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UMSL’s Brogaard honored with 2014 “Trailblazers Award”
Story here. (And her grandmother was a trailblazer too, with cars and motorbikes!)
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Oxford’s Williamson to visit at Yale in Spring 2016, Spring 2017
Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, will be a Visiting Professor at Yale for four weeks in the Spring of 2016 and again in Spring 2017.
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RIT now issues stronger statement in support of Professor Torcello
MOVING TO FRONT–SEE UPDATES Here. Our earlier coverage was here. Special thanks to all those who took the time to write to the RIT Administration, your efforts have produced a good result! UPDATE: Professor Torcello writes: I am confident that your letter and the letters of other supportive academics proved an important counterbalance to the conservative…
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New “PhilJobs” data collection initiative
The new service I noted last week is now live, courtesy of Bourget & Chalmers. I gave them permission to incorporate the appointments information collected so far on this blog for this academic year. Because PhilJobs now works with the APA, one major aim of the joint initiative with the APA is to collect systematic demographic information…
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For your April Fool’s day amusement…
…what happens when you misuse quotation marks.
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Philosophy majors and careers
A propos an earlier item, philosopher Bryan Frances (Fordham) writes: "I agree with the post about the non-career-oriented value of philosophy. Nevertheless, loads of students ask about careers and philosophy, as you know." Professor Frances kindly shared two "prezis" he made about philosophy and careers: a long version and a short version, the latter of which he…
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Wolff on Piketty
Parts two and three and four.
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$3 Million to create first endowed Chair in Philosophy Dept at Rutgers
$1.5 million from an anonymous donor, $1.5 million from the Mellon Foundation. (Thanks to Jeff King for the pointer.)
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New Books in March
Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month: Philosophy of Mathematics in the Twentieth Century: Selected Essays by Charles Parsons (Harvard University Press, 2014). Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love by Simon Blackburn (Princeton University Press, 2014). Why Law Matters by Alon Harel (Oxford University Press, 2014) [this is part…
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Dennett on free will
Discuss. (Thanks to Michael Swanson for the pointer.)
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Is aesthetics “underrepresented” in leading philosophy departments?
Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech) argues that it is. (Thanks to Miguel Dos Santos for the pointer.) Lots of areas of philosophy are under-represented in the leading departments, of course, in the sense that many departments have no specialists. Examples woudl include philosophy of law, mathematical logic, medieval philosophy, philosophy of religion, and 19th-century European philsophy. The latter…
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2014 Canada Research Chairs Announced–Two Philosophers Among Recipients
The full list is here; philosophers recognized are Katherin Koslicki (Alberta) with a new Tier 1 Chair in "Epistemology and Metaphysics" and Margaret Cameron (Victoria) with renewal of her Tier 2 Chair in the "Aristotelian Tradition."
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More on right-wing political attacks on climate science
Environmental philosopher Dale Jamieson (NYU) comments.
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Top Research Universities in the US, 2014
I haven't done one of these in several years–this is an aggregation of reputational surveys done by U.S. News on graduate programs, which tend to give decent, if imperfect, information (based on my conversations with scholars in various fields). The fields included here are from the Social Sciences & Humanities (Economics, English, History, Political Science,…
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Why study philosophy?
This is well-said, by Scott Samuelson, who teaches philosophy at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa: Thinking of the value of the humanities predominately in terms of earnings and employment is to miss the point. America should strive to be a society of free people deeply engaged in "the pursuit of happiness," not simply one of…
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Is this a joke?
Vince Vitale teaches at the Center for Christian Apologetics at Oxford and is featured in this slightly ridiculous video. Is this what Christian Apologetics has become? Yikes! (Thanks to Michael Lopresto for the pointer.) UPDATE: A philosopher really at Oxford writes: Your most recent blog post is a reminder quite how subtle “Oxford” is as…
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Rousseau on inequality…
…at The Washington Post blog.
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Chalmers at TED
No video yet, just a written account.
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Mearsheimer on Ukraine
This is about the most sober item to appear on Ukraine in a major American newspaper. (Thanks to Philippe Lemoine for the pointer.)
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Wolff on Piketty on inequality
This is very funny. UPDATE: And some more substantive commentary.
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Leiter Reports “World Thinkers” in Philosophy Poll, 2014
While Prospect Magazine does its thing, I thought it might be interesting to ask readers of this blog to vote on the same question concerning only philosophers, namely which ones are "engaging most originally and profoundly with the central questions of the world today." You can vote here. I've included all those Prospect included, and…
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Good places for on-line philosophy discussion for undergraduates?
Philosopher Barbara Montero at the City University of New York writes: Some of my undergraduates are interested in engaging in online philosophy discussions and would like a recommendation as to where to go. As I am untraveled in the blogosphere, I was wondering if you might post a request for recommendations. Comments are open for…
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“What is love?”
450 high school students showed up for a philosophy conference at the University of New Hampshire on the topic. Impressive. (Thanks to Nick Smith for the pointer.)
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Prospect Magazine’s “World Thinkers” poll, 2014
A lot of philosophers on the list, including Elizabeth Anderson, Thomas Nagel, Martha Nussbaum, Derek Parfit, Rae Langton, Daniel Dennett, and Patricia Churchland, among others.
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Parfit and procrastination
Here. (Thanks to John Komdat for the pointer.)
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In Memoriam: John Bennett Bacon (1940-2014)
Professor Bacon worked primarily in logic, philosophy of language and ontology, and taught for many years at the University of Sydney and, most recently, at the University of Toledo, where he was emeritus. There is a brief obituary here. (Thanks to John Sarnecki for notifying me.)
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Schaffer, Wilson win Phi Beta Kappa’s 2014 Lebowitz Prizes
From PKP's press release (which does not appear to be on-lline yet): WASHINGTON, D.C. – Jonathan Schaffer and Jessica Wilson are the 2014 honorees of the Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prizes for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution for their symposium titled “Grounding in Metaphysics.” The Lebowitz Prizes offer significant, tangible recognition for excellence in philosophical…
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Philosophy trivia quiz…
…from MIT. Some funny and some really trivial.
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Statement by Jeffrey Ketland
Dr. Ketland, a lecturer and Fellow in philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford, asked me to share the following statement, drafted on March 25, 2014, relating to the events we originally noted a few weeks ago: I knew Ms Charlotte Coursier, formerly Ms Charlotte Marklew, since 2008 at the University of Edinburgh. In June 2011, on graduation,…
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More on the harassment of RIT Philosopher Torcello
We noted last week the "right-wing crazy storm" that enveloped Professor Torcello after misrepresentation by various far right blogs of an essay he had written; this post documents the harassment in some gory detail. Back when I wrote more about politics, I would periodically get linked from right-wing crazy blogs, like InstaIgnorance, and would then…
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What sexual harassment does to its victims
Philosopher Heidi Lockwood collects some harrowing statements from victims. Harassers ought to read this, in particular.
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America is doomed, Part 214
What Americans believe about vaccines etc.
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Aesthetic pleasure and evolution
A very interesting essay by Mohan Matthen (Toronto).
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Are journals more likely to reject an article after a status inquiry from the author?
An untenured philosopher writes In the course of talking with each other about our experiences with journals, a few other junior faculty members and I have noticed the following happening to each of us a few times: after e-mailing the editor asking about the status of a submission, we then receive, within a very short…
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NewApps implosion continues
Berit Brogaard tells me she is also leaving, following on the heels of other contributors, including Eric Schliesser and Mohan Matthen. What started as a fairly interesting philosophy blog has pretty much devolved into endless scolding and finger-wagging, plus lame apologetics for crap philosophy. Alas.
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.
For what it’s worth, I agree. I have, with some trepidation, given it a bunch of my papers and asked…
Looking at some of the AI-amplified cranks on philpeople, it is hard to agree with the assessment of this article.…
Perhaps a useful distinction here is between replacing philosophers and changing the conditions under which philosophical work gets done. LLMs…
Conditional on the hypothesis that journal editors sometimes desk reject high-quality papers written and commended by world experts on a…
Some users seem to have conflicting impressions about the (absolute level of) abilities of current iterations of the LLMs. But…
One thing I appreciate about Greco’s piece is the very helpful distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value, which he lays…
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that