Philip L. Quinn Fellowship in Philosophy to be established at the National Humanities Center
... It is especially gratifying that a distinguished and much-loved member of the academic world admired the National Humanities Center and that his co-executors have chosen to memorialize him here. It speaks to the place that the Center holds in the hearts and minds of American scholars, and it is fitting that Philip Quinn's intellectual and ethical commitments in the profession be transmitted thus to future generations of philosophers.
One of our species’ signature capacities, Deacon argues, is symbol-usage. Symbols permeate our practices to such an extent that even our success in mating depends on our acquiring complex social skills for negotiating symbolically mediated transactions. “Thus,” he avers, “because of symbols and with the aid of symbols, Homo sapiens has been self-domesticated and adapted to a niche unlike any other that ever has existed. We have been made in the image of the word.”
New content on Blip.tv channel.
Connie Rosati argues that storytelling helps us to "secure a relatively ongoing relation of fit to our lives and to ourselves as the author/protagonist of those lives." But only in part, because "the way that we secure a fit with ourselves and our lives is, in the first instance, by doing what it takes to provide the materials from which attractive stories can be constructed."
Andy announces his new project, wherein he highlights some of the more interesting new articles in the week's philosophy journals and describes them in a brief podcast.
Find out how views in the profession break down on key issues, and also how we *think* the profession breaks down...
Littlejohn asks