New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Gender equality on the domestic front II

A few days ago I posted the first installment of a discussion of how gender inequality on the domestic front may affect gender inequality professionally. I discussed women’s limitations in terms of traveling for work, and now I will focus on similar limitations concerning professional relocation. But let me start with a caveat, which occurred to me after writing the first installment: the observations here do not pertain primarily to philosophy, in fact they seem to hold at least of the academic career in general. Indeed, traveling to conferences and the willingness to relocate so as to go after advantageous jobs seem to be part and parcel of academic work in general. So the observations offered here cannot in any way explain why gender balance in philosophy is so much worse than in other disciplines. Nevertheless, I think it is still useful to reflect for a moment on the effects of gender inequality on the domestic front, and possibly on ways to mitigate them.

In order to discuss the issue of relocation, let me start with two anecdotes. The first concerns a distinguished young philosopher/logician who is now just forming a new, exciting research center. He has hired something like ten people to get the center started, and unfortunately all of them are male. I asked him in private what he thought about it; he replied that he deeply regretted this outcome, and that he had made serious efforts to prevent this from happening, in particular by approaching several female potential candidates and encouraging them to apply for the many positions available at the center. But they would often reply that they couldn’t apply, as relocation was out of the question; their partners had jobs elsewhere. (I have to admit having been one of the female potential candidates who gave him this exact reply…) So in the end they had virtually no female candidates applying, and thus no wonder that there were no female hires.

Deleuze: online audio recordings of his lectures

Thanks to Farhang Erfani and his wonderful bulletin board Continental Philosophy for pointing out this page at Radio Deleuze. It provides a great interface to the collection of audio recordings of Deleuze's lectures from 1979-1987 now available for streaming from Gallica, the online service of the BNF. The acknowledgement reads: 

Tout d’abord les cours de Gilles Deleuze enregistrés à l’Université de Paris VIII, Vincennes-Saint-Denis entre 1979 et 1987. Il s’agit là d’un témoignage unique d’une pensée en train de se construire en même temps qu’un art de la pédagogie poussé à son extrême. Grâce à la générosité de la famille de Gilles Deleuze, de Hidenobu Suzuki et de Marielle Burckhalter qui ont réalisé ces captations, ce sont 400 heures d’enregistrement qui sont ainsi venues rejoindre les collections du département de l’Audiovisuel de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et qui sont aujourd’hui consultables dans Gallica grâce à leur aimable autorisation.

This is no secret, but it bears repeating that Richard Pinhas has developed a set of transcripts of Deleuze lectures, many predating the audio files mentioned above, and often with English, Spanish, and / or Italian translations of the French originals. 

Gary Williams: thoughts on Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender"

Williams provides some thoughtful remarks on a book we have mentioned several times lately on this blog. 

His punchline:

The only thing “essential” about the female and male brain is the essential tendency to change, adapt, and robustly respond to varying environmental conditions.

Gender equality on the domestic front I

By now, it is no news to the readers of this blog that I (among many other people) worry about the gender imbalance among professional philosophers. In several fora, and notably in the Feminist Philosophers blog, we try both to unearth the causes of imbalance, and to figure out measures that might be effective in countering it. Usually, it is features of how the profession is organized that come to the fore, in particular the possible effects of implicit biases and stereotypes. But today, I would like to outline domestic factors that may be contributing to the situation of imbalance. Lest anyone should think otherwise, I am *not* claiming that the domestic factors I will be discussing here are more significant and have more impact than the institutional factors that are usually discussed; I am also not suggesting that nothing should be done on the institutional front as long as the domestic aspects involved in gender imbalance are not redressed. But I think that, if we really want to understand what is going on, we need to look at the situation globally (I am with Eric Schliesser in disliking mono-causal explanations for social phenomena).

Actually, it was upon reading Cordelia Fine’s wonderful book that some of the vague intuitions I had on what seems to be happening on the domestic front became substantiated by her informed analysis. So let me discuss two aspects specifically, namely women’s presence at conferences, and their willingness to relocate so as to take up new jobs (the second point will be discussed in a next installment). (Also, let me add the proviso that my comments below apply mainly to heterosexual couples in a stable relationship, in particular those with children. While this is of course not the situation of many female philosophers, I take it that the proportion of women in this situation is sufficiently high for the observations here to apply to a significant number of them.)

Announcing new series in history/philosophy/theory of the life sciences

Our new series in history-philosophy-theory of the life sciences is 'live' at Springer now. Approx. 5-10 titles in the pipeline right now (on vision, the history of instincts, evolution and economics, vitalism, species, etc.). The long name of the series expresses the fact that we are going to try and combine volumes in the history of medicine, biology, neuroscience etc. with contemporary philosophy of biology (ecology, evolution...), and theoretical biology.

Full details as to submission procedures, topic areas and so on are here:

http://www.springer.com/series/8916

David Harvey: Crises of Capitalism

 

See also: 

Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey

A close reading of the text of Karl Marx's Capital Volume I in 13 video lectures by David Harvey. Harvey (cf. his CV) is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Director of The Center for Place, Culture and Politics and author of various books, articles and lectures. Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for nearly 40 years.

Appeal for help for Greek colleagues whose approved posts the government refuses to fund

We received this email from Stathis Psillos, Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy & History of Science in the University of Athens, as well as editor of the journal Metascience.

-----

Dear colleagues

Over 650 colleagues in various disciplines, who since 2009 have been elected by various departments of Greek Universities to take up university posts, have not been appointed because the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance in Greece refuse to release the relevant funds for their appointments. There are some vague promises made for appointments in instalments, but these colleagues (mostly young people appointed as Lecturers) have been left totally in the dark as to the prospects of their employment. This situation is unprecedented and if it persists it is likely to force most of these people to leave academia and, in practice, to cancel the decisions made by faculties around Greece to appoint them—after open calls and elections that involved hundreds of Greek academics.

There is a petition aiming to exert pressure on the Greek Government. For more info see http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42790.html

For those of you who do not know how appointments in Greek Universities work, here is a brief summary: there is an open call for a position and a subject, issued by the department (which has already been approved by the University authorities and the Ministry of Education and has been cleared financially by the Ministry of Finance); a committee of 15 academics (a third of which are outside the University for which the post is advertised) is appointed to elect a candidate; after a written report by a three-strong committee of experts in the field one candidate is elected; then, the Government has to release the funds for the actual appointment of the elected member of staff.

All good wishes

Stathis Psillos

"let’s simply savor what is possibly the best moment in world politics since 1989"

Harman from Cairo on this historic day.

A note on a Rawlsian-Libertarian alliance

Thoughtful Libertarians, who are very aware that the military-industrial complex promotes the corporate welfare state and rent-seeking, have increasingly started to reflect on the possibility of an intellectual alliance with the Rawlsians. (Thank you Roger Koppl, who does very interesting work on the institutional and epistemic background to forensics, for the facebook link.) This is no surprise to those of us who are familiar with the lifelong engagement (e.g., here) with Rawls by (the Nobel Laureate) James Buchanan, arguably the philosophically most profound and lasting Libertarian of the twentieth century (recall my passing comments last week about his criticism of Nozick).

Yet, for all the shared horror at war and torture, the Libertarian-Rawlsian alliance can only get off to ground if there is a honest dialogue about what prevented it in the first place. No doubt the Rawlsian defense of the welfare state should be listed among the most important barriers to a strategic alliance. But in my view the greatest single obstacle was/is the Libertarian fondness for States Rights over Civil rights.

Egypt & China

As many commentators have noted, rising prices for staple products (food, energy, etc) have contributed to civil unrest in the Arab world. (What is unclear is if this inflation is largely due to growth in so-called BRIC countries or the quantitative easing of the FED and European Central Banks, or both.) The old men with guns are being confronted with demands for economic and political reforms from a youthful population. What is worth noting is that the political unrest in Egypt comes on the heels of a thirty year period of rising income per head and a twenty year period of significant, uninterrupted real growth. Rising expectations are dangerous times for dictatorships.

Of course, Egypt is not the only important country where the military doesn't merely run politics but has also focused on rent-seeking self-enrichment via control over crucial aspects of the liberalizing economy. Pakistan, and China readily come to mind. (Russia, too.) In particular, I bet that the Chinese leadership is watching events in Tahrir square with more than unusual attention. I wouldn't be surprised, alas, if it is sending encouraging noises about the consequences of a crackdown.

Sout al Horeya [The Sound of Freedom]- Moustafa Fahmy, Mohamed Khalifa, and Mohamed Shaker

Credit where credit is due

Zizek has many memorable passages in this Guardian column: 

The most sublime moment occurred when Muslims and Coptic Christiansengaged in common prayer on Cairo's Tahrir Square, chanting "We are one!" – providing the best answer to the sectarian religious violence. Those neocons who criticise multiculturalism on behalf of the universal values of freedom and democracy are now confronting their moment of truth: you want universal freedom and democracy? This is what people demand in Egypt, so why are the neocons uneasy? Is it because the protesters in Egypt mention freedom and dignity in the same breath as social and economic justice?...

Although combative, the message of the protesters has not been one of killing. The demand was for Mubarak to go, and thus open up the space for freedom in Egypt, a freedom from which no one is excluded – the protesters' call to the army, and even the hated police, was not "Death to you!", but "We are brothers! Join us!". This feature clearly distinguishes an emancipatory demonstration from a rightwing populist one: although the right's mobilisation proclaims the organic unity of the people, it is a unity sustained by a call to annihilate the designated enemy (Jews, traitors)....

Then we saw a well-planned operation to kidnap the revolution. The obscenity of this was breathtaking: the new vice-president, Omar Suleiman, a former secret police chief responsible for mass tortures, presented himself as the "human face" of the regime, the person to oversee the transition to democracy....

When President Obama welcomed the uprising as a legitimate expression of opinion that needs to be acknowledged by the government, the confusion was total: the crowds in Cairo and Alexandria did not want their demands to be acknowledged by the government, they denied the very legitimacy of the government. They didn't want the Mubarak regime as a partner in a dialogue, they wanted Mubarak to go. They didn't simply want a new government that would listen to their opinion, they wanted to reshape the entire state. They don't have an opinion, they are the truth of the situation in Egypt....

One of the cruellest ironies of the current situation is the west's concern that the transition should proceed in a "lawful" way – as if Egypt had the rule of law until now. Are we already forgetting that, for many long years,Egypt was in a permanent state of emergency? Mubarak suspended the rule of law, keeping the entire country in a state of political immobility, stifling genuine political life. It makes sense that so many people on the streets of Cairo claim that they now feel alive for the first time in their lives.* Whatever happens next, what is crucial is that this sense of "feeling alive"** is not buried by cynical realpolitik.

*. **: emphasis added to this wonderful expression of political affect

All one needs to know about Sulieman (hat tip Andrew Sullivan)

From Al Jazeera's Lisa Hajjar (read the whole thing about Mubarak's lackey and the CIA's man in Egypt HERE):

In Egypt [in 2001], as [Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh] Habib recounts in his memoir, My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks, immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged, revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.

Prior to Mubarak's surreal speech (see analyses HERE and HERE) this was the tweet of the day. How sad that the antecedent is yet to be made true.

philosopher in the news

Atlantic Monthly contributing editor Graeme Wood gives a hat tip to Graham Harman in this article from earlier today.

Many of the people I talk and e-mail with who also love Harman's books don't know that he is the Vice Provost for Research at the American University in Cairo.

Harman's blog is HERE. And if you have some tears to spare, read his tributes to some of the heroic dead. Recent reports state that the death toll could very well eclipse the number killed in Tienenman Square.

 

Death Penalty drugs...and European export bans

A few weeks old, but interesting news about the death penalty (thank you Anna Ietswaart on facebook). Evidently various European governments prevent the export of drugs that are used in executions. This is causing delay in the executions in the US. The financial sacrifice involved is probably pretty small, but it is nice to see that sometimes moral principles can briefly trump economics.

More on Mankiw, and his rhetoric of bluff (CORRECTED)

You may recall that I was rather critical of the Harvard economist Mankiw on this blog recently. In my piece I quoted Mankiw in a concessionary way, "it is also a standard result that in a competitive equilibrium, the factors of production are paid the value of their marginal product. That is, each person’s income reflects the value of what he contributed to society’s production of goods and services." I then argued, "Well, yes, this is true, and the theoretical work of "Gerard Debreu and Herbert Scarf" (1963) does allow one to see that "if the freedom to exit a society is taken as axiomatic, then the only permissible allocations of resources are the competitive market equilibria." I then went on to show why this provides no support for just-desert theory in the real world.

But as the distinguished mathematical economic theorist, M. Ali Khan (Johns Hopkins) (whose writings on the shared history of philosophy and economics are a must read to anybody serious about these matters) pointed  out to me, "the Debreu-Scarf] theorem is false (first noticed explicitly by Foley of the New School) in the presence of public goods." (See Foley's piece here; see especially the conclusion. See also Muench 1972) Mankiw's whole appeal to Debreu/Scarf should be understood rhetorically (now in pejorative sense): cite some esoteric/technical literature in order to silence opponents and assume that the real experts are too polite to call you out (or maybe he misremembered from graduate school?)!

UPDATE: In an early version of this entry, I wrote "Since Mankiw's argument tendentiously ignores the contribution of public goods." Professor Mankiw kindly and correctly points out that he does discuss public goods in his piece. (In particular, to argue for progressive taxation and transfers to the poor.)

In fact, in his piece, Mankiw discusses Lindahl's work, so it all the more puzzling he chose to make his argument in terms of Debreu/Scarf.

History and Philosophy of Science on life support?

In his touching reminiscence of Ernan McMullin (1924-2011), Michael Ruse writes:  "from the first I admired him greatly for trying (what seems to have been much more common back then) to integrate philosophy and history of science into one whole. (Today, my sense is that the philosophers of science have returned to the analytic fold and historians have gone over to sociology and the gap is bigger than ever.)" (Thank you Brian Leiter for the pointer.)

I have made similar noises here; there I blamed the cult of contingency that has overtaken the historians (under the influence of Quentin Skinner's linguistic turn and Foucault's genealogical approach). Of course, on the philosophical side much needs to be done, too, to resuscitate the patient unless one already buys into various Neo-Kantian projects (historical epistemology, relativized a priori, etc). I don't.

Brazilian music on Thursdays: 'Apesar de voce'

Last week I posted a song written by Caetano Veloso when in exile, as a small token of support for the people in Egypt fighting for democracy. Overly optimistically, I had hoped to be able to post a more feel-good song this week, following an improvement in the situation in Egypt. Alas, a significant improvement has yet to happen, so instead I will post the song which can be considered as the anthem of opposing the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s: ‘Apesar de você’ by Chico Buarque.

Chico Buarque is one of the greatest singers and songwriters of the generation which emerged in the 1960s and is still highly influential and productive (others are Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, to mention just a few). Although perhaps having less popular penetration than some of his generation-fellows, Chico Buarque has been a constant presence in the Brazilian music scene of the last decades; he is known in particular for his elaborate lyrics and subtle and sophisticated compositions. He’s not much of a singer, to be frank, but quite an interpreter. He’s had quite some success abroad, in particular in France, and has composed and recorded many, many memorable songs. He is also an accomplished novelist, having written quite a few well-received fiction books.

On the Soviet Threat....and Economists

On Leiter's blog there has been some interest in the role of Reagan in the collapse of USSR. I am not going to take a stand on that. (In general I am with Hume and Adam Smith in disliking mono-causal explanations for social phenomena.) But it is worth saying something about how the Russian threat was perceived by the economics profession. In particular, there were three outstanding social scientists who bucked the general (and bipartisan) trend against overestimating the Soviet GDP (and consequently Soviat military capabilities): Walt Rostow, a Kennedy Democrat (Liberal anti-Communist); G. Warren Nutter one of the founders of so-called Virginia School of Economics (i.e., public choice and law & economics), who became Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the first administration of President Nixon (a very interesting character--I have written a bit about him); Franklyn D. Holtzman, an economist at Tufts University (where I took classes with him); he looked like a Bolshevik, but I have no idea what his political views were. 

Most economists -- and this included the most influential text-book of Paul Samuelson (by no means a friend of the Reagan administration) -- wildly overestimated the economic capabilities of the USSR. This has been very nicely documented in a recentpaper (now in press) by David Levy and Sandra Peart. There are lots of important lessons in this episode, but about that some other time.

released NY Times journalists recount torture of Egyptian protestors

The story is HERE. It cannot be stated enough that the new Vice President Suleiman has been implicated in torture as a state policy. He was centrally involved in the extraordinary rendition program set up by Clinton and then vastly expanded by Bush. Indeed, and now even while receiving support as an "interim leader" by the Obama administration, he refuses to even countenance revoking the thirty year old "emergency law" that allows such treatment.

Here's Pearl Jam doing a credible cover of the Dead Kennedys punk rock anti-torture anthem "Bleed for Me." They updated the lyrics so that the song deals with Bush. How utterly distressing that all signs point to the necessity of writing a new version for President Obama.

New APPS Interview: Cynthia Willett

Today’s New APPS Interview is with Cynthia Willett, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, and Executive Co-Director of SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy).

Greetings, Cindy! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview with us. Let’s start with your personal practice of philosophy. What are the pleasures and pains of philosophy for you?

Most of philosophy would be pleasurable if there were just enough time. The lack of time—for teaching, writing and everything else in your life--is the major source of pain. But I will say that philosophy deepens everything else in life, and that is a very rich pleasure.  Just raising the clichéd question, “what is the meaning of life?”, can make experience richer, and regardless of whether you think you know the answer.  In fact, the question might be richer due to the sheer uncertainty of an answer. Wrestling with the mystery of meaningfulness is much of the pleasure of philosophy.

What’s the relation of solitary and collaborative work in your experience?

It is hard to replace the camaraderie of graduate school, but co-teaching and reading groups are pure delight.  I regret that philosophy, unlike the sciences, tends to happen most of the time in solitary study rather than in groups. But it’s easy enough to account for the difference:  many philosophers often enough develop a personal voice and a singular style even as they address questions of larger relevance than themselves.  

On the Prejudices of contemporary philosophers.

Kadoos to Zena Hitz, who noticed and challenged a really silly comment by David Velleman (who I think of as one of the good guys in the discipline--in the sense that he takes books and humane concerns seriously!) in a Leiter discussion (about how the NYT (mis) represents contemporary philosophy). Velleman wrote: "Nothing written today is more arcane than Aristotle's Metaphysics." Unless Velleman meant to be offering a Straussian reading of the Metaphysics (reading "arcane" as esoteric), Velleman's claim is...ahum...I'll quote Hitz here: "I admit the arcaneness of the book, but the idea that nothing today is so arcane is nuts." (One can point to contemporary debates over perdurantism, say.)

Ernan McMullin (1924-2011)

One of the (gentle!) giants in the study of the history and philosophy of science (and the history of the philosophy of science), Ernan McMullin, has passed away. I'll let others try to evaluate his scholarship and character in more comprehensive fashion. I only met him a few times, but he was always generous and very open-minded toward junior scholars and PhD students. Most recently he was guest of honor at a conference I co-organized (with Zvi Biener and Ted McGuire) at Pitt on Newton and Empiricism, where he actively engaged in all the discussions. His Newton on Matter and Activity (1978) is the classic monograph in Newton studes.

I have a forthcoming paper ("Newton's Challenge to Philosophy") in the first essue HOPOS in which I engage critically and extensively with his important 2001 Philosophy of Science article "The Impact of Newton's Principia on the Philosophy of Science" (reproduced here.) I  am under the impression that Ernan also has an article forthcoming in the issue; I can't wait to read it!

Finally, Some low country pride: McMullin received his PhD from Leuven (1947)!

Wael Ghonim’s History Making and Emotionally Wrenching TV Interview

  
The four videos subtitled at NYTimes make up the entirety of the Wael Ghonim interview that was on the private Egyptian channel Dream TV last night. They are well worth watching in their entirety.  At the end of the fourth video you will find yourself weeping with Mr. Ghonim. I think all of Egypt is.

Al Jazeera English says that hundreds of thousands more people throughout Egypt are protesting after watching last night. In Cairo alone, Liberation Square has overflowed with pro-democracy protestors. Graham Harman has blogged that there is now a protest in front of the Prime Minister's office and that the Suez Canal workers are also protesting. Anyhow, please take the time to watch all four of the videos linked to above. The translation cuts out a little bit in the third and fourth ones, but returns after thirty seconds or so.

Tomorrow: Locke in the Low Countries

If you happen to be in Ghent, this should be fun.

Weekly Philo Economics blog: on values in economics (or the New Welfare economics debate reconsidered)

One of the most exciting young philosophers of economics, Anna Alexandrova, recently called my attention to a blog "the Moral Heart of Economics," by EDWARD L. GLAESER (A Chicago trained Harvard Economics profesor) in the New York Times. Glaeser's piece makes a historical argument about Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, and Milton Friedman, and a separate conceptual argument about the nature of welfare economics.  The bottom line of both arguments is that "freedom" is treated "as a fundamental good, a thing to be valued for itself" in economics. (It turns out that in Glaeser "freedom" means more choice; more about this below.) Because that's 'how freedom is treated at the very heart of economic theory." Both arguments are flawed, and they are flawed for revealing reasons. (Last week I also criticized a Harvard economist, but this week my tone will be more businesslike. While Glaeser's rhetoric is self-serving mythology, he should be applauded for trying to think out loud about the moral foundations of economics.) I will start with the historical claims about Smith, Mill, and Milton Friedman, although I take no pleasure in correcting economists lack of understanding of the history and philosophy of their own discipline. So, some may want to skip to the argument about welfare economics, which I will discuss in light of a now forgotten but very intense debate between two then-future Nobel laureates, Paul Samuelson and George Stigler in 1943.

President Eisenhower: the founder of Social Studies of Science!

"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded." From the Farewell Address (1961).

Other choice quotes (no, not about the military-industrial complex--you all know that):

Socially Extended Mind workshop, Free University Berlin, 21-22 March

Jan Slaby of the Languages of Emotion group (and the Critical Neuroscience group) at Free University Berlin has organized a workshop on the Socially Extended Mind. Shaun Gallagher will be the keynote speaker. Among the other speakers will be Hanne De Jaegher, who has done a series of excellent papers on "participatory sense-making" in this area. Here's a draft of my paper for those interested. Comments welcome here or by email. 

Reviewer's rules.

This rather critical (but otherwise not objectionable) review ends with "A final caveat: I come to Bogdan's book largely ignorant of his previous work. Bogdan often references his previous books and it is entirely possible that the answers to some of the complaints that I have aired are to be found in that large body of work."

So, question to readers of this blog: is there an obligation on reviewers to read the author's prior work (especially if it is referenced in the book)? My gut reaction was, surely not. But on second thought, I am not so sure. When I review works and I notice that some cited text plays a a crucial role in the argument I often take a close look at it. Now in my regular line of work that is often some primary source, but sometimes it is secondary source.  So, I can easily imagine that an author thinks his/her work is crucial to ongoing debate/discussion. (Of course, there is high possibility of self-deception here.) But, to be concrete, I can easily imagine John McDowell writing in such a way such that Mind & World is presupposed in non trivial fashion. (I have not read much of him since he published that book, so feel free to suggest other examples.)
What do people think: can we expect our reviewers to realize that we are building a corpus?

Most underrated philosopher of the week: John Corvino

A recent discussion on public intellectuals in philosophy of science on our blog made me think of this week's most underrated philosopher: John Corvino (Wayne State). In many ways, John reminds me of one of my undergraduate teachers, Hugo Bedau, who despite considerable philosophic breadth became closely identified with his criticisms of the death penalty (and along the way a great moral exemplar to generations of philosophers). Besides being a well known public speaker, a "heavy" on the campus debating circuity, and a regular columnist, John is also  the author of one of the most heavily anthologized piece in recent ethics, “Why Shouldn’t Tommy and Jim Have Sex: A Defense of Homosexuality." (It is probably taught quite a bit, too, in undergradaute courses.) Along the way, John has become a serious gender theorist in his own right. One of my favorite pieces by him is his defense of naughty fantasies (sadly I could not find a nice link to it online).

All of this would be more than enough to qualify for most underrated. (Someone might object that while Corvino fits the formal criteria for most underrated, his fame rules him out--but precisely among professional philosophers fame is often a compelling reason to disqualify somebody; who would deny that as a group we're prone to reverse elitism?) It would be easy to forget that John is also a quite accomplished (and funny) Hume scholar.