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    • Axiomatizations of arithmetic and the first-order/second-order divide

      I'm currently running a series of posts at M-Phi with sections of a paper I'm working on, 'Axiomatizations of arithmetic and the first-order/second-order divide', which may be of interest to at least some of the NewAPPS readership. It focuses on the idea that, when it comes to axiomatizing arithmetic, descriptive power and deductive power cannot be combined: axiomatizations that are categorical (using a highly expressive logical language, typically second-order logic) will typically be intractable, whereas axiomatizations with deductively better-behaved underlying logics (typically, first-order logic) will not be categorical — i.e. will be true of models other than the intended model of the series of the natural numbers. Based on a distinction proposed by Hintikka between the descriptive use and the deductive use of logic in the foundations of mathematics, I discuss what the impossibility of having our arithmetical cake and eating it (i.e. of combining deductive power with expressive power to characterize arithmetic with logical tools) means for the first-order logic vs. second-order logic debate.

      Part I is here, Part II here, and Part III here. I still hope to post Part IV tomorrow, and then the final Part V will have to wait for a while.

    • Student sues Northwestern for alleged failure to act on sexual misconduct finding against a philosophy professor

      [Changed headline and URL from this morning.] See here, here and here for news articles. 3:20 pm, CST, 11 Feb. We are opening comments. We will moderate closely. See our comments policy. From the news stories, we know the following facts:

      1. The student is suing Northwestern, not suing Ludlow.

      2. The lawsuit alleges that the original complaint was upheld by the NU Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention. Their wording is alleged to have been that Ludlow “engaged in unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances.” [Per the news articles, it is a fact that the lawsuit contains this allegation. It is not a publicly available fact that this was the wording of the OSHP.]

      3. The lawsuit alleges that a disciplinary committee recommended firing Ludlow. [Similarly, it is a fact, per the news articles, that the lawsuit makes this allegation. It is not a public fact that the disciplinary committee made this recommendation.]

      4. The university did not fire Ludlow. [Update, 3:50 pm: it's better to say that Ludlow is teaching courses this term at Northwestern.] [Update, 9 am, 12 Feb: see here for more information on Ludlow's teaching schedule.]

      5. Through his lawyer, Ludlow denies the allegations in the original complaint. 

      6. The university changed its policies in January, claiming that these changes would put it in a position to be in better compliance with Title IX. 

      [Update 9am, 12 Feb: 7. The Chicago Tribue reports: "This was not brought to our attention by either the candidate or his employer," said Rutgers spokesman Greg Trevor. "We are looking into this matter thoroughly, including requesting all relevant information to fully evaluate his candidacy."]

    • Another Gendered Speaker Series

      The Gendered Conference Campaign "aims to raise awareness of the prevalence of all-male conferences (and volumes, and summer schools), of the harm that they do." In keeping with that aim, I call your attention to a (so-far) gendered speaker series that raises awareness for this issue in a different way. The University of California at Merced (disclaimer: my place of work) started a Philosophy Speaker Series this year that has so far organized talks for three speakers, all of whom are women (see the calendar and archive here). This was not intentional, but the fact that it is striking to have this sort of line-up reveals that we have some way to go to reach gender parity. Has anyone else come across conferences, speaker series, or summer schools with all-woman line-ups?

    • Philosophical Climate Survey

      Two of my students just put together a philosophical climate survey. It can be found here. It's primarily intended for philosophy graduate students in PhD programs.

      If you are a PhD student in philosophy, it would be great if you could complete it.

      Hopefully this, together with The Philosophical Gourmet Report and other resources, will help students make informed decisions about which PhD programs to apply to.

    • Can someone please explain the publisher’s blurbs for Heidegger’s Black Notebooks

      Google translate gives me gibberish, but with the possible exception (I can't tell) of comments at the end of both blurbs the gibberish seemed to be downplaying the elephant in the dining room. My German is inexcusably (for someone who lived there for two years as a child) awful, so I'd be really interested to see how the blurb accords with the Derbyshire piece.

      In particular a couple of things seem clear to me:

      1. Contra Faye et. al.'s repeated claims, the substance of Heidegger's pre and early 30's philosophy has absolutely nothing to do with anti-semitism or Nazism,
      2. The fact that Heidegger was not a "crude biological racist" is a dangerous non-sequitur (neither were most Nazi's, who had a metaphysical conception of race rooted in German Romanticism),
      3. Heidegger's middle and late work is tainted by the Nazism just to the extent that the history of being (especially the way it is tied to views of the German language and people and their relation to the Greeks) recapitulates central German Romantic themes that actually were central to blood-and-soil Nazism, and
      4. It's possible that the most interesting thing about the black notebooks is that they make this connection much clearer. 

      Now, 3 and 4 may be completely wrong, or may be the kind of things that informed people of good will can disagree about*. But if the blurbs are written in a way that forecloses 3 and 4, this seems a little bit problematic to me.

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    • Philosopher Jaakko Hintikka reveals love affair between his wife and JFK

      Here.

    • Really just a wonderful performance, and a bit about teaching

      Georgetown, like many Jesuit schools, requires philosophy of all undergrads – two courses.  Since most of these students are not going to go on in philosophy, some of us spend a fair bit of time reflecting on what best to aim for in such a class. I don't really think the first steps of professional training are the goal – and so try more to instill habits of philosophical reflection – the examined life – that might be useful to them in the future. As part of this, a few of us have tried to tailor courses to particular groups of students. For myself, this has meant a philosophy of music course – now in its second iteration. I'm not any kind of expert in the area, but I know a bit of philosophy, have a history in music -I was an orchestral trumpet player, was one course short of a music performance major, and have performed with everything from brass quintets to rock bands to professional orchestras – and I'm a thoughtful guy, so I figured I could fake it. 

      For the first assignment in this course, I ask them to select a performance of a piece of music to analyze in Aristotelian terms – a piece that generates an understanding conducive collective emotional reaction in the audience by way of the integration of all the elements, in such a way that nothing is superfluous.  

      Well, really I have nothing to say in this post.  I just wanted to offer you this performance, by one GU student, that was selected by another as the topic of his analysis for the assignment.  

    • But What about the Children?

      It is not very difficult to give undergraduates advice about where they might pursue graduate study without egregiously insulting large numbers of your professional colleagues. 

      But then how to explain the ubiquity things like this not unrepresentative post by Spiros?*

      In the context of a very nice post about an exceptional department, Professor Leiter claims: "The term 'pluralism'** has, alas, been debased to the point that everyone now knows it is usually a code word for 'crappy philosophy is welcome here'."

      That's accurate, but a little too generous! For one thing, it understates the self-congratulation with which the term is deployed, and well as the ways in which it is wielded in order to deceive those most vulnerable in our profession.

      I realize that many of our judgments of concerning philosophical work are somewhere between full-bore cognitive judgments and Kantian judgments of taste rather than judgments of things you happen to find agreeable. I mean, my distaste for a philosophical view or text is not the same as my distaste for bitter vegetables. And that's fine!

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    • Guardian guidelines on how to talk about transgender people

      We've recently had a NewAPPS post where it became clear in comments that many (presumably well-meaning) people are at loss when it comes to the appropriate terminology to use when talking about transgender people. (Interestingly, there is a recent post over at Feminist Philosophers on this very topic.) Conveniently, the Guardian just published an informative piece with very sensible guidelines on how to go about it (at least, they seem sensible to me, but I'd like to hear more from people more knowledgeable than me on this matter). For example, I often asked myself which pronoun to use when talking about a transperson's past, prior to her/his transition, and here is the answer:

      Whether discussing a person's past, present or future, only use the correct pronouns for their gender. A person's gender generally does not change. Public presentation may change in transition and secondary sex characteristics may change with the aid of hormones and/or surgery, but one's sense of being either male or female is, in most cases, constant throughout life.

      There is much more sensible advice in the article, so go check it out!

    • showing versus telling in language

      There have been a number of discussions here at Newapps on various things that philosophical writing can legitimately aim for other than simply tell some truth or other. Here, I want to reflect on a distinction between telling and showing. In the simplest case, this distinction arises when we contrast being told some fact and seeing something for ourselves. So I can tell you about an apple, or show you one. I can tell you how to properly pull a sweep oar or show you.  And there are clearly important differences here.  For one, showing is "higher bandwidth".  That is, the amount of information transfered in a typical observation or physical engagement with an object is orders of magnitude more than the information stated in a claim – even a very complex, say book-length one.  And there may well be other important differences. One can talk about those in different ways – concrete embodiment in environmental-social context, phenomenal access, etc. I'm making no claims about what the difference is, merely pointing to the – I hope – uncontroversial claim that there is an important difference.  And I claim that this is a difference that makes an epistemological difference.  We can know more, know different things, have a different sort of understanding when something is shown to us than when we merely learn various facts about it.

      My thought that something very like the showing/telling distinction can arise in language; that is, we can make use of language to show things to one another in ways that carry with them the positive features of material showing.  That's to say that there are non-fact-stating features of speech acts that have the upshot of something very like showing.

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