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538 says there’s now a 13% chance (up from 12%) of Trump winning the election…
…which might seem like a 13% chance of the apocalypse, so way too close for comfort. While it would obviously be very bad if Trump were genuinely re-elected–especially for what it says about the level of pathology in this country–it's worth remembering that the other elections count too. If the Democrats take the Senate and…
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Survey on “The Concept of Representation in the Mind Sciences” seeking participants
I was asked to share the following announcement, which I'm happy to do: I am Dr. Edouard Machery, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (www.edouardmachery.com). I would like to you to participate in a 15-minute research study about the meaning of the notion of representation. If…
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Amerliorative analysis [sic] and Humpty Dumptying
This is amusing. ADDENDUM: And here's the 2005 paper by philosopher Nicholas Shackel (Cardiff) that introduced this terminology. (Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)
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On being a philosopher with autism
Parts of this interview are quite eye-opening; for example: [I]t’s not that uncommon for people to tune me out completely in the way that people in a public setting tune ou[t nearby conversations. The result is that people often treat as empty the space that I occupy in a social situation. For example, they make…
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Hospitals in Utah preparing to ration care…
…due to surge of COVID patients. Utah has a 7-day rolling average of about 1,400 cases per day in a population of a bit more than 3 million. By way of comparison, Illinois has a 7-day rolling overage of about 4,100 cases per day, but with a population four times the size; Illinois is, not…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Irish Coffee, “I’m Lost,” 1971
Belgian rock band, this was the concluding track on their debut album:
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A good summary of the backtracking and dissembling by the NYT about its error-ridden 1619 Project
From analysts at the World Socialist Website, which has been at the forefront of exposing the scholarly problems and errors.
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Some more reasons to worry about the electoral college map
You can play with the electoral map here. If you look at the high quality polls at 538 (e.g., those with A-range ratings), Biden is at best slightly ahead in Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona, states that often land in the Republican column. If those polls are missing anyone, it is surely Trump voters: folks…
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QAnon and age-old anti-semitic tropes
Great news that millions of Americans believe this stuff now! I'll have more to say about this later, but right now I have to get on a conference call with other members of the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy to make some decisions about what kind of economy we want for 2021.
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New study of non-voters in the U.S.
Here; from the summary of the main findings: Non-voters have less faith in the electoral system than voters. Non-voters say they don’t vote for many reasons, including not liking the candidates and feeling their vote doesn’t matter. Compared with voters, they have less faith in the electoral system, don’t feel they have enough information, and…
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Post-election scenarios
Suppose Biden wins and the Democrats end up with at least 52 seats in the Senate. Robert Paul Wolff comments.
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Another take on the election
Optimistic analysis, but not wholly! (Thanks to Christopher Pynes for the pointer.)
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On our remarkable sense of smell
Philosopher and cognitive scientist Ann-Sophie Barwich (Indiana/Bloomington) comments.
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Some election musings
On October 20, 2016–about 2 1/2 weeks before the election–Nate Silver's operation gave the odds as follows: Trump had a 14% chance of winning, and Clinton was about 7% ahead in the national polls. (Do read the rest of Silver's 2016 analysis for grim amusement: that he thought Clinton's debate performance locked things up shows…
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Philosophy course at Wesleyan gets a nice-write up in the NY Times
"Living a Good Life," taught by philosophers Stephen Angle, Steven Horst, and Tushar Irani.
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Gideon Rosen (Princeton) answers “five questions”…
…about himself, his work, his conception of philosophy, his fears, as part of the podcast series run by philosopher Kieran Setiya (MIT). I've listened to a couple of these, but this was one of the most interesting I thought.
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2020-21 Update for the top ten U.K. schools ranked in the 2017 PGR
MOVING TO FRONT–ORIGINALLY POSTED OCTOBER 14 (changes to: Leeds) Since the 2020-21 PGR has been delayed, this is a summary of changes at the tenured (or almost tenured) ranks at the top 10 PhD programs in the United Kingdom since the 2017 Philosophical Gourmet Report; more precisely, these are changes that were not reflected in…
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“Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk”…
…reviewed at the LARB.
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The Swedish COVID disaster
The chart here certainly sums it up: Sweden has had 59.3 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 11.8 per 100,000 for Denmark, 6.3 for Finland, 5.2 for Norway, and 11.7 for Germany, all proximate countries that were far more proactive in managing it. Sweden is up there with other countries whose response everyone knows has…
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Divers from Leeds to Trinity College Dublin
John Divers (metaphysics), Professor of Philosophy at the Unviersity of Leeds, will take up the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin in June 2021. (He succeeds the emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy, Peter Simons, a metaphysician who was also recruited from Leeds!)
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Freedom, “Nobody,” 1970
A terrific number (the lead track) from the second album of the British blues/rock band we featured in the late summer:
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Classics professor at UT Austin defamed last December as a “pedophile” by deranged students…
…has now, thankfully, sued them (complaint here: Download BLAKEMORECOMPLAINT(Final)). (Earlier coverage (and also), and see also this for more details, including about material since deleted from the Twitter account of the deranged students.) Professor Hubbard's lawyer issued this statement, which sums up what is documented in the various new sources and also reveals UT Austin's…
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Another letter from Notre Dame faculty opposing Judge Barrett’s nomination on the merits
Here. The earlier letter called on her to delay the process given the circumstances. (That letter subsequently got some signatories from the law school; the new one does not appear to have law school signatories.) Barring catastrophe, she will be confirmed, not because of her qualifications (which are shared by hundreds of others), but because…
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Some striking COVID graphics…
…which document vividly the differential impact of the pandemic across the United States at different times. (Thanks to Tushar Irani for the pointer.)
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Reinfection with the coronavirus? Possible, but quite rare
An informative discussion of what we know, and why it's not a cause for concern.
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Picollo from UCL to National U of Singapore
Lavinia Picollo (philosophical logic, metaphysics, philosophy of logic and mathematics), currently Lecturer in Philosophy at University College London, will take up a tenure-track post in philosophy at the National University of Singapore in January 2021. My guess is she will be tenured before long.
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Americans’ engagement with the humanities during the pandemic
A new study from the AAAS, with some interesting results. A bit further down the list was researching the ethical aspects of a choice–although it doesn't suggest the research was done with the help of philosophy. (Thanks to Robert Townsend for the pointer.)
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MA programs in philosophy with funding
Via Geoff Pynn's FB page, I discover this useful resource. It lists both free-standing terminal MA programs and those embedded in PhD-granting departments. But do see the guidance in the PGR on how to approach MA programs, especially those embedded in PhD departments. I increasingly counsel students to avoid Tufts, notwithstanding the strength of the…
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Maybe there will be a Democratic landslide…
…but not all indicators, if one looks closely, are good.
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Notre Dame faculty (but none from the law school) call on Judge Barrett to step aside until after the election…
…for the good of the country. She won't, of course. First, she knows that if she were to withdraw, the Republicans would push through someone else. Second, she believes that her approach to judicial decision-making is the correct one and ought to be on the Supreme Court. Or, as a German philospher once remarked, life…
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1987 NYT editorial appeals to a “consensus among economists” that there should be no minimum wage
A good reminder for whom the NYT really speaks. (I saw this gem via Alex Gourevitch's FB page.)
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A better take on Schadenfreude and Trump…
…from philosopher Susanna Siegel (Harvard). She makes two important points: first, that Schadenfreude is the standard operating device of the American right; and second, Schadenfreude is symptomatic of a dysfunctional democracy (and perhaps corrosive of a functional one). There's a substantive and interesting rejoinder here, to which Professor Siegel responds in the comments at that…
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Trump offends the professional classes…
…but he is in most respects "business as usual" for the imprudent wing of the ruling class: Accusations of fascism and assertions that “This is not normal!” belong to the hysteria of professionals, those for whom Trump’s poor taste and political incorrectness finds its criticism in late show monologues and The New Yorker cartoons. For…
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News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…
Everything you say is true, but what is the alternative? I don’t think people are advocating a return to in-class…
The discussion here assumes an institutional context where returning to supervised in-person assessment is at least theoretically feasible, a reasonable…
Cyber security professional here -reliably determining when a computational artifact (file, etc.) was created is *hard*. This is sorta why…
Agreed with the other commentator. It is extremely unlikely that Pangram’s success is due to its cheating by reading metadata.
I see this question as a bit naïve. There is metadata on every document created by a modern word processor…
I first met Professor Hoy when I returned to UC Santa Cruz in Fall of ’92 to finish my undergraduate…