March 2014
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America is doomed, Part 214
What Americans believe about vaccines etc.
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Dean Rodriguez (Northwestern) on hysteria about law schools
He is obviously right. What is worse, in this instance, is that the "story" about Denver is complete fiction, but since "Above the Law" has no regard for facts, it's hardly surprising they would report such fiction as though it were factual.
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Aesthetic pleasure and evolution
A very interesting essay by Mohan Matthen (Toronto).
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Are journals more likely to reject an article after a status inquiry from the author?
An untenured philosopher writes In the course of talking with each other about our experiences with journals, a few other junior faculty members and I have noticed the following happening to each of us a few times: after e-mailing the editor asking about the status of a submission, we then receive, within a very short…
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NewApps implosion continues
Berit Brogaard tells me she is also leaving, following on the heels of other contributors, including Eric Schliesser and Mohan Matthen. What started as a fairly interesting philosophy blog has pretty much devolved into endless scolding and finger-wagging, plus lame apologetics for crap philosophy. Alas.
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The argument from vomit
An interview with John Searle (Berkeley) at New Philosopher, which includes this gem: "I don’t read much philosophy, it upsets me when I read the nonsense written by my contemporaries, the theory of extended mind makes me want to throw up…."
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Philosophy limericks
Many of these are very clever and amusing. (These limericks are the work of Larisa Svirsky, a philosophy graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill.) UPDATE: And "philosophy poems"! (Thanks to Filippo Contesi for the pointer.)
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Data collection initiatives at the APA
Amy Ferrer, Executive Director, has an informative post here. They include one Dave Chalmers told me about awhile back, namely, that PhilJobs, which partners with the APA, will soon start collecting systematic hiring data, including demographics on those hired. I've given Dave permission to incorporate the material already here into the new database. Depending on reader interest,…
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Some advice to prospective graduate students visiting departments
MOVING TO FRONT: COMMENTS ARE NOW OPEN–SIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE PREFERRED Some excellent advice from philosopher Meghan Sullivan (Notre Dame), who kindly invited me to share it: It is Prospective Visit season at PhD programs, and I know many prospective students are a bit unclear about how they ought to approach these visits. There are…
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College of Charleston chooses Confederate Flag defender as President
Egads! (A less gloomy assessment.)
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Flashback: Sartre on the launch of his newspaper Libération…
…in 1973. (Thanks to Michael Swanson for the pointer.)
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Miami makes senior offer to UMSL’s Brogaard (UPDATED)
MOVING TO FRONT: SEE THE UPDATE Berit Brogaard (philosophy of mind, psychology & language), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, has been offered a senior position in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami. Students thinking about either program will want to keep an eye on what happens; hopefully,…
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Svavarsdóttir from Ohio State to Tufts
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir (ethics, metaethics, moral psychology), Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University has accepted appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy (also with tenure) at Tufts University, starting this fall.
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And now the apologists for Heidegger’s anti-semitism get to work
This is really quite remarkable ("it's OK, we always new he was a Catholic reactionary bigot"), and especially this: Modernity is synonymous with subversion, since with its universalist ideologies (liberalism, democracy, communism) it destroys the communitarian and traditional bonds that unite the members of a given people and separates this same people from its territory…
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Lavin from Harvard to UCL
Douglas Lavin (ethics, history of ethics, philosophy of action), presently an untenured Associate Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, has accepted a permanent post as Lecturer in Philosophy at University College London, to begin this fall.
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii