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On dreading the AI future
Philosopher Harvey Lederman comments; a long, but far from exhaustive, excerpt: For the last two and a half years, since the release of ChatGPT, I’ve been suffering from fits of dread. It’s not every minute, or even every day, but maybe once a week, I’m hit by it—slackjawed, staring into the middle distance—frozen by the…
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The police state comes to Chicago
Read this account of the outrageous military-style assault on a residential apartment building.
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Illinois sues to enjoin Trump’s military deployment
The complaint.
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Philosopher (and former FBI agent) Luke Hunt discusses Trump’s abuse of the National Guard for domestic policing…
…on Australian TV. Professor Hunt treads rather too lightly on the political theater dimension of all this, but perhaps that is prudent for a University of Alabama professor!
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Harvard student newspaper profiles Adrian Vermeule…
….but manages never to note that his feeble book Common-Good Constitutionalism (aptly dubbed “Twitter constitutionalism” by some colleagues) is full of jurisprudential claims that are either mistaken or unargued for. Vermeule’s repeated reference to “the classical tradition” is a reference to something that does not exist.
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On AI and the Nobel Prize in Physics
Philosopher Peter Ludlow comments.
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A government-wide impeachable offense!
Law professor Paul Horwitz comments.
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The monster child is federalizing 300 Illinois National Guard for political theater…
…in Chicago. Governor Pritzker’s statement is apt. I assume they will be used to protect ICE detention facilities, and maybe they will parade about near federal buildings in downtown Chicago. What a disgrace and what a waste of the time of Illinois National Guardsmen.
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University of South Dakota abandons effort to fire professor for remarks about Charlie Kirk murder after federal court reinstates him
A news account here. I’m sorry he apologized, but I understand his reasons. There was nothing to apologize for. Here’s what Professor Hook wrote about Mr. Kirk: :Apparently he was a hate spreading Nazi. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was,” Hook continued. “I’m sorry…
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Book authors may be entitled to compensation in the settlement with Anthropic…
which used pirated copies of books to train its LLMs. Details here, including how to look up to see whether your books were used, and also how to file a claim. In my case, Why Tolerate Religion? (Princeton, 2013) was used.
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Chemerinsky on Trump’s latest attempted “extortion” of the universities
A propos yesterday’s post, Erwin Chemerinsky weighs in at the NYT. (Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)
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Trump’s latest attempt to coerce universities: his proposed “compact”
I have only found the full text on Reddit, so I link to that. Put aside that conditioning federal funding on adopting the government’s viewpoint is a textbook First Amendment violation (at least in the old days!). I’d like to call attention to one provision in particular (some of the provisions are actually banal, requiring…
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Amusing annals of philosophy blogs
The philosophy blogosphere, perhaps like the profession itself (and certainly like cyberspace), has divided into camps. This blog, as longtime readers know, is not friendly to the “wokerati,” but the “safe space” blog (whose provocations I mostly ignore) tried to run a thread on the death of John Searle. Predictably, given its audience, it devolved…
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Another violation of the First Amendment rights of faculty, this time at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
A petition in support of the faculty member whose legal rights were clearly violated.
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Thank God for judges, redux
A federal judge lambasts the authoritarian Trump for his violation of the First Amendment rights of non-citizens.
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In Memoriam: Jonathan Lear (1948-2025) (UPDATED; ORIGINALLY POSTED 9/22/25)
I’m very sorry to report that my colleague Jonathan Lear died this morning. During his long career, he taught at Cambridge University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago, and wrote importantly on Aristotle and Freud, as well as on a range of topics in ethics (broadly speaking). You can learn more about his work…
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Two great remarks about “journalists”
There are honorable exceptions, but not enough! “No ideas and the ability to express them: that’s a journalist”–Karl Kraus “The journalist belongs to a sort of pariah caste, which is always estimated by ‘society’ in terms of its ethically lowest representative.”–Max Weber Kraus’s quip probably illustrates Weber’s observation!
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The “Executive Memo” on alleged domestic terrorism “networks”
Do read it. It’s transparently an effort to legitimize state persecution of liberal organizations and their funders.
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A different approach to academic assessment in the age of AI
Philosopher Matthew Hammerton comments; an excerpt: Prohibition simply doesn’t work when you can’t enforce it. Telling students not to use AI is like telling them not to think about pink elephants. The result is a two-tiered system where conscientious students follow the rules while the rest can cheat with impunity. This breeds cynicism and erodes trust in higher education.…
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Court reinstates wrongfully fired Texas State professor
Thank God for a functional judiciary. (Earlier coverage of this travesty.) (Thanks to Phil Gasper for the pointer.)
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Massive violation of First Amendment, and academic freedom, at Texas Tech University
An “executive order” provides no basis for overriding the First Amendment and academic freedom rights of faculty to discuss and reject the idea that there are only two genders, regardless of what the monster child “thinks.”
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Norcross on Singer and in defense of his own scalar utilitarianism
At IAITV: https://iai.tv/articles/there-is-no-good-and-evil-only-better-and-worse-auid-3371?_auid=2020
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In Memoriam: John Searle (1932-2025)
Professor Searle, who taught for decades at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote widely and influentially in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. (See, e.g., the entries at SEP on speech acts,”the Chinese room” argument and “social institutions” for a sense of his work and its influence..) In 2017, he was the target…
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Where (untenured) tenure-track faculty at the U.S. top 20 Ph.D. programs earned their Ph.D., 2025-26 edition
MOVING TO FRONT WITH CORRECTIONS–ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPTEMBER 1 It looks like the last time we collected this data was 2023, and the changes are minimal: 1. Harvard University (9) 1. Princeton University (9) 3. Yale University (7) 4. New York University (6) 4. University of California, Berkeley (6) 6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (4)…
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More thuggish tactics by ICE, worthy of the Gestapo
Disgraceful: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/23/kat_abughazaleh (I’m pasting the URL, so that the link is visible even to readers who do not click on the “read more” tab.)
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Marx day at Amsterdam
Coming next month:
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The engine on the airplane fails, and the importance of “giving reasons”
What a great talk at Williams College by philosopher Jeffrey Kaplan. Definitely worth watching! (Thanks to several readers who sent this along.)
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Naval Academy cancels talk by philosopher Alec Walen…
…because he had criticized the monster child on social media. Since the military academies, under the authoritarian Trump regime, no longer educate, I wonder whether U.S. News & World Report will drop them from their “liberal arts colleges” rankings? (Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer.) [This post was not part of the export file…
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“Goebbels ends career of five Aryan actors who made witticisms about the Nazi Regime”
A propos nothing (ok, maybe a propos ABC’s purge of Mr Kimmel for jokes that offended the Trumpistas). This is what authoritarianism looks like, then and now. [This post was not part of the file export from the prior blog, so I am reposting it here manually.]
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One in four professors in American South (esp. Florida, South Carolina, and Texas) looking to get out
From a new AAUP study: Many professors in the US south, particularly in Florida, South Carolina and Texas, are considering leaving their state because of the impact the political climate is having on education, according to a new survey by the American Association of Professors. Of those interviewed in the survey, roughly a quarter of…
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Advertising update
With the change to a new blog service provider, I am offering current advertisers extra months, and lowering prices overall. A top spot will now be $550/month instead of $600 and a 2nd from the top will be $450/month instead of $500 until further notice. I don’t plan on selling third spots, although will do…
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More on LLMs from Jason Bridges: back to the blue book
My philosophy colleague Jason Bridges kindly gave permission to share his follow-up reflections about what his own approach will be in light of the power of the most recent version of ChatGPT and, in particular, why he is skeptical about “relying on relationships of trust to regulate AI use–essentially, using an honors system insofar as…
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Paul Boghossian on Alex Miler on rule-following
What a great review. I am biased, of course, since Alex, who has held the Chair at the University of Otago for many years now, was one of my closest friends in graduate school–when both Boghossian and Crispin Wright were at Michigan. Alex is, indeed, the world’s preeminent authority on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations.
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Unfortunately, it looks like the $100,000 H1-B Visa fee will apply to universities
That’s my read of this CHE essay on the latest malevolence to emanate from Trump: Another concern is whether the new rule will affect employers that are currently exempt from the cap on the number of H-1B visas companies can use. Colleges are typically exempt from this cap. Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at…
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Farewell Typepad
Typepad, the soon-to-be defunct blog service provider, hosted this blog for most of its life (roughly from 2005 to earlier this week–the blog started in 2003 on a UTexas blog platform). During the first 22 years, the blog received more than 43,000,000 unique visits (!), averaging over 3,000,0000 unique visits every year in recent years.…
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For readers who use RSS
An RSS feed of this blog is available at https://www.leiterreports.com/feed (Thanks to Michael Risch for calling this to my attention.)
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Martha Nussbaum on the “Lives Well Lived” podcast
A nice overview of themes from her philosophical corpus, and also deeply personal.
Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
An interesting, and in my view, entirely welcome dimension of the “new” PPA has been a return to discussion of…
Daniel says a lot I agree with but on a few of the issues I’d slightly disagree. We’re facing the…
I doubt enough experts have read enough of the articles published in the top 10 value theory journals over the…
It’s hard to see the old PPA publishing some of what the new PPA has been publishing, although that’s not…
Richard, this is all fair and certainly, impressions of the current quality of the discipline are a subjective matter. I…
The stigmatisation of certain theories, counter-intuitive to many, as ‘preposterous’ should be avoided. It is not ultimately conducive to discovering…
“given the actual number of career-worthy jobs (i.e. not per-course or adjunct positions)” The “id est” seems mistaken. Many tenure-track…