New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

PhD and post-doc positions in Groningen

In the context of my new research project The Roots of Deduction, two positions have just been advertised, one for a PhD student and one for a post-doc. Details on the two positions can be found here. The PhD candidate will reassess the literature on psychology of reasoning and mathematical cognition from the point of view of the dialogical, multi-agent conception of deduction underpinning the project, and the post-doc will work on the historical development of the deductive method in ancient Greece, again from a dialogical point of view.

Please help me spread the word, and do get in touch if you think you know of suitable candidates. Thanks!

David Hume on Divine injustice, with a surprising twist

"Were there a species of creatures, intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is, that we should be bound, by the laws of humanity, to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on the one side, and servile obedience on the other. Whatever we covet, they must instantly resign: Our permission is the only tenure, by which they hold their possessions: Our compassion and kindness the only check, by which they curb our lawless will: And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy." (Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 3.1). This is one of the most disturbing passages in David Hume. (Kate Abramson and Steve Darwall brought it to my attention when I started working on Hume's moral theory, and I keep returning to it.) I offer five observations on it.

1. 1. It captures an important truth about the non-universal scope of justice, and I return to that below.
2. 2. It also reminds us of the significance of the virtue of humanity in Hume (about which Kate Abramson, Jacky Taylor [in the Cambridge Companion], Ryan Hanley, David Levy, Robert Shaver, and Remy Debes have written very insightfully).
3. 3. It offers evidence that according to Hume there are at least two normative frameworks -- one governed by considerations of justice and the other one governed by the laws of humanity [and associated with important virtues such as compassion and kindness] --, which are not identical. Moreover, it is unclear that either always must have authority over each other. (This is not to deny that according to Hume there may be circumstances in which one can have authority over the other, and he is certainly an advocate of humanity.) Again, there is more than an important kernel of truth here (recall my discussion here).
4. 4. It just dawned upon me that if there were a Christian god, then we humans would be in the position of the species of inferior creatures in our relationship toward the Deity. If so it follows from Hume's argument that we don't fall in the sphere of God's justice; we can only count on his compassion. Now, I am no Christian theologian, but I suspect this is a serious heresy (one that Priestley made almost explicit in his claim that justice is a modification of divine benevolence. [This made Priestley a target of much criticism as can be traced on Google.books.])
5. 5. Hume's position also undercuts a lot of arguments against Jewish-Christian Theism that center on, say, God's injustices (for a long list of such injustices, see here). According to Hume these arguments have no standing because we cannot make our resentment toward God felt. I don't recall this position being hinted at in Hume's Dialogues, which, I think, is further evidence that in that book nobody speaks for Hume.

the road to me; the royal road to me; the road to a shared future (or how Soames is a Hegelian, and Michael Kremer a Skinnerian)

1. In 1969 Quentin Skinner published a famous article that promoted the idea that in doing history of philosophy (or political theory) we really encountered "alien" ways of answering philosophic questions. We find an echo of Skinner's view in Bernard Williams' famous advocacy that history of "philosophy that can help us in reviving a sense of strangeness or questionability about our own philosophical assumptions.” [To be sure, Williams' distinction between the history of ideas and history of philosophy is not Skinner's. I couldn't find an online copy of Williams' article.] Skinner didn't just deny that there are perennial questions in philosophy, but he insisted that there were only individual answers to individual questions. In fact, together with the writings of Foucault, Skinner is the locus classicus for what I have called the cult of contingency. (He believes it is a "general truth" that there are no "timeless concepts" in the history of philosophy or in describing our social institutions, although he allows this may not be so in mathematics.) Skinner's embrace of the cult of contingency is interesting because he also extracts from it a Socratic moral, that is, "history" provides a "lesson in self-knowledge," if not the Kantian message that "we must learn to do our thinking for ourselves."
2. Now in his paper, Skinner briefly discusses and dismisses an alternative view (which he associates with Hegel) that the best way to write history of philosophy is from the "present" which is, after all, the most highly evolved. Scott Soames' massive (2003) Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century heartily embraces that Hegelian perspective. In a forthcoming paper, drawing on some distinctions from the historian of mathematics, Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1990), Michael Kremer has adopted the phrase “a royal road to me” for that kind of presentist history "which aims to provide an “account of how a particular modern theory arose out of older theories instead of an account of those older theories in their own right,” thus confounding the questions “How did we get here?” and “What happened in the past?” (Kremer is quoting Grattan-Guinness, in part). Kremer goes on to to suggest that "philosophical history is always in some sense a “road to me,” but only becomes objectionable if it is treated as a “royal road to me.” Properly carried out, philosophical history will shape its practitioner philosophically." That is to say, in effect Kremer criticizes Soames for writing a history of his [and Kripke's] prejudice(s), or to put this more politely (and closer to Kremer's own words) Soames doesn't merely mis-characterize the past, in Soames' approach we can't be surprised by the past (Kremer quotes Williams on this point). Now, Kremer's point isn't to bemoan that we forgo on an exciting emotion by following in Soames' footsteps. Rather his point is that Soames' self-congratulatory history of progress (the royal road to me) is not properly a philosophic activity. As opposed to Soames style "royal road to me," Kremer embraces "untimely" history of philosophy (quoting Williams, who is echoing Nietzsche) that is a kind of "road to me." In particular, untimely history of philosophy either upends present philosophy (this is why surprise matters so much to Williams) or makes the past useful to one's present (by making one revise/improve one's philosophic orientation/doctrine, etc).

Your obstreperousness might be ruining it for other people

In a previous thread (Don't Fall to the First Cut) Mark Lance writes:

I've heard many many times from smaller schools in out of the way places, that they are also interested in whether people will take their jobs. We noticed when I was at Pitt in the late 80s, that such places were not interviewing our students, even the ones who genuinely wanted jobs at teaching institutions. After some research it turned out that most were just assuming that none of us would be happy there, that we would leave for a research university in a better city first chance we got. So if you can say something plausible about why you would enjoy living in rural Idaho, that really helps.

I have a clarification and then a number of questions about this.

Sports Sunday 7: Women and children first!

It was meant as a sanction against a particular club, but maybe smart marketing execs at other clubs and in other sports will see the potential. Look at the joy and exuberance on the faces of these fans.

Excerpts from the CNN story: 

The Turkish Football Federation had planned to make Istanbul favorite Fenerbahce play two games in an empty stadium after fans invaded the pitch after a friendly against Ukraine's Shakhtar Donetsk during the summer, according to a Turkish Weekly report.

But new rules say those games will be open only to women and children under age 12, National Turk reports. Admission is free.

The policy got its first test Tuesday night in Istanbul, as 45,000 women and children turned out to watch Fenerbahce and Manisaspor face off in the Turkish Super League....What they were hearing was something unexpected in the usual partisan atmosphere of Fenerbahce Istanbul’s Sükrü Saracoglu stadium: cheers for the visiting team.

Players from both teams greeted their female fans before kickoff, tossing flowers into the stands, Turkish Weekly reported...

“This memory will stay with me forever. It’s not always that you see so many women and children in one game,” Fenerbahce captain Alex de Sousa said at a post-game news conference, National Turk reported.

There's so much to think about in this story: gendering practices, emotional contagion, shared joy, mirror neurons ... A good case study would unravel all sorts of fascinating dimensions to the multiplicity* actualized here, to the differential field* of which this event is a crystallization, lightning flash, or hurricane.

*"Multiplicity" and "differential field" are technical terms for Deleuze in Difference and Repetition.

Does Marc Hauser's Moral Minds Plagiarize John Mikhail's Earlier Work?

Princeton's Gilbert Harman makes a very persuasive case that the answer is probably 'yes!' [Thanks to Kristopher Philips via facebook.] You may remember Hauser...he is the guy that fabricated data. I assume that the reason for the delay in going public with this (Hauser's book got published in 2006) is to wait until Mikhail's book got published.

UPDATE (9/26/11):  Professor Harman has clarified the intent of his piece in a comment added to the thread below. The "plagiarism" charge was meant for private discussion only, and was not intended for public consumption. His piece has now been removed from the web.

A strategic thought on entering the job market

A strategic thought came together for me a while ago, and it seems sufficiently distinct from the more technical best practices issues Mohan is pursuing that I thought I'd put it as a separate post.  The question is how risky to be in your public presentation.  This comes up often in the context of putting yourself out there politically.  People ask folks like us a lot over things like the Synthese controvery, or sexual harassment, or other LGBTQ issues in philosophy whether they should, as people on the market, make public forays into these issues.  The thought is that they might offend someone and thereby not be taken seriously for a particular job.  But here's the thing:

"Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist"

Guardian article HERE. One takeaway:

The returns are astronomical: in the past financial year, for example, Elsevier's operating profit margin was 36% (£724m on revenues of £2bn). They result from a stranglehold on the market. Elsevier, Springer and Wiley, who have bought up many of their competitors, now publish 42% of journal articles.

It's very interesting that this has broken out of being just something that the Chronicle of Higher Education covers.

Kids and Philosophy: A Bad Combination?

More and more of my philosophy friends are having kids or contemplating having them. Those in the contemplating state of mind often ask me how I managed to get any work done after having a kid. I used to tell them that having a kid actually made me use my time more wisely. After having a kid, two hours would seem like gold and I would work my butt off during those precious hours and get more done than I normally would in a day's time. A couple of my colleagues listened, had kids, worked their butts off and did indeed thrive philosophically. Hard to tell whether they would have done even better without the kid(s). But they told me afterward that I was right.

I am not so sure anymore. I only have one child, but I am a single mom, so my situation probably matches that of a two-parent family with two careers and two kids. If you are in that situation and you are still trying to joggle a career, kids, household chores, bill paying, and so on, then you probably hardly ever have any time off from chores.

Here is what a day may look like with a 7-year old. Get up at 6:30, take shower, get dressed, get your own bag ready, make breakfast. Wake up kid at 7:45, make sure she gets dressed, brushes her teeth and combs her hear. Eat breakfast together, get her bag ready. Leave house at 8:30. Arrive at school at 8:50, drop her off, make sure she gets inside the school before you leave. Drive to university. Arrive 9:15. Enter class room, find slide show on computer. Start teaching at 9:30. Finish at 10:45. Meet with students for an hour. Go to lunch with a colleague if time permits. Answer emails for an hour. Go to next class. Meet with students again. Read one quarter of the paper you promised to referee. Pick up kid from school. Drive to soccer practice. Watch kid practice soccer for an hour. Arrive at home at 6. Make dinner. Eat dinner. Help kid do homework and practice drums and spelling test. Help kid get in her PJs and brush her teeth. Read her a story and put her to bed. Take a deep breath. It's now 9 pm. Two hours left to work before bedtime.

Aristotle: the despotic rule of soul over body

I'm prepping for this workshop next week, reading Canguilhem's wonderful La connaissance de la vie (a recent English translation has been done by Fordham UP here). 

In discussing the political transpositions of vitalism, Canguilhem writes on p 124 of the French (my translation): 

Certainly the thought of Dreisch offers a typical case of the transplantation onto the political terrain of the biological concept of an organic totality. After 1933, the entelechy became a Führer of the organism. [Canguilhem provides the original in a note: Die Ueberwindung des Materialismus, 1935: "Eine Maschine als Werkzeug für den Führer -- aber der Führer ist die Hauptsache," p. 59.] Is it vitalism or the character of Driesch which is responsible for this pseudo-scientific justification of the Führerprinzip? 

A very Important example, but what I thought worth a post is the following, which testifies to the greatness of Canguilhem, who, writing in 1946, after heroic service in the Resistance -- which he joined at the encouragement of his colleague Jean Cavaillès, later tortured and killed by the Nazis -- does not rest with a denunciation of recent examples, but drives deep into history to find the bio-political conceptual field -- the field of political physiology -- that authorizes these transpositions.

Could one not think that politics takes from [retire de] biology that which if had first lent it? The Aristotelian notion of a soul that is to the body what the political or domestic ruler [chef] is to the city or the family... [is] a prefiguration of the theories of Dreisch. Thus, in Aristotle, the structure and functions of the organism are set forth by analogies with the intelligently directed tool and with human society unified by rule. What is in question, in the case of the exploitation by Nazi sociologists of anti-mechanistic biological concepts, is the problem of the relations between organism and society.

One of the sources for Canguilhem's claims about Aristotle is the following passage from the Politics, which completes the analogy: the soul as despotic ruler rules over an enslaved, slavish, body:

At all events  we may firstly observe in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule.... When then there is such a difference as between soul and body ... the lower sort are by nature slaves ... (Politics 1.5.1254b4-6; translation from the Barnes edition)

I have a friend...

I have a friend who is a PhD student in Philosophy at a fairly known but not élite, large American university. She has been experiencing any number of forms of harassment, either from senior male professors more or less coming onto her, or fellow graduate students of a more 'fundamentalist' persuasion (yes, in the most common understanding of that term) being aggressive, at times borderline physically aggressive, or other faculty making jokes relating to her appearance.

The question is, where should she go for help (or less dramatically, 'support', 'advice', 'discussion')? I have stopped reading Leiter's blog a while ago and never was a frequent visitor to it (but I must say it is there I learned, sometime last year, of the astounding and shocking 'What is it like to be a woman in philosophy?' blog and its collection of tales, which has since been discussed here too). So, there is that blog, there is our own. Any other suggestions?

(I had asked, of course, if there were supportive female or male faculty members she could talk to, or graduate students with comparable experiences who might have developed 'survival strategies'; it's not clear if that is the case. I had also suggested she tell her story anonymously here or elsewhere, to shame the relevant parties - here the senior staff is probably more the issue - but she pointed out that they most likely are unaware of these blogs.) Thanks for your 2 cents.

Newton-Yahuda collection available online

As Steve Snobelen reports to me, "this is a historic week for Newton studies." The National Libary of Israel has just let a beta version of a web interface providing access to the full Newton-Yahuda collection gone live. You can see the manuscripts in all their glory here:

Hiring Best Practices: Reference Letters

Reference letters: How do you write them? How do you read them?

Experience indicates that lots of people have lots to say about this. So I’ll just get out a few ideas about writing to start a conversation.

No more Troy Davises

Christopher Norris, professor of philosophy at Cardiff, sent the following message to Philos-L, in response to a CFP for a conference in the state of Georgia (re-published here with his permission):

Could I suggest that the Georgia CFP is a good opportunity for list-members to express their moral outrage at the murder of Troy Davis by the Georgia state and judiciary? This they might do either by withdrawing any previous commitment to attend the conference or by writing to the organisers and making plain their abhorrence of capital punishment generally and of this gross and hideous miscarriage of justice in particular. Short of that, delegates could make their attendance provisional on the organisers going public beforehand with a statement of protest and a commitment to do everything in their power to educate people concerning the moral evil of capital punishment. The organisers could make a good start on this by honouring Troy Davis’s memory at the outset of the conference and dedicating most of the sessions to aspects of his case and the urgent need for reform of the judicial system.

In the longer term, could British philosophers who share this view perhaps agree to boycott all conferences and so far as possible avoid all dealing with academic institutions in those parts of the US (especially the deep south) where this practice is carried on? They might even take the view – I do – that there is a moral obligation not to visit any part of the US so long as the infliction of capital punishment is left to the discretion of individual states under federal law.

I have mixed feelings about some of the suggestions he makes (e.g. academic boycotting of institutions located in states allowing for the death penalty), but I think this is a very good point. What can we, as philosophers, possibly do, both theoretically and practically, to fight judicial murder? I'd like to invite people to share their views on the matter.

UPDATE: Christine A. James, professor of philosophy at Valdosta State University in Georgia, sent the following reply to Prof. Norris on Philos-L, which I repost here with her permission:

Friday political music selection - prison

In light of the latest fight over judicial murder - at the moment a contest focused on whether to murder now, murder later, or merely continue to kidnap an innocent man while a cop killer goes free - it seemed like the right theme.  

This isn't particularly politically sophisticated, but gee, had to start here

And this just needed to be included as well.

As usual, Phil focuses on what matters.  In a similar vein here is Lou and spearhead

And to end on a lighter note, 'cause otherwise I'm so extraordinarily disillusioned with this country and where it is headed, well, who knows.  Todd

Brazilian music on Fridays: Tim Maia

A few weeks ago I talked about Brazilian reggae, and before that I had mentioned Brazilian post-punk, Brazilian rock etc. Indeed, alongside with traditional local styles such as samba, frevo, forró (but which are also usually local interpretations and mixtures of foreign styles), in Brazil we also like to ‘import’ music genres from elsewhere, but it always ends up sounding quite different from their original sources; the mixture with Brazilian rhythms and sounds is simply inevitable.

Another example is Brazilian soul music. (When I was in Brazil last July I bought a cd called ‘Soul do Brasil’, a collection of Brazilian soul songs, which offers a good overview of the genre; and here is an informative text in Portuguese about Brazilian soul.) The absolute king of Brazilian soul is Tim Maia; basically, he single-handedly initiated the genre. He released his first record in 1970, which was immediately a huge success with its novel combination of American soul with Brazilian rhythms. Besides his music, his iconoclastic, outspoken attitude did not go unnoticed, and he was famous in particular for missing appointments and concerts. But most importantly, his husky voice and his vocal range of lower register were put to good use not only for soul but also for other rhythms and styles.

More on hominids and early humans

For those of you who share my interest in hominids and early humans, there were a couple of interesting articles published this week, as discussed in this NatureNews article. One study is about a DNA-sequencing of an Aboriginal Australian, on the basis of a hair sample of 90 years ago. The idea is that this would exclude the possibility of interbreeding with people of European descent. The conclusion is that Aboriginal Australians seem to be descendants of the first wave of human migration out of Africa, whereas the majority of inhabitants of mainland Asia would be descendants of a second, later wave of migration.

Another study identifies traces of Denisovan DNA in Aboriginal Australians; Denisovans are another line of hominids, parallel to Neanderthals and modern humans. As is known, traces of Neanderthal DNA were found in all human populations outside Africa, but until now Papua New Guineans were the only modern human population whose ancestors were known to have interbred with Denisovans. Interesting conclusions can be drawn from these findings:

Splendid philosopher of the week; Kathleen Akins

I welcome private and public nominations for my weekly, splendid philosopher of the week post! [Yes, enough folk persuaded me that "most underrated" could cause unintended harms.] Here are the rules: 1. no dead people; 2. no people currently or about to be employed in a Leiter top 50 (or equivalent) department (even thought these are also filled with splendid folk); 3. no former dissertation advisors, or other teachers from graduate school; 4. no former students; 5. No un-tenured junior folk (again accepting emendation); 6a: Excellence in more than one AOS, or 6b: noticeable public impact; 6C Just plain inspiring. (That is I want to recognize interesting philosophers, not just hyperspecialized ones!)

This week's splendid philosopher of the week is Kathleen Akins an associate professor at Simon Fraser, whose moving struggle with HLA-B27 Negative Ankylosing Spondylitis is recounted at Disabled Philosophers. (A site worth visiting and reflecting on regularly.) I adore her work because she doesn't merely use neuro-science to answer philosophical questions, but she also offers a critical and pro-active stance back on the sciences. (She also provided one of the first public mentions in philosophy of one of my undergraduate mentor and sometime co-author, George Smith.) Akins is one of the best color vision people in philosophy, and I can't wait to read her book-in-progress.

But Akins' fame rests, I think, on two remarkable articles. One is a paper that challenged one of the central dogma's of the second half century of analytic philosophy (that is) that intentionality/aboutness is somehow central to mental states. (It is amusing that this Scholastic concept been so greedily adopted by so-called naturalistic philosophers.) Her (complex) argument does not deny that there is such a thing as aboutness, although she insists -- "pace Sellars" [and Chisholm] -- with lots of empirical evidence that we really don't know what it is. But she simply dislodges it from its central position in the explanatory enterprise. More significantly, her 1996 article lays the groundwork for much of the recent focus on embodied and active cognitive capacities in philosophy of mind (so beloved by many of my fellow NewAPPSers).

Second, her two (related) papers in which she criticizes Nagel's famous essay with bats in its title. "What is it like to be boring and myopic" (1993) and "A Bat Without Qualities" [Sadly, I couldn't an electronic copy of each available online.] For me the take home message of these papers is that science can and will surprise us in many ways about how we experience the world. Science won't settle philosophic questions, but it can undermine our confidence in our thinking that we asked the right question. In doing so, it can also change our sense of who we are.

Jason Read: I Owe You an Explanation: Graeber and Marx on Origin Stories

Jason Read offers us this post as a teaser for a series at his excellent blog, Unemployed Negativity.

---

This is the first of a few posts on debt and literature on debt.

The story of so-called primitive accumulation is well known to readers of Marx. This story was political economy’s way of understanding the origins of capitalism, explaining how the world was divided into workers and capitalists. The story is a kind of grasshopper-and-ant tale, of those who save and those who squander, although Marx gives it a different literary spin. As Marx writes:

This primitive accumulation plays approximately the same role in political economy as original sin does in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote about the past. Long, long ago there were two sorts of people; one the diligent, intelligent, and above all frugal elite; the other lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort finally had nothing to sell except their own skins.

Marx argues that this story is inadequate to account for the origin of capital. It is not enough to simply save money, because the accumulation of money does nothing to produce those with nothing to sell but their labor power. In order to get workers, a huge population must be separated from the means of production, cast off the land and out of the commons. The origin of capitalism is not a moral story of thrift, but a bloody story of expropriation; a story which eventually encompasses the whole history of slavery, colonialism, and even the reformation.

Marx ended Volume One of Capital with this critique, David Graeber opens his book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years with a critique of another contemporary fable. This fable concerns the origin of money.

Male-Only Volumes and How to Intervene

First of all, I’d like to thank the New Apps team for inviting me to post here. I have been blogging for over 5 years, but this is my first post as a team blogger. Being part of a team inevitably creates a lot more anxiety than just blogging on your own. I am used to be solely responsible for my claims. Now, I could potentially shed some bad light on a team member. Well aware of this fact, I am going to jump right into a debate that has taken center stage at this and other like-minded blogs, viz. the debate about the status of women in the profession.

Most of the debate has focused on female participation in conferences. I think this debate has been extremely fruitful. It has helped people in our profession become more aware of who they invite (or don't invite) to conferences. Sure, the problem hasn't been solved. But I sense a new awareness of the issue among fellow philosophers. I occasionally hear male philosophers proudly announce that 50 percent of the participants at the conference they were organizing were women. This level of awareness probably wouldn't have been reached without the ongoing debates about the issue.

A related topic that has received relatively less attention is that of women contributions to philosophy volumes. A few years ago I decided to do an informal count of female contributions to Oxford volumes within the last ten years. I counted a female editor and any paper co-authored by at least one woman as a female contribution. My counting went by fast, and I probably missed numerous out-of-print volumes (and, I am sure, in-print volumes).

Still, my count probably is a fairly good estimation of the percentage of female contributions to philosophy volumes. By my informal (and sloppy) count, there were about 10 percent female contributions over the past 10 years. About 20 percent of philosophers holding positions at a research university in the United States are women. This number has not changed significantly within the last 10 years. So 10 percent female contributions to volumes is definitely not good enough.

On the unreliability of eyewitness testimony

This Slate article goes into some detail on police procedure in the Troy Davis case regarding eyewitness testimony. (Georgia presented no physical evidence against Davis, only eyewitness testimony.)

An interesting link in the article goes to this Maryland law prohibiting the death penalty in cases in which the State presents only eyewitness testimony.

There is much philosophical food for thought here, and I'd like to invite comment on the epistemology, the psychology, the ethics, and the pedagogy concerning the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. (Pedagogy in the sense of how people present this issue, if they do, in their classes.)

On Carnap's criticism of Heidegger (post-script to Bell)

Several of us at NewAPPS (Protevi, Lance, Cogburn, maybe Jeff Bell) are explicitly committed to overcoming the analytic vs continental divide. (I see more value in ongoing rival schools and traditions of philosophy.) And as a group, we try not to be mean or sectarian about any way of doing philosophy (although most of us have strongly felt judgments, and we allow ourselves to provoke debate). So, it should come as no surprise that we regularly return to the topic (see Catarina Dutilh Novaes here and my own plugs for Schlick here and earlier here). But Jeff Bell's terrific post on Abe Stone's brilliant analysis the origins of the split, takes the discussion to a more important level. On Stone's reconstruction Heidegger and Carnap understood Husserl and each other quite well, and both offered conflicting approaches to the responsible use of language in response to Husserl's philosophy. In Stone's hands, the difference between Heidegger and Carnap (and their followers) is, thus, fundamentally ethical (in a Kantian sense). Now, some other time I want to return to Stone's motives for disclosing Carnap's "brief hints."

In the history of philosophy, "the nothing itself nothings," has, of course, a dubious status as either brilliant ridicule or very uncharitable reading. But as Stone has taught us, in context that sentence is a very charitable reading of Heidegger. No, the real insult to Heidegger occurs near the end of Carnap's (1931) paper [I have linked to an English translation]. Carnap ends his paper (which is rarely read, but often cited) with a two-fold insult to Heidegger: first, "Metaphysicians [that is, Heidegger] are musicians without musical ability." (Cf. Heidegger's Stimmen in "What is Metaphysics?") Second, Carnap THEN GOES ON TO PRAISE NIETZSCHE and his poetry. To say this as a serious joke: Heidegger's lecture courses on Nietzsche are a response to Carnap's two-fold insult.

But Carnap's praise for Nietzsche as (the right sort of) philosophical-metaphysical poet (cf. Heidegger's treatment of Nietzsche as a Metaphysician of being), should remind us that Carnap's writings as such are not the source of the way we are used to thinking of the split between analytic vs continental. (From an analytic point of view, Nietzsche belongs to 'them'--of course, that's been changing.) To understand the historic roots to the way we have been taught to think about the split, we must turn (as Gregory Arnold Frost has been urging us) to Ernest Nagel's two-part "Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy," in JPhil 1936 (here and here). But about that gripping story (homo-erotic cults, ethnic and religious discrimination, esoteric teachings, etc) much more next week.

ColorofChange.org statement on the execution of Troy Davis

At 11:08 pm, the state of Georgia killed Troy Davis. Just before he was executed, Troy maintained his innocence, urged people to dig deeper into the case to find the truth, and said "For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless your souls." It's a tragic day for Troy, for his family, and for equality, fairness, and justice.

It's hard to know what to say at a time like this. In this moment, and in the days and weeks before Troy's execution, we've felt all kinds of things — anger, sadness, inspiration, hope and hopelessness. This is a time to mourn and remember Troy, to contemplate the profound loss we're facing, to send love and support to Troy's family and friends. It's incredibly important to take the time to spiritually and emotionally care for Troy's family and the amazing community that has arisen to support Troy — and it feels hard to muster the energy to do much more than that.

But before he died, Troy told us that this was about more than him — and he called on those of us who have fought against his execution to continue fighting for justice, even if we weren't successful in saving his life. Now is also an important moment to take stock of what's brought us to this point — the criminal justice system that allowed this to happen, and the movement we've built to fight for Troy and others facing injustice and oppression at the hands of that system.

Race, the criminal justice system, and the death penalty

At every stage of the criminal justice system, Black people and other minorities face inequality and discrimination. We all know about people who've been treated unfairly by police or by the courts. When the entire system treats Black people unequally, it means that the death penalty is applied unequally too. Troy Davis' case underscores the way in which this systemic inequality can lead to a tragic miscarriage of justice.

CC#10: Husserl and the history of analytic and continental thought

In Eric’s post of a few days ago (here), he continues with his argument that Moritz Schlick ought to be considered the “rightful father of analytic philosophy,” contrary to the more frequent claim that this honor belongs to Frege. This post led me to think yet again about the historical roots of the analytic-continental divide.

The usual story as I would tell it, simplified as it is, was that one could mark the bifurcation with Frege’s critique of Husserl’s habilitation dissertation, On the Concept of Number. In his critique, Frege rejected Husserl’s strong psychologistic tendencies. On this telling, we begin with shared concerns and problems in the foundations of mathematics but then divergence arises as Frege and Husserl set out addressing these problems and concerns, with Husserl taking up the issue  along Brentano’s psychologistic lines, and Frege (and subsequently Russell) rejecting this approach and moving in a decidedly realist direction.

This story of the diverging approaches of Husserl and Frege supports the claims of those who read continental thought as being more anti-realist than analytic thought, though there are notable exceptions of course (Deleuze, among others, is more appropriately placed among the realists while the later writings of Putnam have a strong anti-realist flavor).

Thanks to Eric’s post, and to his recommendation of an excellent essay by Abraham Stone, “Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics,” (this and other essays can be found here), I am beginning to rethink the history of the analytic-continental divide.

Fall Season's new programming: Brogaard comes to NewAPPS!

Summer is gone and we are rolling out exciting new features here at NewAPPS. For example, on Thursday the fantastic philosopher, Berit Brogaard will start blogging with us; she is a prolific publicist with wide ranging interests inside and outside philosophy. Can't wait to read her contributions. Welcome, Brit!

Don't Fall to the First Cut

Last week I asked how search committees and departments should best select from several hundreds of applications the 20-30 that will receive close examination. The discussion yielded an insight for job-seekers: since the first examination of files is necessarily less careful, and, in the worst case quite cursory and subjective, they need to defend against the first cut.

New APPS Interview: Ladelle McWhorter

Today’s New APPS interview is with Ladelle McWhorter, James Thomas Professor in Philosophy at the University of Richmond. Her most recent book is Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy (Indiana, 2009).

Thanks so much for doing this interview with us today, Del. Let’s start with your personal practice of philosophy. What are the pleasures and pains of philosophy for you?

One of the pains of philosophy for me is actually finding the time to work. As you know, I teach at a small, private liberal arts university. My teaching load is 3/2. I always have two preps, often not squarely in my area of scholarship, and I frequently develop new courses or thoroughly revise old ones. I spend many hours each week preparing, grading, and meeting with undergraduates. In addition to that, I’m expected to do a lot of committee work, and, at mid-career, I usually have a leadership role. These activities can be very rewarding, but much of the time they work against writing. This is the reason why it takes me close to a decade to write a book.

But they are excellent books! I’ve learned so much from both of them. What about the daily practice of writing; who do you bounce your ideas off of?

In a small department with a primarily analytic focus, I also don’t have a lot of opportunity for philosophical discussion with colleagues. Most of my work has gone on in virtual isolation. Nobody saw any of the text of Bodies and Pleasures until I had five of the seven chapters finished. In many respects that was a very personal text; I was very hesitant to share it until it had been developed enough to sort of justify its approach.

On the other hand, I saw several conference papers whose content ended up in your second book.

Yes, working on Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America was different in that respect. Once I figured out the form it would take, I called on friends like Ellen Armour and Todd May to read it as I wrote. But these friendships are, unfortunately, long-distance.

Hurry up, January 2012

UPDATE WHICH MAKES A HASH OF THE TITLE: Apparently I was on the Australia site for CUP. Moore's book will be availble in the US in November 2011, according to this page.

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Because that's when The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things by Adrian (AW) Moore will be released by Cambridge UP.

Blurb: This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually wide range, A. W. Moore's study refutes the tired old cliché that there is some unbridgeable gulf between analytic philosophy and philosophy of other kinds. It also advances its own distinctive and compelling conception of what metaphysics is and why it matters. Moore explores how metaphysics can help us to cope with continually changing demands on our humanity by making sense of things in ways that are radically new.

Contents: Preface; Introduction; Part I. The Early Modern Period: 1. Descartes: metaphysics in the service of science; 2. Spinoza: metaphysics in the service of ethics; 3. Leibniz: metaphysics in the service of theodicy; 4. Hume: metaphysics committed to the flames?; 5. Kant: the possibility, scope, and limits of metaphysics; 6. Fichte: transcendentalism versus naturalism; 7. Hegel: transcendentalism-cum-naturalism; or, absolute idealism; Part II. The Late Modern Period I: The Analytic Tradition: 8. Frege: sense under scrutiny; 9. The early Wittgenstein: the possibility, scope, and limits of sense; or, sense, senselessness, and nonsense; 10. The later Wittgenstein: bringing words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use; 11. Carnap: the elimination of metaphysics?; 12. Quine: the ne plus ultra of naturalism; 13. Lewis: metaphysics in the service of philosophy; 14. Dummett: the logical basis of metaphysics; Part III. The Late Modern Period II: Non-Analytic Traditions: 15. Nietzsche: sense under scrutiny again; 16. Bergson: metaphysics as pure creativity; 17. Husserl: making sense of making sense; 18. Heidegger: letting being be; 19. Collingwood: metaphysics as history; 20. Derrida: metaphysics deconstructed?; 21. Deleuze: something completely different; Conclusion.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating,* and I'm not sure about "non-analytic traditions" as a category, but just to have that last section in the book is an extremely hopeful sign (see the first category I'm putting this post under). Anyone interested in participating in a New APPS discussion on this book please email me (protevi AT lsu DOT edu).

*The paracite is I think "the proof is in the pudding," which is something mischevious British students might do with their friend's logic homework.

h/t Simon Glendinning on FB.

Truly weird congruence between Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Baton Rouge, LA

On this last Sunday's "View From Your Window Contest" Andrew Sullivian posted the picture at left.

I looked at this and showed it to my wife, and we both became convinced that it was taken from the Capitol building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The parking lot is extraordinarily similar, as is the park with the statue in the middle of it. In Baton Rouge that would be a statue of Huey Long. And the buildings are weridly similar too. The one on the left would be the Catholic Presbyterian apartments and the one on the far right one of the new state offices downtown.

So I entered the contest, giving Sullivan all sorts of information about Louisiana's storied history, including a video of Long singing "Every Man a King." Sullivan published my interesting letter today HERE (scroll down to the sixth letter posted under, "A professor writes") including all this Long minutiae about the statue and the capitol building and LSU and a video of the song and even my jab about how Bobby Jindal has continued the worst of the Long legacy with none of the benefits.

Man, how could I confuse Mongolia with Louisiana? Aren't the mountains in the background enough of a giveaway? Other viewers positied: Californian city between San Jose and San Fransisco, Salt Lake City, Luanda, Windoek, Kazakhstan, Erbil, Almaty, and some city in Israel. I think all those places have mountains though, unlike Baton Rouge. I feel bad that I made professors look foolish. Please go to the link and read my letter. It's comicly embarassing, though the video of Long is kind of moving at least. Randy Newman actually does a good cover of that song.

In any case, I am really interested in how Baton Rouge could be so visually similar to Ulaan Baatar. It's not like it's our sister city or anything.

Gender and book series

In the comments on a recent post by Eric Schliesser, it was noted that the participants in the conference Eric was taking note of are all male. Since there are many highly qualified women who could have given talks on the topic of the conference, an opportunity was missed to include one or more women in a very visible venue.

As Margaret Atherton said in a comment on Eric’s post, it’s not that the speakers invited aren’t highly qualified. The issue is not that less-qualified males are being promoted at the expense of more-qualified females. It is, as the Gendered Conference Campaign argues, that other harms are very likely to be brought about, and benefits foregone, when those in positions of power or authority (conference organizers, speakers, commentators, chairs, and so forth) are all male.

Another very visible venue is book series that have volumes devoted to individual philosophers. How many women are so honored? [Update: Just to be very clear, in those series that include volumes other than volumes devoted to individual philosophers, I am taking into account only those volumes that are devoted to individual philosophers. The Oxford Very Short series, for example, includes volumes authored by women, but as far as I can tell, none of the volumes devoted to an individual is authored by a woman.]

The Library of Living Philosophers, which began over seventy years ago, has among its 33 volumes a fine volume on Marjorie Grene.

In Routledge’s Arguments of the Philosophers, which began thirty years ago, all the arguers are male. Two of the authors, on the other hand, are female: Margaret Wilson (1982) and Eleonore Stump (2005).

In Routledge’s Great Philosophers series all eighteen great philosophers and all the authors writing about them are male.

The Oxford Very Short Introductions series (warning: gross misuse of Flash) includes no women among its dozen or so philosophers.

The Cambridge Companions include Arendt and Beauvoir, and there are also Companions to Feminism and to Feminist Theology.

The Blackwell Companions to Philosophy include no women among the dozen or so individuals who have Companions devoted to them.

Nor does Princeton’s Philosophy Now series include any women among its seven figures. Women appear neither as subjects nor as authors.

Continuum’s Guides for the Perplexed, a series weighted toward theology, offers plenty of help on plenty of topics, but apparently no-one is perplexed about any woman philosopher or theologian. One volume, on Deleuze, has a female author—Claire Colebrook.