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    • Women In Philosophy And Reconceptualizing Philosophical Method

      By: Samir Chopra

      This past Monday, on 20th April, Christia Mercer, the Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, delivered the Philosophy Department's annual Sprague and Taylor lecture at Brooklyn College. The title of her talk was 'How Women Changed The Course of Philosophy'. Here is the abstract:

      The story we tell about the development of early modern philosophy was invented by German Neo-Kantians about 150 years ago. Created to justify its proponents’ version of philosophy, it is a story that ignores the complications of seventeenth-century philosophy and its sources. In this lecture, Professor Christia Mercer uncovers the real story behind early modern rationalism and shows that many of its most original components have roots in the philosophical contributions made by women. [link added]

      At one point during the talk, in referring to the contributions made by Julian of Norwich, Professor Mercer began by saying, "Julian does not offer an argument here, but rather an analysis…". During the question and answer session, focusing on this remark, I offered some brief comments.

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    • Recommendations for citing papers

      By Roberta Millstein

      Following on Helen De Cruz's excellent Why we should cite unpublished papers and some recent reflections of my own while refereeing, I thought it might be helpful to compile a list of suggestions for when to cite (now that we know that our citations should include both published and unpublished work):

      1. If someone has provided a way to understand a certain debate that had not been recognized before and you find it useful to present the debate in that way, you should cite them.
      2. If someone has provided conceptual distinctions that you are using in your paper, you should cite them.
      3. If someone has done the work to find and explain a case study and you want to refer to that case study too, you should cite them.
      4. If X has developed further the ideas of Y, you should cite both X and Y. 

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    • Homer and the Beginning of Virtue Ethics

      It is possible to see Homer as the beginning of a lot of things. (The use of ‘Homer’ here is simply for convenience as a way of referring to  The Iliad and The Odyssey and should not be taken as an assertion that there was a single author of those two epics or that if there was such an author, the author had that name). Nevertheless, it may be particularly appropriate to see Homer at the beginning of virtue ethics. There are ways that there is a version of virtue ethics in the Homeric epics related to later virtue ethics in antiquity, and while there is no equivalent version of later metaphysics, epistemology, or political theory.

      Virtue ethics dominates the way we see ancient ethics and that vein of ancient ethics  can be taken back to Homer even if not quite the same as in later more abstract philosophical elaborations, and even lacking in the same vocabulary. What follows will just assume that a language of virtues can be applied to Homer and is not concerned with how far such a language can be found in an explicit way in that literature. The Homeric approach is interestingly different and even superior to the later philosophical reflections in that virtues are shown to varied and conflicting, rather than as part of rationally unified and hierarchically structures. 

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    • Why we should cite unpublished papers

      I'm writing a paper where I'm citing an unpublished paper. It's by a relatively junior author, available on the internet, and it has been already cited, for example, I recently saw a citation to it in a published paper that's already in print for several years (that paper is very well known in the subject matter I'm writing about now – it is unsurprisingly by a far more senior author at a high-ranking institution).

      I talked to the author of the unpublished draft a few months ago, and they said that the paper had been under review a couple of times, once in a top journal where it was under review for over a year until eventually the editor decided 'no'. They are now resubmitting this paper for the nth time. 

      Upon learning this paper is unpublished, my first reaction was to avoid citing it. And I was frustrated with my own initial reaction – was I trying to use my citations strategically (not implausible, see e.g., here) to cite the papers that are deemed "central" in this discussion? Was I not willing to cite because I have often tried to track down, in vain, unpublished papers that are cited in the works of others and I am trying to avoid this frustration in my potential audience?

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    • Migrants are the bravest people in the world

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      The best teacher I’ve ever had in my life was my history teacher in my first year at the Lycée Claude Monet in Paris: Monsieur (Denis) Corvol. Aged 14, I had just arrived from Brazil to spend two years in France with my parents, who were on an extended research leave from their positions as medicine professors in São Paulo, Brazil. I barely spoke French upon arrival, and to say that the first months were tough is an understatement. Many of the teachers seemed to be particularly harsh on me, and one (the math teacher) said in front of everyone in class: “if you can’t solve this problem, and you obviously don’t speak French very well, I wonder what you are doing in this class”.

      But there was Monsieur Corvol, whose unorthodox teaching methods included talking about a variety of topics that seemed to have no connection whatsoever with the content we were supposed to be learning (the French Revolution and so forth – for that, he told us to go read the textbook on our own). (Years later I realized he was some sort of Habermasian, emphasizing inter-subjective communication and rational discourse.) When I arrived, he spent some two or three classes talking about Brazil — what a remarkable country it was, how much the French could learn from Brazil — in an obvious maneuver to make me feel more welcome, and to invite my classmates to engage with me in more positive ways.

      From time to time I remember Monsieur Corvol with much fondness; many of the things I heard from him for the first time still reverberate with me. One of them, which I am reminded of now with the ongoing disaster of the migrant crisis in Europe, was: “Migrants are the bravest people in the world.” Migrants are the people who have the courage to fight for a better life in a new, unknown, possibly inhospitable country; for that, they must be resourceful and determined. Lucky is the country that can count on the drive and ambition of migrants, as a wonderful recent campaign in the UK has also highlighted. The 800 people who died in the Mediterranean Sea, many of whom children, should be remembered as among the bravest people in the world.

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    • Why is this philosophy? redux

      By Roberta Millstein

      It's been a little over a week since I posted my Why is this philosophy? reflections, and I find myself still puzzling over a common sort of reaction that I got to the post. The common reaction seemed to be that other areas of philosophy are subject to similar challenges, and/or that philosophers in other areas are subject to similar difficulties on the job market, etc. And so (the implication seemed to be), what was my point?

      Let me first clarify that I certainly never meant to imply – and looking back over the post, do not see where I said – that philosophy of science or philosophers of science have it worse than anyone else. I do not take that to be the case. I know that there are certain areas of philosophy that are quite marginalized, causing practitioners in those areas to struggle at various points in their careers. So, why speak about philosophy of science? Well, philosophy of science is what I do, and so the particular criticisms of it are in my face more so than criticisms of other areas. I encourage others to speak out about challenges in their own areas, challenges that I am not in a position to speak to. But let's be clear that the challenges in area X, even if worse than the challenges in philosophy of science, don't make the challenges in philosophy of science go away or unworthy of discussion.

      So, what are the particular criticisms that can make doing philosophy of science challenging?

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    • How to Disregard Extremely Remote Possibilities

      by Eric Schwitzgebel

      In 1% Skepticism, I suggest that it’s reasonable to have about a 1% credence that some radically skeptical scenario holds (e.g., this is a dream or we’re in a short-term sim), sometimes making decisions that we wouldn’t otherwise make based upon those small possibilities (e.g., deciding to try to fly, or choosing to read a book rather than weed when one is otherwise right on the cusp).

      But what about extremely remote possibilities with extremely large payouts? Maybe it’s reasonable to have a one in 10^50 credence in the existence of a deity who would give me at least 10^50 lifetimes’ worth of pleasure if I decided to raise my arms above my head right now. One in 10^50 is a very low credence, after all! But given the huge payout, if I then straightforwardly apply the expected value calculus, such remote possibilities might generally drive my decision making. That doesn’t seem right!

      I see three ways to insulate my decisions from such remote possibilities without having to zero out those possibilities.

      First, symmetry:
      My credences about extremely remote possibilities appear to be approximately symmetrical and canceling. In general, I’m not inclined to think that my prospects will be particularly better or worse due to their influence on extremely unlikely deities, considered as a group, if I raise my arms than if I do not. More specificially, I can imagine a variety of unlikely deities who punish and reward actions in complementary ways — one punishing what the other rewards and vice versa. (Similarly for other remote possibilities of huge benefit or suffering, e.g., happening to rise to an infinite Elysium if I step right rather than left.) This indifference among the specifics is partly guided by my general sense that extremely remote possibilities of this sort don’t greatly diminish or enhance the expected value of such actions. I see no reason not to be guided by that general sense — no argumentative pressure to take such asymmetries seriously in the way that there is some argumentative pressure to take dream doubt seriously.

      Second, diminishing returns:

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    • Parrhesia (Part 4): Friends Don’t Let Friends Study the History of Being

      At the beginning of a 1974 interview (D&E II, 521), M. D’Eramo puts the following question to Foucault: “you always start your analyses at the end of the Middle Ages, without ever speaking of antiquity, but it seems to me that ancient Greece is important for constructing what you call an ‘archaeology of knowledge.’ Are you avoiding the subject intentionally?”  Foucault’s response, which is one of the very few times in which he mentions Heidegger by name other than in the context of existentialism, should be quoted at length:

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    • Assessing inductive risk in the Williams and Ceci studies

      In their series that could be titled "Academic sexism is a myth", Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci have a newest installment: on the basis of fictive scenarios, faculty members in STEM disciplines had to make decisions about hiring particular male or female candidates. I'm not going to talk in detail about the methodology – which involved presenting faculty members fictitious scenarios about the on campus interviews of female and male candidates – but about the problem of inductive risk whenever we investigate biases against women and other underrepresented groups, such as African Americans, people with disabilities, etc.

      Inductive risk is the chance that one is wrong accepting or rejecting a scientific hypothesis. For instance, a food additive that poses a serious health risk is wrongly concluded to be safe, or conversely, a food additive that has no health risk is wrongly concluded to be carcinogenic. Both false negatives and false positives can potentially pose inductive risks. Heather Douglas has argued that inductive risk is one way to let values play a role in science. Because scientists are in an epistemic position to assess the risks and benefits of their work, they should assess the non-epistemic consequences (in policy, public perception, health hazards etc) of publishing particular research findings. How does this concept apply to the research by Williams and Ceci?

      When we investigate sexist biases against women in academia, there are two types of inductive risk: (1) There are no biases against women (indeed women are now being preferred as candidates for some positions in some fields). (2) There are in fact biases against women, but Williams and Ceci failed to detect it.

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    • In Memoriam, Pleshette DeArmitt

      Our discipline suffered a terrible loss yesterday with the sudden and untimely passing of Pleshette DeArmitt, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at University of Memphis. We here at NewAPPS extend our deepest condolences to her family, her colleagues and her considerable network of friends.

      From the University of Memphis’s announcement:

      Prof. DeArmitt's research and teaching interests included contemporary continental philosophy, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and social and political thought. She regularly taught undergraduate courses in feminist theory and 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy. She taught graduate courses on Rousseau’s moral psychology, Freud’s metapsychology, Kristeva's philosophy of bios, and themes in contemporary continental philosophy.

      Prof. DeArmitt published scholarly articles on Derrida, Kofman, and Kristeva in journals such as Mosaic, Parallax, Philosophy Today, Research in Phenomenology, and The Southern Journal of Philosophy. She was the author of The Right to Narcissism: A Case for an Im-possible Self-Love (Fordham University Press, 2013) and the co-editor of Sarah Kofman’s Corpus (SUNY Press, 2008).

      She is survived by her husband, Kas Saghafi, also Associate Professor of Philosophy, and her beloved daughter Seraphine. Memorial announcements will follow.

      On a more personal note, I want to add that Pleshette was a dear friend, colleague and inspiration to me for many years. What has been lost in her passing far exceeds the summary of Pleshette’s scholarly production and academic accomplishments. For those who didn’t know her, Pleshette’s was an incredibly rare sort of gentle, unpretentious, amiable and warm-hearted disposition. She was quick to laugh, quicker to smile, and hilariously (often subversively) funny herself. She was generous to a fault. Often, in conversation, Pleshette would reach out, seemingly reflexively, and put a hand on your arm, as if to reassure you that she was there, engaged, attentively listening. There was never any doubt that she was all of those things. Pleshette was one of the most “present” people I’ve ever known.

      She was also, of course, an imaginative, critical, and whip-smart thinker, deeply invested in Philosophy as a discipline, a profession and a way of life. She was just as committed to its preservation as she was to its diversification. On that last point, I cannot emphasize enough how important Pleshette was as a role model, mentor, friend and colleague to so many women in Philosophy. Only a few months ago, at a dinner table where the “status of the discipline” was being discussed, I remember Pleshette leaning over and whispering in my ear: “you and I could fix this, if they’d let us.” I laughed, nodded, shrugged my shoulders. Then, Pleshette added, with that sly smile of hers: “I can’t see any reason to wait for them to let us, though.”

      Right on, Pleshette.

      I’ll miss her, Memphis will miss her, and I know so many others will, too. For the last several months, Pleshette has been organizing an Alumni Conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Philosophy PhD program at the University of Memphis, which will take place in just a few weeks. Without doubt, hers will be an unbearable absence at that event.