July 31, 2007
Philosophy Humor
Even though I check this blog more than once a day for spam comments, since I'm already checking my own blog, there seems to be a significant contingent of spammers who want to target it anyway due to there being no recent posts, and they must think no one will delete their comments. So to try to remedy that somewhat, in the hopes that it saves me some time deleting, I'll post a link to some really funny philosophy humor combining pretty much every standard philosophical thought experiment and counterexample into one. It appears to have been written by a former Syracuse student, so it's appropriate for OrangePhilosophy to promote it (not that a link from here gives all that much influence or traffic anymore). [hat tip: Kenny Pearce]
Posted by Jeremy at 11:05 PM | TrackBack
March 26, 2007
Undue Attention
The blog that serves as a supplement to John Perry, Michael Bratman, and John Martin Fischer’s Introduction to Philosophy links to OrangePhilosophy as an example of a department-based grad student philosophy blog. Unfortunately, the grad students in question haven't been contributing enough to keep the blog active. If I could find enough interest, I'd be happy to resume regular posting to this blog, but the current grad students don't seem to be very interested in blogging at the moment, and I'm not going to maintain an active philosophy blog here while I've already got my own personal blog.
There are several department-based philosophy blogs that are still active, and anyone coming here from the above link can turn to those as examples of what this link was supposed to serve. Those include Show Me the Argument (University of Missouri) and Go Grue (Michigan), which are very active. Ungrounded Dispositions (Buffalo) has become somewhat active in the last month or so. Less active blogs include This is Not the Name of This Blog (Rochester), What Is It Like to Be a Blog? (UConn), Unideal Observers (Bowling Green), Desert Landscapes (University of Arizona), Undetached Rabbit Parts (Western Michigan), The Web of Belief (Tufts), and the UCSB Philosophy Blog. The Florida Student Philosophy Blog is hosted by the University of North Florida, but they have contributors from other schools in Florida, and Prior Knowledge has contributors from New Zealand. Inactive (but potentially in the market for resuming as far as I know) is Fake Barn Country (Brown). Currently there is none, so I can't link to it.
David Chalmers maintains a list of philosophy blogs. It's not always up-to-date. Some of the links there now are dead, and there may be some excellent new blogs not on his radar yet (or that he hasn't had the chance to add). But it's worth checking back every now and then to see if he has anything new.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 20, 2006
Philosophers' Carnival XL
I think it's good for this blog not to get too stagnant in case we ever bring it out of dormancy, so I like to post something every once in a while. It does make a difference with Google rankings, and spammers target sites that are inactive. I thought the Philosophers' Carnival's turning 40 was a good occasion to put a link up. So here's the 40th Philosophers' Carnival, courtesy of The Brooks Blog. Unfortunately, due to the time of year, it's not as full as it sometimes can be. But then that just makes it easier to read all the posts.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:31 PM
July 15, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XVI
Philosophers' Carnival XVI is at Dinner Table Donts. Mark's open post on Hume and Chesterton is probably an appetizer, while Ben Bradley's PEA Soup post Against Satisficing Consequentialism is, of course, the soup.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:06 AM
July 12, 2005
Thurvan the Liche Lord Returns
Our Gnu has another post combining fantasy role-playing with philosophy. I can't figure out which philosophical issue this one is supposed to illustrate, though. Maybe I'm missing some crucial piece of information.
In case you missed it, here's the first one about time travel and fate, and see our discussion of it here.
Posted by Jeremy at 5:48 PM
Philosophers' Carnival XVI Plug
The next Philosophers' Carnival is coming up this Friday. As usual, submissions instructions are here.
Posted by Jeremy at 5:32 PM
June 25, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XV
The 15th Philosophers' Carvnival is at The Buckingham Inquirer. Irem's post on temporary intrinsics made the final cut.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:28 PM
June 18, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XIV (and XV Plug)
I just realized that the 15th Philosophers' Carnival is next week (if you want to submit a post, please do so very soon), and I forgot to link to the 14th. Here it is. There's actually an OrangePhilosophy post in it, for the first time in a while.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:55 AM | TrackBack
May 26, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XIV Plug
We're up to the next Philosophers' Carnival, and embarassingly OrangePhilosophy hasn't even had a post since the last one. The information on submissions and all that is here. Submissions need to be in by the end of the week.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:10 PM
May 3, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XIII Plug
The 13th Philosophers' Carnival was going to be this week, but the busy time of year has led to its being pushed back until next week. Submit a post here. See the new submissions policy here.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:06 PM
April 13, 2005
moralhealth.com
For those who haven't noticed, a member of our faculty now has a personal blog. Laurence Thomas is now blogging at moralhealth.com.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:35 PM
Philosophers' Carnival XII
The 12th Philosophers' Carnival is at Inessentials. The PEA Soup cross-posting of Ben's Paradoxes of Desire Satisfaction and Hedonism is part of it, though it doesn't link to the posting of it here. Oh, well. I suppose that's the one with all the comments, though.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:23 PM
April 6, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XII Plug
The 12th Philosophers' Carnival is coming up next week. Here's the submission page. The host will be Inessentialism.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:06 PM
March 21, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XI
The eleventh Philosophers' Carnival is at the only official blog of Clayton Littlejohn.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:29 PM
March 16, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival XI Plug
The 11th Philosophers' Carnival is coming up next Monday. Submissions should be in by this weekend, so send them in. The host will be The Only Official Blog of Clayton Littlejohn.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:26 PM
March 1, 2005
Introducing Philosophy
Studi Galileiani has been developing a resource for introducting philosophy. It looks pretty good so far, for a fairly introductory level. I haven't had a chance to read it in detail, but I looked at the metaphysics and philosophy of religion entries, and they look pretty comprehensive. [Hat tip: Mormon Metaphysics]
Posted by Jeremy at 9:59 AM | Comments (2)
February 28, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival X
The tenth Philosophers' Carnival is up at E.G.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:41 AM
More Bennett Translations
Jonathan Bennett's translations of early modern philosophy texts into the English of our own day have two new additions. Locke's Second Treatise on Government and Malebranche's Dialogues on Metaphysics are now completed. He's currently working on Mill's Utilitarianism On Liberty. I'm especially glad he's included Malebranche. He says he's planning to revise that translation while working on Mill. I don't remember anyone mentioning that he added some chapters of Spinoza in November along with revising all the other texts posted at that time.
Posted by Jeremy at 1:10 AM | Comments (2)
February 24, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival X Plug
The next Philosophers' Carnival is coming up on Monday, so it would be good to submit entries soon to give the host time to put them together.
Posted by Jeremy at 5:41 PM
February 5, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival IX
The ninth Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Studi Galileiani. For the first time ever, I believe, there are no entries from Ektopos blogs.
Posted by Jeremy at 6:57 PM
February 2, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival IX Plug
Sunday will be the ninth Philosophers' Carnival, so if you know any posts that would be good to submit, you should do so in the next few days.
Posted by Jeremy at 6:08 PM
Intelligent Design
Newsweek's new issue has a story touting a "controversial new theory [of the origin of life] called 'intelligent design'" The inspiration for the story is related to this new move to put stickers on biology textbooks noting that evolution is a "theory, not a fact...". But you'd think that Newsweek could've called someone up and found out how 'new' ID is. The story is at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6884904/site/newsweek/ Coincidentally, there's a story de-bunking ID in the new National Review, at: http://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/20050214/full.asp#050104
Posted by dbzdak at 1:51 PM | Comments (6)
Groundhog Day
A couple interesting articles I recently came across about the philosophical implications of the Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day. Seemed appropriate. First is the cover story by Jonah Goldberg from the new National Review -- I don't think it's out yet, but it's on-line (at least some of it is, you might need a subscription to read the whole thing). http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502010801.asp Second is an older story by a theology prof. from Notre Dame -- Michael Foley. http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/17.3docs/17-03-012.html
Posted by dbzdak at 11:57 AM | Comments (5)
January 27, 2005
The New Dawson's Creek?
Surfing this morning I found a neat video of that guy Ken from nodogs getting hot on Democracy with some young folks. It's a long video to download, but it's a good concept. I don't believe these are "normal" high-schoolers.
Posted by cmaxfield at 9:18 AM | Comments (12)
January 21, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival VIII
I forgot to mention that the 8th Philosopher's Carnival is now up.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:38 PM
January 15, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival VIII Plug
The eighth Philosopher's Carnival is on Monday. Sorry I'm so late for posting this, but it got buried in a bunch of emails I wasn't looking back at. Submissions can be entered here. Please do so ASAP for the sake of the host, who will be enwe's meta-blog.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:05 AM
January 1, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival VII
I forgot to mention that the seventh Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Mixing Memory. I haven't had a chance to look at it much yet. As with past ones, I'll probably write up a post about ones I find interesting at my own blog when I get around to looking at all the entries.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:21 AM
December 22, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival VII Plug
The seventh Philosophers' Carnival is next Monday, so anyone out there who wants to submit anything should do so soon enough to give the host time to organize everything.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:19 AM
December 6, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival VI
The 6th Philosophers' Carnival is up at MelbournePhilosopher. There's some good stuff there. I expected it to be fairly scant due to the time of year, but that seems not to have affected many of the other blogs. Ektopos blogs, on the other hand...
Posted by Jeremy at 10:40 AM
December 4, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival VI coming up
The 6th Philosophers' Carnival will be Monday. Submit posts here.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:04 AM
November 29, 2004
OCLC Top 1000 Books
OCLC has a top 1000 of books in member libraries. I'm wondering why Lucretius is the highest philosophical work at #47. There's representation by Plato, Aristotle (in spades), Lucretius, Plotinus, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, Mill, and Nietzsche. I didn't see any other major figures, though Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Bacon, and Wollstonecraft count as minor ones by most standards. I don't know if people like Machiavelli, Newton, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Marx count. I'd include some of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois' work as philosophy, but not most of their writings. There may be others I wasn't sure if I should include, but what's more interesting is who is absent: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Hegel, the American pragmatists, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, and Rawls. Some of those are especially surprising. Hat Tip: Crooked Timber
Posted by Jeremy at 5:37 PM | TrackBack
November 19, 2004
Philosophical Gourmet Report
The 2004-2006 Philosophical Gourmet Report is now up. It's nice to see that losing two junior faculty members and gaining (I believe) three junior faculty members and three senior faculty members (in addition to an extremely well-known continental philosopher in the religion department who insists on teaching in philosophy at the graduate level and is listed on the faculty page of the Gourmet Report for our department) since the last report (not to mention keeping one well-known senior faculty member whom everyone thought was going to leave) has given us an increase of ... oh, wait, we didn't move. Did everyone else improve that much? I don't get it. We should at least be nearing the top 20 now, and I'd say many above us don't belong as high as they are and haven't for years, but Leiter's methodology favors some schools that have lost a lot in the last few years, with part-time or semi-retired faculty pulling things along and lots of turnover, the same situation haunting Syracuse but often with a smaller faculty base and therefore a more serious effect from it, but the name recognition of the school or some other factor undiscernible to me has exaggerated the ranking. There are a number of schools with only one or two faculty members I've barely heard of who are a good deal higher than us. Maybe it's just from lack of familiarity with their fields, but that alone strikes me as odd. It's the fact that we can gain so much and not move in the rankings that really seems fishy to me, though.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:48 AM | Comments (5)
November 15, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival V
The 5th Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Ciceronian Review. Nearly half the posts this time are from blogs I haven't heard of before, so check it out if you want to explore some new philosophy blogs.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:04 AM
November 10, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival V plug
We still have a few days to write something and submit it to the next Philosophers' Carnival. If you're working on something and want some feedback, write it up, post it, and tell Richard about it here. The Carnival will be Monday, November 15. I suggest submitting anything by the end of the week.
Posted by Jeremy at 4:50 PM
November 3, 2004
Undetached Rabbit Parts
That's the name of the newest philosophy grad student blog, this time from Western Michigan University. It's so new that there's only one post so far (from yesterday), but it's already got four comments.
Posted by Jeremy at 10:58 AM | Comments (3)
October 25, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival IV
The fourth Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Doing Things With Words. We're represented yet again just by Ben because no one else seems to be writing much genuine content.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:09 PM
October 10, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival Mailing List
Since the Philosophers' Carnival is more spread out than most others, I've had trouble remembering when the next one is and when I need to submit any posts. Well, now there's a mailing list for reminders when the next carnival will be. If you want to know when the next one is approaching to remind you to submit a post, sign up for the email list here.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:29 AM
October 5, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival III
The third Philosophers' Carnival is up at Philosophical Poetry.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:06 PM
October 1, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival Plug
The third Philosophers' Carnival is coming up. Anyone wishing to submit a post for it should do so now. I believe the rule is that any blogger can submit one post, even if it's from a blog that has other posts submitted from other bloggers. For more detailed information, go here. For easy link submission via the web, go here. It's going to be Monday, so if you're going to recommend a post of your own or someone else's then please do so soon.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:45 AM
September 24, 2004
Brian Weatherson Interview
Will Baude has interviewed our formerly very own Brian Weatherson at Crescat Sententia about his blogging at Thoughts Arguments and Rants and Crooked Timber in the 20 Questions series of blogger interviews. It was about a year ago, but I just discovered it, and it's kind of nice to see philosophers interviewed for a non-philosophy audience.
Posted by Jeremy at 7:27 PM
August 23, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival I
The first Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Philosophy, et cetera... Someone must have submitted Ben's post about which death is worse for the person being killed, because it's there. One of mine from Prosblogion is also in it. I haven't read any of the others yet, but since this is supposed to be the best of the philosoblogosphere, I expect some good quality.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:18 PM
August 18, 2004
Philosophers' Carnival
Richard Chappell of Philosophy, et cetera, has brought to my attention a page he just created which announces the beginning of a Philosophers' Carnival. You can find the explanation there, but, in brief, a 'Carnival' is a collection of 'best' posts submitted by the authors themselves or recommended by others. This is nice, as it will result in, if participation is good, a 'best of the philosophy web'. When you consider how the philosophy interweb is booming, this will nicely compact the content for those less willing to surf all the pages all the time to keep up. So, head on over there and contribute!
Posted by MarkSteen at 11:08 AM
August 12, 2004
And another, and another...
I've just received word from Tiger Roholt that a new Philosophy of Art/Aesthetics blog is up and running.
This reminds me--where is the metaphysics blog I've been dreaming of? I thought of starting one up, since I'm lucky to know quite a few excellent metaphysicians who I might be able to cajole into contributing, but I'm already (mis- or under-)managing a few pages/blogs. Any takers? I'd help with invites, but not with admin (or content, at least for a while).
One last note. Things have been a bit slow here of late. I've had word from some folk that entries might be more forthcoming in a few weeks. I'll also attempt mind-control with the incoming grad students as I meet them and install the proper cyborgitry.
Posted by MarkSteen at 10:36 PM | Comments (1)
August 5, 2004
New Philosophy of Biology Blog
is up and running here. Check it out. Thanks to Experimental Philosophy for the info.
Posted by MarkSteen at 10:47 AM
July 8, 2004
Mr. Ashcroft
I came across this story several weeks ago in the NYT and waited to hear more, but haven't. I thought it interesting enough to post.
Posted by kkukla at 5:39 PM | Comments (2)
June 17, 2004
Philosophy Movies
Jason Brennan, philosophy graduate student at the University of Arizona, has constructed a philosophy movie page. It's TV show episodes that I've mostly used (since you can watch them in a class period), so I don't have much to contribute to his project, but if you have any ideas send them his way. Credit goes to Tyler Cowen at the Volokh Conspiracy for the discovery. Update: Majikthise has some more, with explanations why she thinks hers are among the best philosophical films.
Posted by Jeremy at 3:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 16, 2004
PEA Soup
Douglas Portmore at CalState Northridge has let me know about a new (primarily ethics) blog that he and others have started up called PEA Soup. The phenomenon grows....
Posted by MarkSteen at 12:28 PM
June 11, 2004
More Philosophy Blogs
David Chalmers has put together a list of all the philosophy blogs he knows about. Apparently there's one more group blog that I didn't know about, Experimental Philosophy. The overriding goal seems to be to apply the results of empirical studies to philosophical issues. One post reports a study concluding that the incompatibilist notion of freedom is in fact not the dominant assumption of the ordinary person and then asks what philosophical consequences we should draw. The other two posts so far seem to be explaining and defending their approach. It's a little disconcerting to see that they don't follow the standard blog format with the most recent entries at the top.
There are a lot of blogs I didn't know about, and Chalmers has nicely divided them among different categories (non-philosophical by a philosopher, group blogs, philosophical by largely non-philosophers, etc.).
Posted by Jeremy at 2:26 PM | Comments (3)
June 10, 2004
New epistemology blog
Jonathan Kvanvig, in addition to being (so far, anyway) the dominant blogger at Prosblogion, has started an epistemology blog called Certain Doubts. So now we've got two topical philosophy blogs. So far this new one is also institutionally based, since all three bloggers are at the same institution, but he says they've got other people lined up to join. Both blogs display some excellent quality in their posts, though Certain Doubts only has a few posts so far. The Rochester and Brown blogs have been working well, and the Syracuse one hasn't (mostly because most everyone who claimed to be interested in it turned out not to be), with Arizona still in the process of developing. The two topical blogs seem to have started out with excellent quality without need for a period of getting going. I think we now have some empirical evidence that Brian Weatherson was right in his suggestion that topical blogs will be the way to go (in addition to the reasons he gave).
Posted by Jeremy at 10:40 AM | Comments (5)
June 7, 2004
Prosblogion
The third Ektopos blog is now online and ready for your careful perusal. Prosblogion is the philosophy of religion blog I was talking about starting a while back. We've got a decent starting group so far, but I'm hoping for a couple more well-known philosophers. The posting frenzy has begun. Jonathan Kvanvig has already contributed a few excellent posts, and David Efird and I have added our own. Mine is a response to the problem facing Leibniz given his endorsement both of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and of the view that some things are contingent, namely God's choice whether to create at all and God's choice to act according to his nature.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:36 PM | Comments (1)
June 5, 2004
Bienvenidos Desert Landscapes
The joyful disease spreads. The University of Arizona grad students (and some faculty) have started up their blog, Desert Landscapes, here. (thanks to Brian Leiter for the link).
It's a clever name, which needs no explanation if you've read "On What There Is" and know anything about Arizona.
This reminds me of a story about Bill Alston (which I heard from another student, I wasn't in this particular class), who, while discussing Quine and ontology, said (in his very lovably crackling tones), "Who prefers desert landscapes? I want to live in a lush garden!" So, when choosing between sparse or profligate ontologies, the question is, Quine's desert, or, Alston's garden?
Posted by MarkSteen at 10:59 AM
May 20, 2004
Another Undergrad Blog
Richard Chappell, an undergrad whose blog I linked to earlier, asked me what other undergrad blogs I know of. Well, now I know of one more here. The blog is by Shieva Kleinschmidt, a WWU enfant terribile, whose wisdom is shown by her support of stuff ontology (we've correspondend about this a little bit-and she still has to read my paper!). Good to see her blogging... UPDATE: Also check out Will Davies' (@ Bristol) blog Badgerous, another undergrad blog, which has some good content (including a link to a good SJ Gould article which apparently makes hash of DD, and a good post on C. Wright. and skepticism, or, should I say, scepticism) .
Posted by MarkSteen at 11:51 AM | Comments (6)
May 16, 2004
Some undergraduate blogs
The undergrad blogs don't too often get a nod. I sometimes check out Personal Knowledge, which is mostly on philosophy of religion. Also you should check out Richard Chappell's blog (Richard is in New Zealand). Richard posts on a variety of topics.
Posted by MarkSteen at 5:18 PM | Comments (6)