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    Category: Samir Chopra

    • Philosophical Silencing: A Follow-Up

      By: Samir Chopra In response to my post on an act of philosophical silencing, Wesley Buckwalter wrote the following comment:   As you know, I was the gentleman that made that remark in a private facebook thread with a close friend. If I recall correctly, people in that thread were asking about whether certain kinds of thought…

    • An Act Of Philosophical Silencing

      By: Samir Chopra A few months ago, I noticed an interesting and telling interaction between a group of academic philosophers. A Facebook friend posted a little note about how one of her students had written to her about having encountered a so-called "Gettier case" i.e., she had acquired a true belief for invalid reasons. In…

    • ‘Don’t Call Me A Philosopher’

      By: Samir Chopra I cringe, I wince, when I hear someone refer to me as a 'philosopher.' I never use that description for myself. Instead, I prefer locutions like, "I teach philosophy at the City University of New York", or "I am a professor of philosophy." This is especially the case if someone asks me,…

    • The Philosophical Education of Scientists

      By: Samir Chopra Yesterday, in my Twentieth Century Philosophy class, we worked our way through Bertrand Russell's essay on "Appearance and Reality" (excerpted, along with "The Value of Philosophy" and "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description" from Russell's 'popular' work The Problems of Philosophy.) I introduced the class to Russell's notion of physical objects being inferences from sense-data,…

    • On Not ‘Interfering’ With Others’ Self-Conceptions

      By: Samir Chopra Sometimes, when I talk to friends, I hear them say things that to my ears sound like diminishments of themselves: "I don't have the–intellectual or emotional or moral–quality X" or "I am not as good as Y when it comes to X." They sound resigned to this self-description, this self-understanding. I think I see things differently;…

    • Cricket References In Philosophical Writings

      By: Samir Chopra Many philosophers refer to the game of cricket in their writings. Reading one of these references never fails to give me—a lifelong cricket fan—a little start of pleasure. Many years ago, as I began my graduate studies in philosophy in New York City, I stumbled upon JL Austin while reading on speech acts for…

    • Movies About Philosophers: Rare, Hard To Make, Desirable

      By: Samir Chopra After viewing the rather disappointing Chopin: Desire for Love  a couple of years ago, I was struck again by how difficult it seems to be to make movies about artists, writers, or perhaps creators of all kinds. My viewing also served to remind me that movies about philosophers' lives are exceedingly rare, and the few…

    • Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

      By: Samir Chopra  In 'Five Parables' (from Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2002), Ian Hacking writes, I had been giving a course introducing undergraduates to the philosophers who were contemporaries of the green family and August der Stark. My hero had been Leibniz, and as usual my audience gave me pained looks. But after the last…

    • The Dickhead Theory Of Academic Philosophy, Revisited

      By: Samir Chopra A little while ago, I posited something I jocularly termed The Dickhead Theory as a possible explanation for the lack of women in academic philosophy (“there are too many dickheads in philosophy”). In response, one male reader commented:

    • Thou Shalt Know All Before Offering Critique (Of The Police)

      By: Samir Chopra A common argument made in the ongoing national discussion about police brutality and violence is, very roughly, "We should be careful in criticizing the police because we have little idea of how difficult and dangerous their work is." Which reminds me: some ten years ago, when discussing the Abu Ghraib tortures and sundry…