Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

This old (1994) interview with Bernard Williams...

...has been making the rounds on social media, and is a moderately interesting read.  It is nice to see how important he considers Nietzsche to be, though I never had the sense he really understood Nietzsche very well.

Syracuse's Kris McDaniel interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Dennett v. Strawson on consciousness

Following up on our earlier thread, Dennett has now replied to Strawson's critique.

(Thanks to Larry Franz for the pointer.)

Colorado's Robert Pasnau interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Is Philosophy & Public Affairs really the "Oxford-Princeton-Harvard Nepotistic Journal of Reasonableness Studies"?

Someone, who definitely did not want credit, just e-mailed me this, which he said is making the rounds on Facebook.  Let's hope Prof. Satz changes things so much that even that joke won't get traction anymore.

Philosopher Andy Clark (Edinburgh) profiled...

...in The New Yorker.

Want to be virtuous? Get a blood test

Aristotle's view:

Because moral virtues such as courage and moderation develop out of our natural character traits, which are largely the result of our physiology, which rests ultimately on the material composition of our blood, moral virtue has its origin in blood. If you have the right kind of blood — i.e., hot and thin, like that of Greek men — your chances of achieving moral virtue are good. If you don’t — if your blood is hot and thick, like that of the spirited but stupid northern barbarians, or cold and thin, like that of the cowardly but intelligent southern barbarians, or, worst of all, cold and thick, like that of women, who are naturally cowardly and stupid — your chances of achieving virtue are slim. Furthermore, since the composition of one’s blood is determined partly by environment, including climate, where you live has a significant impact on your chances of achieving moral virtue. It turns out, then, that there are, for Aristotle, what Leunissen calls ‘morally unlucky groups’ who have little to no chance of achieving moral virtue and living happy, flourishing lives. It turns out, in other words, that whether one becomes virtuous and happy is largely a matter of luck. Significantly, women, barbarians, and ‘natural slaves’ are among these morally unlucky groups. Full moral virtue is for free-born, male Greek citizens alone. For just about everyone else, bad luck.

"Responsibility without blame"

An e-learning project, courtesy of philosopher Hanna Pickard (Birmingham), aimed at the general public, rather than philosophers (though philosophers unfamiliar with the research may also find it of interest).

What is it like to be a philosopher? Alexander Rosenberg edition

Here, courtesy, as always, of Clifford Sosis.  I enjoyed this interview a lot!

When did "philosopher" become a label with a positive valence?

That's an important question, when one reads that a "celebrity" charlatan philosopher (not Zizek, but close) has endorsed a certain view.  (Thanks to James O'Connor for the pointer.)  This is really a question for a sociologist or other empirical scholar of the humanities who can tell us when "philosopher" became an honorific and why.  I suspect it is due to the historical connection between "philosophy" and both "science" and "theology," but I would be curious to get references from knowledgeable readers.

Tenure-track jobs by area advertised in 2017-18

Marcus Arvan (Tampa) has put together his annual analysis of the areas in which jobs were advertised this hiring year; particularly striking is the distribution of AOS for the 228 tenure-track jobs that were advertised:

Breakdown by AOS - Tenure-Track Jobs Only (228 jobs)

• Aesthetics: 1 job (.04%)
• Continental: 9.2 jobs (4%)
• Core: 28.8 jobs (12.6%)
• History/Traditions: 36.2 jobs (15.9%)
• Open AOS: 40.5 jobs (17.8%) – many at small schools (~60%)
• Religion: 5.25 jobs (2.3%)
• Social identity (race, gender, etc.): 11.7 jobs (5.1%)
• Science: 14.8 jobs (6.5%)
• Value theory (ethics, political): 79.2 jobs (34.7%)

A few observations of my own.  As noted earlier, this was indeed a good year for Continental job seekers.  And the early signs that the "core" is dying do seem borne out by these statistics:  how "core" are areas that account for only 12.6% of all jobs advertised?  On the other hand, some parts of the so-called "core" (language, mind, metaphysics, epistemology) spill over into parts of philosophy of religion, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender and, sometimes, value theory, so perhaps the statistics aren't as bleak as they look--and some of the "open" jobs will, of course, go to those working in "core" areas.  That 5.1% of the jobs had an AOS for philosophy of race and gender is stunning (that's more than for Continental or philosophy of religion, let alone aesthetics), though one suspects some of these may really be "hidden criteria" searches.  Value theory continues to have the most job ads, but probably also the most job seekers.

Comments from readers on this data welcome.

Adorno against popular culture

A sympathetic essay.  Probably Adorno is right, though I can't shake my plebian affection for rock 'n' roll Rausch and The Professional.  But he was objectively wrong about Schoenberg, who is an offense to aesthetic decency (of course, Adorno criticized Schoenberg, but not harshly enough!).

Seeking philosophers who were in Oxford in the 1950s or 1960s or other centres of ordinary language philosophy in those years

Philosopher Adriane Rini (Massey U) writes:

Several of us in New Zealand (Max Cresswell, Edwin Mares, and I) have a research grant for a project we call 'The Logic of Ordinary Language', looking among other things at the connection between logic and what has sometimes been called ‘ordinary language philosophy’. We would love to hear from any philosophers who were in Oxford during the 1950s and 1960s, or who have information or want to reminisce about Oxford or other centres of ordinary language philosophy in those years. The grant gives us travel money to visit and interview people and we’re keen to compile a list of potential contacts.

Anyone interested should contact any one of us at our university email addresses:

Adriane Rini:  A.Rini@massey.ac.nz

Max Cresswell: max.cresswell@vuw.ac.nz

Edwin Mares: edwin.mares@vuw.ac.nz

What it's *really* like to be a bat

A scientist specializing in bats and a philosopher discuss.

Problems of inference

A useful review of three recent books (including one co-authored by philosopher Brian Skyrms) by James Ryerson at the NYT.

Michigan/Deaborn's David Skrbina interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Philosophical "fads"?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--MANY INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME

Friday's poll generated a lot of interest--nearly 850 votes!  Here, in the opinion of readers, were the "top five" current "fads" in philosophy to which readers were plainly not sympathetic:

1. Epistemic injustice  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

2. Experimental Philosophy  loses to Epistemic injustice by 379–302

3. Critical Race Theory  loses to Epistemic injustice by 326–308, loses to Experimental Philosophy by 340–328

4. Effective altruism  loses to Epistemic injustice by 401–280, loses to Critical Race Theory by 349–261

5. Grounding  loses to Epistemic injustice by 395–268, loses to Effective altruism by 326–299

 I confess that apart from "effective altruism" and "grounding," this doesn't look much like my top 5, which also included "formal epistemology" (I've yet to see a paper in this genre that did not involve preposterous idealizations and assumptions with the result that it was useless for epistemology), and non-naturalist normative realism (naturalistic normative realism failed, but true to their conservative nature, analytic philosophers then went for a position some of us had thought was, deservedly, dead and buried).   I forget my 5th!  It is probably true that people are overplaying the "epistemic injustice" meme (as injustices go under capitalist relations of production, it's far down the list), but the core idea is an interesting one, or so I thought.  Hostility towards experimental philosophy is not surprising, but I'm optimistic it will stick around, given its close ties to the cognitive sciences.

Reader comments on "fads" welcome, including possible fads not in the poll.  Feel free to explain your own choices (or to defend some of the possible "fads" against the charge).

On the phenomenology of illness

Philosopher Havi Carel (Bristol) comments.

Copenhagen's Dan Zahavi interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Philosophical "fads"? A poll

This poll lists some currently "hot" topics/areas/methods in philosophy; some of these may be of lasting importance to the field.  But I've also heard all of them described pejoratively as "fads," that will (or ought to) fade away.  What do readers think?  Rank order them from the "most" to the "least" faddish (the most faddish items ought to fade away, lack real philosophical merit in your judgment etc.).  Have fun!

 

Trinity College Dublin's Peter Simons interviewed...

...at 3AM.  A striking bit:

Following Christian Wolff, Edmund Husserl and Donald C. Williams, I think metaphysics has two parts. One is the theory of the forms and highest categories of objects: Husserl called that formal ontology. The other is the general inventory of all that is, which I call metaphysical systematics. It’s through systematics that the formal theory reaches out to be applied to reality. That’s why I think metaphysics is the real theory of everything: nothing is off its remit. This extreme generality makes it harder to secure feedback about the truth or otherwise of its theories, so there are always many fiercely competing views, some quite extreme, and with no obvious best one even of the less extreme views. Every so often, in fact several times in the history of the subject, this has given rise to a sceptical backlash, with that of logical positivism that you mention being one of the most sustained and radical.

It turned out that the criticisms of the positivists went too far: they were self-undermining. There is a genuine place and need for metaphysics, and if it is suppressed for long, that need makes itself felt. When philosophers avoid it, others spring into the breach: philosophically interested scientists, as well as all kinds of gurus and false prophets. After several decades in the mid-part of the last century when metaphysics was criticised and largely avoided, it gradually began to revive, at first in the guise of the semantics of natural and artificial languages, what I call Metaphysics-Lite. Since semantics can be done in so many ways, eventually metaphysics was bound to be taken up again for its own sake. It was an interesting development, because a large number of philosophers moved in the same direction independently at the same time. By the 1980s it was making a strong comeback, and since then it has flourished, especially in analytic philosophy. Not so many years ago I was saying we were living in a golden age for metaphysics. Unfortunately, the rediscovered freedom has again led to some pretty extreme and crazy theories, so another wave of sceptical criticism has followed as surely as day follows night. There has been a return of concern about whether metaphysical disputes are genuine, and a new name for metaphysical reflections on the status of metaphysics: “metametaphysics”. It’s dismaying to find metaphysics through its own excesses being compelled to retrace the steps to legitimation that it so recently took. I hope the excitement about extreme views dies down and a more level-headed realism returns, but I am not betting on it. Extreme views attract comment both imitative and critical, while metametaphysics tends to undermine the drive for first-order truth. Both divert energies from the serious business of getting metaphysics right.

I very much doubt there is a "genuine place and need for metaphysics," but these are, nonetheless, interesting observations.  Informed thoughts welcome.

Interviews with philosophers and political theorists at the Los Angeles Review of Books

Andy Fitch has done a lot of interesting ones, which you can find here, and scroll down.  Interviewees include Nick Bostrom, Melissa Lane, Jonny Thakkar, and others.

Oxford's Alexander Paseau interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Bloviating self-promoter vs. philosopher

Bloviating self-promoter:  "I think it's in the silences and absences of our current disciplinary conversations that most of the exciting possibilities (and the viable future of our discipline) are hiding....[O]ne signal to watch for is what provokes the defensive, gatekeeping reactions, like 'that’s not real philosophy.' We can listen out for what kinds of voices and questions are being dismissed and belittled by the old guard. If there wasn’t something new and powerful there, the conservative wing of our discipline wouldn’t be so flustered about it."

Philosopher:  "Hmm, not sure about this inference. Presumably the philosophical traditionalists would be similarly bothered by the growing popularity of a new way of doing things that was genuinely lacking in value, a mere distraction from the kind of philosophical inquiry that’s most worthwhile. Indeed, I take it that that’s exactly what they believe to be going on in actual cases. (Are they necessarily mistaken, such that there are no methodological boundaries worth protecting? That would be a striking claim…)."

How many dimensions to reality?

Here, with appearances by Kant, Leibniz, Descartes, Aristotle, and others.

Why think about Marx?

I discuss the topic with Matt Teichman and Lawrence ("Dusty") Dallman at the Elucidations podcast.

Johns Hopkins's Yitzhak Melamed interviewed...

....at 3AM.

What is your opinion of abortion?

So let's see if other moral issues produce a high level of convergence among philosophical readers.

 

What is your opinion of abortion in the first two trimesters?

It is a moral abomination, a "Holocaust" of unborn humans.

 

It is morally wrong

 

It is morally neutral

 

It is morally justifiable (or permissible) in many or most circumstances.

 

It is morally commendable as a way of securing the autonomy of women over their lives and bodies

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE: Alas, some anti-abortion crazies in cyberspace ruined the poll, sending lots of non-readers to screw up the survey--they were obviously too stupid or ignorant to realize that the point was to see what kind of consensus, if any, exists among philosophcially-minded readers of this blog on this issue (especially compared to this one), not among random nobodies in the population at large.  But the dumb-dumbs responsible for this did post the results prior to their meddling, so we can see that the consensus on abortion is less robust, and tilting in a different direction than the poll on factory farming:

The point of these surveys is to find out something about the sociology of the academic profession of philosophy and the moral beliefs characteristic of its members.  It's a shame this one got ruined.

Reader opinions of "factory farming"

This morning's poll got over 600 votes in only a few hours, which may mean it's a bit skewed towards those with the strongest opinions about this.  But here are the results:

What is your opinion of so-called "factory farming"?
Selection		Votes
It is a moral abomination, an animal "Holocaust"	27%	167
It is morally wrong	54%	332
It is morally neutral	5%	31
It is a morally justifiable way of providing low-cost food products to people	13%	82
It is morally commendable by bringing into existence animals who otherwise would not have existed	1%	5
617 total

This is a quite remarkable consensus among philosophically-minded folks.  I will be interested to see whether it holds for other issues.  (By the way, a version of the last choice has been defended by Loren Lomasky [Virginia].  In general, it's clear that many philosophers are quite ready to dismiss the cultural and culinary traditions of hundreds of millions of people as having no moral weight.  In this paper, I speculate about the likely practical limits of these moral arguments for vegetarianism.)

Al Kindi on coping with sorrow and loss

Philosopher and scholar Peter Adamson (Munich & KCL) discusses (many resonances with Stoicism).

Authors and philosophers name their favorite living philosophers

MOVING TO FRONT FROM 2 DAYS AGO--LOTS OF INTERESTING CONTRIBUTIONS, MORE WELCOME

Reader Kenneth Lakritz calls my attention to this item from Prospect Magazine in which various philosophers and authors choose their favorite living philosopher.   (Of course, we settled the question of the greatest living philosopher "scientifically" with a poll awhile back about who should get a Nobel Prize in philosophy.)  Some pick themselves, i.e., they pick philosophers whose views are similar to their own.  Other choices are more eclectic:  Anthony Gottlieb, for example, names Simon Blackburn.  So who is your favorite living philosopher and why?  I'll only post responses that come with a full name and valid e-mail address attached, no anonymous comments!  Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

All the great 3AM interviews by Richard Marshall in one place...

...organized by broad subject area.

T.M. Scanlon, "teenage logical positivist"

This charming interview with Tim Scanlon (emeritus, Harvard) covers his trajectory into philosophy at Princeton as an undergraduate, his graduate work at Oxford (where he discovered Kant's moral philosophy by accident) and then Harvard (where he wrote a dissertation on logic with Burton Dreben, but otherwise ignored Dreben's philosophical views!), as well as some of his substantive work.

De Gruyter's new "Open Philosophy" journal is officially a joke

I accepted an invitation to be on the editorial board many months ago, before the editor-in-chief was named, which I learned of by e-mail this morning (the editorial board was not consulted):

I am pleased to announce Prof. Graham Harman as Editor-in-Chief of "Open Philosophy" journal.

Prof. Harman is a central figure in speculative realism. He has written fifteen books (the recent ones: "Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory" (2016), and "Dante's Broken Hammer: The Ethics, Esthetics, and Metaphysics of Love (2016)). In the years 2013-2015 he was listed by ArtReview among the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world. In 2016 he was named by The Best Schools among the 50 most influential living philosophers. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles.

Remarkably, they cite his being listed on the pro-Intelligence Design web site "Best Schools" as evidence of his being a significant philosopher!  And let's not forget the observation of Ray Brassier, a philosopher at the American University of Beirut, regarding "speculative realism":

The ‘speculative realist movement’ exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever: actor-network theory spiced with pan-psychist metaphysics and morsels of process philosophy. I don’t believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students. I agree with Deleuze’s remark that ultimately the most basic task of philosophy is to impede stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in a ‘movement’ whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity.

There are so many highly competent scholars and philosophers who now traverse both the Anglophone and Continental traditions in philosophy, it is a shame that this new open access journal should discredit itself by choosing someone so manifestly unserious.

I notified Katarzyna Tempczyk the managing editor for DeGruyter philosophy this morning that I was resigning from the editorial board.  I would encourage others to follow suit.

ADDENDUM:  The journal's website claims, "The journal does not favour any particular philosophical school, perspective or methodology." Yet Graham Harman has been explicitly hostile to (and is clearly ignorant) of "analytic" philosophy!

The "true" self

Joshua Knobe (Yale) discusses his recent work at Elucidations.

Philippa Foot's journey away from emotivism

This is a nicely done, "popular" essay on Philippa Foot and bits of 20th-century moral philosophy.  It caricatures emotivism in the usual ways that have become fashionable, and because of its British focus, it says nothing at all about  Charles Stevenson.  The author notes that,

Moral judgments, according to the then-dominant view [when Foot's career began], weren’t the sort of thing to be true or false, because they didn’t describe the world. They were trying to do something else – express emotion, prescribe actions, or something else of the kind. They were matters of choice, and to think otherwise was to deny that most basic of truths: that human beings construct their values.

Of course, this remains the correct view, but the author is right to position Foot (and others, like Anscombe) as reacting against it.  Why did Foot and others abandon this way of looking at thing.  The author's explanation is striking:

The importance of philosophy to science education

Philosopher Subrena Smith (New Hampshire) comments.

(Thanks to Shane Wahl for the pointer.)

Psychology catches up with Nietzsche, part 242: consciousness is superficial to the mind's activities

Here; an excerpt:

Most experts think that consciousness can be divided into two parts: the experience of consciousness (or personal awareness), and the contents of consciousness, which include things such as thoughts, beliefs, sensations, perceptions, intentions, memories and emotions.

It’s easy to assume that these contents of consciousness are somehow chosen, caused or controlled by our personal awareness – after all, thoughts don’t exist until until we think them. But in a new research paper in Frontiers of Psychology, we argue that this is a mistake.

We suggest that our personal awareness does not create, cause or choose our beliefs, feelings or perceptions. Instead, the contents of consciousness are generated “behind the scenes” by fast, efficient, non-conscious systems in our brains. All this happens without any interference from our personal awareness, which sits passively in the passenger seat while these processes occur.

Put simply, we don’t consciously choose our thoughts or our feelings – we become aware of them.

(Thanks to Ivan Kelly for the pointer.)

Sorabji on Gandhi the philosopher

Interesting essay.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

A free and different logic textbook...

...from philosopher Adam Morton.

Philosophers on what philosophy means to them

David Papineau, Rebecca Goldstein, Simon Blackburn, and others comment.

On the Confucian view about the death of parents

It is elegantly articulated here by philosopher Amy Olberding (Oklahoma).  I'm not sure I find it persuasive, but it's worth a read.

On authenticity

Philosopher Andrew Bowie (Royal Holloway) comments.

Blast from the past: Blackburn on Anscombe

Back in 2005 (with thanks to Bill Edmundson, who posted it).

I'm a moderate when it comes to Judith Butler's awful work

I don't think she should be burned in effigy, no matter how bad the work is.

Stoics, Existentialists...

...and coffee?  Hmm....

Against "the Trolley Problem"

This is amusing, and makes a couple of sound points, especially this:

In the actual world, decisions do not occur in this kind of vacuum, and it’s just as important to pay attention to the factors that structure individual choices as the nature of those choices. For example, we can ask whether it’s morally justified for me to steal a block of cheese in order to feed my starving, cheese-addicted child. (It is.) But if we focus on hashing out that question, debating how individuals should balance their obligation to follow the law with their obligation to their loved ones, we miss the far more crucial one: why am I even in this situation? The whole reason I am faced with an unpleasant set of choices is that I live in a highly unequal society in which children are deprived of the basic cheeses they need in order to survive. If we zero in on the question of what I should do once my choices have been set for me, we fail to ask whose actions caused me to have those particular options available to me, a.k.a. How Did I End Up On This Fucking Trolley To Begin With? If am forced against my will into a situation where people will die and I have no ability to stop it, how is my choice a “moral” choice between meaningfully different options, as opposed to a horror show I’ve just been thrust into, in which I have no meaningful agency at all? Let’s think a bit more about who put me here and how to keep them from having diabolical power over others. (Some might say this makes the trolley problem the perfect philosophy question for the “neoliberal” era, since it reduces everything to individual choice and tells us there is no alternative to existing power structures. Since the word “neoliberalism” is banned from the pages of Current Affairs, though, we ourselves would not say this.)

This is, as I've argued, indeed the defining feature of bourgeois practical philosophy.

UPDATE:  This is apt!  (Thanks to Nic Koziolek for the poinnter.)

Scruton v. Williamson on the nature of philosophy...

...in the TLS.  They're both wrong, but it's an interesting read.

Truth beyond reason?

Philosopher Corine Besson (Sussex) and others discuss at IAITV.

A pretty good short essay on Sartre's philosophy...

...in TLS.  Lots one could argue with, but given the format, not bad.