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    • Reliable referees: a rare commodity

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      In recent weeks, there has been much discussion on journal editorial practices at a number of philosophy blogs. Daily Nous ran an interesting post where different journal editors described (with varying degrees of detail) their editorial practices; many agree that the triple-anonymous system has a number of advantages and, when possible, should be adopted.* (And please, let us just stop calling it ‘triple-blind’ or ‘double-blind’, given that there is a perfectly suitable alternative!) Jonathan Ichikawa, however, pointed out (based on his experience with Phil Studies) that we must not take it for granted that a journal’s stated editorial policies are always de facto implemented. Jonathan (correctly, to my mind) defends the view that it is not desirable for a journal editor to act as a (let alone the sole) referee for a submission.

      With this post, I want to bring up for discussion what I think is one of the main issues with the peer-reviewing system (I’ve expressed other reservations before: here, here, and here), namely the extreme difficulties journal editors encounter at finding competent referees willing to take up new assignments. Until two years ago, my experience with the peer-review system was restricted to the role of author (and I, as everybody else, got very frustrated with the months and months it often took journals to handle my submissions) and the role of referee (and I, as so many others, got very frustrated with the constant outpour of referee requests reaching my inbox). Two years ago I became one of the editors of the Review of Symbolic Logic, and thus acquired a third perspective, that of the journal editor. I can confirm that it is one of the most thankless jobs I’ve ever had.

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    • New Philosophy Blog on Discrimination and Disadvantage

      here.  (h/t Shelley Tremain)

    • Philosophy of Physics Graduate Program Wiki (courtesy of Shawn Miller)

      Shawn Miller, a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, has been kind enough to create a philosophy of physics grad program wiki in the mold of philbio.net, which you can find at philphysics.net.   He wanted me to be sure to note that the wiki uses, with permission, Christian Wüthrich's Philosophers of Physics list from his Taking up Spacetime website (https://takingupspacetime.wordpress.com/). And also that people should please feel free to contribute to the site, i.e., add people and programs that have been left off. Simple instructions on how to do this are listed on the front page. 

      Enjoy!

       

      UPDATE/REMINDER:  This is a wiki!  That means it is a community project, and everyone should feel free to be involved in keeping it accurate.  Anyone can edit it.   If you, or someone you know, is listed incorrectly, (because they are retired, or are determinately moving to another school) you can fix this yourself!

       

    • The art of writing brief philosophy papers

      I have always wanted to have a paper in Analysis or Thought. A really neat, short, paper, that is self-contained and makes an substantive philosophical point. Unfortunately, I tend to write articles of about 8000-9000 words, and first drafts are typically even longer. I've written some pre-read papers for conferences of 3000 words, but to get all the nuances in, they typically expand to 8000 words or more once they reach the article stage. What does it take to write brief philosophy papers? More generally, what does it take to write concisely?

      Flash fiction is a style of fiction of extreme brevity, 500 words or less, typically 100-150 words. One very brief example, attributed (probably falsely) to Ernest Hemingway goes as follows: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." Or take flash poetry. The Dutch poet Vondel wrote the shortest poem in Dutch, and probably in any language, "U, nu" (literally, "you now", or "now it's your turn"). It's also palindromic, and won him a poetry prize. How to write flash fiction? David Gaffney advises flash fiction authors to cut down on character development, and to jump right in the story. Place the denouement not at the end, but in the middle, that way you have some space left to ponder the implications of what has happened with your readers, and you avoid that your story reads like a joke, with a punchline at the end.

      So how do you write really short philosophical pieces that are substantive pieces in their own right? Which brief philosophical self-contained pieces do you particularly admire?

    • Memories of My Father

      My father, Kirkland R. Gable (born Ralph Schwitzgebel) died Sunday. Here are some things I want you to know about him.

      Of teaching, he said that authentic education is less about textbooks, exams, and technical skills than about moving students “toward a bolder comprehension of what the world and themselves might become.” He was a beloved psychology professor at California Lutheran University.

      I have never known anyone, I think, who brought as much creative fun to teaching as he did. He gave out goofy prizes to students who scored well on his exams (e.g., a wind-up robot nun who breathed sparks of static electricity: “nunzilla“). Teaching about alcoholism, he would start by pouring himself a glass of wine (actually, water with food coloring), pouring more wine and acting drunker, arguing with himself, as the class proceeded. Teaching about child development, he would bring in my sister or me, and we would move our mouths like ventriloquist dummies as he stood behind us, talking about Piaget or parenting styles (and then he’d ask our opinion about parenting styles). Teaching about neuroanatomy, he brought in a brain jello mold, which he sliced up and passed around class for the students to eat (“yum! occipital cortex!”). Etc.

      As a graduate student and then assistant professor at Harvard in the 1960s and 1970s, he shared the idealism of his mentors Timothy Leary and B.F. Skinner, who thought that through understanding the human mind we can transform and radically improve the human condition — a vision he carried through his entire life.

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    • Review of Williamson’s Tetralogue

      By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      (Cross-posted at M-Phi)

      I've been asked to write a review of Williamson's brand new book Tetralogue for the Times Higher Education. Here is what I've come up with so far. Comments are very welcome, as I still have some time before submitting the final version. (For more background on the book, here is a short video where Williamson explains the project.)

      ============================

      Disagreement in debates and discussions is an interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, having to justify your views and opinions vis-à-vis those who disagree with you is perhaps one of the best ways to induce a critical reevaluation of these views. On the other hand, it is far from clear that a clash of views will eventually lead to a consensus where the parties come to hold better views than the ones they held before. This is one of the promises of rational discourse, but one that is all too often not kept. What to do in situations of discursive deadlock?

      Timothy Williamson’s Tetralogue is precisely an investigation on the merits and limits of rational debate. Four people holding very different views sit across each other in a train and discuss a wide range of topics, such as the existence of witchcraft, the superiority and falibilism of scientific reasoning, whether anyone can ever be sure to really know anything, what it means for a statement to be true, and many others. As one of the most influential philosophers currently in activity, Williamson is well placed to give the reader an overview of some of the main debates in recent philosophy, as his characters debate their views.

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    • Hobby Lobby Means Muslim Inmates Can Grow (Short) Beards

      By Gordon Hull

      No, this is not clickbait.  Sometimes, the headline tells the story.  Gregory Holt, aka Abdul Maalik Muhammad (the Court uses the “also known as” language when referring to him, and I am not sure about the status of the two different names), an inmate in an Arkansas state prison, wanted to grow a beard, in accordance with his religious beliefs.  The Arkansas Department of Corrections has a strict no-beard policy, with a medical exception (allowing those with certain dermatological conditions to grow a beard of up to ¼ inch length), on the grounds that inmates could smuggle contraband in their beards, and that it is necessary that prisoners remain clean-shaven in order to easily identify them.  Sensing an uphill struggle, Muhammad proposed to grow a half inch beard as a sort of “compromise,” as he put it.  The Department would have nothing of it, and so Muhammad took the argument to court.  Both the district court and the 8th Circuit thought that required deference to the experts at the Dept. of Corrections outweighed any concerns they might have.

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    • Conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy – Part III.1: Genealogy as vindicatory or as subversive

      This is the sixth installment of the series of posts on my conceptual genealogy project.  Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; Part II.2 is here; Part II.3 is here; Part II.4 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. 

      In this post, I discuss in more detail the two main categories of genealogy that were mentioned in previous posts: vindicatory and subversive genealogies.

      ==============================

      III. Applications of genealogy

      In the spirit of the functionalist, goal-oriented approach adopted here, a pressing question now becomes: what’s the point of a genealogy? What kind of results do we obtain from performing a genealogical analysis of philosophical concepts? I’ve already mentioned vindication and subversion/debunking en passant along the way, but now it is time to discuss applications of genealogy in a more systematic way.[1]

      III.1 Genealogy as vindicatory or as subversive

      By now, it should be clear that genealogy is a rather plastic concept, one which can be (and has been) instantiated in a number of different ways. Craig offers a helpful description of a range of options:

      [Genealogies] can be subversive, or vindicatory, of the doctrines or practices whose origins (factual, imaginary, and conjectural) they claim to describe. They may at the same time be explanatory, accounting for the existence of whatever it is that they vindicate or subvert. In theory, at least, they may be merely explanatory, evaluatively neutral (although as I shall shortly argue it is no accident that convincing examples are hard to find). They can remind us of the contingency of our institutions and standards, communicating a sense of how easily they might have been different, and of how different they might have been. Or they can have the opposite tendency, implying a kind of necessity: given a few basic facts about human nature and our conditions of life, this was the only way things could have turned out. (Craig 2007, 182)

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    • 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 my philosophy of language class. I was delighted to note that Austin, in his discussion of performative utterances, provided the now-classic example of a cricket umpire saying "Out". I was a lonely graduate student then, and reading about cricket, even if only in the context of an academic discussion, was a small reprieve from that loneliness. I was happy to think that perhaps some of my fellow graduate students would want clarification about the example, which, of course, I would be only too happy to provide. (They didn't. They understood the example well enough from baseball: "steeerrrikkke! You're out!").

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    • Guest post from Mitchell Aboulafia: “A User’s Guide To Philosophy Without Rankings,” An Update and a Request

      Picture-298-1344308006Ten days ago a new site was launched, “A User’s Guide to Philosophy Without Rankings.”   The response to the site has been extremely rewarding.  Not only have there been thousands of visitors, people are using the Guide as I had hoped: they are visiting sites that are mentioned in the Guide to learn more about graduate programs, as well as the PGR.  A comment on Reddit’s philosophy page regarding the Guide sums up an important reason for the site:

      “Thank you so much.  I'm going to be applying next year and this is exactly what I'm looking for after I heard all of the controversy about the PGR.”

      I want to thank colleagues who have begun to send in resources to post on the site.  And I want to make a request: please send more!  Like the new philosophy wikis, the Guide is in part an aggregator of information.  The more information, the more helpful it can be.  Please do weigh in.  You can email me about the Guide at mitchell.aboulafia@manhattan.edu or leave a comment on the site.

      – Mitchell Aboulafia