The Philosophers' Cocoon

Wise thoughts: Summaries of classic philosophical works in words of one syllable

Philosophy is notable for its jargon, so it is a good exercise to try to summarize its classic works in short texts of just one syllable. The past few days philosophers have provided such summaries, as a game in pandemic times, maybe inspired by this classic paper. It also makes for interesting pedagogy—trying to strip down the philosophy to its bare ideas, away from the jargon. Here follows a selection of summaries, reproduced with the author’s permission.

This list was compiled by Sophie Grace Chappell, Simon Kirchin, and Helen De Cruz. We may have missed some gems. Feel free to put them in comments. 

 

Zeno, by Nicholas Denyer

If you mean to go to a place, you must first get half of the way to that place. But if you are to go half of the way to that place, you must first get half of the way to half of the way to that place. And so on, and so on, and so on. In fact, you can't so much as start to go a place, since to start to go to a place means to do the first thing of all the things you need to do if you are to go to the place, and, as we have seen, there is no first thing.

 

Parmenides, by Sophie Grace Chappell

[Some warm up re "The steeds that bore me to the she God", but I'll skip all that]

IS is.

IS NOT is not.

You can think just what is there to think.

What is, is there for you to think it.

What is not, is not there for you to think it.

So don't; that is a path of thought not at all to be thought down.

Just one path is left, to which I point you: that it is, and that "is not" is not to be thought.

If there were change then IS NOT would oft be true. But IS NOT can't be true at all (see up there ^). So there is no change.

If there were two things X and Y then we would have to say "X IS NOT Y" and "Y IS NOT X". But we can’t say “is not” (see up there ^). So for all X and all Y, X IS Y. So there is just one thing. And it is It Is.

From here I get to the thought that What Is is round and the same depth and length on all sides. A globe, could be? Don't ask me how I got there.

And to what I call the way of tricks and shades, on which I have some stray thoughts on wombs, moons, and roots. Here too, don't ask me how I got there.

The end.

 

Plato’s Republic, by Ruth Groff

Be good and love the Good. You will like it. Nay, you will love it.

If there were no form of the Good, we could not speak of norms - of this one or of that one. In fact, we could not say what it is to *be* a norm that picks out good or bad at all, if there were no Good.

Those who have a say, &/or or sway, should be good for real, and wise. And they should try to help us all to be good for real, and wise. Which we all can be. What with how all of our souls can know and love the Good.

 

 

'What's the f-ing deal with journal formatting requirements?'

Yesterday, I completed a follow-up study on this important new research stream. Here's the new study's abstract and introduction:

Abstract

Many researchers wonder: what's the f-ing deal with journal formatting requirements? This is a common query. Journal formatting requirements are pretty weird. I mean, they require you to format your paper according to the journal's style even though there's a 90% chance your paper will be rejected and you’ll have to send your paper to another journal. To investigate this issue further, I went to submit a paper and looked several journals' author guidelines. They were weird! In conclusion, we may never know the f-ing deal with journal formatting requirements, but further study is warranted.

Introduction

Journal formatting requirements are very strange. Some researchers are like "whoa they actually require you to format your submission according to the journal's preferred style, what's the f-ing deal with that?" This sentiment is widely shared by researchers across institutions and backgrounds. Figuring our the f-ing deal with journal formatting requirements is thus of the utmost importance. It is now widely appreciated that the majority of journal formatting requirements are weird. [1] In journals with highly non-standard formatting requirements that emphasize the important of all submissions conforming to them, we need to understand what is going on with them. In journals with formatting guidelines that don't require new submissions to follow them, what are they even doing, and they do all sorts of weird stuff [4] (but see [5]). Despite these insights, the relative weirdness of journal formatting requirements and what the f is going on with them is yet untested [6-9].

I set out to test these hypotheses by observing several journals' author guidelines. Multiple journals endemic to the United States, Europe, and Australasia had moderately demanding journal formatting requirements (requiring 56% reformatting on average [10]). US journals regularly require Chicago style, whereas European journals routinely require APA (!) style and Australasia MLA style. I looked at these guidelines and how strongly they emphasized the importance that new submissions conform to them. I then verified these requirements upon attempting a new submission, whereupon 100% of the time I was required to check a box indicating that my paper conformed to the author guidelines. I predicted that these requirements would be pretty wild, looked really close at them, squinting and everything, to try and figure what their f-ing deal was. Study results are displayed in figure 1.

Quiz: Who Said It -- Ludwig Wittgenstein or the Log Lady from 'Twin Peaks'?

 compiled by Axel Gelfert

1. “Can you see through a wall? Can you see through human skin? X-rays see through solid – or so-called solid – objects. There are things in life that exist, and yet our eyes cannot see them.”
2. “A drunken man walks in a way that is quite impossible for a sober man to imitate, and vice versa.”
3. “Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too honest? Could one teach a dog to simulate pain?”
4. “As above, so below. The human being finds himself, or herself, in the middle. There is as much space outside the human, proportionately, as inside.”
5. “You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.”
6. “Suppose that at certain intervals situations repeated themselves, and that someone said time was circular. Would this be right or wrong? Neither.”
7. “In a dream, are all the characters really you – different aspects of you? Do answers come in dreams?”
8. “Letters are symbols. They are building blocks of words which form our languages. Languages help us communicate. Even with complicated languages used by intelligent people, misunderstanding is a common occurrence.”
9. “Think of the picture of blindness as a darkness in the soul or in the head of the blind man.”
10. “Miscommunication sometimes leads to arguments, and arguments sometimes lead to fights. Anger is usually present in arguments and fights. Anger is an emotion, usually classified as a negative emotion.”
11. “I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Before, there were branches there; now there is a human shape.”
12. “This of course is only a temporary solution to a problem which is going to keep returning, and sometimes these temporary solutions are worse for us than the original problem.”
13. “Is this language somehow too coarse and material for what we want to say? Then how is another one to be constructed? – And how strange that we should be able to do anything at all with the one we have!”
14. “Sometimes jokes are welcome. Like the one about the kid who said: ‘I enjoyed school. It was just the principal of the thing.’”
15. “Can I not say: a cry, a laugh, are full of meaning? And that means, roughly: much can be gathered from them.”
16. “If we look at a river in which numbered logs are floating, we can describe events on land with reference to these: for example, ‘When the 105th log passed, I ate dinner’.”
17. “It all comes out now, flowing like a river: that which is, and is not.”
18. “Why, suppose one were to say: the cow chews its food and then dungs the rose with it, so the rose has teeth in the mouth of a beast. This would not be absurd.”
19. “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”
20. “You know about death; that it is just a change, not an end.”
    
    

---

Ludwig Wittgenstein: 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19

The Log Lady: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 20.

 

Embarrassing moments in philosophy

I thought it might be fun to lighten things up a bit and share some of the most embarrassing things that we've either done or have happen to us in our professional career as philosophers. Here are my two contributions...

During the first year of my first job after grad school (at the University of British Columbia), I got invited to give a talk at a university on Vancouver Island. As I'd never been there before, you have to take a ferry to get to the island, and I'm a bit neurotic about getting to places early (I hate being late!), I decided to get there an hour early. The only problem was that when I actually got to Vancouver Island University, I learned that the building where my talk was supposed to be held didn't exist there. Why? Well, because my talk wasn't at VIU at all: it was at the University of Victoria! Oops. You see, while I'm almost pathologically averse to being late to things, I'm also definitely pathologically averse to planning trips well. So, yeah, I had to rent a car, drive all the way to the other side of the Island, and got to my own talk about 40 minutes late. Not exactly my finest hour. Fortunately, the department that organized the talk was really understanding about it, everybody stuck around, the talk went well, and we had a nice dinner and drinks out. In other words, everything ended well--but it was mortifying! 

My second story happened just a couple of months ago. I was scheduled to give a talk at the first meeting of the PPE Society, which was organized by Geoff Sayre-McCord and quite frankly was one of the best conferences I've ever been to (do submit to next year's conference - it was awesome!). Anyway, because I was excited about my paper, and I just happened to be on a three-person panel with two pretty high-profile people--Jason Brennan (Georgetown) and David Schmidtz (Arizona), both of whom I knew from my grad school days at Arizona--I worked my butt off for several days to put together a killer Powerpoint presentation. Because our session was just after lunch, I decided to get to the room about a half-hour early to make sure everything worked, technology-wise. I put up my Powerpoint on the screen, and everything looked great. So, when the session began, I felt pretty good. Well, I was pretty nervous as people began filling in, as the room eventually was standing-room only. In fact, there were people sitting all over the floor, which was pretty cool!

Anyway, everything started well-enough, but went bad pretty quickly. Jason gave his talk first, followed by Q&A--which unfortunately the session-chair let go on way too long. Since I was scheduled to go after Jason and before Dave, I already felt like I'd have to rush through my talk, as I didn't want to leave Dave without enough time. Alas, that wasn't the worst of it. When I got up to talk and scrolled to the second slide in my talk (right after my title slide), I discovered the presentation didn't fit on the screen. Of course, the title screen fit fine. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to test whether the rest of the slides would fit too, and they didn't. I later learned that newer versions of Powerpoint automatically default to "wide-screen", and that the projector provided at the conference was incompatible with wide-screen. Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it, so every single slide in the presentation was cut off on both sides, meaning that each bullet-point in the presentation was impossible to read and the many diagrams I had (which were really important to the presentation) didn't fit either. It was a total disaster. I rushed and stammered though the whole thing...it was mortifying! I'm sure I was beet-red in the face from embarrassment all throughout Dave's talk. It was that bad. Or at least I thought it was. And I basically spent the rest of the day depressed. Fortunately, once again things actually turned out okay in the end: I had a number of people come up to me at happy hour who said they found the talk interesting and wanted to chat about it! That took a bit of the sting out of it. 

The morals of the stories? The first two morals, I guess, are these: plan well, and make sure your tech works! But the second moral, I think--in both cases--is that understanding, kind people can make a world of difference to embarrassing mistakes. I'm sure the people at the University of Victoria weren't happy about my mistake--but their kindness made it all okay in the end. Similarly, I'm sure my PPE talk was every bit the disaster that I thought it was--but here again, the kindness of those who came up to chat during happy hour made things okay. 

Anyway, these are my two embarrassing stories (of course, I have many more, but I'll leave it at that!). What are your most professionally-embarrassing stories?

A Dissertation Retrospective

Hey ya'll. Sorry for the radio silence. I've been rushing to finish my dissertation so I can start a new gig in the Fall, and its been all consuming. I'll be designing some new courses from scratch later this summer, at which point I plan to continue the syllabus design series. But in the meantime, since all I'm thinking about lately is my dissertation, I thought I'd share my impressions of the process. So join me after the break for a look back...

Philosopher proves we didn't build this city on rock and roll

In 1985, Starship famously shocked the world by purporting to prove that we built this city on rock-and-roll (for a summary of the proof, see Figure 1).

Figure 1. "We Built This City"

 

Although initially met with skepticism, Starship's proof has surprisingly never been refuted, that is, until now. This morning, an area philosopher, working under the online pseudonym “JeffAirplane4Evah”, published a proof demonstrating, once and for all, that we did not, in fact, build this city on rock-and-roll.

Contacted anonymously through email, the philosopher stated, "I always knew that we built this city. But I've never been convinced we built it on rock-and-roll." When asked to elaborate, the philosopher added, "It's always been a real puzzle. I mean, if we built this city on rock-and-roll, how did it escape our notice for so long?" Alas, Starship's proof has long resisted refutation. Part of the problem, philosophers say, is that the proof is notoriously torturous. "It's almost like reading Wittgenstein", philosopher P.M.S Hacker noted, "Nobody's ever really understood it...well, besides me." One important issue, in particular, has never been solved. "There's always been an interpretive dilemma with premise (9): 'Marconi played the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you rememba?", Hacker says, "Many Starship scholars have argued that it makes no sense to say that Marconi played the mamba. After all, the mamba is a giant, poisonous, African snake. Thus, many scholars have argued Starship must have meant the mambo. Yet, the mambo is hardly rock-and-roll, you know what I mean? On the other hand, if we interpret premise (9) literally...well, playing a giant, poisonous, African snake would be very rock-and-roll...but no one I've met remembers hearing that."

One early attempt to refute Starship's argument was based on experimental philosophy survey methods. "Early empirical studies showed that many of the folk just didn't share Starship's intuitions," one experimental philosopher reported. However, Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor at Oxford University, famously disarmed this argument with his expertise defense. "Starship has very something important that the folk lack", Williamson argues, "decades of careful experience and reflection on this city and rock-and-roll. I mean, who you gonna believe", Williamson famously declared, "the folk...or Grace Slick?" 

Still, many philosophers remained uncomfortable Starship's proof. "Look, I'll give Williamson Jefferson Airplane", one anonymous philosopher stated, "I might even be willing to give him Jefferson Starship. But Starship simpliciter? You've gotta be kidding me. They may know this city...but their rock-and-roll expertise is questionable at best." Other philosophers even rushed to provide new defenses of Starship's argument. One popular approach, Rock Realism, championed by Russ Shafer-Landau, has held that this city being built on rock-and-roll is the best explanation of the face value of our ordinary-everyday rock-and-roll practices. Further, Rock Realists have brilliantly exploited the so-called companions in guilt strategy. "If we denied that this city is built on rock-and-roll," Shafer-Landau explained,"we would also have to say that we started the fire (Joel 1989), that the grass isn't green and the girls aren't pretty in Paradise City (A. Rose at al (1987)...and of course, we'd also have to Stop Believin' (Cain et. al 1981). I don't know about you," Shafer-Landau continued, "but I'm just not willing to bite those bullets." 

JeffAirplane4Evah's new proof took perceived problems with Rock Realism as a springboard. "I've always been skeptical of the Rock Realist defense", JeffAirplane4Evah explained, "I mean, I've looked really hard for the rock and roll this city was built on, but I've never been able to find it. The supposed rock-and-roll truths Rock Realists assert always just seemed to be a hopelessly queer kind of fact. Not to mention there are pretty good arguments for Rock Relativism." According to JeffAirplane4Evah, these worries gave rise to concerns about persistence conditions--the foundations of the new counter-proof. Using cutting-edge metaphysics, JeffAirplane4Evah proved that if this city were built on rock and roll, then destroying rock and roll would have to destroy this city instantaneously. "But that's obviously not true", JeffAirplane4Evah noted, "You could clearly destroy all the rock and roll without destroying this city. QED." Although widespread agreement is rare in philosophy, the proof appears to already have become universally accepted, and is expected to generate a great deal of new work "relating to material constitution, supervenience, realization, and ground", one philosopher said, "though to be honest I'm pretty those are the all same thing. The metaphysicians just have to be messing with us, right?"

In any case, the future looks bright for JeffAirplane4Evah. His next endeavor? He says he's always been fascinated by N. Ranger's longstanding puzzle, "the secret of my success" (see Fig. 2). "I'm not sure what the secret is", JeffAirplane4Evah stated, "but I'm pretty sure it's not living 25 hours a day."

Fig. 2

 

Happy April Fool's Day everyone!

The Book of Rankings

And in the 2500 eons of time before ranked time, there was formlessness. Apart from The Academy and The Lyceum, one knew not where a department stood, nor how deeply one might plant one's feet. One's judgment was clouded by the gossip of the philosophers and the void created by opinion and argument. And one wandered often as in a trance, sometimes lost, sometimes uncertain, but sometimes also in such a fervor of happiness and jouissance that one clung to unranked time.

But, then, out of the darkness of unranked time, came The Lighter. The Lighter paved the way, first with the early tablets of ranking law. These firsts--small things, involving staples, circulated lazily, for every philosopher, in the wake of Kant and the German Idealists, was slow to bow his or her yoke to any law except one that he or she had authored (and staples, verily, required stamps). But The Lighter, in his prescience, saw glimpses of the future and pressed on, for he knew that a giant Network would be built. And The Lighter bent that Network initially to his will and he clothed the law in tasty morsels of food, feeding the hungry and starved, but also the curious and wandering alike. 

Not all approved, however, of what he was cooking. Most loudly, from an ivy palace, there arose The Heckler, who fought with The Lighter for 40 days and 40 nights. But his weapons were weak, for he used letters, hoping to unite the philosophers. But this was folly, for in the wake of Mill and Bentham, the philosophers valued utility greatly. And above all, The Lighter appeared useful, appealing to philosophers, and especially their curiosity (and it is suggested, in cyclopean tracts out of Meßkirch, their boredom). Working from his Gourmet Shoppe, the Lighter grew in power, calling to himself advisers from the Network. And The Network, too, grew in power, and the two became intertwined. And The Lighter cooked his food, and the philosophers ate. And for a time there was quiet.

Soon, though, the Administration discovered The Lighter's treats, and they gorged themselves on it, stuffing themselves into a frenzy, and growing greatly in power thereby. And with that power, The Lighter's power also grew, and The Lighter grew more fearsome. And this power unnerved many and great rifts grew in the world. As the rifts continued to multiply, there arose rival Gourmet Shoppes, for ultimately The Network owed no allegiance to anyone, not even The Lighter, and it birthed further offspring, perhaps even to spite him.  

But none, within the shoppes and without, could agree on the best ingredients, for much in the world of food is cloaked with secrecy, and it is hard to predict which salves will serve best in future, even if they had served once before. With the threat of formlessness again, there arose The Miller and The Gambler, and the two did their cooking in the open, using sauces and spices they offered to share, and The Lighter, now even more fearsome, grew wary or perhaps frightened. And he struck at The Gambler with a mighty wind, but The Gambler parried his attack. And then the philosophers found themselves in between two mighty forces. We might call them "past" and "future." And after Arendt, it has come to be known that these two always produce a third, a deflection of forces. Thus a question is posed for all those who exist in ranked time: might such a deflection offer a path out of ranked (and unranked) time? And if so, what grand seas and vistas will we find there? And what dangers?

Area Philosopher Definitively Refutes Private Language Argument, Unable to Explain It

An area philosopher is reported to have accomplished something long thought impossible: a definitive refutation of Ludgwig Wittgenstein's famous Private Language Argument. In an exclusive recent interview, the philosopher, who for the time being prefers not to be named, announced, "I've done it. I have definitively refuted the Private Language Argument." When asked to provide a detailed reconstruction of the refutation, the philosopher said that the result is still preliminary, and currently "undergoing peer-review."

The philosopher did, however, give a few clues: "It is a very difficult proof - almost impossible to put into words, really. I doubt the referees will understand it. But okay, if you really want to know, here's the best I can describe it. I introspected a particular experience of mine -- a particular shade of red. I assigned it the name 'S.' I then looked away from the red object, and then looked back. It was the same shade! And so I named it 'S' again. But, of course, no one else can possibly experience my experience of that shade of red, so the language is private." He then gave the following brief demonstration. He stared intently at the plastic red beer cup in his hand, closed his eyes, opened them, stared intently at the cup again, and explained, "Nice...QED yet again!"

When asked to elaborate how he knew "the shade of red initially named 'S'" was the same redness he later named 'S", thus coming to terms with Wittgenstein's objection that such a naming -- a putative private language -- would need some public criterion for success, the philosopher excitedly replied, "That's the trick of the proof. I can't possibly provide a public criterion for my act. The act of naming was private to me, so my naming both red shades 'S' was a private language!" When asked whether this potentially groundbeaking line of argument is refuted by recent empirical research indicating that individuals are unable to introspectively distinguish subtly different color shades from one another, the philosopher cavalierly replied, "I just don't have that intuition."

When questioned about whether appealing to intuitions in this case is a good form of argument -- particularly in light of how philosophical intuitions (about absolute space and time, heavenly orbits, etc.) have stood up to empirical findings throughout history -- the philosopher, surprisingly, had a reply ready to hand. "Every theory has its costs. Fortunately, my theory has many partners in crime. If we were to reject appeal to intuitions in this case, we would have to reject them in all other cases: the intuition that moral realism is true because it is the best explanation of moral language and behavior, the intuition that evolution cannot explain consciousness or trait selection, and so on. Indeed, we would have to reject armchair intuitions generally! But philosophy cannot do without intuitions. If philosophers didn't appeal to intuitions -- if, for instance, philosophers of science studied physics or philosophers of mind specialized in evolutionary theory, or really, paid attention to any empirical facts whatsoever -- we would no longer be doing philosophy. We'd be doing science!"

When asked the further question, "How many fallacies can you possibly commit in one long train of reasoning?", the philosopher replied, "Well, that depends. Are we talking logical possibility, metaphysical possibility, epistemic possibility, erotetic possibility, or alethic possibility?" When asked to, "take his pick", the philosopher replied, "Well, if I take my pick, it really depends on whether we approach the issue through a possible worlds semantics, Aristotelian powers-essentialism, etc. Also, are we assuming S5? S4? K?"

In the end, the philosopher remains cautiously optimistic about his refutation of the Private Language Argument. "I could be wrong, I suppose", he said, "but I just don't have that intuition. It seems to me that the argument is sound, and as we all know, seemings provide prima facie justification for belief in the propositions they are seemings-of!"

Oh, and happy April Fools Day!

"Rejection Letters of the Philosophers"

Readers may find this site of fictitious job and journal rejection letters to Great Philosophers letters amusing.

By and large, the letters are not quite as funny as this fake rejection of Plato's Euthyphro, this fake rejection of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, or the last two paragraphs of this real review of Rawls' A Theory of Justice. However, I did find this fake PFO letter from Oxford to A.J. Ayer hysterical, particularly the following passage:

I do realise how disappointing this will be, though I am not particularly sorry not to have better news about your application here. Furthermore, I will not patronisingly remind you that competition for places at Oxford is extremely strong. I should nevertheless point out that you may not invoke a conception of justice or morality in forming an argument for appealing our decision. Such ideas are now considered literally meaningless by the admissions office.

I hope, however, that you will be comforted over Christmas by the fact that any disappointment you may feel is nothing more than mere emotion. You should not, therefore, spend time in trying to reason through or come to terms with our decision since this exercise would inevitably be devoid of analytically verifiable content.

I've written before how these sorts of fictitious reviews seem to me uncomfortably close to reality. How well would Great Works fare if they were sent to contemporary philosophy journals or book reviewers? Not too well, I expect -- and not just because the works themselves are anachronistic, but because of how narrow and conservative disciplinary standards have become (for more on this, see here). Anyway, some funny stuff - and food for thought!

More philosophy light-bulb jokes

The fall semester starts in two weeks (at my institution, at least). It’s time to replenish the stock of philosophy light-bulb jokes. To get things started, here are two:

 

(1) How many Rawlsians does it take to change a light-bulb?

Two. One to secure the light-bulb from the original position and one to place it behind a veil of ignorance.

(2) How many zombies does it take to change a light-bulb?

None. Zombies have no idea what it is like to change light-bulbs.

 

Feel free to add your own jokes in the comments below.

I wish everyone a successful semester.

The Onion Test

Leiter recently published a post linking to a paper by David McNaugton about why much of philosophy is so tedious. Although I've riffed on this question several times -- attributing it at least in part to our discipline's overfetishizing rigor -- I'd like to comment on a point made by Chris Hallquist in Leiter's thread. 

Hallquist thinks that academic philosophy awards too much respect to cleverness for the sake of cleverness, whereas truly interesting, non-tedious philosophy should be more than clever: it deals with important problems. Is Hallquist right? Does our discipline disproportionately reward people for cleverness and not lend nearly enough weight to importance (thereby making much of academic philosophy tedious)?

This is a difficult question to evaluate. But let me offer an acedote in Hallquist's favor. I recently came across this paper, "One Second Per Second", by Bradford Skow from MIT, which appeared in 2011 in one of the top generalist journals in all of philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.  Now, I personally think Skow is a great philosopher, but let's take a look at the subject matter of this paper. Skow's paper is a response to a problem raised by Peter van Inwagen in his 2009 book Metaphysics, and taken up later by Eric Olson in his 2009 article, "The Rate of Time's Passage", which appeared in Analysis -- another top journal in our field. As reported by Skow, the argument by van Inwagen and Olson is this:

[O]ne second per second is one second divided by one second, and one second divided by one second is the number one. But the number one is not a rate, so is certainly not the rate at which anything (the flow os time included) happens. (Skow 2011: 377)

Skow's thesis? "This argument rests on confusions about the nature of measurable quantities and the meaning of phrases of the form n Xs per Y." (ibid.)

No kidding. The problem seems to me obviously not a serious problem, and the argument obviously a howler. By parity of reasoning, one could argue that because 30 miles per hour is 30/60, which is 1/2 -- and 1/2 is not a rate -- that 30 miles per hour is not a rate, I really mean no disrespect to Skow, van Inwagen, or Olson -- who I truly think are all top-notch philosophers. Lord knows I've made bad arguments and wasted time on them! But this much I think is clear: the "one second per second" argument was a bad argument from the outset. And publishing papers on "problems" like this makes academic philosophy tedious and inconsequential.

Am I being unfair? I'm happy to entertain objections, and as always will reconsider my position in light of further discussion. However, in the meantime, I'd like to half-seriously propose the following test for determining, as a necessary condition, whether an issue is one worthy of publication in a top journal in philosophy -- a test that I call "The Onion Test". The Onion, as I'm sure most readers know, is a satirical news site, with articles like, "Freezing, Coatless Woman Has Decided It Is Spring." I hereby propose that if a philosophical problem or article can be easily spoofed by an Onion-like title or article, then it's probably a silly problem.

Here's an example of the Onion Test. I've explained before why I think problems of persistence conditions and material constitutition are pseudoproblems. Here's an application of The Onion Test:

Area Philosopher Unsure if There Are Any Tables, Chairs, or People

An area philosopher emerged from his lab today with what appears to be an astounding discovery: there are no tables or chairs. "Look," this philosopher said, "if tables and chairs existed, there would have to be coincident objects everywhere. This lump of matter would have to be both a lump and a table. But surely there is just one object here: the lump. So, there are no tables or chairs! Or people!" When asked whether this finding has any practical applications ("Does it mean that no one should ever try to sit on anything, since chairs are for sitting?"), the philosopher replied, "No -- not at all. There are no practical applications whatsoever." After an uncomfortable brief pause, he added, "Well, it did help me get tenure."

This

Is it just me, or does this actually look all kinds of AWESOME? Seriously, I was simultaneously laughing and admiring it all the way through (the book simply entitled "Philosophy" being slammed in the door was so, so funny).  Kudos to Leiter for drawing attention to it!

Badass

Who knew A.J. Ayer was such a badass?

I see a blockbuster movie in the future.

Oxbridge Philosophy

This funny sketch, performed by John Cleese and Jonathan Miller, nicely illustrates the common stereotype of the absentminded, detached, and eccentric philosopher.

 

   

 

Is this stereotype bad for philosophy (as a profession)? If so, what can/should we do about it?

Amusing

I came across this unpublished manuscript posted by Tamler Sommers the other day at Philpapers. It's entitled, "Free Will and Experimental Philosophy: An Intervention", and it's a real hoot.  Yet another biting (though potentially productive, and at any rate very funny) critique in what seems to be a rapidly escalating conflict between "experimentalists" and "traditionalists."  I'm curious to see what others think. Is Sommers' critique fair? I don't know the literature surrounding stuff very well, but what I do know is that both sides of the debate tend to accuse the other side of setting up and demolishing straw men. Is more of that going on here? Anyway, I encourage everyone to check it out. It's a fun read!

Letter from an Angry Author

If you'll allow, something a bit more lighthearted in the midst of all this job market doom. This has probably done the rounds before, but I just came across it. Since I'm currently working on a second revision of a paper that was sent out to a *different* referee after the first revision, I can sympathise with it (although I actually got pretty good comments). Anyway, follow the link, and enjoy: http://research.ivo-welch.info/humor-letter.txt

How many philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

In the spirit of philosophy light-bulb jokes, each semester I tell my students a few light-bulb jokes and ask them to come up with a few of their own. Here are a few examples:

(1) How many philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

Three; one to change the light-bulb and two to debate whether they ought to, and if so, whether it follows that they can.

(2) How many ancient philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

Four; one to change the light-bulb and three to say "Yes, Socrates," "Well done, Socrates," "Good job, Socrates."

(3) How many medieval philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

Two; one to change the light-bulb and one to check what Aristotle said about changing light-bulbs.

Feel free to add your own jokes in the comments.

I wish everyone a very successful semester.

The Greats Get Peer-Reviewed

A propos to these three discussions, I'd like to point out these two fictitious reviewer comments on work by Plato and Kant, and this actual review of Rawls' A Theory of Justice by R.M. Hare. They're so awesome that I'll save you all the time and energy you'd waste on clicking the links.

Here's the fictitious review of Plato:

I’m afraid that I cannot recommend the submission ‘Euthyphro, or On piety’ for publication in the Athenian Journal of the Pursuit of Wisdom. I come to this view despite the fact that there are lots of things to like about the submission. For example, there is a neat point here about the possible difficulties in relating ‘what is pious’ to ‘what the gods love’. However, even here at its best the submission is ultimately disappointing. Having raised an interesting question we find only a short and inconclusive discussion before the author moves on to something else. And that is the most important failing of the piece in its current form: no conclusion or positive thesis is advanced at all. This is most infuriating and I imagine your subscribers will find it very frustrating. After all, any philosophical thought worth taking seriously requires the assertion of, preferably, a very striking and surprising positive thesis from a clear standpoint of dogmatic authority. The present submission, on the other hand, neither claims support from divine revelation nor asserts as we would expect  at the outset of the submission that every other discussion of this subject is woefully misguided. Indeed, the author makes no personal assertion whatsoever and seems perversely excited at the thought of hiding his (I assume it is a male author) own views.

Indeed, I can see no reason whatsoever for the  unnecessary self-indulgence involved in concocting a conversation, at least one of whose participants is a well-known and controversial figure. Such a confusion of real figures and disguised authorship cannot fail to generate all manner of interpretative difficulties for your readers that seem to me to serve no useful purpose whatsoever. If the author would agree to recast his submission in a more usual form (some hundreds of lines of nice direct hexameter poetry perhaps)  then he would at least remove some of this unfortunate confusion. But even then it is not clear to me whether the author has any positive view of his own to offer. And until he does he should leave aside this kind of modern literary indulgence.

Here's the one on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (kudos to Feminist Philosophers for digging this one up):

Hard to know where to begin with this one. Lots of ideas -- too many ideas? -- and bold claims but the result ends up feeling essayistic and sweeping, leaping from one assertion to the next. Interdisciplinarity is one thing, but the author seems to want to invent entire fields of thought willy-nilly! It comes across as frankly arrogant and overreaching.

Not least, the author is almost wilful in neglect of secondary sources. This is a serious lack and the text feels ungrounded for it. One gets the sense that the author is interested in their own posterity than in dialogue with a community of thinkers! This needs redress. I might for example point the author towards some of my own recent work, among various writers.

With all this in mind, it seems pointless to engage too much with specific arguments, but the concept of "the noumenal" I found to be quite ungrounded and free from evidential basis. And I found the whole "categorical imperative" idea a bit..."categorical." Forgive the pun!

In summary: technically lacking, poor use of citation, strident, circuitous, dubious and sweeping. It would be foolhardy to recommend publication.

And finally, a small excerpt from Hare's actual review of TOJ:

In concluding this not very sympathetic notice, it must be said that a reviewer with more ample patience and leisure might possibly have done better for Rawls. I have taken a great deal of pains (and it really has been painful) trying to get hold of his ideas, but with the feeling all the time that they were slipping through my fingers...The book is extremely repetitious, and it is seldom clear whether the repetitions really are repetitions, or modifications of previously expressed views. I have drawn attention to some of these difficulties, and there are all too many others. Rawls is not to be blamed for failing to keep the whole of this huge book in his head at the same time (the only way to avoid inconsistencies when writing a book); and still less are his readers. He is to be blamed, if at all, for not attempting something more modest and doing it properly.

Many years ago [Rawls] wrote some extremely promising articles, containing in germ, though without clarity, a most valuable suggestion about the form and nature of moral thought. It might have been possible to work this idea out with concision and rigour (Rawls' disciple Mr Richards has made a tolerably good job of it in his book A Theory of Reasons for Action, which is much clearer than Rawls' own book as an exposition of this type of theory). If Rawls had limited himself to, say, 300 pages, and had resolved to get his main ideas straight and express them with absolute clarity, he could have made a valuable contribution to moral philosophy. 

That one just never gets old. :)  Makes one wonder whether there are better alternatives than traditional peer-review.

Update: Readers are invited to submit their own examples! Here's one from me on Mill's Utilitarianism: "Author claims to endorse hedonism, only to contradict him/herself a few pages later. His/her "proof" of utilitarianism is all of two pages long, and fallacious at every step. Although I am not optimistic about the viability of the author's project, I would advise that he/she submit the manuscript to a (graduate?) conference or two before wasting time submitting it to another journal." :)