Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Richard Wollheim, his life and philosophical work (including the influence of psychoanalysis)

A short film, marking the centennary of his birth.  (Wollheim’s Freud book is excellent in my opinion.)

Reality is paradoxical

An interview with Graham Priest.

"Methods of Philosophy"

Ten lectures (in China) by Timothy Williamson.

Resources in philosophy of work and labor and related areas?

A young philosopher, teaching at a rural two-year college campus, writes:

I have taught retired police officers, future truck drivers, berry farmers, Wal-Mart employees — largely working-class folk. (They were, on the whole, wonderful students. It was a pleasure to be their teacher.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, discussion often turned to issues in, or about, the workplace. I was, and I remain, woefully unfamiliar with this area of philosophy. 

I am hoping you and your readers might have some suggestions for resources in: the philosophy of work and labor, the philosophy of bureaucracy, alienation, the philosophy of the corporation and its nature, Taylorism, Fordism, etc.

I am familiar with Marx's early political writings, especially his anthropology and its role in his arguments about alienation, and with Elizabeth Anderson's book, Private Government. I am mostly looking for resources I could use for teaching, such as readers, collections of essays, or stray essays. But suggestions for my own edification would be welcome, too.

Comments are open for reader suggestions.

The 376 most cited philosophers in the Stanford Encyclopedia that were born since 1900

Courtesy of Professor Schwitzgebel.  The list says a lot about Anglophone philosophy (and SEP), perhaps a bit less about philosophy. 

(Yours truly is tied at #377 according to the Schwitzgebel method.  So close to greatness, but, alas, no cigar.   No cigar, either, for Alexander Nehamas, Jonathan Lear, John Gardner, Leslie Green, Seana Shiffrin, Imra Lakatos, Gilles Deleuze, Robert Pippin, Frederick Neuhouser, and Mark Wilson, among other surprising absences.)   

ADDENDUM:  A reader sends this Google N-Gram (based on searching all books in google) for the period 2000-2020, using philosophers from the top, middle, and bottom of the SEP list, plus some of the "no cigar" folks.  Of course, this would not distinguish between authored and edited works, and it would also pick up "impact" outside philosophy.

A "philosophical eulogy" for Daniel Dennett...

...by David Chalmers:

 

An interview with Neuhouser on Rousseau and amour-propre

Another interview by Johnathan Bi, as part of his series on great books and ideas we noted previously.  Mr. Bi has a nice way of connecting the philosophical ideas to meaningful events in his own life, in a way that I imagine will resonate with other young people.   The interview is worth watching, and is a good introduction to Rousseau.

Some more old philosophy lectures on YouTube: Max Black, Norman Malcolm

Richard Marshall oncea gain sends along some interesting finds:

Max Black on analytic philosophical analysis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1TpzlgTki4&list=RDCMUC7q-GcHyjCHkTpXCUTLzy7Q&start_radio=1&rv=B1TpzlgTki4&t=10

Malcolm on G.E. Moore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCZ8zMdCvi0&list=RDCMUC7q-GcHyjCHkTpXCUTLzy7Q&index=2

Malcolm on Wittgenstein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=371LobXpUlo

Miranda Fricker's Whitehead Lectures at Harvard...

...on "Bernard Williams's Historical Self-Consciousness" are available here and here.  Professor Fricker's talk at the Williams conference in Lund several years ago was excellent.

A program on Philippa Foot on BBC Radio 4...

...with several philosophers discussing her life and work (Anil Gomes, Sophie Grace Chappell, Rachel Wiseman).  I was not aware how privileged her upbringing was!  Although I greatly admire Foot's work, especially the essays collected in Virtues and Vices, I was always puzzled by her thought that an adequate response to the Holocaust required rejecting emotivism (at least in its strongest form, Stevenson's).

Bradley vs. Russell

Michael Della Rocca--probably our leading contemporary monist--thinks Bradley won that debate.  Curious to hear from the Russellians!

"Parfit could make you eat shit"

Now I know that's some clickbait in the title, but philosopher Misha Valdman has a serious point to make (and some good anecdotes about Parfit) at his new substack with his wife, also a philosopher, Sarah Valdman.

Parmenidean oneness vs. common sense and human life

Michael Della Rocca vs. Tim Maudlin and Kathleen Higgins at IAITV.

What is it like to be "manic"?

Philosopher Paul Lodge discusses.  (This is from a few years ago, but I only just came across this interesting essay.)

ADDENDUM:  Philosopher Aaron Garrett calls my attention to this related piece.

An informative review of an intellectual biography of Alasdair MacIntyre...

...at LRB.

Philosopher Kristin Andrews talks about animal minds and culture...

...at Walter Veit's Podcast.  This seems to be a lively area of interest among philosophers these days, curious to hear from well-informed readers about issues raised in the podcast.

On the intellectual habits of contemporary philosophers that render them vulnerable to mobbing and "cancellation"

Interesting and apt discussion by philosopher Joseph Heath.

(Thanks to Chris Morris for the pointer.)

Timothy Williamson did not like Philip Kitcher's "What's the Use of Philosophy"

Not surprising, but he also has some pretty substantive and fair criticisms in my view.   From Williamson's conclusion:

Contemporary analytic philosophy has plenty to offer other disciplines, as its track
record of inter-disciplinary interaction shows. It will have even more to offer other disciplines
if it gets better at answering its own questions. There is plenty of room for methodological
improvement. Some of what Kitcher says is salutary in that respect, for instance: learn more
about modern evolutionary theory before you try to apply it. But most of his
recommendations would make philosophy worse: more anxious to imitate the neighbours and
impress the general public, and so with less to contribute of its own. That is not exactly his
intention, but as a pragmatist he should stand ready to be judged by his polemic’s
consequences in practice.

Curious to hear thoughts from readers after they read Williamson's review.

How to think like a Bayesian

Philosopher Mike Titelbaum (Wisconsin) explains.

Richard Marshall interviews Pedro Tabensky about Camus and Fanon...

...at 3:16 AM.

Rebecca Goldstein on Spinoza, atheism, and philosophy of literature...

...at Robinson's Podcast.

John Martin Fischer on the latest scientist's foray into free will

Here; an excerpt with a couple of interspersed comments:

The view that causal determinism is true is not new, nor is the view that this entails no free will or moral responsibility, but Sapolsky collates and marshals the evidence (some of it recent and cutting-edge) as it bears on these issues. The cumulative effect of the discussions and Sapolsky’s analyses can be an overwhelming sense that we might be wrong about our very foundational beliefs in free will and moral responsibility, and even our selfhood. He writes, “…put all the scientific results together, from all the relevant scientific disciplines, and there’s no room for free will” (8; emphasis in text) [footnote omitted]....

Surprisingly, in a book about free will, Sapolsky offers no definition of it (or, for that matter, determinism—or even moral responsibility!). He writes, “What is free will? Groan… I’ll do my best to mitigate the drag of this” (14). Although he does not present a full definition proper, it is clear that he holds that free will requires the falsity of determinism—by definition (not as a result of argumentation):  "[To establish free will] [s]how me a neuron being a causeless cause in this total sense. …Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will." (15)

This is problematic in various ways. First, it claims that “being a causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” would be sufficient for a choice/action’s being an instance of free will. This is however surely false; pure randomness is incompatible with the control involved in free will. (In his discussion of quantum indeterminacy, Sapolsky is aware of this.) More plausibly, we should interpret him (here and throughout the book) as contending that, as a matter of definition or “meaning,” indeterminism is a necessary condition of free will. Note that the indeterminism of “causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” is a very strong kind of indeterminism, leaving out the more appealing idea of not being fully determined by antecedent causes. (Sapolsky elides the distinction between causation and deterministic causation and thus does not consider indeterministic causal accounts of free will).

11 philosophers you [general reader, not professional philosopher] probably don't know, but should

For "World Philosophy Day" (whatever that is?), IAITV asked Martha Nussbaum, Cheryl Misak, Peter Adamson, Andrew Bowie and others to "nominate philosophers you probably haven't heard of, but you should know about."  The resulting list is eclectic and idiosyncratic, but includes some fine nominees including Porphyry (early animal rights advocate), Frank Ramsey, Cora Diamond, and Friedrich Schleiermacher (a key figure in Romantic hermeneutics, the scholarly kind that Gadamer sadly displaced).

"Loved, yet lonely"

Philosopher Kaitlyn Creasy comments.

Williamson on logic in everyday life and beyond

This short essay by Timothy Williamson is actually pleasingly clear and introductory, and could be profitably shared with someone who wanted to know "what is logic about and why does it matter"?

van Fraassen on Sellars

Philosopher Bas van Fraassen has another blog, and this one has a long and interesting post about Sellars.

What is it like to be a philosopher? Robert Stern edition

A very interesting interview--his reflections near the end about facing a terminal medical diagnosis are especially worth reading and thinking about.

More recollections of Putnam and Quine

A propos yesterday's post, Ned Block posted an amusing recollection at van Fraassen's blog:

I took a course with Putnam as a sophomore at MIT in 1962 and then one or two courses every semester until I graduated in 1964. He was brilliant then in a way that seemed almost other-worldly, a geyser spouting ideas. After 2 years in Oxford I went back to Harvard to work with Putnam but he seemed slightly dimmed, reading his lectures instead of just erupting with them as he had at MIT. He moved from one political nightmare to another, and then got religion. Hartry Field and I had dinner with him once where he seriously advanced the “Where there is smoke there is fire” argument for the existence of his god. Quine’s lectures were horrible. He just read from his Word and Object ms and would only take written questions submitted in advance. I went to see him once about something I was thinking about and he said in effect, “What does this have to do with Quine’s philosophy.” At departmental parties he would go around from grad student to grad student addressing each by name and making a comment that showed he knew something about them. We don’t have to speculate about the existence of Martians–-I have seen one.

Comments are open for more recollections of these "Harvard stars."

 

On Quine and Putnam

More distinctive recollections and observations from Bas van Fraassen.

Some illuminating material on Sartre

On FB, philosopher Jake McNulty calls my attention to a page devoted to Sartre, created by Paul Vincent Spade, a philosopher (now emeritus) at Indiana University at Bloomington, best-known for his work on medieval philosophy.  His notes from a fall 1995 graduate seminar on Sartre are especially instructive.  It's great that Professor Spade has made this material available.

Memories of Grunbaum and Popper...

...from another great philosopher of science, Bas van Fraassen.

"When the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to be bluffing"

An interview with philosopher Alex Byrne about his book The Trouble with Gender and related topics at The Free Thinker. 

(I, for one, was not surprised by the herd-like behavior of academic philosophers, that Professor Byrne discusses, since they are a timid and conservative lot, easily frightened, even when they have tenure!)

"Wittgenstein vs Wittgenstein"

Philosopher Lee Braver comments.

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.

Hermann Helmholtz talks to Richard Marshall...

...at 3:16 AM.

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.)

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.

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.

Philosopher Edward Halper talks about Aristotelian metaphysics...

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

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

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

"The Indian Pragmatist"

Here.

Laurie Paul talks to Sam Harris...

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

"Entanglement" in the quantum world

Philosopher Huw Price and a physicist offer a simple explanation.

Kitcher talks about "Rescuing Philosophy"...

...at Commonweal.  (Earlier discussion here.)

 

Chalmers/Koch bet regarding consciousness

Chalmers wins (but what does he win?):

A 25-year science wager has come to an end. In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is still an ongoing quest — and declared Chalmers the winner.

What ultimately helped to settle the bet was a key study testing two leading hypotheses about the neural basis of consciousness, whose findings were unveiled at the conference.

“It was always a relatively good bet for me and a bold bet for Christof,” says Chalmers, who is now co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. But he also says this isn’t the end of the story, and that an answer will come eventually: “There’s been a lot of progress in the field.”

(Thanks to Joshua Selby for the pointer.)

In praise of doing nothing

A short essay on the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran.

Peter Ludlow did not like Philip Kitcher's book either

An amusing takedown (earlier); an excerpt:

It is said that the very first Western philosopher was Thales of Miletus, who lived from around 620 to 546 BCE. That is about 150 years before Socrates, and 200 years before Plato. His greatest claim to fame is his conjecture that “all is water,” which is important because it is our earliest record of someone asking about the fundamental constituent stuff of reality. But Thales second greatest claim to fame involves that time he fell in a well or a pit or whatever it was. Plato conveyed the story in the Theatetus dialogue...

[W]hat really matters is the point that Plato was trying to convey: People are always up in philosophers’ business, giving them shit for not doing practical things. Sometimes philosophers feel the sting of this criticism and take it to heart. According to Aristotle, Thales decided to show the world that he could do practical things if he wanted to, so one season when he predicted a large imminent olive harvest, he cornered the market on olive presses and price gouged the poor olive famers around Miletus. He thus became not only the father of western philosophy, of but risk arbitrage as well. A Milesian Gordon Gekko. Aristotle thought Thales thus proved that “it is easy for philosophers to be rich if they choose, but this is not what they care about.”

Epistemology in the Andes and Amazonia

An interesting project.

Which philosophers are mentioned in the most articles at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?

It wasn't possible (due to false positives) to search smoe (like Berkeley, David Lewis, William James, and Bacon--Berkeley and Lewis would have surely been in the top 30), but for the rest the number of articles in which they appear tracks fairly well some earlier polls run here, though with an obvious skew to the major figures in 20th-century "analytic" philosophy.  I searched only philosophers no longer alive (some living figures would have made the top 30).

1.  Plato (1012)

2.  Aristotle (1001)

3.  Kant (801)

4.  Hume (590)

5.  Descartes (542)

6.  Leibniz (451)

7.  Locke (442)

8.  Frege (395)

9.  Socrates (391)

10.  Aquinas (374)