PEA Soup

Recruiting Philosophy Majors

At the "start of the year" college meeting last week our dean showed some Powerpoint slides listing the number of majors in each department over the last few years.  The point was to illustrate how the college is growing across the board.  Philosophy wasn't exactly a good illustration of his point, however.  In F08, the latest year for which he had data, we had only 39 majors.  That was more than in F03, but not only is it a small number in absolute terms, it is less than in the prior two years.  Next year's number should be slightly higher, and I think that we may not be getting credit for a few double majors.  Still, we don't have the number of majors that we should have, and among other problems this means that important and worthwhile courses are being canceled for lack of enrollment---theory of knowledge and philosophy of natural science being two recent examples.  As department chair, I need to do something to help the department recruit more majors.  But what?

2009 Mad Meta: Program announced

Russ has released the program for the 2009 Madison Metaethics Workshop. Needless to say, it looks good.

The Logic Curriculum

I am getting ready to teach logic again.  It’s been a while, because I grew discontent with the standard curriculum.  Maybe PEA Soupers can help me out.  What are we trying to achieve in a logic class?

Should graduate students be encouraged not to publish?

Many senior American philosophers strongly advise their graduate students that publishing while in graduate school is a bad idea, and hurts the students' chances on the academic job market. The argument, so far as I understand it, is this.

1. If the sample of written work that you send in with your job application is drawn from a thesis that is still a work in progress, it will be judged by more lenient standards than a published work, which will be taken as the candidate's final word on the topic.
2. Your published work will be so salient in the minds of the philosophers who are assessing your application that they will find it hard to forgive you for any flaws that they think they see in the published work.
3. Indeed, to be ready to write something that is truly worthy of publication, one must have a depth of learning and insight that one can only achieve by first completing one's doctoral dissertation. (It might even be thought somewhat vulgar to rush one's ideas into print -- such people might even stoop to -- blogging ...!)

This argument does not seem even remotely persuasive to me. But I'd like to know what PEA Soupers think!

Sexism and Philosophy

Today's (Sept. 10) Inside Higher Ed has a news story about Sally Haslanger's paper on Sexism in academic Philosophy

To be bold or cautious?

Some philosophers are bold; they defend strong positions with few hedges or caveats. Others are cautious; they defend weak positions with many hedges and caveats. Which of these two approaches, bold or cautious, is better?

Philosopher Bloggers of the Past

Winter is a good time for a bit of navel-gazing.  Blogging is an interesting medium of philosophical discourse; its virtues and vices, it seems to me at any rate, are considerably different from those of the more standard, tenure-relevant sorts of philosophical work.  Posts and comments have to be relatively short, making their points quickly and clearly, even vividly.  The medium doesn’t sustain narrow specialists very well.  It doesn’t allow the intense, in-depth kinds of argument that so many articles and book chapters engage in.  However, it also prevents the exploration of grand sweeping metaphysical worldviews.  All of which prompts the question, which great philosophers of the past would have made good bloggers?

What Keeps Going Wrong With The APA?

The APA has recently posted on its website the comments of four of its past Executive Directors , which were delivered in a session held at the 2005 Eastern APA. The session, titled "What Keeps Going Wrong With The APA?" was organized by John Lach, and included David A. Hoekema, Eric Hoffman, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Michael Kelly, and Richard Bett (who declined to post his comments on the APA website).  William Mann, the current Acting Director, has posted his response to his four predecessors. Also of relevance to this session is John Lach's posted letter from May 17, 2005, on The Future of Philosophy.

The ethics of graduate advising

Over at the Leiter Reports, there's beena lively discussion   about irresponsible (or even abusive) advising and teaching in philosophy graduate programs.   But the larger question is what is to be done?

Recent Important Articles

This past weekend’s metaethics conference in Madison was wonderful in a number of ways, and while we’ll post a brief recap once the link to pictures from the conference is available, for now I want to focus on just one of those wonderful aspects, namely, the chance to sit around with other moral philosophers for hours on end, with a beer in one hand and a pointed finger in the other, not only chatting away about various philosophical positions but also engaging in a favorite pastime, namely, constructing a series of “all time” lists.  It was at one such session with fellow PEA Brains Campbell Brown and David Sobel that we came to a rather surprising and puzzling revelation: while it’s easy to compile an uncontroversial list of important and influential books in moral philosophy published within the past 20 years (e.g., The Moral Problem, Political Liberalism, What We Owe to Each Other, Ruling Passions, and so forth), and it’s also easy to compile an uncontroverisal list of important and influential articles in moral philosophy since 1970 (e.g., “A Defense of Abortion,” “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” “Internal and External Reasons,” “Persons, Character, and Morality,” “Contractualism and Utilitarianism,” etc.), it turns out to be very difficult to construct a list of important and influential articles published within the last 20 years.  Why would this be?