August 2016
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Dennett trashes much contemporary philosophy, esp. “analytic metaphysics”
This is amusing: “A great deal of philosophy doesn’t really deserve much of a place of the world,” he says. “Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum that’s not dealing of problems of any intrinsic interest.” Much if not all philosophical work in analytic metaphysics, for example, is “willfully cut…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Judas Priest, “Dreamer Deceiver” & “Deceiver,” 1976
Judas Priest isn't obscure in the world of rock 'n' roll, but their second album, from which these two songs come, is (relatively speaking). I'm not much for the later Judas Priest, but I always liked this pair of songs:
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University of Chicago’s “free speech” crusade
Although I've not talked to any of those involved, it's hard to escape the conclusion that this is all a coordinated effort: here now is the University President Robert Zimmer, and here is my colleage Geoffrey Stone (lead author of the University's free expression statement). Stone's piece has a useful chronicle of examples of attempts to…
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“Alt-right” explained
This is a useful portrait of these pathetic creatures. Their Moms ought to take their laptops away, and give these boys more chores.
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Citations to faculty scholarship by federal and state courts
Courtesy of the good folks at St. Thomas. The number of cites are remarkably few, even for those in "the top ten." UPDATE: A colleage elsewhere writes with an explanation for why the numbers are artificially low: "They only counted citations in the Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and state supreme courts. Also, they…
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Today’s hot blather topic: U of Chicago’s letter to incoming students about trigger warnings, safe spaces, etc.
Everyone in cyberspace is blathering about this, so I will add my own brief blather: 1. Academic freedom protects the right of faculty to utilize trigger warnings if in their professional judgment it is important for the pedagogical mission in a class. To the extent the letter implies they are forbidden, it is nonsense. ("Trigger…
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A philosophy MOOC with a grading option (for a fee)
Philosopher Caspar Hare's (MIT) philosophy MOOC will now include the option of having your work graded (for a fee). (Thanks to Ryan Moody for the pointer.) UPDATE: Here's a fuller discussion of the proposal.
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Law schools with the highest percentage of “most-cited” tenured faculty, 2010-2014 (CORRECTED 8/24)
Over the last several months, we've compiled "top ten" or "top twenty" lists of "most-cited" faculty (based on the Sisk data) in the following areas of scholarship: Constitutional & Public Law; Administrative and/or Environmental Law; Criminal Law & Procedure; Commercial Law; Corporate Law/Securities Regulation; Torts; Property; Civil Procedure; Evidence; Tax; Antitrust; Legal Ethics/Legal Profession; International Law;…
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Why do rich private universities still want to block unions for their grad student TAs?
About thirty years ago, I was a grad student TA at Michigan, which had a union for TAs. Our wages and benefits (esp. health) were way better than those held by the TAs at Yale at the time (they were not, needless to say, unionized). That was then, of course. Market conditions changed, and wealthy…
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10 Most-Cited Family Law Faculty, 2010-2014 (inclusive) [CORRECTED; first posted 7/27]
MOVING TO FRONT: Turns out family law has evolved quite a bit since the last time we looked at the field more than a decade ago, hence several wrongful omissions, now hopefully all fixed! Once again, this draws on the data from the 2015 Sisk study: Rank Name School Citations Age in 2016 1 Martha Fineman…
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An unknown organization using an unknown methodology has produced a list of…
…twenty influential philosophers, plus thirty chosen at random (the apt description of one reader who sent it along, though I see it is making the rounds on facebook as well). Any list that includes, e.g., John McDowell and a self-promoting charlatan like Graham Harman has to be a joke. (Maybe they got confused between Graham and Gilbert?) Daniel Dennett and…
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Visualization of jobs in philosophy
Courtesy of Mark Alfano (Delft).
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The illusion of choice in action?
The latest psychological research: Suppose, as Wegner and Wheatley propose, that we observe ourselves (unconsciously) perform some action, like picking out a box of cereal in the grocery store, and then only afterwards come to infer that we did this intentionally. If this is the true sequence of events, how could we be deceived into…
David J. Gunkel «Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond» (MIT, 2023) Link:…