New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Most underrated philosopher of the week

Last week I mentioned Joel Anderson as "one of the most underrated philosophers of our time:" http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/extending-selves-before-procrastinating.html

So this gave me idea to start a weekly entry on (living) underrated philosophers. Here are the rules: 1. no dead people; 2. no people currently or about to be employed in a Leiter top 50 department (even thought these are also filled with underrated folk); 3. no former dissertation advisors, or other teachers from graduate school; 4. no former students. Nominations are most welcome (but I have a decent backlog of candidates).

So, this week's most underrated philosopher is Rachel Cohon <http://www.albany.edu/philosophy/cohon/>, who has written the very best book on Hume's ethics: Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication (Oxford University Press, 2008). It is clear and, original, and often simply right. It shows that close careful exegesis combined with analytic rigor can unearth profundity. (I say this while standing for a very different approach to the history of philosophy.) Rachel is also a very versatile ethicist working in action theory and applied ethics.

Leiter Concedes, redoes Poll.

Brian Leiter has graciously accepted the arguments (http://www.newappsblog.com/2010/10/philosophy-of-science-in-20th-century-.html) that his original poll on the most significant philosopher of science was marred by oversight: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/most-significant-philosophers-of-science-of-the-20th-century-one-more-time.html

I am very pleased that Duhem, Michael Polanyi, Moritz Schlick, David Lewis, Frank Ramsey, and David Hull are now all included (but no Weber, Russell, and Weyl, alas!!!). I suspect only Lewis will make a big dent on the list, but I think it is important to avoid encouraging the already existingbias toward the recent past in such polls, which do help shape the discipline's self-perception

Michael Hudson on "Financial Warfare"

Michael Hudson is a very interesting writer on finance. I don't pretend to completely familiar with these arguments, but I found this article fascinating.

Opening grafs of the piece:

What is to stop U.S. banks and their customers from creating $1 trillion, $10 trillion or even $50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world, along with all the land and other assets for sale in the hope of making capital gains and pocketing the arbitrage spreads by debt leveraging at less than 1 per cent interest cost? This is the game that is being played today.

Finance is the new form of warfare - without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? All that is required is for central banks to accept dollar credit of depreciating international value in payment for local assets. Victory promises to go to whatever economy's banking system can create the most credit, using an army of computer keyboards to appropriate the world's resources. The key is to persuade foreign central banks to accept this electronic credit.

 

Philosophy of science in the 20th century

Brian Leiter is running another poll, this time on the most significant 20ty century philosopher of science. This is a topic I have some expertise on, and my intial response to the list was quite favorable. But on reflection I realize the list has a bunch of catastrophic oversights. 1. Pierre Duhem is arguably the most significant 20th century philosopher of science. Not only did he have a direct influence on quite a few people who are listed, the themes of his work are still quite prevalent in the literature. (There has also been a great deal of Rediscovery of his themes in the scientific practice literature.) I think one can say this without thinking he gets anything right. 2. A more controversial oversight is Max Weber, but he theorized value neutrality in the social sciences in a way that has enduring legacy (problematic, of course). Moreover, the whole neo-Kantian re-reading if logical positivism won't make complete sense until Weber is brought into the picture. Finally, all the sociology/contextual approaches to science are building on Weber in some way. 3. It is curious that Schlick is not mentioned, because he invented a new, conceptual role for philosophy of science in the wake of Einstein. 4. Cassirer, who is still inspiring neo-Kantian approaches, and for a while seemed to offer a role to philosophy in the cultural sciences. 5. I hate to admit this, but Wittgenstein for his impact on the philosophy of the human sciences. 6. David Hull for developing one of the first fully fledged Darwinian philosophy of science. 7. Dewey...he needed to be aniliated before logical empiricism could get a foot on the ground, but Kitcher (among others) shows he is still a live option. 8. Herman Weyl. Without him no modern philosophy of space-time? 9. Zilsel. Marxist philosophy of science (and so much Kuhn). 10. Okay, there were a bunch of others, Pareto, early Parsons, Einstein, who all have a lot of non trivial philosophical reflection in their works...

More from Christopher Newfield on university budgets

Thanks to Michael Bérubé for the pointer to this excellent essay by Christopher Newfield. Some key points: 

Further budget research needs to be done, and far more budgetary data need to be disclosed and discussed. In the meantime, I propose these conclusions from my case study. The humanities and social sciences are major donors to science and engineering budgets. Major dogmas about university research turn out to be wrong: science and engineering research costs money, and humanities and social sciences teaching subsidizes it. Furthermore, humanities and social sciences students receive a cheap education—that is, they get back less than they put in.

Making matters worse, university officials have historically perpetuated the myth that the science and engineering fields are the generous subsidizers of the “soft” humanitiesand social science fields.

Hume and Sex

There are many Humes out there. There is Hume the epistemologist, or more exactly the failed epistemologist to many in the analytic tradition who believe his project failed because he lacked the philosophical resources of the twentieth century—namely, either a Fregean or (late) Wittgensteinian theory of meaning and language (this is Jonathan Bennett's criticism). There is Hume the skeptic. Then there is the Hume who is held up as the darling of free market, laissez-faire capitalism. I prefer to think of Hume as a realist, or, and this may express it better, a hyper-realist. Yes Hume is a skeptic, but why is he a skeptic? It doesn’t seem to me that skepticism leads to an anti-realist position, meaning that reality is merely a consequence of formed habits and customs. Granted that for Hume habit and custom are integral to what it is possible for us to know. Recall how lost, for Hume, one would be if they were ‘of a sudden transported’ to our world with no established habits or expectations. On my first trip to England I quickly gave up trying to follow the action in a cricket match. It's only gotten marginally better. Without established habits and customs, which is Hume’s point, one would be lost. But does this mean that all that is real is that which can be identified by habit and custom?  I think not. The experimental approach was very important to Hume, by which he meant the approach that sought to bring about surprises, the unforeseen and unexpected. The very subtitle of Hume’s Treatise tells it all: “Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into Moral Subjects.” It’s for this reason as well that I’m not inclined to simply label Hume a realist; rather, reality always exceeds what we know, always entails an implied multiplicity that may further support or undermine what we know. This is one of the reasons why I think Hume was unbothered by the missing shade of blue—to identify blue as a real, identifiable color entails a multiplicity that exceeds this identification, a nondenumerable reality inseparable from the denumerable, identifiable reality—hence hyper-realism.

Stanley Fish doesn't know what he's talking about

Stanley Fish, in yesterday's NYT: 

And indeed, if your criteria are productivity, efficiency and consumer satisfaction, it makes perfect sense to withdraw funds and material support from the humanities — which do not earn their keep...

And it won’t do, in the age of entrepreneurial academics, zero-based budgeting and “every tub on its own bottom,” to ask computer science or biology or the medical school to fork over some of their funds so that the revenue-poor classics department can be sustained. 

Christopher Newfield, who actually knows something about university budgeting: 

Universities are held together by “cross-subsidies,” and ... cheap programs subsidize expensive ones. Cheap programs include English and sociology. Expensive ones include medicine. This means that in the real world of higher education funding, English and sociology make money on their enrollments, spend almost nothing on their largely self-funded research, and then, ... actually have some of their “profits” from instruction transferred to help fund more expensive fields....

Free and hate speech; minority rights in the Netherlands

Ajan Hirsi Ali, a brave critic of female mutilation and warrior against what she calls "political Islam," treated the readers of the Wall Street Journal to a blistering attack on the trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who holds the balance of power supporting the new conservative government (in Holland that means a weird combination of defense of welfare state for elderly whites, high mortgage deduction for homeowners, and go slow on bioethical changes and Sunday shopping). 

Hirsi Ali is correct that the Netherlands does have a rather heavy handed state role in free speech (even once going so far as providing state subsidies to people advocating unpopular causes). What her article fails to note is that there is no equivalent of a bill of rights and constitutional review in the Netherlands. (The only route is to European human rights courts.) Parliament is sovereign and can interpret its own laws. (See here for my account of political nature of law in the Netherlands).

This means that now that he holds the levers of power, Wilders is free to promote laws that discriminate based on religious affiliation. (Most observers expect European law to overrule, but Sarkozy's treatment of the Roma suggests that little is to be expected from there.) This is not an idle concern; the new government actively promotes religious discrimInation (in various ways some based on clothing, some based on employment practice, in attacking). In practice, in the Netherlands there has been a wavering commitment to impartial rule of law, which Wilders is attacking cleverly in his trial. It probably was a political mistake to put Wilders on trial, especially because the presiding judge has been clumsy In his handling. But Hirsi Ali fails to ask how democracies are supposed to respond to illiberal policies when there is no legal culture of minority rights.

Nobel 2011 Peace

The Chinese government is still upset over this year's Nobel peace prize award to Liu Xiaobo, and is taking it out on Norwegian government. See the unfolding story here. With Norway's oil reserves they can ride out any storm. (Ironically the faster China grows, the wealthier the Norwegians will be.) The Nobel committee redeemed itself this year and chose to go against the current, which increasingly is enticing people to turn mum over the dictatorial nature of Chineese government.

Nobel 2011 economics

This is a corrected entry; in an earlier version I confused Peter Temin with Peter Diamond!!! (No doubt due to my vain attempt at self-promotion!) I think it is a good thing that the prize was given to folk that a) are doing real empirical work; b) not public intellectuals; c) return economics to its roots in institutionalism; d) work on a real social harm (unemployment). I wonder if the prize gives the Republicans a further excuse to delay his appointment to the Fed.

Third annual North Sea Early Modern Workshop (this year's theme: moral psychology in Scottish Enlightenment)

 Given the recent discussions on these matters, let me also note the gender balance in the speakers list. (Of course, in some other crucial respects the list is not diverse.)

On 20th century moral philosophy

Brian Leiter ran a poll on the most significant moral philosophers of the twentieth century (the still living were excluded; discussion here).

Others have noted that the list of options to choose from was a bit limited. In particular, a number of folk wondered why Rawls was not listed. Another significant omission is Camus, who will probably be rediscovered regularly long after most of Leiter's top 20 are forgotten, as are the other Existentialists. One of my personal favorites, A. Prior (today better known as a logician), was also not even listed. One way in which the list of candidates was curtailed is the omission of folk who did their philosophic work historically: Glen Morrow and Isaiah Berlin immediately spring to mind.

The final list does not look very impressive, and this is especially surprising because the twentieth century gave ample stimulus to moral reflection. One reason for the impoverished nature is that much of the most exciting moral theory was -- due to increasing intellectual division of labor -- done outside philosophy or appreciated by non philosophers. Think of Ramsey's work that eventually got noticed by economists; is game theory (Von Neumann and Morgenstern) not a work in moral philosophy? Utilitarianism (Marshall, Pigou, and Keynes) had a lasting impact on 20th century morL thought. Anthropologists (Boas, Mead, and Geertz) also influenced moral reflection. Not to mention Freud...

FEMINIST HULK!!!

If you are on Twitter, chances are you've already heard of the Feminist Hulk. But for those of you who are not (such as myself) and haven't heard of him/her (the Feminist Hulk despises gender binary!), here is the link to the most hilarious of all Twitter personae, the Feminist Hulk! The Feminist Hulk is a big fan of Judith Butler, and intertwines deep reflections on gender issues with a lot of smashing around. Some examples:

SMASH IS SO AWESOME / HULK CANNOT EXPRESS IT IN / SPACE OF TWEET HAIKU.

SOME DAYS, EVEN HULK GET OVERWHELMED. SO HULK SIP FAIR TRADE TEA, READ bell hooks, AND GET STRONG FOR NEW DAY OF SMASH!

HULK SMASH GENDER BINARY TO PUNY, FRAGMENTED BITS (TILL IT HAVE AS LITTLE COHERENCE AS SARAH PALIN'S SPEECHES).

Highly recommended!

"What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?" (blog)

Friends of mine have been posting links to this blog on Facebook, I finally went and had a look - it is pretty strong stuff. Makes one very upset.

http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/

[UPDATE: we've added this to our Blogroll (in the right column)]

Direct democracy in education

OK, I'm making a vow: for every post on the neoliberal assault on publich higher education, like the one below, I'm making one on creative and powerful transformations in which we put the "public" back in "public education." 

First up: the essential Marc Bousquet reports on a new movement of democratic education: schools without administrators!. An excerpt:

A funny thing is happening in the United States. Across the country, headless schools are opening. One opens this fall in Detroit: the teachers’ terms of employment are still governed by their union’s contract with Detroit Public Schools, but they will administer themselves on a democratic, cooperative basis.  In just the past couple of years, schools run by teacher cooperatives have opened in Madison, Denver, Chicago, Boston, and New York.  Milwaukee has 13 teacher-run schools.

These aren’t universities. They are elementary schools, kindergartens, high schools of the arts and humanities, high schools for budding scientists and programmers, high schools for social justice.

University of California invests in diploma mills: Disaster capitalism in the raw

[UPDATE: more on this story from the Edu-Factory Collective (which we've just added to our blogroll.)]

[UPDATE 2: see the post above for a great story of creative transformation in public education.]

This story crystallizes the neoliberal assault on public higher education, and, really, on American society as a whole. It's got it all: Wall Street speculators, for-profit diploma mills, marketing of education as a commodity, rich guys on the board of regents, turning the recession into a business opportunity. You name, it's all there. It's like these guys use The Shock Doctrine as a recipe book. 

National Day of Action in Defense of Higher Education

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on demonstrations around the US on Thursday 7 October. Lead-in to the story is the jazz funeral held at LSU. Here's the local paper's coverage of the LSU event. A key quote, missing from the Chronicle story: 

Plenty of “LSUnited” signs also were visible Thursday, representing the LSU Faculty Senate’s new unionizing plans with the Louisiana Association of Educators.

Comments at both sites include a mix of higher education as a public good arguments and quasi-Tea Party whining. 

Conference, December 2-3, Univ. of Poitiers, France: 'Materialist Ontologies and Politics', organised by Jean-Claude Bourdin & Charles T. Wolfe

COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL: Les ontologies matérialistes et la politique

Organisé par le Centre de Recherche sur Hegel et l’Idéalisme Allemand (EA – 2626) 

Université de Poitiers
Responsables : Jean-Claude Bourdin et Charles T. Wolfe
Poitiers – 2 et 3 décembre 2010
36 rue de la Chaîne – F 86022 Poitiers cedex

Empirically-informed philosophy of logic?

In my previous post on implicit biases, I noted that such biases are a special case of a more general phenomenon, namely the fact that our actual reasoning and judging mechanisms seem to deviate significantly from the traditional picture of ‘human rationality’, as widely documented by research in psychology and behavioral economics, among other areas. As it turns out, our perceptual, cognitive and decision mechanisms seem to be far less accurate than we had taken them to be until this body of research started to emerge. The booming field of behavioral economics has been showing that our decision and choice mechanisms deviate significantly from the traditional construal of rationality (see for example this great TED lecture by Dan Ariely). Psychological research has been demonstrating that our perceptual capacities are not nearly as accurate as we take them to be (as e.g. the strange phenomenon of the invisible gorilla). When it comes to reasoning, the Piagetian idea that human cognition evolves naturally towards abstract, ‘logical’ reasoning (that is, following the canons of classical logic) is by now almost entirely discredited; our actual reasoning mechanisms do not in any way appear to follow the canons of logic as traditionally construed.

Promissory note: embodiment, the evils of '1st person', cognition, Negri/Virno.

Promissory note.
I want to say something here about
- embodiment, invocations of the 'first person', why phenomenology remains respectable in some quarters and why it shouldn't
- 'biochauvinism' (I forget whose phrase this is but it comes up in papers in the special issue of Topoi on embodied cognition, in which I've read Di Paolo and Thompson & Stapleton so far)
- in 2 weeks there is a special workshop in Sydney on such themes, but focusing on memory, culture, cognition, etc., with people doing cognitive archaeology and the likes. I will be trotting out a version of my forthcoming paper on Organism (HPLS 32:2-3, 2010).
- thus I also need to say something about the concept of organism.
- For people who are on the Virno/Negri wavelength(s) it is an odd fact of recent intellectual history that some of the loyal Negrists attacked the Virnians (and their erstwhile journal Forme di vita) for being too "naturalistic", too inclined to talk about philosophical anthropology, the body, etc. There is something odd here to be worked, and future intellectual historians will find it odd, I bet.
OK that is a longish promissory note !

Toscano on Berlusconi and politics in general

Nice piece by Alberto Toscano (haven't read his book on fanaticism yet) on Italy in today's, or very nearly today's Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/06/italy-silvio-berlusconi-public-face

Toscano manages to go beyond the 'isn't Berlusconi funny/repellent?' sort of theme to address broader political questions.

 

Claude Lefort has died

A student of Merleau-Ponty, Lefort was an important political philosopher. He co-founded, with Cornelius Castoriadis, the noteworthy postwar journal Socialisme ou Barbarie (1949-1965), in which an anti-capitalist support of direct democracy was coupled with a critique of the USSR as "bureaucratic capitalism." 

A collection of translated essays is available here, and Bernard Flynn wrote The Philosophy of Claude Lefort with Northwestern University Press; Fred Dallmayr's NDPR review of Flynn's book is here. 

Brief notice here from Le Monde. 

It Gets Better Project on YouTube and the Make It Better (now!) Project

UPDATE from Mark Lance: The Make it Better project: http://makeitbetterproject.org/

The Make It Better Project gives youth the tools they need to make their schools better now!  Through our website and YouTube channel, youth and adults can work together to make schools safer for LGBT youth right now.

Columnist Dan Savage launched “It Gets Better,” a video message in response to recent youth suicides to tell LGBT youth that life gets better after high school.  The Make It Better Project takes this one step further, giving youth the tools they need to make their lives better now.

We aren’t waiting until high school is over for our lives to get better… We are taking action now! Join us!

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A wonderful project on YouTube combatting bullying of gay teenagers: 

From the site:  

Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother's property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body.... I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

The financial corruption of the economics profession

In general I argue that philosophers and citizens more generally ought to be more economically literate than they tend to be. In my view a lot of criticism of contemporary economics is based on conflation between political rhetoric and the complex reality of economic research. (Such criticism also often conflates a lot of different trends within economics.)

Nevertheless, there is a class of economists that have leveraged their economic expertise and have become part of revolving door between academia, industry, and government. (Often they also become apologists of worst abuses by foreign dictatorships from Left and Right!) What is significant about the piece below is that it exposes the financial incentives that tempt economists. It may be well over due that when economists publish journal articles and textbooks that they reveal not just research grants, but also their consulting fees/sources?  It would be strange if economists, of all people, would think that (financial) incentives don't matter.

http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/

More on SUNY Albany French

Passing on a communication from Brett Bowles, a colleague at SUNY Albany, explaining how a deceptive "faculty consultation" set-piece served to give a veneer of respectability to the admin's fait accompli. The difference between Bowles's clear and impassioned writing and the mealy-mouthed admin-speak of the Albany president (attached below) is instructive. He and his colleagues deserve support from all concerned with higher education.  Links for protest emails and letters can be found at the bottom of this post from Sunday.

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Below is the official announcement explaining the rationale for the program eliminations sent to all faculty and students by [SUNY Albany President] George Philip on Friday. As you'll see the announcement of the program eliminations is in paragraph 15 and reads as follows: "This decision was based on an extensive consultative process with faculty, and in recognition that there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs."

The phrase "extensive consultative process with faculty" is of course vague and open to interpretation. Let me clarify the degree to which the faculty in the eliminated programs (French, Italian, Russian, Classics, and Theater) were consulted.

extending selves before procrastinating

One of the most underrated philosophers of our time, Joel Anderson, gets noticed (among notable others) in the New Yorker for his contribution to a volume on procrastination:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all

Can you help me try to avoid a Middlesex situation before it happens?

Please consider sending a signed copy of the following letter to the relevant politicians. Maybe we can stop a Middlesex situation from happening to what is supposed to be the flagship school of the state of Louisiana.

Below I've got (1) links for how to contact some of the relevant poo-bahs, (2) an explanation of all the various things in Louisiana that make this such a Catch 22 (basically, the only way out of the knot is if the Legislature gives the schools the ability to raise non-tuition fees), and (3) a sample letter for people to use in crafting their own, one that I hope is likely to have resonance with people at the state and federal level who decide on the relevant policy for Louisiana.

If everyone reading this took an hour to cut-and-paste the letter into a Word document and minimally sent it to the president of the Louisiana Senate, the Governor of Louisiana, the Speaker of the Louisiana House, various federal Senators and Representatives, and anybody else you know that might make a difference, then there would be a decent chance they would actually do what they need to do instead of further destroying Higher Ed here (we've already lost several programs at LSU including German and Classics, and the philosophy program at ULL was shut down last year).

SUNY Albany French program terminated; why do we have French (or philosophy) in universities anyway?

[UPDATED below fold with addresses of SUNY administrators to write to in protest and links to further news.]

I received an email yesterday telling how the entire French program at SUNY Albany has been cancelled. I'll reprint the email below the fold. But I want to frame the news by examining the stated criterion for the decision: the ratio of undergrad majors to faculty. 

As Harry Brighouse, whom I had the pleasure of meeting the other day while I was visiting Wisconsin-Madison to give a talk to the Geography Department, writes in this highly recommended Crooked Timber post, making the production of majors the criterion for justifying a program severely distorts clear thinking on the role of the humanities in higher education. 

Implicit Biases

In the discussion after my previous post on gender and philosophical intuition, Anne J. Jacobson mentioned the concept of implicit biases. Implicit biases are thought by many (including myself) to be one of the main causes for gender imbalance in philosophy. I am sure that the highly knowledgeable readership of this blog is already familiar with the concept, but let me review some of its main aspects. In my opinion, the topic is relevant not only for the social organization of the profession (affecting not only women, but many other groups of people who do not fit the stereotype of a philosopher as a white male), but also as a philosophical topic as such. It is a special case of a more general phenomenon, namely the fact that our actual reasoning and judging mechanisms seem to deviate very significantly from the traditional picture of ‘human rationality’, as widely documented by research in psychology and behavioral economics, among other areas. What are the implications of these findings for e.g. traditional epistemology? (I plan to blog on this at a future occasion.) 

Subjectivation, dialectics,and Hegel

Jason,

I like Balibar’s reading of Hegel, and thank you for your informative account of it. My comment on your post, in fact, grew so long I am posting it separately; but it is very much a response to your “Generation and Corruption of Subjectivity.”

The debate on the Philosophy of Right has to get off the notion of recognition ASAP, and Balibar’s reading does that. The view that families, as well as states, are agents of subjectivation is a good place to go. I would hate to have lived my entire life not understanding that dimension of family life, and as it is I learned about it far too late. (“Oh! That’s what it’s all been about!”)

But…I do think that the idea that Hegel’s dialectical teleology leads him to underestimate the violence in civil society has some problems.…