September 2023
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll covers: The Stealers, “Parachute Woman,” 2021
The Stealers are a British band from Brighton, with not even 50 regular "listeners" on Spotify! But they have a great cover of this Rolling Stones number from 1967 off the classic Beggars Banquet:
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Blast from the past: Good career paths for undergraduate philosophy majors? (LINK NOW FIXED)
Back in 2011, with reader discussion.
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“Marx” in the Routledge Philosophers series
Jaime Edwards and I delivered the penultimate draft of our manuscript on "Marx" to the press yesterday. I'm sure we'll be making revisions after getting referee reports and feedback at a conference on the manuscript in early January, but with luck the book will appear in fall 2024 or at the latest by spring 2025. …
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In Memoriam: Paul Woodruff (1943-2023)
MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 25–SOME VERY NICE REMEMBRANCES OF PAUL IN THE COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME A longtime faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was only recently emeritus, Professor Woodruff was best-known for his work on Greek philosophy (especially Socrates, the Sophists and Thucydides), and the philosophy of theater. There…
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On the importance of “replications”
Some apt remarks by law professor Holger Spamann (Harvard): Replications aren't good for the replicator’s career. Replications take as much time as original research. But replications offer none of the rewards in terms of developing and publicizing one’s own ideas or gathering citations. It also risks upsetting the original researchers, which isn't fun unless you enjoy…
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Anthropology conference will not permit a panel on “biological sex”
What an embarrassment for a field which already has a terrible reputation for political bias interfering with scholarship. Let's hope philosophy doesn't go the same way, but I must note that the tenured philosopher who sent this to me said, "If you post about this please don't say I sent it to you, for obvious…
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Why numbers are not objects, and other topics in philosophy of mathematics
An interview with philosopher Alexander Paseau (Oxford).
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Panpsychism makes it to “Scientific American”
Yikes! (Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)
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Blast from the past: Dick Cavett on Paul Weiss
Back in 2016. (See also.)
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Mindless jurisprudence-bashing on Twitter (updated)
Speaking of "impotent rage" and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, there was an amazing display of both on Twitter last week, all prompted by Stephen Sachs, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard, sharing on Twitter his syllabus for his "reading group" in jurisprudence, whose stated aim was to address "the nature of law and legal obligation, the…
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Lederman on the tasks for Chinese philosophy scholarship
Philosopher Jeremy Goodman calls to my attention this essay by philosopher Harvey Lederman (who does formal work, but also works on Chinese philosophy) on the tasks confronting Chinese philosopy, and suggested it might make a good topic for discussion; an excerpt: The meat that scholars of Chinese philosophy have in our mouths are these curious,…
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Ibram Kendi’s “Antiracist Center” at BU implodes
The student newspaper at Boston University reports: Three years [since its founding], after at least $43 million in grants and gifts and what sources say has been an underwhelming output of research, the Center for Antiracist Research laid off almost all of its staff last week. Multiple former staff members allege that a mismanagement of funds,…
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An apt takedown of the awful Rupert Murdoch, the man who helped wreck America…
…by Michelle Goldberg, one of the two NYT opinion writers I actually read on occasion (the other is Jamelle Bouie); an excerpt from the end: Murdoch’s legacy is decided. We are hurtling toward another government shutdown, egged on by Hannity. The electorate that Fox helped shape, and the politicians it indulges, have made this country ungovernable.…
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Pairwise comparison ranking of the “top 40” law schools in terms of faculty quality, 2023
I had to close the poll on Friday after Professor Kerr at Berkeley (innocently!) linked to it on Twitter; he has more than 100,000 Twitter followers, which would have brought in all kinds of random voters from cyberspace, which would undermine the scientific credibility of the results, needless to say. Anywhere, here are the "top…
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…