New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Founding myths (or a story of the blues)...

When I was a child my parents were friends with a glamorous Parisian, Jewish family, the Kukurudz-es. (They later moved to L.A., where they ended up befriending the family of fellow philosopher, Marshall Abrams.) Everybody's favorite memory of our visits occurred during a long Passover dinner, when Mrs. Kukurudz intoned from the far end of the room to the children's table in her classy British Voice, "Eric stop eating your Matzo-ball soup with a fork!" (This is still often repeated when I am trying to offer innovative solutions to engineering problems around me.) When she was not teaching me etiquette, Mrs. Kukurudz was the VIP manager at the Hotel Intercontinental in Paris. She made me a fan of Jerry Lewis (who was a regular guest of hers). And that is how I discovered Lewis' rendition of The Birth of the Blues. (For the "eating soup with a fork"--version see this Lawrence Welk's recording. Even Alice Lon can't save it.] His friend, Sammy Davis Jr., performs the most moving version of it on a Lewis Telethon.]

Now I am very fond of "The Birth of the Blues," because it tells the origin myth of the art from within the tradition and simultaneously extends the tradition. [This is as good a definition of philosophy as any.] As regular readers of this blog know, this process is something that fascinates me [recall here, here, and here]. According to the lyrics the blues were actively created by folk at a particular, yet timeless place (the Southland) that wished to innovate ("some people long ago Were searching for a different tune"). The blues are a mixture of a) pre-existing "rhythm;" b) imitation of nature ("the breeze in the trees Singing weird melodies And they made that the start of the blues"); c) the history of punishment ("from a jail came the wail Of a down-hearted frail"); d) the copying of bird-songs transformed by musical instruments ("whippoorwill Out on a hill They took a new note Pushed it through a horn 'Til it was worn Into a blue note"). So, we get an origin story and the essential ingredients of the art. Aristotle would approve.

Lewis is now best known as a comedian beloved by the French. But he was, of course, also part of a popular duo with Dean Martin. Now Martin plays a very dubious role in a remarkable 1965 rat pack recording of the Birth of the Blues in my former old home-town St. Louis; the performance includes Johnny Carson (who turns out to be a remarkably good singer), who, I think, makes a racially tinged joke with the St. Louis audience applauding. [Go here for the back story on the show, which was a fund-raiser for a rehab home for ex-convicts.] It's possible that Sammy Davis Jr. makes the joke. (It's hard to tell.) Either way, it matters because "The birth of the blues" is, of course, in part the story of white-black relations (cf. the Bing Cosby movie with that title); I call it a "myth" because slavery is the unnamed presence, if not rhythm, of the song.

The Sinatra-Armstrong rendition is the classic exemplar of telling the origin myth of the art from within the tradition and simultaneously extending the tradition. I insert a version with French sub-titles; the two masters of the art even introduce each other as "Professor."  

Now, while reflecting on this piece with my son Avi we discovered the clip below from the movie, The Best Things In Life are Free.The conceit is quite clever; the somewhat stiff composer shares the song with the woman he is trying to impress, who has an extensive sexualized fantasy about another man (or men), while he is singing to her. Interestingly, the jail is mixed Black/White, but once the seduction and illicit love unfolds in the fantasy-scene (which has amazing dancing by Sheree North), the Black men disappear from the scene entirely--a fitting metaphor for the effacement that the song instantiates. Yet, despite the multiple effacements the version in the Best Things in Life does tell the story of the song's origins in the roaring twenties of Tin Pan Alley (it was written by Ray Henderson, Lew Brown and, Buddy G. DeSylva and they are the subjects of the 1956 movie).

 

One final twist in this narrative. If I am not mistaken the great Cab Calloway made the song famous. (Here is a recording; I have not been able to find a filmed version.) Yet, while all sources [wikipedia and this guy who seems to know what he is talking about] insist he is singing the same song, Calloway has thoroughly domesticated the lyrics. In his version, the song is a self-help tune on how to learn how to play the blues at home, like learning etiquette. UPDATED [WITH CORRECTION]: As Neil Levy points out below, Calloway is performing "Learning the Blues."

[punkrockmonday # 19] The Legendary K.O.- George Bush Don’t Like Black People

The Onion has a list of 29 remarkable works inspired by Katrina. With the exception of Herzog's much improved version of Bad Lieutenant and this music video, I haven't watched any of those. I really do love me this song and video though. So in honor of this year's hurricane season, and the weird combination of unseriousness, venality, and dishonesty of anybody powerful enough to do anything about anything, here's The Legendary K.O., testifying a mere two weeks after Katrina. The band is from Houston, where Barbara Bush said that it's worked out very well for them. This was while walking through the Houston sports arena and in reference to all of the exhausted people she saw there huddled on bedbug riddled mattresses, people who'd lost everything and sometimes everyone. Barbara Bush don't like black people either. How could you possibly say something like that if you did?

I realize that there's a tendency to give Bush a pass because we feel sorry for the incompetent. But I must say that after the fact he was extraordinarily competent in blocking all manner of reasonable proposed reforms that would stop another Katrina from happening. This was multi-year fight. It was almost as if his core emotional response was just to get incredibly angry at the city, and the only competence the man could ever muster involved revenge for real and imagined slights.

Will Wright and Brian Eno Play with Time (hat tip Gregory Schufreider)

Homo Sciens. Or: Why Humans By Nature Desire to Know

Last week I alluded to a view about evolution that motivates some to sympathize with sensorimotor theory, and more generally, with the view that perception is for bodily action, and not (except incidentally) for the detection of states of affairs independently of their relevance to bodily action.

One version of the argument goes something like this.

Selection cares only about (what Patricia Churchland has raffishly called) the “4 Fs”—Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Reproduction. Since 4F success does not depend on apprehending the truth, selection cannot explain a truth-seeking organism, much less an abstract-truth seeking one.

Arguments like this have considerable currency. Alvin Plantinga takes them to show that God is needed to explain the reliability of human thought. From Stephen Gould’s perspective, they show that non-4F thought is a “spandrel”—a non-adaptive by-product of natural selection. And Tyler Burge writes that false perception “is not a failure of biological function”, since it is response not detection that is biologically functional.

Today, I continue my discussion of actionist theories of perception and thought by taking issue with this anti-intellectual view of human evolution. The 4F view is not mandated by evolutionary theory.

Jack Layton Dies: Canada's Left Badly Wounded

In a terrible blow to the Canadian parliamentary left wing, Jack Layton has died. Readers may remember that in the federal election in May, the always cheerful Layton led the New Democratic Party to a historic high, at least temporarily sidelining the separatists in Quebec and almost destroying the federal Liberal party in most of the rest of Canada. Layton became Leader of the Opposition and would-be mentor to the somewhat ragtag band of under-forties and under-representeds who had been carried to Parliament in the Layton surge. During the summer, Layton was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, and had to take leave from his position. This morning, August 22nd 2011, the cancer caught up with him.

UPDATE I realized yesterday that my subtitle is ambiguous between [Canada] is left badly wounded and [Canada's left] is badly wounded. I meant the second when I wrote it, but gladly embrace the first.

Layton was elected leader of the NDP in 2003. At the time, he seemed fresh and appealing, but basically inept. He grew into his job marvellously, as demonstrated by his magnificent performance in the election earlier this year. He would have made a historically great Leader of the Opposition. It's even possible that by consolidating his position in Quebec, he would have unified the country and become a great Prime Minister. That dim hope has perished with the man.

“Buried in a simplistic and false picture of scientific practice”

[During recent exchanges on this blog about the relationship between metaphysics and physics [see here and here], a forthcoming chapter by Arntzenius and Dorr was repeatedly mentioned. Jody Azzouni has offered us the following reflections on their approach.—ES]

Nominalists beware! It is not nominalistically benign to take objects that a nominalist is committed to, and then stipulate conveniently that such objects (or the “spaces” that they or their properties are located in) have all manner of intrinsic structure. But this is exactly what Arntzenius and Dorr (following Hartry Field) do on behalf of their “nominalism.”

Call Topologism the doctrine that there are no abstracta other than the points and regions of (one or another) space. Call Fieldian Topologism one or another program of showing that any scientific theory T which has among its existential commitments mathematical abstracta can be replaced with an equally useful theory T* which quantifies only over topological entities.

The classical text of Fieldian Topologism is, of course, Field’s (1980) “Science without Numbers.” A recent entry in the topic area is Arntzenius and Dorr’s forthcoming “Calculus as Geometry.” In both cases, regions and points of one “space” or another are quantified over. Arntzenius and Dorr are even willing to posit a continuum “mass space,” and to stipulate that each particle occupies a point therein. They attempt to allay the queasiness that any nominalist is bound to feel at this by suggesting we instead call these “mass properties” and stipulate that particles have such properties.

Arntzenius and Dorr justify this dubious procedure on the grounds that positing such topological structures nicely explain the properties that physical objects actually have. It will illustrate the problem to consider the “mass space” that they so blithely introduce. This additional space must be continuum-rich; further, its “points” must be continuum-structured (ordered, dense, etc.) in order for it to adequately support the mass function mathematically. And the space has these properties even if, as Arntzenius and Dorr admit, most of these mass-point locations are actually unoccupied by particles. In addition, the locations of this “mass space” aren’t located anywhere in relation to actual spacetime: they occur in an additional space posited purely for the mathematical needs of a physical theory of mass. Labeling it a space of mass properties (a set of continuum-ordered, etc., properties?) doesn’t escape the challenge: How isn’t this a positing of the very abstracta that nominalists want to avoid?

Who's smiling now?

Huntsman's Bullworth Moment

After this, it's pretty clear that his soul will be intact at the end of this process. 

USA! USA!

I keep remembering just after 9/11 when many commentators thought there was a moment when the social contract would be rejiggered in a way that took into account the wellbeing of the least among us (as well as the middle class for that matter) and just before Bush used that very moment to shove through even more tax cuts for the very wealthiest and resulting further degradation of basic infrastructure and median income. The recent UN report chronicles the fruits of thirty years of that very mindset, one that still paralyzes positive action here. Note that in all of these categories as recently as 1979 (and what happened in 1980?) the United States led the world. For the full article in American Prospect HERE.

To our great shame, among the 20 major advanced countries America now has

• the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;
• the greatest inequality of incomes;
• the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP on social programs for the disadvantaged;
• the lowest number of paid holiday, annual, and maternity leaves;
• the lowest score on the United Nations’ index of “material well-being of children”;
• the worst score on the United Nations’ gender inequality index;
• the lowest social mobility;
• the highest public and private expenditure on health care as a portion of GDP,

yet accompanied by the highest

• infant mortality rate;
• prevalence of mental health problems;
• obesity rate;
• portion of people going without health care due to cost;
• low-birth-weight children per capita (except for Japan);
• consumption of antidepressants per capita;

along with the shortest life expectancy at birth (except for Denmark and Portugal);

• the highest carbon dioxide emissions and water consumption per capita;
• the lowest score on the World Economic Forum’s environmental performance index (except for Belgium), and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark);
• the highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements;
• the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP;
• the highest military spending as a portion of GDP;
• the largest international arms sales;
• the most negative balance of payments (except New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal);
• the lowest scores for student performance in math (except for Portugal and Italy) (and far from the top in both science and reading);
• the highest high school dropout rate (except for Spain);
• the highest homicide rate;
• and the largest prison population per capita.

'Informed consent' and reproductive rights

Recently, there have been some very worrisome developments regarding legislation of reproductive rights in states such as Oklahoma, Texas and North Carolina, among others. The state of Oklahoma, for example, has a new law according to which, prior to undergoing an abortion, a woman must view an ultrasound of the fetus and hear a description of its status, organs and present activity; similar laws have already been sanctioned in the other states just mentioned. Here is an excerpt of the official formulation of the Oklahoma law:

B. In order for the woman to make an informed decision, at least one (1) hour prior to a woman having any part of an abortion performed or induced, and prior to the administration of any anesthesia or medication in preparation for the abortion on the woman, the physician who is to perform or induce the abortion, or the certified technician working in conjunction with the physician, shall:

1. Perform an obstetric ultrasound on the pregnant woman, using either a vaginal transducer or an abdominal transducer, whichever would display the embryo or fetus more clearly;

2. Provide a simultaneous explanation of what the ultrasound is depicting;

3. Display the ultrasound images so that the pregnant woman may view them;

4. Provide a medical description of the ultrasound images, which shall include the dimensions of the embryo or fetus, the presence of cardiac activity, if present and viewable, and the presence of external members and internal organs, if present and viewable […]

Sports Sunday 4: my achilles heel

The past five years, I've suffered from Achilles tendinitis, now and again. At first, I did what everyone says, stretching my calf muscle, because that's what causes the pain, tight calves, right? Well, that didn't work, and the reason is that the problem isn't tight calf muscles (muscles are never "tight," [edit: in the sense of "too short,"] even if the stretch reflex kicks in before would like it to), but weak calf muscles. If you follow this link, you'll see  the biomechanics behind this claim. Or, you could follow this link and find out everything about the Achilles tendon.

Briefly put, the calf muscle's function in running and walking (actually there are two muscles here, the gastrocnemius and the soleus) is to stabilize the foot during the foot strike. During this time, the muscles produce an eccentric contraction, meaning that they contract while lengthening (think of lowering a weight in an arm curl: your bicep is undergoing an eccentric contraction then). If the calf muscles aren't strong enough, the foot wiggles about, irritating the tendon in its sheath. (There are more complications here, as the entire kinetic chain from hip to foot is involved, but the calf is often -- but not always -- the culprit.)

So what should you do if you're hit by Achilles tendinitis?

A wonderful new resource for teaching Intro to Philosophy (and other courses!)

Here's the URL -- www.teachphilosophy101.org -- and here's the website's Intro: 

Welcome to TeachPhilosophy101 (TΦ101)

This site presents strategies and resources for faculty members and graduate assistants  who teach philosophy courses, especially at the introductory level; it also includes material of interest to college faculty generally. The mission of TΦ101 is to provide free, user-friendly resources to the academic community. All of the materials are provided on an open source license. You may also print as many copies as you wish. I am deeply indebted to Villanova University for all of the support that has made this project possible.

John Immerwahr, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, Email

What a great resource! Putting it together is a real service to the profession, and we owe John Immerwahr and Villanova a great deal of appreciation for sharing it like this. 

Speaking of gratitude for teaching resources, I would be remiss if I didn't also point us to In Socrates' Wake, a wonderful teaching philosophy blog which has been in our Blog Roll from the beginning.

I almost met The Rock

For what it's worth- Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, has been working out at the Baton Rouge Downtown YMCA. I just missed him the other day and today everybody was talking about (1) how he looks even bigger in real person than on the movie screen, and (2) what a prince of a man he is.

I already knew he was a prince of a man. I tried to explain what a legendary wrestler he was, but my enthusiasm was not as infectious as it should have been.

Men supporting the Gendered Philosophy Campaign

A prestigious workshop on metaphysics at Oxford has six invited male speakers (among the commentators there is one women). Our friends at the Gendered Conference Campaign made a fairly discreet public notice of it. Two important male philosophers, Ross Cameron and Jamie Dreier, joined the discussion to defend the GCC. It shouldn't matter that they are male, of course, but perhaps it is evidence that some of the intellectual leaders in the discipline are "getting it;" it is time we get our act together.

Continental Connections Thursday #7: what is philosophy?

In this week’s Friday version of continental connections (I was too swamped with beginning of the semester duties to get this done earlier), I want to expand upon a couple of points that were made in posts on this blog in the last week. In her post on methodological pluralism (here), Catarina called for a conjunction of four different methodologies that, when done together, will result in a more thoroughgoing philosophical inquiry. In the comments, David Chalmers argued that there was something else besides the four methodologies Catarina listed, what he called “substantive philosophical thinking and reasoning,” or “philosophical abduction,” and he argued that it is at the core of philosophy.

I agreed and argued that what I take to be the core of philosophy, following Deleuze and others, is problematics, or the creation of concepts vis-à-vis problems. Catarina argues that problematics falls under her fourth methodology, what she calls "conceptual reflection," and she is probably right.  In a follow-up comment John Protevi pointed out that a subsequent way to think of the history of philosophy would be as a genealogy of problematics, an analysis of how one problematic changed into another – e.g., how did Descartes’s problematic become Kant’s? Understood this way, the history of philosophy is not to be understood in terms of progress, and John, rightly I think, points out that this may well leave us with another point of bifurcation within philosophy, but one that spans both continental and analytic philosophies, and this would be between those who would argue for and those who would argue against progress in philosophy.

Any thoughts?

Information provided by Masters Degree

Who Was Rosa De la Garza?

For about a year now, I have been thinking about iconic content in the senses, making remarkably little progress. Every evening, I come home and reflect on my miserable lack of insight.

Fortunately for my sanity I have an avocation that restores equanimity. I have been working through some extraordinary recipes: Amanda Hesser's brilliant Essential New York Times Cookbook, which collects (and comments on) notable recipes from 150 years of that newspaper, and Mark Bittman's insightful food columns in the Sunday NYT Magazine. (I have also tried Lathika George's cookbook of my native cuisine: The Kerala Kitchen, but my experience has been only sometimes revelatory.)

Last night, I got caught up in a 1969 recipe in Amanda Hesser's book . . .

A call to support philosophy in Mexico

We have been asked to publish this call for support from our Mexican colleagues. Comments can be sent to Gabriel Vargas Lozano, Coordinador del Observatorio Filosófico de México at [email protected]. The website of Professor Vargas Lozano's group is here (in Spanish).

=====

IN DEFENSE OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITIES IN MEXICO

To: Dr. Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, President of the United States of Mexico

Mr. Alonso Lujambio, Minister of Public Education

The Committees on Education of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Republic of Mexico

Since its origin, philosophy has been, and still is today, society's critical self-awareness, which rests on argument, on rationality, and the search for a world in which justice rules. Teaching philosophy has historically made it possible for the society as well as for individuals to be more aware of their world and and to be free.

Our country needs an educational system founded in reflections about our actions and moral norms (which only Ethics can provide). We need to be able organize our thoughts consistently and present arguments coherently (Logic).We need to develop artistic and literary sensibilities and judgments (Aesthetics) and foster the ability to engage in dialogue while respecting the reasons given by others (which is the task of Introductory Philosophy Courses). Philosophy makes possible a greater cultural comprehension of the nation.

Everyone knows that our nation is in the midst of a crisis that requires urgent, long-range solutions. Our young people are most affected by this crisis because they are in the stage of their lives when their understanding of the world organizes itself and in which they form the values which will guide them in the future. For all those reasons it is unacceptable that anyone – especially those in high school – should be deprived of a philosophical education. But that is precisely what the High School Education Reform, first introduced by the government more than 2 ½ years ago, intends to accomplish.

It is even less acceptable that an agreement (the 488), which was entered after we protested, to restore the humanities as well as philosophical disciplines to the basic and required school subjects, be rejected on the grounds of purely sophistical arguments. Let us add that this agreement was unanimously accepted by the educational authority of the country (May 22, 2009) and published in the Official Notices of the Federation (June 23, 2009).

The first order of the day is to teach philosophy in courses bearing the names of classical disciplines. These courses must have serious content and be taught by persons trained in our profession, regardless of the teaching methods employed. We do not accept, for any reason, that the teaching of philosophy be eliminated, diminished, disguised, or distorted. We reiterate to the educational authorities of the country our emphatic rejection of such changes.

The authorities must not lend a deaf ear – as they have done so far – to the an energetic demands of the philosophical, scientific, and humanistic communities, both national and international. As long as we live in a state of laws, the authorities may even less refuse to comply with the agreements they have signed.

Our country needs a solid education. This implies the balanced integration of technology, science, and the humanities. In this way alone we can prepare young people adequately for the challenges of the future on the margins of the violence that surrounds us on all sides. We await your response.

Signed by:

Resurrection of Medieval; wither Early Modern?

[The following was promoted by reflection on word that L.A. Paul and Marilyn Adams will be co-teaching a cool sounding course on medieval and contemporary metaphysics Fall 2012.--ES] Despite Gilbert Harman, who infamously claimed, that “history of philosophy tends not to be useful to students of philosophy," cutting edge philosophy often re-discovers or promotes different historical figures and episodes as conversation partners (or emblematic forms of legitimation). Deleuze's use and approach to Spinoza is a favorite among many NewAppsers. Even in analytic philosophy, we are familiar with this process: Russell's and Ayer's revival of Hume at the start of the 20th century; the Rawlsians' rediscovery of Rousseau and Kant; more recently Hegel at Pittsburgh, and a host of other examples, including Harman's unappreciated study of Adam Smith. (In all cases the full story is complex.)

With the current unraveling of the hegemony of the Kantian-"framework" picture (roughly from Kant through Davidson/Rorty), the secure place of "Early Modern," which has always been a kind of set-up to Kantianism, may come to an end in the English speaking philosophical world. (In my view we see some of this already with the lowered status of Locke and Berkeley.) In particular, given that analytic metaphysics embraces many of the neo-Scholastic virtues (especially the high premium on careful distinctions) and is often driven by questions that the Scholastics worried intensely about, we should expect that the study of Medieval philosophy has a chance to escape from the religious stronghold that still stifles it. (Of course, we should not ignore the fact that analytic metaphysics and analytic theology have become very comfortable bed-fellows.) I am not claiming that it is over-determined that Medieval will be the main beneficiary: we also see renewed interest in the British Idealists (Della Rocca, Sam Newlands, Kris McDaniel) and Brentano (Ariana Betti and her students among others). Either way, there is an exciting process of rediscovery under way. (When we were colleagues McDaniel got me interested in and made me appreciate Suarez.)

Hitchcock's "fun gimmick is to have a theme song for each class"

Courtesy of Christopher Hitchcock's suggestion (in comments here): Plato's Cave: Out of the Shadows, by Sarah McLachlan Zeno: The Space Between, by Dave Matthews Berkeley: What's the Matter Here? by 10,000 Maniacs Personal Identity: Who are you? by the Who McTaggart: No Time, by the Guess Who Mind-body problem: Spirits in the Material World, by the Police Newton's bucket argument: Twist and Shout, by the Beatles Mach's critique of Newton: The Speed of Sound, by Coldplay

With some further suggestions by Paul Raymont: Cosmological Argument: 'Nothing from nothing' by Billy Preston; Autonomy: 'My way' by Frank Sinatra (or the cover by Sid Vicious); Collective Agency: 'Something in the air' by Thunderclap Newman; Theories of Punishment: 'Folsom prison blues' by Johnny Cash; Emergence: 'NaCL' by Kate and Anna McGarrigle; Is the mind spatial? 'Where is my mind?' by the Pixies; Justice: 'Know your rights' by the Clash; The nature of facts: 'Crosseyed & Painless' by the Talking Heads;

I am surprised the 21st Century Monads have not been mentioned yet. Other suggestions welcome. Participatory Democracy (or the lack of it): 'Why do you bother me?' by Gals and Pals -- it's not well known, but it's on YouTube at http://youtu.be/vpKBpQjc13c

Representing the hyperbolic plane with crochet

I just posted something on M-Phi about models of the hyperbolic plane construed with crochet. I won't cross-post it here this time, but for readers interested in either crochet or non-Euclidean geometry (or both), it might be something you will enjoy reading. Just to give you an idea, here's a picture of such a model:

       

Beautiful, isn't it? It looks like a coral.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Lenine

So, we're back, at long last! :) As some of you may know, I was in Brazil for 4 weeks over the summer (in fact, winter there!), and am now fully updated on the latest music news. I'll be playing some stuff I've discovered recently very soon, but today I'd like to talk about an old favorite of mine, Lenine. He is from Recife (the capital of the state of Pernambuco); as some readers may recall, in the 1990s Recife had an extremelly vibrant music scene, including the groundbreaking Chico Science & Nação Zumbi (see this post). It was also in the mid-1990s that Lenine became known in the rest of the country, when he and percussionist Marcos Suzano released the now legendary Olho de Peixe -- legendary not only because it’s a terrific album, but also because for a while at least it was really hard to find... I went to the very first concerts of Lenine & Suzano in São Paulo in May 1995, and I have to say I was simply flabbergasted from the very start –- so much so that my friends and I went to the first concert of a series of three, and then went to the other two again in the following days! I still love this album and pretty much know all songs by heart.

What are you teaching this fall?

A common enough question. I think it will be helpful to be able to see a sampling of the teaching (and enrollment, and teaching loads) of our colleagues. Links to course pages or syllabi encouraged as are email addresses so people can get in touch with you if they want more info on a course.

I'm teaching 

• a graduate seminar on "Foucault and Biopower" (14 students) and 
• an undergraduate Honors College course on "Evolution and Biology of Morality" (19 students).

A Cartoonist's courage, and wisdom: "Life is all about the grey area."

We are often told that Islam speaks in one voice, yet living Islam is also about "the grey area." Naif Al-Mutawa shares his wisdom: "Speaking to a group of Muslim students, Imam Talal Eid said, "If you ask me whether charging interest is haram (forbidden) in Islam, I would say yes and I would quote chapter and verse from the Qur'an for you." After a long pause, he went on to say, "But if I didn't pay for my car with an installment loan, I wouldn't be able to come here to talk to you about Islam.""

A philosopher's philosophy gets away...

In the comments thread on my post about Seeger/Dietrich, fellow NewAppser, Jon Cogburn, writes:

Can you think of historical cases of great philosophers where a philosopher's own philosophy got away from him analogously to the performance interpretation of a song? Maybe Kant being the first to recognize Maimon's genius but just being unable to parse it? Or maybe his experience with Fichte and others explaining the real import of the First Critique?

I've a few times baldly (and thus, to be fair, unconvincingly) asserted in this blog that something similar happened to later Quine, who wrote weird, unintentionally ironic, a-prioristic stories in an effort to empirically tame language/conceptual scheme acquisition. All of this was supposed to be motivated by his previous ideas (and Gibson is I think alone in arguing that it really is).

But Quine also spent some time producing unconvincing defenses of his earlier theses that even his adherents agree misfired (e.g. nobody's been able to make sense of how "Indeterminacy is underdeterminaton twice removed" really shows that indeterminacy isn't just another case of the supposed underdetermination of theory by evidence)? But it's interesting if Quine made the point himself, though I'm not clear from your quote whether this was a general point about the evolution of meaning of some term or about one's own philosophy.

I think the issue goes back to our pre-history. Aristophanes got to define Socrates as a kind of naturalistic, Sophistic philosopher. There are hints in the Platonic corpus this was not entirely poetic license. (I am thinking of Socrates' admission that he was eager to read Anaxagoras.) So, in some sense Socrates lost control over the perception(s) of his philosophy fairly early. If that is right then Plato and Xenophon should be understood, in part, as polemics. But maybe readers have alternative suggestions?

RIP: Warren J. Samuels (1933 - 2011)

A few days ago I mentioned the significance of reliable, local informants to those of us working on topics in another science. I just learned that Warren Samuels died. Samuels was one of the great, tireless historians and methodologists of the 20th century.

Warren was one of my earliest mentors in all matters pertaining to economics. (Thanks to the internet he started his mentoring before we met in person.) In fact, before I had completed my PhD (at Chicago) he called my attention to the existence of a related PhD (on Newton and Adam Smith) in economics (at Cambridge) by Leonidas Montes, who became a decisive interlocutor then. A few years later, Leon and I dedicated our first jointly edited volume, New Voices on Adam Smith, to "Warren Samuels whose invisible hand promotes the best kind of intellectual Exchange." Warren never tired of answering my naive questions.

Warren was the first person to ever acknowledge my research in public. My career was floundering and I thought that I would never find an audience among economists or philosophers. It was such a great morale boost! He also published my long study of the methodology of the Wealth of Nations, when others didn't want to touch it. Once, I saw him debate Nobel Laureate, James Buchanan, in person. Despite their fierce ideological differences, the two of them combined mutual respect, great knowledge of economics and (much to my surprise) deep philosophic learning.

UPDATE: Here's the obituary of Warren by Ross Emmett (one of my other mentors in the history of economics). I quote one passage: "His goal and passion was to broaden and enrich that conversation, and he was as happy to engage in conversation with a young scholar as he was with a Nobel laureate. To that end, he and Sylvia made a substantial contribution to the History of Economics Society to endow its Young Scholars program." (For striking evidence of the significance of this see here.) See also this moving tribute by Pete Boettke.

On founders rewriting tradition, and not....

Because Catarina is not posting about Brazilian music today, I will continue my blogging about music for another week. In two previous posts, I called attention to how performers transform a tradition by inserting themselves in it by way of evaluating it musically. (See here and here.) While there is more to be said about that theme, here I want to call attention to a kind of converse phenomenon.

I start with some autobiography. Both my grandfathers were exiles/refugees from (Nazi-ruled) Berlin, Germany. My maternal grandfather associated this exile with Marlene Dietrich (and named my mom, Marleen, after her). Noel Coward's introduction of Dietrich at the Cafe de Paris was memorized by all in the family.

Now one of the biggest hits that Dietrich ever had was with "Where Have All The Flowers Gone," which went on to be a popular anti-war song. (I believe I first became familiar with it through a version by Peter, Paul and Mary.) Dietrich made the song famous in German at the 1962 Unicef Gala [I have seen reference to a French version by Dietrich, but can't find it]. However, I embed a less glamorous and more austere version below ('creepy' in a David Lynch sense--thanks to Petra Van Brabandt for calling my attention to it).  

Of course, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" is a Pete Seeger song. There is a great clip (courtesy to Swedish TV with Swedish subtitles) where Seeger comments on the fact that Dietrich made his song famous. Now my reason for showing this clip is not merely Seeger's tribute to Dietrich (or to bemoan the fact that he was not always clean-shaven), but to call attention to his comment at the very end of this performance, where (not singing, but speaking) Seeger criticizes his own song "for not being specific enough" and for "being too easy." Now, the hypothesis I want to offer is that because of the popularity of Dietrich's performance, which he clearly admired, Seeger felt constrained NOT to rewrite the song.  

Brazilian music on Thursdays: now on Fridays

The Brazilian music column will resume its activities this week, but on a new day: Friday. Given the schedule of my new job in Groningen, Wednesdays/Thursdays turn out not to be good days to write blog posts; besides, it makes sense to put everybody in a weekend mode with some Brazilian music on Friday. The first new post will come tomorrow, and it will be great! :)

More literature reviews in philosophy

In a recent comment (that also got started by a comment by Robert Williams [maybe you should join NewApps?]), Robert Williams writes, "Let me put another suggestion on the table. One thing I really feel the lack of in philosophy is reliable, regular, high-prestige survey articles. There are some things that are in the ballpark: SEP articles, Phil Compass, Analysis Reviews pieces. I'm sure there are others. But---for example---different SEP authors interpret their responsibilities vis a vis surveying the field, recency etc very differently. Talking to my father (a psychologist) I gather that one thing that supports survey articles in psychology is the career focus on citation indices---survey articles typically carry very high citation counts, so people are incentivized to put effort into producing good ones...[snip--ES] By contrast, in philosophy, I get the impression that we have a bit of a free-rider problem: they're a lot of hard slog and not terribly high-prestige or career-enhancing...[snip--ES] So my schematic suggestion for reducing barriers to entry is to figure out a way of incentivizing this kind of regular literature review."

In the context of plagiarism cases, I have worried about the lack of incentives within philosophy for serious book reviewing and literature reviews. The latter are becoming increasingly scarce in philosophy as the classical dissertation disappears (and dissertation times become shorter); dissertating folk are increasingly encouraged to just write articles in order to enhance employability. Leading journals should promote the publication of (refereed?) literature reviews in their pages. (If I write for SEP or philosophy compass, which I happily do, my bureaucratic funding agencies don't count these as a real publication.)

Brand names

When should young philosophers (or young people in the humanities in general) have their own webpage? And what should they put on it? In this post on anonymity and pseudonymity I thought it at least possible that good blog comments could add to one’s brand name, or, in old-fashioned, less marketized terms, one’s reputation.

But when and how should one use the net for positive name-branding / reputation-building? When? I’d say the earlier the better. How? Or, in other words, what should go on a personal website?

Basically everything you would put in an application packet, and more: your CV, a statement on research, a statement on teaching, research papers, conference papers and Power Points (be sure you save them in PDF with reduced file size), syllabi for courses you have taught or would like to / are qualified to teach, course materials (outlines, study questions, exercises), even a videotape of your teaching.

Of course you have to beware spending so much time on a nice website that it distracts from the work of producing good stuff to put on there! Links to examples of good graduate student personal websites would be very helpful. Don't be shy; it kind of defeats the purpose...