New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

An Open Letter to Professor Michael Sandel from the Philosophy Dept at San Jose State

The eloquent and well argued letter is here. I do not think they are being alarmist in their diagnosis of the ultimate function of this and other attacks on the traditional university.  (Let's keep discussion here to the open letter and the function of MOOCs specifically.  I'm going to start another thread today for discussion of things that we might organize publicly to resist these trends.)

Government protecting corporations - iteration #10,741,692

Here is a truly appalling story concerning the rise of corporatism in America.  The general issue I want to raise is this: most of those who defend capitalism in the sense that includes allowing for private ownership of the means of production, wage labor, and massive wealth disparities as a result, typically claim that genuine capitalism must be distinguished from "crony-capitalism" and that we cannot allow the government to become an organ for the support of the most economically powerful.  But I've simply never understood how this was supposed to work.  The whole theory of the beast presupposes that people are self-interested maximizers.  Does that not apply to those in government?  And if it does, then how exactly do we prevent their corruption?  Is there some magical way to take the possibility of graft in all its myriad forms from bending government to the will of those with the most money?  In short, if the watchdogs of the level playingfield are just people like us, growing up in a system that encourages self-interest and greed, why would one think there was any hope of stopping the slide from capitalism to corporatism.

Anyway, even if you don't share my concerns about the general issue, I trust that this story is revolting enough to be worth a post on its own.   

more attacks on science

"The new chair of the House of Representatives science committee has drafted a bill that, in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen by Congress."

Call for comments on Google Scholar's - Top Publications in Philosophy

There seems to be a strong societal push for "metrics" which means, as best as I can tell, limiting our reasons to ones that can be uncontroversially translated into something numerical, ignoring other facotrs, and then drawing conclusions.  OK.  That is probably a caricature, but I suspect not much.  

In any event, here, by GS, is another metric-driven ranking of philosophy journals.  It has some rankings that strike me, at least, as rather different from how an expert in the field would rank on the basis of quality, prestige, significance, etc.  So, for example, Synthese and Phil Studies are 1 and 2 (certainly both good journals, but I suspect few philosophers would rank them 1 and 2.)  Or consider that Journal of Consciousness Studies is 7 and Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences is 10.  By contrast, we have Ethics 14, Phil Review 17, and Journal of Philosophical Logic 20.  

A hesitant thought after Boston

One brother is dead and the other is in custody in a hospital. Obviously I loathe what they did. Obviously my thoughts are with the victims and their families. Obviously I would have stopped them if I could have, by any means whatsoever. But I also feel enormously sad that a 19 year old boy could come to this. And being a naturalist - that is not believing that things happen magically because of some supernatural force for evil - I believe that there is some explanation for why this happened. Maybe his brain chemicals are at different levels from ours. Maybe he underwent some trauma - either acute or chronic. Maybe he was taken in by an irrational ideology or systematically trained as are government torturers. Maybe all of these. I have no idea, and neither do you. Probably we would never fully understand even if we tried. But something happened, something contingent and potentially avoidable. And I hope that there is a way to redeem some modicum of life for this boy also. I hope that there is a way for all to find restorative, rather than vindictive, justice in this. I hope we can do better than toss one more body on the pile.

Central European University is on board with the Gendered Conference Campaign

Exciting news from CEU in Hungary!

New resource on Food, Energy, Water and Global Justice

I haven't yet been through this in anything like the detail it deserves, but this new website by my colleague Madison Powers, looks like a wonderful site for teachers, activists, cross-disciplinary researchers and just those who care about the future.

Is it, perhaps, time to wake up and start raising hell before academia ceases to exist?

From yesterday's Chronicle

Attempted reductio of the journalistic norm of "objectivity"?

Today, in the NYT, we have a story entitled Turin Shroud Going on TV, With Video From Pope.  In it, we learn "On Good Friday, a Piedmont company, Haltadefinizione, introduced a new app, Shroud 2.0, which features images of the cloth along with scientific and theological interpretations prepared with the Diocese of Turin and the International Center of Sindonology. Sindonology is the scientific study of the shroud[!]."

A common fallacy in deciding on graduate schools.

Decision time for undergrads choosing a grad school is fast approaching, and I want to comment on a fallacy that I hear commonly repeated both by candidate students and by professors.  

political music for this day

Here is a song by David Rovics that tells the story of some noble and actual Irish history that is worth keeping in mind on this day based around green beer and, shall we say, a questionable historical figure.

a small example of virtuous community

We certainly devote enough time at this blog to criticizing universities and aspects of university culture.  So just for a change of pace, here's a local feel-good story.  

Georgetown, like most universities, has some budgetary worries.  We've been through an economic crash, are in the midst of governmental cutbacks, etc. In response to moderate short-term deficits, the administration developed a 5 year plan that called for various savings. Among these were limits on salary: specifically no cuts to the faculty raise pool, but an elimination of all raises for staff this year. This was presented to us as a done deal. When announced in the college Exco - a committee of reps from each program and department that advise the dean - I suggested that this sucked, more specifically that placing the burden of lower salary on those already lowest paid in our community did not represent the values we purported to live by as an institution. Not one person in the group of about 30 disagreed.  After some crafting of word choice, a motion was passed unanimously expressing the sense of the exco that this was not the way GU should deal with budget cuts. Shortly after this, someone introduced the same motion at the faculty senate. I'm not sure if it was unanimous, but it passed with an overwhelming majority there as well.

And the administration listened. Staff increases are reinstated. In the new proposal announced today, there will be no raises for senior administration, and faculty will have raises delayed for 6 months. This will generate the same savings, but with a very different distribution according to need. 

I relay this not (just) to brag on the GU community, but to remind people that even in these uber-corporatist times, and even in the context of  the increasingly corporate university, people sometimes manage to think in collective, communitarian, social, or just moral terms. We manage to make collective decisions on the basis of fairness and concern for each other, rather than our own narrow economic interest. In a time in which one dimension of the uber-corporatism is a constant drum-beat of propaganda suggesting that economic self-interest is inevitable, it is important to keep reminding oneself of examples to the contrary.  

Imagine what might be possible if we organized our work differently.

CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference (yes...white men welcome, too!)

CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference!

Sally Haslanger writes:

Even more important, we would really like to encourage people - including WHITE MEN - to apply for the site visit training.  It is important that we have allies involved because having mixed teams will be more effective than just a group of women....who are feminists, besides!

Visit the Site Visit Program

Expert for sale (episode # 3392)

Mark Lance rightly complains about the fact that corporate interests and sponsors are getting a free pass in the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. But they are not the only ones. For example, as one of my favorite blogs, Retraction Watch, reports in 2005 Edward C. Coyle published a paper about Lance Armstrong in which he "hypothesized that the improved muscular efficiency probably reflects changes in muscle myosin type stimulated from years of training intensely for 3–6 h on most days." As the NYT reported half a decade ago) that paper was regularly used "by Armstrong and his lawyers to fend off allegations that his cycling success came in part through doping." Turn out, Coyle was a paid consultant to Armstrong in a series of lawsuits (even Armstrong's team insurer suspected doping). The NYT quoted also Coyle in 2008 as follows, “People are drawing their opinions essentially on whether or not they believe Lance cheated or not,” he said. “I don’t know what the truth is about that, but I don’t really care.”

Coyle still features the paper on his website alongside his grants and honors. This despite the fact that it has been shown to be deeply flawed. It is reassuring to know that this gun-for-hire is a consultant to the IOC.

Joseph L Camp Jr

As we get on in life, we begin to collect first deaths: first grandparent to die, first parent, first friend.  For many of us who have devoted much of our lives to intellectual pursuits, there is another category that is as important as these: teacher. I don't mean just someone who stands in the official role of teacher, someone with whom we took a class, but someone who guided our intellectual development, nurtured our intellectual autonomy, someone whose voice pops into our head at crucial and unexpected moments as we think through issues.  For me, Joe Camp was such a person, and he is my first such teacher-death. (Adding to the pain of this moment is that it brings fresh to my mind also the untimely death of  Joe's former partner Tamara Horowitz, with whom I took a class, but who I think of more as a dear friend and one of the finest humans I have known.)  

The drugs in cycling food-chain - redux

I posted a while back on my frustration that those with economic power in cycling - and other sports as well - are never implicated or even much considered in the eternally recurrent drama of denunciation and punishment for performance enhancing drug use.  Happily the economic engines of this spectacle are getting a bit of attention at a much higher profile outlet than NewAPPS. Below the break is a comment from a former professional cyclist Jorg Jaksche that gets to the heart of the matter, followed by a clause from a contract that cyclists signed with the team Rabobank, along with the corporate "explanation" - by which I mean "statement so insanely and obviously dishonest that in a just world one would burst into flames instantly upon completing it."

Using the technology we have - a new format for books

I was chatting with Rebecca Kukla a couple weeks ago about things we would like to do with a second edition of Yo&Lo and the following general thought occurred to me.  When it comes to books that people are interested in, we have roughly two distinct media forms for philosophical interaction.  We have the printed book itself, and sometimes later printed articles and reviews.  And we have lots of discussions - in conferences, symposia, classes, etc.  The former are permanent, but fixed - non-dialogical.  The latter are interactive and dialogical, but ephemeral. Once they are over, they exist only in the memory of participants.  (And if we make a web-cast of the event, then it flips to the first category.  

The complexity of poker

(A second in a series, drawn from joint work with K. Joseph Mourad.)
How do we measure the complexity of decision procedures in poker?  This is a question that is both complex and subtle, and seems to me interesting in thinking about the interplay between formal modeling of epistemological situations and more concrete strategic epistemic thinking.

impredicativity in finite (empirical) contexts

(This will be the first in a series of posts designed to suggest that the mathematics of impredicativity - especially methods of definition that make use of revision-theoretic procedures - are relevant to empirical contexts.  Everything I say in these grows out of joint work with my math colleague Joe Mourad.)

Two basic points about the notion of impredicativity: first, it is much broader than what non-expert philosophers tend to think of under the rubric of paradoxes, vicious circularity, and the like.  Second, it is a property of definitions - or, more generally, procedures - not of concepts or sets, in the first instance.  Given an appreciation of these points, it is not hard to see that the general phenomenon can pose important epistemological issues in contexts in which there are no infinite totalities in play, indeed, in the context of various empirical discussions.  

More substantive advice to admissions committees

And hiring committees also.  It is this: the fact that x has received better training than y - gone to a better school, worked with more accomplished teachers, etc. - is a reason, cp, to prefer y to x.

Advice to graduate philosophy programs who require referees to answer multiple choice questions in addition to their letters about potential PhD students

Stop it.  They are stupid.  And a huge waste of our time.  

A neo-classical unionism

For the first century or so of the modern union movement, unions were esssentially extra-legal.  They were conceived as alternative centers of power that challenged the state and capitalist control of production that was itself instituted by state-enforced property regimes.  As such, unionization was not fundamentally about making better deals with capital, or improving conditions of wage-labor, but of changing the dynamics of economic control.  The primary goal was worker control of the means of production.  As such, there was no question of unions being legally sanctioned entities that would enter into state mediated bargaining with capital. 

Beyond Unconscious Bias & Sexual Harassment: a case study

A recent spate of all-male headlined conference announcements (note this one at Princeton here) made me reflect again on the mechanisms at work. Our friends at the GCC have been emphasizing the ways in which implicit bias and stereotype threat reinforce each other and, more recently, Brian Leiter has reminded us (rightly) that "sexual harassment is still the scandal of philosophy profession." Petitions (the call to action initiated by Martin Kusch and Mark Lance has almost a 1000 signatures; here is the official GCC petition; and an interdisciplinary one sponsored by Virginia Valian and Dan Sperber and friends) are not enough to solve these issues, of course. But I do not think that implicit bias, stereotype threat, and sexual harassment exhaust the pernicious mechanisms at work.

Recently, I wrote some young scholars who ended up hosting a resource-rich conference with a line-up of ten (mostly early career) males. (I wouldn't be surprised this particular conference also ends up being a special issue of a journal.) This surprised me because I had noticed the cfp and it explicitly mentioned blind review of abstracts, and had made no mention of invited speakers. Their response is illuminating because it shows how even selection designs that aim at quality can lead to unfair, gender-imbalanced outcomes without any malice or gender bias (I'll qualify this in a bit) at all:

From a call for papers, we have selected 7 papers (out of a total of 10 to be presented at this workshop). Possibly 7, but at least 5 (out of 24 submitted), abstracts have been submitted by women (judging on the basis of first names). All abstracts have been anonymously evaluated double blind by a pool of 30 reviewers (of which roughly half were authors that had submitted abstracts). The resulting rank order was arrived at by straight averaging, gender was not a factor in the decision. The group of authors selected remained the same irrespective of assigning weights (between 60/40 and 80/20) to reviewers’ scores or authors’ scores. We checked for gender only after the blog post [by the GCC] had become known to us. The best “female abstract” is probably on rank 11.

3 out of 10 talks are given by invited speakers. These had been planned before the call for papers. 2 of these are given  by scholars from [our home universities]. These authors had been asked before the call for papers, as we seek to give precedence to work originating [at our home universities]. Prof. X is the one invited speaker external to the [home universities.]

The premature obituary of Occupy and the role of academics

Despite recently haven been declared dead in the press, Occupy has recently launched two major new projects.  In Brooklyn, Occupy Sandy has put on a massive aid effort, coordinated at a completely grassroots level, with very few capital resources, and by some reports outperforming the Red Cross. (When you factor in that the RC has, probably, 1000 times the resources to devote, ...)  See also this, this, this, and perhaps most amazingly this

Parade, raining upon

It is - as a gay hating, anti-environmental, corporatist, war criminal of a former president once said - morning in America.

Obama was elected over Romney; the Democrats held or increased their lead in the Senate, gay marriage is legal in Maryland and Maine, and small victories were won against the insane drug war.  Liberals were partying in front of the White House once again. I'm happy for all of that, and for them. Really, I am.  Given the alternatives, these results buy us a bit of time for dealing with crucial issues, and will make significant differences in the lives of many Americans.  So ok.  Cool.  I hope everyone had a nice celebratory evening.  Now can we face up to the cold reality of the situation in which we find ourselves?

In Memoriam: Annette Baier, by Lynne Tirrell

Most of our readers will know that Annette Baier died recently.  This is a loss that is shared by students, friends, and philosophers in general. I invite others to post rememberances, thoughts, etc. in the comments to Lynne's post.  (ML)

In Memoriam: Annette Baier

 Annette Baier was my teacher and a steadfast friend for over 30 years. That number staggers me, in part because I realize that I am now around the age Annette was when we first met, back in 1980, when I arrived at Pitt. She was such a brilliant, sophisticated, witty, and cosmopolitan person—unlike anyone I had ever met. With annual hikes in the Alps, traveling the earth from end to end, befriending people everywhere, Annette had a commodious life. Coming into her own, as she really did after 50, she showed us, by example, that one’s best work may be yet to come.  Those who know her writing are familiar with her insightful approach to the history of philosophy, are awed by the depth and breadth of her knowledge, and swayed by the power of her original ideas. But to those who knew her personally, Annette was a generous, compassionate, and deeply loyal friend. When Annette was in your corner, you were lucky indeed, because her confidence in you was a great gift through thick and thin.

Degenerating public discourse on free discourse - and a plea to philosophers to engage

Public debate on the status of "free speech" seems to ebb and flow frequently in the US.  In a spate of recent op eds and analyses, this debate has focused on  campus "restrictions on speech" in the name of civility.  Here is a representative piece published in the NYT. This latest cycle of the debate has framed the issue as "conservative" or "libertarian" defenders of unfettered free speech against "liberal" promoters of civility and opponents of hate speech and bullying. Along the way, the important ideal of free speech - the civic goal worth caring about - has been lost and this strikes me as a paradigm case in which philosophers could be of great public value were they to get out there and join the public debate.

Environmental activism: request for references

For several years now, I've been telling my students and random passers-by that environmental issues trumped all other political concerns. The degree and likelihood of disaster resulting from the environmental effects of global corporatism simply dwarf all other threats, now or in the past. (Nuclear weapons could have, still could, destroy us all, but the chances of a widespread nuclear war were always very low.) And I take it to be pretty obvious that governments are not going to respond seriously to the crisis.  All in, I think there is a very good chance of global collapse within the lifetime of my child.  And I don't think I can cruise into retirement not having tried to do anything about that, whatever the chances of success - which I suppose I deem to be low.  

A small bit of advice for grad students

Recently I was asked to suggest graduate students for a focused conference on a particular issue in philosophy.  I decided to poke around the web pages of some departments known for work on that topic. This turned out to be largely useless.  Many students had web pages - not all did, which brings up prior advice - but almost none had any specifics.  Now I know that one doesn't always know specifically what one's specialization will be while in grad school.  But still, if you know enough to say that you are working on, say, metaphysics, you know this because you have written papers at least for courses. So you can mention topics.  My advice is that you do so - mention every topic that you know enough about that you would like to be invited to a small focused conference on that topic.  Where you will meet folks working in the area, get noticed, share work, all that good stuff. Talk with your faculty about what would be good things to include, but do so.  I doubt that my search was all that unusual a phenomenon, but you have little to lose by including some areas.

More on the virtue of collaboration

A few days ago, Berit posted on the virtue of philosophers collaborating with psychologists.  I've thought a bit about collaboration over the last 5-10 years, and I want to suggest some reasons why I think it is far more important than is generally recognized.