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A philosophy prof came up with the idea for the MacArthur “genius” [sic] grants
F. Champion Ward, who taught at Denison University and was also a protege of Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago, entered the foundation world and seems to have come up with the idea for the now-mysterious MacArthur windfalls. Given the Hutchins connection, he almost certainly thought these should be awards to recognize genuinely exceptional…
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“The Murder of Professor Schlick” and the fate of the Vienna Circle…
…reviewed at The New Yorker.
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“Who is entitled?”
Philosophers Dan Kaufman (Missouri State) and Robert Gressis (Cal State/Northridge) discuss.
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One-third of humanities faculty at Roehampton (in the UK) likely to lose their jobs!
A humanities staff member in the UK writes: The University of Roehampton (London) has just announced staffing cuts of £1.6 million to be made in the Humanities school (it’s £3.2 million for the two Arts and Humanities schools together) by the end of the academic year. Roughly one third of Humanities faculty will be made…
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On free will
Philosophers Daniel Dennett (Tufts), Helen Steward (Leeds), and others discuss.
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This is what happens when you read too much Kant
You can't even enjoy your Schadenfreude when a wicked man falls ill. Stuff like this is an embarrassment for philosophy; maybe it should be preached from the pulpit on Sundays, or revealed in the confession booth, but to pass it off as a philosophical "insight." Oy veh. (Thanks to Henry Cohen for the pointer.) ADDENDUM: …
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New study estimates 20% of Chicago residents have antibodies to the new coronavirus
Not wholly surprising, given that there have been more than 83,000 confirmed cases in a population of not quite 2.9 million in the city proper. So 20% having been exposed would mean not quite 500,000 people with either symptomatic or asymptomatic cases over the last 8 months or so. I've talked to some students who…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Bang, “Lions, Christians,” 1972
Another number from the debut album of this Philadelphia band we featured a few weeks ago, who were, not wrongly, described as the "American Black Sabbath" (albeit not as successful), which one can hear in this song:
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What is it like to be a philosopher? Bryan Van Norden edition
Here, courtesy of Clifford Sosis as usual.
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2020-21 Update for top five Canadian schools from the 2017 PGR
MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 25–CORRECTED Since the 2020-21 PGR has been delayed, this is a summary of changes at the tenured (or almost tenured) ranks at the top 5 PhD programs in Canada since the 2017 Philosophical Gourmet Report; more precisely, these are changes that were not reflected in the faculty lists evaluators saw…
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This New England Journal of Medicine editorial would make a good opening statement at the “war crimes” trial for those politicians who failed us in the “war on COVID”
An excerpt: Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we…
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Philosophy majors in the U.S. increasing in the last few years
Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) has the details.
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Douglas Husak (Rutgers) talks about punishment…
…on Brain in a Vat.
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The real “terror” threat in America
It's domestic and it's from the partly lunatic, partly infantile right.
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How many languages does Werner Herzog speak?
This is hysterical. He really doesn't like to speak French!
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Some not-so-nobel Nobel Prize choices
This is amusing.
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I’ve read Derrida (more than I wish I had), and there’s no doubt he’s a charlatan, and a symptom of the decline of certain parts of the humanities
This review of a recent biography tries to suggest there's something there, but it provides some amusing ammunition for the contrary view: One of Derrida’s examiners at his prestigious high school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, wrote of his work: “The answers are brilliant in the very same way that they are obscure.” His work as an…
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The First Amendment is apparently hard to understand
MOVING TO FRONT FROM OCTOBER 5–UPDATED WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM PROFESSOR JUN IHE had a brief item this morning about controversy over statements by philosopher Nathan Jun, who teaches at Midwestern State University. (MSU is a public liberal arts college, in a smallish city in North Texas (about 100,000 people), on the border with Oklahoma.)…
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How a Justice Amy Coney Barrett would reshape the Supreme Court
There's a lot of commentary here, a lot of it fanciful, but Mark Tushnet (emeritus, Harvard Law) cuts to the chase and probably gets it right: With a newly constituted Supreme Court, we’re not going to see dramatic changes in constitutional law within a year. But let’s assume the court stays the same for the…
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When COVID joins the family gathering
Not a happy event: a 13-year-old with very mild symptoms (stuffy nose) nonetheless infected 11 others!
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The increasingly mysterious MacArthur windfalls
21 new windfall recipients here. As I noted five years ago, the awards "used to be known [in the 1980s] as the 'genius' awards until it became obvious that wasn't the selection criterion! What is the selection criterion? No one is really sure." Nomination occurs through a secret process, as does selection. It's clear that…
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Another academic freedom case, at the University of New Hampshire
IHE, in a very strangely written article (more on that in a moment), reports that the University of New Hampshire has put an assistant professor of chemistry on administrative leave and is investigating him because he posted pseudonymously (posing as a minority STEM professor) on Twitter in order to critique "woke" blather. I can't see…
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Conservatism, libertarianism, and progresssivism
Philosopher/lawyer Ken Levy (LSU) comments. (It's wrong to lump socialism together with liberalism, as he does, but that's minor.)
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Pickup from Oxford to Birmingham
Martin Pickup (philosophy of religion, metaphysics), current a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford, has accepted appointment as Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham, effective March 2021.
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Motivate the troops…
…with heavy metal. Bizarre!
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“Does God exist?”
Philosopher Graham Oppy (Monash) discusses on Brain in a Vat. (Spoiler alert: no.)
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The latest on Trump’s health
Here from the NYT. They now acknowledge that his oxygen levels had fallen and that he needed some supplemental oxygen, but now think he can be discharged soon. This may all be true, but it also reminds me of my father's experience with Covid last April. He was admitted April 8 but discharged about…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Yesterday’s Children, “Sailing,” 1970
Psychedelic/blues band from Connecticut, they recorded one album, from which this song comes:
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Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins should resign
As multiple news outlets are reporting, Rev. Jenkins tested positive for the coronavirus after attending last week's announcement of the nomination of former Notre Dame law professor (now Judge) Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Rev. Jenkins violated all the public health protocols that faculty and students at Notre Dame are expected to observe,…
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A poll about COVID-related restrictions
UPDATE: Moving to front from earlier today–vote! Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney) suggested I run this poll. It asks whether you think the level of Covid-related behavioral and economic restrictions in your own local community has been "excesssive," "about right," or "not stringent enough." Please take it. ADDENDUM: Be forewarned some odd ads pop up after…
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Finally, a news story about colleges *successfully* managing COVID
In the NYT. But you heard it here first!
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Trump’s COVID diagnosis
Trump is 74 and obese, two facts we do know about him, and that puts him at higher risk for complications and even death from COVID. But counting in his favor is that he will presumably be able to get access to newer treatments, like antibody plasma from recovered patients. Since he is purportedly asymptomatic…
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Drudge Report had only 1.4 million unique visitors in August
That detail is buried in this NYT story (the subject of the latter was obviously lifted from this blog!). According to my public stat counter, this blog had a quarter-million unique visits in August (and that was coming off my July hiatus when I only posted a few times), and 300,000 last month. In a…
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The author lived through societal collapse (in his case, the Sri Lankan civil war)…
…and describes what it's like. An excerpt: I moved back to Sri Lanka in my twenties, just as the ceasefire fell apart. Do you know what it was like for me? Quite normal. I went to work, I went out, I dated. This is what Americans don’t understand. They’re waiting to get personally punched in…
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In Memoriam: Dan W. Brock (1937-2020)
A moral philosopher, Professor Brock became especially well-known for his influential work in bioethics. He taught philosophy at Brown University for many years, and spent the later part of his career in the Department of Biothics at Harvard Medical School. The Harvard memorial notice is here. UPDATE: Philosophy Tom Carson (Loyola/Chicago) writes: I am very…
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The truth about philanthropy
Some facts about where the money is going. There should be no need for philanthropy; the state should impose an essentially confiscatory tax on all income and wealth above some appropriate threshhold ($10 million? 25 million?). Then we could have a civilized society!
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Annals of tunnel vision
A reader (who asked not to be identified for the obvious reasons) called this bizarre post by Twitter's favorite feminist philosopher to my attention: Professor Manne is the proverbial "one trick" pony, but unfortunately, she doesn't recognize when the trick doesn't apply. (We've seen this before.) As commenters quickly pointed out, people had called 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…