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APA/Boston Travel Information/Advice/Updates
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY Post on this subject in this thread.
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APA Session Cancellations/Reschedulings
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY Post information on these in this thread. Per reader suggestions, I'm creating separate threads for each kind of information that might be useful. Don't forget to check the original thread which already has some information on cancellations, travel info, and interviews. I will try to make sure that new comments are…
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In Memoriam: Denis Dutton (1944-2010)
A philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Professor Dutton may have been best known to the wider literate public for the creation of the popular Arts & Letters Daily website. An LA Times notice here.
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IHE Story on the Boston APA Disaster
Although IHE is mostly not publishing this week, to their credit they did do a story on the Boston APA disaster, which includes quotes from some APA folks.
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A bit of advice for departments interviewing at the Boston APA
So with the caveat that I am not offering legal advice (since I am officially retired from the practice of law)–but since I am hearing a couple of horror stories about some departments perhaps not making accomodations for stranded job seekers (e.g., rescheduling the interviews, proposing Sykpe interviews, phone interviews, or some alternative way to "meet" with job seekers who simply can…
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What’s going on with the APA Meeting in Boston in Light of the Weather Disaster?
The American Philosophical Association website is on its "winter holiday," while the most important meeting of the year is snowed under in Boston, and I am hearing from loads of folks that they don't know when they can get there. The APA site has no information about what's going on. Have departments made contact with interviewees…
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2010: The Year of the Crazies
Here. America went off the rails with the election of Reagan in 1980, but the truth is that that period of time now looks really quite sane by comparison to the past fifteen years. The thing that bodes ill for the future of this country is that there is no sign of a return to normalcy: …
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Weather Alert for Those Heading to Boston for the APA
Better keep an eye on this. Delta has already cancelled 500 flights. Good luck to all!
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XPhil in The Philosopher’s Magazine
Here. (Thanks to Wesley Buckwalter for the pointer.)
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Postmodern Xmas
Here. (Thanks to Johnston Hill for the pointer.)
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Burge on Neurobabble and “jj” on Burgebabble
Here and here. ("jj" is the pseudonym of a philosopher of mind and cognitive science.)
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Cambridge Offers Professorship to Sydney’s Price
Huw Price, Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and a two-time winner of the lucrative Australian Federation Fellowships, has been offered the Bertrand Russell Professorship in Philosophy at Cambridge University (presently held by Simon Blackburn, who will be retiring this year). Price has written widely in philosophy of science and physics, metaphysics,…
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Some Good News for the Humanities: $20 Million to Support Humanities at the University of Wisconsin…
…including $2.5 million specifically for a Chair in ancient Greek philosophy! (Thanks to Samuel Howard for the pointer.) ADDENDUM: Wisconsin's press release is here. They are hoping to fill the ancient Greek philosophy Chair, it indicates, by fall 2011. CORRECTION: Folks at Wisconsin tell me the press release is in error: the Chair will be advertised…
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A comment on this year’s job market
Many years ago (1992 to be precise), I can recall, with pleasant surprise, getting a convention interview with UCLA just 3 days before Xmas. (Didn't get that job, but it was still good for morale! And I'll never forget Robert Adams's poker face when asking me about Nietzsche!) If that's indicative of how late in…
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“The Simpsons” Make Fun of Grad Students
Thanks to Jonathan Trerise for the pointer.
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A Petition in Support of the Faculty and Students at the University of Puetro Rico
Here. Professor Rosado Haddock explains: [The] petition [is addressed) to a member of parliament in charge of educational affairs. [I]t essentially states the following: 1. that the government should look for funds for the university elsewhere and not in the pockets of the students; 2. that the president, the chancellor and the president of the Board of…
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In Memoriam: Richard L. Cartwright (1925-2010)
Professor Cartwright, longtime member of the philosophy faculty at MIT (where he was professor emeritus), passed away on December 19. I will link to memorial notices as they appear. UPDATE: MIT has posted Judith Jarvis Thomson's admiring remarks on Cartwright for a festschrift published for him a number of years ago. They are both evocative…
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I’m really not sure if this is a joke
I am hoping it is. An excerpt: Inverting the way we commonly talk and think about domestication, the book will explore how grasses, grains, various animals such as wolves, cows, cats, goats, and microbes, as well as technologies have conspired to domesticate human beings for their own ends. Throughout North America and other parts of…
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Kant and Poker
This appears to be for real. (Thanks to Ken Feinstein for the pointer.)
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A great new way to waste time this holiday break: Google Book’s New Searchable Database!
Philosopher Zvi Biener (Western Michigan) writes: This might be of modest interest to some. Google has just released a tool for viewing relative word frequencies in their database of scanned books (slightly more details on the exact subset of books can be found here). I inputted the names of the Top 10 Most Significant Philosophers…
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“Electro-Rorty”
Cute (thanks to Jacob Nerney [Brandeis]).
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Not Nice Referees
Reader Stephen Lavelle sends a link to this choice compendium of wicked excerpts from referee reports for a science journal; a few examples: The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about. I suppose that I should be…
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“Do people actually believe in objective moral truths?”
More interesting discussion at "On the Human," this time courtesy of Joshua Knobe (Yale).
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“Smartest” Academics by Field
It's now official: "Philosophers are the smartest humanists, physicists the smartest scientists, economists the smartest social scientists." (Thanks to Peter Kail for the pointer.)
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Canadian MA Student Under Attack for Thesis Deemed “Offensive” to Jews
More precisely, it is critical of the exploitation of the Holocaust for political advantage, apparently a verboten topic in the new Canada. But like the earlier attack on the conference at York University, this is a sign of a very ugly political climate in Toronto when it comes to honest discussion of Israel. (Thanks to Moti…
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Now *this* is serious: Julian Assange Trying to Suppress Dialetheism!
The proof. (Thanks to Peter Ludlow for the pointer.)
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Notable Retirements (Recent and Prospective) That Prospective Students Should Be Aware Of
MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 15, 2010 (some more updates) Especially because we will not get a new PGR out till 2011, I thought it might be useful for students thinking about graduate school in philosophy to flag some significant recent or imminent retirements of well-known philosophers; in many cases, the affected departments have already made new appointments…
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Special Issue of Synthese on “Evolution and Its Rivals”
Available free on-line through the end of the month! Longtime followers of my "Texas Taliban Alerts" will, no doubt, be particularly interested in the extended discussion of the ID creationism apologetics of Francis Beckwith. (Earlier relevant items here, here and here.) Alas, one of the essays, by Robert Pennock (Michigan State), appears to be a purported defense…
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University of Puerto Rico (including Philosophy) Under Threat, Occupied by Police
Philosopher Guillermo Rosado Haddock has sent the following letter to philosophical colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere: Dear Colleagues: I am not discussing here any philosophical issue but just asking forsome international awareness about the terrible emergency situation at the University of Puerto Rico. The University of Puerto Rico's main campus -and also three…
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More on the London Protests Against the Massive Tuition Hikes
Here. (Thanks to Matthew Smith for the pointer.)
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APA Hikes Fee for On-Site Registration!
Manyul Im (Fairfield) writes: Did you know about the on-site registration fee hike by the APA? I suspect a lot of people like me don’t know. I don’t think I received any email notice about it; I think there should have been, given the fact that it’s a 50% (!) rate hike. Here’s the announcement…
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Zurn from Kentucky to U Mass/Boston
Somewhat belated: Christopher Zurn (social & political philosophy, philosophy of law, Critical Theory), previously Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, has taken up a post (starting this fall) as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachussetts at Boston.
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U of California Raises Retirement Age, Reduces Benefits for New Hires
This, I suspect, is a move that will have substantial consequences down the road for the University of California System, which had, for a long time, probably the best retirement benefits of any state university system in the country. The raising of the retirement age may actually benefit the system, at least short-term, by keeping distinguished…
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New Journal: “Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy”
I don't usually announce new journals, but this one is open access, so seems like it should be encouraged and publicized. They are now accepting submissions. I trust they will publish articles that also explain how what used to be an actual movement in philosophy ceased to exist!
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“How to write a thread on the Leiter Reports blog”
Philosopher Steve Hales (Bloomsburg) sends along this extremely funny parody, inspired by some recent discussion threads on this blog. Even if, like all parodies, it's perhaps a tad unfair, it still made me laught at loud, so my thanks to Professor Hales for permission to share: Original post: Before starting a career in philosophy, you…
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Suckerpunch, redux
An alert reader informs me that I may have misinterpreted the offending Tweet, that it may not be Christopher Roussel who plans to suckerpunch me, but Dave Mesing. I'm afraid Twitter syntax is beyond me, so I guess I'll just have to take precautions against both of these tough guys. Sigh.
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Ryanair Not Popular, It Appears
Judging from this.
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“Should I go to graduate school in philosophy?”
Eric Chwang (Colorado) calls to my attention this site created by his colleague Michael Huemer. It's certainly quite opinionated, but of course we like that! I think I mostly agree with what he says, though perhaps at points it's a bit too negative (e.g., is it really true that an undergrad who needs paper ideas…
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Religiosity on the Decline in Canada
Not surprising, but here's the evidence. (Thanks to Les Green for the link.) UPDATE: Reader Roger Albin sends a link to this interesting study (and do click on the chart at the end), which suggests that Americans may be much more likely to tell pollsters that they're religious than they are to actually engage in religious…
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