December 2015
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Happy New Year to all readers!
My 2016 workshop/conference schedule will take me, as of now, to the APA in Washington, DC, Berkeley, Rome, Catanzaro, Willamette (Salem, Oregon), Bonn, Vienna, York U/Toronto, and Belgrade. I hope to have the opportunity to visit with many of you in person in 2016. Thanks, as always, for reading.
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New Books in December
Publishers and/or authors kindly sent me these new books this month: Moby-Dick as Philosophy: Plato-Melville-Nietzsche by Mark Anderson (S.Ph. Press, 2015). The Lily of the Field and The Bird of the Air by Soren Kierkegaard, trans. & introduced by Bruce Kirmmse (Princeton University Press, 2016). The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When and Why Procreation…
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“Heroes of the Internet, 2015”
The list includes University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks for her important work on "revenge porn."
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2015: Philosophers who passed away
The passing of the following philosophers was noted on the blog this year: Aldo Antonelli, John Arras, Robert L. Arrington, Claudia Card, Leigh S. Cauman, Keith Donnellan, Richard Flathman, John Forrester, Roger Gibson, Jaakko Hintikka, Georg Kreisel, Michael L. Martin, Peter Menzies, William L. Rowe, Irving Singer, Alan Wertheimer. You can see last year's list here. ADDENDUM: …
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2015 in review, fourth quarter: October, November, December
University structure and success and failure in philosophy (Guest Blogger Christopher Pynes) (October) Changing hierarchies in American philosophy (October) Academic privilege, access and diversity in philosophy (Guest Blogger Christopher Pynes) (October) Philosophy's Third Rail (Guest Blogger Darlene Deas) (October) Doing Empirical Philosophy (Guest Blogger Edouard Machery) (October) "Posturing, preening, wankers" debuts (October) Greer, Green, and…
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2015 in review: third quarter, July, August, September
The pernicious influence of Peter Singer and the "effective [sic] altruism" schtick (July) Rosenberg on intractable moral disagreement (plus discussion) (July) "Me" studies and philosophy's problems (July) Legal knowledge and good sense (August) (curiously, the person here criticized has never been heard from since!) "Bullying and harassment" at U of British Columbia (and not only…
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2015 year in review: second quarter, April, May, June
MA programs, with or without a thesis? (April) "fatuous sub-Marxist horseshit" (April) The rise of adjuncts a "toxic force" in higher education (April) The effect of social media use on job candidates (April) The surprising positives & negatives of becoming a professional philosopher (April) "Absolute Traffic" and other memorable abstracts (May) University of Colorado behaves disgracefully in…
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American plutocracy watch: tax code edition
And it made it to the front page of The New York Times no less!
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3 Quarks Daily “philosophy blogging” prizes…
…as chosen by John Collins (Columbia).
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More thoughts on the Sheinman case at Bar-Ilan University
The legal philosopher and legal scholar Alon Harel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) writes: I was asked to examine again carefully the case of Hanoch Sheinman. I was told that I was misled with respect to some of the facts. I tried to do my best to explore all the relevant facts and here are my findings.…
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Leading evidence law scholar and UC Hastings faculty member David Faigman named Interim Dean effective January 1, 2016
The Hastings press release is here. No indication, however, of what's become of current Dean Frank Wu, who was just reappointed in 2014. I'll add an update when I know more. UPDATE: I apparently missed the announcement in November that Dean Wu was stepping down.
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2015 in review, first quarter: January, February, March
Top philosophy journals explained (January) University of Chicago statement on freedom of expression (January) Mitchell Aboulafia, caveat emptor (January) The Most Important Anglophone Philosophers, 1945-2000, poll results and discussion (January) Marquette's attack on lawful speech and academic freedom (February) Pedigree matters (February) Who is reading this blog? (And also.) (February) Editorial practices at Philosophy & Public Affairs (March) The first…
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On criticizing students: why is academic law so different than academic philosophy?
Last month's fake controversy du jour—complete with false accusations and selective presentation of evidence ("Lebron-gate" for short)–included an appearance of the weirdest trope to infect philosophy cyberspace over the last couple of years, a variation on "think of the children!" This is the idea that criticizing a graduate student (even if you didn't intend to, and even if…
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The sociology of cold fusion in physics
Philosopher Huw Price (Cambridge) comments.
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii