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Michigan’s Ruetsche and Oxford’s Wallace Win 2013 Lakatos Award in Philosophy of Science
A colleague at LSE asked me to share this announcement: The London School of Economics and Political Science announces that the Lakatos Award for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, has been won jointly by Laura Ruetsche of the University of Michigan for her book Interpreting Quantum Theories (Oxford University Press, 2011) and…
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Another school with “climate” problems across departments?
From The Yale Daily News: On the corner of Trumbull and Hillhouse, nine protesters held signs and handed out fliers about reports of sexual misconduct at Yale. Protesters demanded stiffer punishments, including expulsion, for both faculty and student offenders. Several of the protesters’ placards named the Divinity School, Philosophy, Physical Sciences, Pharmacology and Egyptology departments…
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Do babies have an innate moral sense?
There must be more to the "science" than what is described here: They begin with a puppet show. In this show, a gray cat is seen trying to open a big plastic box. The cat tries repeatedly, but he just can't open the lid all the way. A bunny in a green T-shirt comes along…
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UM-St. Louis’s Piccinini receives 2014 Herbert Simon Award…
…for his work on philosophy and computing. Missouri/St. Louis has had one of the top terminal MA programs in the country for many years now.
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The complaint in the lawsuit against Northwestern
A colleague elsewhere sent me the complaint, and I thought it would be worth noting a few points: 1. There is no allegation of rape in the complaint. (I note this since one newspaper headline used the word "rape.") 2. There are allegations of egregious misconduct by Ludlow towards the plaintiff that would probably constitute…
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More on the reception of the Beatles
Jonathan Dancy (Texas/Reading) sends along this quite interesting review by William Mann, the senior classical music critic of the Times of London, that appeared on December 27, 1963: The outstanding English composers of 1963 must seem to have been John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the talented young musicians from Liverpool whose songs have been sweeping…
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Statement from Rutgers Philosophy Department regarding the allegations against Ludlow
I have been asked to post the following on behalf of the Rutgers Department: Rutgers University and the Department of Philosophy learned of the allegations against Peter Ludlow on Monday February 10. The University and Philosophy Department take these allegations extremely seriously. The university administration is actively looking into the matter.
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Why was the Colorado report made public?
I am now told (by a reliable source) that an "open records" act request was made for the Colorado report, and that is why the university decided to release it "officially" (it was going to become public anyway, in other words). It is not hard to imagine why, in a department with climate problems, there would be…
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And some philosophers think aesthetic judgments are not subjective!
The 1964 reaction to The Beatles. Just to be clear, I enjoy the Beatles and I don't think any of these folks are wrong (or right).
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What happens when you have the same name as an international drug dealer?
Philosopher Stephen Law found out. (Thanks to Eric Mathison for the pointer.)
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Northwestern student files lawsuit against university, claiming it failed to act after she was sexually assaulted by a philosophy professor
There are accounts here and here (sent by numerous readers); an excerpt: A Medill junior is suing Northwestern, alleging the school failed to act after she filed a sexual assault complaint against a professor two years ago. The lawsuit claims the University handled the allegations with “deliberate indifference and retaliation,” according to a copy of the…
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Criticisms of the Site Committee Report on Colorado
UPDATE: "Jane Brownstein" confesses in the comments that she is using a pseudonym and that she had misled me. I apologize to readers, but I usually do assume people are who they say they are when they write to me. While other readers shared some of these concerns, they did not want to be credited…
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Since Republicans can no longer win elections fairly…
…they keep coming up with new ways to suppress the vote.
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Called out, once again, for being too nice…
…drats. (Spiros is, alas, right that the major victims of the "pluralism" scam are students, who get suckered into PhD programs that probably shouldn't exist.)
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Being an “adjunct” rather than a VAP: a liability going forward on the job market?
A recent PhD writes: This is the time of year when those of us on the job market who didn't get tenure track offers start to see ads for VAP positions. Like many other graduate students and early career professors, I am married and have children. My children are very well-settled regarding their respective schools and…
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Industry thugs pursuing academics: a problem for social epistemology
The case of Tyrone Hayes, a Berkeley biologist persecuted by a manufacturer of dangerous agricultural pesticides.
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All Wikipedia roads lead to “philosophy”
We noted this, I think, several years back, but one of the law studenst here, Bart Quintans, sent a funny example: Apparently, if you "go to a random article on Wikipedia and keep clicking the first non-parenthesized link in the body text of each article," there is something like a 95% chance of eventually ending…
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More free philosophy by well-known philosophers…
…courtesy of SUNY-Brockport's Philosophical Exchange.
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Politicians enter the fray on the boycott movement in wake of American Studies Association endorsement of boycott of Israeli universities
Two state legislatures, New York and Maryland, and now perhaps Congress are looking to punish those who hold verboten views about Israel. There is a kind of petition here, which also includes links and other information.
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Sorry for the dearth of posting…
…but I've been on the road (in California) first here and then here. Visiting the wonderful UCR Department, as I've been fortunate to do several times in recent years, prompts some reflections on our field and also on the interests in the Continental traditions that I share with many others. There are, fortunately, lots of…
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“Laughing Philosopher”
A new blog, from J.W. Showalter, who, among other things, has a pretty critical take on the report of the Site Visit to Colorado; I have mixed feelings about his take, but it's worth airing. I'll have more to say about that by tomorrow, as I've heard from a number of critics who raise some issues…
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Wash U makes senior offer to O’Callaghan
Casey O'Callaghan (philosophy of mind, metaphysics), Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, has a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy and the Program in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology at Washington University, St. Louis. Students considering either Rice or Wash U will want to keep an eye on what happens.
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More Colorado news
More about events prior to the release of the report, as well as a critique of the Administration by a recent PhD. And finally, a statement by the Co-Chairs of the Department's climate committee.
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George Lakoff: the Right-Wing Wins Because of Oxford Philosophy
This is not a joke, he really said it: [Liberals] don't understand their own moral system or the other guy's, they don't know what's at stake, they don't know about framing, they don't know about metaphors, they don't understand the extent to which emotion is rational, they don't understand how vital emotion is, they try to…
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Columbia’s Philip Kitcher interviewed…
…at 3AM, but not by Richard Marshall. He is mostly discussing his recent work on Thomas Mann.
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Scary “transient academics”
Evanston residents say: not in my backyard!
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Comments may be slower to appear as the day goes on…
…so please be patient.
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More on Colorado…
…this time from IHE. The only new bit of information here is that one member of the Site Visit committee was also "surprised" that the report was made public. Although the Site Visit team can not contract out of "open records" laws at state universities (though even those typically do not cover documents related to…
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PhD admissions, writing samples, and MA programs
A philosopher at a top twenty department writes: I am reading graduate applications this winter with a few other faculty in our department, and we are all noticing two trends that are both heartening and disturbing, and both of which make the job of graduate admissions even harder. The first trend is that an increasing…
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Colorado faculty were told APA Committee’s report would not be made public…
…according to this news story. Indeed, the APA's information about the "site visit program" seems to imply that the report is strictly for the Department that requests the visit. I suspect the breach of confidentiality here was the doing of administrators at Colorado, and not the APA Committee, but it would be in the interest…
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New Books in January
Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books this month: Essays and Reviews, 1959-2002 by Bernard Williams (Princeton University Press, 2014). Epistemic Paternalism: A Defence by Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). The Logic of Legal Requirements: Essays on Defeasibility edited by Jorrdi Ferrer Beltran & Giovanni Battista Ratti (Oxford University Press, 2012). Three Views…
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Colorado’s Philosophy Department put into a kind of receivership…
…with an external (to Philosophy) Chair taking over, in the wake of an extremely critical report by an APA Committee that the Department, to its credit, invited to come in to assess sexual harassment and other climate issues in the department. (I had heard rumors about two faculty members accused of sexual harassment last year,…
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Marx is back, part 78: Democracy is doomed, equality is doomed, as long as capitalism survives
And it's in The New York Times no less.
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What were you favorite book(s)/article(s) that appeared in 2013?
MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 21, 2013: THIS DESERVES MORE RESPONSES! Signed comments only: full name and valid e-mail address. You can name more than one, but say a couple of words about each book or article you mention, why you liked it, why it's significant, what it's contribution is to a particular literature. I'll…
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“Good Practices” for encouraging women to participate in philosophy…
…courtesy of the British Philosophical Association and SWIP. Quite a lot of information as well as suggested practices. (Thanks to several philosophers who sent this along.)
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I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that
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…
I only just learned of Barry’s passing, and I’m enormously saddened at the news. I wrote my PhD on his…