PEA Soup

PhilPapers and APA partnership

The PhilPapers Foundation and the American Philosophical Association are pleased to announce a new partnership that will enhance the Foundation's ability to support the development of PhilPapers and related services. Beginning this August, the APA’s Jobs for Philosophers will merge with PhilJobs to become PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers (PhilJobs: JFP). By bringing together the PhilJobs software platform with JFP’s established presence, this partnership will create an online source for jobs in philosophy that is both comprehensive and user-friendly and gives job seekers confidence in fairness and equity in the hiring process. The new combined service will be tailored to both US and international job listings, making it the go-to site for those seeking professional employment in philosophy as well as for hiring institutions. PhilJobs: JFP will be free of charge for all job seekers. Job advertisements will be available at competitive rates on a sliding fee scale to appeal to all types of institutions and hiring searches.

Further, PhilJobs: JFP aims to expand to provide additional services for both job seekers and hiring departments in future years. Jobs for Philosophers will be freely accessible to job seekers starting July 1, 2013 in anticipation of the transition to PhilJobs: JFP. The partnership between the PhilPapers Foundation and the APA will also extend to other initiatives. The APA will provide some financial support for PhilPapers as well as PhilPeople, an interactive, crowd-sourced, open directory of all philosophers in the English-speaking world under development by the Foundation. The APA’s contribution will enable the PhilPapers Foundation to continue to maintain and expand its services for the community while evolving toward a sustainable funding model for the future.

David Bourget David Chalmers Co-Directors, PhilPapers

A Worry About Reasons Primitivism

A recently influential idea in the philosophy of normativity is reasons primitivism. Reasons primitivists hold that we can give no account of what it is for some consideration to be a (normative) reason. At most we can say that reasons are considerations that count in favour (or against) some response, or that when there is reason to do something, there is something to be said for doing that thing. In this post (which is intended in the spirit of Dave and Dave’s request for half-baked ideas…) I want to raise a worry about this view.

Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy

The first annual Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy will take place in Tucson, Arizona, October 17-19, 2013. The web page for the conference (with travel and hotel information and so much more) can be found here: http://oxfordstudies.arizona.edu/

Keynote Speakers:

Charles Larmore (Brown)

Philip Pettit (Princeton)

A. John Simmons (UVA)

Submitted Papers:

Ian Carter (Pavia)

Tom Christiano (Arizona)

David Enoch (Hebrew University)

Helen Frowe (Kent)

Eric Mack (Tulane)

Jon Quong (USC) & Rebecca Stone (UCLA Law)

Fabienne Peter (Warwick)

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (UNC)

Nicholas Southwood (ANU)

Character Project's Essay and Book Prize Winners

The Character Project (www.thecharacterproject.com) is happy to formally announce the winners of our Essay and Book Prize Competition. In philosophy the winners included Tom Hurka and Iskra Fileva. Please be sure to congratulate them!

http://news.wfu.edu/2013/06/18/a-good-character-summer-reading-list/

 

Wisconsin Metaethics Program

2013 Workshop Program below the fold.

Open for Questions...?

It’s an unexpected honor to be included in this series along with greats like Tom Hurka, Tim Scanlon, Sally Haslanger, Elizabeth Anderson, Nomy Arpaly, and David Enoch, so let me start by thanking Dale and the Daves for including me.  This summer, between moving house and trying to enjoy some time with my daughter, who just had her first birthday, I’m trying to spend some time reflecting on my work so far, and how it fits together.  So I thought that the best way to open this discussion would be to say something general, and then open up the discussion to questions on any topic whatsoever.

Featured Philosopher: Mark Schroeder

Hi Soupers,

I'm thrilled to introduce our next featured philosopher, Mark Schroeder!  You all know Mark for his groundbreaking books Being For and Slaves of the Passions, as well as a a number of significant articles in metaethics and thereabouts.  Since Mark already has his PEA Soup bona fides, he's going to post his own set of comments later this evening.  But until then, let me express my excitement for what should prove to be a fascinating discussion!

- dd

Ethics Discussion at PEA Soup: Chike Jeffers's "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races'"

We are pleased to announce our next Ethics discussion on Chike Jeffers's new article, "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races."  Jeffers is an assistant professor at Dalhousie University. The article is available open access here.  Tommie Shelby, professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard, is kicking off the discussion with a critical precis of Jeffers's article. Here now is Tommie Shelby:

 

Chike Jeffers’s article is rich, subtle, provocative, and carefully argued. It makes contributions to a number of related debates within what has come to be called the philosophy of race. Jeffers offers a fresh interpretation of Du Bois’s influential essay “The Conservation of Races” (1897) and helpfully situates his reading within the context of leading commentaries on that piece. Extracting insights from Du Bois, he defends a cultural theory of the meaning of “race” that highlights the cultural dimensions of racism. And he stakes out a position on the ethics of resistance to racism, calling for the conservation of racial identities now and in the imagined postracist future.

June is "K" and "L" Month on the Soup!

If you are a contributor whose first name starts with "K" or "L," it's your special month, and we encourage you to post something.  Check the calendar of events to make sure you won't be posting on top of some other planned event.  Remember, we are happy to see more informal blogging, so feel free to let that half-baked idea rip!

Ethics Discussion at PEA Soup: Chike Jeffers's "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races'"

We are pleased to announce that our next Ethics discussion will be on Chike Jeffers's new article, "The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's 'The Conservation of Races."  The article has already been made open access here.  Tommie Shelby, professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard, will be kicking off the discussion with a critical precis of Jeffers's article.  Our discussion will begin Wednesday, June 5th.  We hope to see you there!