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    Category: Roberta Millstein

    • Philosophy in the age of Trump: Threats to science, threats to the environment

      by Roberta L Millstein It's been a long time (too long) since I've blogged here, and now, with the political situation in such turmoil, it's hard to think about anything else.  And one wonders what place philosophy has in all of this.  But it occurs to me to share two blog posts I've written recently-ish…

    • Celebrating women in philosophy at UC Davis and elsewhere

      This evening I had an opportunity to get together with the other women in my philosophy department at UC Davis, and it caused me to reflect on how far we have come – when I joined the department in 2006, I was the only woman.  Elaine Landry (front center) joined in 2008, followed by Marina…

    • PSA-WC’s Highlighted PhilosopHer of Science: Merrilee Salmon

      The PSA Women's Caucus is delighted to announce its first Highlighted PhilosopHer of Science, Merrilee Salmon. You can read about Merrilee's many-splendored career over at Science Visions. Congratulations, Merrilee!

    • Unhealthy Skepticism: Foregone Conclusions and Bernie Sanders

      By Roberta Millstein Philosophers, and many thoughtful people more generally, pride themselves on having a healthy skepticism toward claims made by the media, by politicians, by scientists – by pretty much anyone. And rightly so. Many issues are complex and have not just two sides, but multiple sides. One ought not accept proffered claims without…

    • Finding Common Cause: Deaths of Lions, Deaths of Black People, and Lori Gruen’s article

      By Roberta Millstein I'd been trying to grapple with the weeks and weeks of horrifying stories about the treatment of Black Americans at the hands of police, with Sandra Bland and Samuel DuBose only the latest victims, when the story about Cecil the Lion hit social media. Some reacted angrily, frustrated that one lion was…

    • Nominations for PSA-WC Highlighted PhilosopHer

      By Roberta Millstein Nominations are OPEN for the PSA Women's Caucus new Highlighted PhilosopHer feature, recognizing the work of the Caucus's membership. Nominations need not be from Caucus members (although nominees do), so this is your chance to crow about some of your outstanding colleagues!  Maybe you saw a great talk from a woman philosopher…

    • Demographics of PSA Membership

      By Roberta Millstein Miriam Solomon has a post over at Science Visions, the blog of the PSA Women's Caucus, giving a summary of PSA demographics that she has been tracking since the Women’s Caucus began in 2006.  The full text of the reports is linked to from the post. An excerpt from Solomon's post: It…

    • Space and Time after Quantum Gravity

      Nick Huggett and Christian Wüthrich are happy to announce the award of a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation to fund a three year investigation into the philosophical implications of theories of quantum gravity, "Space and Time after Quantum Gravity." The work, which will be divided between the University of Illinois at Chicago and…

    • GMOs and the thing I should have said (or, why not all scientific expertise is created equal)

      By Roberta Millstein I'm sure we've all had the experience of committing to the final version of an article, only to think of that one more thing you should have said. Yeah, that just happened to me. Just the nature of the beast, I guess. My recent instance has to do with an article concerning…

    • Lewontin’s revisition of the Spandrels paper with D.S. Wilson

      By Roberta Millstein About a month ago, David Sloan Wilson posted a transcript of a wonderful phone conversation that he had with Richard Lewontin concerning the (in)famous paper that Lewontin co-authored in 1979 with Stephen Jay Gould, The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme, a paper that…