Writing philosophy under adverse conditions

At The Workbench, Nathan Ballantyne interviews two philosophers who know what it's like.

On being cancelled in philosophy

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY:  SEE INTERESTING COMMENTS FROM DAVID WALLACE AND JOHN BOGART

Colin McGinn comments.  As I have noted in the past, tihs exclusion of a philosopher from participation in all aspects of the life of the profession is not defensible.   If I may quote from a related CHE essay awhile back:

Liberals who no doubt believe that convicted felons "deserve a second chance" sometimes sound like they think that accused or university-convicted sexual harassers should never be heard from again. But how could that be right?

Punishments should be proportional to the offense; that is a widely accepted principle of punitive justice. No one thinks that a sexual harasser should be castrated or hung. One also hopes no one thinks a sexual harasser should be prohibited from earning a living ever again. (Even convicted murderers, released from prison, are allowed to work.)

ADDENDUM:  Philosopher David Wallace writes:

Graduate school writing samples

Some very good advice from philosopher Bernhard Nickel at Harvard.  My only small caveat is this:  while I agree with Professor Nickel that the writing sample need not be in one's primary area, if it is too far afield of anything the department does, that will not work out well (e.g., don't submit a paper on Heidegger when applying to MIT).  Comments are open if others have thoughts about Professor Nickel's advice.   Signed comments (full name and full email address, the latter of which will not appear) will be preferred.

Cailin O'Connor on game theory and misinformation (with particular reference to Covid)...

...at The Dissenter.

In Memoriam: Ted Honderich (1933-2024)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SATURDAY (10/19/24)

Emeritus Grote Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, where he spent most of his career, Professor Honderich wrote widely on consciousness, free will and determinism, punishment, and other topics, and achieved particular notoriety late in life with his work on the justification of terrorism.   Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Honderich or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Miroslav Imbrisevic for the information about his death.)

"On becoming an historian of philosophy"

Reflections from Margaret Atherton in her APA "Dewey Lecture" (this is from 2017, but still interesting!).

Another state flagship faces a budget crisis, and philosophy is on the "chopping block"

CHE has details; an excerpt:

Christopher Vials, an English professor at UConn’s flagship campus in Storrs and president of its American Association of University Professors chapter, said 70 majors were identified as having failed to meet a threshold of 100 student completions over the last five years....

“It is anticipated that the end result for the review of low-completion programs will result in the closure of some programs,” Anne D’alleva, the provost, and Gladis Kersaint, the vice provost for academic affairs, wrote in a memo to all academic deans.

Majors like philosophy, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and animal science are on the chopping block. With the exception of Spanish, every program within the university’s literatures, cultures, and languages department is under review....

Last fall, UConn unveiled a plan to reduce the operating budget of all of its units — colleges, schools, administration, and institutional support — by 15 percent over the next five years to combat what was then a $70-million budget deficit.

A one-time infusion of state funding has eased the pain for this year, but the university’s expected funding gap for the 2026 fiscal year is about $72.8 million, according to Reitz.

Unlike West Virginia University, UConn has a PhD program in philosophy (and in other of these fields I expect); if the major goes, how long can the PhD program survive?

AI is "dumber than a cat"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 16--LOTS OF COMMENTS WORTH READING!  VERY INSTRUCTIVE!

So says this "AI pioneer," Yann LeCun:  "LeCun thinks that today’s AI models, while useful, are far from rivaling the intelligence of our pets, let alone us. When I ask whether we should be afraid that AIs will soon grow so powerful that they pose a hazard to us, he quips: 'You’re going to have to pardon my French, but that’s complete B.S.'"

What say you informed readers?  (Post a comment with a full name and valid email address. And don't post unless you know something about these issues:  I'd like to be educated!)

David Lewis on his approach to philosophy, on his education, and other topics (link fixed now)

A very entertaining lecture from 1991 [click on the PDF button] (which I learned about via Phillip Bricker's recent review of materials from Lewis's Nachlass).  The lecture contains a crisp statement of Lewis's "conservativism" in philosophy, which is characteristic of most of the Anglophone discipline:

I am a conservative philosopher. Fear not, I don’t mean that I make it my business to glorify the marvellous market and the Republican Party!—What would that have to do with resisting innovation? One thing I do mean is this. I think philosophy has no business challenging the positive convictions of common sense, and no business challenging established results of the natural sciences and mathematics. What should a philosopher do if he discovers a proof that he is the pope?  Boldly follow where argument leads?—No, or not unless he’s the philosopher Karol Wojtyła. Instead he should find the flaw in his proof. If he fails, he should conclude that the proof has a flaw he cannot find. The same goes, say I, if a philosopher discovers a proof that some truths are also false; or that motion or time or value or consciousness or freedom is unreal; or that it is unthinkable that anything exists outside the mind, or outside the text; or that there are no people, and no swizzle-sticks either; or that it is a wide-open scientific question whether anyone has ever believed anything; or that Cantor’s diagonal argument was fallacious; or that we make worlds with words. We should know a reductio ad absurdum when we see it! It is ever so much more likely that a philosophical argument has gone astray than that any of these things is true.

Gramsci's view of "common sense," and his reasons for skepticism about it, seems to me more plausible.

The "marketability" of philosophy, once again

The Cardiff approach. 

One of the ironies is that the UK, with an almost entirely "public" university sector has adopted far more than the U.S. a market-based approach to higher education.  

(Thanks to Panos Paris for the pointer.)

Bentham in defense of sexual pleasure

A nice video from UCL (Bentham's ideas inspired its establishment):

a

ADDENDUM:  A reader points out the amusing, but unintended, implication of the parenthetical, above, so let me make clear that it was not Bentham's ideas about sexual pleasure in particular that inspired the establishment of UCL!

In Memoriam: Anand Vaidya (1976-2024)

Professor Vaidya, who spent his career at San Jose State University, was well-known for his work on the epistemology of modality, and for using contemporary analytic philosophy to explore and develop ideas from ancient Indian philosophy.    There is a very nice memorial notice from the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy.  He also wrote about his experience confronting a terminal illness here.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Vaidya or for those who wish to comment on the significance of his work.

(Thanks to Malcolm Keating and Tim Williamson for the pointers.)

Idealism and realism about philosophy and its role

Philosopher Jimmy Lenman kindly gave permission to share this amusing and striking comment he made on FB:

I have moments of idealism. In my moments of idealism I think philosophy should be to bullshit what the medical profession is to disease. And I have moments of realism. In my moments of realism I fear how all too often philosophy is to bullshit what the munitions industry is to warfare.

So which are you, an idealist or realist?  Explain why.  (Comments require a valid email address, which will not appear.  If you wish to criticize specific philosophers or journals, you will need to do so with your full name.)

Robert Paul Wolff is back...

...after a real health ordeal, but how nice to know he will resume blogging again!

Richard Marshall interviews J.D. Trout...

...at 3:16 AM.

In Memoriam: Keith Campbell (1938-2024)

Professor Campbell was a longtime member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where he was emeritus and where he had served as Challis Professor.  He wrote widely and influentially on topics in metaphysics.  Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Campbell or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.