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    • Ghost From The Machine: Once Again, The Dead Return

      By: Samir Chopra

      Matt Osterman's Ghost from the Machine (2010)–originally titled and known internationally as Phasma Ex Machina--is touted by its marketing material as a 'supernatural thriller'. A low-budget indie, it uses a cast made up of genuine amateurs who sometimes look distinctly uncomfortable and self-conscious on camera, and wears its modest production values on its sleeve. The story sounds hokey enough: a young man, an amateur inventor of sorts, tries to bring his dead parents back to life by building an electrical machine that changes the electromagnetic field surrounding it (I think.) The parents, unsurprisingly, do not return from the dead, but other folks do: a widowed, fellow-garage-tinkerer neighbor's long-dead wife, and a pair of murderous old folk. (The return to life of this latter bunch makes the movie into a 'horror' or 'ghost' film; bringing back the garage-tinkerer's wife would only have made it 'supernatural.')

      For all that PEM manages to often be genuinely thought-provoking. It is so because its treatment of its subject matter invites immediate analogizing–not comparison–with two cinematic classics: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Andrei Tarkovsky's  Solaris. 

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    • Concerning events at the journal Science

      By Roberta Millstein

      My friend Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, a historian of science at the University of Florida, has drawn my attention to a number of concerning events at the eminent journal Science.

      One was an appalling magazine cover, for which they were roundly and rightly criticized. The Editor-in-Chief issued a non-apology for the cover, saying that she is "truly sorry for any discomfort that this cover may have caused anyone" and promising "that we will strive to do much better in the future to be sensitive to all groups and not assume that context and intent will speak for themselves." 

      A second recent development is the shortening of book reviews to 600 words, with an increased focus on popular books and fewer reviews coming from scholars in the history and philosophy of science as compared to the past. This is an unfortunate loss of an important perspective from Science.

      Now, a blog post from Michael Balter, who has been with the journal for over 21 years, talks about some of the behind-the-scenes troubles at Science and its publishing organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). These include the recent dismissal of four women in the art and production departments, with essentially no notice in three cases and very little notice in the fourth case, and the absence of any serious response to the concerns expressed by the overwhelming majority of Science's news staff about the way these dismissals were handled.

      I am not in a position to fully comment on these recent developments; I am only reporting what I have read and what I have been told. But as a member of the AAAS Section on History and Philosophy of Science (Section L) I am very concerned. Indeed, perhaps given the important role that Science plays, we should all be concerned about what what is involved with the "strategic transformation that AAAS is currently undergoing, to enhance its engagement with its members and to be in the forefront of the multimedia landscape of the future."

    • Cloud Computing and the Extension of the Price Mechanism

      by Gordon Hull

      Cloud computing – where users keep their data (and often their applications) online – poses significant theoretical and regulatory problems.  Many of these concern jurisdiction: it’s very hard to even know at a given moment where data is kept, and it’s often unclear (in the case of privacy, for example), which jurisdiction’s privacy and data protection rules should apply (the one for the data subject? the company that collected the data? the companies processing it? etc.).  Not only that, U.S. and EU law are wildly inconsistent on the point, even though any large big data company has to serve multiple jurisdictions.

      A recent piece by Paul M. Schwartz does some valuable work disentangling these issues; here, I want to focus on one moment.  Schwartz notes that cloud computing will likely induce significant changes in how firms are structured, and how they structure their data handling.  Back in 1937, Ronald Coase proposed that companies will decide between doing something in house and outsourcing it based on a comparison of the costs of each.  If it’s more efficient to do something in-house, using the hierarchical control structure of the firm and avoiding the complexities of dealing with markets, that’s what we can expect.  If, on the other hand, it turns out that it’s more efficient to hire somebody else to do the job, we can expect companies to do that.  Companies have to balance the difficulties of managing a project in-house versus the costs of negotiating contracts with independent vendors.

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    • Style of Living versus Juridification in Foucault

      I'm making a brief exploration of one of the most significant oppositions in Foucaut's thought, which has not been discussed that much in my experience, but I may well have overlooked some vast bibliography. In any case, there is a major polarity in Foucault between the style of living in antiquity, related to care of the self, and in which 'style' can be replaced by 'aesthetics' or 'techne', while 'living' can be replaced by 'existence', in ways I do not think make much difference to the current discussion. There is also a relation with the discussions of the government of the self and the use of pleasure.  I am not getting into references and precise context, but outlining the general field.

      The most obvious opposition to 'style of living' is the emergence of 'subjectivty' in the sense of some deep subject behind speech and action. Foucault's understanding of this refers in large part to the development of the confessional in Christianity, with the standard Catholic confession in private to a priest taken as the end point. There is a suggestion in this historical discussion of a historical preparation for the development of assumptions about the sıbject that come to inform Descartes, and what follows Descartes with regard to consciousness and subjectivity. 

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    • For the Record

      I have read in several places this description of my placement post and my response to Brian Leiter's criticisms of that post (most recently, in comments posted yesterday at Philosophical Comment): 

      "July 1:  I posted a sharp critique of some utterly misleading rankings produced by Carolyn Jennings, a  tenure-stream faculty member at UC Merced.  She quickly started revising it after I called her out."

      For the record, this does not strike me as an accurate representation of those events. 

      First, while I did post a ranking, I made it clear that I did this as an exercise: (from the original post, bold original) "As discussed here in the comments, one of the advantages of comparative data on placement is that they help fill in gaps left over by the PGR…To illustrate this, I below rank the top 50 departments by tenure-track placement rate**, providing for comparison these department's ranks from the 2011 "Ranking Of Top 50 Faculties In The English-Speaking World" by the Philosophical Gourmet Report. Please note that this placement ranking is provided only to demonstrate the potential utility of these data."

      Second, while Brian Leiter did find the rankings misleading, many others did not, and even commended the clarity of language in my post. Take these quotes from David Marshall Miller, who has also worked on placement data: "Andrew Carson and, especially, Carolyn Dicey Jennings have developed analyses that now strike me as very robust." and "I will say, to again quote Leiter, that “all such exercises are of very limited value.” Nevertheless, they are of some use, and should be made available, so long as the methodology and limitations of the analysis are made clear. I think the PGR and the placement rankings by Jennings, Carson, and myself all meet this standard." 

      Third, Brian did post criticisms of the ranking, but I did not make any substantial revisions to the ranking based on his criticisms, since I did not find those criticisms to have merit. Brian's way of characterizing my response at the time was "Prof. Jennings digs in her heels."

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    • Against ranking

      By Roberta Millstein

      John Protevi, founder and emeritus member of New APPS, has posted an "October Statement."  By signing, one states one's opposition to the ranking of philosophy programs, whether in the form of the current PGR or in some other revised form.  The statement contains links to those who have offered reasons for taking such a position.

      Protevi seems to have found a second statement to be necessary because he thinks that the September Statement implies that ranking systems confer a (net) benefit on the profession.  I don't think that it implies any such thing, and in a comment over at the Feminist Philosophers blog, Daniel Elstein nicely sums up why:

      I guess what we should try to remember is that it’s really hard to write a statement that pleases everyone. People who support (PGR-style) rankings and people who oppose (PGR-style) rankings can (and should) agree that it is worse if Leiter is PGR editor than if he isn’t. The phraseology in the September Statement that seems to irritate ranking opponents is clearly there to reassure the ranking supporters that signing on is compatible with supporting (PGR-style) rankings. Ranking opponents should recognise that it is a good thing if all those who oppose bullying (including ranking supporters) can sign a unified statement, and so interpret the relevant parts of the statement charitably. The problematic sentence could be read: “With a different leadership structure, the benefits [that some attribute to] the guide might be achieved without detriment to our colleague.” That’s true, right? And it’s all that the authors will have intended.

      That being said, I do understand why some might share Protevi's interpretation and for that reason not feel comfortable signing the September statement.  I would encourage those who feel similarly to sign the October Statement, while also pointing out that it is consistent to sign both statements (as I have done).

    • Anonymous reviewing is not enough to counter implicit bias, so what can we do to mitigate it?

      This article in Aesthetics for Birds has some interesting statistics on the percentage of papers authored or co-authored by women and minorities in the top print aesthetics journals: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and British Journal of Aesthetics. About 20% of articles in these journals are written by women in the period from 2010 onwards. When we look at memberships of professional aesthetics organizations, the percentage of female aestheticians is about 32%. So that means women are underrepresented in JAAC and BJA. What can account for this disparity? JAAC keeps a record of gender and geographic location of submissions.

      Sherri Irvin finds "It is notable that over the past three years, women authors have submitted to JAAC at a rate substantially higher than the rate at which they are published in JAAC from 2010-2014, and closer to the proportion of women members in the ASA. During 2 of the last 3 years, the acceptance rate for women has been lower than for men. Though the differences seem small (only 2-3 percentage points), another way of putting them is that in 2012-3, men were 21.4% more likely than women to have their manuscripts accepted, while in 2013-4, they were 11.6% more likely." She also writes "US submissions tend to be accepted at a rate slightly over 20%, while submissions from non-English-speaking countries tend to be accepted at far lower rates".

      JAAC practices double-anonymous refereeing. I am in the statistics, since I've co-authored an article that was published in JAAC in 2011. My co-author and I were very pleased with thoroughness of our reviewer, who is one of the few experts on the aesthetics of paleolithic art. We could guess who he was, and it turned out (as he later communicated with us) he also had an inkling as to who we were. Aesthetics is a small world. The only time I reviewed for JAAC I didn't know who the author was, so I believe I reached a verdict that was unsullied by considerations of the author's identity. But was it? Thoughts about the identity of an author can play a role in one's decision, even if you don't want to, this is after all how implicit bias works.

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    • Privacy Research and Academic Freedom

      by Gordon Hull

      To the long list of rich entities trying to generate academic research that supports their business model, add (maybe) Google.  This piece in ProPublica discovered that the Stanford Center for Internet and Society had promised not to use any Google money to fund privacy research, after research done at Stanford led to a substantial fine for Google.  The article was immediately followed by a lot of backpedaling and denials on everyone’s part (there’s an update on top), and it’s unclear at this point exactly what’s happening.  The Stanford Center has also been the source of a lot of very good work on the Internet over the years.

      That said, the blurring of boundaries between corporations and the academy has been going on for some time, and Stanford has always been at its epicenter.  I suppose it’s encouraging that folks at least felt the need to deny the allegations

    • Change The Face Of Philosophy; Fund PIKSI!

      By: Samir Chopra

      Folks, there is a new initiative underway to 'change the face of philosophy.' (It was brought to my attention by my Brooklyn College colleague, Serene Khader.) I urge all of us to get behind it.

      For nine years, PIKSI, or the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute, has been helping students from underrepresented groups develop the skills, confidence, and community needed to pursue graduate study in philosophy. Our students include women, people of color, LGBT individuals, individuals with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged communities. 

      PIKSI aims to change philosophy's status as the least diverse in the humanities. Only 16% of full-time academic philosophers are women. Of the 13,000 professional philosophers in the United States, only 156 are black. The experiences of members of diverse groups can cast new light on traditional philosophical questions as well as raise new ones.

      PIKSI needs funding: 

      PIKSI has traditionally received two sources of funding. The program is housed at the Pennsylvania State University’s Rock Ethics Institute, who together with Pennsylvania State University School of Liberal Arts, have pledged to continue their partial financing of PIKSI, conditional upon funding from a partner organization. Until recently the American Philosophical Association (APA) has co-funded PIKSI, but beginning 2014, this is no longer funding we can count on.

      Please, pitch in!

       

       

    • Once More: ‘Intellectual Property’ Breeds Confusion; Drop it

      By: Samir Chopra

      Rarely, if ever, does the term 'intellectual property' add clarity to any debate of substance–very often, this is because it includes the term 'property' and thus offers an invitation to some dubious theorizing. This post by Alex Rosenberg at Daily Nous is a good example of this claim:

      Locke famously offered an account of the justification of private property, one that Nozick brought to our attention in Anarchy, State and Utopia. The account worked like this: morally permissible private property begins with original acquisition, and that happens when you mix your labor with nature, and leave as good and as much for others. Alas, this “Lockean” proviso is impossible to satisfy. Or at least it is in every original acquisition other than the case of intellectual property. Here one mixes one mental labor with nature—empirical facts about reality, including social reality. Since there are an infinite number of good ideas, the creator of intellectual property leaves as much and as good for others, and therefore has an unqualified right to what he has created.

      Brian Leiter’s ownership of the PGR satisfies the most stringent test of private property I know. It’s his creation and he excluded no one else from mixing his or her labor with nature to produce a substitute for or for that matter a complement to his creation.

      In light of this fact, the effort to separate him from his intellectual property owing to disapproval of his emails and posts seems rather preposterous.

      It has often been proposed–most notably by Richard Stallman, free software's most fiery proponent-that the term 'intellectual property' be junked in favor of more precise usage. That is, when you are tempted to use the term 'intellectual property' use 'copyright,' 'patents,' 'trademarks,' or 'trade secrets' instead. Doing this would enable immediate grappling with the precise nature of the issue at hand–in each named domain there are separable legal and policy issues at play.

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