September 2020
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Uriel, “Garden of Earthly Delights,” 1969
British pscyhedelic/blues band, this is the lead number on their debut album:
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Former Supreme Court clerks all love each other…
…as this recent endorsement of Judge Barrett reveals.
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New study estimates 10% of Americans have antibodies to COVID
Study here. Of course, we know that antibody levels wane fairly quickly, and that the key to immunity are T-cells. Is there any way to estimate from this study how many people have T-cells that recognize COVID, even though they no longer have antibodies?
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Harvard’s Noah Feldman thinks his friends and former co-clerks are “brilliant” and should be on SCOTUS
That's the short version, I think. (I could count on one hand the number of "brilliant" people I've met in the legal academy, but maybe I don't use it in the hyberbolic way Yale graduates do!) Joking aside, there's no doubt Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a smart and capable lawyer. But Professor Feldman knows…
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A concern about this year’s Philosopher’s Annual results
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–UPDATED A couple of readers have pointed out that two of the ten papers chosen this year by the Philosopher's Annual are by faculty at Michigan, which by itself would not be notable since Michigan is a top department. The worry is that the winning papers were chosen by three Michigan…
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Four immunity scenarios for COVID
This is informative.
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Lessons from the list of highly cited books since 2000
I think there are a couple of takeaways from looking at the books that pile up huge numbers of citations in philosophy over the last twenty years: 1. Books that draw an audience outside philosophy fare much better–in part because citation practices are stingy in philosophy but profligate in some other fields (e.g., psychology). This…
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Breonna Taylor and George Floyd
The media, unfortunately, have linked these cases of police killings, even though they have almost nothing in common. And now, unsurprisingly, a Louisville grand jury has failed to indict any of the officers involved in the no-knock raid that led to Ms. Taylor's death (by contrast, the officer that killed Mr. Floyd was quickly and…
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Philosopher’s Annual, ten top papers from 2019
MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 13: The papers are now available at the PA website. Here are the papers recognized this year: Brad Armendt (Arizona State), “Causal Decision Theory and Decision Instability,” from the Journal of Philosophy Maegan Fairchild (Michigan), “The Barest Flutter of the Smallest Leaf: Understanding Material Plenitude,” from the Philosophical Review
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A Hume scholar on Hume’s racism
Philosopher Paul Russell (British Columbia/Lund) comments in The Scotsman. In an e-mail to me (which he kindly gave permission to share), he observed: Suffice it to say that Hume would have laughed at the resemblance between the sanctimonious moralism of this woke mob (who are tormenting him in death) and the crazy nuttiness of the…
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A sobering account of the nightmare that will begin on November 3 in the U.S….
…unless it's a Democratic landslide. ADDENDUM: What will bring any crisis to an end is that when the economic and market turmoil becomes too great, a message that will be communicated by members of the ruling class to their lackeys in the Senate and Congress–at that point, the Republicans will stop supporting Trump in his…
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Toronto Law scandal involving political interference with academic hiring continues
Amnesty and the National Council of Canadian Muslims have joined the call for an investigation of the allegations of outside meddling in appointments, and some are now naming the judge allegedly involved, David Spiro of the Tax Court and an alumnus of the law school.
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Most influential books of philosophy of the last 20 years?
There was some chatter on Twitter about this, but here's what Google Scholar tells us about which books are being cited the most. Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) looks to be the hands-down winner, with multiple books cited more than 1,500 times, including Women and Human Development (2001), with nearly 11,00 citations; but also Frontiers of Justice…
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Many universites have extended the tenure track for tenure-stream faculty…
…and they should also try to extend by a year any fixed term appointments that would end this academic year, since the job market has ground to a near-halt this year, meaning these faculty have little chance of securing other academic employment. The academic world is hitting "pause" (where it can): graduate programs are extending…
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii