Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Warwick's Karen Simecek interviewed...

...at 3AM.

San Jose State's Anand Jayprakash Vaidya interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Copenhagen's Søren Overgaard interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Carnegie-Mellon's Clark Glymour interviewed...

...at 3AM.  Funny and opinionated, as we've come to expect.  An excerpt:

Compare Plato and Aristotle, superficially. Plato made no effective contributions to how to acquire true belief. Plato had analyses and counterexamples (The Meno) and a huge metaphysical discourse; we still don’t know necessary and [sufficient] conditions for virtue, the subject of the Meno. Aristotle had axioms for logic, a logic that was pretty much the best anyone could do for 2300 years. He had a schema for conducting inquiry (albeit, not a terribly good one, but it wasn’t bested until the 17^th century). Euclid was not a contemporary of Plato or Aristotle, but he systematized the fragments of geometry then current. The result was a theory that could be systematically investigated mathematically, applied in a multitude of contexts, and that constituted a stalking horse for alternative theories that have proved better empirically. Euclid has no formal definition of “point” that plays any role in his mathematical geometry. Just imagine if instead the history of geometry consisted of analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a point, which is McGinn’s ideal of philosophy. Or look at Newton’s Principia, axiomatic if anything is. Many of the ideas Newton put together were in the air in the early 17^th century. Combining them into the three laws, and relating the variables in specific conditions to observed quantities, created modern physics. McGinn would have preferred a litany of necessary and sufficient conditions for “quantity of matter” which Newton does not define. (Of course there is an interesting question of how, given the theory, “quantity of matter” can be estimated, on whatever extra assumptions.) Or look at von Neumann’s foundations of quantum theory, the best work in philosophy of physics in the 20^th century...which put to rest the disputes over what were taken to be different theories. Or look at Frank Ramsey’s brief formulation of behavioral decision theory, derivatives and developments of which still run a good deal of economics, or Hilbert and Bernay’s axiomatization of first order logic, which was a critical step towards computation theory, or David Lewis’ and others’ axiomatizations of the logic of counterfactuals, which run through contemporary philosophy and much, much else. Socratic thinking has no comparable fruits.

I don’t claim that the back and forth of Socratic philosophy is entirely useless. The canon of proposals and counterexamples is, or could be, a caution for superficial definitions and neglect of subtleties. Philosophers are good at subtleties.

McGinn and Giere and their like can botanize the world of thought into “philosophy” and “not philosophy” and corral the mostly fruitless into the former, as they wish. Universities make those sorts of separations an invitation to triviality and sometimes, outright stupidity. I think the basic motivation is pretty simple: most philosophers can’t do any mathematics, certainly not original mathematics; they are trained not to know statistics or computation. They treasure playground and rewards for the skills they have, and want to make sure the playground is well-guarded. Sometimes that reaches to ignorance as a policy, as in Tim Scanlon’s recent book, Being realistic about reasons, which insists (argues would be too complimentary) that ethics and metaethics need take no account of any other subject in the intellectual universe (save possibly logic) and the theories of that enterprise cannot be assessed or assailed from any other discipline; no new knowledge about the human condition can or should touch the metaethcists’ arguments. John Rawls opened that trail in his Theory of Justice, using the “veil of ignorance” as a conceit to pick and choose what facts of the human condition can be used in deciding the political constitution of society so as to get his conclusion, much like a prosecutor working a grand jury.

The importance of philosophy to Catholic higher education

A statement from the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

(Thanks to Chad Engelland for the pointer.)

A nice profile of Bryan Magee...

...who probably did more than anyone to bring serious philosophy to a wider public (especially in the UK).

Durham's Phillip Horky interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Yale-NUS's Malcolm Keating interviewed...

...at 3AM.

UC Riverside's Georgia Warnke interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Deciding between graduate school in philosophy and law school

A recent philosophy graduate gave me permission to share his questions, which might be of interest to others:

I am currently deciding between graduate school in philosophy (I graduated in honors philosophy from [school name omitted] in 2015) and law school. In the long run I am considering whether to pursue philosophical or legal academia. I have benefitted greatly from your advice to prospective philosophy graduate students and prospective law school students with philosophical interests on Leiter Reports. Since I have a couple of questions that as far as I can see have not been directly discussed in a Leiter Report blog post I thought I would email them to you in case you have the time to answer them.

1. My primary area of philosophical interest is political philosophy. In the spirit of your post on the difference between the study of political philosophy in political science and philosophy departments, I am wondering about the difference between working in political philosophy in a law school or in a philosophy department. What would you say are the most significant differences that someone considering both options should take into account?

2. a. If one were to plan on obtaining a philosophy PhD and a JD separately in order to pursue legal academia, is there a significant difference academically in doing one of them first? For instance, would there be a significant impact on one's study of the subjects themselves? on job market chances?

b. If there is, is one course of study preferable? In other words, is it more beneficial to come to the study of law with significant training in relevant philosophical areas (political, moral, epistemology), or to come to the study of philosophy with philosophical questions arising from one’s study of law?

Here are my answers:

1.  At many good law schools (see this section of the PGR), there are serious opportunities to study political philosophy, but even at the best law schools, given that most of your studies will not be philosophy-related, you can't get adequate training to do professional work.  At best, you can acquire competence with themes, authors, and arguments, but you won't emerge as a political philosopher with a JD only.

2a.  I've known students who have done it in both directions, and had good success at it.  PhD programs seem, in recent years, to be keen to admit those with a good JD record, but those who come to the JD with a PhD in philosophy already have a set of intellectual and disciplinary skills that can help them thrive and do quite well in law school.

2b.  I don't think there's a one approach fits all answer to this question.  But I'm opening comments for thoughts from other readers.

 

 

Mexican philosophy workshop at UCSD

This looks interesting, sorry it's 2,000 miles away!

Confessions of an "arsehole"

This is funny; an excerpt:

A few months into a cushy postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton, where the walls were a soothing yellow and poached salmon was a staple, it dawned on me that I could reasonably be considered an arsehole. This wasn’t the first time the thought had occurred to me: after all, I am the kind of Brit who insists on the difference between a donkey, otherwise known as an ass, and a backside, otherwise known as an arse. But on this occasion my reflection was prompted not by looking in the mirror or by hearing a recording of my voice but by the experience of being a philosopher in a non-philosophical setting. Calling yourself a philosopher already makes you sound a bit of an arse, but the fact remains that I have spent most of my professional life studying, discussing, writing and teaching philosophy—and it is this, I submit, that has made me liable to appear a right royal arsehole....

One of the norms governing ordinary conversation is that to disagree too much is to be disagreeable. Just as socially competent individuals tend to encourage whoever’s speaking by nodding or giving other affirmative signals, so they also tend to agree with most of what is being said unless something really important is at stake. If a stranger says that the last few days have been brutal with all the rain, a well-adjusted conversationalist might gently suggest an alternative viewpoint (“It’ll make us appreciate the weekend even more!”) but they would be unlikely to dispute the proposition entirely (“Actually you’re wrong: there was a lot of gray sky but not that much rain. People often make that mistake.”)....

The trouble for philosophers is that they find disagreement to be one of life’s higher pleasures. Part of the fun of philosophy, for those who have acquired the taste, is the cut and thrust of argument: for the person proposing it’s the thrill of trying to articulate yourself in the knowledge that a step in the wrong direction could get you skewered; for the person responding it’s the thrill of trying to reverse engineer an argument until you find a chink in the armor. In principle there’s nothing personal about this, just as there’s nothing personal about trying to exploit a weakness in someone’s backhand. In practice things tend to be more complicated. To take an obvious example, philosophers will often test an argument to see if it implies something ridiculous or if it rests on premises that do. But it’s a short step from calling someone’s argument ridiculous to ridiculing them—and in most contexts even asking whether someone’s view might imply something ridiculous is already a violation of trust and mutual respect.

American University in Cairo's Catarina Belo interviewed...

...at 3AM.

From C.L.R. James to game theory and the social epistemology of science

Liam Kofi Bright, a new member of the philosophy faculty at LSE, charts his intellectual evolution.  (Link fixed now.)

XPhil replication project

Philosophre Florian Cova, a participant in the project, writes:

Here is an information that might be of interest to the readers of Leiter Reports. In 2016, several experimental philosophers (including me) have teamed for a wide-scale replication project involving the replication of 40 experimental philosophy studies. In the wake of the replication crisis in psychology, it indeed seemed necessary to assess the reliability of results in experimental philosophy. The results of the projects are now out and can be found:

*Here for a detail presentation: https://psyarxiv.com/sxdah

*Here for a summary: https://sites.google.com/site/thexphireplicabilityproject/outputs

Overall, the rate of successful replication was quite high.

John Martin Fischer on "near death experiences"

This lecture was on the occasion of his appointment to the rank of University Professor at UC Riverside; the lecture itself begins around the five-minute mark, and it includes a lot of interesting examples of the phenomenon:

 

What is it like to be a philosopher? Eric Schwitzgebel edition

Here.

Why aren't more philosophers discussing the philosophical issues raised by the claim of transgender women to be women?

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) discusses the issues in a measured and informative way here and here.  Those who recall the reaction to an earlier philosophical discussion of Germaine Greer's views can surmise why so many avoid the topic.  But philosophers shouldn't, for reasons Professor Stock addresses.

An excerpt from Professor Stock's second essay below the fold:

Bern's Pierfrancesco Basile interviewed...

....at 3AM.   He discusses English psychologist and philosopher James Ward!  From Professor Basile's interview:

I like forgotten figures in the history of philosophy, they are like smaller, tortuous roads, sometimes leading nowhere, sometimes leading to bizarre, undreamed of places… James Ward is one such figure, both personally and philosophically intriguing. He grew up in a very poor family, went through a religious crisis, studied in Germany, and eventually became a professor in Cambridge. He was also a teacher to Russell and Moore, and Russell always writes of him with great respect and affection. Ward lived at a time when Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain. With some simplification, it seems correct to say that the first British idealists looked to Hegel (as well as to other monist metaphysicians like Spinoza and Lotze) as their main source of inspiration. Ward, who disliked Hegelian monism as much as materialism, turned to Leibniz. His metaphysics, which he expounded in a book titled The Realm of Ends, or Pluralism and Theism, is a form of pluralistic metaphysical idealism (or spiritualism), according to which the basic constituents of the world are experiential substances....

[H]e did not slavishly follow Leibniz, but tried to adjust the theory of monads to his own needs. His monads differ from Leibniz’s in that they have windows, that is to say, they are capable of direct causal interaction. We do not live in the best of all possible worlds, but there has been progress in the course of evolution. How is this to be explained? There must be a God working within history, Ward insinuates, leading the monads towards an ideal end, but leaving them free to do their own choices and mistakes. There is a fascinating parallel between this metaphysics and Ward’s own development. Born in a very humble family, he became one of the most respected philosophers of his time (he held the prestigious Gifford Lectures twice). In a way, his life illustrates the basic metaphysical principle that slumbering monads may achieve the highest levels of rationality in the course of time.

Filmmaker Errol Morris really doesn't think much of Kuhn!

At the Boston Review, along with conversations about Kuhn between Morris and Hilary Putnam and Noam Chomsky.  Thoughts from readers?

(Some of our earlier coverage of Mr. Morris's work related to philosophy.)

Tulane's Michael Madary interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Calabar's Ada Agada interviewed...

...at 3AM.

NYU's Hartry Field interviewed...

...at 3AM.   An excerpt:

The role of deductive logic in rationality is often exaggerated.  The notion of rationality isn’t very precise (and indeed doesn’t have fixed descriptive content: ‘rational’ is an approval-term), but logic is one of only many factors.  For instance there could probably be a perfectly logical advocate of the claim that the moon landing was a hoax, but few would regard such a person rational.  It’s frequently noted that when one becomes aware that certain of one’s beliefs are logically inconsistent, the most rational response is often to keep the inconsistency, because one is not sure how best to eliminate it.  The ability to manage known inconsistencies and other tensions in one’s beliefs is one of the many important factors in rationality that stress on “being logical” obscures.

A nice write-up about experimental philosophy...

...over at Aeon.

Compassion for mental suffering and clinical diagnosis

The always smart and humane Hanna Pickard (Birmingham) comments.

Oxford's William Child interviewed...

...at 3AM.

Economist Tyler Cowen (George Mason) talks to philosopher Agnes Callard (Chicago)

Podcast and transcript both here.  An excerpt:

COWEN: Let’s turn now to your new book, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming. There’s a sentence from the book. Let me read it, and maybe you can explain it. “Proleptic reasons allow you to be rational even when you know that your reasons aren’t exactly the right ones.” What’s a proleptic reason?

CALLARD: What I’m trying to explain is, how do people get themselves to care about things that they don’t yet care about? Suppose that you want to come to appreciate a certain kind of music — that’s the example I use in the book — more than you do.

Then there’s the question, why should you do that? Why should you take the music appreciation class? You might say, well, the value of music. Classical music is this great thing, but you don’t see it as valuable, presumably. That’s why you have to take a class.

So there’s a kind of paradox that would suggest we should never try to get ourselves interested or into new things because, in order to have a reason to do that, we’d already have to have the interest. 

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.