May 2004
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Q&A on the Philosophy Job Market
One student writes with a series of questions that may be worth answering publically; I intersperse my answers and comments: Student: “I just read your Leiter Report post on the philosophy job market. It is reassuring to know that candidates from top-5 programs still have a good chance of landing a tenure-track job. How fast…
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Adjudication in a Police State
Is this how it works?
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A good writer
I like the name of this blog (“The Maggot Hammer”) and I like the writing in this posting in particular: “It’s good to see that the world is still here, at least. Still war, still slimy crypto-Nazi pornographers of the spirit, still tiny bleating liars with enormous voices and no words.” “Tiny bleating liars with…
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Philosopher Siegel turns down Arizona
Susanna Siegel (philosophy of mind and language), currently an untenured (but tenure-track) associate professor at Harvard University, has turned down the tenure-track offer from the University of Arizona–I will leave it to Matthew Yglesias to figure out why!
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Burning Bridges
This big-firm associate isn’t planning on coming back, it appears. From his parting e-mail to colleagues at the law firm: “While I have a high degree of personal respect for PHJW as a law firm, and I have made wonderful friendships during my time here, I am no longer comfortable working for a group largely…
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The Arguing-with-Rorty Game
Pascal Engel (Paris/Sorbonne) summarizes it well: “[The editors] identify correctly the difficulties of criticizing Rorty and of playing with him the usual game of exchanging arguments. In the first round, Rorty attempts to undercut some traditional philosophical thesis – Platonism, Foundationalism, Representationalism, etc. (always a capital letter!) – with the intention to show that a)…
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Putting Your Life Where Your Mouth Is
This letter-writer to the NY Times gets it right: “Joshua Foer has omitted the most critical reason his privileged classmates at Yale have had such overwhelming support for the war in Iraq: there is no military draft. “This conflict is being fought by working-class and poor kids who joined the military as a viable economic…
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A Sharp Message for “Hawks” with “Second Thoughts”
A real human being–who doesn’t, apparently, blog in favor of sending other people’s children to war–writes to The New York Times as follows: “In ‘The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts’ (Week in Review, May 16), you note that the shapers of thoughts and architects of the war now have troubling doubts about their enthusiastic…
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Who’s “Hot” in Metaphysics?
For some refereeing work, one of the complimentary books I requested from OUP is the new Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics edited by Michael Loux (Notre Dame) and Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers). This is an impressive, very much state-of-the-art volume, with a detailed index that gives an idea whose work in metaphysics is most-discussed these days. The…
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Legal scholar links to Coulter Column
My former colleague, the prolific and distinguished legal scholar Michael Rappaport (San Diego Law), has linked, approvingly, to a column by Ann Coulter. Really. Now I’ve seen everything.
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Good News for India
Now that the religious zealots have been ousted from control of the government, there appears to be hope for India: a first good sign is the repeal of India’s own police state “anti-terror” laws. Now if we can oust our own zealots, perhaps we can get rid of the Patriot [sic] Act too?
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Metaphysician Heller from SMU to Syracuse
Mark Heller (metaphysics, epistemology) at Southern Methodist University has accepted a senior offer from Syracuse University, where he took his Ph.D. twenty years ago under William Alston, Jonathan Bennett, and Peter van Inwagen. This caps several years of strong hiring by Syracuse (other additions at the tenured level during this time include Edward McClennen, Kenneth…
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Yale Joins the Pursuit of Philosopher Bealer
Texas and Florida have already made offers to George Bealer (metaphysics, epistemology) at the University of Colorado at Boulder; now Yale has made him an offer as well. Hopefully this will resolve itself before the new PGR survey in early September.
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Philosopher Colin Allen from A&M to Indiana
Colin Allen, a philosopher of mind best-known for his work on animal cognition, is moving from Texas A&M University to Indiana University at Bloomington this fall, where he will be Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science.
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Right-Wing Bloggers May be Parodies of Themselves…
…but, just in case you didn’t get the joke, read this. (Thanks to Bill Childs for the pointer.)
Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue (Italy) Rationalized and Extended Democracy – The REDemo Project. Foreword by Gilberto Corbellini. Firenze University Press 2023.…