The Philosophers' Cocoon

3QD Semifinalists

I am happy to report that four Cocooners are among the semifinalists in this year's 3 Quarks Daily Philosophy Blogging Prize:

• Justin Caouette's, "Moral Responsibility and Volunteer Soldiers."
• Elisa Freschi's, "Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta."
• Clayton Littlejohn's, "Introducing (and solving?) a puzzle about rationality."
• My, "The Case for Libertarian Compatibilism."

Six finalists will be posted on December 1st. Good luck to everyone!

Why you should still (maybe) be a professor

Over at Talking Philosophy, the blog associated with The Philosophers' Magazine, Mike LaBossiere has written a piece entitled, "Why You Should (Probably) Not Be a Professor." In brief, LaBossiere gives many of the standard warnings about the career (and life) risks involved in attempting an academic career: student debt, poor job prospects, low salaries, high workloads, etc. These are all good and important things to warn people about. Given the risks, one should be very careful about attempting a career in academic. One should enter into it with eyes wide open, knowing the risks and knowing the attritition and placement record of whatever graduate program one considers entering. That being said, in my experience when people like Bossiere warn people of the risks of a career in academia--and sometimes actively deter people from choosing it as a career path--I worry that they tend to focus overwhelming on the negatives. Indeed, I can't help but find it a bit curious that in my experience, people who warn others of the risks of being an academic tend to preface their remarks in a similar manner as Bossiere. Bossiere begins his post with the caveat, "While I like being a professor, I am obligated to give a warning to those considering this career path." I've heard many other people say similar things, and it always strikes me as strange. The person is admitting they like/love their job, but then they tell others not to pursue it! Yes, of course there are great risks to pursuing an academic career, just as there are risks in attempting to become a professional baseball player, dancer, or musician. But as in those cases, there can be great benefits too, benefits that should not be ignored or downplayed but (I fear) often are ignored and downplayed by those issue such stern warnings. So, allow me to catalog some of those benefits--at least some of the benefits I have experienced--and say a little bit about what I think should determine one's decision about whether or not to pursue an academic career, given the risks involved.

Let me begin by stating up-front what I think are good grounds for pursuing a career in academic, despite the risks. I think, provided one has a reasonable chance of success (i.e. one gets into a program with a good placement record, etc.), one should base one's choice on how much one loves philosophy and teaching--on how deeply they are a part of your person and values. I don't think it's a good idea to go into academia because you "want the life of a professor." The latter are the people who (I think) should heed the warnings that people like Bossiere give. For, no matter what, there's a serious chance you won't get what you want. You might not get that life--the life you imagined. I know I haven't. I have been through many serious ups and downs in my career. My career has gone nothing like I imagined it would. I have wondered many times whether I should have made a different decision. And if I had gone into this solely because I wanted the life of a professor, I think I would be miserable. I think I would regret my choice.

I don't regret my choice to pursue a career in academic, and for one overwhelming reason: I truly love it; it's who I am. I love philosophy, and I love teaching. I look forward to waking up every morning and writing. And I feel like I'm making a small but important difference in the world when I see students learn and grow. Not everything is rosy, of course. Just like a marriage--just like the rest of life--these things I love are not always easy. Sometimes they seem impossibly hard. There's frustration, disappointment, dashed hopes, etc.--and again, far more of these things than I ever expected. Through it all, there have been two things that have kept me going: love of philosophy, and feeling like I can make a small difference in the classroom. And so, I say, it should probably come down to that. If you're looking for money, summers off, the "life of a professor", I don't think I would advise it. The risks you won't get those things are too great, and much more likely than you are apt to think (we all tend to think we will be the exception, after all! It's other people who won't get jobs, not us!). Just as with pursuing a career as a professional athlete, musician, or artist, there's one reason to pursue a career in academia in spite of it all: because it's who you are in your bones--a philosopher, a teacher, a psychologist, a historian, etc. 

Or so say I. What so you, my fellow Cocooners?

What can my grandmother know about Mary?

In What can she know Lorraine Code argues for a feminist epistemology, in which our situation, community, position in society, matter to what we can know. Knowledge mainly available to men is implicitly regarded as gender-neutral; meanwhile knowledge traditionally associated with women is regarded as not knowledge at all. Consider the practices of some Catholic Latina women in the United States, who fend off the evil eye (especially of infants) with eggs, bury statues of saints like Mary and Joseph in their front yard when the saints refuse to grant requests, and dig them up again once the request is granted. As Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado details, this sounds rather irreverent, but the practice just illustrates how intimate the relationship is between the Latino community and the saints they revere. Home altars with pictures of Mary and the Saints are the territory of Latina Catholic women. Do these practices contribute to religious epistemology? If so, how? 

---

The council of Trent wanted to eradicate these practices of saint reverence and fending off the evil eye, in which women prominently figured as practitioners and experts. However, it did not destroy these practices in Latina women. Neither did it destroy them entirely in European women, such as my grandmother. My grandmother was a devout Catholic woman who taught me the first things about religion such as the significance of the host, the meaning of infant baptism, how to pray. She had a wooden black statue of Mary (there is a tradition of revering Black Mary in Medieval Europe, and my grandmother's home town had a tradition that still kept this alive), to whom she talked and prayed. When Mary refused to grant her requests, she would be unceremoniously turned facing the wall until Mary changed her mind.

By the time I was 12, I dismissed her practices as superstitious folk beliefs of an old woman who had not moved with the times, and as just plain silly. Her beliefs, I thought, were wrong also within her own epistemological framework of Christianity, given that statues aren't actually the figures they represent (but in Latina culture, and my grandmother's practice, they were), and Mary cannot autonomously grant requests but is assumed to intercede with God on our behalf (but for my grandmother, she clearly could do all sorts of things on her own). However, I am now wondering if it is true that my grandmothers religious beliefs (aka superstitions) were really inconsistent with the epistemology she held. After all, her epistemology was not the official teaching of the Catholic church, but something that was informed by her own practices.

Very few philosophers of religion discuss how specific religious practices can foster a religious knowledge that more cerebral thinking about God cannot. Sarah Coakley has some work liturgy as a form of doxastic practice (a tantalizing term she borrows from Alston, who did not do much with the concept, but fortunately, Sarah has and I hope to elaborate it in work further on in a talk I'll be giving at Texas A&M). Coakley argues that the physical, multi-sensory experience of worship can mediate spiritual experience.  Howard Wettstein argues along similar lines about Jewish practices like blessings. He argues these practices provide access to a religious way of life even if there is no doxastic commitment to metaphysical claims about God. Do religious practices provide us with religious knowledge? Even practices that seem contrary to claims generally accepted in philosophy of religion?

I would claim that if we assume that perfect being theology in western philosophy of religion is correct, and if the main theological claims are correct, my grandmother and the members of the Latino community Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado studied can have knowledge. It is hard to say if any theological claims are true, and of course, if naturalism is true, my grandmother's views, and those of theologians are not knowledge; I am just here assuming the traditional theological views because practices like my grandmother's are in this framework dismissed as superstitions without any epistemological value.

If my grandmother has knowledge of Mary, it is knowledge by acquaintance, afforded by intimate second-person interactions (manipulating the statue of Black Mary, speaking to her). This sort of knowledge isn't available to people who do not engage in practices like this. In When God talks back, Tanya Luhrmann explains how this works for Evangelical Christians, but Gonzalez Maldonado offers another perspective (Yet another one is offered by Eleonore Stump on how reading scripture can give us second-person insight). I would like to think more about how embodied practices in religion, so often downplayed by mainstream churches as an embarrassment and relic of the past, can contribute to epistemological questions in philosophy of religion.

[this blogpost is inspired by a talk by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado at the Annual Academy of Religion; in the talk Gonzales Maldonado discussed Latino religious practices in relationship to Luhrmann's work on Evangelical spirituality. It is cross-posted from Prosblogion]

Participation for a survey on religious disagreement

What do philosophers think about religious disagreement? This is a brief survey (takes about 5-10 minutes) to find this out. The survey is aimed at academic philosophers, by which I mean people who hold a PhD in philosophy or are graduate students in philosophy. If you fit these criteria, please consider participating. Participation is fully anonymous. The format of the study is a multiple choice questionnaire. I will ask some personal questions, amongst others about your religious views, but your name will not be asked. To further take care that your anonymity is preserved, I will not report on individual responses but report statistical patterns. There are a few places where you can provide an open response (optional). I will publish at most one open response per participant, making sure that there is no identifying information within your response. The full dataset will remain confidential and will not be shared with anyone. I will report the preliminary results on the Philosophers' Cocoon and one or two other websites. The study is designed and carried out by Helen De Cruz, postdoctoral fellow of the British Academy at the University of Oxford. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact helen.decruz- at - philosophy.ox.ac.uk. To participate, please click here or paste this link in your browser: https://surveys.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9TFkp1QkxnZkdTL

Some notes on the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis

Intuitively, we have certain important moral obligations toward our animal companions, a.k.a. pets. To begin with, we ought to keep them safe from harm. We also ought to provide them with certain goods: food, recreation, social life, comfort, freedom to move around, and so on. And we don't kill them except in certain unusual cases (e.g., we might kill them in self-defense, or for their own good when they are very sick). Many of us believe that our moral relationship with our animal companions is similar to our moral relationship to our family members; indeed, many of us believe that our animal companions are family members. By contrast, we do not regard livestock as family members. For instance, we kill livestock in order to eat them. That's no way to treat a family member.

Is there any way to justify the intuitive idea that there is a moral gap between pets and livestock? I believe so. Elsewhere I have argued in favor of a view that I call the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, and I believe that this hypothesis can explain why the moral status of pets differs from that of livestock. In this post, I'll present the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, discuss some of its advantages, and then will discuss one problem for the view.

The Eyeball Test and the Seductiveness of "Talent"

I'd like to share and comment on a case that recently came up in another department. The case is this. The department was doing a hire, and they had two main finalists. One of the finalists was a woman a few years out of a very good program, with a ton of first-authored publications (well upwards of ten), several in top-ranked journals in the field, despite having a full-teaching load. At the flyout, this rather dimunitive woman (standing 5 feet tall) did not "impress." Her research was judged to be very good, but many on the hiring committee were not impressed by her presentation: she seemed nervous, her voice was too quiet, etc. The second candidate was a 6-foot-2 male with no first-authored publications. Although he had come out of the #1 program and been in prestigious post-doc for an entire year, he only had three publications, all of which were co-authored with his (very famous) graduate school advisor. He had no teaching duties at his post-doc, very few papers under review, and had struggled to finish his graduate program, taking a full two years longer to graduate than the female candidate. Despite all this, many of the faculty were "blown away" by his brilliance during the flyout. He spoke in a deep, confident voice and was considered by many faculty to "obviously be a future star."

The faculty were torn between the two candidates. Some thought the brilliant man was the obvious choice. Others thought this to be completely absurd. In their view, the female candidate was far and away the better candidate. Unlike the male candidate, she actually had a proven track record of success publishing her own work in top-journals and in the classroom. Alas, after several days of drama and deliberations, the department decided to offer the position to the male candidate. Members of the faculty who preferred the female candidate were irate, feeling that the committee had favored someone with few accomplishments over a person with many.

In my view, this is the kind of case that should lead us to question the value of interviews and such. There is this common belief--a belief which there is a great deal of empirical evidence against--that we are capable of detecting "talent" better through personal experience than through purely statistical resources (i.e. resumes alone). Study after study has that purely algorithmic processes (i.e. counting publications) are systematically better predictors of success than so-called "eyeball tests" (i.e. personal impressions)--and yet, as we see in the case above, people continue to base hiring decisions on personal impressions. Why?

The reason why "eyeball tests" don't work very well seem obvious enough (to me, at any rate). Generally speaking, the best predictor of future success is past success. But, if you want to know about someone's past success, all you have to do is look at their work. Looking at the person, on the other hand, introduces all kinds of additional noise into the process: preferring people on the basis of things that might seem impressive (e.g. confidence, a bellowing voice, mental quickness, etc.) but which don't necessarily have any reliable relation to actual production. To see how, consider just a few notable examples from professional NFL football:

• Despite only having one good collegiate season, JaMarcus Russell blew everyone away at the 2007 scouting combine with his physical talents. He was selected #1 overall in the draft and went onto become one of the worst draft "busts" in history.
• In 1998, pro scouts were split between two college quarterbacks: Peyton Manning, who has gone onto become one of the greatest pro quarterbacks ever, and Ryan Leaf, who is one of the worst draft "busts" of all time. Many scouts preferred Leaf over Manning because of his "obvious" physical advantages--this despite the fact that manning had a much more successful collegiate career.
• In 1999, Akili Smith was selected in the first round of the NFL draft despite having only one good season, because of his "obvious physical talents" at the scouting combine.
• In 2000, a man named Tom Brady was selected in the 6th round of the NFL draft, due to perceptions that he lacked sufficient physical tools to succeed.
• In 1979, Joe Montana was selected in only the 3rd round of the NFL draft, being judged by scouts to be too slight of build and not having a strong enough throwing arm--this despite being famous for incredible comeback victories while at Notre Dame. Montana is now judged to be perhaps the best NFL quarterback of all time.

There's an obvious pattern here: a pattern of people systematically ignoring actual accomplishments in favor of personal judgments about "talent." And there's another obvious pattern: this not working very well! Time and time again, individuals who are profoundly impressive in person do not go onto succeed...precisely because their personal impressiveness is not backed by a past record of actual success. Conversely, time and again, individuals with actual records of success continue to succeed even if they are "not that impressive" in person. 

So why, after all of the studies, and all of the trends, do people continue to "trust their judgments" of talent? Why indeed!

3QD Blogging Prize: The Voting Begins!

I'd like to encourage our readers to vote here on this year's 3 Quarks Daily Philosophy Blogging Prize. Several of the Cocoon's contributors are in the running. Here are our contributors' posts listed by the number assigned at the voting site:

• #8: Justin Caouette's, "Moral Responsibility and Volunteer Soldiers", at A Philosopher's Take.
• #11: My "The Case for Libertarian Compatibilism: A Brief Overview", at Flickers of Freedom.
• #21: Helen De Cruz's, "Does taking pictures sully our memories?", at NewAPPS.
• #42: Clayton Littlejohn's, "Introducing (and solving?) a puzzle about rationality", at Think Tonk.

Best of luck to all!

UPDATE: Please note that our own Elisa Freschi has also received two nominations:

• No. 11, Veṅkaṭanātha's contribution to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
• No. 48, Interpreting an Alien Philosophy, what works for me

On Graber's, "Creating Truth By Winning Arguments..."

I read a really interesting paper today by Abraham Graber entitled, "Creating Truths By Winning Arguments: The Problem of Methodological Artifacts in Philosophy" (forthcoming in Synthese). The paper sort of crystalizes a worry that I've had about philosophical practice dating back at least to graduate school, and which I explored previously here and here: namely, that a whole lot of philosophy--just about anything having to do with conceptual analysis (including analytic metaphysics and meta-ethics)--is little more than philosophers (1) taking themselves to discovering objective philosophical facts (i.e. what material objects are, what morality is, etc.), where what they're really doing is (2) making more-or-less arbitrary semantic decisions to settle the semantics of fundamentally vague concepts that (3) objectively have no determinate satisfaction-conditions before those arbitrary semantic decisions are made.

There's another, simpler way to put this worry: namely, that philosophers engaged in conceptual analysis, far from discovering philosophical facts, are making them up arbitrarily out of whole cloth--in which case a lot of what appears to be "philosophical progress" or "good arguments" at any given point in time are more-or-less-arbitrary semantic decisions that have "won out" rhetorically in the literature and seminar room. This is more or less the worry Graber is pushing as well. So let me briefly explain why I've had the worry for so long, and then briefly comment on Graber's paper.

When I was in graduate school, I found that I often didn't share the intuitions I was "supposed" to. When doing philosophy of language, metaphysics, and mind, I found I didn't share Kripke's Godel/Schmidt intuitions, I didn't share Putnam's Water/XYZ intuitions, I didn't share Davidon's Swampman intuitions, and indeed, I didn't share any externalist intuitions about pretty much anything. But there I was, encountering a veritable tsunami of externalists trumpeting the arguments! But of course not everyone was an externalist. There were still some internalists like me. We just seemed to be getting crowded out by those with externalist intuitions.

And so I worried:was what was going on a kind of band-wagon, Hawthorne effect where once some influential people (Kripke, Putnam, Davidson, etc.) affirm an intuition, other people simply tend to follow suit--in which case it's not actual arguments that are winning the day so much as a sociological phenomenon of certain intuitions becoming popular (in turn rather arbitrarily redefining what counts as a "good argument" in that literature--namely, those that begin with the popular intuition!).;

I ended up taking my "messed up" intuitions home, as it were, leaving philosophy of language for other areas of philosophy where my intuitions weren't considered so "off": namely moral and political philosophy (my AOS now). And yet...the worry has crept up yet again! Indeed, Graber focuses on another case that has troubled me even more lately: the case of moral realism.

Anyone who does meta-ethics knows that there has been a moral realism tsunami, with realist after realist contending that, "only a realist account of moral semantics can account for the face value of moral language [see, for e.g., Shafer-Landau (2003) and Brink (1989)]." (Graber, p. 5) Except here's the problem: many people--people like me, any expressivist on the planet; my students, if my class discussions are any indication, etc.--just don't think the face value of moral language is anything like moral realists claim it to be. Most of my students, for instance, explicitly say that they think moral statements (e.g. "Murder is wrong") merely state matters of emotion, opinion, or otherwise mind-dependent phenomena (such as desires)--all of which flies in the face of moral realists' claims.

And so I have worried: how has moral realism achieved such a preeminent place in philosophical discussion? Is it the arguments that have done it, or is it more of a sociological phenomenon where the philosophers with realist intuitions have the upper-hand not in terms of arguments but rather mere number and prominence of people with their intuitions? 

Now, of course, as I have expressed them, these are just worries--nothing more! However, in his paper, Graber argues that on any plausible theory of meaning (internalist, externalist, whatever), philosophical inquiry changes the meaning of words and concepts, altering their satisfaction-conditions so that (A) at one point in time, and for one set of speaker, one answer to philosophical questions (e.g. moral realism) is correct, whereas (B) at another point in time, and for other speaking, a different answer is correct (e.g. moral antirealism).

Graber's final point then is that if he is right, then philosophical projects that depend on "meaning analysis" (i.e. analytic metaphysics, meta-ethics, etc.) all have to lapse into incoherence. Why? Because, very roughly, if we take ourselves to be (1) discovering answers to philosophical questions, but (2) our inquiries change semantic meaning of contested terms, it follows that (3) we're not discovering answers to philosophical questions. We're making up "answers" on the fly...which is to say, we're not discovering answers at all--we're playing rhetorical philosophical games.

Anyway, I don't know if the worries are good ones, or if Graber is right. These are just some issues that have bounced around in the back of my head for a while--and, while I've never thought about them very carefully, Graber seems to have: and his analysis of them seems to me worth taking seriously. But what do I know? I'll be curious to hear what you all think.

Do professors have a moral duty to retire?

[this is cross-posted from NewApps] A few years ago, I read the Philosophy Smoker on a regular basis. In the comments threads, several job seekers complained about older professors who didn't retire. If only they finally went away, more tenure lines would become available for junior people. In a provocative essay, professor emerita Laurie Frendrich argues along similar lines. She argues that professors have a moral duty to retire. The reasons why they don't, she argues, are largely self-serving: the large income of a senior faculty member, the pleasure of teaching: "Professors approaching 70...have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves."

Unlike in the US, where the mandatory retirement age of professors at 70 was lifted in 1994, European professors are still obliged to retire when they reach a given age (usually between 65 and 67). It is certainly a good thing that tenured lines eventually open again and younger academics can step in. But does that mean that older professors in the US also have a moral obligation to step down when the time comes? For one thing, many tenured positions aren't being replaced by junior tenure lines but by contingent (VAP, adjunct etc) positions. Also, pension schemes were gutted during the 2008 and following years crisis, which made it financially precarious for older professors to retire.

I agree high retirement ages are problematic, but I disagree that individual older professors have a moral duty to retire. If the total effects of scrapping the pension age for professors are negative, that should be a reason to reintroduce mandatory pension age in academia in the US, but it does not put the burden of that decision on individual professors in their late 60s or older. Let's look at some of the main arguments Frendrich offers:

A contemporary Indian Philosopher's dialogues

Daya Krishna (1924--2007) was an Indian philosopher, a rationalist and iconoclast, who constantly tried to question and scrutinise acquired "truths". The main place for such investigations was for him a saṃvāda 'dialogue'. That's why he also strived to organise structured saṃvāda inviting scholars from different traditions to debate about a specific problem. The minutes of such dialogues have been published in Saṃvāda and Bhakti.

Shail Mayaram, in the introduction of a book dedicated to Daya Krisna and Ramchandra Gandhi, Philosophy as Samvad and Svaraj adds some interesting information about the saṃvādas which have no written record:

A dialogue on bhakti attempted to universalize the phenomenon of devotion and encourage thinking about it philosophically. A dialogue on Śilpaśāstra [traditional Indian study of architecture, EF] was held in Amber, Jaipur and brought together traditional sthapatis ['carpenters', EF] and architects. I […] was fortunate to be present at the dialogue on Kāshmir Śaivism (with a special session in an open ground in Gulmarg). […] Subsequently, two dialogues were held in Lucknow and Hydearabad.

Within the same volume, Mustafa Khawaja reproduces the letter of invitation sent by Daya Krishna to scholars of Islamic philosophy. Daya Krishna predominantely wrote in English, but he was well aware of the risk of neglecting other languages. Thus, the saṃvādas were open to scholars speaking in different languages (as attested also by the proceedings mentioned above) and Daya Krishna was very keen to listen also to marginal philosophical traditions (such as that of the Islamic theologians speaking Urdū). Also the invitation letter is written in two languages and is full of open questions to be debated.
Nonetheless, this openness did not always work. Mayaram writes:

I remember the meeting of the scholars' group including Daya Krishna, Ram Chandra Dwivedi, Arindam Chakrabarti and Mukund Lath with Laxman Joo, then celebrated as one of the greatest living exponents of the school of philosophy that is popularly known as Kashmir Saivism [I would rather speak of the Pratyabhijñā school, EF]. Laxman Joo responded to their questions with complete silence. […] After their departure, he asked Bettina Bäumer, yeh nāstik kaun the [Who were those non-believers?]

For outsiders, it might be interesting to note that the scholars visiting Laxman Joo are among the most important scholars of Indian (and in many cases also Western) philosophy (on Arindam Chakrabarti, see here), so that his silence appears all the more puzzling.

The possibility of failure is an interesting point, because dialogue cannot be imposed on someone, its very "democratic" structure makes this impossible. Thus, what to do with those who do not want to speak? Or is dialogue among people not sharing the same presuppositions (e.g., the same religious praxis) impossible?

(Cross-posted for insiders on my personal blog.) On Daya Krishna and his volume on bhakti, see this post and this one respectively. On English as the predominant language, some interesting comments can be read at this post and at the linked ones. I am grateful to Elise Coquereau for sending me a copy of Shail Mayaram's article.

Where the jobs are(n't)

**Updated**: In the comments section, Cian Dorr pointed out that Zombie's 110 jobs number was off, as Zombie only counted unexpired jobs on philjobs. My initial count of AOS did not make this mistake. I had gone all the way back to August, which upon double-checking was >160 jobs. In any case, I have gone back a second time, this time all the way to July, and have now listed the breakdown of AOS for 195 jobs.

I recently came across a facebook thread in which someone asked if there was a list of the distribution of this year's TT jobs by AOS. Since the answer to their question was, "No", I figured I'd put together a list myself.

Below is a list I compiled from this year's JFP so far, in alphabetical order by AOS. A few notes: (1) I have not included jobs from other job boards (e.g. HigherEd Jobs, Vitae, etc.); (2) I have only included TT jobs; (3) I have simply tallied the number of times each AOS was listed, so the list does not distinguish between jobs that listed one vs. multiple AOS--with one exception, jobs that listed "The Core" (metaphysics, epistemology, mind & language).

So, without further ado, here's the list:

• Aesthetics: 6
• African American philosophy: 1
• Agency Theory: 1
• Ancient: 6
• Applied Ethics: 35
• Asian: 3
• Biology: 1
• Catholic: 1
• Classical German philosophy:
• Classical: 1
• Cognitive Science: 5
• Comparative (Western & non-western):
• Continental: 9
• "Core" (M&E+Lang+Mind): 4
• Early Modern: 7
• Epistemology: 13
• Ethics: 37
• Feminist philosophy: 5
• Gender: 1
• German philosophy: 1
• History of philosophy: 3
• History of phil science: 2
• Indian: 1
• Islamic: 3
• Kant: 2
• Language: 3
• Law: 3
• Logic: 1
• Lonergan studies: 1
• Math: 2
• Medieval: 5
• Meta-ethics: 3
• Metaphysics: 11
• Mind: 15
• Modern: 3
• Nineteenth Century: 2
• Non-Western: 1
• Open: 37
• Psychology: 1
• Phil Science & Technology:
• Politics, Philosophy, and Economics: 5
• Pragmatism: 2
• Race: 1
• Science: 12
• Science and Technology Studies: 5
• Social-Political: 20

Right offhand, a number of notable trends pop out. First, this looks like a terrible job season so far. Over at the Smoker, Zombie has tallied only 110 tenure-track jobs [note: now, going back all the way to June, it doesn't look quite so bad--though most AOS are still in the single digits).  Second, the most in-demand AOS this year are ethics (37 listings), applied ethics (35) jobs, open (37), and social-political (20). So, value theory's looking comparatively good. Third, it's surprising (to me, at any rate) how few jobs are in the "core", though Mind isn't doing too bad (15 listings). 

Livestock animals as slaves

Do livestock animals in factory farms count as slaves? I think so, but many of my friends disagree.

3 Quarks Daily prize

I'd like to encourage our readers to nominate posts from the Cocoon for this year's 3 Quarks Daily philosophy blogging prize. Any post from the past year may be nominated, and nominations may be made in the comments section of the aforementioned link. One important further note: only the first 100 nominations will be counted. So, nominate aways, and let's win one for the Cocoon! :)

Maybe you're not too disorganized. Maybe you're too organized!

This post's headline is intended as a friendly riposte to Elisa Freschi's recent post, "You are not too busy, just disorganized." In brief, in response to a frustrating situation, Elisa enjoins all of us to either (1) stop overcommitting to projects that we cannot follow through upon in a timely manner, or (2) develop organizational skills so that we can follow through on our commitments.

I think (I hope!) Elisa's basic point is easy to agree with. It's common courtesy not to leave other people on the hook for bad planning, and better courtesy not to make excuses for oneself when one does plan poorly. But, of course, for many people, good planning is easier said than done! We often make commitments with the best of intentions, fully intending to meet our deadlines...and yet, all too often, we find ourselves overcommitted and struggling to meet those deadlines. Which begs the obvious-enough question: how can avoid landing ourselves in these types of situations?

In today's post, I am simply going to make a friendly suggestion to those who find themselves strugging to meet deadlines or get things done in a timely manner. Although I recognize that people work differently, and that the suggestion may not work for everyone, the strategy I'm going to describe has worked splendidly for me--and so, if you're having trouble, maybe give it a try! 

It's natural enough to think--as Elisa's post suggests--that being "well-organized" is conducive to getting things done. I actually don't think this is the case. At least it hasn't been my experience that being "well-organized" in any traditional is conducive to getting things done. I know some people who are incredibly well-organized--people who have daily lists of things to get done, planners detailing their daily schedule, etc.--but who are constrantly struggling to meet deadlines. I think there is a general problem with this entire approach to getting things done. Let me explain.

Suppose you set aside 2 hours to work on a Project A (e.g. a paper for an edited volume that there's a deadline for), 2 hours to work on Project B (e.g. reviewing a paper for a journal), 2 hours for Project C (e.g. lectures), etc. On the surface, this looks like good planning. But there's a perfectly simple way in which it can predictably lead to a failure to meet deadlines. Suppose you spend your 2 hours working on Project A, but you end up mucking-around (we all have those days, right?). In that case, even though you dedicated 2 hours to Project A that day, it was time wasted. You didn't get squat done on the project, and you could have spent those two hours hacking away at other things you need to get done. And herein, I think, lies the horrible garden-path. You muck around on Project A, not getting far; so you fall behind schedule. Then, because you only left yourself 2 hours on Project B, if you're not super-efficient on that project, you fall behind on that one too. All of a sudden, there you are: you "planned fantastically", and yet you're not meeting any of your deadlines!

I think there's a simple, killer way to solve this problem: move back and forth from project to project constantly, on the fly, so that you're always getting a little bit of everything done. In other words, don't do this:

• 2 hours for grading
• 2 hours for working on Paper A
• 2 hours for working on lecture notes
• Etc.

Instead, try bouncing back-and-forth between projects on the fly whenever you find yourself wasting time or getting tired with what you're doing--as in:

• Grade 2 term-papers; immediately move on to:
• Editing a page of paper A...until you hit a roadblock; then immediately move on to:
• Writing several Powerpoint lecture slides; then move on to:
• Grading daily assignments for Class #1; then move on to:
• Editing a page of project B; then move on to:
• Grading 2 more term papers; then move onto:
• Writing ten powerpoint-slides;
• Etc.

This kind of project-hopping might sound like complete mayhem--but I think you may find yourself surprised just how well it works. Because you're always moving from thing to thing, you're almost constantly crossing things off your to-do list (e.g. 2 papers graded here, 5 lecture slides there, a page of a paper written/edited there, etc.), slowly but surely whittling away all of the stuff you need to get gone.

Contrast this to the strategy of laying aside 2 hours for this project, 2 hours for that, etc. The problem with this, again, is that it's really easy to waste time when you're working on a single project (e.g. a single paper, grading, whatever) for a set time-period. For example, suppose you decide to spend 2 hours on a paper you've been writing. We all know how this can go. You run into a roadblock, sit and think for 30 minutes, revise that same paragraph again, etc. All of a sudden you've wasted two hours. You can avoid this by simply moving from project to project. On this model, whenever you start to struggly with something, you don't sit and think about it for 30 minutes; you move onto 2 paper you need to grade, five lecture slides you need to write, etc. In other words, the 2 hours you would have wasted by setting time aside are 2 hours you are grading 2 papers, writing 5 lecture slides, etc. All of which gets more done. 

The other great thing I've found about bouncing back and forth from stuff is that it really goes a long way to preventing fatigue. Grading a stack of 40 papers? Goodness, it's monotonous. Grading 2 papers, editing a page of a paper, editing a job application letter, grading 2 more papers an hour later? Not monotonous at all. Indeed, suprisingly fun!

Or maybe not. Again, like I said, we're all different. Maybe this Mayhem Strategy won't work for you--but if you are one of those people who struggle to get things done, maybe it couldn't hurt to try something new! :) 

A demarcation problem for political discourse

Note: I have a co-authored paper with my friends Jonathan Lang and Bekka Williams on this topic. I don't want to speak for them here, so I'm using "I" rather than "we" for this post. They might well disagree strongly with some of the things I say (or the way I say them). However, most of what I say below is indebted to my conversations with Jonathan and Bekka, and is developed much more extensively in our paper.

Here's an important fact about democratic political life: Some political outcomes are considered to be up for discussion, while others are excluded from consideration. For example, when an election is coming up, candidates for major parties (Democrats and Republicans in the U.S.) get a lot of attention, whereas third-party candidates (e.g., the Libertarians, the Greens, etc.) are often excluded. Similarly, when we're debating an issue of public policy, some possible policies are up for discussion, whereas others are not.

We each get to decide whether to include or exclude any given candidate or policy from consideration. And those decisions are collectively (if not individually) consequential. For example, if sufficiently many people exclude a candidate from consideration, then her fate is sealed. Because these exclusionary decisions are consequential, we should try to make them in a principled and reasoned way. When we exclude a given political outcome from consideration, we should be able to offer reasons why.

What principle can be used to decide whether to exclude someone (or something) from consideration in political discourse? Here's an option:

The Probability Principle: For any given political outcome O, there is some probability threshold X such that O ought to be considered iff Pr(O)>X.

The Probability Principle (or some cousin of it) seems to be in the background of many of our exclusionary decisions. For example, in political discourse surrounding the presidential election of 2012, one often heard sentences like this: "Let's not talk about Jill Stein, even though she'd make a great president, because she almost certainly won't win."

Against the Probability Principle, I offer the following argument.

First, political discourse is a form of reasoning about what to do: in political discourse, we are reasoning about whether to elect this or that candidate, or institute this or that policy, or whatever.

But, second, when we reason about what to do at the individual level--e.g., when an individual agent is deciding about whether to give to charity, or go vegan, or fulfill a promise, or get married, etc.--the probability of one's making various available decisions is not a relevant factor. ("I probably will not fulfill my promise, and therefore I should not even consider whether to do so" seems like a very bad inference.)

Thus, if the Probability Principle is true, then there is a disanalogy between political discourse and deliberation at the individual level.

But I see no way to explain why such a disanalogy would exist. Why would "We probably will not elect Jill Stein, so we should not even consider whether to do so" be a good inference if "I probably will not fulfill my promise, and therefore I should not even consider whether to do so" is a bad inference?

I see no satisfactory explanation of the disanalogy between political discourse and deliberation at the individual level. So, I think we should abandon the Probability Principle and look for another one.

Here's an option:

The Utility Principle: For any given political outcome O, O ought to be considered iff considering O is better, in utilitarian terms, than not considering O.

If you're a utilitarian, it'll be easy to sell you on the Utility Principle. But the Utility Principle does not reflect a typical approach to political discourse. Consider: For the average citizen, political discourse has approximately zero utility-enhancing effects, because the average citizen's political speech has very little effect on political outcomes. Given this, if we were to accept the Utility Principle, I think we should recommend that most individuals refrain from considering any political outcomes at all. So, I think, the mere fact that people engage in political discourse at all suggests that most people reject (implicitly) the Utility Principle.

The demarcation problem is this: How can we find a principle to guide us in our decisions about what to include and what to exclude in political discourse? I see three ways that this problem might ultimately be resolved:

(1) Conservatism about political discourse: We might find a principle that could justify all (or most) of the exclusionary decisions that we conventionally make. For example, we might find a principle that would justify the exclusion of Greens and Libertarians from consideration in political discourse, and would also justify the inclusion of Democrats and Republicans in political discourse. 

(2) Moderate revisionism about political discourse: We might find that there is no principle that could justify all (or even most) of the exclusionary decisions that we conventionally make. But we might find that there is some principle that can justify some exclusionary decisions. This resolution of the problem would force us to consider some outcomes that we might otherwise have been disposed to ignore (and might also force us to ignore some outcomes that we might otherwise have been disposed to consider), but would allow us to continue excluding some outcomes from consideration.

(3) Extreme inclusivism about political discourse: We might find that there is no principle that can justify any exclusionary decisions, and therefore any practically possible political outcome deserves to be considered right alongside every other practically possible political outcome.

My money is on (3). I don't think there is any principle that can justify the exclusion of any practically possible political outcome from consideration in political discourse. In my (tentative) view, any given candidate for political office, for example, ought to be given equal consideration alongside all the others, and ought to be discarded only if she is shown to be a worse candidate than the others.

Extreme inclusivism requires a radical change in the way that we engage in political discourse. If we were to become extreme inclusivists, it would not be enough just to consider a few of the third-party candidates, e.g., the Greens and the Libertarians; we would have to consider (at least implicitly) millions of different candidates. I do not think this approach is feasible--i.e., I do not think that very many people will become extreme inclusivists anytime soon--but I think it is what we ought to do.

"A Reminder to Search Committees"

Shelley Tremain has asked for me to post the following on her behalf:

A Reminder to Search Committees 

As deadlines for philosophy faculty positions approach and pass, members of search committees should bear in mind how structural, institutional, disciplinary, material, and other factors have marginalized many philosophers, reproducing the profession and discipline as homogeneous along axes of power such as disability, race, sexuality, nationality, language, and gender.  Disabled philosophers have been virtually excluded from the profession and discipline. In my introduction to the Fall 2013 issue of Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ, vol. 33, no. 4 http://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/108) whose theme was Improving Feminist Philosophy and Theory by Taking Account of Disability, I estimated that 4% of philosophy faculty in North America are disabled. This figure was based upon past surveys conducted at a couple of APA conferences. Clearly, that estimate was too generous: according to recent membership surveys conducted by the APA and CPA, less than 2% and less than 1% (respectively) of philosophy faculty (any rank) are disabled.  

In the DSQ intro, I identify many of the factors that have shaped the ableism of the discipline and profession. Entitled "Introducing Feminist Philosophy of Disability," that article can be accessed from the link above or read here: https://www.academia.edu/5812065/Introducing_Feminist_Philosophy_of_Disability. I also discuss the marginalization and exclusion of disabled philosophers from the profession in "Disabling Philosophy" which appeared in the April issue of The Philosopher's Magazine. That article can be read here: https://www.academia.edu/6651947/Disabling_Philosophy.

Undergraduate teaching is not a necessary evil

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well." - Albert Einstein

I've heard some people say before that they consider undergraduate teaching to be a necessary evil--as something one has to do in order to get paid to do research. Now, I don't know how many philosophers actually think something like this. It could be few, it could be many. What I do know is that, in my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. My experience has been that undergraduate teaching--in addition to being valuable in its own right--can be a vital part of doing research. Now, of course, this is just my experience. Still, for all that, I'd like to suggest that there are some general reasons to think that, if you really put a lot of time and energy into undergraduate teaching, it is likely to improve your research.

 

You are not too busy, just disorganized

Let us face it: We do not work in optimal work conditions. The ones of us who work in the US or in a US-similar system are always under pressure in order to find a job (whatsoever), then to find a tenured-track position, then to have their tenure confirmed and then to have enough articles per year. The ones of us who work in Europe or in a Europe-similar system are constantly precarious, spend their lives applying for projects and have to overcommit to many projects in order to survive.

Nor there is hope for the future: Today in the morning I heard at the news that only 1% (sic!) of the Italian researchers will sooner or later achieve a permanent position in an Italian university. Such being the case and beside fighting for better conditions for researchers, one just needs to learn to do research nonetheless. How? By applying the basic rules of managers and other over-busy people (schedule, organise, delegate ---an example of the latter activity can be found here---…). No matter how little we like this to become part of our daily routine, if we do not, we are just deemed to fail. We do not have the freedom to spend years on a single article, with no other commitment apart from the one to research and to the search for truth. Nor do we have the freedom to ignore that things have changed, unless we are ready to be unemployed.

Of course, one can try to commit to as little things as possible, learn to say "no" to most offers and focus on only a few things. This is a risky way (one never knows whether one will keep on receiving invitations and offers), but a fair one, I believe. No one pretends from us that we organise conferences, panels, apply for gigantic projects, edit proceedings, write an article per month and so on.

However, if we want to keep on organising conferences, writing articles, teaching, researching, etc., we are not allowed to throw our organisation problems onto our colleagues. Many years back, I submitted an article to an edited volume reserved for early career scholars. One can easily imagine that these people really need their articles to be published. Nonetheless, the book has been published only five years after the conference. And we all know many other cases of this kind. This is just unfair.

We are all in the same situation (a small boat in a wavy ocean) and it is just unfair to pretend from your colleagues to be patient or even to solve the problems we have created. Thus, please don't call your co-organiser telling her (usually women tend to be more vulnerable to this behaviour) that you are overbusy and she needs to do more than her half: WE ARE ALL OVERBUSY and unless you are the single parent of five disabled children, you are very likely not to be busier than anyone else. You are just disorganised. Either you stop committing to too many things or you start being better organised. But you are not allowed to tell other people that they have to wait or to solve your problems.

Jobs only at Vitae?

Yesterday, I was browsing a thread over at the Smoker and came across this comment by Zombie:

Having not looked at Vitae until today, I'm distressed to see jobs listed there that are NOT on philjobs. WTF peoples. List your jobs at philjobs!

And indeed, what do you know: there are tenure-track philosophy jobs listed over at Vitae that are listed neither on philjobs, nor HigherEdJobs, nor anywhere else that I can tell for that matter. Like Zombie, I had never even heard of the Vitae listings until now. What gives?

The explanatory superfluity of non-natural moral facts

I'm interested in the following metaphysical thesis:

Moral non-naturalism: Moral facts do not belong to the natural world, i.e., moral facts are not natural facts.

I accept moral non-naturalism. I accept it despite all the problems it causes (and it causes a lot of problems). My purpose in this post is to urge my fellow non-naturalists to embrace one of the main problems that comes along with our view. Specifically, I'm going to argue that non-naturalism implies that moral facts are explanatorily superfluous with respect to moral attitudes.

Here's my argument:

(1) Natural facts just are facts that are properly subject to scientific investigation—i.e., natural facts just are scientific facts. 

(2) If X plays a contributory role in the best explanation of any natural fact, then X is properly subject to scientific investigation.

(3) If X influences Y, then X plays a contributory role in the best explanation of Y.

(4) Moral attitudes are natural phenomena.

Therefore, if moral facts influence or explain moral attitudes, then moral facts are natural facts. Equivalently: If moral non-naturalism is true, then moral facts do not influence or explain moral attitudes.

The argument is valid. (Here's why: Suppose moral facts influence or explain moral attitudes. Then (by (4)) moral facts influence or explain a class of natural facts. Then (by (3)) moral facts play a contributory role in the best explanation of a class of natural facts. Then (by (2)) moral facts are properly subject to scientific investigation. Then (by (1)) moral facts are natural facts.)

I don't think there ought to be much controversy about (4) and (3). Moral attitudes (moral beliefs, moral seemings, etc.) are a type of psychological phenomena; and psychology is a science; so moral attitudes are natural phenomena, as (4) says. Regarding (3): I know of no counterexamples to it, and I know of a lot of cases that seem to lend confirmatory support to it. For example: If I want to explain a thunderstorm, and it turns out that humidity (say) influenced the thunderstorm in some way, then it seems clear that humidity plays a contributory role in the best explanation of the thunderstorm.

Perhaps (2) will be more controversial, but I think (2) is well supported by the actual practices of scientists, and by the norms that these practices reflect. The idea behind (2) is that science is maximally open: the mission of science is to investigate anything whatsoever that best explains natural facts. Even Zeus, for example, would fall within the purview of scientific investigation, if Zeus influenced or explained anything in the natural world.

(1) is a claim about the boundaries of the natural. The term "natural" has a lot of different meanings in different contexts, and I don't claim that (1) is in line with every such meaning. However, in the context of discussion about moral non-naturalism in particular, (1) is very often endorsed; e.g., Shafer-Landau, Parfit, and Enoch have all relied upon some variant on (1). I think it's clear that (1) captures a principal meaning of "natural" in the metaethical context.

(1) and (2) together imply that Zeus would be a part of the natural world if Zeus influenced or explained anything in the natural world. More generally, (1) and (2) together imply that the non-natural cannot influence or explain the natural. Sometimes people find this to be surprising or even objectionable. I don't think it's particularly objectionable. Further, it seems to me that even if these implications are objectionable to some degree, they're less objectionable than the denial of either (1) or (2).

I think the premises of the above argument are all defensible, and so I think we should all just finally, once and for all, accept the explanatory superfluity of non-natural moral facts: If moral non-naturalism is true, then moral facts do not influence or explain moral attitudes.

This conditional is generally considered to be a problem for non-naturalism (and therefore is sometimes resisted by non-naturalists) for at least two big reasons:

First, the explanatory superfluity of non-natural moral facts saddles non-naturalists with some immediately counterintuitive commitments. Consider: We all believe that torturing for fun is wrong. Why do we believe that? Well, it's tempting to say: We believe that torturing for fun is wrong because torturing for fun really is wrong. But if I'm right, moral non-naturalists can't say that. Whatever the correct explanation of the content of our moral beliefs turns out to be, that explanation does not include any moral facts.

Second, and more importantly, the explanatory superfluity of non-natural moral facts presents non-naturalists with some heavy epistemological difficulties. How could our moral beliefs amount to knowledge of moral facts if our moral beliefs are neither influenced nor explained by moral facts?

Some non-naturalists have tried to avoid these difficulties by rejecting or remaining uncommitted about the explanatory superfluity of non-natural moral facts. That strategy won't work, if I'm correct. In my view, defenders of non-naturalism have to try to overcome our epistemological difficulties, rather than avoid them. We have to accept the explanatory superfluity of non-natural moral facts and find a way to struggle forward.

The Greatest-Possible-Metablog

First there was the metablog. Then there was the metametablog. Then there was the metametametablog. Something had to be done. And so it was: None can possibly surpass it. Yes, this is a joke...I so couldn't help myself. ;)

The ethics of self-promotion through bragging

In the reputation-based culture that academic philosophy is, it is advantageous to brag about one's accomplishments. In a forthcoming paper by fellow Cocooner Mark Alfano and Brian Robinson, there's an interesting conceptual analysis of bragging. I will not repeat their work here (the paper is quite short), but to briefly reiterate, Alfano and Robinson define bragging as a special form of assertion where the bragger "aims to impress her audience with something about herself by asserting something about herself". 

In this broad sense, lots of social media updates count as bragging. For instance, even posting scenic pictures from the beautiful location where the conference you are speaking at could be a form of bragging (look what a cool place I've been invited to!). And so are status updates of books and articles one has recently published. Self-promotion through bragging, it seems morally problematic. Susan Speer found that there is a strong social norm against self-praise. She writes

Praising oneself is an interactionally delicate matter that may leave one vulnerable to “unfavorable character assessment” or accusations of bragging", something that can only be mitigated by framing the praise as coming from someone else.

Is this a reason why letters of recommendation are so important in our profession? We can't have it that the candidate toots her own horn, so perhaps we want someone else to do it for her? 

As Alfano and Robinson point out, bragging wasn't always frowned upon. For instance, it is positively framed in Beowulf, where the long brag by Beowulf boosts morale of the Danes who were defeated by Grendel. Yet, as Christianity elevated humility as a virtue, bragging became increasingly seen in a negative light, giving rise to strange things like the humble-brag (A&R identify Paul's 2 Corinthians 11 as an early example).

One could categorically say bragging is morally wrong, just like, for instance, it has been recently suggested networking is wrong (I discuss the ethics of career networking here). Even if it is advantageous for one's career, it's just not something one should do. 

On What Reasoning Might Be, Part II: why reasoning is not rule-following

I would like to begin this, my final post as Featured Author for the Philosophers’ Cocoon, by once again thanking Marcus for this opportunity. I also want to add a big thanks to the Cocoon community for stimulating comments.

In what follows I will sketch some of my current thinking on reasoning. As I mentioned in my previous post, I start from the idea that reasoning requires recognizing rational relations among propositions: in reasoning from R to p you must take it that R supports p (in some relevant sense), and come to believe p partly because of this. This is what, following Boghossian (2014), I call the “Taking Condition”. The problem is giving an account of reasoning that can make sense of this requirement. As Boghossian correctly points out, giving such an account is by no means a trivial problem.

The Many-Interacting-Worlds Interpretation of QM and the P2P Hypothesis

Readers may find this new(ish) interpretation of quantum mechanics of interest (see also here). Basically, the authors suggest that QM should be understood in terms of many parallel worlds interacting with one another. On that note, I think it is worth pointing out some obvious similarities between their approach and the P2P Model that I proposed earlier here and here (for a brief overview, see also here). My model also understands QM in terms of many-interacting-worlds. One main difference--a difference that I believe may stand in favor of my model--is that whereas their model assumes a primitive, unexplained force pushing "nearby" worlds away from one another, my model explains the probabilistic nature of QM in terms of non-primitive, computational processes we already understand: the functional architecture of peer-to-peer computational networking. I also think the P2P Model explains philosophical phenomena (e.g. the mind-body problem, free will problem, and problems in the philosophy of time) that their model does not. Finally, my model has one important virtue that theirs does not: their model entails that all of the parallel worlds are equally real, including a vast variety of counter possible me's and you's in different dimensions. My model implies, to the contrary, that our actual, intersubjective "universe" is the superposition of worlds selected by sentient beings' consciousnesses in a peer-to-peer environment, whereas other possible universes are not actualized by conscious experience at all (and so, are merely possible universes that *could* have been experienced).

In any case, I'm glad to see the general, many-interacting-worlds approach gaining some traction!

Featured Author: David Killoren

I'd like to wholeheartedly thank Markos Valaris for his work as Featured Author, and for doing such a great job during his stint! It was really great learning about Markos' research, and I hope Markos enjoyed his time sharing his work with us.

Now that it's the beginning of another month, it's my pleasure to introduce our second Featured Author: David Killoren. 

David received his PhD from Wisconsin in 2012 and is now in a post-doctoral position in the Jackson Family Center for Ethics & Values at Coastal Carolina University. He works mainly in ethics, but also has interests in epistemology, social/political philosophy, and aesthetics. His publications include:

David Killoren (2010). Moral Intuitions, Reliability, and Disagreement. Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 4 (1) 1-35.

David Killoren and Bekka Williams (2013). Group Agency and Overdetermination. Ethical Theory & Moral Practice 16 (2) 295-307.

In some of his recent papers (accessible here: http://www.davidkilloren.com/papers) he argues that robust moral realism is an excellent religion, that robust moral realists ought to adopt an occasionalist epistemology, that the moral difference between pets and livestock should be understood in terms of narrativity, and (with Jonathan Lang and Bekka Williams) that political discourse should be extremely inclusive. He's also in the midst of co-editing (with Emily Crookston and Jonathan Trerise) a collection of new papers on political ethics.

David will be with us for the next couple of weeks or so, and has several interesting-sounding posts planned. I've also known David for a couple of years now, and am happy to say that he's a really cool cat. :) So, please join me in welcoming him!

Finally, I'd just like to remind readers that participation in our Featured Authors series is open to all early career members of the profession with a peer-reviewed publishing record, and invite anyone who is interested in sharing their work to self-nominate by emailing me at marvan@ut.edu. Please don't be shy. I'd like for the series to be comprised by a truly diverse body of philosophers from all over the map!

Recent Work by Cocooners (October 2014)

The following works were either published or posted to philpapers by Cocoon contributors during the month of October (listed in alphabetical order by author):

Marcus Arvan (2014). A Unified Explanation of Quantum Phenomena? The Case for the Peer‐to‐Peer Simulation Hypothesis as an Interdisciplinary Research Program. Philosophical Forum 45 (4):433-446.

Marcus Arvan (2014). Justice as Fairness in a Broken World. Philosophy and Public Issues 4 (2):95-126.

Bradford Cokelet (forthcoming). Dispositions, Character, and the Value of Acts. In Christian Miller, R. Michael Furr, Angela Knobel & William Fleeson (eds.), Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology. Oxford University Press.

Bradford Cokelet (forthcoming). Virtue Ethics and the Demands of Social Morality. In Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 4. Oxford University Press.

Bradford Cokelet (2014). Review of Christian Miller, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory. [REVIEW] Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2014 (2.7)

Helen De Cruz (2014). Where Philosophical Intuitions Come From. Australasian Journal of Philosophy:1-17.

Elisa Freschi (forthcoming). The Reuse of Texts in Indian Philosophy: Introduction. Journal of Indian Philosophy:1-24.

Moti Mizrahi (forthcoming). Three Arguments Against the Expertise Defense. Metaphilosophy.

Did I miss anything? If so, just let me know and I'll update the list!

UPDATES:

Joshua Mugg (w/Muhammad Ali Khalidi) ‘The Inherent Bias in Positing an Inherence Heuristic.’ (2014) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37: 493-494.