AAPT Members American Association of Philosophy Teachers

Wiley is introducing a new line of 'Popular' philosophy books called "Philosophy for everyone," edited by Fritz Allhoff of Western Michigan University.  The first few books titles promised include:

• College Sex: Philosophers With Benefits
• Cycling: A Philosophical Tour de Force
• Climbing: Because It’s There.
• Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life
• Porn: How to Think with Kink
• Cannabis: What Were We Just Talking About?
• Serial Killers: Being and Killing.

And in 2011:

• Dating: Flirting with Big Ideas
• Gardening: Cultivating Wisdom
• Fatherhood: The Dao of Daddy
• Motherhood: The Birth of Wisdom.

You can read the coverage at Publisher's Weekly here:  read more »

Time published an article this morning by Coeli Carr on the 'Philosophy And...' books:
The Meaning of Mad Men: Philosophers Take on TV - TIME
There really isn't that much there - it reads something like a press release. But still, any coverage of philosophy in the popular press is a good thing right?

Our own Peter Worley inspired a very nice article on 'Teachers.tv,' a website for British teachers at the (American) pre-college level:
Should philosophy be taught in schools? | Teachers TV

On another note, the BBC has an article where Julian Baggini and Raymon Tallis 'debate' deep thinking:
That thinking feeling

While there are great problems in the way the UK supports (or fails to support) academic philosophy, they are light years ahead of us when it comes to recruiting students in the pre-college set.  I do wish we'd improve. Which would take, of course, a cultural shift so that those with interests in pedagogy and *gasp* pre-college pedagogy were no longer see as failures or sellouts. And that's a long, long ways off...

From the Wall Street Journal:
Japan’s New TV Craze: Philosophers - Japan Real Time - WSJ

“I am astonished and delighted by the popularity of ‘Justice’ in Japan,” Prof. Sandel told JRT by email. “There seems to be a great yearning, in Japan as in the U.S., for public discussion of big ideas, especially about ethics and values.”

While Sandel is good at his delivery style, I'm always taken aback by the praise he gets in the press. It's not like there aren't thousands of us who do the same thing, day in and day out, at Small Liberal Arts colleges - albeit to a smaller crowd.  Maybe we can start using this meme to promote SLAC's to Japanese students: Like Michael Sandel? Enroll at any of the SLAC's in the US, and you'll meet 25 of him!

Elliot Cohen has an entry on his Psychology Today blog promoting his forthcoming book:
Conquer Your Anxiety with Philosophy | Psychology Today

Conquer Your Anxiety with Philosophy

While I generally agree that psychology has a historical tendency to overextend itself and medicalize normality, I worry about this approach.  Cohen appears to be promoting basic critical thinking mixed with pop-psychology (i.e. 'cognitive dissonance') as an alternative to psychological therapy. Consider:

If you push yourself to formulate the premises of your thinking, it is then possible for you to refute them with a little critical thinking, that is, prove to yourself that they are irrational.

Uh... yeah. That's why anxiety is a disorder. Because it is irrational. If it were rational anxiety, one wouldn't be seeking counseling.

But maybe this is just a part of the natural correction to over-diagnosis and Psychiatric classification-creep. 

Or, as Pedro Tabensk,  associate professor of Philosophy at Rhodes University, puts it:

Daily Dispatch Online

“What do you mean by ‘useless’?”

Alan Smith has a nice reflection piece in the Guardian on his experience teaching Philosophy in prison:

In prison, the philosophy class must start again | Education | The Guardian

Before we can start up, I have to talk to the old-timers about Nietzsche. Finish him off. Lee listens for a bit and then interrupts: "He ought to be tied up and stuck in the corner." "Straight up," says Casey, "the sonofabitch." "To hell with him then," I say, "let's talk about Aristotle."

From Havana Times.org: Alexis Jardines
Interview with Cuban Philosopher Alexis Jardines - Havana Times.org

Mockus, who is routinely referred to as a 'Philosopher' by the press, has a masters degree in Philosophy from the National University of Columbia (according to Wikipedia, I'll try to find a better source).  That's enough to add him to the list of politically-engaged philosophers. His campaign seems pretty interesting, I'll try to keep an eye out for updates:

Philosopher Antanas Mockus rattles Colombia election - CSMonitor.com

"They discovered my weapon," he says, recalling the incident with an impish smile. The pencil is one of the symbols of his campaign, which emphasizes education as a tool to transform society.

Tom Morris @Huffington post has an interview with CUNY Philosopher Shannon Eric Kincaid, whose recently book Jobs I've Had covers the 63 jobs he's had over the years.  This little tidbit was especially notable:

Tom Morris: Interview With a Philosopher: Only One Person/Over Sixty Jobs.

People look at my current job and say, "Wow, must be nice. A dozen hours of teaching for three or four days a week, eight months a year? Summers off?" Yet they fail to appreciate the training it takes to become a professor, and the amount of important work that happens outside the classroom - like staring into space and thinking. One of the main points of the book is that being a "professional" anything means never NOT-working. You're a philosopher. You know what I mean. We do philosophy in the express line at the grocery store ("Do 12 cans of cat food count as one item, or 12?").