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    • How did this band ever produce Revolver?

      Lester Bangs famously wrote that the only rocker in A Hard Day's Night is Paul's grandfather.

      It's a relentlessly weird movie, far weirder than the justly maligned Magical Mystery Tour. The oddest thing is that in A Hard Day's Night all of the songs concern romantic love, but nothing in the film has anything to do with romantic love. I mean, if you were an alien anthropologist limited to understanding human beings from repeated watching, you'd just have no idea what these guys were singing about.

      There are three main tensions: (1) Paul's anarchic grandfather causing trouble, (2) the bossy manager not letting them go to parties where people stand around smoking cigarettes and yelling at one another over the din, and (3) the variety show squares not getting the Beatles in various ways. All of this is set against a background of screaming teenage girls and odd facets of the British class system. And there's a truncated concert at the end with close up shots of kids screaming.

      Bangs wrote a controversial eulogy for Lennon, which included this gem:

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    • Speculations V (on Aesthetics)

      Sometime in the next two years I hope to teach a class where the only texts are issues of Speculations.

      Ridvan Askin, Paul J. Ennis, Andreas Hägler and Philipp Schweighauser did a great job editing Issue V. The introduction by Askin, Hägler, and Schweighauser is worth the price of admission alone.* Anyone interested in all the hoopla surrounding Speculative Realism could do much worse than to begin there.

      Analytic philosophers tend to dismiss Continental metaphysics because they don't think that the principle historical figures (German Idealists, phenomenologists, soixante-huitards) have much to offer. Continental philosophers tend to dismiss it because they misunderstand Meillassoux's critique of correlationism as a critique of transcendental epistemology, instead of as a recapitulation of Hegel's critique of the claim that transcendental epistemology must replace metaphysics.

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    • This is what a philosopher looks like

      Awhile back, there was an campaign to show all the different ways that philosophers can look, called "This is what a philosopher looks like." I thought this was a good project, with the goal of making a small dent in implicit bias, but it looks like it hasn't gotten any love in awhile; the last entry was in August, 2013.  So, if you haven't sent in your photo and brief description yet, you might want to head on over there and submit your stuff!

    • A principle of parity in gender matters

      Some years ago, at the end of an evening that probably involved more alcoholic beverages than it should have, I found myself as a member of a small party of four, composed of two colleagues (and incidentally, good friends) and one PhD student (all three male). As the conversation progressed, I ended up saying things that were somewhat sexually explicit (as some readers may recall, I don’t shy away from talking about matters pertaining to sexuality – see a recent lecture of mine on the science of female orgasm). To be clear, what I said could not have been construed as ‘flirtatious’ in any way, but the next day I came to deeply regret the whole episode. My reasoning was as follows: had I been a male individual, and had the student in question been a female individual, what I said would have been undoubtedly inappropriate, by my own lights. (Similar considerations could be offered concerning interactions with colleagues, but I was particularly concerned with the asymmetry between me and the student).

      This episode led me to formulate and since then apply a principle of parity to regulate my behavior in professional situations: not to say or do anything that would be construed or viewed as problematic, had I been a man dealing with (especially more junior) women, be they colleagues, students etc. Until then, I would on occasion make remarks during class (e.g. ‘here, size does matter’ when talking about some issue pertaining to model-theory) which seemed to me to be ok (and in a sense, even a ‘political statement’ in some way), but which would not have been appropriate if uttered by a man. I do not make such remarks in class anymore.

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    • PC163

      Philosophers' Carnival #163 is HERE.

      One of the cool things about PC is you discover blogs you might have missed before. This month it's being hosted by Amod Lele, Elisa Freschi, and Mathew Dasti's Indian Philosophy Blog. There's lots of cool stuff.

    • Brazilian music on Fridays: ‘I’m alive’/’Nine out of Ten’

      A few weeks ago, the Rainforest Alliance, an NGO whose aim is to "conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods", released a promotional song, ‘I’m alive’, recorded in the Tijuca Forest in Rio de Janeiro, celebrating the wonders of Brazilian rainforests. Some of my favorite Brazilian musicians (Caetano Veloso, Lenine, Criolo) were involved, and the song is inspired by Caetano’s ‘Nine out of Ten’, from his classic 1972 album ‘Transa’. There is a sense in which it is yet another slightly embarrassing attempt by musicians to get involved in a ‘good fight’, but the result is musically not bad at all actually, hence me posting it here at BMoF. But I’m also posting the original ‘Nine out of Ten’ by Caetano Veloso, which, as my friend Jeroen would put it, has a lot more ‘balls’ than this newer version….

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    • Copy this Sheep!

      A few days ago, the Federal Court of Appeals issued a decision denying patentability to Dolly the Sheep.  Dolly, as one will recall, was the first successful mammalian clone from an adult somatic cell.  Essentially, researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh took an unfertilized donor egg, replaced the nucleus with one taken from a different animal, induced the clone egg to divide, and implanted it into a surrogate.  Dolly thus came into the world with nuclear DNA identical to that of the sheep from which the donor nucleus was taken, although you could also plausibly say she had three “mothers:” the egg donor, the nuclear donor, and the surrogate.

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    • please consider signing this open letter to defend the humanities at The University of Saskatchewan

      Brian Leiter and Simon Evnine have already signed this letter from students at The University of Saskatchewan who are attempting to convince university administrators not to gut their humanities programs. The organizers are inviting people to add their signatures by sending an e-mail to uofsphilosophy@gmail.com with your name and any relevant information you would like to share (institutional affiliation, education, etc).

      It's a very nice letter, citing Nussbaum and Bromwich on the value of the humanities while still explaining to the administrators how fantastically bizarre it is to claim to be building a top research school while destroying the humanities. With respect to the proposed changes, the authors write:

      Such poor definition entails that the university has failed in whatever duty of clarity it possessed. We know from reading the brief only that some future program shall exist, taking ‘the best parts’ from each of four programs: Religion and Culture, Philosophy, Women and Gender Studies and Modern Languages. Forgive us if we remain sceptical of the virtues of such a combination. The attitude of presumption that must be required for university administrators to suppose that they, and not the cumulative force of tradition, are sufficient to develop a new program from the base materials of these four programs is beyond us, and our understanding. Most plausibly, the four programs shall be made into one ‘interdisciplinary’ program, which offers more upper-level classes than any of the four previous programs individually, but fewer than the four programs collectively. Most students, however, are not interested in a poorly-defined ‘interdisciplinary’ program, but instead are interested in Modern Languages, or Philosophy, or Women’s and Gender Studies, or Religion and Culture. Most universities, considering applicants for postgraduate degrees, are not interested in students who have taken poorly-defined ‘interdisciplinary’ programs, but are instead interested in philosophers, or linguists, with a thorough education in their subject.

      Anyhow, please take time to read the letter and if you support it send in your info to the above e-mail address.

    • Anonymous Grading

      In my role as intructional faculty, I aim to grade everything anonymously, which is a provision I enjoyed as an undergraduate. My current method is to ask students to write their names on the back of their papers and exams, which also helps me to return them. One of my students remarked that I must do this because I am particularly biased. She may be right. But there is reason to believe that we are all biased against minority groups in our grading practices. Take this publication on the perception of grammatical and spelling errors by partners at 22 law firms: "The exact same memo averaged a 3.2/5.0 rating under our hypothetical 'African American' Thomas Meyer and a 4.1/5.0 rating under hypothetical 'Caucasian' Thomas Meyer. The qualitative comments on memos, consistently, were also more positive for the 'Caucasian' Thomas Meyer than our 'African American' Thomas Meyer." It seems obvious to me that these effects could have an impact on the grading of philosophy papers and exams. (It may be worth noting that the gender/race/ethnicity of the partner did not affect these findings, although "female partners generally found more errors and wrote longer narratives"). And take this publication on faculty assessment of a student applicant, mentioned a couple of years ago here at NewAPPS: "Our results revealed that both male and female faculty judged a female student to be less competent and less worthy of being hired than an identical male student, and also offered her a smaller starting salary and less career mentoring." The difference in mean rated competence, hireability, and mentor-worthiness was of the order of 10%. Again, it seems obvious to me that these effects could have an impact on the grading of philosophy papers and exams, which could be a grade-letter difference (i.e. the difference between a B and a C). Since perceived differences in grading standards could have an impact on whether students choose to stay in philosophy, it seems to me that anonymous grading would both be more just and would encourage a more diverse range of participants in philosophy (see other suggestions on this over at Daily Nous). What does everyone else think? Do you grade anonymously? If not, why not? 

      Update: Other posts on this topic are here and here. 

    • Is this happening to your college library?

      Nice article by slate dot com's Rebecca Schuman here,* about the move among university libraries to put more and more printed material in compact shelving where people cannot browse.

      Schuman sees these moves as one more instance of administrators and staff turning universities into strip malls with frats:

      But there’s one wholly unsentimental reason the stacks are both vital and irreplaceable, and that brings us back to Colby’s decision to replace theirs with a gleaming shrine to the corporate bottom line. As more of the books disappear from college libraries, the people in charge of funding those libraries will be more tempted to co-opt that space for events that bring in revenue, or entice students for the wrong reasons: food courts. Gaming lounges. I expect rock-climbing walls soon. Unless administrators make a protracted effort to preserve the contemplative and studious feeling, that feeling will disappear altogether, and the whatever-brary will become just another Jamba Juice.

      Faculty around the country have been trying to fight the strip-mallification of their campuses, but in most cases the administration and staff argue that financial necessity dictates whatever thing it is they are doing to make the campus worse. In most cases the faculty don't have access to what the money is really being spent on, so no way to adjudicate the claims.

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