Lemmings

The Behavioral Economic Revolution

2012-01-02T08:38:00.003-06:00

By guest blogger Elaine Hirsch

For most of the twentieth century, economics has been dominated by the ideas from the neoclassical school of thought. Neoclassical economics encompasses an array of ideas about how people make decisions and respond to incentives. Specifically, it makes simplifying assumptions about the underlying processes determining human action, including the idea that people will always rationally study the costs and benefits of their choices in order to maximize their individual gain, known in economics as utility. Although it is widely used in masters degree programs in economics, many of its assumptions have been rigorously tested in recent years by a new branch of economics, behavioral economics, which is rewriting the rules underlying the discipline.

The growth of economics as a branch of science has much to do with the power of rational choice theory, which states that all people in an economy will act in their personal interests to maximize individual utility. Although this is an assumption used to simplify economic models, it has had a profound impact on the insights brought by economic thinking. Indeed, rational choice theory has been so successful that it has branched out to many different social science disciplines, including areas like political science. However, the rise of behavioral economics, which uses insights from psychology to obtain a more complete picture of human behavior, is coming to discover many instances where people fail to act in ways in accordance with rational choice theory.

Some of the problems concerning neoclassical economics rest on the idea of perfect information, which assumes that people have full access to all the information necessary to make a decision. This, however, isn't the case in reality, as there is usually information held by insiders or just a lack of knowledge due to human laziness which hinders perfect decision making. Without such complete information, it would be impossible to assume utility maximization in all instances. As it turns out, behavioral economics is shedding light on times when this assumption fails. Instead of operating as a homo economicus (utility-maximizing beings), people have a variety of biases that cloud their judgements.

In just one example demonstrated by Daniel Kahneman, a pioneer in behavioral economics, people who were given coffee mugs valued them far more highly than those who were not given them but were asked to bid on them. This bias, known as the endowment effect, suggests that people value an object more simply by possessing it. This emotional attachment to an object can hinder exchange that would otherwise have taken place by "rational" actors. Increasingly, behavioral economics is demonstrating how emotions are as much a part of economic decision making as rational thought.

This idea can have plenty of practical applications, especially as it pertains to the recent financial crises in the United States and Europe. The sub-prime mortgage crisis was fueled by easy access to easy credit, which allowed people to continually bid up the prices of homes across much of the developed world. Ultimately, the price of housing was driven by the dictates of the greater fool theory, which suggests that people purchased assets not based on their intrinsic value but rather because they expect others to pay more than they did for the asset in the future. This kind of behavior can lead to asset bubbles that drive economies into recession when they pop.

Of course, as is often the case in academic disciplines, there is a lot of debate concerning the influence behavioral economics really should have in general economic analysis. Although behavioral economists have performed many enlightening experiments that reveal interesting patterns of human choice, other economists believe that seemingly irrational decision making can be incorporated into the neoclassical framework. However, it cannot be denied that behavioral economics has changed the way economists think about traditional problems in economic science and will likely continue to do so in the future as the science matures.

Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Good news: we are still ranked nationally

2011-12-18T11:50:00.006-06:00

We just received the following good news from our chair Gualtiero Piccinini, which I thought was worth repeating here in case you are considering applying to our MA program.

In recent years, our Philosophy MA was ranked as one of the 9 best terminal MA programs in philosophy in the country by the Philosophical Gourmet Report-the most authoritative and up to date ranking of English-speaking graduate programs in philosophy, edited by Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago. Given our recent losses (Ron Munson to retirement, Anna Alexandrova and Robert Northcott currently on leave but expected to stay in the UK), I was worried that this year we would lose our national ranking.

As you may know, a couple of days ago the 2011 Philosophical Gourmet Report was published. To my relief, we are still listed among the 9 best terminal MA programs in the country.

More good news: As a temporary replacement for Robert and Anna we have been able to hire two new people.

Noell Birondo, coming to us from Augustana College, will be a visiting assistant professor for the next two years. Noell obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2004. Besides Augustana College, he has taught at University of Arizona, SIUE, Pomona College, and Claremont McKenna College. Some of his publications are listed here.

Corey Maley is finishing up his dissertation at Princeton University and will be a postdoctoral fellow for the next year and a half. More information about his already distinguished record can be found here.

Eudaimonistic Virtue Epistemology

2011-12-07T13:19:00.003-06:00

I just uploaded a first rough draft of my Eudaimonistic Virtue Epistemology paper to my website. If you're interested, you can find it here.

Zach Ernst writes about unprincipled denial of tenure

2011-11-30T12:41:00.007-06:00

Philosopher Zach Ernst writes about his female colleague and wife who was just denied tenure by her department:

She was also speciﬁcally faulted for failing to design new courses for the department. If this strikes you as odd, it should – after all, I have also never designed a new course for the department. Nor was I ever asked to do so. But in my case, this issue never arose. Finally, with respect to her teaching, she was faulted for not teaching a wide enough variety of courses. But as I’ve already mentioned, our courses are assigned by ﬁat by the chair of the department, without our input or approval. And as you might expect by now, this issue never arose during my tenure process, despite the fact that both she and I taught exactly what we were assigned. Regarding her research, she was faulted because several of her papers were co authored – and as I’ve mentioned already, co-authored work and collaboration of any kind is discouraged in our department. However, a much larger percentage of my own publications were co-authored, often with three other colleagues. And predictably, this issue about co-authored publications was never raised during my tenure review. In fact, our department had recently adopted a policy about credit for co-authored work, which was scrupulously followed by both of us. If anyone should have come under criticism for this issue, it should have been me. I could go on. She had a vastly greater number of more prestigious presentations than I have ever had, many of which were in international forums (none of mine were). She had a larger number of invited articles to the most prestigious presses in her ﬁeld, many more than I have ever had, despite the fact that I am two years senior to her. And despite all of this, my tenure case was a breeze, and hers has been a failure. When a man and a woman are being evaluated in a male-dominated ﬁeld such as ours, it’s easy to spot hypocrisy and sexism. I would submit that this is one such case.

Here is the link to the full article. I have seen this happen repeatedly in recent times. Women are held to much higher standards than men in tenure and promotion cases.

Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code

2011-11-27T14:26:00.002-06:00

This is not a new video but I think it's pretty interesting.

Seeing as a Non-Sensory Relation: The Case from Synesthesia and Visual Imagery

2011-11-22T03:15:00.003-06:00

A friend of mine recently asked me whether I thought synesthesia has any philosophical consequences or is just an independently interesting phenomenon. I think it has numerous philosophical consequences. In this paper I outline some consequences of synesthesia for the analysis of the concept of seeing. This is still just a rough draft. Comments are welcome.

Center for Neurodynamics

2011-11-19T18:49:00.005-06:00

I just accepted an appointment at the Center for Neurodynamics, directed by physicist Sonya Barhar, at University of Missouri, St. Louis. So my time will be split among my current two departments and the center. I am really looking forward to collaborating with these people. I have also joined the Network for Sensory Research as a research associate. That should be really fun, too.

Non-Visual Consciousness and Visual Images in Blindsight

2011-11-18T17:42:00.007-06:00

Consciousness and Cognition recently published this response paper to my paper "Are there unconscious perceptual processes?". They have invited me to write a 1000 word reply. Here is a rough draft of my reply: Non-Visual Consciousness and Visual Images in Blindsight. Comments are welcome.

Interesting very short video of famous people's failures

2011-11-18T10:37:00.002-06:00

Free Access to Erkenntnis Articles

2011-11-18T10:26:00.002-06:00

As Hannes Leitgeb just pointed out on PHILOS-L, all articles in Erkenntnis will be freely available from now until December 31st, 2011. Here is the link.

St. Louis Graduate Conference CFP

2011-11-16T15:38:00.003-06:00

University of Missouri-St. Louis
March 9-11, 2012 Gateway Graduate Conference in Philosophy

Keynote Speakers:

Amie L. Thomasson, University of Miami
Gillian Russell, Washington University
Berit Brogaard, University of Missouri-Saint Louis

Call For Papers

The graduate students of the University of Missouri-St. Louis invite high quality paper submissions in the areas of metaphysics, ontology, ethics and related subjects in the philosophy of art.

Submission guidelines

● Presenters must be college/university students or postgraduate students.

● Papers must be suitable for a 25 to 30 minute presentation (not to exceed 3500 words or roughly 10–12 pages).

● Papers must be prepared for blind review. All identifying information, including paper title, name, email and 300 words (or less) abstract, must be placed on a separate cover page.

● Email submissions, in either *.pdf, *.docx, *.doc, or *.rft format, and all inquiries to Hannah Bondurant at habkvf@mail.umsl.edu or John Camacho at jac68d@mail.umsl.edu by January 2nd 2012.

The Epistemology of Perception

2011-11-10T09:17:00.004-06:00

I recently guest-edited a volume of Philosophical Issues on the epistemology of perception. It just came out in print. Contributors include: Roger Albritton (hitherto unpublished paper), Louise Antony, Berit Brogaard, Tony Brueckner, Benj Hellie, Mark Johnston, Mark Kalderon, Uriah Kriegel, Heather Logue, Jack Lyons, Farid Masrour, Alan Millar, Martine Nida-Ruemelin, Adam Pautz, Duncan Pritchard, Roy Sorensen, David Sosa, Matthew Soteriou, Charles Travis, Brian Cutter and Michael Tye.

The Ethics of Sex and Love

2011-11-09T19:44:00.005-06:00

For those of you in the St. Louis area: I am on a panel with my colleagues John Brunero and Eric Wiland on the topic "The Ethics of Sex and Love". It will take place in Century Room C, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 12:30 to 2 pm. The public advertisement promises a bit more than we can deliver: "Come to a Q&A with John Brunero, Brit Brogaard, and Eric Wiland to figure out what is naughty and nice in life".

Is English Hegemony in Academia Stunting Innovation?

2011-10-28T11:57:00.003-05:00

By guest blogger Elaine Hirsch

It shouldn't come as a surprise that English is an established hegemon in today's political and academic spheres. English is one of the official languages of the United Nations. It is also the premiere language spoken at the most prestigious PhD programs around the world. While cultural biases can be attributed to the favoritism shown towards English, globalization and the economic advantages of learning English has magnified the effect in recent years. With Wall Street and Silicon Valley as beacons of hope for anyone looking for a lucrative career, excelling in English has become a barrier of entry for bright students from non-English speaking countries (which unfortunately is highly correlated with developing areas).

In order to attend one of the prestigious universities, students from these areas much pass English proficiency tests such as the TOEFL, IELTS, or TOEIC, depending on country. In Patricia Ryan's talk on the topic, she points out that English proficiency tests have become gatekeepers of higher education; they prevent non-English speaking, poorly-represented students from displaying their rich acumen to the field of higher education. For example, a bright computer scientist from India must exert extra efforts compared to his/her American counterparts if he/she were to apply to an Ivy-League program.

Today, there are 6,000 languages to fumble with. 90 years from now, there will only be 600. For sure, there are efficiencies that are created with a consolidation of languages. A world with only a few languages will reduce the inefficiencies created when ideas are, literally, lost in translation. Furthermore, many languages are lost voluntarily; indigenous speakers relinquish their languages in lieu of more practical languages while maintaining their culture.

When considering efficiencies, however, it is important to consider the externalities and costs created with extinct languages. Although pinning a value of a lost language is much more difficult than valuing a company (financial experts have yet to figure that one out either, mind you), linguists often cite the loss of language as a irrecoverable loss of unique cultural, historical, and ecological knowledge.

Regardless of the values people peg to languages, reality remains that languages are continuing to consolidate in a fast pace. While much of the loss of language remains a voluntary phenomenon, it has indeed erected unnecessary barriers to the higher education sector. English requirements seemingly equate language proficiency to intelligence, as the best universities in the world use English as their language of choice. Instead, removing language barriers would allow universities to attract bright students who otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to attend a prestigious university. Perhaps shifting higher education to focus on bringing in teachers from different linguistic backgrounds will end this self-sustaining cycle of English hegemony in higher education.

Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Go Cards!

2011-10-19T20:10:00.003-05:00

Once again the religious fervor of the fans of the St. Louis Cardinals has put an obstacle in the way of more important matters. Our student Eric Wilcox recently made the following announcement:

"My dearest Forum,

It is with regret that I must once again postpone the upcoming Symposium, this time indefinitely. Finally having chosen a suitable topic, we were struck with the bad fortune of the Cardinals making it to the World Series. This would usually be a value-neutral event, except for the fact that the Symposium and the World Series are at the exact same time. Given this, it is terrible news and makes me dislike the Cardinals, both the baseball team and, perhaps inappropriately, the species of bird. So instead of presenting you with this rather difficult moral dilemma of choosing attendance between the two events (for indeed this is a moral problem, and of such gravity that it must be considered a dilemma, on par with torturing time-bomb terrorists and rescuing a cart of embryos from a burning hospital), I have decided to cancel the Symposium (again). Rather than rescheduling it (again), I will organize something more informal later in the semester. I hope this doesn't ruin anyone's week; if it does, I suggest you write to the Cardinal's main office. Tell them their excellence in baseball has ruined our chances of philosophical discussion. I suggest you mention Nietzsche on mediocrity and herd-mentality, as it seems particularly apropos. Perhaps they will awaken from their dogmatic slumbers and realize that the true path to greatness is through philosophy and rational discourse, not watching people swing a stick of wood at a ball.

All my best,
Eric Wilcox

Cardinals Executive Office:
700 Clark Street
St. Louis, MO 63102
Phone Number: (314) 345-9600"

Spring Courses

2011-10-18T18:28:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are interested, my course offerings for the spring are as follows:

1. Sexual Ethics (big lecture course, freshmen and sophomore, satisfies the GEN ED requirement and the humanities requirement, cross-listed with the gender studies program)

2. Epistemology: Knowledge and Seemings (upper-level undergraduate and graduate seminar in philosophy)

3. Biological Bases of Behavior (graduate course in neuropsychology)

Course description for epistemology:

Epistemology: Knowledge and Seemings
It is reasonable to think that sensory perception, introspection, memory and intuition can provide justification for our beliefs. But what sort of justification (if any) do they provide? On one view, seemings may provide prima facie justification for beliefs. At first glance, this position is very reasonable. But at further scrutiny, it turns out to face a number of problems. This course is devoted to the study of whether perception, introspection, memory and intuition can provide justification for belief. We will attempt to answer questions such as 'How many kinds of seemings are there?' 'How reliable is memory?' 'Is an internalist theory of justification feasible?', 'Is foundationalism mandatory for epistemic internalists?', 'Can we use a virtue epistemological approach to explain the plausibility of the hypothesis that seemings can justify beliefs?', 'If visual seemings can provide prima facie justification for beliefs, what about appearances that arise from other sense modalities?' 'Can seemings explain the appearance that high-level properties figure in the content of perception?' The course satisfies one of the two M/E requirements.

Postdoc Position at UMSL

2011-10-02T11:47:00.001-05:00

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-ST. LOUIS, St. Louis, MO. Postdoctoral Fellow, one year appointment with possibility of extension for one or two semesters (pending administrative approval), Department of Philosophy. Begins Spring Semester (January 15) 2012 or later. AOS: philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and computing. AOC: open. The postdoctoral fellow will work closely with Gualtiero Piccinini on a joint research program. Undergraduate and possibly graduate teaching; one course per semester; no service except professional. Salary competitive. Send CV, three letters of recommendation, and a writing sample to Postdoc Search, Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri-St. Louis, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121. The University of Missouri is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to excellence through diversity. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply. Application review will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. For more information, email piccininig@umsl.edu.

New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

2011-09-23T10:08:00.002-05:00

From now on, you will also see me over at New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. I really look forward to being part of this excellent team of bloggers. You can read my first post here.

Social Deviancy, the Law, and Society

2011-09-21T23:43:00.004-05:00

By guest blogger Allison Gamble

Deviance and criminal behavior are closely linked concepts in modern thought, although they are not always the same in practice. While the average man on the street may assume deviant behavior is also criminal, in terms of forensic psychology this simply isn't the case. While the categories often overlap, it's possible to be a deviant without being a criminal, or to be a criminal without being socially deviant.

Deviant Behavior, Society, and Social Sanction

Deviant behavior violates what society considers acceptable, while criminal behavior violates the law of that society. The average person sees deviance as behavior not in accordance with the standards of “proper” behavior in society.

Social deviance may include any of the following behaviors:

• Refusing to respect social norms of polite behavior.
This can range from being rude to others to refusing to offer respect to social icons. In general, this sort of behavior brands adherents as standing outside what the majority sees as the acceptable bounds of social activity.

• Unpopular political or religious beliefs.
Minority social or political groups often fall into this category, especially during times of social or ethnic tension. Examples in the United States include abolitionist activists in the Antebellum South, as well as Catholics during the mid- and late-19th century.

• Defying normal class and gender roles.
Early feminists and civil rights advocates often found themselves accused of social deviancy for transgressing against the accepted standards of behavior as it applied to gender and ethnicity.

• Engaging in activities harmful to others.
Murder, theft, rape, and other transgressions that have a direct impact on others are almost universally regarded as both deviant and criminal.

• Criminal behavior.
Although not always the case, many individuals regard breaking the law as a deviant act in and of itself, regardless of the nature of the act. By breaking the law, an individual engages in a defiance of accepted standards of public behavior. However, this definition of deviancy is by no means universal, and a common attribute of unpopular laws is that the majority of the citizenry does not regard disobedience to be a sign of deviant behavior.

Thus, while socially deviant behavior can be criminal, not all criminal offenses are considered socially deviant. Especially in liberal societies, being socially deviant doesn't constitute criminal behavior.

Social Deviancy and Criminal Behavior

However, state and society both often ascribe social deviancy to criminals. In fact, being able to point to the social deviancy of crime is vital to securing the legitimacy of the law in the eyes of a people. Laws which aren't seen as curbing socially deviant behaviors often fail to gain acceptance. Laws that criminalize acts that are nearly universally regarded as socially deviant include laws against rape, pedophilia, murder, violent robbery, or fraud. While those accused of these crimes may deny guilt, they very seldom attempt to defend the acts themselves.

When a population isn't convinced a law enforces social norms, the law often fails. Perhaps the most dramatic example in recent history was Prohibition. Despite the best efforts of proponents, the majority of the population continued to consider alcohol socially acceptable, dooming Prohibition to eventual repeal.

At the other end of the spectrum, perceptions of social deviancy can lead to laws designed specifically to punish deviancy, even where it involves no harm to others. Nudity ordinances are an example of criminal statutes designed solely to enforce social norms and punish social deviants who defy them. Obscenity statues are much the same, and in fact the Supreme Court's approach to obscenity explicitly makes reference to community social standards when determining if something is deviant enough to be labeled obscene.

In these cases, individuals may have radically different opinions about the acceptable or deviant nature of the behavior in question. The legal dependence upon community standards and the average person’s interpretation of them make it clear that standards of social deviancy can vary widely from community to community. Unlike crimes such as murder, in these cases it's very difficult to achieve consensus as to what constitutes deviant behavior, and whether or not it should be criminalized. In the United States, such differences can divide states or even individual communities within those states.

Changing Times and Changing Definitions of Deviancy

This brings up a final factor: definitions of deviant and criminal behavior can change over time, impacting both social and criminal aspects of how behaviors are regarded by society. A number of behaviors, from same-sex relationships to the advocacy of reproductive rights, have been demonized and met with legal sanction. As definitions of deviance change, especially in the eyes of the average population, the relationship between the law and deviant behavior shifts as well.

In this way, both criminal and social standards of deviancy evolve over time, as does the average perception of what constitutes social and legal transgression. The two issues are tightly linked and will always affect each other through mutual influence.

Allison Gamble has been a curious student of psychology since high school. She brings her understanding of the mind to work in the weird world of internet marketing with forensicpsychology.net.

CFP - McDowell Conference

2011-09-18T15:03:00.002-05:00

The Inaugural Dorothy Edgington Lectures will be given by Professor John McDowell

March 2nd-3rd 2012, Birkbeck College

As well as giving two public lectures, John McDowell will lead a 2 day graduate workshop on the Epistemology of Perception. We invite submissions on this topic, from graduate and postgraduate students, to be presented at the workshop.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15th November 2011

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

(1) Papers should be no more than 3,000 words

(including footnotes, excluding bibliography), to be presented in 30 minutes

(2) They should be prepared for blind refereeing

(3) They should include a cover-sheet, with the title, an abstract, your name, institution affiliation, and student status

(4) They should be formatted with 1.5 spacing, 10pt font, and saved as .pdfs, or .doc (not .docx)

(5) Send all submissions to: edgingtonlectures@gmail.com

Small student bursaries will be available for speakers who require assistance with travel costs.

Accommodation for student speakers will be available with members of the department.

Workshop registration is free for graduate students, but there are limited spaces - to register for either the workshop or the lectures email: edgingtonlectures@gmail.com

Perceptual Reports

2011-09-12T16:57:00.002-05:00

I have uploaded a new version of my "Perceptual Reports" to my website. Here is the link.

Final Program for the 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association

2011-09-03T11:41:00.003-05:00

Program, Moonrise Hotel, St. Louis, September 15–17

All talks will take place at (across the street from the Moonrise Hotel):

Regional Arts Commission
6128 Delmar Blvd.
St. Louis, MO. 63112

Plenary Sessions

September 15, RAC- Conference Room C

5:00 Keynote Address: John Doris, Washington University
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

September 16, RAC- Conference Room C

4:00 Business Meeting and Presidential Address: Berit Brogaard, UMSL
“Intellectual Flourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm”
Chair: Paul Weirich, University of Missouri

5:00-7:00 Reception, Moonrise Rooftop

September 17, RAC- Conference Room C

5:00 Keynote Address: John Hawthorne, University of Oxford
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room C, September 15

9:00 An Impasse over Epistemic Value - A Critique of Linda Zagzebski's Arguments Against Pure Reliabilism and Proper Functionalism
Speaker: Devon Bryson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Chair: John Greco, St. Louis University
Commentator: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University

10:00 The Value of Knowledge: A Primary Good
Speaker: Daniel Pilchman, University of California, Irvine
Chair: Heather Werner, UMSL
Commentator: Kristian Marlow, UMSL

11:00 Knowing Versus Knowledge - The Two Questions within the Secondary Value Problem
Speaker: Zack Robinson, UMSL
Chair: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Commentator: Trent Dougherty, Baylor University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Neo-Aristotelian Plenitude
Speaker: Ross Inman, Trinity College, Dublin
Chair: John Heil, Washington University
Commentator: Irem Kurtsal Steen, UMSL

2:00 Functions Must be Performed at Appropriate Rates in Appropriate Situations
Speaker: Gualtiero Piccinini, UMSL, and Justin Garson, Hunter College/City University of New York
Chair: Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Kraemer, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

3:00 Special Science Kinds - Property Clusters without Homeostasis
Speaker: Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University
Chair: Sarah Robins, Washington University
Commentator: Christopher Pearson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

4:00 Panel: Natural Kinds
Speakers: Daniel A. Weiskopf, The Human Stain - Concepts, Anthropic Kinds, and Realism, Georgia State University
Andrew McFarland, How are Kinds Individuated?, University of Kansas
Alexander Bird, The Ontology of Natural Kinds, University of Bristol
John Camacho, Natural Kinds and Scientific Practices, UMSL
Chair: Kent Staley, St. Louis University

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room B, September 15

9:00 Frankfurt Cases, Gettier, and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Speaker: Adam R. Thompson, University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Chair: Krista Hyde, UMSL
Commentator: Michael Neal, UMSL

10:00 Against Counterfactuals of Libertarian Freedom - There is Nothing I Would have Done if I Could Have Done Otherwise
Speaker: Paul C. Anders, Mount Marty College, and Joshua Thurow, College of Southern Nevada
Chair: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Commentator: Grant Sterling, Eastern Illinois University

11:00 Are There True Libertarian Action Counterfactuals?
Speaker: Daniel Rubio, Western Michigan University
Chair: Krista Wiley, UMSL
Commentator: David Killoren, University of Wisconsin – Madison

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Compositional Nihilism and the Puzzles of Coincidence: A Response to McGrath
Speaker: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Andrew McFarland, University of Kansas

2:00 Physical Causal Closure and Non-Coincidental Mental Causation
Speaker: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Andrew Melnyk, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Douglas Hiddleston, Wayne State University

3:00 Hume, Counterfactuals and Causation
Speaker: Joshua Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Dean Obermark, UMSL
Commentator: John Camacho, UMSL

4:00 Panel: Causation
Speakers: David Killoren, Moral Causation, Consequentialism, and the Hazards of Pure Metaethics, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Hannah Abigail Bondurant, Consciousness, Control, and Causation: Some Issues for the Cognitive Physicalist, UMSL
Nicholas K. Simmons, How Much Bearing Does the Correct Construal of 'Causation' Really Have on the Problem of Mental Causation?, University of Kansas
Andrew Ward, Causal Criteria, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Causal Inferences, University of Minnesota
Chair: Simine Vazire, Washington University

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room B, September 16

9:00 Rawls on Rectification
Speaker: Sarah Kenehan, Marywood University
Chair: Eric Wilcox, University of Missouri – Kansas City
Commentator: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa

10:00 Individual Rights and the Restrictive Force of Just Cause - A Response to Jeff McMahan
Speaker: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri
Chair: Bre'Anna Liddell, UMSL
Commentator: Eric Reitan, Oklahoma State University

11:00 Killing in Self-Defense and the Doctrine of Double Effect
Speaker: Phil M. Mouch, Minnesota State University Moorhead
Chair: David McGraw, UMSL
Commentator: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri

12:00 Lunch

1:00 From Insensitivity to Moral Debunking
Speaker: Matthew Braddock, Duke University
Chair: Dan Haybron, St. Louis University
Commentator: Brian Besong, Purdue University

2:00 Moral Perpendiculars
Speaker: Hallie Liberto, University of Connecticut
Chair: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Molly Gardner, University of Wisconsin – Madison

3:00 Moral Intuitionism and Fundamental Disagreement
Speaker: Brian Besong, Purdue University
Chair: Mylan Engel, Jr., Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brian Hutchinson, Metropolitan State College of Denver

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room C, September 16

9:00 Solving the Generality Problem for Reliabilism and Resolving the Internalist/Externalist Controversy
Speaker: Mylan Engel Jr., Northern Illinois University
Chair: Matthew Cashen, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Commentator: Matthew Braddock, Duke University

10:00 Against the Minimalistic Reading of Epistemic Contextualism - A Reply to Wolfgang Freitag
Speaker: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Jeff Dauer, Washington University
Commentator: Geoff Pynn, Northern Illinois University

11:00 Knowledge, Assertion, and the Belief that One Knows
Speaker: Dylan Black, Indiana University – Bloomington
Chair: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Options and Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Roy Sorensen, Washington University
Commentator: Wenwen Fan, University of Missouri

2:00 Epistemic Modals and Practical Reasoning
Speaker: Joshua S. Heter, St. Louis University
Chair: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Lisa Cagle, Washington University

3:00 Determining the Field of Concern with Knowledge
Speaker: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Chair: Jessica Wilson, UMSL
Commentator: John Pauley, Simpson College

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room C, September 17

9:00 On Hawthorne on Lewis on the Case for Modal Realism
Speaker: Robert William Fischer, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chair: Thomas Sattig, Washington University
Commentator: John Gabriel, Washington University

10:00 Cappelen, Content Relativism, and the “Creative Interpreter”
Speaker: Mark Criley, Illinois Wesleyan University
Chair: Nicholas Baima, Washington University
Commentator: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University

11:00 A Prosententialist Account of Vagueness
Speaker: Renee Jorgensen, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Ronald Glass, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Commentator: Nicholas Baima, Washington University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Simple Proof of Mind-Body Dualism
Speaker: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Chair: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Daniel Ryan Weed, UMSL

2:00 The Fact of Cartesian Qualia
Speaker: Brett Coppenger, University of Iowa
Chair: William Robinson, Iowa State University
Commentator: Donald Sievert, University of Missouri

3:00 The (One and Only) Argument for Physicalism about the Mind
Speaker: Jared Bates, Hanover College
Chair: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Commentator: Angie Harris, University of Utah

4:00 Panel: Physicalism
Speakers: William S. Robinson, The Poverty of Physicalism, Iowa State University
Andrew Melnyk, Pereboom on the Formulation of Non-reductive Physicalism, University of Missouri
Eric Kraemer, The Challenges of Non-Physicalism, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
Chair: Jared Bates, Hanover College

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room B, September 17

9:00 Remembering Does Entail Knowing
Speaker: Andrew Moon, University of Missouri
Chair: Lisa Cagle, Washington University
Commentator: Zack Robinson, UMSL

10:00 Fallibilism and the Flexibility of Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Charity Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Amy Broadway, UMSL
Commentator: Andrew Moon, University of Missouri

11:00 Skepticism in the Problem of the Criterion
Speaker: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Chair: Mark Steen, UMSL
Commentator: Casey Swank, St. Cloud State University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Textualist Argument for a Living Constitution
Speaker: A. J. Kreider, Miami Dade College
Chair: Xiaofei Liu, University of Missouri
Commentator: John Collins, East Carolina University

2:00 Republican Political Justification and Unreasonable Citizens
Speaker: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College
Chair: Christian Richeson, UMSL
Commentator: Richard Lauer, University of Missouri

3:00 The Connection between Political Legitimacy and Justification
Speaker: Leo Yan, University of Missouri
Chair: Daniel Pilchman, UC Irvine
Commentator: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College

4:00 Panel: Risk
Speakers: Ashton T. Sperry-Taylor, Bounded Rationality, Risk, and Moral Heuristics, University of Missouri
Michael Neal, Epistemic Risk, Epistemic Peerage, and Rational Disagreement, UMSL
Chair: Kevin Lepore, UMSL

Program for the 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association in St. Louis

2011-08-10T20:59:00.003-05:00

CSPA Program, Moonrise Hotel, St. Louis, September 15–17

Plenary Sessions

September 15

5:00 Keynote Address: John Doris, Washington University
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

September 16

4:00 Business Meeting and Presidential Address: Berit Brogaard,
“Intellectual Flourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm”
Chair: Paul Weirich, University of Missouri

5:00-7:00 Reception, Moonrise Rooftop

September 17

5:00 Keynote Address: John Hawthorne, University of Oxford
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

Concurrent Sessions, Room 1, September 15
9:00 An Impasse over Epistemic Value - A Critique of Linda Zagzebski's Arguments Against Pure Reliabilism and Proper Functionalism
Speaker: Devon Bryson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Chair: John Greco, St. Louis University
Commentator: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University

10:00 The Value of Knowledge: A Primary Good
Speaker: Daniel Pilchman, University of California, Irvine
Chair: Heather Werner, UMSL
Commentator: Kristian Marlow, UMSL

11:00 Knowing Versus Knowledge - The Two Questions within the Secondary Value Problem
Speaker: Zack Robinson, UMSL
Chair: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Commentator: Trent Dougherty, Baylor University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Neo-Aristotelian Plenitude
Speaker: Ross Inman, Trinity College, Dublin
Chair: John Heil, Washington University
Commentator: Irem Kurtsal Steen, UMSL

2:00 Functions Must be Performed at Appropriate Rates in Appropriate Situations
Speaker: Gualtiero Piccinini, UMSL, and Justin Garson, Hunter College/City University of New York
Chair: Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Kraemer, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

3:00 Special Science Kinds - Property Clusters without Homeostasis
Speaker: Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University
Chair: Sarah Robins, Washington University
Commentator: Christopher Pearson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

4:00 Panel: Natural Kinds
Speakers: Daniel A. Weiskopf, The Human Stain - Concepts, Anthropic Kinds, and Realism, Georgia State University
Andrew McFarland, How are Kinds Individuated?, University of Kansas
Alexander Bird, The Ontology of Natural Kinds, University of Bristol
John Camacho, Natural Kinds and Scientific Practices, UMSL
Chair: Kent Staley, St. Louis University

Concurrent Sessions, Room 2, September 15
9:00 Frankfurt Cases, Gettier, and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Speaker: Adam R. Thompson, University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Chair: Krista Hyde, UMSL
Commentator: Michael Neal, UMSL

10:00 Against Counterfactuals of Libertarian Freedom - There is Nothing I Would have Done if I Could Have Done Otherwise
Speaker: Paul C. Anders, Mount Marty College, and Joshua Thurow, College of Southern Nevada
Chair: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Commentator: Grant Sterling, Eastern Illinois University

11:00 Are There True Libertarian Action Counterfactuals?
Speaker: Daniel Rubio, Western Michigan University
Chair: Krista Wiley, UMSL
Commentator: David Killoren, University of Wisconsin – Madison

12:00 Lunch
1:00 Compositional Nihilism and the Puzzles of Coincidence: A Response to McGrath
Speaker: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Andrew McFarland, University of Kansas

2:00 Physical Causal Closure and Non-Coincidental Mental Causation
Speaker: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Andrew Melnyk, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Douglas Hiddleston, Wayne State University

3:00 Hume, Counterfactuals and Causation
Speaker: Joshua Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Dean Obermark, UMSL
Commentator: John Camacho, UMSL

4:00 Panel: Causation
Speakers: David Killoren, Moral Causation, Consequentialism, and the Hazards of Pure Metaethics, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Hannah Abigail Bondurant, Consciousness, Control, and Causation: Some Issues for the Cognitive Physicalist, UMSL
Nicholas K. Simmons, How Much Bearing Does the Correct Construal of 'Causation' Really Have on the Problem of Mental Causation?, University of Kansas
Andrew Ward, Causal Criteria, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Causal Inferences, University of Minnesota
Chair: Simine Vazire, Washington University

Concurrent Sessions, Room 1, September 16
9:00 Rawls on Rectification
Speaker: Sarah Kenehan, Marywood University
Chair: Eric Wilcox, University of Missouri – Kansas City
Commentator: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa

10:00 Individual Rights and the Restrictive Force of Just Cause - A Response to Jeff McMahan
Speaker: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri
Chair: Bre'Anna Liddell, UMSL
Commentator: Eric Reitan, Oklahoma State University

11:00 Killing in Self-Defense and the Doctrine of Double Effect
Speaker: Phil M. Mouch, Minnesota State University Moorhead
Chair: David McGraw, UMSL
Commentator: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri

12:00 Lunch

1:00 From Insensitivity to Moral Debunking
Speaker: Matthew Braddock, Duke University
Chair: Dan Haybron, St. Louis University
Commentator: Brian Besong, Purdue University

2:00 Moral Perpendiculars
Speaker: Hallie Liberto, University of Connecticut
Chair: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Molly Gardner, University of Wisconsin

3:00 Moral Intuitionism and Fundamental Disagreement
Speaker: Brian Besong, Purdue University
Chair: Mylan Engel, Jr., Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brian Hutchinson, Metropolitan State College of Denver

Concurrent Sessions, Room 2, September 16
9:00 Solving the Generality Problem for Reliabilism and Resolving the Internalist/Externalist Controversy
Speaker: Mylan Engel Jr., Northern Illinois University
Chair: Matthew Cashen, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Commentator: Matthew Braddock, Duke University

10:00 Against the Minimalistic Reading of Epistemic Contextualism - A Reply to Wolfgang Freitag
Speaker: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Jeff Dauer, Washington University
Commentator: Geoff Pynn, Northern Illinois University

11:00 Knowledge, Assertion, and the Belief that One Knows
Speaker: Dylan Black, Indiana University – Bloomington
Chair: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Options and Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Roy Sorensen, Washington University
Commentator: Wenwen Fan, University of Missouri

2:00 Epistemic Modals and Practical Reasoning
Speaker: Joshua S. Heter, St. Louis University
Chair: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Lisa Cagle, Washington University

3:00 Determining the Field of Concern with Knowledge
Speaker: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Chair: Jessica Wilson, UMSL
Commentator: John Pauley, Simpson College

Concurrent Sessions, Room 1, September 17
9:00 On Hawthorne on Lewis on the Case for Modal Realism
Speaker: Robert William Fischer, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chair: Thomas Sattig, Washington University
Commentator: John Gabriel, Washington University

10:00 Cappelen, Content Relativism, and the “Creative Interpreter”
Speaker: Mark Criley, Illinois Wesleyan University
Chair: Nicholas Baima, Washington University
Commentator: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University

11:00 A Prosententialist Account of Vagueness
Speaker: Renee Jorgensen, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Ronald Glass, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Commentator: Nicholas Baima, Washington University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Simple Proof of Mind-Body Dualism
Speaker: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Chair: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Daniel Ryan, UMSL

2:00 The Fact of Cartesian Qualia
Speaker: Brett Coppenger, University of Iowa
Chair: William Robinson, Iowa State University
Commentator: Donald Sievert, University of Missouri

3:00 The (One and Only) Argument for Physicalism about the Mind
Speaker: Jared Bates, Hanover College
Chair: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Commentator: Angie Harris, University of Utah

4:00 Panel: Physicalism
Speakers: William S. Robinson, The Poverty of Physicalism, Iowa State University
Andrew Melnyk, Pereboom on the Formulation of Non-reductive Physicalism, University of Missouri
Eric Kraemer, The Challenges of Non-Physicalism, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
Chair: Jared Bates, Hanover College

Concurrent Sessions, Room 2, September 17
9:00 Remembering Does Entail Knowing
Speaker: Andrew Moon
Chair: Lisa Cagle, Washington University
Commentator: Zack Robinson, UMSL

10:00 Fallibilism and the Flexibility of Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Charity Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Amy Broadway, UMSL
Commentator: Andrew Moon, University of Missouri

11:00 Skepticism in the Problem of the Criterion
Speaker: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Chair: Mark Steen, UMSL
Commentator: Casey Swank, St. Cloud State University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Textualist Argument for a Living Constitution
Speaker: A. J. Kreider, Miami Dade College
Chair: Xiaofei Liu, University of Missouri
Commentator: John Collins, East Carolina University

2:00 Republican Political Justification and Unreasonable Citizens
Speaker: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College
Chair: Christian Richeson, UMSL
Commentator: Richard Lauer, University of Missouri

3:00 The Connection between Political Legitimacy and Justification
Speaker: Leo Yan, University of Missouri
Chair: Daniel Pilchman, UC Irvine
Commentator: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College

4:00 Panel: Risk
Speakers: Ashton T. Sperry-Taylor, Bounded Rationality, Risk, and Moral Heuristics, University of Missouri
Michael Neal, Epistemic Risk, Epistemic Peerage, and Rational Disagreement, UMSL
Chair: Kevin Lepore, UMSL

Knowledge-How: A Unified Account

2011-07-18T23:23:00.005-05:00

I just received the proofs for my article "Knowledge-How: A Unified Account." Here is the link, if you're interested. And the abstract:

There are two competing views of knowledge-how: intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. According to the reductionist varieties of intellectualism defended by Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001) and Berit Brogaard (2007), knowledge-how simply reduces to knowledge-that. To a first approximation, s knows how to A iff there is a w such that s knows that w is a way to A. For example, John knows how to ride a bicycle if and only if there is a way w such that John knows that w is a way to ride a bicycle. John Bengson and Marc Moffett (2007) defend an antireductionist version of intellectualism that takes knowledge-how to require, in addition to a propositional attitude, that s understands the concepts involved in her attitude. According to the anti-intellectualist accounts originally defended by Gilbert Ryle and many others after him, knowledge-how requires the possession of a practical ability and so knowing that w (for some w) is a way to A does not suffice for knowing-how. For example, John knows how to ride a bicycle only if John has the ability to ride it; if John merely knows that w (for some w) is a way to ride a bicycle, John does not know how to ride a bicycle. Here I argue for a conciliatory position that is compatible with the reductionist variety of intellectualism: knowledge-how is reducible to knowledge-that. But, I argue, there are knowledge states that are not justification entailing and knowledge states that are not belief entailing. Both kinds of knowledge state require the possession of practical abilities. I conclude by arguing that the view defended naturally leads to a disjunctive conception of abilities as either essentially involving mental states or as not essentially involving mental states. Only the former kind of ability is a kind of knowledge-state, that is, a knowledge-how state.

More or Less: Varieties of Human Cortical Colour Vision

2011-07-16T19:41:00.001-05:00

The schedules/programs are now up for the Vancouver conference on cortical color.

Surprising News: UMSL's research faculty ranks in top 10 in the US

2011-07-14T16:38:00.002-05:00

This is for "scholarly production among universities with less than 15 doctoral programs". The link is here.

Lemming's Birthday and a New Version of My Presentism Paper

2011-07-12T21:30:00.005-05:00

Happy belated birthday to Lemmings. He turned 5 two days ago. In case you are interested, I have uploaded a new version of my new presentism paper, "Presentism, Primitivism and Cross-Temporal Relations: Lessons from Holistic Ersatzism and
Dynamic Semantics", to my website.

Meaning and Value: How Do They Relate?

2011-07-05T11:24:00.002-05:00

A further question that came up in my summer existentialism class was that of what exactly the existentialists are so worried about. What is the ambiguity or dilemma De Beauvoir and others keep talking about?

It may be tempting to answer like this: We all have to die, and death is a scary thing. So, how do we deal with that fear?

However, that answer is far too simple. The dilemma in life turns on value. Most people live a life that is aimed at the future. For example, you go to college in order to increase your chances of getting a good job. Almost everything you do is aimed at something in the future. So, almost everything you do is valuable because it leads to something else. What you do appears to have instrumental value.

On non-existentialist accounts, if your life has meaning, then that meaning is derived from the instrumental value of your actions. But if there is no final destination, which there is not if death is inevitable, then your actions have no instrumental value and hence your life has no meaning.

In class I used an analogy to illustrate this. Suppose you hate driving but are willing to make the trip to Chicago, because being in Chicago has intrinsic value. As it turns out, however, there is no Chicago. It was burned down or was just a fantasy city people thought was real. We can then rightfully say that your trip was meaningless.

Things are different if Chicago exists and you just never make it there because you make a wrong turn and end up in Detroit or die in a car crash. Your trip then had a bad ending but it wasn’t meaningless.

If Chicago doesn’t exist but Detroit does, then your trip needn’t be meaningless, because it can still be aimed at not ending up in Detroit. So, your actions then have instrumental value and your life has meaning derived from the instrumental value of your actions.

Here is how the analogy carries over to the meaning of life. If there is no heaven or hell after death, but sheer nothingness, then your actions in life have no instrumental value. Hence, if meaning is derived from the instrumental value of your actions, your life is meaningless.

The existentialist puzzle does not arise for the theist who posits life after death. Heaven has intrinsic value, and your actions in life are aimed at ending up in heaven. So, your life has meaning derived from the instrumental value of your actions.

But few existentialists are theists. This is why they are in despair. De Beauvoir considers other possible ways of resolving the predicament. Hegel suggested that the Spirit (with a capital S) was greater than mankind and hence greater than you and your life. You might also think mankind, nature or society is greater than you and your life.

If this is true, then it seems that we can resolve the predicament in a way similar to the theists: You simply live your life serving the Spirit, mankind, nature, society, or what have you. If these greater entities have intrinsic value, and your actions are aimed at serving these entities, then your actions have instrumental value. So, if the meaning of life is derived from the instrumental value of your actions, then your life is meaningful. Or so it may seem.

The problem, though, is that if your life is aimed at something that is greater than you, or goes beyond you and your life, then even if your actions have instrumental value, your life can still be meaningless. This is because the Spirit, mankind, nature, society or whatever has nothing to do with your life per se, and we cannot derive the meaning of YOUR life from something that has nothing to do with your life.

The theists are in fact better off in this respect. They posit "life after death" or "eternal life". So, your life doesn’t end. On some theist views, your body ceases to exist but your soul continues. On other views, your body ceases to exist temporarily but will arise again when God introduces heaven on earth. Either way, if there is a heaven, we can say that your life has meaning derived from the instrumental value of your actions – actions aimed at getting you to heaven.

But this is not an option for atheists. De Beauvoir and most of the other existentialists are atheists, so they cannot resolve the puzzle the way the theists can. The solution they propose is to derive meaning from the intrinsic value of your choices rather than from the alleged instrumental value of your actions.

Your choices, however, can only have intrinsic value if you are the true agent in making the choice. If your choice is heavily influenced by upbringing, tradition, culture, authorities, a desire to do well or be famous, etc, then your choice doesn’t have any intrinsic value.

Existentialists don’t recommend that you go against any of these institutions but only that you question your choices and make your own choices. The choices must be choices you make for your own sake and not for the sake of others.

Does Existentialism Entail Ethical Relativism?

2011-07-03T23:54:00.004-05:00

One of the questions we discussed in my summer existentialism class was that of whether existentialism, as laid out by Simone De Beauvoir, entails ethical relativism. My argument for the conclusion that it does went it as follows:

According to De Beauvoir, you should choose to be free. This means that what you should do depends on what has meaning for you. You should not do what tradition, authorities, caregivers, peers or culture dictate but rather what can add to the meaning of your life. Of course, this does not mean that because your parents told you to go to college, you should not go to college, but only that if you decide to go to college, it should be because it adds to the personal meaning of your life.

Now, "should", familiarly, comes in many different flavors. In "You should stop for red light", the "should" is a legal (and perhaps a prudential) "should". In "You should aim at maximizing true beliefs and minimizing false ones", the "should" is an epistemic "should". And in "You should wear a condom during sex" the "should" is a prudential "should", and so on.

"Should" in these senses can be overridden. For example, if you are taking a dying friend to the hospital, it needn’t be the case that you should stop for red light. If maximizing true beliefs and minimizing false ones implies sitting in your backyard counting leaves rather than going to class, you should go to class, not maximize true beliefs and minimize false ones. And if you are trying to conceive a child, you shouldn't wear a condom during sex.

These sorts of considerations count against there being a special ethical "should" alongside the legal, prudential and epistemic "should"s. For suppose otherwise. Then it could be that, ethically, you should speak the truth. But we all know that the "should" in this case can be overridden. If the Nazis are banging on your door, asking you whether you know the whereabouts of your friend, you should not tell them, even if you know. In this case, then, it cannot be that, ethically, you should tell the truth. We can conjure up similar scenarios for other things you might think you should do, ethically speaking.

The lesson: Practical reason, and hence ethics, concerns what you should do all things considered. So, you should tell the truth in some situations but not in others. If there is an ethical "should", it’s the all-things-considered "should", and the all-things-considered "should" cannot be overridden.

Return now to the existentialist "should". De Beauvoir intends this modality to be an all-things-considered "should". In other words, she does not take it that you should do what adds to the meaning of your life only in some circumstances. She holds that you should always do what adds to the meaning of your life.

But we cannot have two all-things-considered "should"s. So, if existentialism is true, then the existentialist "should" is the only all-things-considered “should” around.

This then straightforwardly leads us to ethical relativism of a rather extreme kind. If it adds to the meaning of your life to kill the kind 90-year old lady next door who brings you delicious baked goods every Sunday morning, then you should kill her all things considered. You get the idea.

What can the existentialist say in response to this?

She could bite the bullet. But that just feels wrong (to me anyway).

Alternatively, she could argue that these kinds of issues don’t arise. This seems to be what De Beauvoir is getting at on p. 23 of The Ethics of Ambiguity. Here she says that we will eventually reason toward certain universal principles. As rational individuals, we won’t kill to add meaning to our lives, for instance.

The problem, though, is this: What are we to say about people who are too rational, such as serial killers, and people who are too emotional or who are plainly stupid?

Perhaps the existentialist could say that you have to possess a certain level of rationality and emotional sophistication to be able to define your own meaning. But the question then remains why people who are not sufficiently rational or who do not have the right level of emotional sophistication are left to lead a meaningless life.

Summer Existentialism Class 2011

2011-07-03T07:34:00.008-05:00

If you were unable to attend our meetings discussing Simone De Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, you can listen to the mp3 files here, either by clicking the play buttons directly on this site or by clicking the links located on top of each window:

Discussion of the Ethics of Ambiguity

Discussion of the Second Sex

Googling Paper Titles

2011-07-02T00:00:00.003-05:00

[From comment section]

Anonymous: I wonder if you have any views about whether authors ought to bring it to journal editors' attention if they discover a referee has googled passages from their paper in an attempt to uncover the author's identity? I don't think this issue has been brought up in discussions of refereeing, but it is a practice I think should definitely stop and making a bit of noise when it happens is perhaps one way to for that to happen. If I were an editor I would certainly want to know if my referees were breaking blind review practice, but I imagine some editors might not be very concerned about this practice and that it may bias them against the author if the latter were to make a stink to them about it.

Me: There is no surefire way to find out if a referee Googled the paper title or passages from the paper to establish the author's identity.

If a referee were to write "since the author is only a graduate student... " in his report, I would be suspicious. But referees don't usually say these kinds of things.

You can protect yourself against this practice by keeping your paper off your website or by re-naming it until it's accepted for publication.

But as you say, referees might Google passages rather than titles, and renaming the paper doesn't protect against that.

In my opinion, the best thing a young author can do is to upload their paper to Google Docs. This allows them to control the share settings. There is a setting that allows people with the link to view the paper but the paper won't show up in Google searches.

This is not a guarantee that a reviewer won't find the paper but at least it wouldn't show up in a Google search, and people who want to check out your website can still use the link on your page to get to the paper.

How to be an Ethical Journal Referee

2011-06-26T18:51:00.003-05:00

I just uploaded a popular paper to my website, entitled "How to be an Ethical Journal Referee".

The 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association

2011-06-23T03:36:00.005-05:00

The 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association will take place September 15-17 at The Moonrise Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. The cut-off date for reserving a room at the group rate is August 14, 2011. The cost for the hotel rooms at the Moonrise Hotel are $139 or $149 (the latter is an extra large room for sharing). To get that rate you should mention that you are booking a room for the Central States Philosophical Association Conference. Make your reservations early as they only have 75 rooms at the conference rate.

The hotel has a rooftop bar, where we will socialize at night. The hotel is in one of the most active areas of St. Louis called "the University City Loop" or just the "The Loop" for short. There are dozens of restaurants and bars within walking distance, including Pi, the pizza restaurant where President Obama dined when he was in St. Louis. The conference rooms are across the street from the hotel.

Cheaper accommodation is available here. Rates Starting at $39.99.
www.motel6.com/Missouri
1405 Dunn Road, St Louis, MO
(314) 869-9400

This place will work great if you have a car. If you are looking for cheaper accommodation, you can also go to: http://www.hotels.com/.

You can take the metro link directly from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (STL) to University City, where the Moonrise Hotel is located. A taxi from the airport to the hotel will cost you between $30 and $40.

New Papers

2011-06-19T08:21:00.005-05:00

I have uploaded a new version of my presentism paper and two new papers to my website:

Presentism, Primitivism and The Problem of Cross-Temporal Relations: Lessons from Hoslistic Ersatzism and Dynamic Semantics

Intellectual Flourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm

Perceptual Reports

Central States Philosophical Association (CSPA) 2011. Second Call for Panel Proposals

2011-06-08T03:31:00.002-05:00

The 2011 Central States Philosophical Association meeting, hosted by the University of Missouri–St. Louis, will take place at:

The Moonrise Hotel, 6177 Delmar, St. Louis, MO 63112
September 15–17, 2011

Keynote Speakers: John Hawthorne (University of Oxford) and John Doris (Washington University)

You need not be a member of an institution in the central states area to participate. The deadline for submission of colloquium papers has passed, however, the program committee still welcomes panel proposals and extends the deadline for them to June 30. During a panel's session, the panelists will make five-minute presentations on the panel's topic. After these presentations, there will be a discussion period. The whole session, presentations and discussion, will last an hour.

The program will include panels on these topics:
(1) Metaphysics: Natural kinds
(2) Mind: Physicalism vs. non-physicalism
(3) Causation
(4) Risk

To join a panel, submit a brief proposal of not more than 500 words that advances a point about the panel’s topic. Include a title page in a separate document with author information and the proposal’s word count, and submit both the proposal, prepared for blind reviewing, and the title page as RTF or PDF files.

The deadline for submission of panel proposals is: June 30, 2011.

Submissions should be sent to Leo Yan at: lhybnd@mail.mizzou.edu. Responses to submissions will be sent by July 31, 2011.

Suggestions for commentators and session chairs (including self-nominations) are welcome. Information about registration will be sent in July.

Suggestions and questions regarding the program should be directed to Paul Weirich at: weirichp@missouri.edu

Questions concerning local arrangements should be directed to Brit Brogaard at: brogaardb@gmail.com

The Synnie Gang from Toward a Science of Consciousness in Stockholm, 2011

2011-05-09T18:12:00.007-05:00

Group picture of the synesthesia geeks from Toward a Science of Consciousness in Stockholm, 2011. Back: Michael Sollberger, Engelbert Winkler, Dirk Proekl (hiding). Second row: Patricia Lynne Duffy, Jason Padgett, Berit Brogaard, Carrie C. Firman. Third row: Alexandra Kirschner, Nancy Clark. Front: Neil Theise, William C. Bushell, Maureen Seaberg. Thanks, Maureen, for organizing the workshop.

The Superhuman Mind

2011-04-30T20:59:00.007-05:00

I am in beautiful Stockholm at the Toward a Science of Consciousness. Our session on Tuesday will take place in the fabulous Aula Magna Hall (see picture). Stop by if you are in the neighborhood. Danish National Radio will also broadcast a feature on this. Here is the title and abstract of my talk (for slides, click here). This is also the title of my next (academic) book.

The Superhuman Mind: From Synesthesia to Savant Syndrome

Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person has a talent that is so developed that he can perform what may seem like impossible mathematical, linguistic or artistic tasks. Blind Tom, a blind autistic slave in Georgia in the nineteenth century, was an amazing pianist and performer. Stephen Wiltshire drew an extremely accurate sketch of a four square mile section of London, including twelve major landmarks and two hundred other buildings after a twelve minute helicopter ride through the area. For any date you pick, the "human computers" Kay and Fro can report what they had for dinner, what they did on that day, what weekday it was, what their favorite TV-host wore on that day, and so on. Oliver Sack's autistic twins John and Michael computed prime numbers with more than 6 digits. The real rain man Kim Peeks was a living encyclopedia. There is currently no widely accepted explanation of the superhuman abilities of savants. What we do know is that most of them are synesthetes or autists and have left-brain injuries and particularly well-developed right-brain areas. Neurobiologist Stanislas Dehaene has proposed that savant synesthetes don't really differ that much from the rest of us. He claims that what distinguishes a mathematical genius from a normal person is an obsession with numbers and lots and lots of training. I provide empirical evidence against this hypothesis and offer a new theory of how savant synesthetes manage to complete ostensively impossible tasks.

Sartre and de Beauvoir Course

2011-04-30T00:11:00.003-05:00

I am teaching a cross-listed undergrad/grad Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre course this summer. The course is taught virtually and also includes some face-to-face meetings in August. Sign up now, if you are interested. The course numbers are: PHIL 4410 and 5410.

Color Workshop and Conference

2011-04-26T11:18:00.003-05:00

The deadline for early career participants in our deviant color workshop and conference in Vancouver in August has been extended. Go ahead and apply.

Can Time Slow Down?

2011-04-25T11:07:00.001-05:00

Inception and Philosophy

2011-04-20T19:50:00.000-05:00

Presentism and Cross-Temporal Relations

2011-04-01T12:37:00.004-05:00

I just finished a first draft of a new paper on presentism and cross-temporal relations. If you have any comments, feel free to email them to me at brogaardb@gmail.com

CFP: The 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association

2011-03-26T07:19:00.004-05:00

As tradition has it, the university of the President of the Central States Philosophical Association hosts the annual meetings. So, the 2011 meeting will take place in my current hometown St. Louis. Our excellent Vice President, Paul Weirich, Curators' Professor at University of Missouri, Columbia, has just issued the following call for papers:

Central States Philosophical Association (CSPA) 2011 Call for Papers

The 2011 Central States Philosophical Association meeting, hosted by the University of Missouri–St. Louis, will take place at:

The Moonrise Hotel, 6177 Delmar, St. Louis, MO 63112
September 15–17, 2011

Keynote Speakers: John Hawthorne (University of Oxford) and John Doris (Washington University)

You need not be a member of an institution in the central states area to participate. Colloquium papers in any area of philosophy are welcome. Submissions dealing with aspects of John Hawthorne's or John Doris’s work are encouraged. Papers are limited to 3,000 words. All submissions must include on the title page, author information, a word count for the paper, and an abstract (not longer than 150 words). The title page and the paper should be submitted as separate documents. No author-identifying references should appear in the paper. Both the title page and the paper should be submitted as RTF or PDF files.

The program will include panels on these topics:
(1) The value problem in epistemology
(2) Mind: Physicalism vs. non-physicalism
(3) Metaphysics: Natural kinds
(4) Intrinsic value
(5) Causation
(6) Risk

To join a panel, submit a brief proposal of no more than 500 words that advances a point about the panel’s topic. Include a title page in a separate document with author information and the proposal’s word count, and submit both the proposal, prepared for blind reviewing, and the title page as RTF or PDF files. Submitting a panel proposal in addition to colloquium paper is permissible, but at most one will be accepted.

The deadline for submissions is: May 31, 2011.

Submissions should be sent to Leo Yan at: lhybnd@mail.mizzou.edu. Responses to submissions will be sent by July 31, 2011.

Suggestions for commentators and sessions chairs (including self-nominations) are welcome. Information about the meeting’s banquet will be sent out in July.

Suggestions and questions regarding the program should be directed to Paul Weirich at: weirichp@missouri.edu

Questions concerning local arrangements should be directed to Brit Brogaard at: brogaardb@gmail.com

Male-Only Volumes and a Confession

2011-03-10T11:43:00.006-06:00

Brian Weatherson recently called attention to a debate about female representations in volumes and at conferences. Over at TAR, he writes:

Andy Egan and I have (very slowly) put together a collection of papers on epistemic modals and epistemic modality, and it is coming out with OUP this spring. The collection isn’t perfect; it should have come out ages ago, and contributor list is missing a certain something [i.e., female contributors], but we hope it’s a valuable addition to the literature. I’ll hopefully write more about this closer to publication, especially about what I wish I’d done differently along the way to publication.

Interesting discussion of these issues can be found here.

As I say in my reply to the blog post. I don't want to defend male-only volumes (of course). But, as I say there, in some cases, it is difficult to get women to contribute. On average, an Oxford M&E volume has only 10% contributors. I am not sure whether that reflects the number of women working in M&E. There are 20% women employed in US departments. But they don't all work in M&E. So, I am not sure whether 10% is good or bad. No-women volumes are clearly a bad thing. But the editor is not always to blame.

I also have a confession to make: I actually reviewed Egan and Weatherson's volume proposal for Oxford and regrettedly did not point out that there weren't any female contributors. A friend and former colleague of mine, who is currently employed by a top-university department, has made a habit out of pointing out to the publisher that a volume she is asked to referee should not be published if it does not have a reasonable number of female contributions. I will adhere to her stricter and higher ethical standards in the future.

Don't be Nervous When You Present Your Ideas. They are NOT You

2011-02-25T23:40:00.005-06:00

This advice from Kai Von Fintel is gold. I particularly love this statement:

That work was written by a previous time slice of myself that I do not anymore have any privileged access to or even a strong emotional bond with.

I'll second that. Here is another so-true statement -- this time from Geoff Pullum. He offers a good reason why you shouldn't be nervous when you present your ideas. This is a (re-)quote from Kai's site.

REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE AN ADVOCATE, NOT THE DEFENDANT. It’s your idea that’s being presented, not you. The reason for not feeling nervous is that you are not what’s up for consideration... This isn’t about you

Agreed. No skin in the game!

More or Less: Varieties of Human Cortical Color Vision

2011-02-11T21:09:00.007-06:00

Philosophers, neurophysiologists, psychologists and researchers within the cognitive sciences are warmly invited to attend the conference and to submit posters. The conference will be held at Simon Fraser University Harbour Center in Vancouver on August 5-7, 2011.

The focus of this conference is "colour beyond the retina", both the normal neurophysiology of human cortical colour mechanisms and a variety of cortical color 'anomalies', in particular:

* Cerebral Achromatopsia
* Color Synaesthesias
* Color Blindsight
* Cortical Color Development

Early career researchers and graduate students are invited to apply for a two day intensive workshop held prior to the conference. The workshop will take place on August 4-5, 2011.

Confirmed Speakers and Workshop Leaders Include

Morten Overgaard (Aarhus University)
Fred Kingdom (McGill University)
Qasim Zaidi (SUNY State College of Optometry)
Charles Heywood (Durham University)
Bob Kentridge (Durham University)
Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin)
Austen Clark (UConn)
Jon Opie (University of Adelaide)
Berit Brogaard (University of Missouri at St. Louis)
Tony Ro (CUNY)
Dan Smilek (University of Waterloo)
Julia Simner (University of Edinburgh)
Kathy Mullen (McGill University)
Alex Byrne (MIT)
Roy Sorensen (Washington University, St. Louis)

For a complete list of confirmed speakers, click HERE.

This conference is funded by The James S. McDonnell Foundation.

The Neuroscience of Inception

2011-02-03T15:38:00.003-06:00

I just finished a popular article called "The Mad Neuroscience of Inception". It's available here.

Vision for Action and the Contents of Perception

2011-01-30T20:10:00.004-06:00

I have now uploaded a copy of this paper on vision for action and the contents of perception to my website. The paper is forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy.

Call for Book Proposals: Studies in Brain and Mind

2011-01-28T17:16:00.005-06:00

Studies in Brain and Mind is a Springer book series. It covers all areas in which philosophy and neuroscience intersect: philosophy of mind, philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of psychiatry, neurophilosophy, and neuroethics.

Under the previous editor, John Bickle, the series published several high quality books. The series is now being relaunched with a new Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Gualtiero Piccinini, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Editorial Board:

Berit Brogaard (UM St Louis)
Carl Craver (Wash U)
Eduoard Machery (Pitt)
Oron Shagrir (Hebrew University in Jerusalem)
Mark Sprevak (Edinburgh U)

The series aim to publish technical books for an academic audience of graduate students and up. The new editor and the board see the series as a great opportunity for the field, providing a venue for specialists as well as junior authors. Some high quality book projects are too specialized or their authors are too junior for other publishers. Studies in Mind and Brain fills this gap. The hope is to make Studies in Brain and Mind an excellent addition to the development of interdisciplinary research in philosophy and neuroscience.

Every book published in the series will be available simultaneously in print and as an e-book in SpringerLink. If a library has purchased the Springer e-book package, visitors of the library are able to download these PDF’s for free or order a paperback for Euro: 24.95 / USD 24,95.

The series aims for a high level of clarity, rigor, novelty, and scientific competence. Book proposals and complete manuscripts of 200 or more pages are welcome. Initial proposals can be sent to Gualtiero Piccinini at piccininig@umsl.edu.

For more information, see the Series website or contact Dr. Piccinini.

Virtue Epistemology and Other Spring 2011 Courses

2011-01-27T13:06:00.004-06:00

I have had a few inquires about the courses I am teaching this semester. This is a re-posting of the list. I have added the virtue epistemology course description.

1. Sexual Ethics (Big lecture course, freshmen and sophomore, satisfies the GEN ED requirement and the humanities requirement, cross-listed with the gender studies program)

2. Virtue Epistemology (upper-level undergraduate and graduate course in philosophy)

3. Biological Bases of Behavior (graduate course in neuropsychology)

Course description for virtue epistemology:

Unlike other directions in epistemology, virtue epistemology takes epistemology to be a normative discipline. On this view, epistemology is a central component of value theory. The opposing position in epistemology is naturalized epistemology that proposes to abandon the classical project of analyzing knowledge and to look at how people actually reason and form beliefs and memories instead. The key concepts of virtue epistemology are the concepts of the intellectual role model and intellectual virtues. Epistemic norms, epistemic values and epistemic reasons are derivative concepts, typically defined in terms of the concepts of an intellectual role model or intellectual virtues. In this course we will evaluate a range of virtue-theoretical approaches to epistemic concepts. Our aim is to reach a level of expertise at which we can determine whether some form of virtue epistemology both can withstand all the classical challenges in epistemology and is empirically sound.

Graduate Admissions

2011-01-27T13:01:00.003-06:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am now director of graduate studies and the chair of the admissions committee. So, if you have any questions about applying to the graduate program at UM-SL,feel free to send me an email: brogaardb@gmail.com.

Synesthesia and Savant Syndrome

2011-01-26T20:49:00.004-06:00

Synesthesia is sometimes connected with special talents. For example, some people with synesthesia are excellent artists or good with numbers. Some have what is called 'savant syndrome'. Savant syndrome is often accompanied by autism but it can also be acquired after an accident or an assault or by (what seems to be) sheer coincidence. If you think you have a special talent that was not the result of years of training, or you think you have synesthesia and a special talent, you may qualify for our research project about synesthesia and savant syndrome. To find out if you qualify, take the survey linked to below, or send an email to: brogaardb@umsl.edu. You need not live in St. Louis to participate.

Click here to take the survey

Call for Papers, Philosophy of Mind Graduate Conference

2011-01-20T15:03:00.006-06:00

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

6th Annual Gateway Graduate Conference, April 8-10, 2011

The Philosophers’ Forum at the University of Missouri, St. Louis invites submissions of high quality graduate student papers to our 6th annual Gateway conference. This year’s topic is Introspection, broadly construed. Possible areas relevant to this topic include philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of religion.

Keynote Speaker:

Eric Schwitzgebel (UC-Riverside)

Extended Submission Deadline: March 1, 2011

Submission Guidelines:

Please prepare your paper for blind review by sending two separate attachments to 2011UMSLGRAD@GMAIL.COM:

First attachment, the cover letter:

author’s name
title of paper
institutional affiliation
contact information (email, phone number, mailing address)
word count
an abstract of the paper (less than 500 words)

Second attachment, the paper:

Suitable for a 25-30 minute presentation (less than 4,500 words, should not contain any personal information

Report on Acquired Synesthesia and Savant Syndrome

2011-01-13T15:30:00.003-06:00

I just finished an initial report on a case of acquired synesthesia and savant syndrome. The report is available here.

Accidental Genius

2011-01-11T13:23:00.003-06:00

Here is a follow-up news clip about a subject I work with, who has synesthesia and savant syndrome. The first news clip can be found here.

Synesthesia Water Color

2011-01-08T19:17:00.008-06:00

Alex Heim, a synesthete who also has migraine auras, just sent me this water color of one of his synesthetic auras. The second picture is the water color digitally superimposed on a picture to show how the colors are in front of his vision but not blocking it out. The second picture was also created by Alex Heim.

Synesthesia and Non-Synesthesia Subjects

2010-12-30T04:31:00.004-06:00

I am now looking for people with number-color synesthesia for spatial response time tests. You don't have to be located in the St. Louis area to take these tests.

I am also looking for non-synesthetes for an fMRI study that will be carried out at Washington University, St. Louis. The scan will take 2 hours and you will be asked to complete some rather trivial tasks (e.g. studying a photo) while inside the machine.

fMRI is a non-invasive procedure that measures changes in blood flow corresponding to activity in the brain. Radio waves redirect the axes of spinning protons in a strong magnetic field that is produced by passing an electric current through wire coils. A computer processes the signals and generates a series of images.

The procedure does not depend on ionizing radiation, there is no radiation exposure, and short-term exposure to magnetic fields and radio waves is considered harmless. fMRI scans therefore have no known side-effects and are not associated with any discomfort.

Only very few people should not get an fMRI. These include people who may be pregnant, people with whole-body tattoos and people with an internal defibrillator or pacemaker, an ear implant or clips on brain aneurysms. Platinum implants in other parts of the body do not compromise your safety during the procedure.

To qualify for this study, you must be located in the St. Louis area or be willing to travel to the St. Louis area. If you are interested, please email me at: brogaardb@umsl.edu

My Paper on Unconscious Perceptual Processes

2010-12-15T12:21:00.002-06:00

The official link to my paper "Are there unconscious perceptual processes?" is now up. The paper manuscript is available in full on my homepage.

Drawing of a Migraine Aura

2010-12-14T20:28:00.006-06:00

Alex Heim is a synesthete who also has migraine auras. He just sent me this drawing of one of his migraine auras.

Short Film on Synesthesia

2010-12-14T10:44:00.003-06:00

One of the young synesthetic savants I work with in Australia just created this film on synesthesia.

New Synaesthesia Survey

2010-12-02T06:19:00.006-06:00

I have uploaded a new synaesthesia survey to our synaesthesia page. The results of the survey will be used to improve the design of our synaesthesia studies at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

If you are a synaestete, and you are interested in contributing to our ongoing synaesthesia studies, you can take our advanced synaesthesia survey by clicking below.

Click here to take our advanced synaesthesia survey

If you are interested in becoming a participant in our studies at the University of Missouri, St. Louis but you are not sure if you qualify, we have created a survey that will allow us to determine whether you do. The only required information is your email address. You do not have to be located in St. Louis to qualify.

Click here to take the basic survey

If you have migraine and synaesthesia, you can take our migraine survey by clicking here.

Philosophy and Psychology Courses Spring 2011

2010-10-28T12:06:00.006-05:00

Here is the list of courses I will be teaching/involved in for Spring 2011. I will also be the graduate director of philosophy, starting January 2011, and I will continue my board membership on the gender studies program. So, feel free to come to my office to talk to me about these courses. We are still deciding on the readings. The sexual ethics course is only open to undergraduate students for credit. Some graduate students have expressed interest in sitting in on it. You are very welcome to do that.

1. Sexual Ethics (Big lecture course, freshmen and sophomore, GEN ED, cross-listed with the gender studies program)

2. Virtue Epistemology (upper-level undergraduate and graduate course in philosophy)

3. Biological Bases of Behavior (graduate course in neuropsychology)

Synaesthesia Subjects

2010-10-27T08:53:00.005-05:00

We are still looking for additional color synaestetes for our ongoing synaesthesia project. We are currently studying higher synaesthetes with thought-induced color experiences. If thinking about the number 3 or the letter D almost always induces green (or some other color), you may be a higher color synaesthete and may qualify for our study. Other higher synaesthetes that may qualify include people who experience color when reasoning or making decisions, people who experience color when judging whether an act or a person is good or bad, and people who experience color when they consciously feel shame or fear. If you have other sensory experiences during thought-processes or conscious feelings, such as taste experiences or sound experiences, we would also like to hear from you. You need not be located in St. Louis to qualify. If you think you may qualify, contact the St. Louis Synaesthesia Research Group via email at brogaardb@umsl.edu

A Dialogue with Gualtiero Piccinini on Philosophy and Neuroscience

2010-10-19T10:47:00.007-05:00

Gualtiero: Until recently, you were known for armchair philosophizing
and not at all for empirical research. Could you briefly explain how
you became interested in doing empirical research and what your current empirical projects are?

Brit: Actually, I started out in the sciences. I have a 5-year M.S. in neuroscience from University of Copenhagen and The Danish National Hospital. My research was on neurotransmitters, specifically glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). As a hormone, GLP-1 stimulates insulin-secreting cells. As a neurotransmitter, it modulates stress and anxiety. I was, and still am, very interested in mood disorders,so I really loved this project. But owing to a terrifying event described in the personal information section of my website, I decided to go to graduate school in philosophy. I already had degrees in philosophy and linguistics as well. One of my main areas of specialization in philosophy was, and still is, philosophy of language. Philosophy of language by its very nature is a very empirical area of philosophy.

Philosophy of language by its very nature is a very empirical area of philosophy.

We look at what the linguists do, and they look at what we do. But you are right. Until recently I didn't design my own experiments or studies. My interest in designing my own studies was sparked by a series of events taking place around the time of my divorce. To deal with the consequences of these events, I felt that I had to expand on my knowledge of the brain. Another coincidence sparked my interest in synesthesia. I am now testing for unconscious color processing in 40 higher synestetes. Owing to a nice McDonnell grant, Kathleen Akins and I will be able to host a workshop on abnormal color vision (synesthesia, acromatopsia, color blindsight, etc) next year in Vancouver. I am also working on a large project about the effects of personality assessments on judgments of intentional action. That project started out as a response to Knobe. My third project is on blindsight and will be done in collaboration with a team of researchers in Europe.

Your own work seems to be heavily inspired by empirical research. What are your current projects and how did you become interested in them?

Gualtiero: Wow, I didn't know you had such a scientific background. Now I understand why you know so much neuroscience! A coincidence: I have acromatopsia, so if you decide to work on that topic, you can use me as a subject.

As to my research, I have three main projects. The first is on what constitutes concrete computation—what distinguishes things that compute from things that don't. This is relevant to many sciences: computer science, computational psychology and neuroscience, and even physics. The second is on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience into a unified explanation of cognition. It piggybacks on the first project, because both psychology and neuroscience give computational explanations of cognition. Once we are clear on how computational explanation works, we should be in a better position to say how psychology and neuroscience go together. The third project is on the legitimacy of data from first-person reports (and other "first-person data") in psychology and neuroscience. I argue that this kind of data is scientifically legitimate because such data are actually public data—the outcome of a process of self-measurement on the part of the subject.

But while my work is deeply engaged with various sciences, I don't do any experiments, whereas you do. How hard was it for you to start designing and conducting experiments on your own? Did your prior scientific training prepare for it or or did you need extra help? And do you now consider yourself a philosopher, a scientist, or both?

Brit: I didn't know you had acromatopsia. I certainly will be working on that topic sooner or later. To begin with your last question, I consider myself both a philosopher and a neuroscientist. I have the sufficient background for designing studies and experiments and know statistics pretty well. But I must confess that I still get help with the statistics part. Statistics is hard. Kathleen Akins calls herself a neurophilosopher.

I think neuroscience is hard, just about as hard as good philosophy.

I don't call myself that. I still do some armchair philosophy. I also draw heavily on other people's empirical results in my work on psycholinguistics and philosophy of language. When I think about neuroscience, I am a neuroscientist. But I think I have an advantage. Because I am a philosopher, I am used to come up with counterexamples (that's what we do, right?). So, when I design studies or look at data, it is very easy for me to spot alternative hypotheses and to come up with ways of ruling them out. I think neuroscience is hard, just about as hard as good philosophy.

Did you ever consider doing empirical experiments or studies on your own or in collaboration with others? Why? Why not?

Gualtiero: I usually don't consider doing experiments, mostly because I'm already busy enough with what I'm doing. But I do have a little bit of relevant experience.

For my undergraduate honors' thesis, I designed and conducted a fairly serious piece of experimental cognitive psychology.

For my undergraduate honors' thesis, I designed and conducted a fairly serious piece of experimental cognitive psychology. At the time I wanted to become a cognitive psychologist, but later I decided to go back into philosophy.

I found it interesting that you don't consider yourself a neurophilosopher. Me neither, because to me neurophilosophy sounds too much like picking your favorite neuroscience papers and putting a "philosophical" spin on them. I think of myself as a philosopher of mind and of the sciences of mind. How about you; why don't you
consider yourself a neurophilosopher? You also don't seem to consider yourself an experimental philosopher. Why? Experimental philosophy seems to be all the rage. Why aren't you jumping on the bandwagon?

Brit: Well, strictly speaking, my intentional action project falls under the category of "experimental philosophy". But I am not sure I think the field ought to be called "experimental philosophy". As far as I am concerned, it's social psychology. Hopefully over time I will be able to add a neuroscientific touch to my project on intentional action. But right now, I don't see the difference between that project and other similar projects in social psychology. To say that what
other people call "experimental philosophy" really is social psychology is not to say that it has no philosophical relevance.

What
other people call "experimental philosophy" really is social psychology.

It certainly does. I think that some of the results, as far as they hold up, cast some doubt on some of the armchair characterizations of the notion of intentional action. I also think philosophers, to the extent that they have sufficient training in designing experiments, can bring new advances to this particular area of social psychology.

I agree with you about your characterization of neurophilosophy. I prefer to just think of myself as working in two distinct areas: neuroscience and philosophy. The theories I advance in neuroscience are, of course, inspired by my work in philosophy of mind, and vice versa. Discoveries in neuroscience can provide counterexamples to theories in philosophy of mind. But philosophy of mind also provides us with results which neuroscience cannot give us. For example, neuroscience as it is currently carried out cannot give us an answer to the question of what consciousness is. Neuroscience, however, can provide an answer to the question of what the correlates of consciousness are. So, both areas have an important role to play.

What is your take on the new experimental turn in philosophy? And how do you think results in neuroscience can influence theories in philosophy of mind, and vice versa?

Gualtiero: I agree with you on experimental philosophy. I'm always glad when people try to back up their theories with empirical evidence, especially given that some philosophers tend to trust their intuitions too much. If philosophers have the expertise and resources to collect their own data, more power to them. That being said, some experimental philosophers tend to exaggerate the consequences of their theories, as if a couple of simple experiments could easily and directly refute all kinds of theories. Testing theories is harder than some experimental philosophers seem to think.

Even worse, too many philosophers, including philosophers of mind, still act as though empirical evidence is irrelevant to their theories.

Too many philosophers, including philosophers of mind, still act as though empirical evidence is irrelevant to their theories.

Occasionally this is true, but many times it's not. And since the mind is a product of the nervous system, it should be blindingly obvious that neuroscience and philosophy of mind have much to learn from each other. Philosophy of mind should look at what is known about the nervous system to constrain its theories, while neuroscience can take much inspiration from philosophical theories about the mind.

This has happened before, by the way. For example Warren McCulloch, a pioneer of computationalism, was a neurophysiologist and psychiatrist but also studied a lot of philosophy. His project was to explain intentionality and knowledge in neuroscientific terms. He didn't quite succeed, but he did make a strikingly innovative proposal that transformed the whole field. If we are going to improve on our current understanding of the mind-brain, we would do well to emulate McCulloch and study both philosophy and neuroscience.

Why Your Children Need Professors With Tenure

2010-10-07T12:21:00.006-05:00

By Cary Nelson

If you follow the news these days, you know that tenure is getting a bad rap. Fox News in particular will tell you that tenure shields radicals who are trying to indoctrinate your children to overthrow the government. In truth, it's hard to find any faculty member sending that message. No matter. It's a good scare tactic. But even the responsible press prefers editorials and op-ed essays claiming that tenure protects deadwood, preserves an aging professoriate, and costs too much money. Although each of those claims can be proved wrong, they have gained traction anyway.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education. Read the rest of this article

Central States Philosophical Association 2010

2010-09-08T19:10:00.004-05:00

The program and the registration form for the 2010 meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association in Detroit are now available for download. Here is a quick overview of the program:

Thursday Afternoon September 23, Values and Conventions

1:00 Iddo Landau (Haifa): Meaningfulness, Meaninglessness and Unmeaningfulness: Did Hitler Have a Meaningful Life?

3:00 Natasha N. Liebig (South Florida): The Flash of Being: Vision, Speaking, and Place in Process Ontology as Seen Through Foucault

4:00 Marija Jankovic (Indiana): The Intentional Underpinnings of Convention

Thursday Afternoon September 23, Epistemology

2:00 David Alexander (Iowa State): Inferential Internalism and the Argument from Responsible Belief

3:00 Jonathan Hecht (San Diego State): How Skeptics Live Their Lives
Commentator: Bruce Dutra (Mott)

4:00 Tim Kakos (Northern Illinois): Knowledge and Multi-Premise Closure

Thursday Afternoon September 23, Ethics

1:00 Robyn R. Gaier (Saint Louis): Autism and Moral Indifference: Uncovering a False Dichotomy

2:00 Bertha Alvarez Manninen (Arizona State West): What did "Octomom" do wrong?: Exploring the ethics of fertility treatments

3:00 Howard Nye (Alberta): Harming as a Side-Effect Versus Benefiting at Someone’s Expense

4:00 Eric Reitan (Oklahoma State): Avoiding the Personhood Issue: Abortion, Identity, and Marquis's 'Future Like Ours' Argument

Friday Morning September 24, Mind

9:30 Eric Hiddleston (Wayne State): A Counterexample to Kim’s Account of Reductive Explanation

10:30 Gordon Knight (Iowa State): Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Mind

11:30 Donald Sievert (Iowa): Witgenstein's Vexation with Color Incompatibility
David Stern

Friday Morning September 24, Epistemology

9:30 Brendan Murday (Ithaca College): The Problem of the Criterion: Methodism and Higher Order Epistemic Constraints

10:30 John Turri (Waterloo): Unreliable Knowledge

11:30 Kok Yong Lee (Missouri-Columbia): On the Distinctive Value of Knowledge

Friday Morning September 24, Rights and Values

9:30: Philip M. Mouch (Minnesota State University Moorhead): Open Adoption Records: Privacy Rights vs. Equal Rights?

10:30 Tyler Paytas (WashU): Locating Normativity in Human Rights: A Defense of Naturalistic Theories

11:30 Scott Forschler (Minneapolis): The Formula of Universal Law is Heteronomous

Friday Afternoon, September 24, Metaphysics

2:00 Valia Allori (Northern Illinois): Do Particles have Free Will?

3:00 David Goldman (UCLA): Modification of the Reactive Attitudes

4:00 William A. Bauer (North Carolina State): Priority Monism and Extrinsic Properties

Friday Afternoon, September 24, Epistemology

2:00 Peter Murphy (Indianapolis): Epistemic Descent Principles

3:00 Ted Poston (South Alabama): A Coherentist Account of Reasons

4:00 Michael Shaffer (St. Cloud): Pragmatic Encroachment Penalized: Five Yard Penalty ... Repeat First Down

Friday Afternoon September 24, Value and Deliberation

2:00 Amanda Roth (Michigan): Dynamic Deliberation of Ends

3:00 Kathleen Dougherty (College of Notre Dame of Maryland): Commitment, Identity and Risk

4:00 Hallie Liberto (Wisconsin): Organ Sales and the Commodification Objection

Evening: Bruce Russell's presidential address: In Defense of Non-doxastic, Deontic Foundationalism
Chair: Vice President Berit Brogaard (Missouri)

Saturday Morning September 25, Metaphysics

9:30 Majid Amini (Virginia State): Is the Maximal God Free of Paradox?

10:30 Eric Kraemer (Wisconsin, La Crosse) Proper Functions and their Natural and Divine Designers

11:30 Bruce Dutra (Mott): Theism and the Concept of the Greatest Possible Being

Saturday Morning September 25, Epistemology

9:30 Andrew Moon (Missouri-Columbia): Beliefs Do Not Come in Degrees

10:30 Shawn Graves (Cedarville): Defending the Equal Weight View from Some Problem Cases

11:30: Andrew Spear (Grand Valley State): Metajustification, Skepticism and the A Priori

Saturday Morning September 25, Language, Epistemology and Mind

9:30 Yu Izumi (Maryland, College Park): On a theory of descriptions in articleless languages

10:30 Ali Hasan (Iowa): Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism

11:30 David G. Stern (Iowa): Wittgenstein and the Inverted Spectrum

Saturday Afternoon September 25, Mind

1:00 Irwin Goldstein (Davidson): The Mental is not Physical

2:00 Rocco Gennaro (Southern Indiana): Conceptualism and the Richness Argument

3:00 Mark Steen (Saint Louis): Jesus and Mary: Why Christians Should not Believe in Non-Physical Qualia

Saturday Afternoon September 25, Metaphysics

1:00 Molly Gardner (Wisconsin): Time Travelers Who Kill Their Younger Selves: They’re Closer Than You Think

2:00 Irem Kurtsal Steen (Missouri): Almost Ontology: Why Epistemicism Cannot Help Us Defend Restricted Composition

3:00 Ben Caplan (Ohio): Brutal Counting

Saturday Afternoon September 25, Metaphysics and Ethics

1:00 Jeffrey Snapper (Notre Dame): Why the Vagueness Argument is Unsound

2:00 Dustin Nelson (Tennessee – Knoxville): Character and Moral Luck

3:00 Matt Flummer (Missouri): If I were in the Shoes of a Non-Cognitivist, I would Plan on Being a Classical Expressivist: An Evaluation of Gibbard's Plans

4:40 Jim Pryor (Keynote Address): Hypothetical Oughts
Chair: President Bruce Russell

Call for Commentators CSPA

2010-08-09T15:14:00.002-05:00

If you are interested in commenting on a paper or chairing a session at the 2010 meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association at Wayne State in Detroit on September 23-25, please drop me an email.

G. E. Moore Philosophy Music at Syracuse 2010

2010-08-03T18:50:00.004-05:00

Kris McDaniel, Carrie Jenkins and Ben Bradley

Philosophy Music at Syracuse 2010

2010-08-03T13:22:00.002-05:00

Ben Bradley, Kris McDaniel and Carrie Jenkins (Photographer: Bob Van Gulick)

Freelance Writing: FAQ

2010-07-30T15:56:00.007-05:00

I have received multiple questions from students about LIVESTRONG.com and freelance writing. I don't have time to answer every single one, but here are some answers to frequently asked questions.

Is LIVESTRONG.com a for-profit site or a non-profit site?

It is a for-profit site, making donations to cancer research.

Is LIVESTRONG.com associated with LIVESTRONG.org?

Yes, but LIVESTRONG.org is a non-profit site

Is LIVESTRONG affiliated with Lance Armstrong?

Yes, LIVESTRONG is also known as "The Lance Armstrong Foundation." Armstrong remains closely connected with both sites. He started LIVESTRONG.org as a site in support of people with cancer.

Are the writers on LIVESTRONG professional writers?

Yes, they write for money. To write for LIVESTRONG.com Health or LIVESTRONG.com Nutrition you must have a medical degree or an M.S. in a medical field.

Are the articles on LIVESTRONG.com reviewed?

Yes, they are reviewed by editors who have at least five years experience editing for a print publication.

If I don't get into graduate school in philosophy, can I make a living as a freelance writer?

Yes, but I strongly recommend that you supplement your degree with an M.S. in a medical field. You will make more money.

How do you know what to write about?

You will get an assignment or a title to write to, or you can send a pitch letter to an editor.

Do I need a published article to be considered as a freelance writer for a popular magazine or ezine?

No, but you will need a well-written article, written in the style of the publication you want to write for.

How do you find your sources for health-related publications?

Articles published in top medical, nutrition or neuroscience journals are the best resources. You can then contact the media person at a university listed in the "affiliations" section of the article and ask if she has a news release that you might have overlooked. If she does, she will send it to you or provide a link. That's her job. If she doesn't, ask her if she can arrange a phone conversation with one of the authors of the paper.

Do you have to learn how to write for popular publications?

Yes, lots of know-how. The explicit rules are simple. Use an active but authoritative voice. Avoid passive tense. Avoid the dummy phrase "to be." Avoid empty phrases. Don't state unsupported facts or anything that is not common knowledge. Find a source to "blame" it on. Unless you article is strictly informative (e.g., How is a Frontal Lobe Meningioma Diagnosed?), use a surprising or strong, supported fact or a catchy anecdote as your first sentence. Actually, a strong beginning is recommendable even if your article is strictly informative. Never write "this article is about ..." But do convey why the reader should continue reading. Why is this important? Hint at how you are going to address the problem. Then practice practice practice.

Why Men are Never Depressed

2010-07-29T08:33:00.002-05:00

(Thanks to Hugh Mellor for sending this)

Your last name stays put.
 The garage is all yours.
Wedding plans take care of themselves.
 Chocolate is just another snack.
 You can never be pregnant.
 Car mechanics tell you the truth.
The world is your urinal.
You don't have to stop and think which way to  turn a nut on a bolt.
Same work, more pay.
 Wrinkles add character.
 Wedding dress £5000; DJ rental £200.
People never stare at your chest when you're  talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
One mood all the time.
Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
You know stuff about tanks. 
A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
Your underwear is cheap.
 You almost never have strap problems in public.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
 Everything on your face stays its original colour.
The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
You only have to shave your face and neck.
You can play with toys all your life.
One wallet and one pair of shoes in one colour for all seasons.
You can trim your nails with a pocket knife.
 You can choose whether to grow a moustache.
You can do Christmas shopping for 25 people in 25 minutes on 24 December.

Philosophy Student Reflects on his Weight Loss

2010-07-28T23:09:00.003-05:00

My former student Adam Taylor reflects on his 156 pounds weight loss here.

Growing Up

2010-07-27T08:10:00.001-05:00

Some people grow up a lot slower than others. I am one of them. But I am starting to grow up. I think growing up, in part, means learning not to do the things you just hate doing (and can easily avoid). I have always hated organized conference lunches. The super-amazing conference organizers here at the SPAWN conference have organized the most fantastic lunches at the most fantastic and damn tasty restaurants. For most people, that's heaven, true paradise. Who wouldn't want yummy food surrounded by the world's most brilliant minds and mind-blowing (literally) conversations about your favorite topics? Well, not me. Don't get me wrong. I want the conversations and the yummy food. But conference lunches generally irritate me. Like A LOT. You leave the conference site, hurry down to a great restaurant, start a rock-the-foundations-of-the-world conversation. Then 10 minutes into the conversation, food is served. You forget to eat because Kit Fine is in the middle of proving an incredible (and I mean "INcredible") result in his new semantics for counterfactuals. Then someone reminds you that the next session starts in 10 minutes. So, you never see the final steps of the proof, you stuff yourself quickly with half of the food on your plate (who would want to let great food go to waste, right?), and then you get a tummy ache and almost fall asleep in the next session because you over-stuffed yourself, or you can't concentrate on the talk, because that damn proof that seemed so irritatingly sound is running through your mind like a sprint runner at the Olympics. So, YES, I do know that today's lunch restaurant is AppeTHAIzing. This is the place that's supposed to serve this yummy, formidable, dynamite Thai food (I guess you got the point). But I am not going! Not today. I am growing up.

New Consciousness Paper

2010-07-23T20:18:00.001-05:00

I have made my paper for the Syracuse SPAWN conference temporarily available here. I am sure it will undergo drastic changes after the conference.

Color Experience in Blindsight?

2010-07-22T20:16:00.003-05:00

I have a new paper called "Color Experience in Blindsight?" It's a semi-protected link, so Google search engines won't pick up on it. If you are interested, please go ahead and take a look at it. The link will be fully public, when I am done making little alterations (very little, as the proofs are on their way).

There's Something about Mary

2010-07-21T21:23:00.002-05:00

Cross posting from Sick Love

From my newest blog: There's Something about Mary: The Princess Diaries

The fairytale began on September 16 2000 when Mary Donaldson, an ordinary Australian girl, met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark at Merivale's Slip Inn in Sydney during the Summer Olympics.

Three years later the Australian beauty and the crown prince decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. On October 2003 after a long-distance relationship, a short stay in Paris and a number of private visits to Denmark, Mary and Frederik got engaged. Read the rest of this post >>

Stupid People Deserve What They Get

2010-07-17T17:33:00.003-05:00

That's the title of my paper responding to Joshua Knobe. The paper argues for personality effects in judging intentional action. It's available here.

About Color Vision

2010-07-14T03:34:00.004-05:00

The distribution of cone types, types of cells in the retina that detect different wavelengths of light, varies greatly among different individuals, says University of Rochester professor David Williams. Williams and his team used a laser-based system to catch images of the retinas of living humans. While the study participants picked nearly the same "best example" of yellow from color samples, the cones that detect red, green and yellow were sometimes richly dispersed across the retina and sometimes barely present. The divergence was 40:1. "That points to some kind of normalization or auto-calibration mechanism [...] that balances the colors for you no matter what the hardware is", says team member Heidi Hofer. Read the rest of this article >>

Working Your Way Up

2010-07-06T16:57:00.004-05:00

There is something to be said for working your way up, starting as the coffee boy and ending up as the CEO of the company. The idea of working your way up also stands for all the things I was raised to dislike as I grew up in Copenhagen.

In a welfare country like Denmark, you get an education, then you get a job. In theory, you cannot work your way up to anything. Of course, there are raises, promotions and prizes, but starting out as the copy girl and ending up as the editor-in-chief at a major publishing house is practically unheard of.

Working your way up is also foreign to the philosophy arena in the US. There are, admittedly, some philosophers who have worked their way up in terms of where they publish, who they hang out with, or where they work. Graduating from Syracuse University and ending up at Oxford and Princeton, John Hawthorne is an excellent example of someone who has worked his way up. But it's rare. It's rare to hear of someone who starts out at Crackpot Community College in Southern Mississippi and ends up at Jackpot Ivy League University in Manhattan.

The philosophy profession inadvertently borrows some of its ideas from European royalty and aristocracy. You are either born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or you are not. If you are not, you can marry your way in. Or if you are very ambitious and very lucky, you can get hired as, say, Princess Mary's fashion consultant and make your way into the inner circle, get invited to their parties and be seen with her eating lunch at upscale vegan cafes in Copenhagen. But fashion consultants don't become royalty. Like the crown prince couple's best friends from high school and college, they just hang out with them, get media attention and a taste of life in a castle.

Unlike the real castles, the philosophy profession's castles have a few loopholes that make it possible for a few of the fashion consultants and college friends of the philosophical royalty to slip through the cracks. Tenacity, strategic planning and a good portion of luck can increase your chances. Luck is an uncontrollable factor but the rest of the recipe goes like this. Keep a finger on the pulse, find out about the royalty's research interest and concentrate on those areas, publish in the journals approved by the royalty, cite the royalty's work extensively, do not criticize the royalty, criticize those the royalty criticizes, find out where the royalty hangs out, present your work at those events, become their fans and supporters. The recipe is no surefire route to success but it helps. There are other little secrets to success, which I will save for another post.

But back to working your way up. The recipe I just gave you for making your way to the top in philosophy is not a recipe for how to work your way up. Working your way up in the genuine sense of the word means starting on the floor and then slowly through good, solid work breaking through the glass ceiling.

Having flirted a bit with writing for popular media, I already have a sense of how you can really work your way up in that business. Though every rule has its exceptions, you don't start out as a New York Times reporter or a CNN correspondent. But if you can write or you have the abilities to learn to write, you can get there in a finite number of steps. You literally start at no-name sites with nearly no requirements in terms of a platform or portfolio. Then you move to local newspapers, magazines or slightly more prestigious online sites. By then you have a couple of quality clips to include with your pitches. Next step is a national publication. The recipe then goes like this. Work on your pitches, do quality work, learn as you go and move one little step up at a time.

Despite going against my childhood teachings, I like the idea and the process. It gives you an immediate sense of gratification. Every assignment you complete successfully takes you one step closer to the goal. Pay-offs (monetary as well as mentions) along the way increase steadily and typically match your current abilities and accomplishments. The process is fair and satisfying in a way that aristocracy and royalty are not.

Truths of Existence

2010-06-16T08:51:00.007-05:00

As I click on the little Firefox icon at the bottom of my screen and see the letters G O O G L E form bright and colorful on my screen, I release a sigh of relief. For several weeks now, I have been without a reliable internet connection. AT&T didn't cut the cable, nor did my laptop take its last breath ... no, none of that... I was simply traveling in Turkey. I had my computer with me (of course), and I paid good money for a wireless connection everywhere I went, but money can't buy everything. Not a reliable wireless connection. Not in Turkey.

I was sweating a lot while I was there. Maybe it was the hot weather. Maybe the slight sunburn. Or maybe it was the error message I had to watch on the screen time and time again... the half-written emails that disappeared in thin air. If I didn't learn anything else on my journey, I learned this: To love and honor the shiny colorful letters spelling the magic word "G O O G L E".

Most of the time the letters never appeared. I am not an impatient person. I happily wait 18 months to hear back from a journal. But at that point I slowly realized that I had to claim defeat and make do with whatever desktops I could find at the local cafes. So, I packed away my laptop, paid good money, clicked on the little Explorer icon and waited for the beautiful letters to make their magic appearance.

There. G O O G L E. What an awe-inspiring sight! Type "Gmail". Login. Password. Glance at inbox. Open email. Click reply. Write. Next email. Write. Next. And then ... Bazoonga! Error message.

I looked around. A woman in business attire got up from her chair, opened her handbag, took out a nail file and filed her nails while she casually glanced at her screen. "What's wrong with the internet?", I asked, trying not to sound too desperate. "It's down", she said nonchalantly. "Right", I nodded, "It seems to happen to me constantly. Is this normal?" "In Turkey the internet is not very good. It comes and goes. We are used to it", she chuckled. "Good God", I cried, "How do you guys ever get any work done?". She sent me a skeptic look. "You get used to it. You work for 15 minutes. Then you take a break. Then you work for 15 minutes again". I nodded knowingly and thought about what I would have done, had I been born in Turkey. Not a philosopher, not an academic, not a writer. Maybe a truck driver. At least the trucks seemed to work.

Back in the hotel I was restless. No computer. No internet. At least the TV was working. I could watch Eurovision. Or I could use my iPhone. $19.97/minute in roaming charges. Maybe it was worth it, all things considered. If only the money wasn't going to AT&T. I ended up reading Mehmet Bastiyali's "Truths of Existence" instead, a Turkish interpretation of the Koran, translated into English. "Every person should occasionally be able to shake himself free of the pressures of daily life to think about the questions of who he is, how and why he was created ...", it said. I thought about his wise words for a moment. Then I grabbed my iPhone.

Thomas Knoten's Commencement Speech

2010-05-25T01:34:00.004-05:00

My student Tom Knoten, a former successful lawyer, served as a commencement speaker at this year's graduation ceremony.

The Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony: A Case Study

2010-05-08T05:30:00.006-05:00

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. This has been shown empirically on a number of occasions. In my introspection class last semester we decided to test this claim in a class experiment.

The class was attended by a real lawyer Tom, who was professionally trained to query eyewitnesses. Chris was assigned the role of police officer, Alex was assigned the role of juror, and Lisa, Jessica and Matt were assigned the roles of criminals and victims.

Tom, Chris and Alex were asked to leave the room. Lisa, Jessica and Matt were then told to go to the main office and plan a crime. They were also told to change their clothes and enter the room later wearing accessories, as they saw fit.

I then instructed the rest of the class to pretend that they were at a cafe. They were told to engage in real conversations with each other, as they would at a real cafe. They were furthermore asked not to pay any special pay attention to Lisa, Matt and Jessica, were they to enter the room, unless there was something special to pay attention to.

Jessica and Matt then entered the room, sat down, and I overheard them engage in a conversation about cats. Then Lisa entered the room, noticed Jessica and Matt and got terribly upset. An argument took place, and Lisa then stabbed Matt and ran away. One of the cafe patrons called the police on his cell phone. Chris then came and questioned Jessica and Matt (who survived the stabbing). He caught Lisa and then questioned her too.

Tom (the lawyer) interviewed victims, criminals, the police officer, and eyewitnesses. Then the trial began. Tom called and queried people, as he saw fit, one at a time. Finally Alex the juror was asked to decide which of the eyewitnesses was the most reliable.

Alex said that he thought Kristina was the most reliable eyewitness. Her report was clear and to the point. She also offered many details which were lacking in the other eye-witnesses' accounts. She looked self-confident and reliable and used very few modifiers of the sort "I believe", "I think", "probably", "could be", "might have".

As it turned out, Kristina was the least reliable eyewitness. She got the color of Lisa's shirt wrong, and there were various other inaccuracies in her story. Our class experiment had confirmed the existing theory: Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. What's more: We are unable to tell when it is.

All the eyewitnesses wrongly categorized the crime as a jealousy stabbing which involved a man (Matt), his new lover (Jessica) and his old lover (Lisa). In fact, Jessica and Lisa were lovers, and Jessica was cheating on Lisa!

What Women's Butts Really Look Like

2010-05-02T23:11:00.001-05:00

There has been a lot of discussion of whether Britney Spears's recent release of untouched versions of images of her half-naked body just is another case of "bourgeois body image feminism" and not the worthwhile struggle for "real gender equality".

But c'mon, you gotta give Britney credit for exposing her behind like this with cellulite and everything. Most women look like the gal on the right, not the gal on the left. The one on the left is the result of heavy photoshop brushing, not the real thing. Dream on guys.

Or better: stop dreaming. If you really want someone who looks like the girl on the left, you probably have pedophile tendencies cuz that's how a 10-year-old looks. Once the teen hormones kick in, fat cells naturally get filled, and they don't get filled evenly. Or maybe you should join an association for anorexic girls. If you are lucky, sick starving girls might look like that too (HT: Feminist Philosophers).

Life and Work

2010-05-01T01:59:00.008-05:00

I just love this picture. It's from Australia: Declan Smithies's 30 years birthday party and engagement party to Jenny. The other two in the picture are Rhiannon Long-Rabern and Holly Lawford-Smith. Leone Miller took the picture. God, I miss those guys. And yes, my hair is red. It changes color like leaves on a tree in autumn. Why is my hair red? Answer: I don't know. Why did I start the love blog? Answer: See my earlier post on stereotypes. Not all of us confuse career with life. Some of us have hobbies. I write on weird topics. That's my hobby. (love, I learned tonight, is a weird topic).

Some Announcements

2010-04-29T17:10:00.007-05:00

1) My colleagues Eric Wiland and John Brunero are putting together a conference on reasons and rationality. It's an annual event. The official title is: St. Louis Annual Conference on Reasons and Rationality. This year's event will take place May 23-25, 2010. It's looking great already. For more information on the conference, click here.

2) I have started a new blog. It's not a philosophy or psychology blog. It's meant to be for the general reader and focuses on the irrational and unconscious elements of love. Occasionally, philosophical or psychological issues may come up but they would be in a format that can be understood by the gal on the street.

3) As some of you may have guessed, writing is my passion. I once wanted to be a writer but didn't make enough money to pay my bills. So, I went into philosophy. I have just recently started doing some freelance writing again. My articles are on all sorts of topics and usually completely unrelated to philosophy or psychology. When I get around to it, the articles will be posted here. When they happen to be of relevance to students, I will post them in the sidebar of this blog under "Tips for Students and Other Job Seekers".

4) I hold a secondary position in psychology now. I am only barely starting to get acquainted with my new department. But in the future Lemmings will also occasionally contain some posts on psychology.

Are we in control of our own decisions?

2010-04-28T00:22:00.003-05:00

In an Ideal World...

2010-04-24T17:59:00.003-05:00

Old classic:

In an ideal world...

1) the baseball players would be American
2) the policemen would be English
3) the car mechanics would be German
4) the schools would be Danish
5) the cooks would be Italian
6) the stand-up comedians would be Australian
7) the innkeepers would be Swiss,
8) and the lovers would be French

In a living hell...

1) the baseball players would be Australian
2) the policemen would be German
3) the car mechanics would be French
4) the schools would be American
5) the cooks would be English
6) the stand-up comedians would be Swiss
7) the innkeepers would be Italian
8) and the lovers would be Danish

Stereotypes

2010-04-15T17:09:00.004-05:00

Stereotype for 'philosopher' (outdated): old-looking, man, suit, pipe smoker, whiskey drinker, a serious look on his face, sober analytic writing style, not prolific, secret meetings at philosophers’ houses to study dead philosophers, knows that to steal ideas from one person is plagiarism but to steal from many is research, fails to respond to mail from people below himself, is obsessed with ivy-league universities, interviews female job candidates on hotel beds.

Stereotype for 'philosopher' (up to date): young-looking, man, poorly dressed or Euro-trash, beer-drinker, fun, endearing analytic writing-style, prolific, confuses career with life, tardiness in responding to emails from people below himself, has a mental list of good and bad people and good and bad philosophy, travels frequently, changes jobs often, contributes to one or more weblogs, has a webpage with links to all published articles and works in progress, is a member of Facebook, has at least 200 Facebook friends, owns a MacBook, owns an iPhone, is obsessed with department and journal rankings, frequently attends the meetings of the American Philosophical Association mostly to be seen and to hang with the inner circle, obsessed with media presence, surrounded by female groupies.

Stereotype for 'The Eastern Meeting of the American Philosophical Association': over-prized hotel rooms, poorly attended talk sessions, scared job candidates, obsession with the university affiliation listed on people’s name tags, free-beer smoker, over-prized beer smoker, hitting on female students, parties in hotel rooms, drunkenness, the Presidential address.

Stereotype for 'man': doesn’t go to the bathroom when he needs to make an emergency crotch adjustment, doesn't need to schedule sex around his reproductive system, never lets hot wax near his pubic area, his orgasms are real (always), his last name stays put, people don’t glance at his chest while he is talking to them, nobody secretly wonders if he swallows, can have great sex with people he doesn’t like, sorts laundry into "filthy" and "filthy but good enough to wear", wonders how service stations keep their restrooms so clean, can walk down the street with a balding head and a beer gut and still think he is sexy, can be president.

Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek

2010-04-07T01:21:00.001-05:00

The 4-Hour Workweek immediately hit the media spotlight. It got raving reviews and has created countless debates on blogs around the web ever since. Its author, Timothy Ferriss, coined the term "the new rich". The new rich are not rich. They don't own oil companies or Manhattan nightclubs. They are not bestseller authors either. What they have is a regular flow of cash which they obtain without working much, and which they use to fund their dream lifestyle. Tim aims at showing anyone how to achieve just that: a luxury lifestyle without putting in the hours. And by 'anyone' he literally means 'anyone', from the Midwest academic on a 4-4 course load to the single mother working a 9-5 job as a coffee bitch. The book is smack-full of neat tips. Here are just a few of the "how-to" promises of the book. Tim promises to show you:

• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How to read 200% faster in 10 minutes
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent "mini-retirements"
• How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it's beyond repair
• How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
• How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50–80% off
• How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office

What the heck is the guy thinking? Well, there is a bit of history to it. After college Tim took a wearying sales job at a tech-y firm. When he left to start a successful business of his own, he went from 40 to 80 hours a week. Despite making good money, he felt like every little piece of his soul was slowly being sucked out of him.

Tim then decided to change. He streamlined, eliminated, automated, outsourced. Not exactly the geeky type, Tim took off to tropical paradise, and then decided to write a book about achieving the true American dream. He also created a blog devoted to experiments in life-style design.

So what to do if you want to be Tim? Well, first stop your 9 bad habits and then start outsourcing. It's that simple. Tim's 9 bad habits undone are plainly adorable:

1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers
2. Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night
3. Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time
4. Do not let people ramble
5. Do not check e-mail constantly — “batch” and check at set times only
6. Do not over-communicate with low-profit, high-maintenance customers
7. Do not work more to fix overwhelm — prioritize
8. Do not carry a cellphone or Crackberry 24/7
9. Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should

I must admit that I haven't been able to stop a single one of these killer habits (except the first one, but I never answer the phone anyway, unless I really like you). But the thought is a good one. What about outsourcing? The trick is to find a job that doesn't require your presence. Then, and only then, will outsourcing work. You then hire some poor Indian guy to do business for you and then you book a discount trip to Hawaii or Greenland. It sounds burlesque and irresponsible but, Tim argues, it really isn't. We are simply socially conditioned into thinking that we have to work our asses off to be successful. Get over your fears and hit the road, guys!

But outsourcing seems to rub people the wrong way. It feels a bit atrocious to hire some stone broke virtual guy from a third-world country to do an exhaustive search of the world's boutiques in order to find a talking or dancing Elmo for your spoiled child or to arrange for a team of tech nerds to set up a countless number of speed-dates with oblivious young women looking for true love. Tim has done all of that, and more. The most hilarious part of the book is the section where Tim describes how he is outsourcing his love letters to his wife! I am glad I am not married to him (though I do have to admit that he is quite a handsome young man). But back to outsourcing. Is it really that bad? We live in an outsourced world, don't we? We pay people to clean our houses, wash our cars, fill our SUVs with gas in Jersey, walk our dogs, house-sit our cats, baby-sit our kids, cook our party food, teach our classes, grade our quizzes, conduct our X-Phi quasi-experiments, add footnotes to our book manuscripts (yes, some people really do do that!), you name it. But it's not just paying people to work for you that fuels people's concerns about outsourcing. It's the fact that Tim pays $5/hour to have young starving men and women from India run his company and personal life while he tangos in Argentina and eats at 5-star restaurants. Ever thought of donating, Tim?

But if (and that's a big if) outsourcing really ain't that bad, then the question arises, is it really true that you can get away with working only four hours a week? Not really. By "a 4-hour workweek" Tim means four hours spent on work you really despise doing but which nonetheless brings in most of your income. Many of us (academics) are fortunate enough to have a 4-hour workweek in this sense. Not all academics are where they want to be, but a huge number of us are doing exactly what we want to do 90% of the time. So, the book is not really geared towards academics. But I think even academics can draw something useful from the book. If nothing else, you can get a good laugh out of it. Plus, it's all the rage, it's been on New York Time's bestseller list for years. Actually, this is the second expanded edition (100 pages of added material!), and it's still on the lists. Of course, the fact that it has been on the lists for years just shows that people buy it for whatever reason (a lot of marketing buzz and a catchy title?), not that it's a great book. But it really is quite a useful book, full of little nifty tips on how to use your time more efficiently and find more time to do what you really enjoy doing. One wonders, though, whether Tim actually wrote the book. Or did he follow his own religion? This could be a true Gödel-Schmidt story.

[Nota Bene: I appreciate the sudden flow of free books from trade publishers after I started posting book reviews to my blog but it is still my prerogative to pick and choose which of them I review. Yes, I do have a life! So, no follow-up emails please. Or maybe I should think about outsourcing my reviewer responsibilities!]

Courses This Fall

2010-04-06T14:07:00.007-05:00

I am teaching two seminars this fall. Here are the course descriptions:

Introspection (graduate level)
Conducted this fall by Dr. Berit Brogaard
brogaardb@gmail.com

There is little doubt that we undergo conscious experiences. There is also little doubt that we often describe our conscious experiences. For example, I might convey to you the content of my current visual experience or the character of my pain sensation or the level of detail of my visual image. Whether or not we can describe inner experience, and can do so reliably is an important question. Various kinds of scientific research depend on the possibility and reliability of these types of report. But is it actually possible to describe inner experience? And if it is possible, can introspective reports serve as reliable evidence in scientific studies? This course addresses these and related questions about introspective reports through a study of the Method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, a method developed by psychologist Russ Hurlburt. The method was critically discussed and tested in a series of studies conducted by Russ Hurlburt in collaboration with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel in 2003. The results of these experiments and Schwitzgebel and Hurlburt's conversations were published as the book Describing Inner Experience (MIT, 2007). The book will serve as the main textbook for this course. Upon completion of the book we will read William Lyons' The Disappearance of Introspection and Hurlburt's Sampling Inner Experience in Disturbed Affect. We will furthermore discuss selected sections of David Dunning's Self-Insight and Tim Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves. The first three books must be purchased on eBay or Amazon, or at the University bookstore. The last two books can be acquired through inter-library loans. The class will meet for approx. 2 hours every Monday from September - November. No prerequisites are required, though some general background in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science or related fields of study is recommended.

The Nature of the Unconscious (graduate level and upper-level undergraduate, cross-listed)
Conducted this fall by Dr. Berit Brogaard
brogaardb@gmail.com

While Freud was responsible for popularizing the notion of the unconscious, the notion of an unconscious mental state was not given any serious attention in modern-day scientific circles until around the 1970s. The notion then emerged independently of the Freudian tradition in cognitive psychology. In cognitive psychology the notion of an unconscious mental state first seriously entered the picture as a result of studies of amnesiacs. While amnesiacs cannot remember words they have just read, they nonetheless are able to do as well as normal people on cognitive tests that do not require short-term memory. Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, introduced the notion of 'unconscious memory' or what he called 'implicit memory'. Implicit memory is the effect of a past event on a person's current experience, thought, and action in the absence of, or independently of, conscious memory (Schacter 1987). Implicit memory involves implicit episodic knowledge, that is, implicit knowledge of a specific event, as opposed to procedural knowledge. If you have ever been so drunk that you couldn't remember how you ended up in fetal position on the couch, what you were missing was explicit episodic knowledge but you may still have had implicit episodic knowledge. Even if you cannot explicitly remember what you did last night, your implicit memories of what you did last night may still guide your current actions. Your brain knows what you did and is out for revenge. Readings for the course include: The Hidden Brain (http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Brain-Unconscious-Presidents-Control/dp/0385525214), The New Unconscious (http://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Oxford-Social-Cognition-Neuroscience/dp/0195149955), and selected readings from The Freud Reader (http://www.amazon.com/Freud-Reader-Sigmund/dp/0393314030). The class will meet for approx. 2 hours every Monday from September - November. No prerequisites are required, though some general background in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science or related fields of study is recommended.

Two Papers

2010-04-05T22:32:00.008-05:00

I am back from the Pacific APA. In case you missed my talks (and care) I have posted links to them on my website here and here. The first link is to my comments from the author-meets-critics session on Uriah Kriegel's book Subjective Consciousness. The second link is to a very brief version of my paper on high-level properties in perception.

Rat Stoppers in All Sewer Systems

2010-03-22T22:24:00.015-05:00

Vincent Hendricks' new television show "Gal eller Genial" is scheduled to air on Danish television's DR2 on Tuesday April 6 at 8PM. Vincent Hendricks, who is Professor of Philosophy and Logic at University of Copenhagen, will evaluate 20 innovative projects in this new inventor's contest. The projects range from mobile homes for homeless people and cancer treatment with modified UV rays to rat stoppers in all sewer systems.

Hitler gets a revise and resubmit

2010-03-19T23:32:00.000-05:00

Someone put dialogue concerning peer review for a science paper to the same clip (HT: Jeff Roland)

Book Review: The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives

2010-03-13T22:12:00.013-06:00

In his recent book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives science journalist Shankar Vedantam argues that our unconscious thoughts and emotions, for example our implicit sexism, racism and conformity to the behavior of others in a group, govern behavior we explicitly despise. Many Americans have a racial bias against Africans and African-Americans not because of biology but because of culture, says Vedantam. We grow up watching television and quickly learn who the most successful leaders in our country are. We are taught that the stereotype of a successful leader is a white male. We implicitly think that people of color and women are inferior to white males. In stressful situations our implicit biases quiet down our rational inner voices and take control of our decision making. Michael Richard’s racist rant during a 2006 stand-up appearance is an example of how our true temperament may suddenly rear its ugly head. Vedantam does not think that Michael Richard is significantly more racist in his beliefs than any one of us. The difference is a matter of degree, he says.

According to Vedantam, our unconscious mind fuels most of our decisions to act the way we do. Vedantam explains how the hidden impulses of a large crowd of onlookers fueled the horrible events that took place on the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit on the morning of August 19, 1995, where Deletha Word, college student and mother of a 13-teen year old, was beaten up beyond belief by Martell Welch in front of crowd of onlookers who not only failed to intervene but also failed to notify the police. Some allegedly cheered him on as he beat up Deletha and tore off her clothes. Why didn’t the onlookers put an end to it? Because people unconsciously mirror the reactions of others in a crowd. Even though they understand at a rational level that they ought to notify the authorities or stop the incident, their hidden world of learned behavior prevents them from doing so.

One of the most fascinating sections of Vedantam's book is the discussion of how two transgendered biology professors at Stanford University underwent a complete change, not just sexually but also in how they were treated professionally, when they changed their appearance. One of the professors went from being a woman to being a man, and the other went from being a man to being a woman. The one who became a man suddenly was taken more seriously and was treated with a whole new kind of respect. The one who became a woman found that she was taken less seriously, and her pay fell significantly relative to her peers, all as a result of changing her sex.

As the book progresses Vedantam becomes increasingly more free in his interpretations of the scientific data. He moves from discussions of how our unconscious attitudes shape small-scale behavior to our unconscious resistance to famine relief and the hidden brain's seductive powers in suicide bombings and presidential elections. Despite the leap from solid evidence to more creative hypotheses about what drives our political and social decisions, the later sections of the book raise the important philosophical questions of whether we are responsible for behavior driven by our brain's hidden impulses and whether we can change our tendency to act on our predilections.

Though Vedantam remains optimistic about our capability of changing our inclinations by bringing our implicit biases to light and by using reason rather that gut feeling to guide our decisions, he doesn't really offer much by way of insight into how we should go about changing our ways. He also does not really answer the question of to what extent we should be held liable for behavior governed by our unconscious biases. But on a whole The Hidden Brain offers an insightful treatment of the delicate question of why we make the horrible decisions we do when they could have been avoided with a bit of confidence in the light of reason.

Koksuhking God

2010-03-03T10:15:00.002-06:00

During our prospective student Abe Brummett’s travels in the pacific islands he came across a tiny island in Micronesia that is very religious. This is a short video of the moment when Abe’s Peace Corps class was first taught the word for "praise" in the Kosraen language.

Call for Papers: Origins of Design in Nature

2010-02-25T11:31:00.002-06:00

Liz Swan is looking to solicit contributions from women philosophers of science for a prospective Springer volume she is co-editing entitled, "Origins of Design in Nature: A Fresh, Interdisciplinary Look at How Design Emerges in Complex Systems, Especially Life". You can contact her at: Liz.Swan@ucdenver.edu

Hitler finds out about his philosophy grad school applications

2010-02-24T20:06:00.004-06:00

Brian Leiter linked to this video a few days ago, but because of the Central Division Meeting I didn't get around to watching it until now (Thanks to John Fraiser for reminding me!). It's hilarious.

Alternative Location at the Pacific Division Meeting of the APA

2010-02-23T19:09:00.001-06:00

As you might have heard the Pacific APA meeting in San Francisco is taking place at a hotel that is currently in a labor dispute. Since many members want to honor the boycott of the union, the University of San Francisco offers an alternative location. At this point there are 17 sessions fully confirmed. Here is the website with all the info (HT: Gerard Kuperus).

Heidegger And A Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates

2010-02-16T09:06:00.016-06:00

I just read Heidegger And A Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (and Jokes!) to Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everything in Between (Thanks to Brian Leiter for the link). It's available as an e-book through the Penguin group.

The authors Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein were once philosophy graduate students at Harvard University. After graduating they went on to do other things. Cathcart served as a probation officer and attended various divinity schools. Klein wrote a lighthearted book on jokes and a number of thrillers. After many years the two men re-united and wrote Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, a humorous and lighthearted introduction to key concepts in philosophy. It was rejected by 40 publishers before an editor finally showed interest. Initially the book was called An Existentialist and a Horse Walk into a Bar. But the editor didn't like the title. "I want it to be called Plato and ... something", he said. Cathcart quickly replied "A platypus". The book went on to become a bestseller. The two college friends followed up with Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, a humorous book about logic tied to political speech. The alliteration has become their logo. One wonders whether their next book is going to be called Frege and a Flamingo Walk into an APA Smoker.

Cathcart and Klein's latest effort explores the meaning of life and death through a dialogue between the two authors. The dialogue includes serious passages, jokes and clever little gags, such as the continual assignment of flippant nick names to philosophers. Some reviewers found the running gags annoying. For example, the authors refer to Heidegger as 'Heidi' and 'Marty', and Sigmund Freud as 'Siggy'. I found the style refreshing, and while most of the jokes didn't originate with the authors, they are well placed in the context of more serious philosophical discourse.

Incidentally, the authors' French publisher didn't want 'Heidegger' in the title of the translation because of Heidegger's Nazi associations. The French editor had once put out a book of letters from Heidegger to his wife. No one bought it. So, in France the book will be called Sartre et la Salamandre.

The authors' main aim in the book is to educate the reader about the immortality systems cultures go out of their way to design. Immortality systems are ways of denying death. Religions that promise eternal life are immortality systems. So is the urban tripe: the university club, the fraternity, the golfer club. Groups outlive individuals. Or you decide that you are going to live on in the hearts of your country men, or through your publications and international reputation. You decide that that's going to be your immortality system. But, the authors say, clinging to an immortality system is cheating yourself of a fulfilling life. It means that you are denying death. By not embracing death you are not living fully. And who wants eternal life through others anyway? As Woody Allen once wisely put it, "I don't want to live on in the hearts of my country men. I want to live on in my apartment".

The authors point out that immortality systems don't work very well. People are ultimately willing to kill each other to save their immortality systems. The reason: If I buy into one, and you buy into another, then yours could ultimately be seen as a threat to mine.

Historically, philosophers thought they were giving us a good message when they told us to get in touch with our mortality, Cathcart and Klein say. If you deny your own death, you also reject the chance of feeling fully alive. If we had eternal life, we could waste a couple of millennia making mistakes. It wouldn't matter. It is because of our mortality that we have to take responsibility for ourselves. Artifacts are stuck with the purpose they were designed to have, they cannot change their essence. Human beings, on the other hand, choose what they are going to become. However scary it may be, you have to take responsibility for your own life, Cathcart and Klein add. The message of the book: Face death head on and live intensely.

It's a fine little book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a lighthearted and humorous reality check on life and death.

25 Fascinating Lectures for the Modern-Day Philosopher

2010-02-15T08:58:00.000-06:00

Here.