AAPT Members American Association of Philosophy Teachers

From the chronicle.  His main criticism is: Philosophers Rip Darwin - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

I want to draw attention to the way this crop of critics ignores evolutionary biology—aside from the kind of cherry-picking in which Fodor engages. Nagel may sneer about the failure to find "accessible literature" that answers his worries. In what part of the library was he doing his literature search? Where, for example, is any discussion of the Grants' work on the Galápagos finches? What about a detailed look at the new scholarship that is challenging earlier thinking about the evolution of bipedalism? What about the discoveries of molecular biology and of the similarities (homologies) between humans and fruit flies? And why no mention of Marc Hauser and his work uncovering the secrets of moral thinking? There is a deafening silence on those and other issues. Fodor, Nagel, and Plantinga don't need to turn themselves into biochemists, but some awareness of the issues and advances would not be entirely misplaced.

Ruse goes on to suggest that the 'deeper' reason for their critiques of Darwin is, for Plantinga and Nagel, a rejection of reductionism. For Fodor, it is a resistance against seeing homo sapiens as just another animal.  read more »

If you aren't familiar with his work, Pascal Boyer is a significant figure in the nascent Cognitive Science of Religion. According to Pascal, religious concepts are those concepts that, as a function of our memory mechanisms, are particularly memorable. They are what he calls 'minimally-counter intuitive concepts', which means that they tend to violate the template of a concept (such as TREE) in a minimal way (TREE THAT WALKS). Our cognitive mechanisms are such that these sort of concepts are more likely to be remembered and survive cultural transmission better than concepts that either do not violate the template, or maximally violate the template.

In a recent blog entry, he seems to be applying this analysis to academic fashions: that they tend to be introduced by 'gurus' who make a counterintuitive claim, e.g. 'Madness is not brain dysfunction,' and then unpack it into relatively innocuous claims.

Boyer's thesis is polemical, but the underlying position is interesting: can there be a Cognitive Science of Philosophy?  Can we explain the attraction to philosophical theses in terms of the cognitive mechanisms at work in our brains?  He concludes, incidentally almost, that:  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 »

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.

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 »

Gabbi Seltzer, Philosophy and History double major at VaTech has a column in the student paper defending liberal education. The argument is essentially from the 'broad world view' that results from a liberal education, but still--it's good to see undergraduates advocating for such impracticalities, esp. at large technical universities:
CollegiateTimes.com - Column: Liberal education a necessity in every student's curriculum

Worldnetdaily - wnd.com - a site that appears to trade in right wing conspiracy theories has a bizarre, but useful, article 'unmasking' Henry Louis Gates Jr. The author spends almost half of the article criticizing DuBois - because, apparantly, having a persons' name on your endowed chair means that their political affiliations from a century ago are yours, today. The most hilarous one, however, is his salvoy at our (i.e. the APA's) current (or is it former) president: Meet the man at center of Obama's race controversy

Gates also lured to Harvard socialist sympathizer Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist and novelist, as well as William Julius Wilson, who is close to the Democrat Socialists of America.

Good for use in Critical thinking no?

For example: why 'Ghanaian'? Appiah is as much British as Ghanaian. Actually, he's now an American - so why not 'American'? He was raised in England and attended Cambridge. If you've ever heard him speak, you'd think he was a relative of the Queen.

Actually, he is. So how about 'aristocratic'?  He is related to both the Asante and British royal family.  His parent's wedding, held in Westminster Abbey, was written up in the Times (go ahead, look it up. It was a big thing back then.  I remember some passage from the times mentioning 'barefooted Africans,' but it's been 10 years since I read it, so I might be mis-remembering).  read more »

I don't post rants or political diatribes on this blog. I usually reserve those for my classroom ;). But I do like to collect examples of public discourse that can be used for instruction in the Critical Thinking classroom. This story--of how Sarah Palin quoted "Plato" on her Twitter account, when in fact there is no such Plato quote--is a perfect example for timely CT instruction. It is one of those that can open one up to charges of political bias, but look: Obama just doesn't make these kind of mistakes. Maybe it's because he's actually read Plato! (oh, there I go, showing my bias... damn.).

So: here's the putative quote:

Here's a progressive political blog attempting to find the *actual* source of the quote: Think Progress » Aspiring philosopher Palin quotes ‘Plato.’

I've searched google books as well, and found it attributed to a 'old saying' in No Props: Great Games with No Equipment‎ - Page 12 (good), and Plato (bad) in:  read more »

John Wilkins over at Evolving Thoughts reproduced an early paper by W.R. Greg that Darwin cites in the Descent of Man. Excellent resource for anyone teaching the text (which I will be later this term).
Evolving Thoughts: Natural selection fails with Man - W. R. Greg

Superb article in the Times Higher Ed by Soran Reader (Durham University), a specialist in ethics, who is suffering from an inoperable brain tumor:
Times Higher Education - It is monstrously wrong that patients cannot ask for euthanasia