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2024-10-29 09:00:58

Surviving the “Precarious Years”
“Lassiter taught nearly 50 courses before he began a tenure-track job in 2013. He ordinarily took on three courses in Fall and Spring semesters, plus three or four courses during the summer… Similarly, before starting a tenure-track job in 2014, Atkins taught over 60 courses. As a graduate student, he would usually cover between two and five courses every year, but after he graduated with a Ph.D. in 2010, his course load increased to four or five courses each semester.” Richard Atkins, professor of philosophy at Boston College, and Charlie Lassiter, associate professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University, were both graduate students at Fordham University, and during that time they worked extensively as adjuncts “while simultaneously completing their Ph.D. program requirements by writing term papers, passing comprehensive exams, and writing dissertations.” Nathan Ballantyne (Arizona State), was on the faculty at Fordham when Atkins and Lassiter were there, and decided to include them in his series of interviews at The Workbench. He writes: “Years after meeting them, I wanted to know: What compelled them to write and how did they work during those precarious years before finding tenure-track employment?” I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt in which Atkins and Lassiter answer questions about how they got any writing done while being so busy with teaching and other responsibilities. Ballantyne: How did you organize your life? Where did you do your work? Atkins: I worked wherever I could. In our apartment in Queens, I had a desk in the living room. Other times, it was at the kitchen table. My wife has pictures of me sitting in our apartment, holding our daughter, while working on my dissertation. As far as organizing my life, I’ll tell you the same thing that I tell all of the philosophy grad students at BC. One of Charlie’s colleagues, Greta Turnbull LaFore, who went to grad school at BC, coined the name for it—the “Atkins Diet.” Every day, read at least one essay or chapter related to your research, write at least one paragraph, and jog at least one mile. Ballantyne: How did you stick with that routine over the years? Was it habitual? Was someone encouraging you? Atkins: I committed myself to doing..
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2024-10-07 09:00:00

New Editorial Team at Philosophy & Public Affairs
Philosophy & Public Affairs, the highly regarded philosophy journal whose future was put in doubt when all of its editors and editorial board resigned en masse this past spring to form a new journal, has a new editorial team. The new editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Public Affairs is Jason Brennan (McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University). The journal’s associate editors are Christopher Freiman (Chambers College of Business, West Virginia University) and David Lefkowitz (University of Richmond). The journal’s editorial board (which Brennan expects to grow) is currently: Cristina Bicchieri (University of Pennsylvania), Emanuela Ceva (University of Geneva), Daniel Jacobson (University of Colorado), Matthew Kramer (Cambridge University), Kimberly Krawiec (University of Virginia School of Law), Jeffrey Moriarty (Bentley University), and Christopher Heath Wellman (Washington University in St. Louis). The previous editorial team at Philosophy & Public Affairs, which is published by Wiley, resigned in May, stating that “scholarly journals—including our own—serve important purposes, and that these purposes are not well-served by commercial publishing.” They then launched Free & Equal: a Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs, a diamond open-access journal published by Open Library of Humanities, and began accepting submissions last month. Professor Brennan passed along the new mission statement for Philosophy & Public Affairs: Philosophy & Public Affairs publishes the best philosophical work that engages with matters of public concern. Since 1972, Philosophy & Public Affairs has published pathbreaking scholarship that has reshaped philosophical debates for decades to come. Continuing this tradition, the journal seeks papers that are bold, daring, and risk-taking. Philosophy & Public Affairs prizes papers that seek to change paradigms over papers that make minor moves in long debates. It seeks to avoid esoteric and scholastic papers in favor of accessible and engaging papers about topics that matter to non-specialists. The journal welcomes submissions from philosophers, legal scholars, political scientists, economists, and sociologists. It welcomes papers on problems requiring empirical or legal analysis, provided those papers also rigorously defend a normative position. All papers submitted to Philosophy & Public Affairs are blinded to editors. Papers that pass initial inspection undergo triple-blind review. The journal values viewpoint and ideological diversity; no preference will be given to papers that affirm editors’ political or moral commitments. The journal aims to provide a forum in which researchers with different perspectives..
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2024-10-07 08:00:06

Mentoring Workshop for Early Career Women in Philosophy
The Mentoring Workshop for Early Career Women in Philosophy is seeking both mentees and mentors for its next installment, which is taking place in June, 2025. The Workshop’s organizers, Carol Hay (University of Massachusetts Lowell), Willow Starr (Cornell University), Lori Watson (Washington University, St. Louis), and Yolonda Wilson (St. Louis University), sent along the following announcement: We are delighted to announce that the 7th Biennial Mentoring Workshop for Early Career Women* in Philosophy will be held June 4-6, 2025, at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. The Mentoring Workshop is supported by the generosity of the Mark Sanders Foundation. More information about the workshop can be found here. ( *While we retain the historic title for this workshop, the co-directors would like to emphasize that its goal is to provide mentorship to philosophers who might have had difficulty finding it in virtue of their gender. Given the demographics of the field, this includes philosophers from one or more of the following groups: women, nonbinary people, and trans* people.) This workshop seeks to address the ongoing underrepresentation of women, non-binary people, and trans* people in professional philosophy by building long-term mentoring relationships among senior and junior colleagues from these groups. Any woman, nonbinary person, or trans* person entering or holding a faculty (pre-tenure or contract) or postdoc position in Philosophy at a college or university is eligible to apply. Because the workshop is aimed specifically at those who are navigating academic life after their PhD, we require that applicants have successfully defended by the date of their application. Members of groups underrepresented in Philosophy are especially encouraged to apply. Details of the application process can be found here. The deadline to apply is December 15, 2024. There is no charge for participation in the workshop, but mentees’ home institutions are expected to cover the cost of their transportation, room, and board. We recognize and deeply regret if the cost of attending the workshop is prohibitive. While the Mentoring Workshop operates on a limited budget, we invite those without adequate institutional support to contact us directly, so that we can offer support and advice as best we are able. We would like to invite senior scholars interested in serving as mentors for the Mentoring Workshop to..
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2024-10-04 08:00:42

Mini-Heap
New links… Discussion welcome. “I didn’t have so-called talent in high school or college–I didn’t sing, couldn’t dance… But I had these tools that were given to me in my logic and philosophy classes” — Steve Martin, talking with Alan Alda (philosophy comes up around the 8:40 mark) (via Paul Kelleher) “A war crime does not cease to be a crime just because it is committed by the military forces of a democratic state, or in a defensive war” — Jessica Wolfendale (Case Western) on the “false equivalency” defense of immoral actions in war “How has German philosophy received and influenced philosophical ideas from across the globe over the last several centuries?” — a ten-part podcast series with Peter Adamson and ten other scholars “How can we have two graphs using the same data, but that appear to show entirely different things? Are these just different ‘perspectives’ on the data? Is one of them right?” — Corey Dethier (Minnesota) on how “a little bit of philosophy can go a long way in helping us understand graphs” If Taylor Swift is a philosopher, then so is anyone who reflects on their experiences a few times — Ponens or tollens? Catherine Robb (Tilburg) shares her view “Political neutrality is a democratic ideal. As such, it is not a promise of absolute military subordination to the executive” — Graham Parsons (West Point) on the military’s obligations to the president “What ‘breaks’ when someone breaks into song” (on a TV show, but also in real life)? — a musicologist with a background in philosophy who is personally “familiar with the hesitations over musicals” has a whole podcast series on this question Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-10-02 11:00:50

Why Won’t the APA Meet in New Orleans (or Many Other US Cities)?
Georgi Gardiner, a philosopher at Tulane University, wanted to know why it seemed that the American Philosophical Association (APA) is refusing to hold its Central Division meeting in New Orleans. – Here’s what the APA says on its Meeting FAQ page: How does the APA choose cities for meetings? Sites are selected based on the quantity and quality of meeting space, cost, local amenities and attractions, and ease of travel by air, rail, and car. In addition, relatively few cities have hotels with enough space to accommodate APA meeting. Surveys are used periodically to assess members’ preferences on meeting locations. Further, the APA strongly prefers only unionized hotels and avoids jurisdictions where there are policies in place that members are likely to find objectionable. So the APA avoids holding meetings in “jurisdictions where there are policies in place that members are likely to find objectionable.” Of course, any group of philosophers will include at least one philosopher who finds at least one policy objectionable no matter where they happen to be, and yet APA meetings take place. This suggests the answer given to that particular frequently asked question could use some sharpening up. Gardiner asked for details about APA meeting planning criteria, and was provided with a couple of key pieces of information. The first is that certain metrics from the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index are employed to evaluate candidate cities for meetings, and falling short on those metrics weighs heavily against choosing those cities. Falling short means anything less than: 5 (out of 5) Sexual Orientation rating and a 5 (out of 5) Gender Identity rating in the “Public Accommodations” category 5 (out of 5) Sexual Orientation rating and a 5 (out of 5) Gender Identity rating in the “Housing” category 10 (out of 10) rating in the “LGBTQ Police Liaison or Task Force” category 12 (out of 12) rating in the “Reported 2020 Hate Crimes Statistics to the FBI” category These standards were adopted in a 2019 APA Board of Officers Meeting, based on a proposal from the Graduate Student Council that was developed with the APA’s Committee on LGBTQ People in the Profession. They were intended to address concerns about discrimination and risk owing to..
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2024-09-26 10:29:14

Philosopher Sara Green Wins Royal Danish Academy’s Silver Medal
Sara Green, a philosopher of science at the University of Copenhagen, is the recipient of this year’s Silver Medal from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Professor Green was recognized for her interdisciplinary work at the intersection of epistemology and ethics in the biomedical sciences, particularly the potentials and challenges of personalized medicine. From the prize announcement: Green’s research combines philosophical analysis with ethnographic methods while simultaneously incorporating philosophy of science literature into the dialogue with other studies in science and technology. Green believes that interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial to understanding the implications of new technologies for both science and society. “I see myself as a bridge builder, which might sound a bit fluffy but it takes a tremendous amount of work to familiarise yourself with other fields of research. I’ve spent many years studying biology, reading medical journals and understanding how, for example anthropologists, biologists, doctors and STS researchers work. Moreover collaborating with researchers from those fields has shaped my thinking and methodological approach,” notes Green. The nomination statement emphasized her interdisciplinary and collaborative work: Her interdisciplinary approach and ability to collaborate closely with philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, STS [science and technology studies] researchers and researchers from the disciplines that she studies have also been a key aspect of her work since the start of her academic career… The fact that so many leading researchers from disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and biological and medical sciences have chosen to collaborate with her clearly reflects her exceptional talent, intelligence and energy. The Silver Medal is awarded annually to a younger researcher associated with Danish research “for a particularly significant thesis or overall scientific endeavours that have been publicised within the last five years.” It is awarded to a researcher in the humanities in even years and a researcher in the natural sciences in odd years, and it comes with a grant worth 100,000 Danish kroner to be used in the recipient’s research. (via Hanne Anderson)
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2024-09-11 11:44:44

Transdisciplinary Philosophy Book Prize Longlist
The Royal Institute of Philosophy has announced the finalists for its 2024 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Book Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy. The £20,000 annual prize aims to “reward the most original philosophical research that transcends academic disciplines.” It recognizes books that: demonstrate rigorous original and quality transdisciplinary research are accessible and engaging to read are original, innovative, and impactful intend to advance and contribute to the understanding of human behaviours. The authors and books on the shortlist for this year’s prize are: Chris Armstrong (Southhampton), Global Justice and the Biodiversity Crisis (Oxford University Press). Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman (Berggruen Institute), Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crisis (Stanford University Press). Mazviita Chirimuuta (Edinburgh), The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (The MIT Press). Joseph LeDoux (NYU), The Four Realms of Existence: A New Theory of Being Human (Harvard University Press). Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (UC Santa Cruz), Jennifer Deger (Charles Darwin), Alder Keleman Saxena (Northern Arizona), and Feifei Zhou(Columbia), Field Guide to Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature (Stanford University Press) Shannon Vallor (Edinburgh), The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press). The prize is sponsored by philosopher and neuroscientist Nayef Al-Rodhan. You can learn more about it here and here.
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2024-09-10 17:50:27

Wu from CMU to Pitt
Wayne Wu, currently associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, will be moving to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Wu works in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and cognitive science. He is the author of Movements of the Mind: A Theory of Attention (2023) and Attention (2014), among other works, which you can learn about here and here. He will take up his new position as full professor in January of 2025. (via Edouard Machery)
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2024-09-10 12:41:57

Academic Philosophy on “Contingent Current Affairs”
“According to one founding myth, philosophy begins in Ancient Greece with Socrates abstracting from concrete examples of just activity in order to determine the timeless and eternal essence of justice. To this day, few philosophy journals are dedicated to the analysis of historically contingent current affairs, let alone a specific event of historical significance.” That’s the opening of the introduction, by Aaron James Wendland (KCL) to a special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica on the Russia-Ukraine War. The open-access issue contains articles by philosophers, many of which engage with details about the war and the specific governments involved in it, such as “Just War Theory and the Russia-Ukraine War” by Jeff McMahan (Oxford), “Putin’s Use and Abuse of History as a Political Weapon” by Cynthia Nielson (Dallas), “What Is this Thing Called Peace?” by Fabio Lampert (Vienna), among others. (Some of the other pieces, such as “Against the Odds: Defending Defensive Wars” by Gerald Lang (Leeds) and “Nationalisms: Purification, Privilege, Pride, and Protection” by Jonathan Wolff (Oxford) take a more familiar approach of using the war as an example by which to explore more general principles or concepts.) While there is plenty of public philosophy on issues of the day, Dr. Wendland’s remarks that relatively little academic philosophical work is “dedicated to the analysis of historically contingent current affairs” seems right.* But there has been some, and I encourage people to share worthwhile examples. * putting aside a kind of historicization critique of philosophy under which all of its subject matter is contingent.
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2024-09-06 10:00:34

New “Human-Centered AI Lab” at Oxford
The Human-Centered AI Lab (HAI Lab) is a new initiative at the University of Oxford that aims to “create a space for technologists and philosophers to collaborate on translating philosophical concepts into open-source software and AI systems, fostering a vibrant community for big-picture thinking about a future of AI that enhances human flourishing.” The HAI Lab’s director will be Philipp Koralus, a member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford who was recently made the inaugural McCord Professor of Philosophy and AI there. The lab is funded by the Cosmos Institute, which was founded by AI entrepreneur and “avid student of philosophy” Brendan McCord. The Cosmos Institute states on its mission page: We envision a society where technology enhances reason, decentralization, and human autonomy, empowering individuals to reach their full potential. Current trends, however, point away from this future. We are bridging philosophy and technology through the “philosophy-to-code” paradigm. As the effectiveness of this approach gains recognition, it inspires a movement that reshapes AI development and governance. Rather than controlling people from the top down and diminishing human potential, AI becomes a tool for consistently expanding human freedom and excellence from the bottom up. Echoing some of that language, a press release from Oxford states that the HAI Lab “will bring together leading philosophers and AI practitioners to embed concepts such as reason, decentralisation, and human autonomy into the AI technologies that are shaping our world.” In the same document, Professor Koralus says, “We aim to cultivate a new class of philosopher-technologists.” The HAI Lab will initially be a part of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI (launched in 2020), which in turn is part of the Faculty of Philosophy. Next year it will become a part of the forthcoming Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at Oxford (previously).
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2024-09-05 13:15:02

Virtual Dissertation Writing Groups
New virtual writing groups for people working on dissertations in philosophy will be forming soon. Joshua Smart (St. Bonaventure University) is the creator and longtime organizer of these groups. He writes: Signups are open through Sunday, September 15th here. What it is: Virtual Dissertation Groups is a free service for those currently working on their doctoral dissertations in philosophy departments (or philosophy of science or the like). Since 2014, VDG has connected students from over 30 countries to provide peer feedback on dissertation work with a minimal time commitment. How it works: Each dissertator is placed in a group of three on the basis of a short survey about their project/area of work. Three times over the course of the semester, one member will send some work (3k – 6k words) to the other two, who then return feedback in a week or so. (Usually these are written comments, though some groups choose to have video discussions.) Why it’s good: While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one’s work with peers in a lower-stakes environment and particularly enlightening to do so with those who take a different approach, outlook, or focus. There is even evidence from psychological research that even just thinking about problems in relation to persons who are geographically distant can promote creative insights. With students at a variety of programs and from around the world, VDG is a great way to capture some of these benefits!
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2024-09-04 11:00:38

New: The Philosophy Teaching Library (guest post)
A pair of philosophers have built upon the approach to pedagogical materials of a highly successful philosophy course at the University of Notre Dame to create a vetted, open educational resource that can help guide students anywhere through primary philosophical texts. The Philosophy Teaching Library was founded by Wes Siscoe (Bowling Green) and Paul Blaschko (Notre Dame). In the following guest post, they introduce The Philosophy Teaching Library, discuss its features, and explain how others can contribute to its growth. [Disclosure: I am a member of the project’s advisory board.] Introducing the Philosophy Teaching Library by Wes Siscoe and Paul Blaschko Have you ever assigned a primary text to students only for them to get nothing out of it? Do they get lost, or not have the background necessary to understand what they’ve read? Is it impossible for them to productively interact with primary texts outside of class? Maybe for these reasons, you have decided to avoid primary texts in your classroom in favor of articles that attempt to summarize these important philosophical works. If this is the route you have chosen, do you worry that you aren’t helping students develop the skills to engage with philosophers on their own terms? Are you concerned that you are just training them to read philosophy as a collection of “Cliffs Notes”? If you answered yes to any of these questions, The Philosophy Teaching Library is here to help. The Philosophy Teaching Library is a collection of introductory primary texts. What is an “introductory primary text”, you might ask? Instead of leaving philosophical texts as impenetrable and incomprehensible, introductory primary texts facilitate student understanding via textual commentary, illustrative examples, and detailed argument breakdowns. Each piece allows students to develop their philosophical understanding along with their ability to read the primary texts themselves. The Philosophy Teaching Library builds on the work of the God and the Good Life class at the University of Notre Dame. Because of the challenges we just discussed, the God and the Good Life course introduced students to a number of seminal philosophy pieces using textual commentaries. Originally, these commentaries were intended just for Notre Dame students, but because the God and the Good Life has a public-facing website, other..
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2024-09-04 10:00:40

21 Yale Philosophers File Amicus Brief on Case about Medical Care for Transgender Minors
“Amici are professors of philosophy who are trained to identify flaws in arguments. Philosophers assess arguments in a variety of ways, but most relevant here is by examining the logical structure of arguments. This requires identifying the premises underlying arguments as well as the ways that arguments can attempt to hide those premises.” So begins the amici curiae brief submitted yesterday on behalf of twenty-one philosophy faculty at Yale University in the Supreme Court case of United States v. Skrmetti. The case concerns whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Tennessee’s defense of the law involves the claim that it does not classify minors by sex, and so is not subject to heightened scrutiny (that is, it need not shoulder the burden of proving to the court that its law involves a classification that is substantially related to serving an important state interest). In their brief, the philosophers argue that this is false, and the Tennessee law does “classify by sex.” They write: Tennessee tries to argue that its statute is not sex-based, but its arguments contain a fallacy. More specifically, Tennessee’s arguments contain the question-begging fallacy—that is, the arguments assume the truth of the conclusions within their premises. In addition, by prohibiting treatment “inconsistent” with a minor’s sex, Tennessee enforces sex-specific stereotypes, which again demonstrates that its law does classify by sex. The philosophers who signed the brief are: David Charles, Timothy Clarke, Stephen Darwall, Robin Dembroff, Keith DeRose, Claudia Dumitru, Paul Franks, Robert Gooding-Williams, Verity Harte, Lily Hu, Brad Inwood, Shelly Kagan, Joshua Knobe, Jacob McNulty, L.A. Paul, Thomas Pogge, Jason Stanley, Zoltán Szabó, Timothy Williamson, Kenneth Winkler, and Gideon Yaffe. The full brief is below (and also here).
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2024-08-30 21:00:05

Owens to Be Next Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy
David Owens, currently professor of philosophy at Kings College, London, will be moving to the University of Oxford, where he will be the Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy. Professor Owens works primarily on various subjects in moral philosophy, and has also written on topics on topics in political philosophy and epistemology, and also on causation. He is the author Bound by Convention (2022), Shaping the Normative Landscape (2012), Reason Without Freedom (2000), and Causes and Coincidences (1992). A collection of his papers, Normativity and Control, was published in 2017. You can learn more about his research here and here. The Sekyra and White’s professorship is one of the oldest in philosophy. Professor Owens will be taking it up in August of 2025.
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2024-08-30 11:41:50

Philosophy Job Market Report for January-June 2024
How was the academic philosophy job market during last season’s “secondary cycle”? Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga University) has again kindly gathered data about the philosophy job market and reports on his findings for January through June of this year and some trends over the past several years. (A version of this post first appeared at his site.) – The Philosophy Job Market: Secondary Job Cycle, January – June 2024 by Charles Lassiter Greetings! As the fall term gets underway, it’s a good time to take a look back at the job market: job ads from January-June of 2024 in particular. As a reminder, I break the application cycles into primary (July-December) and secondary (January-June). We’ll look at the numbers for the secondary cycle of 2024 and then put them in wider context. You can find the dataset and code under “Blog Data.” Here’s the big picture: Junior faculty leads (206), followed by postdocs (108), and visiting positions (55). Now we’ll take a look at contract types. There are far more fixed-term positions offered than tenure/tenure-track, which is standard for this cycle. Onto the intersection of contract types for junior and postdoc openings: Now that we’ve seen what’s going on now, let’s add some historical context. On the upside, there’s been an overall increase in the number of jobs advertised over the last decade with the exception of open contracts. Open contracts have decreased slightly over time. For fixed-term positions, the last two cycles have seen a cooling-down after a post-COVID bump. But how do junior and senior faculty fare in all this? Let’s look at junior and postdocs first. What’s interesting about this is that fixed-term positions for both junior faculty and postdocs have been increasing over the last 10 years, but openings for postdocs have had greater increases relative to fixed-term junior positions. What could account for this? One possibility is that more philosophers are winning grants, so the demand for postdocs is increasing. Another is that departments are getting specially-allocated funds for postdocs from private foundations or donors. I don’t really know but those seem like plausible guesses. Independently of the causes, the increase in postdoc demand is a double-edged sword. On one side, freshly-minted PhDs can have some..
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2024-08-30 08:00:27

Mini Heap
Links for the long weekend… Discussion welcome. “Proust takes this obsession with knowledge to another level” — Troy Jollimore (CSU Chico) & Rick Furtak (Colorado College) discuss the philosophical dimensions of Proust on “Philosophers on Culture” “Landscapes convey information, they ‘speak.’ As long as people are there to listen, to engage with, to regard land as community member, that information stays relevant” — Joel K. Jensen (North Hennepin) on the epistemic value of land and the epistemic limits of archives “To create your fantasy philosophy league, you will need ten colleagues…” — so begins the detailed and possibly workable instructions for playing fantasy philosophy, from Steve Gimbel (Gettysburg), at McSweeney’s (via Sophia Stone) “That inextricable relationship between intelligent decision-making and responsibility is an essential ingredient for a well-functioning, civilized society” — and it seems AI lacks it “When failure is obscure and private, it feels shameful, it’s to be feared and suffered alone. When failure is manifest and public, it can be embraced as a challenge and birth camaraderie” — Michael Barkasi (Wash U. St. Louis) on how this is relevant to teaching “By encountering difficult and foreign ideas, we are freed from the natural parochialism of our immature brains and our many subcultures, freed from unthinking loyalty to whatever creeds and norms shaped our families and early schooling” — a series of reflections on the value of college from Sara Hendren (Northeastern) (via The Browser) “What we’re trying to capture here is… ethically important experience” — the latest episode of Many Minds features a conversation with Jonathan Birch (LSE) on how to understand sentience Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-08-29 12:32:28

Fraser from Oxford to MIT
Rachel Fraser, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford, will be moving to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Fraser works in epistemology, philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, feminism, and aesthetics. She is currently working on a book entitled Narrative Epistemology. You can learn more about her writings here and here. Fraser has also written a fair amount of public-facing work, which you can check out here. Fraser had recently accepted an offer from the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University just prior to it being abruptly dismantled. She will be joining the MIT philosophy faculty as associate professor (with tenure) at MIT in January, 2025. Also hired by MIT is Tushar Menon, who was also previously at the Dianoia Institute. Menon works in philosophy of physics and philosophy of science. He’ll take up his position as senior lecturer at MIT in January, 2025.
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2024-08-29 10:00:21

One University’s AI Guide for Students, Written with the Help of AI
“When permitted, you can use AI tools for help but not to do the work for you.” That line appears in the recently released “AI-U“, billed as “a student guide to navigating college in the artificial intelligence era.” What would a typical student make of it? Fortunately, the guide, put out by Elon University and the American Association of Colleges and Universities, contains some more definitive advice. Of particular use, I thought, was the following checklist: Before you start 1. My school and my professor allow the use of the AI tools I’m considering for this assignment 2. I clearly understand when and how I can use AI for this assignment Doing the work 3. I am using my own thoughts, words and tone of voice 4. I have checked sources generated by AI and properly cited any facts, statistics or quotes 5. I have critically analyzed the AI output and identified any false, biased or harmful information 6. I have documented where and how I used AI and cited that use according to my professor’s expectations 7. I have not used confidential, protected or copyrighted information When the assignment is complete 8. I can explain my findings and demonstrate full understanding without the aid of AI 9. I can prove what sources I used and how I verified the information Thoughts on this checklist are welcome. A question that arises, of course, is how to encourage students to comply with it. This term I am putting a fair degree of emphasis on #8. Students in one of my lower-level courses work on a multi-part research project throughout the term, and the penultimate part is a graded one-on-one meeting in which the student gives a brief presentation and then is subject to extended questioning from me about it. They’ll have to know what they’re talking about, and so it won’t be good enough to have memorized an AI-written presentation. With 40 students in this course, these meetings are a substantial time commitment, and I don’t think I’d do this with a larger course without TAs. But I’m curious how it will go. As for #6 (and possibly #3, though it is impossible to tell), I wish the authors of this guide..
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2024-08-28 10:00:55

Philosophers Among Recent NEH Grant Winners
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced its latest round of grant winners, and several philosophers are among them. – They and their projects are: Huaping Lu-Adler (Georgetown University) and Julia Jorati (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Slavery and Early Modern Philosophy A three-week residential institute for 25 higher education faculty to examine the subject of slavery and modern philosophy. $190,682. Rega Wood (Indiana University, Bloomington) The Richard Rufus Project: The Oxford Lectures Project Preparation for print and online publication of the Paris and Oxford lectures of Richard Rufus of Cornwall, an early Scholastic philosopher-theologian (ca. 1200–1260). $300,000 Deborah Mower (University of Mississippi) An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Methods, Goals, and Ethics of Memorialization Planning and holding an interdisciplinary conference on the goals, methods, and ethics of memorialization. $50,000 Veljko Dubljevic (North Carolina State University) Embedding AI in Society Ethically (EASE) Center Establishing a humanities research center at North Carolina State University on the ethics of agent-based AI. $500,000 The complete list of grant winners is here. (If any philosophers are missing from this post, please let us know. Thanks.)
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2024-08-27 12:37:22

When Your Semester Starts Without a Contract
In my inbox yesterday: “I am about to begin teaching tomorrow and I have yet to receive my contract…” My correspondent, an adjunct instructor in a philosophy department at a highly regarded private university, notes that this is not the only time this has happened nor are they the only person to whom it has happened. And it has highly objectionable consequences, as they explain: At my university… if you don’t receive your contract by a certain time, your pay can often be delayed by one or two months, as you only get paid once a month at the end of the month, and [at the earliest] not until the end of the first month of classes in the Fall. This leads to scenarios in which, through no fault of my own, I am expected to teach for free with no guaranteed money coming in, and no knowledge of when I will be paid exactly. The instructor brought this to my attention, they say, because “I imagine this happens elsewhere, and I think it is one of the things that should be part of the conversation about adjunct rights.” The university, or someone at the university, is not giving (the prospect of) this intolerable situation the attention it deserves. If an institution is going to rely on instructors hired on annual contracts, its bureaucracy ought to be able to expedite those contracts and pay the instructors in a timely manner. Does this problem occur at your university? Is it ongoing and addressed with remedial measures (and if so, what)? Did it used to and was resolved (if so, how)? Discussion welcome.
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2024-08-27 09:00:31

Mini-Heap
Recent additions to the Heap of Links… Discussion welcome. How, if at all, is the biography of a philosopher relevant to assessing their philosophy? — biography, argues Paul O’Grady (Trinity), can elucidate “the background or second-order conception of philosophy that shapes how… first-order debates are conducted” “What are smells? One would assume we know the answer, yet despite the best efforts of chemoscientists and philosophers, it is still an open area of research” — Benjamin Young (U. Nevada, Reno) gives us a whiff of his answer “He sees us coming into a golden age of philosophy due to the growing influence of AI and all of the questions that it’s raising” — Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram thinks that the AI industry needs philosophers Looking for new episodes of philosophy podcasts? — check out this regularly updated feed from Jason Chen (Ohio State) Philosophy against toxic positivity — a conversation with Mariana Alessandri (Texas Rio Grande Valley) “Philosopher’s Friends Constantly Pitching Him Ideas For Dilemmas” — at The Onion “I was at work [in a warehouse] for eight hours a day. Seven hours of it would be spent reading philosophy, listening to philosophy” — now Stephen West’s “Philosophize This” podcast has 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify,150,000 subscribers on YouTube, and is the third most popular philosophy podcast on Apple (ungated version) Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-08-26 14:09:35

Wisconsin Campus Closure Approved; Philosophers & Others To Lose Jobs
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted last week to approve the closer of the Waukesha campus of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Thirty-two professors will be laid off, including three tenured philosophers. They are Timothy Dunn, Dean Kowalski, and Tait Szabo. See this earlier post for background. An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: UW-Milwaukee closed its Washington County campus at the end of the 2023-24 school year, and its Waukesha campus will shutter after the spring 2025 semester. Faculty at the two campuses worked in an academic unit called the College of General Studies. The UW Board of Regents on Thursday eliminated the college, and with it, the professors’ jobs… Board members were apologetic about what they called an “unfortunate situation.” They blamed poor planning and a lack of oversight on the 2018 restructuring project, which placed the branch campuses collectively known as UW Colleges under four-year universities. Enrollment had been declining even before the merger but has accelerated since then. Only one member of the 18-member board voted against the layoffs. The article notes that the layoffs are the result of weakening of tenure protections: Before 2016, if a program was discontinued, faculty with tenure protections had to be placed in a different position if they did not leave on their own accord. Tenured faculty could be laid off only in a campuswide financial emergency or be terminated for just cause. For decades, Wisconsin had some of the strongest tenure protections in the country because they were written into state law. Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2015 stripped those protections from state law. They added language into the law giving chancellors clear authority over program decisions, and allowed for tenured faculty to be laid off if an academic program is discontinued. The regents, the majority of whom were Walker appointees, approved the new tenure policy in 2016 despite intense faculty objections. Since then, the board has applied the layoff policy just once, for a single UW-Platteville professor in 2021. The Journal Sentinel article, paywalled, is here. (via Alan White)
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2024-08-26 09:00:31

The Collapse of Academic Marxism?
In an entertaining post at In Due Course, Joseph Heath (Toronto) tells the tale of the “death” of Marxism in analytic political philosophy. Who killed Marxism? According to Heath, it was Rawls. Back in the 1970s, many of the smartest and most important people working in political philosophy were Marxists of some description. So what happened to all this ferment and excitement, all of the high-powered theory being done under the banner of Western Marxism? It’s the damndest thing, but all of those smart, important Marxists and neo-Marxists, doing all that high-powered work, became liberals. Why? Well, for one thing, they realized capitalism was not going to self-destruct and that they needed a “normative critique of capitalism”. But attempts to ground that critique on Marxian concepts like exploitation, Heath writes, failed: One could write an entire book explaining why, but suffice it to say that several of the greatest philosophical minds of their generation took a crack at the problem, and none of them was able to generate a coherent critique of capitalism that took exploitation as its normative foundation. While Rawls was more successful: What Rawls had provided, through his effort to “generalize and carry to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract,” was a natural way to derive the commitment to equality, as a normative principle governing the basic institutions of society. Rawlsianism therefore gave frustrated Marxists an opportunity to cut the Gordian knot, by providing them with a normative framework in which they could state directly their critique of capitalism, focusing on the parts that they found most objectionable, without requiring any entanglement in the complex apparatus of Marxist theory. The result is that it’s only “a slight exaggeration to say that no one is a Marxist anymore”: The collapse of academic Marxism—as a body of normatively motivated social criticism—has been complete. Hence the fundamental unseriousness of contemporary Marxism in public discourse. Popular Marxism (along with the sort of Gramscian or “cultural” Marxism one finds in critical studies departments) has become a religion without a theology. Heath’s rendition of the story is that “Rawls wound up triumphing over Marxism… by rendering it superfluous, making it so that no one needed to be a Marxist any more.”..
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2024-08-23 14:02:38

Robert Stern (1962-2024)
Robert A. Stern, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, has died. Professor Stern was known for his work in the history of philosophy, particularly on Hegel and Kant. He is the author of The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics (2019), Kantian Ethics: Value, Agency, and Obligation (2015), Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard (2011), Hegelian Metaphysics (2009), and Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism: Answering the Question of Justification (2000), and Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object (1990) among many other works. You can learn more about his writings here and here. Stern joined the philosophy faculty at Sheffield in 1989. He earned his PhD and undergraduate degrees from Cambridge University. Stern was diagnosed with brain cancer last year, which he discussed (along with many other subjects) in this interview. In response to a question about fearing death, he said: I am sure this kind of experience differs greatly between people, and I can’t in any way claim to speak for others. But perhaps curiously, in my case, I seem not to be afraid of death – though of course it may be different for me when it is finally my turn. Instead, I just feel grateful for how lucky I have been in life with my family, friends, work, and so on. This leads me to feel I can hardly complain when I am no longer around to enjoy life, though of course I would be perfectly happy to have more… What I do regret, instead, is the effect that the outcome will have on others, particularly family and close friends, who will experience life in my absence in a way that I will not. But I hope that memories of really valuable and happy relationships will replace this immediate experience of grief, and thereby provide comfort over time. Stern was a runner and a memorial fundraiser in his name supporting ParkRun Global has been set up here. He died on August 21st, 2024.
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2024-08-23 12:38:39

Philosophers in Industry “Office Hours”
Members of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee for Non-Academic Careers who have PhDs in philosophy but who work outside of academia are holding office hours for philosophers considering careers outside of academia and anyone who’d like to learn more about “how they can prepare and support philosophers for opportunities outside academia.” – Here’s information they sent along about the program: Who are we? We’re members of the APA’s Committee for Non-Academic Careers—philosophy PhDs that, for one reason or another, work outside academia. Though some of us may still publish and teach in academia, our work and careers are primarily non-academic. We volunteer our time to meet with folks interested in learning more about life beyond academia. Why are we doing this? Don’t get us wrong, we love philosophy; we love it so much that we got PhDs in it. But we’ve found that academic programs often fall short when it comes to careers. Students are often ill-prepared for the life, careers, and opportunities that await them beyond academia. Combine this inadequacy with an abysmal academic job market, and no established conventions for philosophers in industry, and you have a recipe for anxiety, existential upheaval, and despair that even the best of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche’s work can’t appease. But don’t despair, there are many many philosophers in industry, and we want to help! What are we doing? We find that one-on-one time with folks is the best and most direct way to help as everyone’s goals and focus are different. One may, for example, may be interested in learning what sort of career options are available to them, while another might want specific feedback on their resume, or help interviewing. Who should sign up? We’re happy to talk to anyone: not just folks interested in leaving academia, but also faculty, administrations, and any other professionals interested in learning more about how they can prepare and support philosophers for opportunities outside academia. Conversations are 1:1, and your personal details are not shared (just like normal office hours). How do I sign up? We have each set up individual office hours with links and descriptions below. You can select someone who seems like a good match, then browse their available hours and select a..
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2024-08-22 13:31:03

George M. Wilson (1942-2024)
George M. Wilson, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Southern California, has died. Professor Wilson worked in aesthetics, especially philosophy and film, as well as philosophy of action and philosophy of language. He is the author of Seeing Fictions in Film: The Epistemology of Movies (2012), Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (1988), and The Intentionality of Human Action (1980), among other works, which you can learn more about here and here. Wilson became professor of philosophy and cinematic arts at USC in 2005. Prior to that, he was at the University of California at Davis, and, for 28 years, Johns Hopkins University. His first faculty position was at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned his PhD from Cornell (with a dissertation entitled “The Nature of the Natural Numbers”) and his undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas. A 2017 interview with Wilson may be of interest to readers. Here’s an excerpt: “Were you conscious of being a new sort of philosophical film critic?” …I don’t believe that I thought of myself as a new kind of philosopher of film. I would have been dubious that there was such an intellectual discipline as ‘philosophy of film.’ I don’t remember if I even knew at that time that there were senior Anglo-American philosophers who were writing on film other than Cavell. And, as much as I admired aspects of his brilliance, I didn’t think of him as conforming to the ideals and standards I cared about from my training in analytic philosophy. “How would you characterize this tradition and the mental habits it formed?” In retrospect, it is not easy to capture how I thought of ‘analytic philosophy’. As narrow as it was reputed to be, there was a fair amount of diversity among the leading practitioners. Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Elisabeth Anscombe, Donald Davidson, and Michael Dummett all fell within the ‘analytic’ canon that I admired, but they are very different from one another. But within the ‘analytic’ paradigm, there was a great emphasis on clarity of formulation in discussion and on logical rigor in argumentation, and certainly these were ideals that influenced me enormously. As intellectually conservative as the movement seems in retrospect, I and many other..
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2024-08-21 09:00:04

The “Academic Great Gatsby Curve” in Philosophy
The “Great Gatsby Curve” describes the positive correlation between “income inequality” and “intergenerational income persistence” (lack of income mobility). An academic Great Gatsby curve refers to a positive correlation between academic inequality and intergenerational persistence. The existence and extent of an academic Great Gatsby curve is the subject of a new study by Ye Sun, Fabio Caccioli, Xiancheng Li, and Giacomo Livan published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The authors take “academic inequality” to refer to “the uneven distribution of opportunity and academic impact”, operationalized in terms of volume of citations, and “intergenerational persistence” as “the influence that a mentor’s status may have on their protégés’ academic success.” That latter quality is determined by measuring “the similarity between the positions of mentors and their mentees in the impact rankings of their discipline: the higher the rank–rank correlation, the more a mentee’s scientific impact is correlated to that of their mentor, the higher the intergenerational persistence.” They analyzed data on over 300,000 academics across 22 disciplines who in total published close to 10 million papers between 2000 and 2013 and found that an academic Great Gatsby curve indeed exists. They also found that, by their measures, both academic inequality and academic intergenerational persistence were on the rise during the studied period. A breakdown of the correlation by discipline finds it in philosophy, which, according to the study, has both the most academic inequality and the least academic mobility: One conclusion the researchers draw is that “academic impact—as quantified by citations—is to some extent inherited. As such, citation-based bibliometric indicators should be handled with care when used to assess the performance of academics.” They also comment on the analogical basis of their study, and its limits: We find that academia is not immune from the phenomenon of intergenerational persistence, which has been widely documented in the social sciences across dimensions such as income, wealth and occupation. We examined intergenerational academic persistence by analogizing academic mentors and mentees to parents and children, and academic impact (as measured with citations) to income. The persistence of income through genealogical generations and the persistence of impact through academic ones both reflect the transmission of resources and status, and they capture the extent to which the success of one..
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2024-08-20 11:00:46

What’s Up With the World Congress of Philosophy?
The World Congress of Philosophy (WCP), which takes place every five years, convened in Rome earlier this month. The WCP typically has a very large program—around 550 pages long this year—and from what I’ve heard, with over 1000 speakers, the conference was somewhat overwhelming. Also underwhelming. – According to two WCP participants who wrote to me separately, a surprising number of sessions were unattended—by the very speakers scheduled to speak during them. One of them writes: Initially, I went to a talk but upon speaking with the session chair, I discovered that the speaker was absent. I brushed it off, thinking this was normal—people fall ill, have personal emergencies, or face other unexpected situations. However, in the following days, as I spoke with other attendees, I realized that many had similar experiences with speakers failing to show up. I attributed it to the size of the conference, reasoning that it wasn’t improbable to encounter others with similar experience. What ultimately compelled me to write… was an incident during a two-hour session, where six speakers were scheduled to present. Long story short, not a single one of the six speakers turned up for their talks! The chairs had no information, neither did the conference organizers, and the attendees simply waited in the room for two hours, only to leave without hearing any presentations. After this incident, I discussed with other participants and I discovered that almost everyone had encountered similar situations, with many speakers failing to appear. It’s bad enough when conference-goers only attend the session in which they’re giving a talk and skip the rest—that is really poor conference behavior, folks. (Which is not to say that at large conferences nonstop attendance by all is expected or even desirable.) But ditching your own session? On purpose? That’s no longer just obnoxious free-riding but academic fraud. How common was this at the WCP? Of course I’m more likely to get emails from people with complaints than those without, so it would be helpful if more WCP attendees could comment on it. While I’m especially interested in whether people found themselves in sessions that were missing their scheduled speakers, discussion of other aspects of the WCP is welcome.
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2024-08-20 10:00:52

The Philosophy of Science Association’s Excellent “Office Hours”
Here’s a useful idea from the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) that other philosophy groups should consider duplicating: the expert office hour. The office hour, says the PSA, is a way to “facilitate interactions between our graduate student membership and prominent philosophers of science.” Here’s how it works: [A] theme will be chosen for each month during the Fall and Spring semesters and two philosophers of science will be made available, either individually or together, to graduate students via Zoom through [an] online sign-up sheet… The students will select from the following categories that which best describes what they seek out of the opportunity: Input on dissertation topic choice Guidance on a problem occurring in own research Clarification on an issue within professor’s research Other (please describe) and be invited to write a short paragraph in which they describe in more detail what they would like to discuss with the professor. Students from any institution, region, or at any stage of their graduate studies are welcome to attend. Where sessions receive more than 6 requests for participation a selection will be made to maximize thematic cohesion and promote resource redistribution. Office hours will last up to 90 minutes and participants must be current members of the PSA. This opportunity is primarily for graduate students, but postdocs are free to apply as well. You can check out the PSA’s September-through-January office hour programming here. Do other professional associations in philosophy offer similar programs?
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2024-08-20 08:00:06

Mini-Heap
The latest links… Discussion welcome. “We developed a new approach to machine learning we call liquid networks [which] result in solutions that are much more compact and explainable than today’s traditional AI systems” — embodied artificial cognition, or what we learn about AI from trying to put it in robots How can you get the most out of graduate school in philosophy? — the start of the school year is a good time to revisit this advice from Douglas Portmore (Arizona State) “It’s possible for an act to harm a person, even if the act takes place after the person is dead” — David Boonin (Colorado) talks with Jason Chen (Ohio State) about posthumous harm A course on philosophical approaches to the question of Palestine — a syllabus with discussion questions and links to readings from the Society for Anti-Colonial Middle Eastern and North African Thought “Human beings can’t swim like swordfish or sprint like cheetahs but, for all that, we’re physically very impressive animals” — David Egan on why the “persistent tendency to suppose that we’re not” is a “self-aggrandizing myth… that supports an ideology that has been ecologically devastating” What are children for? — a conversation with Anastasia Berg (Hebrew U.) and Rachel Wiseman (The Point), who co-authored a book on the subject Do people in a vegetative state have any awareness of what is going on around them? — a new study suggests that for some–maybe 25%–the answer is yes BONUS: “Possible side effects of FOH include seeing your professor as a human for the first time…” (a video that might inspire your students to come to office hours): Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-08-19 11:32:43

On the First Day of Your Intro-Level Philosophy Course
You’re teaching a lower-level philosophy course. Many of your students may be encountering philosophy for the first time ever on the first day of your course. Besides going over the syllabus and course logistics—which should never be the first thing you do—what else do you do on day 1 to (as one reader put it) “get the philosophical juices flowing”? We had a post about this 8 years ago, and there were some good ideas bandied about then, but I’m sure that by now more people have some more interesting approaches to the first day of philosophy course. Let’s hear them.
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2024-08-19 09:00:38

A Different Open Access Model for Journals
Recent discussion of open-access journals and their financing prompted a reader to share information about a different model for publishers and journals converting to open-access, known as “subscribe-to-open”. Subscribe-to-open hasn’t been discussed much, but it is currently being tried out by De Gruyter Brill, the humanities publisher readers may know for their ancient philosophy journals Phronesis and Apeiron. Reader “C.B.” writes: S2O, as they call it, flips the journal by just asking academic libraries to continue their subscription at something like the current price, and, provided a certain threshold for continued subscriptions is met, makes all articles for the coming year open-access (with no article processing charges, or APC). If libraries cancel their subscription en masse, the threshold isn’t met, and so the journal’s coming year of publications instead remain behind the paywall. Previously published articles, as with most OA flips, remain behind the paywall, to provide institutional libraries with some individual incentive for continued subscription. The major appeal to this model is that it funds OA publication through existing library budgets, rather than disadvantaging those at institutions without new budget line items for APC fees (a worry that was raised in regard to the Journal of the American Philosophical Association), while not requiring the community, or struggling philosophy departments, to pick up the budgetary slack (as has been floated re: Ergo). More specifically relevant to DN readers is that in the coming year the philosophy journals Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie and Analyse und Kritik will be flipped under this model. Here is a link to De Gruyter Brill’s press release promoting the program. I have no horse in the race nor any involvement with De Gruyter Brill (aside from publishing in their journals occasionally), but I thought it might be of some relevance to the discussion. You can read more about subscribe-to-open program here, and here’s a video about it (promotional, but explanatory):
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2024-08-18 13:29:17

John Woods (1937-2024)
John Woods, a philosopher well-known for his work in logic, and who held faculty and administrative positions at several Canadian universities, has died. Professor Woods authored or co-authored nearly twenty books (not counting a few textbooks and many edited collections), including works such as Truth in Fiction: Rethinking its Logic (2018), Errors of Reasoning: Naturalizing the Logic of Inference (2013), The Death of Argument: Fallacies in Agent-Based Reasoning (2004), and Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract Sciences (2003), among others. His work is also the subject of two festschrifts: Mistakes of Reason: Essays in Honour of John Woods (2005) and Natural Arguments: a Tribute to John Woods (2016). You can learn more about Wood’s works here and here. At the time of his death, Woods was Honorary Professor of Logic at the University of British Columbia and Director of its Abductive Systems Group, President Emeritus and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge, and the Charles S. Peirce Professor Emeritus of Logic in the Department of Computer Science at King’s College London. He held positions previously at the University of Toronto, the University of Victoria, and the University of Calgary, and had visiting appointments at many institutions. He died on August 15th, 2024. (via Dominic McIver Lopes)
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2024-08-16 12:35:56

JESP Moves to More Transparent Submissions System
The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (JESP) has adopted the submissions system that was originally created for Ergo, which is known for being relatively transparent and user-friendly. – Sarah Paul and Matthew Silverstein, the editors of the diamond open-access journal, write: We’re happy to announce that the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy has launched a new website for handling submissions. The site is based on the system designed for Ergo, and we’re grateful to Jonathan Weisberg and the current editors at Ergo for sharing that system with us. It has been adapted to suit JESP’s own review processes, but it retains the transparency and user-friendliness that Ergo is lauded for. The dashboard allows authors to see exactly what is happening with their submission at each stage of the review process, and the website is simple and easy to navigate for both authors and reviewers. Authors can read the reviews shortly after they come in, and referees are sent each other’s reports as well as the Associate Editor’s decision. Further, the Associate Editors can send referee requests directly through the system, which cuts out the delays that are inevitable when a Managing Editor mediates this process. The transition will also allow JESP to track and publish its acceptance rate and other useful statistics more easily. It’s good to see worthwhile innovations shared among journals. Are there other exemplary journal practices or operations that should be more widely employed?
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2024-08-15 12:10:09

Frege’s Ambiguous Legacy (guest post)
“We ought to ask ourselves, how did Frege’s claim to expertise in the matter of thinking fare, at that crucial moment when Germany most needed its intellectuals to rise to the defense of the endangered democratic ideals of civic equality, popular sovereignty and international solidarity? Like Heidegger, Schmitt and many others, Frege failed this test, welcoming fascism and the spread of eliminationist antisemitism with unreserved enthusiasm…” In the following guest post, Stephen D’Arcy, associate professor of philosophy at Huron University, discusses the political views of Gottlob Frege, their connection to his philosophical ideas, and the role they should play in our assessment of the influential philosopher. This post is part of a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. – Frege’s Ambiguous Legacy by Stephen D’Arcy As we approach the centenary of his death, we can expect attempts to be made in the coming months to offer wide-ranging overviews of Gottlob Frege’s achievements as a philosopher. And why not? Frege was one of the founding figures of analytic philosophy, the most important logician of modern times, and arguably the main impetus behind the “linguistic turn” in 20th-century thought. In view of these accomplishments, many assessments of Frege’s legacy will likely take the form of “tributes,” depicting him in an idealized way, as a kind of exemplar of intellectual virtue, to be admired and even emulated. No doubt a few admirers will invoke Bertrand Russell’s hagiographical remark about how Frege reacted to Russell’s discovery of an inconsistency in the logical system that Frege hoped would provide a foundation for arithmetic: As I think about acts of integrity and grace, I realize that there is nothing in my knowledge to compare with Frege’s dedication to truth. His entire life’s work was on the verge of completion, much of his work had been ignored to the benefit of men infinitely less capable, his second volume was about to be published, and upon finding that his fundamental assumption was in error, he responded with intellectual pleasure clearly submerging any feelings of disappointment. It was almost superhuman and a telling indication of that of which men are capable if their dedication is to creative work and knowledge instead of cruder efforts to..
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2024-08-14 12:39:05

A Way to Bring Environmental Issues Into Your Philosophy Course
A new initiative from Philosophers for Sustainability provides philosophy instructors with free “plug and play” teaching modules on philosophy related to sustainability, the environment, and climate change. Created by philosophers Nora Mills Boyd (Siena College) and Rachel Fredericks, the modules are designed to be “easily slotted into existing philosophy courses or used to create new ones.” They’ve just posted their first module, “Moral Courage, Environmental Style“. It includes slides, a short introductory video and a longer video of a conversation on the lesson’s themes, suggested discussion questions and prompts for assignments and activities, as well as a list of further resources. Other modules are forthcoming, and Boyd and Fredericks are also looking for others who would like to have their work featured in them. Questions about that can be directed to Dr. Boyd via email.
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2024-08-14 08:00:07

Mini-Heap
Recent additions to the Heap of Links… Discussion welcome. “In the 19th century [liberalism] was an aspirational doctrine for living well, but in the 20th and 21st century it retreated to a much more staid legal and political project.” Why? — Alexandre Lefebvre (Sydney) on the “ethical guts” of liberalism Students need both “appreciation for the difficulty of [philosophical] questions” and “conviction that they themselves might find an answer worth defending” — Gina Schouten (Harvard) on assigning problem sets of philosophy puzzles “The hidden curriculum of higher education—the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons… that students learn in school… began to reveal itself to me” — Nadia Ruiz (Leibniz University of Hannover) shares her route into philosophy “Right-wing packaging should not obscure the genuine perils to which pronatalism is a response” — Victor Kumar (Boston) on population decline and why it is a progressive issue “He approached his writing much like he lived his life: unconventionally” — a brief film on Richard Wollheim, his views on expressing emotion in painting, and his theory of complex projection, by Vanessa Brassey (KCL) Hegelian e-girls — that’s a thing now “Every now and again (thankfully rarely) I see people advocate for something like affirmative action but for citations. I think this is an awful idea” — Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) comments on the SEP citation rankings Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-08-13 09:00:48

Hoefer Wins 2024 Lakatos Award
Carl Hoefer, Research Professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and Scientific Director of the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy (BIAP) is the winner of the 2024 Lakatos Award. The Lakatos Award is given for “an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted, in the form of a book published in English during the current year or the previous five years”. Professor Hoefer won the award for his book, Chance in the World: A Humean Guide to Objective Chance (Oxford University Press, 2019). The award announcement says: Chance in the World: A Humean Guide to Objective Chance is praised by the selectors of the Lakatos Award as “a terrific book, thorough, detailed, and persuasive”, and as work of which “it’s not hard to see that it will become the sort of book that no one working on the interpretation of probability will be able to ignore”. The book is “has succeeded in producing the definitive version of the Lewisian theory of chance”, and it has done so in a way that “leads to a number of interesting and original claims about the relation of macroscopic chances and causes to the micro-world”. The award which includes a £10,000 prize, is named in memory of Imre Lakatos, endowed by the Latsis Foundation, and awarded by a committee organized by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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2024-08-12 10:00:06

Ergo Eliminates “Major Revisions” Option for Editors and Referees
Philosophy journal Ergo has eliminated the “major revisions” category of editorial response to submissions. The only options for editors and referees of the journal will be “accept,” “reject” and “minor revisions”. In an email, one of the managing editors of Ergo, Ben Bradley (Syracuse), writes: Papers that need a substantial amount of work to be publishable, even very promising papers, will be rejected. One of the guiding principles of Ergo has been to emphasize efficiency over improving submitted papers (hence our policy allowing only one round of revisions—we want authors submitting papers that are already in a polished state). This policy change accords with that principle. But it is also, and most importantly, an attempt to reduce the number of accepted papers to an affordable level. Ergo’s budget allows us to publish only about 50 papers per year, but we now get well over 1,000 submissions annually. Despite generous financial support from the Syracuse philosophy department, we cannot pay our bills in the long term if we accept even 70 of those, absent a new revenue stream. Have other journals made similar moves, or considered doing so? Discussion of this change and other related editorial policy matters at academic journals are welcome. See the comments policy. Remember: comments are moderated and may take some time to appear.
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2024-08-12 01:49:03

Alvin Goldman (1938-2024)
Alvin I. Goldman, emeritus professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Rutgers University, and one of the most influential epistemologists of the past 50 years, has died. Professor Goldman was known for his work developing naturalized epistemology. He is the author of several books, including A Theory of Human Action (1970), Epistemology and Cognition (1986), Knowledge in a Social World (1999), Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (2006), among others, and there are several volumes collecting his articles. You can learn more about his writings here and here. Professor Goldman joined the Rutgers faculty in 2002, after spending close to two decades as professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona. Before that, he was a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and from 1963 to 1980 was a member of the philosophy faculty at the University of Michigan. He earned his MA and PhD from Princeton University and his BA from Columbia University. He died on August 4th, 2024.
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2024-08-09 13:17:06

Appiah Wins Kluge Prize
Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at New York University, is the winner of the 2024 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. The Kluge Prize is awarded by the Library of Congress. It “recognizes and celebrates work of the highest quality and greatest impact that advances understanding of the human experience.” The prize is $500,000. It was endowed by entrepreneur John Kluge and awarded for the first time in 2003. The Library of Congress says: Appiah is… internationally recognized for his contributions to the study of philosophy as it relates to ethics, language, nationality, and race. Appiah also writes ‘The Ethicist’ in The New York Times Magazine, a feature that explores ethical approaches to solving interpersonal problems… Appiah is the author of more than a dozen books. These include academic studies of the philosophy of language, a textbook introduction to contemporary philosophy, and “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture” (Oxford University Press, 1992), considered a canonical work in contemporary Africana studies… Appiah is the current President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has served as President of the PEN America Center, a Member of the Advisory Board of the National Museum for African Art, as Chair of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies, and as president of the Modern Language Association and of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. The New York Times reports: Appiah, 70, said in an interview that the variety [of topics he has written on] was thanks to figures like his longtime friend and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. as well as the British philosopher Dorothy Emmet, who encouraged him to apply his analytic philosophy to whatever interested him. “Being trained in philosophy has helped me to answer these questions, but they’re not philosophers’ questions,” he said. “They’re questions anybody might have thinking about their lives.” A list of previous winners of the Kluge prize is here.
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2024-08-09 12:47:17

Mini-Heap
New links… Discussion welcome. “We can’t put scientific statements to the test without dragging metaphysical statements along with them. But there’s a flipside to the story: It means that metaphysics is testable.” — it doesn’t mean that, but nonetheless this piece on science, philosophy, and “experimental metaphysics” is interesting “I funded a qualitative study of undergraduate moral development at my institution and found that undergraduates felt that they were lacking opportunities to grow in their relationships reflectively” — so Jeremy Bendik-Keymer created a course, “Good Relationships” “The disparity between the views of academics and those of the legislators who ultimately fund them is a major problem for US higher education” — But what explains that disparity? “This is ultimately a reflection of the fact that conservatism, in the form it currently takes in the US, involves rejection of the intellectual values of a university” says John Quiggin “Ecosystems are dynamic and have always changed over time as organisms move around” — Avram Hiller (Portland State), Jay Odenbaugh (Lewis & Clark), and Yasha Rohwer (Oregon Tech) on the government’s attempt to pick “ecological winners and losers” “Negative emotions are the victims of what I call the emotion double standard” — Krista K. Thomason (Swarthmore) explains How should you allocate philanthropic resources in the face of moral uncertainty? — try out a new tool from Rethink Priorities that lets you select projects to evaluate, normative moral theories by which to evaluate them, and strategies for proceeding in the face of normative disagreement “I don’t think the fact that incongruity is cheap—that we locate it so readily, even in its seeming absence—undermines the point or plausibility of treating it as a condition of humour” — Kieran Setiya (MIT) on what makes something funny Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-08-08 11:50:31

The 378 Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the SEP (guest post)
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is one of the most widely respected online reference works. Many philosophers and students have found it to be invaluable, and even non-philosophers have marveled at it. Whose work is most cited in this important resource? In the following guest post, Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) answers that question, noting that the resulting list constitutes “a rough measure of current influence in… ‘mainstream Anglophone philosophy'”. A version of this post first appeared at The Splintered Mind (Substack edition). The 378 Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Eric Schwitzgebel Time for my five-year update of the most-cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy! (Past analyses: 2010, 2014, 2019.) Method m1. Only authors born 1900 or later are included. m2. Each author is only counted once per headline entry (subentries are excluded). In 2010, I found that this generated more plausible results than counting authors multiple times per entry. m3. As in 2019, but unlike 2014 and 2010, I include co-authors. Due to the unsystematic formatting of SEP references, this was a somewhat noisy process. To capture last authors, I searched for “and” or “&” in each bibliographic line, if appearing before a “19”, “20”, “forthcoming”, or “in press”, then pulled the text immediately after. To capture second authors that were not last authors, I searched for a second comma before such a date-preceding “and” or “&”, then pulled the text after that. I omitted co-authors in position three or higher unless they were last author. Fortunately for the analysis, co-authorship is relatively uncommon in philosophy compared to the sciences, constituting by my estimate less than 10% of the bibliographic lines. m4. Also as in 2019 but unlike 2014, I included editors, but only if their name appears before the date in the bibliographical line. Putting the editor at the front of the bibliographical line highlights the editor’s role or the edited collection as a whole. m5. After computerized search and sort, I hand-coded the data, in some cases correcting misspellings and merging authors (e.g., Ruth Barcan = Ruth Marcus), more often separating authors with similar names (e.g., various A. Goldmans and J. Cohens), in a process that involved some guesswork and pattern recognition...
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2024-08-07 13:43:16

An Ecology of Feedback: On Non-Circular Work-in-Progress Groups (guest post)
“What might an ‘ecology’ of work-in-progress reading groups look like?” In the following guest post, Georgi Gardiner (Tulane), who has spent some time thinking about novel forms of academic get-togethers (for example), explores the idea of “non-circular work in progress groups”. You can check out some of her other thoughts on the art of academic gatherings here. This is part of a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. An Ecology of Feedback: On Non-Circular Work-in-Progress Groups by Georgi Gardiner My research has benefitted enormously from various ‘work in progress’ (WIP) research circles over the years. These groups have always had a reciprocal circle structure: We read each other’s drafts, or hear each other’s embryonic ideas, in turn. These various WIP gatherings have been either weekly or monthly, comprising between four and nine people, depending on the group. Some are in-person, others online. Ernie Sosa’s student group is a well-known and long-running example. It has spanned decades. I have organized many of these research circles. I recently wondered whether my assumption that work-in-progress groups should be a circle (i.e., reciprocal) is mistaken and limiting. Colloquia attendance is not a circle. We do not organize philosophy talks on the expectation that all talk attendees will, at some point, hear each other’s talks. Instead, talk attendance occurs within a broader research ecology: We all, at some point, have opportunities to hear talks and give talks. No direct reciprocity is expected. Can read-ahead sessions and embryonic idea-airing groups also work this way? That is, what would happen if people held read-ahead WIPs, or idea-airing WIPs, outside of an established research circle or department? (‘Embryonic idea airing’, or ‘popcorn talks’ are a very short—10 to 15 min—informal sketch of a new idea, followed by discussion. Well-developed ideas or polished talked are discouraged.) Would people attend and benefit? I think they would: People could attend topics they are most interested in or want to learn about. Many researchers love reading groups and discussing ideas, and would happily do so without expecting that the author being workshopped will ‘return the favour’ directly. And even if people viewed attending as ‘work’ or donating their time, they might still attend. We all give time and..
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2024-08-06 13:19:07

New Philosopher-Led Bitcoin Research Institute
The University of Wyoming has launched a Bitcoin Research Institute, headed by associate professor of philosophy Bradley Rettler. – It’s the first academic institute dedicated to research on Bitcoin, according to Nik Hoffman of Bitcoin Magazine, who writes: The institute aims to elevate the quality and impact of Bitcoin research by creating faculty positions for Bitcoin research, incentivizing and rewarding good academic research on Bitcoin, encouraging young scholars to pursue Bitcoin research projects, and providing workshops on related papers and books. It will also connect researchers interested in Bitcoin and provide peer-reviewed research for journalists, policymakers, and the public. Professor Rettler told Inside Higher Ed that he does not want the public to think he is “shilling Bitcoin,” adding: “We’re not telling people to buy it; we’re exploring the dimensions of the existence of Bitcoin.” IHE reports: The Bitcoin institute will be housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as Rettler plans to foster an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the intersections of Bitcoin and various fields of study, including philosophy, law, energy and environmental science and computer science. Professor Rettler is co-author of Resistance Money: A Philosophical Case for Bitcoin. One of his co-authors, Andrew M. Bailey, currently professor of humanities and philosophy at Yale-NUS, will be joining the Institute in 2025. You can check out Professor Bailey’s syllabus for his Philosophy & Economics of Bitcoin course here. The Bitcoin Research Institute was funded in part by a $1.5 million grant from investor Mark Casey.
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2024-08-06 07:30:07

Mini-Heap
Some links of interest… Discussion welcome. “If you are beset by philosophical questions and have the great luxury of being paid to spend a chunk of your time trying to answer them, then go for it. If you want to change the world in a big way… best to either reduce your ambitions or leave academia” — Russ Shafer-Landau (Wisconsin) at “What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?” “The challenge for plant philosophy… is to try to achieve some clarity concerning the legitimate use of concepts such as agency and intelligence in the plant sciences” — but not just that, argues Stella Sandford (Kingston) “We purposefully drew up a malicious playbook for undermining democracy, and it mirrored business-as-usual” — Steven Fesmire (Radford) on teaching students about the risks of “moral fundamentalism” “Does AI marvel and change its output because it just read or saw something marvelous?… How do you teach it to marvel when it has already absorbed so much and hasn’t yet marveled?” — five perspectives on the humanities and AI (via MR) When philosophers of mind claim their works are informed by empirical evidence, what does that mean? — Karen Yan (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) categorizes and analyzes different types of cross-disciplinarity in philosophy of mind “To ensure that it’s consciousness we’re studying we need to start with consciousness as it occurs within ourselves. But that approach threatens to be unacceptably anthropocentric” — one of many challenges to the study of animal consciousness discussed by Tim Bayne (Monash) in Noema Magazine “What matters most is the manner in which the animal is able to live and then how it is killed, not the fact that it is killed” — The Guardian talks with Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney) about humans and our relationship with earth and its other inhabitants Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-08-05 13:26:51

Open AI Has Kept Secret an Accurate ChatGPT Detector for Two Years
According to The Wall Street Journal, “OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper” but hasn’t released it yet, despite concerns about widespread student cheating on assignments with it, as well as other illicit uses. – The WSJ writes: The project has been mired in internal debate at OpenAI for roughly two years and has been ready to be released for about a year, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s just a matter of pressing a button,” one of the people said. Why the delay? In trying to decide what to do, OpenAI employees have wavered between the startup’s stated commitment to transparency and their desire to attract and retain users. The detection technology is a watermark system that is reportedly 99.9% effective. Here’s how it works: ChatGPT is powered by an AI system that predicts what word or word fragment, known as a token, should come next in a sentence. The anticheating tool under discussion at OpenAI would slightly change how the tokens are selected. Those changes would leave a pattern called a watermark. The watermarks would be unnoticeable to the human eye but could be found with OpenAI’s detection technology. The detector provides a score of how likely the entire document or a portion of it was written by ChatGPT. The watermarks are 99.9% effective when enough new text is created by ChatGPT, according to the internal documents. Apparently a version of the watermarking technology has been developed by Google that can detect text generated by its LLM, Gemini AI (the detection technology “is in beta testing and isn’t widely available”). The detection technology does not appear to negatively affect the quality of the text generated by LLMs (which was one concern voiced by opponents of releasing the technology). OpenAI’s own survey data shows that people would prefer the technology to be released by a margin of four to one. What has kept it under wraps, it seems, are worries about how it will affect OpenAI’s profitability: “nearly 30% [of surveyed ChatGPT users] said they would use ChatGPT less if it deployed watermarks and a rival didn’t.” Are there..
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2024-08-05 12:01:09

Developments at the Philosophy Journal Insight Project (guest post)
The Philosophy Journal Insight Project, which collects and organizes information about philosophy journals, has grown a bit since we first reported on it last year and is asking journals to submit data via a new “operations survey”. In the following guest post, Sam Andrews, a recent philosophy PhD from the University of Birmingham who created and directs the project, discusses recent and upcoming developments at it. This is part of a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. – Developments at the Philosophy Journal Insight Project by Sam Andrews Academic philosophy currently lacks any universal or standardized set of metrics on journal policies, practices, operations, or rankings. This obscurity makes it difficult for philosophical researchers to know which journals are appropriate venues for their manuscripts. The lack of clarity regarding review lengths is particularly detrimental for early career researchers who have a limited window in which to publish. The Philosophy Journal Insight Project (PJIP) is set up to address these issues by maintaining a comprehensive database about the policies and operations of philosophy journals, surveying journals to collect novel statistics, conducting data analysis to provide insights, and disseminating those outputs to the philosophical community. When the project was first featured on the Daily Nous, it consisted of a single spreadsheet containing information about 47 journals. Our resources have since expanded significantly in both size and scope. PJIP Resources The PJIP website hosts two key resources: the ‘Philosophy Journal Directory’ and the ‘Philosophy Journal Ranking Index’. The Journal Directory is an interactive table containing a detailed overview of over 200 philosophy journals. It contains information about the journal’s specialism, word limits, review anonymity, open-access status, SJR ranking, SNIP ranking, CiteScore, types of papers published (book reviews; discussions), aims and scope, eISSN, and publisher. Like the Directory, the Ranking Index is an interactive table, but it presents various ranking metrics for each journal. It contains the following measures: SJR, SNIP, CiteScore, Cite Percentage, H-5 (Google Scholar), H index (SJR), and survey results from Leiter and de Burin. The aim of the Directory is to help philosophers decide what journals are suitable venues for their manuscripts while the Ranking Index intends to help philosophers determine, via their preferred metric (or a..
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2024-08-05 09:00:36

Online Philosophy Resources (Monthly) Update
The usual weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books is a monthly report this summer. Here’s the edition for the past month. SEP New: Yogācāra by Szilvia Szanyi. Biological Information by Marc Artiga. Revised: Moral Skepticism by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science by Elizabeth Anderson. Mechanisms in Science by Carl Craver, James Tabery, and Phyllis Illari. Immanuel Kant by Michael Rohlf. Theories of Meaning by Jeff Speaks. Practical Reason by R. Jay Wallace and Benjamin Kiesewetter. Kant and Hume on Causality by Graciela De Pierris and Michael Friedman. The Definition of Art by Thomas Adajian. John Niemeyer Findlay by Douglas Lackey. Samuel Clarke by Timothy Yenter and Ezio Vailati. Leibniz’s Philosophy of Physics by Jeffrey K. McDonough. Medieval Theories of Singular Terms by Julie Brumberg-Chaumont and E. Jennifer Ashworth. Plato’s Aesthetics by Nickolas Pappas. The Nonidentity Problem by M. A. Roberts. Ibn Kammūna by Tzvi Langermann. Self-Reference and Paradox by Thomas Bolander. Analysis by Michael Beaney and Thomas Raysmith. The Epsilon Calculus by Jeremy Avigad and Richard Zach. Nonconceptual Mental Content by José Bermúdez and Arnon Cahen. Justification Logic by Sergei Artemov, Melvin Fitting, and Thomas Studer. Future Contingents by Peter Øhrstrøm and Per Hasle. Discourse Representation Theory by Bart Geurts, David I. Beaver, and Emar Maier. Needs in Moral and Political Philosophy by Gillian Brock and David Miller. Sidney Hook by David Sidorsky and Robert Talisse. IEP The Cognitive Foundations and Epistemology of Arithmetic and Geometry by Markus Pantsar. NDPR The History of Hylomorphism by David Charles (ed.) is reviewed by William M. R. Simpson. Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers by Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro, and Andrea Roselli (eds.) is reviewed by Andrew L. McFarland. Plato’s Second Republic: An Essay on the Laws by André Laks is reviewed by Rachana Kamtekar. Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Śāntideva on Virtue and Well-Being by Stephen E. Harris is reviewed by Jay Garfield. Don’t Think for Yourself: Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy by Peter Adamson is reviewed by Christina Van Dyke. 1000-Word Philosophy Moral Education: Teaching Students to Become Better People by Dominik Balg. Project Vox ∅ ..
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2024-08-01 10:00:08

New Teaching Mentorship Program for Philosophers in Small Departments
The American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) is launching a new teaching mentorship program designed for philosophers teaching in small philosophy departments. A small department, for the purposes of this AAPT program, is either a philosophy department with three or fewer faculty in it, or a multidisciplinary department with three or fewer philosophers in it. The “Mentor Observation Program” is meant to address the following concern: Faculty in small philosophy programs often lack access to effective feedback about teaching. Such feedback may come from faculty in other departments who are not familiar with prevailing practices for teaching philosophy, or from a very limited number of philosophy colleagues. The program is funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA). Jack D. Musselman (St. Edwards University) of the AAPT writes: Are you a new faculty member in a small department with only a few philosophers? Maybe you’ve only been teaching for one year, or two years, and would like feedback about your teaching from a philosopher on another campus? If so, apply for the Mentor Observation Program. We’re looking for five new faculty who would like an experienced college teacher on another campus to observe them remotely and engage in discussions to improve their pedagogy. See here for details regarding the program and eligibility. The deadline to apply is September 2, 2024. Questions about the program may be sent to Jack D. Musselman (jackgm@stedwards.edu) or David Gray (degray@buffalo.edu).
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2024-07-30 14:41:33

Valparaiso to Eliminate Philosophy Program
Students at Valparaiso University will no longer be able to choose philosophy as a major or minor, according to a plan announced by the school’s president, José Padilla. The philosophy major and minor are two of several programs being cut. According to the NWI Times, the cuts are a response to decreased student enrollment at the Christian university. The philosophy programs at Valparaiso are currently housed in the Philosophy and Theology Department. Meanwhile, according to the Chicago Tribune, “over the next year, the faculty and the provost’s office will develop a new major and required courses in the field of religion.” The university says that “the freedom to pursue truth wherever it leads is at the heart of Valpo’s sense of community” and that “the university aims to foster in its students a lifelong commitment to this search for truth, encouraging the development of a sense of personal vocation as well as the intellectual and professional skills needed to pursue it.” How that aim is better achieved by the elimination of the very programs of study dedicated to it is unclear. (via Joel Pust)
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2024-07-30 11:43:02

Some Virtues Become Vices When Too Many People Possess Them (guest post)
“If individual vices can be virtuous from the perspective of a group, is the inverse also true? Does this mean that virtues, in some cases, can be vices in the context of group behavior?” That’s the subject taken up by Mandi Astola (Delft), Steven Bland (Huron), and Mark Alfano (Macquarie) in the following guest post. The post is based on a recent article of theirs, “Mandevillian Vices“, published in Synthese. This is the sixth in a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. (Posts in this series will remain pinned to the top of the homepage for several days following initial publication.) Some Virtues Become Vices When Too Many People Possess Them by Mandi Astola, Steven Bland, and Mark Alfano In Ghost in the Shell, the protagonist Major Motoko Kusanagi is asked to justify why she involves a normal human in her mission, rather than a powerful cyborg with superhuman capabilities. She replies: “If we all reacted the same way, we’d be predictable, and there’s always more than one way to view a situation. What’s true for the group is also true for the individual. It’s simple: overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It’s slow death.” Cyborgs are stronger, more resilient, better fighters and better investigators than regular humans. However, if all the members of the crew are strong, resilient, and skilled in the same way, then the members are all similar in that way and diversity is diminished. Many of us accept that diversity in gender, ethnicity, background and experience is generally a good thing for many groups. Many of us also accept that diversity of opinions is good. A “marketplace of ideas” is more likely to be interesting and fun, more likely to cater to the needs of different people and less likely to result in polarization and staleness, and, like Motoko Kusanaki says, vulnerability to attack and exploitation. These types of diversity are all positive. But what about diversity in virtuousness? Might it also be better to have people with different sets of virtues and vices? And does this mean that even vicious character traits can add value to collective reasoning by increasing diversity? Are there reasons to think that we should resist trying..
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2024-07-29 08:00:07

Mini-Heap
Recent additions to the Heap of Links… Discussion welcome. “Digging deeper into the question [of the ‘realness’ of numbers] might challenge our assumptions about not only the nature of numbers, but the nature of the universe itself” — the philosophy math is covered at Salon, in an article that quotes Penelope Maddy (Irvine) and others “In news stories… some of the letters in a swear word are obscured by asterisks. So you get f**k instead of ‘fuck’ and there’s this puzzle about how that works” — a conversation with Rebecca Roache (Royal Holloway, University of London) on swearing “The goal is to help industry… corporations as well as startups, or organizations like law enforcement or hospitals, to develop and deploy AI systems responsibly and ethically” — a profile of Cansu Canca (Northeastern), recently recognized for work that “fosters an AI environment of equality and empowerment” “The problems of the pursuit of virtue through craft are on full display in The Bear” — Errol Lord (Penn) on the television show The Bear and the virtue of hospitality “He had a way of bringing ideas from all these fields together into a grand synopsis, a grand vision that would then resonate with so many people” — David Chalmers on Daniel Dennett (video) The point is “to provide students with an experience of discussing and deliberating about difficult topics, knowing that they are with people that will disagree with them right from the beginning” — Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) is interviewed about “Deliberation Dinners” “What is morally good depends… on what a hypothetical congress of socially sophisticated, developmentally expensive humans, post-humans, aliens, sufficiently advanced AI, and others of the right type would judge to be good” — Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) offers up a characteristically weird (not an insult) metaethics Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-07-24 11:28:42

Two Ideas for Improving the Future of Philosophy (guest post)
“In this post, I want to encourage a conversation about active steps that we—all of us who love, teach, and write philosophy—might take to help philosophy’s future.” There are many concerns about the future of philosophy in higher education. In the following guest post, Alex Guerrero, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, puts forward two ideas he thinks are both feasible and effective about how to improve philosophy’s prospects. This is the fifth in a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. (Posts in this series will remain pinned to the top of the homepage for several days following initial publication.) Two Ideas for Improving the Future of Philosophy by Alex Guerrero For those of us who teach philosophy or love philosophy, it is hard not to notice the steady drumbeat of despair and demise sounding in the background of what we do. There has been much discussion on these pages and elsewhere about the many threats and concerns. Some aren’t particular to philosophy: the general decline of interest in and support for humanistic education and a decline in humanities majors and enrollment, the corporatist mindset and administrative takeover of higher education, the politicization of higher education, the political attacks on “critical race theory” and other humanistic subjects, the decline in public support of and funding for post-secondary education, the threats posed by AI to the humanities and university education. Other concerns—including the regular “what are you going to do with that?” jokes and “uselessness” rhetoric, circulating in the public and on occasion being embraced by administrators—are more philosophy-specific. These and other forces have resulted in philosophy department and program closures, firing of tenured philosophy faculty, failures to allow departments to replace retiring and departing faculty, and a general sense of precarity regarding the future of philosophy, at least within the university setting. Responses to all of this are often reactive (let’s try to put out this particular fire), fatalistic (so philosophy, too, burns in the world-engulfing flames), exhausted (I’d like to help, but I’m already on fire myself, thanks), or aloof (I can’t even smell the smoke from way up here). Many of these responses are understandable, even sensible. But they leave us struggling to..
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2024-07-23 15:01:46

Bernstein and Nolan from Notre Dame to Santa Cruz
Sara Bernstein and Daniel Nolan, currently professors of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, will be moving to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where Bernstein will be professor and chair of philosophy, and Nolan will be professor of philosophy. Professor Bernstein works in metaphysics, particularly the metaphysics of causation and related topics in ethics and law, as well as the metaphysics of time and time travel, and the metaphysics of feminist theory. You can learn more about her work here and here. Professor Nolan works mainly in metaphysics, especially modality and intensionality, and has also written on topics in moral philosophy, philosophy of science, epistemology, and the philosophy of David Lewis, among other subjects. You can learn more about his work here and here. They will be taking up their new positions at UC Santa Cruz in the summer of 2025.
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2024-07-23 12:37:25

The Honor Society for Philosophy Students Aims to Grow
Phi Sigma Tau is an honor society for undergraduates in philosophy. It currently has over 230 chapters in the United States at various institutions of higher education, and is looking for faculty to serve as officers for its national leadership. Charlie Huenemann, professor of philosophy at Utah State, is the new president of Phi Sigma Tau. He writes: So far as I know, it’s the only honor society in philosophy, and it’s been around for nearly a century (!). Its principal effects are at the level of local chapters. They host local conferences, induct new members, sponsor lectures, and so on, all with the aim of making connections among students who are interested in pursuing philosophy with greater intensity and dedication. The national organization serves the local chapters in sharing news among the chapters, processing membership fees, providing honor stoles and pins, and (not least!) publishing the undergraduate journal, Dialogue. Currently we are looking to fill two spots on our Executive Council. We are looking for a new executive secretary to handle membership, our newsletter, and the routine functions of keeping a national organization in order. We also are looking for a vice-president who can take over as president when my term expires. We are looking at the next few years as an opportunity to help make PST a greater resource for today’s students and faculty advisors. We’re looking at making our journal available online and smoothing out the process of collecting membership fees. I can imagine a small philosophy program taking on some of the executive duties and providing internships for students to help run the journal. We’re open to new ideas! Anyone who has questions or is interested should feel free to reach out to me at charlie.huenemann@usu.edu. You can learn more about Phi Sigma Tau here.
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2024-07-22 13:49:35

“You’re welcome to utilise AI platforms for creating your vision statement”
Publishing corporation Wiley has updated its pages for Philosophy and Public Affairs, now that its editors have all resigned, and has announced it is seeking new co-editors-in-chief for the journal. Wiley states that applications for the position should include, among other things, “a vision statement including a short assessment of how you see the strengths and weaknesses of the journal, including your vision for its future development.” It then adds: You’re welcome to utilise AI platforms for creating your vision statement, but incorporating your own ideas can provide a more advantageous and authentic reflection of your vision and values. What’s more absurd about this? An academic publisher admitting it will accept AI-written application materials, or an academic publisher thinking it has to advise academics to incorporate their “own ideas” into their own “vision statements”? (I know some will be tempted to say “it’s the request for something called a ‘vision statement,'” in the first place, but that ship has sailed, my friends.) It remains to be seen whether the academic community will, as it did with the Journal of Political Philosophy, collectively issue a call to not cooperate with Wiley. Perhaps it because Wiley is preparing for that possibility—and the likelihood that their pickings for a new editorial team will be slim to none—that they’re lowering the bar in this way. And perhaps that Wiley included something like this in their application instructions is evidence of the mentality that contributed to the problem they’re now trying to solve. (via Jay Wallace)
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2024-07-22 12:52:31

Academic Publisher Sells Authors’ Work to Microsoft for AI Training
The international academic publishing company Taylor and Francis says “it is providing Microsoft non-exclusive access to advanced learning content and data to help improve relevance and performance of AI systems”. That “learning content and data” is your writing and research. The statement from Taylor and Francis, published in an article at The Bookseller, follows the recent circulation on social media of details about an agreement between its parent company, Informa, and Microsoft. The Bookseller reports: Informa will be paid $10m+ for “an initial data access” of the works it has the rights to, with a recurring payment of an undisclosed sum to be made over the subsequent three years. When contacted by The Bookseller, Taylor & Francis said it is “protecting the integrity of our authors’ work and limits on verbatim text reproduction, as well as authors’ rights to receive royalty payments in accordance with their author contracts”. One of the biggest concerns… is over whether it is possible for Taylor & Francis’ authors to opt out of the AI partnership with Microsoft. [Ruth Alison] Clemens [whose work has been published by the firm] told The Bookseller: “There is no clarity from Taylor & Francis about whether an opt-out policy is in place or on the cards. But as they did not inform their authors about the deal in the first place, any opt-out policy is now not functional.” The Bookseller asked Taylor & Francis if it was possible to opt out and requested clarification over whether authors had been told about the AI deal. The publisher’s spokesman said he couldn’t comment further. Taylor and Francis publishes many philosophy journals.
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2024-07-22 11:29:26

Mini-Heap
Latest links… Discussion welcome. Should it be “illegal in most cases to fire an employee for their off-the-clock political activities or extramural speech”? — Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami) thinks so “Sausages and Socratic method come together as PhD students set up unlikely street food business” — public philosophy in China What happens when you repeatedly ask ChatGPT, after it answers a question, “That response… seems to rely on further foundational principles. What are they?” — on whether ChatGPT can explain “turtles all the way down” A philosopher asked, “why do so many great ideas come to you in the shower?” and a cosmetics firm got interested — the story of the partnership between Zachary Irving (Virginia) and Lush. (Lush’s promo video about the collaboration) “For the most part [extremists] have the same stupid ideas as the rest of us, only more so” — Joseph Heath (Toronto) on why, “when we think about extremism, our focus should be on the distribution of certain traits… in the population” and what this means “I know quite a lot about the experiences of other women of philosophy… There’s a lot of really terrible things out there, and it’s still happening… However, there are also big positive changes” — an interview with Jenny Saul (Sheffield) “If it were October 7 and IDF soldiers saved you, would you have been grateful? Or would you have preferred to die because they used violence to save you?” — the kind of question philosophers on the Israeli Defense Force’s Conscience Committee ask Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-07-19 11:56:12

$2.5 Million Grant for Philosopher-Led Project on Diversity & Disagreement
“Dynamism is the core of liberalism. The reason why liberalism is better than its global competitors, such as authoritarianism or different forms of perfectionism, is because it harnesses disagreements and diversity and channels it into productive outcomes.” That’s Ryan Muldoon, professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo and director of its Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, describing the project “Diversity, Dynamism and Inclusion: A New Multi-Method Approach for Studying Liberalism.” The project, for which he is the principal investigator, has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Also on the project are fellow Buffalo philosophers Justin Bruner, Alexandra Oprea, Alex Schaefer, and David Gray, as well as political scientist Jake Neiheisel and economist Erik Kimbrough (Chapman University). Professor Muldoon writes, “This work will involve formal models, computer simulations, lab experiments, and large-scale surveys, to help us better understand the mechanisms that allow liberal institutions to use diversity, dynamism and inclusion as tools for improving liberal orders.” He notes that, among other things, the grant will support the hiring of three post-docs and a lab manager. Further details here.
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2024-07-18 19:31:01

Philosophers Among the British Academy’s 2024 Fellows
The British Academy has announced the selection of 86 new fellows, and several philosophers are among them. They are: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University (International Fellow) David Chalmers, University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science, New York University (International Fellow) Joseph Chan, Distinguished Senior Research Fellow, Research Center for Humanities and Social Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan (International Fellow) Adrian Moore, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford; Fellow, St Hugh’s College, Oxford (UK Fellow) Lucy O’Brien, Richard Wollheim Professor of Philosophy, University College London (UK Fellow) Lea Ypi, Professor of Political Theory, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK Fellow) The fellowships aim to recognize “leading scholars from the humanities and social sciences”. You can see the full list of new fellows here.
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2024-07-18 12:45:53

The Benefits of Student Autonomy
What I sometimes call the “great Millian hope” is that freedom, knowledge, and happiness are positively correlated. A new study conducted by a philosopher and a psychologist provide some reasons to think that, in the college classroom at least, the hope can be realized. – In “Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education“, published yesterday at Science Advances, Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer (both at Carnegie Mellon University) report on a pair of studies they conducted about college student autonomy. In one, the students were given the choice of whether to have their particular class attendance mandatory and factored into their overall course grade. In the other, they gave students the option to opt out of some more challenging work. From the abstract of their paper: We demonstrate how two autonomy-supportive policies effectively increase classroom attendance and subject mastery. First, in a randomized controlled field study, we explored the effect of allowing students to choose whether to make their attendance mandatory (i.e., a component of their course grades). We found that nearly all students used the opportunity as a pre-commitment device and were subsequently more likely to attend class than were students whose attendance had been mandated. Second, in a multi-year cohort study, we explored the effect of allowing students to opt out of a challenging, high-effort assessment stream, finding that students given greater autonomy invested more effort into their assignments and attained greater proficiency with the material. And from the paper itself: Allowing students to commit to mandatory attendance and to choose more rigorous assignments led them to attend class more reliably, to put more effort into their assignments, and to understand the material better. Further, most students who chose mandatory attendance were happy with their choice (10% were not). You should check out the full paper for details on their studies and findings. Cullen and Oppenheimer think that the benefits of student autonomy probably apply beyond the domains in which they tested it. They write: While we have focused on attendance and assessment, similar choice architectures can be applied to many other course elements. For any mandatory course element, it is worth considering whether making it optional-mandatory might serve students better. They acknowledge that faculty..
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2024-07-16 13:59:06

The Case for Diamond Open Access
“As editors of one of our field’s leading journals, we feel a strong responsibility to help build collective momentum towards a better arrangement: a publishing model that no longer wastes massive amounts of public resources feeding profits to private corporations, secures editorial independence against the pressures of profit-making and makes research available to everyone, free of charge.” That’s Arash Abizadeh (McGill), writing in The Guardian about the mass editorial exodus from Philosophy and Public Affairs earlier this year. He makes clear the problems with the current dominant form of academic publishing: Academics do almost all of the substantive work to produce these articles free of charge: we do the research, write the articles, vet them for quality and edit the journals. Not only do these publishers not pay us for our work; they then sell access to these journals to the very same universities and institutions that fund the research and editorial labour in the first place. Universities need access to journals because these are where most cutting-edge research is disseminated. But the cost of subscribing to these journals has become so exorbitantly expensive that some universities are struggling to afford them. Consequently, many researchers (not to mention the general public) remain blocked by paywalls, unable to access the information they need. The “obvious alternative,” he says is that universities, libraries, and academic funding agencies can cut out the intermediary and directly fund journals themselves, at a far lower cost. This would remove commercial pressures from the editorial process, preserve editorial integrity and make research accessible to all. The term for this is “diamond” open access, which means the publishers charge neither authors, editors, nor readers (this is how our new journal will operate). Librarians have been urging this for years. The change, he says, is important not just for academics, but for society: “a revolution in the publishing landscape could also help stem the tide of disinformation and propaganda in the public sphere.” But there’s an obstacle: Academics still face a massive collective action problem: we want a new arrangement but each of us, individually, is strongly incentivised to stick with the status quo. Career advancement depends heavily on publishing in journals with established name recognition and prestige, and these journals are often owned..
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2024-07-16 13:23:13

Mini-Heap
New links… Discussion welcome. AI and agency — a brief conversation between David Papineau (KCL) and Majid D. Beni (METU/ODTU Ankara) “US politics is trapped in a Schmittian vortex, where it is impossible for anyone to seek common ground without being perceived as capitulating to the side of evil” — Justin Smith-Ruiu on the “feedback looping” of political life Not everyone has an “inner voice” — and variations in inner speech have “consequences for our cognition” according to recent research “The most effective guarantee against presidential lawbreaking has been, for over 200 years, the presidential belief that the law—and the system that produces such law—is worth taking seriously” — Michael Blake (Washington) on the importance of virtuous politicians Must public philosophy either “come too late to change ‘righteous minds’” or instead “crush freedom”? — Carlos Fraenkel (McGill) on why one might arrive at that question, and why its answer is “no” Everyone is somewhat conservative — Richard Pettigrew (Bristol) on G.A. Cohen’s defense of a version of conservatism “If you give people a choice between Instagram and Socrates, they will chose Socrates. At least some people do” — music historian and culture critic Ted Gioia is launching a 12-month humanities course, starting with Plato (via Dave Estlund) Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-07-15 12:51:15

Academic Equipment: The Chair
When you sit down to do your work, on what do you sit? I realize that is worded like a riddle or a kid’s joke, but it’s not intended as that. Rather, it’s just the second installment in an occasional series about the things academics tend to use—the tools, equipment, accessories, and other products we need (or want) for our work. This one is about chairs and other forms of seating. (The first one, a couple of months ago, was on work bags.) Do you have a particular chair, or type of chair, you use and would recommend to others? Or one that you’ve looked into and would like? Do you prefer one kind for the office and another at home? Do you prefer different types of chairs for different types of tasks (say, one for writing and another for reading)? Perhaps you forgo the traditional chair and opt for a stool, or a sofa (in the office?), or something like this. Tell us about it (and include links, if you’d like). Maybe you skip sitting altogether and work at a standing desk; if so, save that for a future installment on desks. Your seating suggestions, based on your experience, shopping around, or even wishing, are welcome, as are criticisms or warnings about certain chairs, as well as questions about them for others.
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2024-07-12 09:00:50

Mini-Heap
Recent links… Discussion welcome. “I think what you should be looking for here is not so much a way of telling people what they should and shouldn’t get worked up about and more a way of disagreeing zealously but civilly” — Robert Goodin (ANU) is interviewed by Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) in Quillette. “I asked several of his students whether their professor had stirred up any serious controversy during the semester—all said no” — a profile at Mother Jones of Peter Singer, who taught his last course at Princeton this past Spring. “Despite his self-assessment that he was ‘a lousy junior consultant’, he had seen a need for ‘proper rigorous ethics advisory’ service that would charge BCG- and McKinsey-level fees” — a profile of ethics consultant David Rodin “It might be crass or mercenary to point out that public philosophy increases demand for philosophy education. It’s also true” — Ian Olasov (NYU) on the reasons for, and questions raised by, public philosophy If you’re an empirically-minded philosopher relying on social science studies, you need to learn how to read them critically — example: social media’s effects on teen mental health (via MR) “For at least a millennium, humans have attempted take… two marvelously malleable and uniquely human abilities—abstract thinking and descriptive language—and outsource them to something more rational” — the history of “truth machines” includes philosophers, mathematicians, and zealots “One conclusion… we should draw from LLMs’ success is that far more of our own language production may be rote, on autopilot, than we commonly tend to believe… The key question is how far down this goes” — Yoshua Bengio (Montreal) & Vincent Conitzer (Oxford) on what AI can teach us about ourselves Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-07-11 12:04:37

NYU Receives $6 Million for Mind, Ethics, & Policy Center
New York University has received $6 million in donations for an endowment to support the creation of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP). The center emerged from the Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program at NYU, established just two years ago. It will be led by philosopher Jeff Sebo, who is associate professor of environmental studies at NYU, director of NYU’s Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, and co-director of its Wild Animal Welfare Program. The mission of CMEP is “to advance understanding of the sentience and moral status of nonhumans, including animals and AIs” towards “a world in which all sentient and morally significant beings are treated with respect and compassion.” The endowment was funded by two donations: $5,000,000 from The Navigation Fund and $1,000,000 from Polaris Ventures. Further details here.
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https://dailynous.com/2024/07/11/nyu-receives-6-million-for-mind-ethics-policy-center/

2024-07-10 09:00:04

Lillehammer from Birkbeck to Sheffield
Hallvard Lillehammer, currently Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, will be moving to the University of Sheffield, where he will be Professor of Philosophy. Dr. Lillehammer works on topics in the history of ethics, metaethics, normative ethics, and social and political philosophy. You can learn more about his work here and here. A brief interview with him is here. He will take up his new position at Sheffield in January of 2025.
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2024-07-09 11:45:34

Mini-Heap
New additions to the Heap of Links… Discussion welcome. “I didn’t feel like I belonged on the same side as someone with a job and home… I will never forget that longing to be at the university, to be studying, and to be one of those philosophy students with self-confidence” — Sophia Stone (Lynn U.) shares the personal struggles that inform her work bringing philosophy outside the university setting The epistemic value of fairness — tools used to examine algorithmic fairness ” can effectively map out the different parts of a hard problem and isolate the precise regions of the problem that make it hard to solve” On caring about what others think — Frederick Neuhouser (Columbia) is interviewed by Johnathan Bi “The analytic debate… takes one of the most profound questions that human beings can ask and has turned it into a discussion of the private prejudices and contingent beliefs… of a bunch of people who have been similarly socialised” — Pranay Sanklecha explains why he left a tenure-track job to “do philosophy in the world” Is Kant’s philosophy “fundamentally and profoundly anti-Black”? — Dilek Huseyinzadegan and George Yancy (Emory) discuss Kant, race, and racism New AI app lets you “text” with authors, including several philosophers — the new frontier in public philosophy? “A lot of academic writing is formulaic and routine. Rarely does anything break out of the conservative mold of traditional article structures” — John Danaher (Galway) on how academics might benefit from John McPhee’s “elaborate and playful approach” to writing Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-07-08 11:36:32

Supporting Higher Education in Gaza (guest post)
“No matter what else one thinks of this conflict, our hearts should break over the loss of educational opportunities for over a million people which will extend far beyond this war.” – Preston J. Werner, senior lecturer in philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is donating to a fundraiser by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) to support higher education in Gaza, and has offered to match donations to it by any philosophers and philosophy students up to a total of £2000 (approximately $2500.00). As BRISMES notes on their fundraising page, Since October 2023, Israel has damaged or destroyed buildings on every university campus in the Gaza Strip. Libraries, science labs, and historical archives have all been obliterated. Israel has killed hundreds of university students and more than 100 academics, including numerous internationally respected scholars, deans and presidents, thus serving a harsh blow not only to the physical infrastructure of higher education in the Gaza Strip, but also to its intellectual underpinnings. At a time when the Palestinian population in Gaza needs them most, it will take years to rebuild university programmes in social work, physiotherapy and medicine, but also in engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, law and history. In what follows, Dr. Werner discusses why he is donating to the fund, and encourages you to do so, too. Supporting Higher Education in Gaza by Preston J. Werner What can we do, as philosophers and academics, about the ongoing war in Gaza? This is a secondary question to what we can do, as citizens of our respective countries, and as human beings, about the ongoing war in Gaza. But the first question is a question that is also of central relevance to most people reading this blog. One answer to this question is that we can engage in moral, political, and legal thinking surrounding the war. Several people have done so on this blog and elsewhere, and while I of course have strong opinions on the issue, I don’t intend to add to that discussion here. I instead encourage you to read work on the topic by philosophers and academics who have spent large chunks of their life thinking about these issues. Here is something that I think should unite..
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2024-07-04 11:28:00

Don’t Accept an Offer from Australian Catholic University
In the latest of a series of actions that appear to be an attempt prove itself an employer of last resort, Australian Catholic University (ACU) has fired philosopher Stephen Finlay, the former director of its Dianoia Institute, which it abruptly shut down last year, despite the fact that it announced at the time that Finlay would have a position in its Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. They gave him two weeks notice. Details about the closure of the Dianoia Institute last year are here. Readers may recall that ACU lured Finlay and about a dozen other philosophers to Australia with the creation of a philosophy research institute, beginning in 2019, and continuing to hire new people as late as 2023. Just a few years later the university abandoned the project, selling its destruction of the institute with the promise that a few philosophers associated with it, including Finlay, would still have jobs at ACU. It now has abandoned that commitment. In a Facebook post that has been circulating among philosophers, Finlay writes: I’m sorry to have to share that as of June 14th, 2024 I find myself unexpectedly unemployed. I was informed by management on May 30th that my employment at the Australian Catholic University was being terminated, as my continuing position as Professor of Philosophy is “no longer required”. While I am dying to be able to share more about events at ACU, I cannot say more at present. My family and I are now in a dire situation, as the timing of this could hardly be worse. I had expected to have a continuing position at ACU for 2024 onwards at the conclusion of my 5-year administrative term as Director of the (former) Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. International vacancies for the 2024-25 academic year were filled months ago, and jobs for the 2025-26 academic year have not even been advertised yet and will mostly not commence for another 12-15 months. I’m therefore putting out an urgent SOS for any kind of temporary or part-time university affiliation(s)–such as visiting fellowships or adjunct roles–that would help us pay the bills over the next year until I am able to secure new permanent employment. I’m open to travelling to and..
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2024-07-03 12:37:20

Kathleen Okruhlik (1951-2024)
Kathleen Okruhlik, a philosopher at Western University, died last month. Dr. Okruhlik worked in philosophy of science and feminist theory. You can learn more about her writing here. Okruhlik joined the philosophy department at Western in the 1980s, and over the years served in various faculty and administrative positions. She earned her PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and her undergraduate degree from Marquette University. The following obituary was provided by James Brown. Kathleen Okruhlik (1951-2024) Kathleen Okruhlik was born in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up in Houston. She attended Marquette University then Pittsburgh HPS for her PhD. She taught in the Philosophy Department for four decades at the University of Western Ontario, in London Ontario. She was the founding Director of the Women’s Studies Institute (later renamed Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies); she chaired the Department of Philosophy; she served two terms as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. While Dean, she was instrumental in the initial creation of the Rotman Institute for Philosophy. While much of her energy went into administration, she also did important work on the history and philosophy of science (Newton, Leibniz, Kant) and feminism and the philosophy of science. She coedited several books on, for instance, Leibniz, Women and Reason, and PSA 1992. Her most influential paper was probably “Gender and the Biological Sciences.” It put two doctrines together: there is no logic of discovery and theory evaluation is fundamentally comparative. She drew the consequence that for the sake of better science the pool of those who create theories had to be as diverse as possible. This leads to a policy of affirmative action that is based on epistemic considerations, not correcting past injustices. Almost weekly she received (and still receives) discussions of this paper and even fan letters, especially from young women. In early May she suffered a stroke and declined rapidly. She died on June 6 peacefully with her family at her side, including her husband of 50 years, Jim Brown (a philosopher at Toronto), and her two children, Elizabeth and Stephen. She has two young grandchildren.
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2024-07-02 12:38:39

Official & Unofficial Action
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, issued yesterday, concerns the extent to which the president is immune from criminal prosecution. The Supreme Court’s majority judgment relies on a distinction between a president’s official and unofficial conduct, holding that: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts. The whole decision is here. I encourage anyone interested in discussing the decision to read at least the first eight pages of it (the summary, or “syllabus”). Of particular concern to the Court is the extent to which prosecution and the threat of prosecution would inhibit or prevent presidents from acting in ways that, they say, the framers of the Constitution envisioned: The Framers designed the Presidency to provide for a “vigorous” and “energetic” Executive. The Federalist No. 70, pp. 471–472… They vested the President with “supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity.”… Appreciating the “unique risks” that arise when the President’s energies are diverted by proceedings that might render him “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties,” the Court has recognized Presidential immunities and privileges “rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history.” Previously, in protecting the President from civil lawsuits The Court’s “dominant concern” was to avoid “diversion of the President’s attention during the decisionmaking process caused by needless worry as to the possibility of damages actions stemming from any particular official decision.” But when prosecutors have sought evidence from the President, the Court has consistently rejected Presidential claims of absolute immunity. Turning to the matter of criminal prosecution, the Court’s majority says: Criminally prosecuting a President for official conduct undoubtedly poses a far greater threat of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch than simply seeking evidence in his possession. The danger is greater than what led the Court to recognize absolute Presidential immunity from civil damages liability—that the President would be chilled from taking the “bold and..
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2024-07-02 09:00:38

Mini-Heap
New links… Discussion welcome. What does it mean to be “liberal all the way down”? — Alexandre Lefebvre (Sydney) talks about the personal and the political with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) “A key part of the study of human rationality is a theory of rational inquiry for bounded agents” — David Thorstad (Vanderbilt) discusses “inquiry under bounds” “If you picture being at home now but with your router destroyed and your phone disconnected—that is really not what it was like” — Patricia Marino (Waterloo) would like your help recalling the “textural experience of life before the internet” “Within a single domain, status is zero-sum—I cannot move up the substack leaderboard without someone else moving down—but status-in-general is not” — Brad Skow (MIT) on multiple status hierarchies Advice: “sleep with people for whom sex is as important as it is to you” — Lillian Fishman asks, “What are we doing when we have sex with someone for whom sex isn’t what it is for us?” “Aspects of how we organize ourselves ought to be keyed to… the world we hope to build. But we may find that the world as it already has been organized prevents meaningful progress toward that ideal” — Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) and others on climate, state, and utopia “Analytical philosophy… is premised upon certain kinds of dualism… certain kinds of unintelligible distinctions” — Michael Della Rocca (Yale) in conversation with Hilary Lawson and Sophie Scott-Brown Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-07-01 09:00:45

Online Philosophy Resources (Monthly) Update
The usual weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books is a monthly report this summer. Here’s the edition for the past month. (If you notice something missing from the weekly update, let us know. Thanks.) SEP New: Moral Demands and Permissions/Prerogatives by Thomas Hurka. Bernard Mandeville by Mikko Tolonen and Robin Douglass. Revised: Torture by Seumas Miller. Form vs. Matter by Thomas Ainsworth. Divine Revelation by Mats Wahlberg. Freedom of Association by Kimberley Brownlee and David Jenkins. Sentence Connectives in Formal Logic by Lloyd Humberstone. Affirmative Action by Robert Fullinwider. The Consistent Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics by Robert B. Griffiths. Democracy by Tom Christiano and Sameer Bajaj. Self-Consciousness by Joel Smith. Wilhelm Windelband by Katherina Kinzel. Touch by Matthew Fulkerson. Moral Naturalism by Matthew Lutz. Methodological Individualism by Joseph Heath. Units and Levels of Selection by Elisabeth Lloyd. Doxography of Ancient Philosophy by Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia. Hermann Weyl by John L. Bell and Herbert Korté. Word Meaning by Luca Gasparri and Diego Marconi. Communitarianism by Daniel Bell. al-Farabi’s Psychology and Epistemology by Luis Xavier López-Farjeat. Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction by Ron Mallon. Catharine Macaulay by Karen Green. Gaṅgeśa by Stephen Phillips. Moral Responsibility by Matthew Talbert. Ontological Arguments by Graham Oppy, Joshua Rasmussen, and Joseph Schmid. Contradiction by Laurence R. Horn. IEP ∅ NDPR Divine Contradiction by Jc Beall is reviewed by Daniel Molto. 1000-Word Philosophy ∅ Project Vox ∅ BJPS Short Reads Institutional Decision-Making Heuristics by David Thorstad. Open-Access Book Reviews in Academic Philosophy Journals Kant, Race, and Racism by Huaping Lu-Adler is reviewed by Pauline Kleingeld in Mind. Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy by David Chalmers is reviewed by Lucy Osler in Philosophical Psychology. The Pleistocene Social Contract: Culture and Cooperation in Human Evolution, by Kim Sterelny is reviewed by Andra Meneganzin in Philosophical Psychology. Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media Rapture by Christopher Hamilton is reviewed by Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed. Dangerous Jokes: How Racism and Sexism Weaponize Humor by Claire Horisk, and Dogwhistles and Figleaves: How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood by Jennifer Saul are together reviewed by Rachel Fraser at The Times Literary Supplement...
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https://dailynous.com/2024/07/01/online-philosophy-resources-monthly-update-4/

2024-06-28 12:22:57

Royal Institute of Philosophy Essay Prizes Awarded
The Royal Institute of Philosophy has announced the winners of essay prizes for its publications Philosophy and Think. The theme of the 2023 Philosophy Essay Prize was “methodology”. The winners and their essays are Thomas Raleigh (Luxembourg) for his “The Emptiness of Naturalism” and Stefan Rinner (LMU Munich) for his “Scorekeeping in a Therapeutic Language Game”. Suilin Lavelle (Edinburgh) was named runner-up for her “Less Theory, More Observation.” Here are abstracts of the papers: The Emptiness of Naturalism by Thomas Raleigh I argue that the term ‘naturalism’ is so empty of meaning that it is not suitable for serious theorizing in philosophy. In particular, I argue that the question of whether or not some theory or thesis should count as naturalistic is an empty verbal dispute with no further theoretical significance. I also discuss naturalism construed as a methodological thesis and argue that any plausible version will collapse into triviality. Lastly, I briefly discuss the idea that naturalism is not a thesis at all but rather a ‘stance’ and suggest that this too succumbs to the charge of emptiness. I conclude that we should stop talking about naturalism altogether. Scorekeeping in a Therapeutic Language Game by Stefan Rinner In ‘Scorekeeping in a Language Game’, David Lewis famously compares conversations to playing baseball. Just like baseball, conversations have a score which, together with rules for correct play, determines which utterances are acceptable or even true in the course of a conversation. For all similarities, however, there is a crucial difference between conversations and baseball games. Unlike the score of a baseball game, conversational score adjusts in such a way that the utterances made in the course of a conversation count as correct play. This is also known as accommodation. Starting from this scorekeeping approach to language use, the overall aim of the present paper is to provide a better understanding of how the methods and interventions of talking therapies work from a linguistic point of view. According to the scorekeeping model, the methods and interventions of talking therapies are effective by changing the score of the therapeutic conversation, in particular in the form of accommodation. This has significant implications for the therapeutic practice, as it highlights the importance of training therapists in the linguistic aspects of therapeutic..
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2024-06-28 11:29:00

Mini-Heap
Latest links… Discussion welcome. “Fully programmable DNA rearrangements” — advances in genetic engineering: “Bridge recombination can universally modify genetic material through sequence-specific insertion, excision, inversion, and more, enabling a word processor for the living genome beyond CRISPR.” “Democracy needs universities like the Kyiv School of Economics to thrive. But democracy also needs to survive. That’s why I’m donating the funds to Come Back Alive” — news coverage of the donation by Jason Stanley (Yale) of his entire salary as an honorary professor at the Ukrainian university (previously) There seems to be a conflict between what interpersonal ideals like solidarity ask of us and what individual ideals like virtue or autonomy ask of us — but distinguishing between different kinds of solidarity can help here, argues Samuel Dishaw (UNC Chapel Hill) A tale of two philosophical archives — Peter Salmon on their origins and significance Reflections on the point of philosophy job market advice — from Trevor Hedberg (Arizona), responding to an earlier post from Marcus Arvan (Tampa) “Let us debunk the ignorant claim that philosophy has not progressed as a discipline” — Brian Ball (Northeastern U. London) & Patrycja Kaszynska (U. of the Arts London) respond to an attack on philosophy departments “Maybe the famous philosopher’s inclusion in the game necessitates renaming it ‘Magic: The Symposium’” — Socrates is now part of the ‘Magic: The Gathering’ game Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-06-27 16:00:00

Journal of the APA to Go Open Access
In less than two weeks, the Journal of the American Philosophical Association (JAPA) will transition into an open access journal. – Heather Battaly (Connecticut), editor-in-chief of JAPA, writes: The Editorial Team of JAPA is delighted to announce that all articles accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association from July 9 onwards will be Open Access, published with a Creative Commons license and freely available to read online. We have an Open Access option for every author: the costs of open access publication will be covered through agreements between the publisher and the author’s institution, payment of APCs (Article Processing Charges) from grants or other funds, or else waived entirely, ensuring every author can publish and enjoy the benefits of Open Access. For more information about Open Access at JAPA, see this FAQ and the Journal’s Open Access Options page. The journal will continue to be published by Cambridge University Press.
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2024-06-27 11:56:47

Moral Progress & Moral Philosophers
A post by Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) at Digressions & Impressions, responding to an essay by Daniel Kelly and Evan Westra (Purdue) at Aeon that was mentioned recently in the Heap of Links, raises questions about moral progress and the role that the work of moral philosophers plays in it. Schliesser writes: What set me off on this rant is this sentence: “changing the social world for the better will very often mean changing some old, harmful norms and replacing them with better ones”…. Let’s stipulate there is a germ of truth here. But we don’t consciously norm-engineer our way to a morally improved social world primarily or even very often; the drivers of moral progress are not the moral elect; rather collective action, prophecy (religious and philosophic), institutional change, and the unintended side-effects of long-range patterns of behavior. You can read Kelly and Westra’s essay here and Schliesser’s response here. Discussion welcome.
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2024-06-26 19:26:03

Dorsey from Kansas to Oxford
Dale Dorsey, currently professor and chair of philosophy at the University of Kansas, will be moving to the University of Oxford, where he will be professor of moral philosophy. Professor Dorsey works in moral and political philosophy. He is the author of, among other things, A Theory of Prudence (OUP 2021), The Limits of Moral Authority (OUP 2016), and The Basic Minimum: A Welfarist Approach. You can learn more about his writings here. At Oxford, he will be based at Somerville College, where he will be a tutorial fellow. He will be taking up his new position at Oxford in the summer of 2025.
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2024-06-26 14:32:44

Two Philosophers Bring Expert-Based AI to Your Reading Experience
John Kaag (University of Massachusetts, Lowell) and Clancy Martin (University of Missouri, Kansas City) have teamed up with businessman and philosophy enthusiast John Dubuque to create a new business that brings together great books, expert commentary, and artificial intelligence. Called Rebind Publishing, the idea, according to the New York Times, is to “pair a world-class expert with a classic work and use technology similar to ChatGPT to replicate the dialogue between a student and teacher.” Each of the experts, selected by Kaag and Martin, provide commentary on and are interviewed about their assigned text. They also agree to have their voice cloned and let their words be used and manipulated by the platform’s AI. That way, when a reader pauses to ask the text a question, the text—or rather a language model trained on the ideas of the expert and speaking with their voice—can respond. Experts recruited to comment on works, besides Kaag and Martin themselves, include: John Banville (Dubliners), Lena Dunham (A Room With a View), Roxane Gay (The Age of Innocence), Marlon James (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Laura Kipnis (Romeo and Juliet), Bill McKibben (selections from John Muir), Margaret Atwood (A Tale of Two Cities), Elaine Pagels (selections from the New Testament and Secret Gospels), and James Wood (Chekhov), among others. Kipnis interviewed Dubuque, the businessman developing and funding Rebind, and wrote about the project and her experience with it for Wired. She writes: The innovation, [Dubuque] explained, was making the… commentary “chattable.” It’s designed to “meet the user where they are”… The App isn’t for everyone, Dubuque stressed. College students can use it, obviously, but the target audience is adults, or at least the book-loving subset. (Five million people in the United States are in book clubs, Kaag had mentioned.) “You read all these wonderful books as an undergrad,” Dubuque said, “and then you graduate and you read newsletters.” The big thing a user has to understand is that Rebind is designed to be an active experience. “If you’re not responding to these questions and thinking deeply, you’re not going to have as much fun.” Kaag too had stressed that the more a reader puts of themselves into the chat windows—highlighting and reacting, producing “marginalia”—the more interesting the..
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2024-06-25 09:00:07

Misinformation Mistakes (guest post)
“The mistake involves grouping together into an all-or-nothing package entire sets of claims whose epistemological credentials are quite varied. It also often involves collapsing epistemic and moral concerns.” In the following guest post, Eric Winsberg, professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida, discusses why he has become “extremely skeptical of recent philosophical work, both in social epistemology and in philosophy of science, around such topics as misinformation or fake news.” This is the third in a series of weekly guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. (Posts in this series will remain pinned to the top of the homepage for several days following initial publication.) Misinformation Mistakes by Eric Winsberg I recently reviewed a book by Paul Thagard called Falsehoods Fly: Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It for the Journal of Value Inquiry. (It got some uptake here.) The main reason that I was eager to review this particular book is that I have become extremely skeptical of recent philosophical work, both in social epistemology and in philosophy of science, around such topics as misinformation or fake news. If readers are interested in the topic, I urge them to go and read the review before they join the discussion of this topic below. This isn’t just because I want the clicks. It’s because to understand and appreciate the root of my skepticism requires working through some of the (admittedly) tedious scrutiny that I subject some of Thagard’s claims to. The book covers a number of topics, including the war in Ukraine, inequality, and political conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, but I focus primarily on the chapters on the Covid-19 pandemic and on climate change, both because those are areas about which I have some (admittedly limited) expertise, and because those two topics share a pair of features that I think aggravates a wound in the misinformation discourse in philosophy. What pair of features do the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change share? First, both subject areas are founded on certain well-credentialed propositions that are nonetheless doubted by a highly vocal minority. Covid-19 was a real virus that killed millions of people. Carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas that has contributed to some of the observed warming..
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2024-06-24 16:42:56

Clarke from Berkeley to Yale
Timothy Clarke, currently associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, is moving to Yale University, where he will be associate professor of philosophy. Professor Clarke works in ancient Greek philosophy. According to Paul Franks, chair of philosophy at, Yale, Clarke “is currently working on Aristotle (and others) on Platonic forms; the methodological problem of how to engage with positions which seem, in various ways, to call the basic presuppositions of philosophical argument into question; and natural teleology.” He is the author of, among other things, Aristotle and the Eleatic One (2019, OUP). You can learn more about his work here. Clarke will take up his new position at Yale on July 1st, 2024. Professor Franks shared some other Yale Philosophy news: Both David Charles and Kenneth Winkler will be retired as of July 1st, 2024 The department has made two junior hires—Tyler Brooke-Wilson (currently a Bersoff fellow at NYU) and Claudia Dumitru (currently a post-doc at Princeton)—who will be starting at Yale in July.
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2024-06-24 11:32:54

AI Generated Content and Academic Journals
What are good policy options for academic journals regarding the detection of AI generated content and publication decisions? As a group of associate editors of Dialectica note below, there are several issues involved, including the uncertain performance of AI detection tools and the risk that material checked by such tools is used for the further training of AIs. They’re interested in learning about what policies, if any, other journals have instituted in regard to these challenges and how they’re working, as well as other AI-related problems journals should have policies about. They write: As associate editors of a philosophy journal, we face the challenge of dealing with content that we suspect was generated by AI. Just like plagiarized content, AI generated content is submitted under false claim of authorship. Among the unique challenges posed by AI, the following two are pertinent for journal editors. First, there is the worry of feeding material to AI while attempting to minimize its impact. To the best of our knowledge, the only available method to check for AI generated content involves websites such as GPTZero. However, using such AI detectors differs from plagiarism software in running the risk of making copyrighted material available for the purposes of AI training, which eventually aids the development of a commercial product. We wonder whether using such software under these conditions is justifiable. Second, there is the worry of delegating decisions to an algorithm the workings of which are opaque. Unlike plagiarized texts, texts generated by AI routinely do not stand in an obvious relation of resemblance to an original. This renders it extremely difficult to verify whether an article or part of an article was AI generated; the basis for refusing to consider an article on such grounds is therefore shaky at best. We wonder whether it is problematic to refuse to publish an article solely because the likelihood of its being generated by AI passes a specific threshold (say, 90%) according to a specific website. We would be interested to learn about best practices adopted by other journals and about issues we may have neglected to consider. We especially appreciate the thoughts of fellow philosophers as well as members of other fields facing similar problems. — Aleks..
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/24/ai-generated-content-and-academic-journals/

2024-06-19 09:00:14

A Searchable Digital Map of Principia Mathematica
Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, is known for its significant influence over the subsequent decades on work in philosophy, logic, and early computer science. It was originally published in three volumes (totaling 1,992 pages) between 1910 and 1913. Now, it’s available in a new form: a digital searchable map. The aim of the map, say creators Landon D.C. Elkind (Western Kentucky), Gregory Landini (Iowa), and Matthew Butler (Iowa), is to “make clear structural connections between different parts of Principia and to make analyzable data about the theorems, definitions, and primitive postulates in its text.” They urge people to try out the map and report back using the feedback form here. They say: “Particularly helpful would be any and all (a) feature requests, (b) apparent bugs or issues, and (c) evaluative feedback (whether positive or not).” One’s first view of the map, upon opening the site, is this: You can scroll horizontally to the right through the map or jump to a specific section using the search feature. You can also click on each node for an unpacking of it, including a brief description and a visualization of which other parts of the book the proof in that section cites, and which other parts of the book cite it, as well as a link to the original text. Here’s what you see when you click on section 2.15, for example: There’s also a table which presents this intra-citational data in a filterable form. A user guide is here. The project was funded by a $281,104 Scholarly Editions and Translations grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded last year. You can watch an introductory video about the Principia map below: Related: The Tractatus As Subway Map. Other posts about visualizations of philosophy are here.
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/19/a-searchable-digital-map-of-principia-mathematica/

2024-06-18 12:44:13

An Opportunity for Reforming Peer Review (guest post)
“Current dissatisfaction with peer review is such an opportunity for change, so we call for taking advantage of this opportunity as fully as we can. We build our recommendations on the idea that mutual critical engagement is a skill developed through ongoing practice and actual engagement with each other’s ideas.” In the following guest post, Samantha Copeland and Lavinia Marin (Delft University of Technology) put forward the case for an “open forum” model of peer review in philosophy. The post is based on the fuller discussion and argument in their “‘It takes a village to write a really good paper’: A normative framework for peer reviewing in philosophy” which was published in Metaphilosophy earlier this year. This is the second in a series of weekly guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. (Posts in this series will remain pinned to the top of the homepage for several days following initial publication.) An Opportunity for Reforming Peer Review by Samantha Copeland and Lavinia Marin We recently published an article on peer review and reforming the way that publications are produced, reviewed, and disseminated in academic philosophy. We had been discussing this issue for a while, and more and more was being written on the problem by philosophers on social media and in print. Good points were being brought up about the dominance of the English language and its effect on how we evaluated philosophical arguments, and proposals for reform included one we found particularly interesting: the “open forum”. This format advocates for a public, iterative, and community-driven peer review process. What would this look like in academic philosophy? Pre-publication and post-publication forums have been proposed, whether run by journals or societies, often similar to arXiv (hosted by Cornell). We propose that peer review should also happen in a similarly open context. On our proposal, an archive would host not only papers, but also comments and advice from others alongside it, as part of a discussion and improvement process initiated by authors who post their work. The system would not be anonymized. It’s a risky idea. Take, for example, the concerns expressed over the Matthew Effect in the ongoing discussion in the literature. Heesen and Bright (2021) suggest that their..
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/18/an-opportunity-for-reforming-peer-review-guest-post/

2024-06-17 15:40:15

Survey: What Makes a Good Philosophy Journal?
What makes for a good philosophy journal? A new survey is underway to help answer that question. A few years ago Boudewijn de Bruin (Groningen, Gothenburg) conducted a study that led to a journal ranking published last year in Synthese and discussed here. With his colleague at Groningen, How Hwee Ong, he is now conducting a follow-up study to gain an understanding of the attributes philosophers believe quality journals should possess, to gain insights into philosophers’ opinions on the peer review system in philosophy, and to gather information that could be used to establish a ranking of philosophy journals based on procedural quality and integrity. He says that the survey is designed such that no identifying information (name, affiliation, etc.) is requested, and should take 10-15 minutes to complete. You can access the survey here.
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/17/survey-what-makes-a-good-philosophy-journal/

2024-06-17 12:42:20

UNC Asheville Philosophy Under Threat
UNC Asheville Chancellor Kimberly van Noort has proposed eliminating the Department of Philosophy and the philosophy major program at the school. Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Drama, Religious Studies, and the French and German concentrations in Languages and Literatures are also among the programs the chancellor is suggesting be cut. The cuts are intended to help alleviate a “structural deficit forecast at approximately $6 million” owed to several factors, including “an enrollment decline of about 25 percent,” van Noort said in a statement announcing the proposed cuts. In addition to the academic cuts, van Noort proposed eliminating two administrative positions and consolidating two others. Van Noort’s statement provides no details as to how much closing the academic programs will save the University, though the cuts will involve terminating many faculty positions. The Department of Philosophy has six faculty, all but one of whom appears to be tenured. The statement does not say whether any philosophy courses would be offered at UNC Asheville if the cuts are enacted. UNC Asheville professor of religious studies Rodger Payne, says: The idea that if you’re going to get a liberal arts degree that you’re now going to do it without encountering philosophy, the classics, religious studies — just seems absolutely unconscionable to me. That’s the core of who we are as a liberal arts institution. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to claim that title anymore. According to the Citizen Times, the proposal will go before the UNC System Board of Governors at its July 25th meeting.
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/17/unc-asheville-philosophy-under-threat/

2024-06-17 07:30:14

Santoni De Sio from Delft to Eindhoven
Filippo Santoni de Sio, currently associate professor in ethics and philosophy of technology at Deflt University of Technology, has been hired as professor of philosophy of ethics and philosophy in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology. Professor Santoni de Sio works on philosophical issues of freedom and responsibility, and democracy, especially in relation to emerging technologies such as AI, neurotechnologies, and robotics. You can learn more about his research here and here. He takes up his new position at TU Eindhoven in September, 2024.
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/17/santoni-de-sio-from-delft-to-eindhoven/

2024-06-13 10:35:48

Mini-Heap
New links… Discussion welcome. Is this going to be David Hume’s pop culture moment? — Hume scholars, get ready for the next installment of The Hunger Games series, which author Susanne Collins is based on the philosopher’s idea of “implicit submission” The path a scientific example took from obscurity to world fame runs through two philosophers and a science fiction author — a cultural history of Schrödinger’s Cat Three fake philosophy journals made it into Elsevier’s widely used Scopus database — philosophers Tomasz Żuradzki & Leszek Wroński (Jagiellonian University) made the discovery “An agent’s assumptions about their situation… are not above question” — Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami) on the risks of applying judgments about thought experiments to real-world cases (responding to Setiya in #5, below) “What gets lost in the memes is why the trolley problem matters” — Kieran Setiya (MIT) on the famous example, why Thomson changed her mind about it, and its application to recent events “She’s one of those philosophers, like Simone Weil or Alasdair MacIntyre, whose name calls to mind a unique and immediately recognizable way of thinking. Or at least, Rose’s name would do that, if she were better known” — Maya Krishnan (Oxford/Chicago) on the philosophy of Gillian Rose, who wrote six books prior to her death in 1995 at age 48 “The principle of institutional neutrality lends itself to being used in a merely cynical way” — Anton Ford (Chicago) on Israel, Hamas, and the institutional neutrality of universities Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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2024-06-11 11:41:48

Stilz Resigns from PPA; Shares Instructions to Authors
Anna Stilz (currently at Princeton, soon to be at Berkeley), editor-in-chief of Philosophy and Public Affairs, has submitted her resignation to the journal’s publisher, Wiley. – Her resignation follows the mass resignation of the rest of the editorial team at the journal in May and their announcement that they are launching a new journal. Stilz wrote in to share the news about her resignation and provide instructions for some authors who had submitted papers to the journal. She writes: I have resigned as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy and Public Affairs and Wiley has now accepted my resignation. I will continue to serve as Editor in a limited, transitional capacity, only to process papers that have been previously accepted by the journal, and reviews on revised papers that were submitted to the journal before May 22, 2024. Authors whose papers were conditionally accepted by the journal prior to May 22 must resubmit by June 25 if they wish their paper to be published in Philosophy and Public Affairs under the current masthead. We hope to issue final decisions on these papers by June 30. Please direct inquiries regarding all other recently submitted manuscripts to Wiley’s manager for the journal, Hannah Reed, at hreed@wiley.com. Related: Editors at Philosophy & Public Affairs Resign; Will Launch New OA Journal
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/11/stilz-resigns-from-ppa-shares-instructions-to-authors/

2024-06-11 08:00:39

Ethical Evidence, Ethical Experience, and Shamelessness (guest post)
“A kind of science-envy is often visible in much of what analytic philosophers have had to say about the question of evidence in ethics… In some cases, however, what deprives us of the truth is not scientism, but other forms of prejudice.” In the following guest post, Sophie Grace Chappell, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University, discusses what counts as evidence in moral philosophy, how methodological norms have excluded certain forms of evidence, and why this is a problem. This is the first in a series of weekly guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. Ethical Evidence, Ethical Experience, and Shamelessness by Sophie Grace Chappell Scientists, we’re told, start by compiling data, e.g. observations of the positions of the stars and planets over time, and then construct a theory that makes sense of those observations. Some philosophers say explicitly that they see the moral philosopher’s job as analogous. The scientist’s task, they tell us, is to build a scientific theory, a structure of laws or lawlike generalizations that neatly fits and explains the scientific data; likewise the moral theorist’s task is to build a moral theory, also consisting of laws or generalizations, that neatly fits and explains the moral data. This story is bad philosophy of science. There are some examples in science where what is going on is, at least in part, something like this points-to-pattern model of science (if you want a ruder name, call it the Rorschach-ink-blot model): we do a survey and find a correlation, and then confabulate a generalizable reason for that correlation. But there are plenty of other examples in science where what is going on is nothing like this. Much science is not about developing a theory at all, but about monitoring and measurement, e.g. of atmospheric CO2 or mean global temperature; or it is about invention, e.g. making a COVID vaccine or a rechargeable battery or a solar-energy panel. And even where the scientist’s primary aim is explanatory theory-building rather than measurement or new technology, her explanations need not be general in form: the explanations provided by Newton’s laws, and the explanation why transition metals are conductive, are general in ways that the explanations of the Wall Street Crash and the San..
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/11/ethical-evidence-ethical-experience-and-shamelessness-guest-post/

2024-06-04 05:09:00

Summer Plans
Summer is here, and with it, some changes for the season at Daily Nous. Once again, I’ll be slowing down the pace of posts at Daily Nous for the summer, starting this week and continuing into August. As with previous summers, there will be a series of guest posts. The plan is for these to appear once a week, starting next week. I appreciate the authors of these posts helping to keep DN interesting. With the summer slowdown, note that comments held up in moderation may sometimes take a little while longer to appear, and emails may take a little longer to be answered. I appreciate your patience with all of that. In mid-August, Daily Nous will resume daily postings about news and issues in academic philosophy, along with its regular features. Thanks for reading. I hope your summer* is off to a good start! (* Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case, I hope your winter is off to a good start.)
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/04/summer-plans/

2024-06-03 09:00:42

Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books… (If you notice something missing from the weekly update, let us know. Thanks.) SEP New: ∅ Revised: Christian Wolff by Matt Hettche and Corey Dyck. Human Rights by James Nickel and Adam Etinson. Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by Jan Faye. Pragmatics by Kepa Korta and John Perry. Marsilio Ficino by Christopher S. Celenza. IEP Abelard: Logic by Wolfgang Lenzen. NDPR William of Ockham: On Heretics, Books 1-5, and Against John, Chapters 5-16 by William of Ockham, translated by John Kilcullen and John Scott, is reviewed by Monica Brinzei. 1000-Word Philosophy Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems by John Charry. Project Vox ∅ BJPS Short Reads ∅ Open-Access Book Reviews in Academic Philosophy Journals ∅ Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Lefebvre is reviewed by Matt McManus at Jacobin. The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No by Carl Elliott is reviewed by Jack Goulder at Literary Review. Previous Edition Compiled by Michael Glawson BONUS: Early Wittgenstein Becomes Late Wittgenstein
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https://dailynous.com/2024/06/03/online-philosophy-resources-weekly-update-367/

2024-05-31 14:25:16

Mini-Heap
Interesting stuff elsewhere… Discussion welcome. “I realized then, with shock, that our disagreement was not about the capabilities of machine learning models at all. It was about the capabilities of human beings” — Shannon Vallor (Edinburgh) on the ideology of “superhuman” technology, and on appreciating the human and the humane “[Marcus Aurelius] says, if you’ve ever seen a hand or a foot or a leg severed off from the rest of the trunk, that’s what we make of ourselves when we cut ourselves off from each other” — Nancy Sherman (Georgetown) and Margaret Graver (Dartmouth) discuss stoicism, its popularity, and its lesser-appreciated aspects, on NPR’s “On Point” “We’re not supposed to admit it when we feel stupid, or underappreciated, or jealous, or that we cared so much about something that when it didn’t go our way we felt shattered” — mathematician Danny Calegari (Chicago) on the personal dimensions of professional disappointments and failure A group of AIs try to figure out who in their midst is really a human — a “reverse Turing test” (that’s kind of cute). Also: the booming business of deepfakes of your deceased loved ones. “Bernard Williams’ Historical Self-Consciousness” — Harvard’s 2024 Whitehead Lectures, by Miranda Fricker (NYU) “Even if in a piece of music its structure, sounds, intentions, and goals are set there is something inherently puzzling in it” — Giulia Lorenzi (Warwick) on “places in which imagination may play a role in enjoying, perceiving, and producing music” “Simplicity remains the key. / I’m no conceptual acrobat / Who postulates as if it’s free; / My convenient myths are only that.” — Quine’s “On What There Is”, the poem, by Brad Skow (MIT) Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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https://dailynous.com/2024/05/31/mini-heap-590/

2024-05-30 15:08:15

Philosopher: Missed Class to Get an Abortion? Not Excused.
A philosophy professor and a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin have joined with the state in a lawsuit against the Federal government, particularly the US Department of Education’s “Final Rule” regarding the interpretation of Title IX, which aims to prevent “discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.” The professors are Daniel Bonevac and John Hatfield. The lawsuit says that with the Final Rule the Federal government oversteps its authority by requiring “students and teachers to, for example, use someone’s ‘preferred pronouns'” and by “reinterpreting the word ‘sex’ to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity.'” It also aims to protect the plaintiffs’ rights to treat student absences from class for the purposes of getting an abortion as unexcused, to regulate the clothing their teaching assistants wear, and to decline to hire as teaching assistants students who have received abortion pharmaceuticals in the mail. In a section of the lawsuit (reproduced below), Professors Bonevac and Hatfield describe ways they plan to behave that they believe are rendered illegal by the Final Rule interpretation of Title IX—hence the lawsuit. These include: Not honoring any student’s demands to be addressed by the singular pronoun “they”. (“I will not violate the rules of grammar or make a fool of myself to accommodate a student’s delusional beliefs.”) Not allowing his teaching assistants to teach or otherwise interact with students while wearing clothing traditionally not associated with their genders. Not treating absences to obtain an “illegal abortion” or “purely elective abortion” as an excused absence. (Note that in Texas, abortions are generally illegal with few exceptions.) Not knowingly hiring teaching assistants who have received shipments of “abortion pills and abortion-related paraphernalia”. Here’s the full text of Professor Bonevac’s declaration (Professor Hatfield’s is the same): I, Daniel A. Bonevac, declare as follows: I am over 18 years old and fully competent to make this declaration. I have personal knowledge of the facts stated in this declaration, and all of these facts are true and correct. I am a named plaintiff in this litigation. I am a professor of philosophy of the University of Texas at Austin. The University of Texas at Austin is subject to Title IX and..
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2024-05-30 13:08:36

An Open Letter from Gaza Academics
“We have come together as Palestinian academics and staff of Gaza universities to affirm our existence, the existence of our colleagues and our students, and the insistence on our future, in the face of all current attempts to erase us.” – So begins an open letter from Gaza academics and administrators. It continues: We call upon our friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions. The future of our young people in Gaza depends upon us, and our ability to remain on our land in order to continue to serve the coming generations of our people… Our families, colleagues, and students are being assassinated, while we have once again been rendered homeless… Our civic infrastructure—universities, schools, hospitals, libraries, museums and cultural centres—built by generations of our people, lies in ruins from this deliberate continuous Nakba. The deliberate targeting of our educational infrastructure is a blatant attempt to render Gaza uninhabitable and erode the intellectual and cultural fabric of our society. However, we refuse to allow such acts to extinguish the flame of knowledge and resilience that burns within us. The letter asks for a few things: (a) for “universities and colleagues worldwide to coordinate any academic aid efforts directly with our universities” rather than through “alleged [Israeli] reconstruction schemes that seek to eliminate the possibility of independent Palestinian educational life in Gaza.” (b) for financial and technical assistance in transitioning to online teaching “to mitigate the disruption caused by the destruction of physical infrastructure,” including “comprehensive support to cover operational costs, including the salaries of academic staff.” (c) for “all concerned parties to immediately coordinate their efforts” to take the “urgent measures” needed to “address the financial crisis now faced by academic institutions, to ensure their very survival.” You can read the whole letter and see its list of signatories here. (via Matthew Smith) Related: American Philosophers Should Condemn the War in Gaza
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https://dailynous.com/2024/05/30/an-open-letter-from-gaza-academics/

2024-05-30 11:00:02

A Christian University’s Unchristian Treatment of a Tenured Philosophy Professor
A tenured associate professor of philosophy who had received ratings of “excellent” in her annual reviews each year for the past decade, whose classes are always full or overloaded, who teaches extra courses, and who gets great student reviews in those courses, has been fired. The professor is Leigh Johnson, who up to just recently was associate professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Christian Brothers University (CBU), a Catholic university in Memphis, Tennessee. – Her case serves as a warning to faculty at small universities and colleges: extreme measures to address financial problems at your school may come out of the blue; in the panic that ensues, procedures may not be followed; it may be the case that financial exigency is used as a cover to make changes that would otherwise be noticed as objectionable; and the financial hardship threatened by a faculty member’s job loss may be used to pressure them into hiding what has happened—even at a Christian university based on the ideas of someone they approvingly quote as saying, “God desires all of us to come to the knowledge of the truth.” In September 2023, David Archer, the then-President of the University*, declared a “condition of financial exigency” and began the process of terminating tenured faculty. (There is some question as to whether this was done properly. According to the Faculty Handbook at CBU, one may not simply declare financial exigency. The administration is first required to establish “a condition of financial difficulty” which involves various procedures and steps to be taken before “financial exigency” can be invoked, and, according to a source at CBU, it is not clear that these procedures were followed.) CBU’s accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges had placed CBU on “monitoring” for the past two years, and at the beginning of December placed the school on probation, “the most serious public sanction imposed by the SACSCOC Board of Trustees short of loss of accreditation.” According to SACSCOC, CBU failed to demonstrate compliance with the Principles of Accreditation, namely, Core Requirement 4.1 (Governing board characteristics) and Standard 13.3 (Financial responsibility)… These standards expect an institution (1) to have a governing board that… exercises fiduciary oversight..
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2024-05-29 12:20:08

Eric B. Dayton (1946-2024)
Eric Brian Dayton, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan, died earlier this month. Professor Dayton worked in argumentation theory, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and pragmatism—especially the philosophy of C.I. Lewis. You can learn more about his writings here. Dayton was a member of the philosophy department at Saskatchewan for over 40 years. Prior to that he held a one-year position at Rutgers University. He earned his PhD from Western University. For 12 years he was the editor-in-chief of Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, the official journal of the Canadian Philosophical Association. He also was a significant participant in his philosophy department’s community outreach program, Philosophy in the Community, for 17 years. You can learn more about Professor Dayton and his life in this obituary. He died on May 18th. (via Samantha Brennan)
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https://dailynous.com/2024/05/29/eric-b-dayton-1946-2024/

2024-05-29 11:47:16

Mini-Heap
Recently added links… Discussion welcome. You might not have heard the philosophy lectures of Michael Sugrue, who died recently, but hundreds of thousands of others have — “The type of professor you’d ditch class to go and listen to,” says one YouTube commenter “Liberalism is the broad tradition that may well underlie who so many of us are in all walks of life, from family to the workplace, from friendship to enmity, from humor to outrage, and everything in between” — an interview with Alexandre Lefebvre (Sydney), who is against mere “political” liberalism “I have sought a clearer view of the connections, logical and causal, between stimulation, language, and the natural world that language purports to describe” — from a letter from W.V.O. Quine to photographer Steve Pyke; one of a few “relics of the process” of Quine’s photo session “People without PhDs can contribute meaningfully to philosophy” — Sam Woolfe, a freelance writer and author of a book on the philosophy of psychedelics, is interviewed by Cliff Sosis at What Is It Like To Be a Philosopher? “If you always make every possible decision, that does seem to severely undermine the sense in which you are exercising any meaningful kind of choice” — several philosophers interviewed for a Scientific American article on the strong determinism of Eddy Keming Chen (UCSD). (Quote from Emily Adlam) “Philosophising in…” now has a podcast — the interview series explores the philosophical richness of lesser-studied languages from across the world “We (both philosophy and society at large) need more practical philosophers like Peter Singer, who draw upon a deep understanding of systematic theorizing in order to productively critique common moral assumptions” — Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami) reflects on the career of Peter Singer Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you. Previous Edition
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