Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Some New Philosophy Books

Publishers are good enough to send me their new books, so the least I can do is mention them for the benefit of readers who might be interested.  Here are some of those recently received:

Paul Thagard, The Brain and the Meaning of Life (Princeton University Press, 2010)

Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Princeton University Press, 2010)

John Searle, Making the Social World:  The Structure of Human Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche:  A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen & Jeff McMahan (eds.), Ethics and Humanity:  Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Allen Buchanan, Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Tamler Sommers, A Very Bad Wizard:  Morality Behind the Curtains, Nine Conversations (McSweeney's, 2009).

Chrisoula Andreou & Mark White (eds.), The Thief of Time:  Philosophical Essays on Procrastination (Oxford University Press, 2010)

I really should get around to reading that last one...

York U in Toronto Continues to Embarrass Itself

A colleague in Canada writes about the continuing academic freedom scandal at York and its law school, Osgoode Hall:

York University in Toronto has done it again.    As your readers will remember, the Senior Administration has been embroiled in a long-running dispute about academic freedom at the Osgoode Hall Law School.  Two tenured faculty members organized a conference on the future of Israel/Palestine only to find themselves insulted and pressured by hecklers from the far-right of Toronto’s diverse Jewish community (one of them married to a senior member of York’s administration), and then from the funding organization.  The University gave in to the hecklers, and pressured the organizers to change their whole approach to the conference, or to add hand-picked Zionist invitees --‘for balance’-- or else be sent off-campus.  The conference was in the end tolerated, but then subject to inquisitorial review by the University (led by former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci).   In response, the Canadian Association of University Teachers struck their own Review to investigate allegations of improper pressure on the law school from the Administration and the Federal Minister. Both reviews are due out soon.

Fresh revelations now show that, in addition to whatever expertise Mr Iacobucci was imagined to have on academic freedom  or on the middle east (subjects on which he has published nothing), he was useful in one way  to the administration.  Unbeknownst to most Osgoode Faculty, he actually was hired, not as an expert reviewer, but as one of the University’s lawyers!   Claiming solicitor-client privilege, Iacobucci now says that his files are beyond the reach of freedom of information legislation.    If that argument holds, a number of people will breathe a big sigh of relief. 

Successful freedom of information requests already brought against the University have turned up evidence of a close collaboration between the former Dean of Osgoode, Patrick Monahan, and then Chair of the Board, Mickey Cohen , a collaboration aimed at getting the organizers to change direction, to accept that pre-vetted panelists should be added to their roster, or failing that, that they should be moved off-campus.  On 15 April 2009, the  Cohen wrote to Osgoode’s Dean Monahan:.

“I wId seriously consider moving the venue off campus. If this blows up on us then it occurring on campus will overwhelmingly exacerbate the impact on York. There are lots of "reasons" we can come up with to justify the decision.

Two days later, on learning that the conference organizers had begun to yield to pressure, Cohen further congratulated Dean Monahan in these words,

“I can only assume that you put the fear of all 3 gods involved here into them! Good work”

No doubt the Iacobucci report will prove interesting reading.  It doesn't sound well-designed to explore academic freedom, however.  But watch to see whether it contains advice to administrators, for instance, on how to trump up 'reasons' for unethical decisions, or on how to 'put the fear of god' into annoying faculty, or on how to use solicitor-client privilege to gather evidence that will never have to face contradiction, or even see the light of day.

Philosopher Lear Wins Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in Humanities

I am pleased to report that my esteemed colleague Jonathan Lear is one of three winners of the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities for 2009.  Lear's work ranges widely over ancient philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethics and moral psychology, Wittgenstein, and many other topics.  Among his many books is the splendid volume on Freud in the Routledge Philosophers series.

How many philosophers went to your college?

You can find out about Oberlin and Amherst and Swarthmore.  Feel free to post in the comments other websites listing undergraduate alumni from other schools who are now academic philosophers.

On "Cranks"

Michael Weisberg (Penn) calls to my attention these amusing excerpts from Martin Gardner's book Fads and Fallacies, in which he discusses "crank scientists," though, with a few suitable modifications, we can all think of some philosophers to whom this description applies:

[Some cranks] are brilliant and well-educated, often with an excellent understanding of the branch of science in which they are speculating. Their books can be highly deceptive imitations of the genuine article — well-written and impressively learned....[C]ranks work in almost total isolation from their colleagues. Not isolation in the geographical sense, but in the sense of having no fruitful contacts with fellow researchers.... The modern pseudo-scientist... stands entirely outside the closely integrated channels through which new ideas are introduced and evaluated. He works in isolation. He does not send his findings to the recognized journals, or if he does, they are rejected for reasons which in the vast majority of cases are excellent. In most cases the crank is not well enough informed to write a paper with even a surface resemblance to a significant study. As a consequence, he finds himself excluded from the journals and societies, and almost universally ignored by competent workers in the field..... The eccentric is forced, therefore, to tread a lonely way. He speaks before organizations he himself has founded, contributes to journals he himself may edit, and — until recently — publishes books only when he or his followers can raise sufficient funds to have them printed privately.

And here are Gardner's criteria for "crankhood":

He considers himself a genius.
He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. Everyone is out of step except himself....
He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against....
He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein in the name of Newton....
He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined...

Is Catholic U's Daniel Coleman the Only Person in Academia Who is Glad King's College, London Faculty are Being Fired?

Quite possibly.  (In one iteration, Mr. Coleman's piece was even published under the heading "Fire More Professors"!)  Even putting aside Mr. Coleman's weird focus on me (I'm not the one possibly being fired, it's the folks at KCL, and they're really and correctly incensed!), it apparently doesn't occur to this market fundamentalist that in a functioning market economy governed by the rule of law people correctly feel entitled to that which they were led to believe they were entitled to.  (Mr. Coleman gives a passing nod to promises, but observes, with characteristic penetrating insight, that they can be broken sometimes.  Why this time?  Apparently because the Market God Mr. Coleman worships demands it.)  The U.K. may not have de jure tenure, but it has had de facto tenure for the past quarter-century, which is why everyone, other than Mr. Coleman, has been shocked by the recent actions at KCL--together, of course, with the fact that while claiming the need to cut costs, the KCL administration is also spending lots of money on other things, including administrators, as has been pointed out.  And why firings, rather than other cost-saving measures (e.g., furloughs)?  But all of this is lost on Mr. Coleman.  The Mises Institute is a weird outfit, as is well-known, but Lew Rockwell and others associated with it do sometimes write some interesting material.  But nonsense like this shows they really need a bit more editorial, indeed grown-up, oversight.

UPDATE:  Just to be clear, I included Mr. Coleman's institutional affiliation for identification purposes only, since "Daniel Coleman" is a not uncommon name.  I have no reason at all to think anyone else at Catholic University, faculty or student, shares his silly and reprehensible views on the KCL fiasco.

The Lateral Market Keeps Pace with Last Year

Last year at this time, there had been 15 faculty moves or offers reported in the New Year; this year, there have been 16 moves or offers.  By contrast, between January 1 and March 30, 2008, there were more than 20 faculty moves or offers reported.

The PhilPapers Survey on What Philosophers Believe Makes The Economist

Not a bad summary, though we will let Mr. Gottlieb's characterization of "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy pass in silence. 

(Thanks to Naftali Weinberger for the pointer.)

Montana Man Claims to be Holy Ghost, Neighbors are Skeptical

Can't fool these folks.

(Thanks to Eric Muller for the pointer.)

Bermudez from Wash U/St. Louis to a Deanship at Texas A&M;

Jose Bermudez (philosophy of mind and psychology) at Washington University, St. Louis will become Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, effective July 1.

Fitzpatrick from Virginia Tech to Rochester

William Fitzpatrick at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, who has done very interesting work on a variety of topics in ethics, has accepted a tenured offer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rochester, to start this fall.

Two More Senior Hires for Arizona: Pincione from Argentina, Russell from Wichita State

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona has made two more hires with tenure:  Guido Pincione (political philosophy, rational choice theory), Professor of Law at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires; and Daniel Russell (ancient philosophy, ethics), Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wichita State University.

 

Wash U Makes Senior Offer to UCSD's Cohen (UPDATED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 5, SEE UPDATE

Jonathan Cohen (philosophy of mind and psychology, metaphysics, cognitive science), Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, has a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy and Program in Philosophy-Psychology-Neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis.  Students considering either program with a strong interest in philosophical work related to cognitive science will want to keep an eye on what happens.

UPDATE:  Cohen has declined the offer from Wash U/St. Louis.

Lying about the Academic Job Market: The Case of William Pannapacker

The disastrously bad academic job market this year and last has English professor William Pannabacker (who uses the pen name "Thomas Benton") giddy with excitement, and has brought back to the attention of many readers his utterly reckless scare piece from several years ago.  Pannabacker, an Associate Professor of English at Hope College, tells students thinking about grad school in the humanities "just don't go" because there are no jobs.  The same ridiculous advice shows up on countless blogs.

Now here's some advice that isn't silly:  don't go to graduate school unless you get into a strong program.  Period.  If you get funding to go to a strong program, and you love the subject, then go to graduate school.  The odds of securing a tenure-track job, indeed a good tenure-track job, from a strong program are very high.  Take a look at the placement record of NYU or MIT or Princeton or North Carolina or Berkeley or UC Irvine or--outside the very top ranks of philosophy PhD programs--Georgetown.   In fact, the vast majority of graduates of these programs secure tenure-stream employment, and at the very best programs, a majority secure what, by any measure, would have to count as terrific academic positions at the best research universities and liberal arts colleges in the U.S., and often abroad. 

It is a shame that a lot of those who echo Pannabacker's reckless generalizations do so under cover of anonymity.  Each time the veil of anonymity has been lifted, in my experience, it turns out that the person complaining that there are no jobs for really good candidates is a graduate of a mediocre or worse PhD program.  Some of these people may really be good candidates; that's very hard to know.  But what is often easy to know is that they have the albatross of a not very good graduate program around their neck, and their difficulties on the job market are, alas, predictable.  It is a shame these people were misled, either by the programs in question or by their undergraduate teachers, and it has been one of my aims to make misleading students this way harder.  But the fact that there really aren't jobs for PhDs from weak programs does not mean one shouldn't get a PhD in philosophy.  It means a student should not get a PhD from a weak program. 

So figure out which programs in your field are really reputable.  Investigate job placement.  Investigate what the former students of the faculty you're interested in working with are doing now.  Don't go if the program isn't going to fund your studies.  Don't go if you can't get into a strong program in your field (unless your aim is not academic employment).

Of course, it may well be that the current crisis of capitalism may also signal the end of American economic dominance, and so may really presage a dramatic change at all levels of the productive economy, including academia.   Even in that scenario, however, the basic advice wouldn't change, it's just that the number of "strong programs" that can deliver results will be smaller than it is currently.

But please don't listen to William Pannabacker.  He obviously has some other personal axe to grind.  It's a shame he lies about the academic job market (things are bad enough, without lying!), and it's a shame the CHE gives him a forum for doing so.  But as the links to job placement records, above, make clear, there are plenty of PhD programs from which a student can be highly confident about finding stable academic employment upon completion of the course of study.

Why so few women in science, engineering and mathematics?

This interesting study sheds some light, I suspect, on why there are not more women in academic philosophy as well.

(Thanks to Simine Vazire for the pointer.)

Since ignorance of so-called "analytic" philosophy is widespread...

...this recent book by Gary Gutting (Notre Dame) is a helpful antidote that you should give to your colleagues in other fields.  I'm more of a skeptic than Gutting about some of the claimed "progress" and "knowledge," but before one gets to skepticism one has to actually understand the target views, and Gutting helps readers, even non-philosphical readers, get that understanding.

Rewriting History, Texas Taliban Style

I often miss Austin and I certainly miss many wonderful colleagues, but I do not miss the ignorant and often venal neanderthals who still run the state.

Anywhere out of this world.

Some Items on the Healthcare Reform in the United States

Details on the new law. 

Ten immediate benefits of the healthcare legislation.

A critique of the new legislation from Physicians for a National Heathcare Program.

And finally, since this is America after all, the predictable reaction of the morally depraved, terminally stupid, and pathologically deranged.   (Or consider this--these are truly people that the entire post-Enlightenment world has passed by.)

It is remarkable that a quite conservative set of healthcare reforms, by the standards of civilized nations, just barely passed and is met, at the same time, by such utterly insane denunciations that bear almost no relationship to any reality.

Fabre from Edinburgh to Oxford

Cécile Fabre (moral and political philosophy), who currently holds a Chair in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh, will take up a permament CUF Lecturership and Tutorial Fellowship in Philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford University, starting this fall.

Sober on Fodor, Part II and in Writing

Elliott Sober has now posted a written critique of Fodor & P-P's critique of natural selection.  Read in conjunction with Block & Kitcher's piece, this seems pretty decisive.  Will FPP concede?  Sometimes it is nice when philosophers admit they're wrong.

A Cautionary Tale about Posted Placement Records

A young philosopher writes:

 Prospective students really should look into the placement records of departments they are interested in, not just by looking at department websites, but also by speaking to current students and faculty.  Despite your efforts, and the general improvement in how departments report their placement results, some departments--even quite distinguished ones--continue to report misleading or incomplete information.

I know of one case in particular:   one major department omits any mention of two graduate students who applied for jobs in 2008/2009 but received no offers.  I suspect the department attempts to justify this omission on the grounds that these two students had not yet received their degrees.  However, as far as I can tell, nowhere on  its website does the department clearly indicate that some students who applied for jobs are not included in the data.  The closest they come to hinting that they omit some job searches by ABDs is a subtle switch on their website from writing about placement information for their graduate students to writing about placement information for their *graduates*.  This is surely is misleading.  And the department does report on *successful* job searches by its ABDs (even when those students begin their employment before defending).  The end result is an inflated picture of the department's success in placing its graduate students in academic jobs.  Furthermore, for the current 2009/2010 job market, the department lists its successful candidates, but not those who have yet to receive offers.  This is, perhaps, slightly more justifiable, since the market is on-going and offers may yet be forthcoming.  Still, the upshot is that the department's website inflates their placement record.

As "incomplete" information goes, this department's situation is less serious than some others, on which I may comment in the future.

Update on the Situation at King's College, London

I am told that there are some hopeful signs from KCL, that the administration is beginning to realize that KCL will fall off the face of the earth as far as major research universities go if they follow through with the initial course of action.  I hope to have more concrete news to report before too long.  In the meantime, this blog has some excellent coverage of the entire fiasco.

Batterman from Western Ontario to Pittsburgh

Robert Batterman (philosophy of science and physics), holder of a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, has accepted the senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh.

What philosophers earn

Here is some data on faculty salaries for the 2009-10 academic year from a major public research university with a reputable and PGR-ranked philosophy department and PhD program.  The data was published by a news magazine, but I've anonymized the data here, since the point isn't to make this even more public than it already is, but to illustrate--for the benefit of current faculty, graduate students, and students thinking about careers in philosophy--what kinds of salaries might be in their future.

The information is organized as follows:  Rank, approximate age of faculty member, when hired, and salary.  The salary is for the academic year; in some cases, there may be additional summer salary, though in most cases there isn't.  In order to make it harder to identify the department, I have not listed everyone, but this list is representative.

1.  Professor, 50s, hired since 2000, salary:  $194,800.

2.  Professor, 60s, hired since 2000, salary:  $157,300.

3.  Associate Professor, 40s, hired since 2000, salary:  $122,500.

4.  Endowed Professorship, over 70, hired in 1960s, salary:  $98,500.

5.  Endowed Professorship, 60s, hired in 1970s, salary:  $97,900.

6.  Professor, 50s, hired since 2000, salary:  $94,651.

7.  Professor, 50s, hired in 1980s, salary:  $93,200.

8.  Professor, over 70, hired in 1970s, salary:  $92,700.

9. Professor, 50s, hired in in 1980s, salary:  $91,500.

10. Professor, 50s, hired in 1980s, salary:  $90,200.

11. Professor, 50s, hired in 1980s, salary:  $89,500.

12. Professor, 50s, hired in 1990s, salary:  $88,500.

13. Professor, 50s, hired in 1990s, salary:  $88,402.

14. Professor, 50s, hired in 1980s, salary:  $86,600.

15. Professor, over 70, hired in 1960s, salary:  $85,100.

16. Assistant Professor, 30s, hired since 2000, salary:  $75,000

18. Assistant Professor, 30s, hired since 2000, salary:  $74,000

19. Associate Professor, 40s, hired in 1990s, salary:  $72,100

20. Associate Professor, 40s, hired in 1990s, salary:  $72,100

21. Assistant Professor, 30s, hired since 2000, salary:  $65,435

A couple of patterns here are typical and worth noting.  First, there is enormous salary compression, with relatively new faculty often making as much or more than tenured and more senior faculty.  The market pressure makes itself felt most keenly at the entry-level.  Seniority counts for relatively little in explaining salary differentials over time, but continued market power does:  those who periodically get outside offers have the highest salaries, period.  This is true at private as well as public universities which, alas, is why faculty sometimes shop for offers they have no real intention of accepting.

UPDATE:  I should note that the Depratment is in an above-average but not very high cost-of-living part of the country.

Fodor v. Sober on Natural Selection and Laws on Bloggingheads TV

Here.  It's really a first-rate discussion, and brings out aspects of the argument that were not clear (to me at least) in the earlier iterations, namely, that the key claim of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (hereafter FPP) isn't that there isn't a difference between traits that are selected for and those that are mere free-riders (e.g., genetic hitch-hikers), but that the theory of natural selection can state no laws governing the distinction, i.e., no laws about what it is to "select for" traits of a particular type.  An excellent place to start is Sober's summary of FPP's argument at roughly 6 to 11 minutes (a characterization Fodor accepts), which is much clearer than Fodor's own introductory remarks I thought.  The crucial exchange then occurs betweeen roughly 14:30 and 29:00, in which Fodor, as far as I can see, concedes to Sober that actual theories in evolutionary biology do state counterfactual-supporting generalizations about which traits are selected for--but then he claims (this is 25-28 minutes in), bizarrely, that this is a merely "statistical" explanation not the kind of biological explanation that could support talk of "functions" and "teleology."  Sober replies, unsurprisingly, that statistics are used to express probablistic causal relations, so, in essence, he doesn't know what Fodor is talking about.  Those who have read Sober's work know that he is a lucid expositor of philosophical and scientific ideas; the same skill is in evidence in this discussion, and it shows up the peculiarity of Fodor's position very clearly.

I should note that it is really very disappointing, indeed a bit shocking, to see Fodor, who wants nothing to do with the intelligent design charlatans, adopt the language of the ID propoagandists, in talking about "Darwinists" and the views of "Darwinists," a point we have remarked on previously.  Apart from that reprehensible and irresponsible lapse, it's a high-level and informative discussion, but it does vindicate one of Block and Kitcher's original worries, namely, that the whole argument of FPP suffers from ignorance of the actual theories put forth by evolutionary biologists.  Fodor will have to turn in his Quinean union card, alas.

UPDATE:  Jerry Fodor takes issue with my characterization of the exchange and the issue in dispute:

My claim is that the theory of natural selection does not, and cannot, provide a mechanism to do what Darwin says that ecological filtering does;  i.e. choose from among a creature’s phenotypic traits the ones that are causes of fitness. I don’t propose to defend that claim here (sound though it quite certainly is). But I do want to  point out that the brief discussion of statistical models in my blog conversation with Elliott Sober is entirely orthogonal to this issue. I took Elliott to be arguing, correctly in my view, that contemporary  biology could perfectly well proceed with model construction even if what I’ve been saying about the theory of natural selection is true. What I took Elliott NOT to be saying is that the construction of a statistical model might  provide a mechanism for the selection of causes of fitness. Statistical models don’t specify  causal mechanisms; nor do I suppose for a minute that Elliott thinks they do.

Listeners can obviously decide for themselves which characterization is apt.

I invited Elliott Sober to comment on this, and he sent me the following:

Contrary to what Jerry says in the BloggingHeads exchange that he and I did together, his
book with Piattelli-Palmarini DOES assert that “natural selection cannot distinguish between coextensive phenotypic traits."  This is a quotation from p. 154.  There are other passages that say the same thing.

When two traits are coextensive, I think there can be selection-for one of them but no selection-for the other.  The book denies this.

The book also asserts that there can't be a theory of selection-for and this is something that Fodor also defends in our BloggingHeads exchange.  I disagreed with him about this.  I think there are numerous counterfactual supporting generalizations in evolutionary biology about selection-for.  I described these in our conversation as causal models.  I also gave an example. Jerry chose to call them "statistical." He never explained why they aren't causal. Jerry demands that a theory of adaptation must say what all adaptations have in common, "as such."  Theorizing about sex ratio, optimal foraging, and cooperation (to name just three subjects that the theory of natural selection addresses) isn't like this.  Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini's book doesn't discuss theoretical modeling.  For him the only thing there is in the "theory" of natural selection is the statement that if two traits differ in fitness, then, all else being equal, the fitter of the two will increase in frequency.  This isn't a theory, but is, more or less, a definition.

A long time ago, Creationists argued that the theory of natural selection is a "tautology."  Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are recycling this old saw, though they are not creationists.

 

Friday Poem: "My Small Grandmother"

 My Small Grandmother        

My small grandmother

Who did not smile

Wore her mortal trial

Neatly on her shoulders

While somewhere in her dry silence

My grandfather’s shadow hovered

Fleshless as her bony Yiddish

 

Grandmother all gristle and wrinkles

Outlasted Czarist Russia

Survived the Cossacks’ plunder

Brought here her Sabbath’s wonder

Five sons and my mother

 

Now she is remembered

Late in my December

Seated at the window

Near the warm radiator

Her round eyes drinking

The bay’s dark waters

Its blinking shadows swimming

Starstruck in the moonlight

 

I know not what embraced her

As she stared in seeming torpor

Perhaps her mother’s figure

From a long-thawed Russian winter

Or the eyes of hostile soldiers

Fixed sternly on her father

As he held her closely to him

Fearing they might harm her

 

Or in another darkness

Its outlines even dimmer

The hush of three lost infants

Their bodies still within her

 

Tonight I miss her

12/12-12/17/96, 1/12-1/14/97, 1/7-1/l8/98, 8/22/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter.

Posted with permission.

Interested in Studying Nietzsche in Grad School?

If so, you probably already read my Nietzsche blog, but just in case.

Exceptional Pedagogical Commitment

Here.

(Thanks to Bill Wringe for the pointer.)

Fodor on Natural Selection Redux

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini reply to Ned Block and Philip Kitcher's devastating critique, and Block and Kitcher respond at the same link.  Be sure to read the response by Block and Kitcher.

The wicked never rest, part 147

The Texas Taliban, as usual.

More Advice to Prospective Grad Students Choosing Programs: Faculty Who Diss Other Schools

A couple of correspondents raised the question of what prospectives should make of faculty at School X who say derogatory things about the program at School Y.   In general, I think it's fair to say that faculty know more about programs than prospective students, so I would not want to say that, in general, such comments should be ignored.  But they should certainly be discounted in proportion to the extent those faculty have highly interested reason for demoting their competitors.  Students are clearly well-advised to investigate any claims about other programs made by faculty or students not at the program. 

An anecdote will illustrate the point.  Years ago, in the late 1990s, when the PGR first moved NYU into the top ranks of PhD programs, I was deluged with e-mails saying that, "Oh the NYU faculty don't care about students" and "sure the faculty are famous but they won't be able to train students" and so on.  The comments were obviously ridiculous, given that so many of the NYU faculty had trained many students at their prior programs.  And more than a dozen years later, it's clear how ridiculous these disparaging comments were.  (I had a similar experience when the PGR first ranked Rutgers highly, though, again the reality speaks for itself.)

"Philosophy Conferences and Calls for Papers"

If you're not familiar with this blog, you should be, it's a great service.

New Philosophers' Carnival is...

...here.

Robert Paul Wolff is a Blogger!

I was pleased to discover that the eminent philosopher Robert Paul Wolff (now emeritus at U Mass/Amherst) has a blog.   He also has an interesting defense of the value of a liberal arts education.

UPDATE:  Link to the blog now fixed.

San Francisco State's Anita Silvers Wins APA's Quinn Prize for Service to Philosophy

Story here.

Rules for Philosophy Q&A; Sessions

I want to strongly second Spiros's rules.

New Philosophy of Action Blog...

...here.

The U.S. Supreme Court Strikes a Decisive Blow for the Plutocracy

I meant to post something several weeks ago about the Supreme Court's outrageous decision striking down limits on corporate spending on elections, but other events overtook my efforts.  The best explanation of the decision and the issues I have seen comes from my colleague Geoffrey Stone, a leading First Amendment expert.  Senator Feingold (Wisconsin) has a straightforward commentary.  This statement is quite fair about the import of the decision and about its radical character.

It is obviously a disaster for a country that, qua putative democracy, is already a mess.  It's hard to imagine that the U.S. could become more of a naked plutocracy than it already is, but I guess we're about to find out.

British Columbia's Paul Russell Wins JHP's Book Prize

Paul Russell, a leading Hume scholar at the University of British Columbia, has won the book prize from the Journal of the History of Philosophy for The Riddle of Hume's Treatise:  Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion (OUP, 2008).

Deciding Between Admissions Offers: The Importance of Visiting/Talking With Current Students

MOVING TO FRONT FROM March 6, 2009 (SINCE TIMELY AGAIN)

Applicants to PhD and MA programs are now receiving offers of admission and, if they are lucky, are beginning to weigh choices between different departments.  I want to reiterate a point made in the PGR, namely, that students are well-advised to talk to current students at the programs they are considering.   There are often things you will want to know that you won't glean from familiarity with the excellence of the faculty's work, even if that remains the most important, if defeasible, reason for choosing a particular department.  Here are some examples of information that no ranking, no departmental brochure, and no "official" departmental representive will tell you about; all of these are drawn from stories I've heard from students over the last few years about ranked departments (the departments will remain unnamed, obviously).  You can think of them as representing "types" of problems you should be aware of before enrolling.  I've tweaked some of the details to protect identities.

The Absent Faculty:  Are the faculty who look so good on paper actually around and interested in working with students?  I heard a story about a key senior person in one department who is an alcoholic, and who simply ignores his students.  In another department, almost all the graduate students had to sign an open letter to the faculty a few years ago protesting the failure of faculty to return graded papers and their general lack of interest in mentoring the students.   In yet another department, a well-known senior member of the faculty spent so much time travelling and lecturing around the world, that he rarely had time to review or discuss work carefully with students. 

The Sexual Predator Faculty:  Are women treated as young philosophers and aspiring professionals, or do faculty regularly view them as a potential source for dates and sexual liasons?  It's a bit shocking to realize that this is still a live issue in some departments, but, sadly, it is.  Are faculty-student sexual relations common in the department?  What happens when the relations end?  Are there repeated cases of sexual harassment complaints against faculty in the department?  Do they ever result in discipline?  I suppose it is possible this could be an issue for male students, but all the reports I've gotten over the years have been from women victimized by male faculty. 

The Nasty Faculty:  Talented philosophers and scholars often differ, dramatically, in how pleasant they are personally and professionally.  I recall the story of one department where a member of the faculty was known to reduce students to tears in seminar.  In another department, a faculty member regularly refuses to work with students, even those interested in his areas; he works only with those he deems "worthy," and there are not many of them!  In another department, faculty openly express doubts about the competence of the graduate students and their ability.  Make sure the philosophers who seem most interesting to you don't fall into these categories!

The Factionalized Faculty:  Many faculties are "factionalized," in the sense that there are sub-groups that rarely see "eye to eye" about departmental issues, from appointments to admissions.  Where this becomes worrisome, though, for a prospective student is when certain members of the faculty who share interests and approaches control all the key resources--fellowships, resources for speakers etc.--and use that control to define "in" and "out" groups of faculty and students:  students with the "wrong" philosophical interests or who express an interest in the "wrong" faculty members are denied access to important perks and support.  This kind of ugly factionalization is less common, but it exists. 

I wish it were possible to meaningfuly measure and evaluate faculties along these important dimensions, but, alas, it is not.  I can report, based on accumulated anecdotes over many years, that some departments are really exceptional for how pleasant they are as places to do graduate study:  faculty are engaged, kind, supportive, committed, and professional in their interactions with students.  Arizona, North Carolina, MIT, UC Riverside, and U Mass/Amherst are among those about which one regularly hears these kinds of glowing reports.  I have no doubt there are many others, and the way for a prospective student to discover them is to talk to lots of current students.

Good luck with your decisions!

Ludwig from Florida to Indiana

Kirk Ludwig (philosophy of mind, language & action; epistemology) at the University of Florida at Gainesville has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington, to start this fall. 

More Rock 'n' Roll Philosophy...

...from the band Gourmet Rapport (good name!), courtesy of Richard Hanley (Delaware).

Scholar of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy Accused of Plagiarism

Story here.

What's the point of having a philosophy department?

Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) comments.

"The Radicalism of Legal Positivism"

This is the penultimate version of an essay that will appear in the special 'legal theory' issue of the National Lawyers Guild's Guild Practitioner.  It is written with a non-specialist audience in mind, so may be of interest to some readers.  The abstract:

“Legal positivism” is often caricatured by its jurisprudential opponents, as well as by lawyers and legal scholars not immediately interested in jurisprudential inquiry. “Positivist” too often functions now as an “epithet” in legal discourse, equated (wrongly) with “formalism,” the view that judges must apply the law “as written,” regardless of the consequences. Lon Fuller, Ronald Dworkin, and the Critical Legal Studies writers have all contributed in different ways to the sense that "positivism" is either a politically conservative or politically sterile position. This essay revisits the actual theory of law developed by positivist philosophers like Bentham, Hart, and Raz, emphasizing why it is, and was, understood by its proponents to be a radical theory of law, one unfriendly to the status quo and anyone, judge or citizen, who thinks obedience to the law is paramount. To be clear, the leading theorists of legal positivism thought the theory gave the correct account of the nature of law as a social institution; they did not endorse it because of the political conclusions it entailed, and which they supported. Yet these theorists realized that the correct account of the nature of law had radical implications for conventional wisdom about law. We would do well to recapture their wisdom today.

Anthony Grafton on the Self-Destruction of KCL and British Higher Education

Here.  It's a brilliant exegesis of the toll short-term market thinking is taking on what used to be the greatest university system in the world.  (Thanks to Chris Fraser for the pointer.)

That universities at the level of King's College, London and the University of Sussex should succumb to such extraordinary stupidity is, as I've heard from many friends and readers in the U.K., very worrisome.  But it bears noting that, at least at this point, most of the major universities in Britain remain under control of the academics and scholars, not the brainless and gimmicky bureaucrats.  KCL and Sussex are outliers, and unless they reverse course, they are obviously destined to drop off the map of reputable research universities in the Anglophone world.   One reason to continue to draw attention to the misconduct by the bureaucratic elite at these institutions is to hammer home the consequences on the world stage of sacrificing scholarly values.

Fellowship in Honor of Philip Quinn Established at National Humanities Center

Details here.

Free E-Book from U of Chicago Press

Ted Cohen's Jokes.

(Thanks to Varol Akman for the pointer.)

More on the Implosion of King's College, London

Here, and certainly worth reading.  The author notes, ever so discreetly, a fact that had escaped my notice so far, namely, the rather disproportionate number of Israelis who are being targetted for the purge from the faculty.  Hmm.

Philosophy Rock 'n' Roll

Not philosophy of rock 'n' roll, but philosophical themes and topics set to music, courtesy of some former U Mass philosophy grad students:  Ben Bradley (Syracuse), Carrie Jenkins (Nottingham), and Kris McDaniel (Syracuse).

(Thanks to John Martin Fischer for the pointer.)

UPDATE:  Reader Jonathan Phillips writes:

I really enjoyed your latest post on philosophy rock 'n' roll. While a number of the songs were impressive, I was especially stuck by Carrie Jenkins's nuanced critique of experimental philosophy in A Priori:

'Don't need no fucking survey... just need my blessed concepts' 

Upon hearing it, I thought that it could only be rivaled by the opening remarks in Alina Simone's x-phi anthem:

'They told me it was wrong, but they could never show me why...'

Anyway, I thought some of your readers might also find the subtle conceptual distinctions intriguing. Either way, though, it seems the song would make a great addition to the recent philosophical soundtrack. 

I guess it could turn out that rock 'n' roll is not the right medium for good philosophy.

CORRECTIONS:  Carrie Jenkins (Nottingham) writes:

Thanks for your link to the 21st Century Monads page from your blog!

A couple of corrections: I wasn’t at U Mass; I got my PhD from Cambridge (UK). And the lyric is ‘Just need my basic concepts’, not ‘blessed concepts’.

(And, of course, that lyric is not supposed to convince anyone that I don’t need surveys to learn conceptual truths: that’s what my book is for! /Grounding Concepts/, 2008, OUP, all good booksellers etc..)