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    • new philosopher’s metablog (hat-tip Spiros)

      Long-time Philosophers Anonymous discussion contributor Glaucon SonofAriston has started a Philosophy Metablog* here. The purpose:

      Don't like their comment policy? Think blogger x is a doofuss? Tired of threadjacking to air your grievances about other blogs? Here's a blog for you.

      It will be interesting to see if this works as a pressure valve for discontented anonymous posters who are being blocked at pre-moderated blogs and/or threadjacking at non-moderated ones (e.g a not untypical example here and Spiros' response here). I think it's a very nice idea independently of that though.

      I wish a smart Habermasian would write a book on internet communication. His theory of ideal speech situations might help people set up good policies, and the way communication characteristically breaks down on the internet is probably good grist for testing and ammending the theory itself. 

      We all know of the thing where not being face to face or even hearing the person's voice, yet still communicating in real time, leads to a rapid ramping up of negative affect. But I also think that we haven't quite mastered the art of communication between people who are not anonymous and people who are, especially in a culture where anything you say probably will be used against you.

      [*I am now meta-meta-blogging.]

    • Are FOX affiliates cutting to commercial when “Cosmos” mentions human evolution?

      There were news reports indicating that an Oklahoma affiliate did this in March, when there was brief mention of human evolution.   Some claimed it was an accident.   There are now rumors (I don't have an internet link for this) that they did this again last night in Louisiana.   Can any Louisiana viewers confirm or deny this?

    • Foucault 20th Century Viconian

      I am aware of exactly two comments Foucault made on Vico. From Discipline and Punish, with regard to the description of the 'spectacular' and famously brutal execution of Damiens: 'As Vico remarked this old jurisprudence was "an entire poetics"' (Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan, Penguin, 1977: p. 45). Then from 'What is Enlightenment':

      The present may also be analyzed as a point of transition toward the dawning of a new world. That is what Vico describes in the last chapter of La Scienza Nuova; what he sees "today"; is "a complete humanity … spread abroad through all nations, for a few great monarchs rule over this world of peoples"; it is also "Europe … radiant with such humanity that it abounds in all the good things that make for the happiness of human life"

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    • Is there a recieved view about Evans’ argument against ontic vagueness?

      My co-writer* Joshua Heller is currently working on a project connections between vagueness literature, literature on semantic underdetermination, and new work on metaphysical indeterminacy.**

      One thing we're both interested in exploring the next few weeks is the extent to which Evans' argument against ontic vagueness applies to either semantic underdetermination or metaphysical indeterminacy. But I'm about ten years out of date on the vagueness literature. The last time I dipped my toe in this, it seemed like everyone was trying to save supervaulationism from Williamson's criticisms about wide and narrow entailment and from the charge that it has no advantages over three valued systems with respect to modelling higher order vagueness. I didn't think there was any consensus on Evans' argument
      then.

      Is there now anything approaching a consensus among people working on vagueness about Evans' argument? If so, what should I read? Have any of the new people working on metaphysical indeterminacy or semantic underdetermination said anything interesting about Evans' argument?

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    • Gary Becker (1930-2014)

      Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago, has died.

      Becker is perhaps best known for "human capital" theory, which talks about how one might, for example, come to think of education as an investment in one's future earnings.  As the absolute normalcy of a statement like this would suggest, I think it's probably hard to overstate how influential Becker has been on the development of the neoliberal world we all inhabit.  Foucault's analysis in Birth of Biopolitics is essential, as are the exchanges (here and here) between Becker, Bernard Harcourt (whose Illusion of Free Markets ought to be required reading), and the Foucauldian Francois Ewald.

      As readers of this blog will know, I'm no fan of neoliberalism.  But, as I tell my students, if you don't see neoliberalism at least as a temptation, you didn't get it.

      Here is the U. of Chicago notice; here is Leiter.

    • Sunday School lecture on PC(USA) General Assembly confessional issues

      449px-Allan_Boesak_(1986)Today I'm lecturing on issues relating to the adoption of a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism and the possible adoption of the Belhar Confession into the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions.

      In preparing for them I had to study a fair amoung of neo-Calvanist Kuyperian Apartheid theology (which, if Belhar is correct, is heretical) as well as scholarship on what the Christian Bible does or doesn't say about homosexuality (the new translation of Heidelberg removes a denunciation of gay people that was not in the original German). It's pretty interesting stuff, albeit very dispiriting at times. It's astonishing to me that defenders of Kuyperian "pluralism" at least on the web never seem to take into account its horrific legacy in South Africa.

      Anyhow, the full lecture is here.

      Given the connection between Dutch Calvanism and Apartheid, it is a wonderful sign of reconciliation that the two biggest American Calvinist denominations (RCA and CRCNA) have added it to the traditional three Confessions accepted by Calvinists (though the more conservative CRNEA has accorded it lesser standing).

      This being said, along with South African civil rights pioneer and leader of the campaign for Belhar Allan Boeseck, in my heart of hearts I can't help but take the Belhar rejections to apply to injustices committed against GLBT people. So it's a little bit weird to me that both of these denominations accept Belhar yet embrace explicit doctrinal statements decrying homosexual acts as sins (though some member churches of the CRA, which accords Belhar full confessional status, reject this teaching).

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    • Was that a Frampton reference in my store?

      The gypsies had no home. The doors had no bass.

      Nor bass:

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    • Adjunctification (again) and How (not) to Fix It (again)

      There’s a new piece up at The Atlantic by Elizabeth Segran on the adjunct crisis in U.S. Higher Ed and the growing movement to contest the situation. The piece has a number of helpful aspects, including providing a summary of some of the most recent research on the effects of adjunctification on faculty, students, and the overall shape of the institution of U.S. Higher Education. Especially welcome is the recognition that, aside from its obvious economic consequences and its effects on student outcomes, faculty precarity has significantly eroded academic freedom, scholarly production, and done a great deal to compromise the university as an institution of learning and critical thought.  This makes it all the more disappointing that the solutions the author seems most inclined to accept would only improve the economic situation of contingent faculty while doing nothing to make them less precarious or offer more support for research and scholarship.
       
      In what follows, I’ll explain the above in a bit more detail.

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    • Cool Philadelphia Summer School in Continental Philosophy – Topic Continental Philosophy and the New Metaphysics

      Full CFP at Leon Niemoczynski's After Nature blog HERE.

      John Caputo's going to be hosting it. I saw him speak a couple of years ago to a group of philosophers, theologians, ministers, and laypeople and it was dynamite. If I remember right, during the question and answers "the new metaphysics" (not meant as scare quotes) came up, and he had really interesting things to say about his interpretation of Derrida versus Hagglund's.

      The reading list for the Philadelphia Summer School includes Caputo's The Insistence of God and Crocket, Putt, and Robbins' (eds) The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion as well as essays by Meillassoux, Brassier, Latour, and Malibou.

      Although the school begins day after the end of the Pittsburgh Symposium, it's only a 4-5 hour drive from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.  So it would actually be convenient to attend both.

    • How much do we know about the evolution of language?

      According to some big names in linguistics and evolutionary biology (Hauser, Lewontin, Chomsky, etc.) not very much.

       

      Two things to talk about here:

      1.  The claims of the article, which I find very well argued for, but not (at least to me) very surprising.

      2. Is it surprising to anyone that Mark Hauser is collaborating in a such a prominent piece of research?