December 2019
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Is immortality worse than death?
Philosopher Adrian Moore (Oxford) comments.
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Today in Trump’s fascist initiatives
An effort to sanction and suppress criticism of Israel. What else is new in America?
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Biologist Jerry Coyne on Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s paper on “white empiricism”
Professor Coyne is very patient in going through this stuff. (We encountered Professor Prescod-Weinstein once before. You can read her demand for honoraria here.) An excerpt from near the end of Coyne's piece: I am growing weary, for I have dissected papers like this before—papers on white glaciology, the racism of Pilates, lattes, and pumpkins,…
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More evidence for the relativity of moral judgments, this time in the form of cross-cultural responses to variations on the Trolley Problem
Of course, moral realists will have their usual question-begging accounts that explain away these divergent responses, but putting the parochialism of Anglophone moral philosophers to one side, here are the results: The researchers found that countries’ preferences differ widely, but they also correlate highly with culture and economics. For example, participants from collectivist cultures like…
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On filling out the USNEWS.com “peer assessment” (i.e., academic reputation) survey
A young legal scholar elsewhere writes: I'm my faculty's most recently tenured member, so I got a US News peer assessment survey. Or, I should say, peer "assessment," since it doesn't actually ask for any assessment of anything. I knew that the methodology was shoddy for these things, but I'm still kind of shocked at…
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Deranged UT Austin students now harassing classics professor at his home
They're proud of it! This faculty member's "crime" is his scholarship. The students should be prosecuted under any applicable criminal statutes, and Professor Hubbard, the victim of this abuse, should bring a civil action against the students (including for defamation: calling someone a "pedophile" when they are not is per se defamatory, meaning he won't…
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“Feminism for the 1%”
This is a smart essay.
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Historian James Oakes on “diversity” in the academy and in history departments in particular
Another interesting bit of the interview noted the other day: Q. Can you address the role of identity politics on the campus? How is it to try to do so serious work under these conditions? A. Well, my sense is that among graduate students the identitarians stay away from me, and they badger the students…
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The latest attack on freedom of thought and expression in academic philosophy…
…this time involving one of the philosophy editors of OUP, Peter Ohlin–rather disappointing! UPDATE: I suppose one shouldn't be surprised that Carrie Jenkins and Kate Manne both think this is wonderful!
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The best introductory texts to metaphysics and epistemology
Reader Alfred MacDonald called my attention to this old blog post and wondered whether I might solicit something similar here for various subfields of philosophy. So let's start with recommendations for introductions to metaphysics and/or epistemology. Don't just name a text, but say something about why you think it's particularly notable or valuable.
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Law & Philosophy Fellowship at University of Chicago for 2020-21
The ad is now up; I paste the description of the position below: The University of Chicago Law School seeks a Law and Philosophy Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer, for the academic year 2020-21. This is a twelve-month appointment and is expected to begin July 1, 2020. A Ph.D. in philosophy by time…
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The author of the “1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones…
9/21 UPDATE: Apparently Richard Painter–whose own law school colleague had to call out his lies about me–is still linking to this post from two years ago. He knows I have a low opinion of journalists generally, and have excoriated many of them, not just Ms. Hannah-Jones: James Bennet, Thomas Friedman, Bret Stephens. He knows this,…
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that