May 2016
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Directory of Open Access Journals is busy purging predatory and other disreputable publishers
A good development. (Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)
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Chinese academics (mostly in law and in political science) fleeing to the U.S.
Story in The Guardian. (Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)
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Three cultures of Facebook
On Facebook, I've got, broadly speaking, three "kinds" of friends: academic lawyers, academic philosophers, and regular people (the latter category including some lawyers, relatives, neighbors etc.). The FB habits of these three groups are strikingly different. Regular people use FB the way I thought it was supposed to be used (and the reason I joined): …
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The real purpose of business school: train psychopaths to appear normal
This is really amazing. (Addendum: it's also, I think, a joke.) (Thanks to Mark Pavlick for the pointer.)
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Ten Most-Cited Faculty in Commercial Law (including contracts and bankruptcy), 2010-2014 (inclusive)
Once again, drawing on the data from the 2015 Sisk study: Rank Name School Citations Age in 2016 1 Robert E. Scott Columbia University 970 72 2 Steven Schwarcz Duke University 760 67 3 Douglas Baird University of Chicago 640 63 4 Alan Schwartz Yale University 590 76 5 Oren Bar-Gill Harvard University 540 41…
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Article about Professor Pogge’s “ethics” complaint to the New York Bar about the Olivarius law firm
Here. Ann Olivarius represents not only Fernanda Lopez Aguilar, but also the former graduate student who has sued Colin McGinn and the University of Miami over sexual harassment.
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Peter Carruthers did not like Colin McGinn’s book on “Inborn Knowledge”
He makes that clear in a pleasingly understated way: The book is framed around the contrast between Lockean empiricism and Cartesian nativism. Locke held that the contents of the mind are more-or-less veridically impressed upon it from without. McGinn devotes considerable time to arguing that this is untenable, on a variety of grounds. The mind…
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Philosophy faculty saying dumb things
The latest sexual harassment scandal in academic philosophy has, predictably, brought the usual know-nothing pontificators out in force, busy signaling their rectitude while actually harming the interests of the complainant against Pogge. Let me explain. We are told by Jonathan Ichikawa (British Columbia) that the "presumption of innocence," is rightly considered a pillar of civilised…
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Another creepy Thomas Pogge incident
Princeton philosopher Delia Graff Fara writes about her own " unpleasant experience" with Professor Pogge (which she kindly gave me permission to share): I had a mildly unpleasant experience with Pogge when I was a senior undergraduate at Harvard and he was a visiting professor who stayed in my "house", Harvard's equivalent to residential colleges at…
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Alarming data about schools awarding the highest percentage of philosophy PhDs to women, 2004-2014
Over that decade, nearly one hundred women have been awarded PhDs in philosophy from just three schools, two mediocre and one a joke: the University of Memphis, the University of Oregon, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. Indeed, of the ten programs that graduated the highest percentage of women during this decade, just three…
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Quick summer advertising update
Like last summer, I'll be doing less blogging June through August, a couple of days per week tops. Prices are cut accordingly: $300 for top spots, $250 for second, $200 for third. Click on the "public stats" icon at the bottom of the left sidebar to get a sense for traffic. (Stats last August were…
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Ten rules of thumb for philosophers writing op-eds
This is useful.
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On polygraph tests
Reader Alexander Stingl writes: One of the items in Pogge's defense struck me as odd; namely, the use of a "polygraph" as defense. While I am not sure what the current status of polygraphs in the American legal context is, but in science&technology studies the technology counts largely as debunked and – outside of people…
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Crypto-fascist loses Austrian Presidential race…
…just barely. I hope it's not so close in the American race (though the winner of the Austrian race is much further to the left than Clinton).
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University of Miami gets an endowed chair for the study of atheism
God bless them! More universities should have chairs endowed for the study of what's true.
I came across this article today. https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-investigators-say-overreliance-on-palantir-ai-tech-contributed-to-u-s-strike-that-killed-123-iranian-children-2000814477 Apparently, the (irresponsible) use of AI was partly to blame for the American…