August 2017
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New books in August
Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month: Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World by Iddo Landau (Oxford University Press, 2017). The Philosophical Parent: Asking the Hard Questions about Having and Raising Children by Jean Kazez (Oxford University Press, 2017). Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science edited by Kevin…
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“Knowledge and Affect: Perspectivism Revisited”
MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 30, 2017 FOR THOSE WHO MIGHT HAVE MISSED IT DURING THE SUMMER I haven't written a serious paper on the (vexed) topic of Nietzsche's "perspectivism" since 1994, and this new paper has been reworked repeatedly over the last year under dialectical fire from Chris Janaway and especially Ken Gemes, and,…
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“Nietzsche and Aestheticism,” 1992
MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 28, FOR THOSE WHO MIGHT HAVE MISSED IT DURING THE SUMMER This was my first peer-reviewed publication (back in 1992, in Journal of the History of Philosophy), which I thought I'd make more easily available. Here's the abstract: Alexander Nehamas’s 1985 book Nietzsche: Life as a Literature offers an elegant synthesis…
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Dartmouth’s Amie Thomasson wins APA’s 2017 Sanders Book Prize…
…for Ontology Made Easy.
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Hiring committees and their curricular priorities can be announced…
…at the annual Prawfs thread.
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Hurricane Harvey in Houston
A bracing view on the ground from philosopher Anne Jacobson.
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Lawfare blog calls for start of impeachment proceedings
These folks are hardly radicals, more like center right American policy/law wonks. So it's a hopeful sign that they're raising this; as Dopey Donald continues to antagonize the Republicans in congress, the odds of something happening go up as well.
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Virtual dissertation groups, once again
Joshua Smart writes: VDG is a free service that connects graduate students to provide feedback on dissertation work. Members are grouped with two others working in the same general area of philosophy. About once a month, one member sends some work (3-6K words) to the others, who return feedback and comments in a week or…
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In Memoriam: J. Dickson Phillips, Jr. (1922-2017)
Before becoming a distinguished and influential federal judge, Phillips served on the law faculty at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was also Dean. There is a lovely memorial notice for Judge Phillips here. (Thanks to Mitch Berman, who clerked for Judge Phillips, for the pointer.)
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Doe v. Kipnis & Harper Collins: Doe’s opposition to the motion to dismiss by defendants
Plaintiff's opposition brief is here: Download 31 Plaintiff's Memorandum in Opposition to Defendants' Motion to Dismiss 08.21.17. The motion to dismiss is here. I find the "opinion" defense to the defamation claim incredible, so I think plaintiff will prevail on that, and if she prevails on that, everything is open to discovery. I still expect some…
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Church-state relations in Sweden captured in one photograph
The canons on the castle in Uppsala, aimed directly at the largest cathedral in Scandinavia: God Bless Sweden! Photo courtesy of legal philosopher Jakob Holtermann (Copenhagen)
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Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon doesn’t understand his job
As President, one of his jobs is to defend academic freedom, not to denounce members of his faculty. The Dartmouth Trustees should remove him from office.
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Eight lateral moves that made people “stop and take note” in 2016-17
Here are eight lateral moves from the 2016-17 list that, judging from my in-box and what I've heard other ways, made members of the academic community stop and take notice: *Richard R.W. Brooks (contracts, business organizations, law & economics, law & social norms) from Columbia University to New York University. Brooks only moved to Columbia from…
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College students in America: a reality check
Philosopher Tom Carson (Loyola/Chicago) calls my attention to this sobering piece: Of the country’s nearly 18 million undergraduates, more than 40 percent go to community college, and of those, only 62 percent can afford to go to college full-time…. The typical student is not the one burnishing a fancy résumé with numerous unpaid internships. It’s…
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2017 Gittler Prize in Philosophy of Social Science….
…goes to Ronald Mallon (Wash U/St. Louis).
No-one knows how “the long run” is going to go in AI in general, and detection in particular. Right now,…