Press Release/Newsletter Article for Publicity (January 23, 2012)

Our chair Gualtiero Piccinini asked me to post this.

PHILOSOPHY SALON MARKS REBIRTH OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT

St. Louis, Missouri) The Philosophy Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis is experiencing a rebirth. UMSL offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy and has recruited distinguished faculty from here and abroad to demonstrate the relevance of philosophy in contemporary society.

As a 2012 initiative, worthy of the name, the Philosophy Department hosted a 'salon' on the evening of January 20th showcasing the talents of one of his department's brightest stars, Professor Berit Brogaard. Guests arrived at 7:00 p.m. at the World's Fair-era home of Thomas (an alum of the Philosophy M.A.) and Christine Knoten in Parkview, St. Louis County. Chancellor Thomas George mingled with the Honorable Vincent Schoemehl and other guests. In a living room lighted by candelabra and to the muffled sound of clinking champagne flutes, Professor Brogaard wowed her audience of twenty-two with a formal presentation titled: The Superhuman Mind. Tall, elegant and with command of her material, this native of Copenhagen, Denmark left the ladies thinking that she had integrated the study of philosophy into contemporary society. She left not a few of the gentleman in her audience thinking, with homage to Shakespeare, "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!"

The Department Chair, Dr. Gualtiero Piccinini, congratulated Professor Brogaard for her excellent presentation and as a humble token of appreciation made her a present of a box of chocolates. He then announced that the catered buffet would be served forthwith in the dining room.

Chief among Philosophy student volunteers on hand was Krista Hyde, a graduate teaching assistant who aspires to a career teaching philosophy in either the traditional classroom or in venues such as this salon.

Overheard from Professor Eric Wieland during the champagne reception was the Latin accolade:"Tempum bonum habebatur ab omnibus." to which Professor Andrew Black of Great Britain nodded: "So say we all!"

Good news: we are still ranked nationally

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free Access to Erkenntnis Articles

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

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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