March 2019
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UMSL’s Piccinini wins 2018 Barwise Prize for contributions to philosophy and computing
The APA announcement is here.
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Tucker Carlson and I discuss the benefits of Higher Education and Student Loans (Michael Simkovic)
Last night I was invited to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. For the last two nights, Mr. Carlson has been inveighing against higher education and federal student loans. Mr. Carlson has been promoting a private-student-lender supported plan to tax higher education institutions that accept federal student loans. Similar plans to tax educational…
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In appreciation of Richard Marshall’s interviews at 3AM Magazine
A propos this, longtime reader and attorney John Bogart (who also has a PhD in philosophy) writes: The Marshall interviews, whatever they are for folks in academia, are even more valuable to those of us in other contexts. I am a devoted reader of them. They are clear, largely jargon-free, short discussions of what a…
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It appears 3AM Magazine owner Andrew Gallix isn’t coping too well with the response to his decision to pull the Lawford-Smith interview
Philosopher Jimmy Doyle (Harvard) shared Mr. Gallix's response to Prof. Doyle's e-mail of protest, calling it "rank cowardice" to pull the interview: UPDATE: At Richard Marshall's request, I've pulled Mr. Gallix's intemperate and unfortunate response. Richard writes that Mr.Gallix is "a good guy actually and is under a lot of pressure from the mob who…
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Follow-up study about personality and philosophical beliefs
I posted about the initial study five years ago. Now PhD student Nick Byrd (Florida State) asked me to share that he is conducting a follow-up study about the relationship between personality and reasoning. It should take only 10-20 minutes to complete the survey: https://fsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2fukMpZiL7kwcLj
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Godfrey-Smith on the influence of Australian philosophy…
…at least within the "analytic" tradition after WWII. In addition to the philosophers Godfrey-Smith mentions (like J.J.C. Smart and David Armstrong), Australia has sent a huge number of undergraduate students for PhD education in the U.S. and England, who then embarked on successful academic careers both abroad and back home (examples, just off the top…
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3AM Magazine’s radical chic motto–“whatever it is, we’re against it”–turns out to be bollocks
Their real motto is "whatever right-thinking zealots in our little corner of the universe agree on, we're for it." The magazine has withdrawn Richard Marshall's interview with philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) because in the course of the interview she denied that trans women are women, and expressed the gender critical view of these issues familiar…
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University of Pennsylvania statement about the college admissions scandal
Well, not really, but funny.
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On Javanka, the brain-dead children of money
This is very funny: [T]he first daughter and her husband remain psychologically mysterious, at least to me. Why don’t they have impostor syndrome, given that their total lack of qualifications for the jobs they are doing makes them actual impostors? According to “Kushner, Inc.,” Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told…
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How accurate are department placement pages?
MOVING TO FRONT AGAIN (ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 11): Discussion continues in the comments Not quite twenty years ago, I began pressing philosophy departments to provide comprehensive placement information on their homepages. That effort was largely successful, and the average philosophy PhD program typically makes available better placement information than the average PhD program in other…
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Remembering Anscombe 100 years after her birth
Philosopher John Schwenkler (Florida State) offers a sympathetic overview of her work and public positions. (Anscombe's Intention is undoubtedly an important work, but it seems to me overstatement to call it "the foundational text in analytic philosophy of action," although it is foundational to a certain tradition within analytic philosophy of action.)
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Economics, another bastion of sexual harassment…
…and it's in The New York Times. Kudos to the AEA for investigating this and publicizing it. But why haven't more economists been taken down by sexual harassment? Have I missed it?
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Fascists in California legislature introduce bill calling for a tenured professor to be fired…
…for his constitutionally protected speech. Nothing he said comes close to the legal test for unlawful incitement. These legislators are a disgrace to the United States and the First Amendment. The University of California at Davis reportedly is "investigating" the faculty member for his comments, even though it has no legal authority to do…
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Blast from the past: advice for prospective graduate students about visiting departments
Back in 2014, but still quite relevant of course.
@ The Pacific: Good questions. My point isn’t that journals can’t adopt that stance, only that I won’t referee for…