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Luke Roelofs on panpsychism

I recently came across a review that Luke Roelofs, a professor teaching at the University of Texas at Arlington, wrote back in 2018 of a then new book on panpsychism.  Roelefs' own comments on panpsychism here are not limited to evaluating the merits of the book, and in what follows I will avoid unnecessary explanations by omitting any naming of the book itself.  Roelef says that there is a distinction, important but seldom made, between one sort of panpsychism, as old as philosophy itself, and another, specific to recent discussions that arise within the Anglophonic analytic tradition. One natural way to define panpsychism is to call it the view that the fundamental properties of the physical world are themselves conscious. This, as Roelef said, looks like a claim about the where, not the what or the how of consciousness. The proper rivals of panpsychism, were it limited to the view defined in italics above, would be other views about where. A "neologism-happy philosopher...
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A classic Eddie Murphy clip

At a moment when the President of the United States uses the old blacks-look-like-monkeys meme for hahas, and enhances the indignity of it by blaming it on an aimless aide ... we need Eddie Murphy's wisdom.    Weekend Update: Eddie Murphy on the First Black Astronaut - SNL - YouTube

Christoph Schuringa

I think of this as "proper names" week. Each of the four posts this week will have a proper name in the title.  Yesterday's, of course, is already "in the books". The proper name in the title of yesterday's post was, of course, Frank Sinatra. The proper name used in today's, and in the posts of the next couple days, will be violations of the Frank Sinatra rule.    Today we discuss a recent book about analytic philosophy by Christoph Schuringa.  As I Christopher who generally drops the "er" at the end of that given name when called upon to give my signature, I highly approve of his spelling.  Schuringa wrote a book, published last year by Verso, entitled A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. It's point is that the what we think we know about analytic philosophy is wrong. The term "we' here can refer to anyone without an academic position who might nonetheless read a book with the phrase "analytic philosophy" in the titl...

The old Frank Sinatra rule

Just thinking about the sort of "introduction to journalism" course one can take at any decent four year college, or perhaps in the context of an associates' program. They generally teach that the first sentence should cover all the Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. "The chief of the Smallville fire department personally rescued a small cat from a chimney in the Soapsy neighborhood Saturday afternoon in response to a 911 call." Good lede.  [Yes, journos generally spell it 'lede' for the same reason that a certain Zeppelin is described as 'led'. The spelling 'lead' -- as an alternative to led or lede -- can be confusing.]   The italicized sentence is a good lede.  The rescue of the cat is the what.   Who rescued the cat? The chief (identified here by role not by name). Where ? a chimney in the Soapsy neighborhood. When ? Saturday afternoon. Why ?  In response to a 911 call.  Of course the rest of the story can expand on any or all of t...

Causation and the Leslie affair

A scandalous matter now forgotten, even among historians of philosophy, the "Leslie affair" may be a turning point of some significance in the debates over causation in Anglophonic philosophy.  John Leslie (1766 - 1832) was a Scottish mathematician and physicist. In 1804 he published a book on  the nature and properties of heat that earned him some favorable attention among the cutting edge scientists of the day.  In 1805 the University of Edinburgh decided to make him professor of mathematics. BUT ... there was surprising kickback from church officials on the ground that Leslie had said positive things about David Hume and about Hume's understanding of causation as the mere fact of constant and invariable sequence.   The establishment saw this notion as a danger to the accepted religion, and specifically to any cosmological argument for the existence of God as a First Cause.  Causation has to mean something, some REASON WHY some sequences are invariable, f...

Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein

Isn't it past time we flush this ugly fellow out of our national politics and conversation, now? I don't mean President Trump.  For now I'll give him a bye.  The guy we need to flush at long last is ... Elon Musk. Seen in the photo here with one of his exes, the actress Talulah Riley, best known for Westworld.   Musk busted pleading to visit Pedo Island in Epstein files The world's richest man repeatedly sought to arrange a visit to "Little St James," aka Epstein's island or Lolita island. In particular, in November 2012, Epstein emailed Musk in expectation of such a visit, asking about logistics, "how many people will you be for the heli to island?"  The future head of the US Department on Government Efficiency responded, "Probably just Talulah and me. What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?" Musk had divorced Talulah in March of that year. Plainly though  they had not cut each other off entirely: they would remarry in...

Three models of PhD education in philosophy

  Brian Leiter has made the point that there are three distinct models of doctoral education in philosophy, with regard to the English-speaking world. He calls them by their most distinguished representatives: Princeton, MIT, Pittsburgh. They are distinguished from one another by how they regard the history of the field. Is the history of philosophy itself a matter of doing philosophy?  On the Princeton model, history is treated as important, but distinct.  The department will incorporate courses on the great historical schools and interests.  There will be other course, though, about contemporary hot topics in Anglophone/analytic philosophy.  This two-track model is dominant in the US, and it has exemplars elsewhere, as at Oxford and Toronto. On the MIT model, Leiter continues, "the focus is almost entirely on contemporary research in analytic philosophy, with one or no lines set aside for history of philosophy." Finally, on the Pittsburgh model, "the history o...