AAPT Members

Comrade Physioprof recently posted a little video encapulating his recent experience at a conference. You can make these videos online from texts - so I could't resist. Enjoy:  read more »

There's not a lot of these yet, but the book looks promising for intro to Phil. Religion. It's described as 'wickedly funny' and 'an anecdote to the pedantic debates stirred by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens...'.

Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God - Time Out Chicago

Philosopher and writer refutes God’s existence in new novel | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California

Books of The Times - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s ‘36 Arguments’ About God - Review - NYTimes.com

No, you don't want to know:
Q&A: Slavoj Žižek, professor and writer | Life and style | The Guardian

What is the worst job you've done?

Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.

Isn't that everything that is wrong with our discipline? Public intellectuals have this way of starting out as 'original and interesting promoter of the discipline' and ending as 'embarrassing caricature hell-bent on destroying the discipline' but has anyone made that transition more quickly than Zizek?  Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Students are stupid and boring.

Maybe it's time we stop calling him a 'philosopher' and start using title for which he's most qualified: 'psychoanalyst.' "The most dangerous psychoanalyst in the west" has a bit of a different ring to it doesn't it?

You read that right. Dov Seidman argues that Philosophy better prepares students for the current state of the business world that Econ. In short, Philosophy trains you to understand broad trends and large institutional relationships - and that, not specialization in narrow economic theories - is what the business world requires in the face of climate change, economic crises, global consumption habits, etc.

And he argues the point, not surprisingly, by pointing out that Adam Smith was - shocking - a philosopher, not an economist.
Philosophy is Back in Business - BusinessWeek

The financial and climate crises, global consumption habits, and other 21st-century challenges call for a "killer app." I think I've found it: philosophy...
...The Wealth of Nations, a book that serves as the intellectual platform for capitalism, lays out how markets should be organized and how people should behave in such markets. The book's author, Adam Smith, was not an economist, as many believe, but a philosopher. Smith was chairman of the Moral Philosophy Dept. at Glasgow University when he wrote the book

Well, that's true, but so were all the major intellectuals of the 18th century. OK, Smith was probably more similar to his good friend David Hume, than some of the others who called themselves 'natural' philosophers, but this argument just doesn't hold much water.  read more »

I've kept an eye out for coverage of our non-discrimination petition from last spring--you'll find previous entries here and here. But this one is useful as an example of loaded rhetoric as well:
American Philosophical Association and Christ-Centered Colleges « Academic Freedom File  read more »

From the Yale Daily News:
Yale Daily News - Smith, ever the philosopher

I blogged about coverage of this practice last November, but it's back in the press, so:
Philosophy Slam takes philosophy out of the classroom // Current

Interesting piece on a lifetime of logic:
Logician with a flair for grammar

In Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle (which I delivered when I was 11, thank you very much).
Philosophy studies broaden RIT experience | democratandchronicle.com | Democrat and Chronicle

Containing this nugget:

‘First they called me a joker, now I am a dangerous thinker’ - All That Matters - Sunday TOI - Home - The Times of India

A lot of people will find it ridiculous to even imagine that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler? Are you serious when you say that?
n Yes. Though Gandhi didn’t support killing, his actions helped the British imperialists to stay in India longer. This is something Hitler never wanted. Gandhi didn’t do anything to stop the way the British empire functioned here.
For me, that is a problem.

It's hard to take this kind of hyperbole seriously, esp. from someone who claims the title 'philosopher.'  Public intellectuals need to speak carefully. Sure, it is worth considering Gandhi's actions critically, but he is not directly responsible for the slaughter of 6 million people. Don't stretch your equivocations and metaphors to the point of absurdity. It gives all of philosophy a bad name.

I'm a bit behind on this, but here's the current tally:
Feminist Wire Daily Newsbriefs: U.S. and Global News Coverage Ms. Magazine - 1/5/10

Mary Daly, pioneering feminist who tussled with BC, dies at 81 - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe 1/5/10

Feminist BC theology professor Daly dies at 81 | Latest National Headlines | Star-Telegram.com - 1/6/10

Radical theologian Mary Daly, 81, dies - Nation - TheState.com - 1/9/10 (reprint of LA Times article dated 1/10/10)

Mary Daly dies at 81; radical feminist academician - latimes.com - 1/10/10

Mary Daly dies: feminist theologian, professor - SF Gate.com 1/10/10

Radical feminist and theologian rankled Boston College - washingtonpost.com - 1/10/10

Windy City Times - Mary Daly dies at 81 - 1/13/10  read more »

It's back.  Enjoy:
Why Sarkozy won't let Camus rest in peace - Europe, World - The Independent

The Daily Star - Arts & Culture - In death as in life: Camus, a controversy to the last

France24 - 'Outsider' Camus stirs debate 50 years after his death

From the NY Times: the American Law Institute, which drafted the reasoning behind Gregg v. Georgia has "pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it."
Sidebar - Group That Shaped Death Penalty Gives Up on Its Own Work - NYTimes.com
Anyone teaching 'Contemporary Issues in Ethics' may well find this a rich topic. Here are some relevant links:

• The press release at ALI
• And the decision in Gregg v. Georgia: at Cornell law (1976).
• Also, Furman v. Georgia, (1972), in which the court decided the death penalty was cruel and unusual

David Kyle Johnson, of King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, had an op-ed Dec 13th in the Baltimore sun arguing that parents should not deceive their children about Santa Claus. His arguments are pretty simple: children crave reliable information, parents are seen as the most reliable source of information, so this practice violates their natural trust. It discourages critical thinking, leads to a gullible populace, and the various excuses fall flat.  All in all, pretty straight-forward stuff:

Sorry, Virginia ... -- baltimoresun.com

I didn't blog about it before because it just seemed so obviously correct.  But it has touched a nerve. It's a hobby of mine to track these kind of debates in the public sphere for use in CT courses. Here's the start:

The American Spectator : The Gift Delusion - a good example of poisoning the well by introducing the Johnson as a 'grinch' who is a 'liberal arts professor at a prestigious east coast college' who might 'give you a grade-inflated A plus'. The argument appears to simply to critique Johnson for not doing what the author believes to be a philosopher's job: talk Kant and the Ontological argument.  read more »

Jonah Penne - a freshman at Stevenson University (formerly Villa Julie) outside of Baltimore - wrote an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun discussion the implications of the behavior of game players in massively multi-player role playing environments (like 'World of Warcraft') for state of nature arguments.  There is, of course, much to do here: his evidence should be backed up with real empirical work, and his understanding of Locke's system in the state of nature seems pretty simplistic:

Philosophers and video games -- baltimoresun.com

Thomas Hobbes, a 17th-century English philosopher, believed that without the restraints of civil society, people's lives would become savage - in his famous words, "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." John Locke, the British philosopher who influenced many of America's Founding Fathers, was more optimistic about this state.

But hey - he's a 1st year - and how often do we see novel applications of ideas in the classroom to experiences in the individual students' lives? Stevenson is just down the road. Maybe I can get him to come up for one of my classes!

This video has just started becoming viral, so I thought I'd post it here.

The new HP computers have 'face tracking' software that appears unable to track people with dark skin. One might think that it is unlikely that global corporation would put a product out that wasn't tested on people with various complexions, but having worked with engineers at global technological companies (not HP, notably), I'm not so easily duped. There is little doubt in my mind that this was just never tested thoroughly - a simple oversight that demonstrates a severe lack of critical thinking and social awareness. Engineering ethics are often thought of in terms of the utilitarian calculus required for any major construction project - but this f***-up by HP shows the complexity of that field. Engineering a product for public consumption requires significant ethical reflection, and this may be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the depth of that challenge.

YouTube - HP computers are racist

HP computers are racist  read more »

Here's an oddity:
The Associated Press: Vatican paper says 'The Simpsons' are okely dokely

Without Homer Simpson and the other yellow-skinned characters "many today wouldn't know how to laugh," said the article titled "Aristotle's Virtues and Homer's Doughnut."

L'Osservatore Romano's english edition site (here) has only the 1st page of this edition publicly available, so we don't have access to the original. Still - it might be worth a look for an intro classes using popular culture to introduce Philosophy.

According to the website GEN: Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology news, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science has announced that Dennett has been selected as a fellow for "transformational contributions to philosophy of the cognitive sciences and philosophy of biology, which have become the most rapidly advancing fields in philosophy of science."  I have not yet confirmed this on the AAAS website, so stay tuned!
News: Tufts University Professor Daniel Dennett selected as 2009 Fellow by AAASA.

My google alert caught this a couple of days ago, and there's no official memorial up at Syracuse's Phil Department site. But the story has been republished in a number of papers, so I'm going to go ahead and link it from here:

Syracuse University emeritus philosophy professor identified as accident victim | News from The Post-Standard -

A professor emeritus in the philosophy department at Syracuse University was killed Friday night when he was hit by a pickup truck as he attempted to cross Erie Boulevard.

Here's his profile at Syracuse: http://philosophy.syr.edu/FacKidder.htm
According to Phylo.info, his PhD was from Pitt in 1968, and he advised three PhD's while at Syr: http://phylo.info/joel-h-kidder

I'll keep an eye out for any more memorials, and post them as they arrive.

The story quotes Appiah extensively, although not 'ex officio'. It does make mention of the petition (about 1/2 way down: search 'Hermes' to find the relevant paragraph). It only requotes Paul Corts, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities from the previous 'Insidehighered.com' article (here).
APA pushes for hiring equality - The Daily Princetonian

UPDATE 12-11
The Daily Princetonian comes out in support of the APA:

Editorial: In support of the APA - The Daily Princetonian