September 2022
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Blast from the past: Most important/influential philosophical articles of the 20th-century
Back in 2012, with many contributions from readers.
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Is a change to Australian defamation law coming? A Murdoch lawsuit may be the impetus
Australia, like the U.K. and Ireland and most other democracies, is far less protective of defamation than the United States. But it's clear that Australian law needs some modification: can it really be defamation to accuse the Murdochs and their Fascist News network of helping incite the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol building last year? …
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Stepson, ‘Lil’ Bit,’ 1974
MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 6, 2018–DIDN'T FIND ANYTHING NEW WORTH POSTING, SO THOUGHT I'D START REVISITING SOME GREAT NUMBERS FROM THE EARLY YEARS OF THIS FEATURE. This Portland-based hard rock/blues band recorded but one album, from which this great rocking number comes (the whole album is worth a listen):
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Another triumph for diversity: Italian fascist set to become Prime Minister is also a woman
It's amazing that the New York Times is so pathologically invested in "diversity" that they can't shake the fixation, even when reporting on a not-so-crypto fascist with an infantile hobbit fixation. The article is headlined, "Giorgia Meloni Could Be the First Woman to Lead Italy," instead of "First fascist since Mussolini set to lead Italy." …
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Society for Personality and Social Psychology ceases to be a scholarly society
This is shocking: [M]y main professional association — the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) — recently asked me to violate my quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth. I was going to attend the annual conference in Atlanta next February to present some research with colleagues on a new and improved version of the Moral…
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A short interview with Peter Singer about his meta-ethics and some misconceptions about his views
Not philosophically deep, but interesting nonetheless. Here's his final comment: I wish more philosophers would work on things that matter. I regret the fact that so many very bright and hard-working philosophers spend their time on issues that are of interest only to other philosophers, and will never have any impact on anyone outside philosophy.…
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An essay in the NY Times that uses the idea of “reification” (correctly)
Its general point about the "medicalization" of what are political problems is also correct. An excerpt: A crisis that affects mental health is not the same thing as a crisis of mental health. To be sure, symptoms of crisis abound. But in order to come up with effective solutions, we first have to ask: a crisis of what? Some…
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USNews.com compared to other metrics of school quality
MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 30, 2022 Here's the USNews.com "top ten", with other data on these schools. US News overall rank School Overall scholarly impact rank Scholarly impact rank for faculty under 60 SCOTUS “per capita” placement rank Academic reputation rank in US News Avg. rank across all metrics 1 Yale University 1 3…
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In Memoriam: Saul Kripke (1940-2022)
MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 16–UPDATED Professor Kripke was one of the 20th-century's major figures in philosophy of language and logic (see, for example). There are a handful of analytic philosophers who will likely be read a century from now, and Kripke is one of them. Most recently, he taught at the Graduate Center of…
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71 applicants in the 2nd FAR distribution from the AALS…
…compared to 39 last year. Probably the attention accorded to the astonishingly low number of applicants in the first distribution in August inspired a few latecomers to enter the market.
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Twitter is a cesspool of stupidity, ignorance, malice, ressentiment, and virtue-signalling, part 319…or Kripke was not a plagiarist
What's irresponsible is to accuse someone who just died of plagiarism without having any idea what one is talking about. Quentin Smith did not cover himself in glory with this nonsense, and it was dispatched years ago by serious philosophers of language. Stephen Neale's authoritative assessment of the debate is perhaps the most accessible account,…
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The ethics of abortion, the political & civil equality of women, Roe and Dobbs and SCOTUS
I discuss all of the preceding (and more) with Mark Oppenheimer and Jason Werbeloff at Brain in a Vat.
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Top 95 law faculty ranked by D-Index
MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 8–ONE CORRECTION (Prof. Helfer [Duke] was not listed with Duke in the database). The earlier reference to a ranking of chemists in connection with my post about ranking of law faculty with Google Scholar pages by H-Index was a bit misleading: the ranking of chemists alluted to was by their…
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A whole generation of the “greats” of post-WWII “analytic” philosophy is now almost entirely in the past
Kripke most recently, but since 2000, we have also lost Quine, Rawls, D.K. Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Dummett, Putnam, Davidson, B. Williams, Fodor, among others. From that generation (born 1940 or earlier), the only philosophers of comparable stature who are still with us are David Kaplan, Thomas Nagel, and T.M. Scanlon. I am reminded of this…
Re: enforcing the policy via Pangram. I must be a Large Language Model, then: Just checked one of my paper…