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Over 2 million GBP grant from Templeton for project on “Global Philosophy of Religion”…
…led by philosopher Yujin Nagasawa (Birmingham).
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On science denial
Philosopher Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) comments. I'm pretty skeptical of the adaptaionist explanation for this, even if the phenomenon described is currently all-too-real.
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On the phenomenology of solitude
Philosopher Dermot Moran (Boston College) comments.
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An interview with philosopher David Wallace (Pittsburgh)…
…about Black Holes.
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COVID and higher education…
…with a particular focus on Boston University, from philosopher Daniel Star at BU. BU has not been covering itself in glory with its approach to faculty and graduate students during the crisis.
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Is the philosopher’s concept of knowledge an outlier?
This is amusing, if not wholly surprising (after all, if the philosopher's just matched the "ordinary" one what work would the philosopher be doing?): We find that academics and laypeople share a similar concept of knowledge, while philosophers have a substantially different concept. These experiments show that (a) in contrast to philosophers, other academics and…
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Where is the self?
Philosopher Shaun Gallagher (Memphis) comments.
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Good news out of Poland
President Duda, of the illiberal and reactionary "Law and Justice [sic]" party, has been forced into a run-off election. Good luck to Poland, where democratic processes may yet oust the neanderthals from power.
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Red Dirt, “Maybe I’m Right,” 1970
We haven't featured this Yorkshire band since 2016, but here's another tune from their debut album:
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What is it like to be a philosopher? Anne Margaret Baxley edition
Here, courtesy of Clifford Sosis as always.
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Another amusing take on Isaiah Berlin…
…from the theologian David Hart Bentley in this week's TLS, explaining his judgment that Berlin is "fraudulent": I was moved to the more intemperate word by reading his short book The Magus of the North, putatively about Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88), a volume universally deplored by Hamann scholars as a bumptious tour de force of ignorance…
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It pays not to read the mail: a Paul Grice story
A propos this, philosopher Ian Rumfitt (Oxford) wrote to John Rapko and myself the following (which he kindly gave permission to share): Your story about finding an unopened letter from Isaiah Berlin in one of Paul Grice's books reminded me of a tale told by a colleague of Grice's at St John's College Oxford in…
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Isaiah Berlin’s vendettas
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY Suitably scathing description of the overrated windbag. (Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.) UPDATE: Longtime reader John Rapko writes: Thanks for posting Ali's bit about Caute on Isaiah Berlin; I had overlooked it. I share your view on Isaiah Berlin. I think you'll be amused by this anecdote: 20…
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Comparative policing: the case of Austria
Man fined for farting.
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“The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration”
This is quite interesting, a plausible alternative to the account popularized by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow. (Thanks to Chris Lewis for the pointer.) ADDENDUM: From the essay: Race is relevant because it is our best explanation for the absence of a working-class movement on the American continent, and thus the persistent underdevelopment…
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Another COVID Dr. Doom, Israel’s Anthony Fauci (as it were)
Like the earlier one, he may be right (he's focused, naturally, on Israel, but one can extrapolate to other places). Short version: if you're under 50, you should be fine; if you're over 70, you're in trouble; between 50-70, mixed prospects.
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A controversy regarding leadership and accountability at U of Arizona’s “Freedom Center”
Originally launched by the well-known political philosopher David Schmidtz in 2008, the Freedom Center initially attracted (mostly pointless) controversy for its Koch funding, but in recent years it has benefitted from direct (!) appropriations from the state legislature. But the current controversy is different: some University of Arizona philosophy faculty, including some previously involved with…
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Modelling COVID spread on campus
This is sobering.
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David Hume statue targetted by protestors in Edinburgh
Who knew there were so many Kantians in Edinburgh? Joking aside, if holding the same view as your 18th-century contemporaries is grounds for being de-statued, not many will last. (Thanks to Filippo Contessi for the pointer.)
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Australian government decides to destroy humanities in higher ed
What a disaster. UPDATE: Philosopher Antony Eagle (Adelaide) has more details about this mischief, which has ramifictions beyond the humanities.
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On the meaning of statues
Philosopher Les Green (Oxford & Queen's U) comments.
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In Memoriam: D.H. (Hugh) Mellor (1938-2020)
Professor Mellor, who spent his career at Cambridge University, was best-known for his work in metaphysics, although his philosophical interests ranged widely. I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Tear Gas, “Big House,” 1970
Another great tune from this long-forgotten Scottish rock band:
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“University” [sic] of the West of England proposing to close its philosophy program…
..no doubt as part of a plan to revert to being a polytechnic in all but name. There's a petition in support of philosophy you can sign here, and details about the proposed closure and the department here; the latter includes contact information for the administrators at UWE. Philosopher Amia Srinivasan (Oxford) kindly gave permission…
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More evidence for the “war crimes” trials for the failed U.S. war on COVID
Here; an excerpt: Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented? That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the…
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The obstacles to ethical vaccine challenge studies
Bioethicist Carl Elliott (Minnesota) comments. (Thanks to Mark Pavlick for the pointer.)
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COVID-19 planning for higher education
A detailed set of recommendations from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
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The self-destruction of the American press
Very amusing and mostly right too! (Thanks to Mark Couch for the pointer).
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“Contemporary Legal Realism”
A special journal issue of solicited contributions at Iuris Dictio, a law journal from Ecuador. Some, but not all, of the essays are in English. Besides my own essay, there are contributions by the leading figures in contemporary Italian and French legal realism (Riccardo Guastini and Michel Troper, respectively).
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Cheap and widely available steroid drug cuts mortality in patients seriously ill with COVID
A welcome bit of news: For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%. Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality – and…
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Statement by Alex Byrne (MIT) regarding the debate with Professor Dembroff
It is here (background here). I would especially call readers' attention to his point #4, which sheds further light on Professor Dembroff's ongoing attempts to distract and deflect.
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Cedric Johnson on “Black Lives Matter”
This is worth reading; an excerpt: While a slim majority of Americans now believe police are more likely to use excessive force against blacks than other groups, millions more do not share the most militant calls to defund or dismantle police departments voiced by some activists.1 Most Americans are upset by police killings, but they…
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Still more on Phil Studies and the Dembroff-Byrne debate
Just a recap from last week: 1. Philosophical Studies (hereafter "PS") published a paper by philosopher Robin Dembroff (Yale) critiquing an earlier paper in PS by philosopher Alex Byrne (MIT). 2. The Dembroff paper contained, as the former EIC Stewart Cohen put it, "unprofessional personal attacks" on Byrne (e.g., claiming that Byrne's paper was really…
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Big victory for LGBT rights at the Supreme Court
The Court finds that the 1964 law barring "sex discrimination" includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status. Roberts and Gorsuch joined the more liberal justices on this–I haven't had a chance to read the decision, but they are textualists in matters of statutory interpretation, so were no doubt persuaded that what members of…
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Thinking in quarantine
Philosopher Zena Hitz (St. John's, Annapolis) comments.
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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…