Philosophy in Utah

February 8, 2010

Are philosophers insular?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 9:09 am

Brian Leiter’s blog featured this discussion of the ACLS’s “New Faculty Fellows” program, which awarded 53 jobs to junior scholars in the humanities, but not one to a philosopher. In the comments, one of the reviewers on the ACLS panel ventured this opinion:

Philosophers fare poorly in these things mainly because we are not part of a sort of overlapping consensus about what the humanities are and should be up to. Folks in History, English, Comp Lit, the various language disciplines, Cultural Anthropology, etc have a lot that they can talk about to one another. Although their precise methods of inquiry differ from one another, they do basically understand one another and share overlapping intellectual goals. A cultural anthropologist reading a Comp Lit proposal gets it, almost instantly. And doesn’t really need it spoon fed to her.

Philosophy and philosophers are just outliers to this overlapping consensus. Take gender and race, as examples. Lots of humanistic disciplines have long been seized with the project of reshaping their disciplines by thinking very, very hard about gender and race. In philosophy, there’s some of that, but not a whole lot. For example, we were part of a five department competition this year for a junior appointment for someone working on race and ethnicity. Five different departments were invited to search for candidates, each would be allowed to have three people come to campus, and each would be entitled to nominate one finalist to a central committee. We searched and in perhaps the worst or second worse market in decades we got a total of 18 candidates, many of them not really plausible. Now you would think that in today’s market anybody who was even marginally qualified would have applied for our job. So assume that they did. That means there are precious few young philosophers out there working race and ethnicity.

I mention this last thing just to illustrate that many of the intellectual issues with which the broader humanities are concern are just not on the radar screen of many philosophers. And, correlatively, many of our concerns are hardly on the radar screens of many humanists — even very smart, well meaning, well-read ones. So we start out at quite a competitive disadvantage in these things. And unless philosophers are very astute about selling themselves to panels of humanists, they are almost bound to lose out. Indeed, I anticipate it being something of an uphill struggle for many of the philosophy files I’ve read for the panel that I am on.

I’m wondering if there is truth in this. I know that in my own experience I often have little interest in how people in other disciplines engage with the issues that interest me. (I don’t often read literary analyses of Spinoza’s works — are there are any?! — though I do read works by historians of ideas, like Jonathan Israel.) Am I then insular? Should I be reaching out more to my colleagues in the other humanistic disciplines? Or is it just a fact that a lot of what interests philosophers doesn’t interest anyone else? That sounds unfortunate.

February 7, 2010

Huenemann talking, again

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 10:06 am

Huenemann will once again try to present a talk on Nietzsche at the University of Utah without passing out. The date is Thursday, Feb 11, at 3:30 pm; the topic is whether Nietzsche runs afoul of his own strictures against moralists.

Then, tempting fate, Huenemann will visit BYU on February 25th, speaking to the Philosophy Club on Hume and Kant on ultimate reality, and to the faculty on the reality of individuals in Spinoza’s philosophy.

January 26, 2010

Philosopher gets $4mil to figure out free will

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 8:44 am

More details here. Alfred Mele, the philosopher in question, has a very solid reputation, and has published interesting and important theories about agents and actions. I’m sure anything he comes up with will be worth studying. But it is funny to read how his university has tried to spin this news — they are working like mad to get him to say he’ll solve the free will problem, and he keeps cautioning that he doesn’t expect to do quite that.

Over on usuphilosophy, we once had a discussion about atheists trying to decide whether they ought to accept money from the Templeton foundation.

January 18, 2010

Intermountain West Student Philosophy Conference

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 10:38 am

… has extended its deadline for submissions until January 30th. Graduate and Undergraduate students: submit an abstract and present it at the University of Utah in March! Details over on this page.

January 15, 2010

Are bioethicists credible?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 10:44 am

Read a book review on the topic here. Sample passage:

Though clearly fond of the bioethicist-physicians, bioethicist-philosophers, and bioethicist-legal scholars they interviewed, Fox and Swazey describe themselves as “critical of what we regard as the field’s deficiencies and blind spots.” They identify these as the use of dumbed-down teaching formulae, an insensitivity to cultural differences, and the tendency of American bioethicists to emphasize “individual rights, and rationality” instead of “community, and common good,” which are the values that Fox and Swazey  favor.

Fox and Swazey claim bioethicists would do better if they stuck to policy and economic questions, but the reviewer isn’t sure why.

January 14, 2010

Philosophy is good for business

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 8:57 am

… according to Business Week:

The financial and climate crises, global consumption habits, and other 21st-century challenges call for a “killer app.” I think I’ve found it: philosophy.

Philosophy can help us address the (literally) existential challenges the world currently confronts, but only if we take it off the back burner and apply it as a burning platform in business.

December 5, 2009

A memorable philosophy event

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 9:17 am

Huenemann’s lecture at the University of Utah yesterday was fraught with unexpected dramatic intensity. See his own account of the event here.

December 3, 2009

Philosophy club events at USU

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 9:30 am

We had a big night last night, with a lecture by an undergraduate and a Philosophy Club concert. More information here.

November 30, 2009

Huenemann talking about Nietzsche

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 9:04 am

(Shameless self-promotion — I know.) At the U of U Philosophy Department, Friday December 4th, 3:15 pm. Topic will be “Nietzsche vs. the sanctimonious snivelers” (or, how Nz can both offer advice and attack advice-givers; roughly the same talk as given at Weber recently.)

November 23, 2009

Top Ten Problems for Philosophy for Today

Filed under: Uncategorized — Huenemann @ 4:36 pm

Well, here goes with a first attempt to introduce a philosophical discussion on this blog — let’s see how it goes.There’s a philosophy radio show called “Philosophy Talk,” hosted by John Perry and Ken Taylor, and they recently celebrated their 200th show by putting forward the top ten problems of philosophy for today. You can listen to their show here (I think Brian Leiter’s interview, at 30 minutes, and Martha Nussbaum’s interview, at 40 minutes, are the most interesting parts).

The list they finally came up with:

1. Artificial intelligence

2. Problems associated with resource conservation

3. What the human individual is, in light of recent scientific developments

4. Collective decisions and rationality

5. The concept of private property in an increasingly global community

6. The problem of misinformation

7. Death penalty, especially in light of new reasons for being a determinist

8. Consciousness

9. Social identity

10. Relativity of values

Any thoughts? For me, the most interesting problem is one Nussbaum describes on the show, but didn’t exactly make it on the list. She thinks we have done a pretty good job in understanding the problem of social justice — there’s not universal agreement, of course, but the main positions have been staked out. But we have not really begun to think hard about global justice, or justice when there’s no overarching authority, as between nations. That seems to me an important and huge problem.

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