AAPT Members American Association of Philosophy Teachers

I have absolutely no interest in contemporary French Philosophy. But I do have a certain distaste for public intellectuals who tend towards hyperbole at the cost of precision. So I find it delightful when these eruptions occur. Does that make me a bad person?

Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG: Bernard-Henri Lévy comes a cropper with fake philosopher

In his latest book, published this week amid the traditional adulation in the media, Lévy, 61, attacks Immanuel Kant, the 18th century philosopher. He calls him "raving mad" and cites as his authority Jean-Baptiste Botul, a 20th century philosopher.

The trouble is that Botul never existed. He was invented as an elaborate joke in 1999 by Frédéric Pagès, a literary journalist, who wrote works in his name.

Bernard-Henri Lévy a laughing stock for quoting fictional philosopher - Times Online  read more »

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?

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 »

Riva Gold, phil major from McGill, has a highly entertaining commentary on the gender gap in Philosophy. While I don't want to minimize the concerns she is expressing, I just can't pass up some of these quotes, like the one in the title.

The Patriarchy of Philosophy: Women in philosophy departments find themselves pushed to the margins

Philosophy is one of those rare majors that, when declared, simultaneously elicits looks of reverence and contempt from others. Philosophy majors are often seen as meek hipster wannabes who emit foul odours and begin every sentence with “it is the case that.” And with good reason.

It took me nearly three months to learn what Hegel meant by “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” and I assure you, it was not fascinating.  read more »

The National Union of Students, with help from HSBC, has produced a report on student-professor contact hours by discipline in the UK. The Guardian had a brief story about it this morning:
Arts students 'see academics for just nine hours a week' | Education | The Observer
A 'mini-report' on the contact hours and the full report produced by NUS and HSBC are available from NUS's press-release site here:Media Centre: News And Events: NUS.org.uk

The data set is worrying. Here's the graph included in both:

That's 9 hours a week in History & Philosophy, 5 of which are in lecture, and 3 of which are in tutor sessions.  I'd love to see an equivalent study done here in the US. It strikes me that it would be pretty easy to create a meaningful measure of school-value by simply dividing the number of contact hours by the number of students present during that session - McDaniel has 3 contact hours a week for a 4-credit class (I know, don't get me started) and our 'official' average class size is 17. That gives students 0.176 of an hour of the professor's attention per class. 4 classes means 0.70 hour of faculty attention per week per student.  read more »

I can't understand why an online magazine "dedicated to the analysis and understanding of religious forces in the world today, highlight a diversity of progressive voiced and aimed a broadening and advancing the public conversation" is interested in the enactive mind thesis, but apparently they are: You Are More Than Your Brain: A Revolutionary Theory of Consciousness | RDBook | ReligionDispatches

Consciousness, he argues, and all the things that that word means (thinking and feeling and the fact that the world shows up for us, to use Noë’s turns of phrase) does not originate from the brain the way digestive acids originate from the stomach, or the way light originates from the lens of a movie projector. Consciousness is the product of a living organism dynamically interacting with the world around it

Actually, we do know a little more than that: Thompson, who advocates a view of perception similar to that of Noë's, explicitly endorses Buddhist theology through his work in philosophy of mind and cognitive science - but I've never known Noë to do that. I'm just not sure what this has to do with religion.

At the bottom (after spending a whole section criticizing the 'new atheists' and never mentioning Noë once), the article finishes with:  read more »

It is only 20% women. Actually, this is really not news at all. It's been at that level for a generation.

A Dearth of Women Philosophers - Idea of the Day Blog - NYTimes.com

Evelyn Brister over at 'Knowledge and Experience' is all over the statistics and analysis, so there is no need for me to repeat her here.

My real complaint here is that the NY Times used an image of Ayn Rand as a Woman Philosopher! You've got to kidding me. For an article about academic, professional philosophy, nonetheless. I mean, seriously. How hard is it to find a photo of a woman philosopher? Let's choose one at random - say, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Martha Nussbaum? Oh, 1 click on google. Difficult. She even has a fairly detailed page on wikipedia. The third hit for google search on "Woman Philosopher" is a gallery of images of various suitable choices. And if they really had the energy, the first link is to an alphabetical list of women in philosophy. Many philosophers have their pictures right there on their web pages: Ruth Millikan has her picture on her public web site. And she's in Connecticut, so it isn't even a long drive for an interview.  read more »

The Collegian, the independent student newspaper of the University of Tulsa has a story covering a political phil course without grades. Hooray!  As an alum of a school without grades, I can testify to the educational benefits of removing grades from the curriculum. It looks, however, that it will simply a reading group offered 'extracurricularly'.  Seriously disappointing.

The Collegian Online: Grade-less political philosophy class offered next semester

It “is intended for the intellectual benefit of those who wish to participate,” Hittinger said, in an announcement about the reading group. “No grades, no tests, no papers. Just reading and conversation.”

Lou Marinoff at CCNY has a confessional on insidehigered.com about last year's search:
Career Advice: Inside a Search - Inside Higher Ed
It is, in my mind, the best example of what's wrong with the discipline. Marinoff should be commended for being honest. We know everyone does this crap, but he's the only one admitting it.  Here's the problem.  The mission of CCNY is:

The City College of New York (CCNY), the first college of The City University of New York (CUNY), is a comprehensive teaching, research, and service institution dedicated to accessibility and excellence in undergraduate and graduate education. Requiring demonstrated potential for admission and a high level of accomplishment for graduation, the College provides a diverse student body with opportunities to achieve academically, creatively, and professionally in the liberal arts and sciences and in professional fields such as engineering, education, architecture, and biomedical education. The College is committed to fostering student-centered education and advancing knowledge through scholarly research. As a public university with public purposes, it also seeks to contribute to the cultural, social, and economic life of New York. (from http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/about/index.cfm

And Marinoff's criteria for the 'long list' of people who got face-to-face interviews were:  read more »

I caught this story on PRI's 'The World' tonight:
Apology campaign for British Nazi code-breaker | PRI's The World
It's about fucking time. (sorry, but I think that is a perfectly appropriate use of the expletive).

The petition, which is limited to citizens of the UK, is here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing.

I'm either behind the curve, or this has sparked an internet wildfire. The hits on google just keep growing. Here's a sample of the coverage:

Pardon for Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing? - Channel 4 News (8/19)

RichardDawkins.net Forum • View topic - Alan Turing - Campaign for government pardon and apology (8/19)  read more »