May 2023
-
APA announces prizes….
…including the Dewey Lectures, the Gittler Prize, and others.
-
Humanities (including philosophy) at risk of being totally gutted at the University of Brighton in the UK
The proposed cuts are draconian! At the prior link, there is also a link to an open letter that readers can sign in support of their Brighton colleagues. (Thanks to Pascal Brixel for the pointer.)
-
Students in the UK are still trying to deplatform philosopher Kathleen Stock
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–UPDATED It's apparently not enough to have run her out of her job, some of them still can't abide her being invited to speak. The latest incident was at Oxford. Philosopher Jeff McMahan (Oxford) kindly shared the very good letter he and other Oxford academics (including many philosophers [e.g., Timothy Williamson,…
-
There should be severe liability for creating “counterfeit people” using AI
Philosopher Daniel Dennett in The Atlantic: Today, for the first time in history, thanks to artificial intelligence, it is possible for anybody to make counterfeit people who can pass for real in many of the new digital environments we have created. These counterfeit people are the most dangerous artifacts in human history, capable of destroying not…
-
Ruse on Setiya on Kitcher (with Leiter’s commentary)
Philosopher Kieran Setiya wrote a fairly critical review of Philip Kitcher's recent book, What's the Use of Philosophy. A few excerpts: What Kitcher finds in philosophy today is arid technicality, produced for an audience of insiders. He complains about the fetish for clarity and the needless use of formalism; he objects to a methodology that splices…
-
Viktor DeSantis’s war on higher education in Florida: the latest
He has now signed legislation that, among other things, restricts certain topics from being taught in general education courses, the lower-level classes that all students must take for their degrees. It also expands the hiring and firing powers of university boards and presidents, limits protections for tenured faculty members and prohibits spending related to diversity,…
-
Git and Pandoc for managing your academic work
Philosopher Richard Yetter Chappell walks you through it!
-
On the legal import, going forward, of Trump’s liability for defaming E. Jean Carroll
Law professor Tobias Wolff (son of philosopher Robert Paul Wolff) explains it clearly here.
-
Given the new (inexplicable) USNews.com ranking stew…
…Derek Muller (Iowa) predicts what next year's ranking will look like. There is always the possibility that the reputational scores will fluctuate (arbitrarily), but my guess is this won't be far off what the 2024 rankings look like! Note some of the dramatic changes predicted!
-
Peter Singer is drowning in a pond…
…so it's time for a utilitarian calculation! (Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)
-
Lawsky’s entry-level hiring report for 2023
It's here! Very informative, as always. A few quick observations. Over the last five years, we've seen a decline in job applicants submitting FAR forms, from 344 five years ago, to 334, 297, 328 last year, and an all-time low of 272 this year. At the same time, there's been an increasing number of hires: …
-
Spinoza’s anti-humanism
Philosopher Yitzhak Melamed, a leading Spinoza scholar, comments.
-
Trans men among the Marsh Arabs
An interesting story, courtesy of philosopher Galen Strawson. As Professor Stawson notes, a far more civilized attitude than one finds in most "red" states in America these days.
If knowledge is sociologically conditioned, then what, exactly, happens to the truth-status of the sociology of knowledge itself? This is…