New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Candlish's Bradley

I switched to Philosophy just after I finished my bachelor's degree in Physics. I was at St. Stephen's College, Delhi then, and having disliked studying Physics, decided to switch to Philosophy. The Head of the Philosophy welcomed me to the subject and recommended that as preparation, I should read Bradley's Appearance and Reality. A miserable summer followed: one in which I was driven into the arms of Bertrand Russell, in which vicinity I have been more or less content to languish ever since.

No wonder then that Eric's post on Stewart Candlish's report of 18 myths about F. H. Bradley caught my attention, especially as he (Eric) seems to class me (more or less correctly) as the kind of guy who would believe all 18. This drove me to read the first 40 pages of Candlish's book. It was an absorbing read, but ...

Minds on Monday: Sense and Un-sense in the Animal Kingdom

“The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we have of perceiving the world.” So writes Fiona Macpherson in the Introduction to her new anthology, The Senses, a visionary work, which will spark a whole new literature on individuating the senses. At first glance, you might think “perceive” is unhelpful: the connection between “sensing” and “perceiving” seems too close and too porous for one to illuminate the other. Yet, there is a crucially important point here. Our bodies monitor blood oxygen levels and control breathing accordingly; this is a response to the (internal) environment. Yet, we do not perceive blood-oxygen levels. And this, presumably, is at least part of what Macpherson is getting at. But what does it mean? Colour perception is a response to the (external) environment, after all. Why is it right to say we perceive colour, but not blood-oxygen levels? (The internal/external distinction is unimportant, by the way: hunger and thirst are perceptions, aren’t they?)

Push has come to shove on the "work for hire" front

We previously discussed Steven Shaviro's Jan 11 post in which he expressed his dismay at discovering that OUP had inserted "work for hire" language in his author's contract. Gordon Hull's comments here and at Shaviro's blog were particularly acute, explaining how "work for hire" differs from standard contracts: usually, an author retains various rights of ownership, re-use (e.g., in a later single-authored work), and distribution (e.g. private web archive), and allocates a limited set of rights pertaining to copyright to the press. However, with "work for hire" the author has no rights, as the press claims copyright from the start.

Here Shaviro reports on the developments. More below the fold, but in brief, he will not sign the contract, will not submit his work, will not write for OUP in the future, and will not buy OUP books until the "work for hire" language is dropped from OUP contracts, on the grounds that such contracts spell the end of our status as scholars freely contributing to ongoing discussion in the public interest and its replacement with the status of "knowledge worker" producing privately owned "content."

Mythology, incommensurability and the Analytic-Continental distinction

Kuhnian incommmensurability is often rejected as silly or false by the very same folk that dismiss, say, Heidegger or Derrida as unintelligible nonsense. [Admittedly the former is less fashionable now (after -- in some sense even more misleading -- revisionary scholarship) that Carnap and Kuhn are said to be in general agreement.] It is possible, of course, that both claims are true, but it never seems to cross the self-confident mind that finding a whole philosophic movement or tradition unintelligible is, perhaps, evidence of the reality of incommensurability.

These thoughts come to me because (due to encouragement by Michael Della Rocca) I am reading Stewart Candlish's extremely clear The Russell/Bradley Dispute. The book provides overwhelming evidence for the existence of shared myths within analytic philosophy (about Bradley). They are, in fact, origin myths. Some of the very best and most interesting analytic philosophers are caught up in these--Candlish provides detailed evidence of the silly, misleading, uncomprehending, and thoughtless things said about Bradley by, say, Ayer, Geach, (my beloved teacher) Linsky, Wollheim, Broad, Grayling, Blackburn, Rorty (when he was still an analytic philosopher) and, of course, Russell and Moore--not to mention many more minor figures. (This is a partial list; Candlish also documents parochial sins of omission.)

Philosophy in Groningen

Another installment in the ‘shameless self-promotion’ series, this time to promote my department: here is a little promotional film to praise the wonders of doing philosophy in Groningen (including the participation of yours truly):

"Hacker has been blamed"

I like reviews that make clear what matters in th the reviewed work and that (giving due to considerations to fairness) do not pull punches. Reviewing is an important, undervalued duty to the profession that brings problems and interesting issues out into the intellectual open. (It is also helps us police the excesses of the buddy system.) I ought to like much of this review by Oskari Kuusela. And I do. But one sentence has me very uneasy: "Hacker has been blamed for dogmatism in relevant connections, and this chapter does little to dispel such worries." Kuusela goes on to explain what he means and offers an example of the relevant dogmatism. But he never offers a citation to unnamed others that have done such blaming or to earlier works in which Hacker stands guilty as charged. To me this reads as somebody writing to the peanut-gallery of one in-crowd-faction of the Wittgenstein world. Don't get me wrong, I strongly dislike Hacker's style of argument, which is no stranger to charging unnamed others with confusion. But two wrongs...

The pseudo-economy of the United States

There is an important article in today's NYT.  What is fascinating about this account of Apple's iphone production in Asia is not the usual left criticism of Asian working conditions.  That is mentioned.  Work is structured in an authoritarian manner, for low pay, and with long hours.  But a good case is made here that this is not the main issue.  Rather, the US simply lacks the economic and educational infrastructure to get the job done at all.  

It would be nice if the NYT would delve into the causes of all this.  They note that we lack the relevant numbers of workers with the relvant skills, that we lack huge amounts of manufacturing infrastructure, that what manufacturing we have has not kept up with the flexibility needed for 21st c production.  They also note that a huge middle class that might have been trained in the relevant sorts of skills are employed in service, financial, and other auxilliary sectors of the economy.  What they don't mention is that public decisions led to this.  There are no doubt many decisions over the last 40 years that left us in such a situation, but I'd like to highlight one: military spending.  The US - especially since the second half of the Carter administration - has diverted enormous resources from civilian infrastructure to military spending, regularly spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined.  One occasionally hears about how this level of spending contributes to deficits and wars, or how it facilitates imperialism and authoritarian regimes abroad, but far less does one hear about how it leads to a country that is incapable of producing actual goods.  

Seymour Melman devoted most of a career to warning of this and documenting the details.  No one in power listened, and now it is left to the NYT t0 document the result.  

The doddering Hans effect

Another well-worn example bites the dust? You remember that famous study in which the participants, if primed with words connoting agedness, walked more slowly when leaving the lab.

A new study by the Belgian team of Stéphane Doyen, Olivier Klein, Cora-Lise Pichon, and Axel Cleeremans not only failed to replicate the effect, but also appeared to show that the effect observed in the original study was owing to the experimenters’ expectations.

The Fibonacci sequence, plant growth, and Vi Hart

(Cross-posted at M-Phi)

The Fibonacci numbers are those in the following sequence of integers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc. By definition, the first two numbers are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. The sequence is named after Fibonacci, aka Leonardo of Pisa, who introduced the sequence (known already in Indian mathematics) to Western audiences in his famous book Liber Abaci (1202) – which, by the way, is also one of the main sources for the dissemination of Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe, no less. (Fibonacci had learned ‘Eastern’ mathematics while studying to become a merchant in North Africa -- see an earlier post on the importation of Indian and Arabic mathematics into Europe through a sub-scientific, merchant tradition.)

Mr. Smith goes to China

Teaching Hume’s political essays this semester is giving me an opportunity to reread a number of essays that have long been among my favorites, and it has reminded me yet again about the important contribution these essays make to political theory. A favorite quote of mine that encapsulates much of this contribution comes when Hume is discussing the “tumultuous governments of Athens and Rome” near the end of his essay, “That Politics may be reduced to a Science,” and he points out that despite the fact these governments ended in ruin, the proper conclusion to draw is that 

…so little dependence has this affair on the humours and education of particular men, that one part of the same republic may be wisely conducted, and another weakly, by the very same men, merely on account of the difference of the forms and institutions, by which these parts are regulated. 

Hume is thus quite adamant in what this entails with respect to governmental institutions and the regulatory apparatus they have in place—in short, it is much more important to have good laws and institutions with regulatory powers than it is to have good or bad people in government. As Hume puts it, “wise regulations in any commonwealth are the most valuable legacy that can be left to future ages.” 

Big people have big thoughts about their big selves

Detail from a plaster cast of a relief from the temple of Beit el-Wali, Lower Nubia, 13th century BCE. Source: Metropolitan Museum, New York; photographed by Hans Ollermann.

An amusing bit of research from Michelle M. Duguid (Olin Business School, Washington University), and Jack Concalo (Cornell), published in Psychological science (pay).

In a series of three experiments, the researchers found a definite correlation between feeling powerful and feeling tall, and even suggest that future research may want to examine whether employers should consider placing short high-ranking workers in higher offices to raise their psychological sense of power.

• There seems to be a general tendency (often noted by philosophers in one guise or another) for the human mind to seek or insist on harmony between “inside” and “outside” or between visible and invisible characteristics. Socially big people are pictured as big, imagine themselves big. The blessed must be beautiful, their faces luminous.
• I would call this “research-lite”. Research-lite makes for good press. You can summarize it in a sentence. It may well be that scientific effort, driven more and more by requirements of “impact” (now included in the research assessment criteria under which departments are evaluated in the UK), will become increasingly lite, or at least be compelled to present itself as lite. That is in part because having “impact” requires that research answer not only to the internal demands of the disciplines within which it is conducted but to journalistic criteria of newsworthiness, at a time when corporate media tend to treat news as a form of entertainment.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Curumim'

Yet another busy week here, so I haven't had the time to write a proper column. But here is a fantastic song by one of my favorite Brazilian singers, Djavan. The song is 'Curumim' (from his 1989 album Djavan), which means 'child' in the Tupi language, a now nearly extinct Brazilian indigenous language. Indeed, in the song different Brazilian indigenous people are referred to (a list of names of different tribes/languages, towards the end), and there are also faint connections with their musical traditions. I should probably write a post on Brazilian indigenous music at some point, but that will be for another time; for now, Djavan should keep you busy for a little while.

The Eastern APA in early January? You've got to be kidding me

I once was a big fan of the annual meetings of the American Philosophical Association. For years I would show up to every single one. Usually I would present a paper, occasionally I would just show up, linger, go to some talks, go to the smoker and have lunch or drinks with old friends. Probably I was one of few people who actually enjoyed APA meetings, even the Eastern. Don't get me wrong. I, too, had to go on the job market: First I needed a TT  job, then I satisfied the obligatory "everyone goes on the job market when they are up for tenure" rule. Oh, and I left one out: I sort of went on the job market when I applied for my current job (but I applied for exactly one job on that occasion). Did I love the Eastern APA on those occasions? I know people are going to hate me for saying this. But I really didn't mind it too much. The first time around I was intrigued. The second time I already had a job, so not much hinged on the outcome.

I (secretly) still love most APA meetings (though I guess, now it's no longer a secret). But each Eastern APA I go to gets more and more unpleasant. I see sweat, tears, panic and anxiety everywhere. Yes, everywhere. I am certain that it's getting worse. I see candidates stand there in the corridors waiting for their interviews with glassy eyes, guys in nice jackets and ties, looking like they have a part in a 50s commercial, and the girls in suits or jackets and pants and the obligatory glasses their advisers tell them to wear, looking like the professors in Legally Blonde. Okay, we might all have looked like that when we went on the job market (at least since the job market got insanely bad). But now the candidates wear the desperation as an accessory as they slide through the corridors of the hotel or pose at the smoker or in the hotel bar.

"Joyful" Moral Theory--heroes without dazzlement....

"People who simply live up to their everyday responsibilities are suddenly becoming idols, personalities and heroes in this country." Mrs. De Falco on her husband Gregorio De Falco (pictured below).
Leaving aside the pathologies of contemporary Italy (or modern society?), one of the most "joyful" aspects of Francis Hutcheson's moral theory is that living up to everyday responsibility that comes with one's professional role comes out as heroic:

Women in Grad Admission Applicant pool

Over at a great new blog, The Mod Squad (a group blog on modern philosophy), Antonia LoLordo (Virginia) writes in the context of graduate admission, "We have 16% female applicants – this is lower than I would’ve expected, but I don’t have data from past years." Any folk involved in graduate admission in other departments want to share their data? It would be especially interesting to be able to report trends, if any.

Lynxes and lumps

I’ve been reading Robert Batterman’s Devil in the details, a book that packs a lot of punch in a relatively few pages. Among its themes is that of the universality of certain mathematical models. Universality is “the slightly pretentious way in which physicists denote identical behaviour in different systems” (Berry 1987:185, quoted in Batterman 13).

That requires some unpacking. Two systems exhibit “identical” behavior if that behavior can, under suitable redescription, be seen to instantiate the same mathematical system (I use the imprecise word ‘system’ rather than a more precise term because what is instantiated need not be, for example, the graph of a single equation). They are different if, as in the case of Berry’s own examples, they have different shapes, or if, as in some cases discussed by Batterman, they are made of different stuffs. We will see yet another sort of difference below.

New APPS interview: Eric Winsberg

Today’s New APPS interview is with Eric Winsberg, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida.

Thanks, Eric, for doing this interview with us today. You’re known for philosophy of science and philosophy of physics. Were you bookish, artsy, athletic as a child? Or were you always tech-oriented?

Pretty much.  I was born in NYC, but moved to Montreal before I really reached consciousness.   I wasn’t particularly bookish, artsy or athletic as a kid.  I was mostly into science and technology.  If I read, it was mostly science stuff.   

Such as?

Scientific American, Popular Science and Popular Electronics.   I was really into Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, and read his book.    And of course as a teenager I loved Gödel, Escher, Bach, and The Emperor’s New Mind.  The earliest favorite book of mine that I can remember was A Drop of Blood.

NYU course on OWS

A brief interview with NYU professor Lisa Duggan is here. She will teach a course on “Cultures and Economies: Why Occupy Wall Street? The History and Politics of Debt and Finance” in the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis this spring.

New APPS readers are invited to discuss in comments how they might include any of the social movements of 2011, from the "Arab Spring," through the indignados to the Occupy movement, as a topic in their courses. As well as the instigating processes for those movements: the Global Financial Crisis; the Shock Doctrine austerity policies adopted on the basis of not letting a good crisis go to waste; the debt crises of students, workers, and indeed nations; and so on.

What is Religion for Anyway? And What Is It for in Britain?

My post on the old-chum network and economic mobility is generating a lively discussion of established religion in the UK. Let me bring this into the sunlight. The UK is a modern liberal democracy. It is highly multi-ethnic and multicultural. Yet, the Head of State is also the Head of the state's church. Buddhists and Muslims sing "God Save the Queen", apparently without strenuous mental reservation. At many Oxbridge colleges, they say Grace and attend eulogies in the Chapel. Churches all over Britain are festooned with military colours.

Is it reasonable under these circumstances to expect that religion might serve some functions different from that of organized worship? (It serves that, of course.) The English are an inscrutable people, but could it be that they go to Church to bond and gain social advancement? And would this be wrong? Better than the non-established religiosity of many North Americans, I say.

Marilyn Adams's Dewey Lecture . . . And My Life

There is a lovely set of Dewey Lectures in the latest Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. I am still reflecting on Bernard Boxill's moving and brilliant Central Division address, and haven't gotten around to Harry Frankfurt's Eastern Division one. More on them later, perhaps.

Marilyn McCord Adams's Pacific Division lecture was special, though. It was as revealing to me about my history as it was about hers. And this is what I want to reflect on today.

Weekly Philo of economics: our slavery, Adam Smith and Thoreau

This is from a footnote in Wilberforce's Correspondence, presumably added by the editors (his sons I believe). The second, more amusing part of the anecdote (starting with "one day") is usually attributed to Sir Walter Scott, who turns it into a satirical moral on how two great teachers of philosophy engage each other.

Martha Nussbaum on her childhood

Yesterday someone told me about an interview with Martha Nussbaum for a series entitled ‘Beauty & Consolation’, produced by and for Dutch TV (btw, she is not the only philosopher interviewed for the series). I’ve been watching the interview since (youtube is one of the best things in life!), and the main theme turned out to be her childhood and how her experiences as a child still permeate the person she is now. Nussbaum is very open about her mother having been an alcoholic, and describes in detail the impact this has had on her life at the time and still now. I was particularly touched by this, having had an alcoholic parent myself (my father); I could recognize my own life in many of the situations and experiences she talks about.

Here is the first part of the interview (the other 5 parts are also to be found on youtube):

Minds on Monday: Seeing and Doing

What we see as a species depends on what we do as a species. This was the teaching of the visionary (though often a little too much so) Estonian physiologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944). Uexküll posited that the world sensorily revealed to an organism, its Umwelt as he called it, consists of environmental features constructed (or selected, as I would prefer to say) for their relevance to the organism’s behaviour and survival.

Who Do You Know? And Are They Helping?

I have always thought that hiring by influence was a sign of small and less diverse economies. The adage "Who you know is more important than what you know" can surely not be true in talent-hungry, diverse employment centres such as New York and London. Unfortunately, though, I have observed disconcertingly many gatherings in London where everybody is from Oxford or Cambridge or Eton, and enough in New York where male white Ivy Leaguers dominate. Somehow the message about talent has not gotten through. Things seem (somewhat) better in much-smaller and evidently more provincial Toronto. Though there is here an odious emphasis on "Canadian experience" which disadvantages immigrants, especially those who are not from white English-speaking countries, there seems relatively less by way of hiring old school chums and their children.

These thoughts were revived recently upon reading a piece by Timothy M. Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin in the "Room for Debate" section  of the New York Times.

Having your cake and eating it: the new 21st Century Monads album

The 21st Century Monads, the coolest philosophical band around (interviewed at NewAPPS here, here, and here) are releasing a new album this year. It will be available for purchase in a somewhat unusual way:

So what we are going to do is this. From now until the end of May 2012, you can purchase the uncompressed .wav files by taking the following steps. First, make a donation to the charity of your choice in the amount that you think is appropriate.Second, send an email to the following email address: [email protected]. In this email, simply tell us that you have made a charitable donation; you don’t need to tell us where if you don’t want to. We’d appreciate if you’d tell us the amount donated since we would like to know how much money has been raised in this fashion. 

(See further details here.) In other words, you get to buy some great music while at the same time contributing to your favorite charity. Any one of these two things would already be worth doing on their own, so go ahead and get moving!

Neuroscience versus Cognitive Science

A professor writes:

My colleagues here at my small liberal arts college in several disciplines (biology, biochemistry, psychology, computer science, languages) want to start a minor that covers neuroscience (including neuroscience that is not cognitive neuroscience) and what I would call cognitive science. My colleagues are keen, enthusiastic, inclusive and want very much for courses in philosophy, computer sciences, linguistics, etc. to be part of the program. That's the good news. The bad news is that many think that the minor should be called a Neuroscience minor. What I have learned is that folks who do this from the hard sciences think of the term 'Neuroscience' as including these areas. My response, in brief, is, 'that's the problem.' Thankfully, because I have such wonderful colleagues, this hasn't presented an inalterable obstacle. They have responded that they are very surprised to learn that folks who they think of as being included under 'neuroscience' might not want to be included under this umbrella exclusively. To be clear: the alternative proposal is to call the program 'Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.' What they want from me is some very short, clear, explanation of why folks who do what might be better termed 'cognitive science' would appreciate being in a program that includes that title rather than the title 'Neuroscience.'

The problem, as the reader sees it, is that neuroscience and cognitive science seem to represent significant methodological differences. Cognitive science assumes that cognitive phenomena can be studied at multiple levels and the process rather than their neural correlates are the objects of study. What do you think?

Paradoxes: something's gotta go, but what? And why?

(Cross-posted at M-Phi)

The coming months, I’ll be teaching a course on paradoxes, which will focus on historical and methodological rather than technical aspects, so it is quite likely that there will be a constant stream of blog posts on paradoxes. We shall see…

One useful definition of a paradox is the one offered by M. Sainsbury in his highly influential book Paradoxes (p.1):

This is what I understand by a paradox: an apparently unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. Appearances have to deceive, since the acceptable cannot lead by acceptable steps to the unacceptable. So, generally, we have a choice: either the conclusion is not really unacceptable, or else the starting point, or the reasoning, has some non-obvious flaw.

Gay Marriage . . . and Divorce: A Canadian Tale

Responding to court rulings, Canada legalized gay marriage in 2005, amending the Civil Marriage act in a gender neutral way. But the Liberal government of the day—Irving Cotler, Minister of Justice, not the brightest ever to hold that post—forgot to amend various interlocking pieces of legislation to accommodate the US gay couples who came to Canada to get married.

Is the field of philosophy of religion more gender-imbalanced than other fields?

I am at the Society for Christian Philosopher's regional meeting in Westmont College, Santa Barbara. Out of a total of 20 speakers, there are 4 women (20 % of speakers are women, which seems roughly in line with the percentage of women in our profession). One of the four keynote speakers is female (Eleonore Stump, arguably one of the top authors in philosophy of religion). It is not difficult to come up with names of prominent women philosophers in philosophy of religion (e.g., Eleonore Stump, Lynne Rudder Baker, Nancey Murphy, Linda Zagzebski, Christina Van Dyke, Celia Deane-Drummond.)

Patricia Pisters on Malabou, plasticity, and the neuro-image

Patricia Pisters is Professor of Media and Film studies at the University of Amsterdam, where she is chair of the department of Media Studies. She is also a member of the steering committee of NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies). Her research and teaching focuses on film-philosophical questions in conjunction with neuroscience and on political implications of contemporary transnational screen culture. Her new book, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Filmphilosophy of Digital Screen Culture is forthcoming with Stanford University Press.

She recently spoke about how her work intersects Catherine Malabou's What Should We Do With Our Brain. Here's the Intro to the talk by Pisters; full text here.

Catherine Malabou’s work makes a strong and important intervention in (re)connecting the materiality of physics and the immateriality of metaphysics through the concept of plasticity. In the first part of my response I would like to sketch a trajectory of this concept – as it is a “plastic” concept in itself. In doing this I hope to do justice to the radical moves which Malabou’s investigations entail, even if I will only be able to look at the developments of the concept in big steps. The implications of this radical turn might be even bigger than Malabou herself suggests, but that is something for the discussion. In the second part of my response I would like to look at a concrete example of what I call a “neuro-image,” contemporary cinema’s response to, resonance with and reflections on neurological and digital plasticity.