Individual Achievement Revisited

In a previous post, I discussed the notion that individual achievement in philosophy is grossly underrated, despite the fact that philosophy is a discipline that seems to want to reward individual achievement.

Patrick offered some lively comments about my post (click here for his comments). He asked: "Why do so many of us just take it for granted that a job at a teaching college is to be seen as, at best, a fallback position in case our research careers don't work out?"

Let me try to answer this question fairly systematically. First, to my mind, a teaching job is seen as a fallback position because philosophy is about writing, thinking, and writing some more. The writings of the philosophers withstand the test of time. Only by writing some stellar article in a premier journal or writing a really good book will a philosopher leave his/her mark. We all want (it seems) to leave something for future generations. So, philosophers leave what they write, which is the result of intensive research.

Second, Patrick's question seems to imply that I think a research job is in some way better (maybe even much better) than a teaching job. This wasn't my intention in writing my original post. I merely wanted to point out that (in some cases) rankings may proscribe some individuals from achieving success in publishing articles, books, etc. Journals and publishers claim that they have a blind review process for each submitted article or book proposal. This is the case sometimes, but it is definitely not the case all the time. My guess is that like all other areas of life there's a "good ol boy network" in play even in philosophy. I am sure there are some reviewers who think: "If a professor or graduate student from Rutgers, NYU, or Princeton wrote the article, it has to be good." Yes, this has an air of a conspiracy theory, so I will leave it at that.

Finally, let me address your implication directly. No, there is nothing wrong with a teaching job. In fact, I find teaching very fulfilling, and I will be very thankful for any position, teaching or research, I am able to obtain after earning a doctorate. Yet, I don't ever want to lose my drive for wanting to achieve something better. No matter what position I am able to obtain, I will not be satisfied. Words to live by: "Never be satisfied with who you are, and never give up trying to become someone better." I think the moment a person is satisfied with who they are and give up trying to accomplish greater things the person should seriously consider an alternative career or intensive therapy.

Cohabitating in N.C. is illegal

StarNewsOnline.com reported a story one week ago about a 911 dispatcher in Pender County, N.C. who lost her job because she and her boyfriend were living together. Debora Hobbs, the 911 dispatcher, is now taking her story to the national media to fight for the right to cohabitate with her boyfriend.

North Carolina is one of seven states with anti-cohabitation laws on the books. In North Carolina, a man and a woman found cohabitating out of wedlock may be charged with a class 2 misdemeanor, which carries a maximum jail sentence of up to 60 days and a $1,000 fine.

The other states with anti-cohabitation laws on the books include:
(1) Florida
(2) Michigan
(3) Mississippi
(4) North Carolina
(5) North Dakota
(6) Virginia
(7) West Virginia

The most common reason states give for not overturning the anti-cohabiting law is that the state wants to uphold family values. To eradicate cohabitation among men and women, each state should form anti-cohabiting squads that go door-to-door asking couples if they are married. If the couple is not married, the squad should arrest the couple. Arresting the couple will definitely promote family values among the population. Won't it?

CTDreyer's Metaethics Amazon List

CTDreyer, a fellow blogger, has a list of suggested books in the area of metaethics. The list is very comprehensive, and it includes many contemporary works one should read if interested in metaethics. Follow this link to CTDreyer's amazon booklist click here.

Why be immoral?

In the Introduction of Reasonably Vicious by Candace Vogler, she raises a question I had not considered very seriously, "why be immoral?" She contends that this question is as important as "why be moral?", a more traditional question.

There are two features of the new question that baffle me. First, the question seems to presume that we are able to act in ways we know are immoral. Very few who have done immoral things see the act(s) as immoral. For example, in the Nuremburg trials, several nazis claimed only to have been following orders. Following orders is not immoral, but the consequences of following those orders are immoral. So, an answer to the new question seems to presume that we can know what it means to act immorally, which is exactly what we usually deny.

Second, why is the new question as important as the traditional question? Taking the new question seriously presumes that it may be able to assist us in answering the traditional question.

Well, I guess I just have to read the rest of the book to figure out what's going on here.

Back to the Heat!

I've returned to Fayetteville, and I've several things to blog, including a response and extension of my comments on Mackie at Ctdreyer's Tribunal of Experience. Arrghhh, there's not enough time in the day for quality philosophizing!

Good News for Academic Job Market

CNN reports that the Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks that the academic job market will expand widely over the next years. The primary reason is that faculty members who joined departments in the 1960s will be retiring soon, opening new faculty tenure-track positions. See the article here.

The report fails to account for the recent trend among colleges and universities to hire adjunct instructors, instead of tenure-track professors.

Boston bound

Blogging may be light for the next few days. I'll be in my hometown, Boston.

Comparing Iraq and Vietnam

In a recent post by Noam Chomsky (available here), he argues that there are very few comparisons that can be made between the conflict in Vietnam and the conflict in Iraq. I respectfully disagree. There are at least three comparisons that can be made.

First, the conflict in Vietnam had a fairly well-defined enemy, the North Vietnamese. The U.S. government's purpose was to overthrow or otherwise challenge the communist government in the North. We were in South Vietnam to defend it's independence. In Iraq, the enemy is not even fairly well-defined, but our mission, our purpose for being there is similar. The purpose of the conflict in Iraq is to defend the Iraqis independence from terrorist insurgents and brutal dictatorship.

Second, the conflict in Vietnam and the conflict in Iraq involves guerilla warfare. In Vietnam, Viet Cong guerillas infiltrated South Vietnam and attacked U.S. installations throughout the country. These guerillas used unconventional tactics, i.e. sappers and children, to perform these operations. Similarly, in Iraq, insurgents use unconventional tactics attacking U.S. installations and installations of U.S. (and worldwide) interest. In Iraq, insurgents use car bombs and RPGs to attack U.S. soldiers and coalition fighters.

Finally, early in the Vietnam conflict the U.S. ousted a leader from the South Vietnamese government and replaced him with someone more attuned to the U.S. mission in Vietnam. In Iraq, we have ousted Saddam Hussein from power and we will replace him (on June 30) with someone who is more democratic, more American than the brutal dictator.

So, there are at least a few comparisons to be made between the conflict in Vietnam and the conflict in Iraq. Granted, there are differences like the ones Chomsky and others sight: the state of technology is different, there is far more news coverage, and, yes, Iraq is a country that produces a commodity the rest of the world would like to have. When it comes to comparing the actual conflict though, there are tremendous similarities. We cannot ignore these similarities. If we do, we will inevitably repeat the same mistakes we made in the Vietnam conflict.

Taking Psychologism Seriously

Anthony Newman, in Keeping Psychologism in Mind, argues that traditional objections to psychologism, particularly those leveled by Frege, do not deserve the philosophical weight they usually are given. I tend to agree, nowadays.

One of the Frege's objections says that since propositional contents are shareable and psychologism presumes that propositional contents are private (not shareable), psychologism is false. Professor Newman suggests a novel way around this objection, but I want to address a concern I have for the way traditional defenders of psychologism have tried to undermine this argument. Traditional defenders have given up the "Cartesian" conception of mind embodied in privacy. Professor Newman cites John Aach (1990) as a case in point. Aach adopts a form of behaviorism to undermine the traditional objection to psychologism.

Let me try to suggest a way around psychologism that doesn't surrender the "Cartesian" conception of mind. Any idea we conjure up is our own idea. No one else has access to our ideas without our verbalizing it to them, maybe by means of explanation or argument. Private thoughts are shareable if the agent chooses to verbalize the thoughts. Language enables us to share private thoughts. So, at least on one level, two agents can share private thoughts.

CIA Operative Beats Detainee in Afghanistan

More allegations of detainee abuse has come to light (See the Fayetteville Observer story here). This time a CIA operative in Afghanistan, formerly a Special Operations soldier, is accused of beating and punching a detainee with a flashlight. The CIA operative was not a trained interrogator.

Leiter/Counter-Leiter

Every good argument has a counter-argument, or so the story goes in philosophy. When it comes to the Philosophical Gourmet Report, the story should be no different. Is it?

Very few people in the philosophy world have tried to argue against the Gourmet Report. Perhaps the most famous critic of the Gourmet Report is Richard Heck, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University (See his response to the Gourmet Report here). Heck's insightful criticisms of the Gourmet Report have been met with very little support. In fact, Leiter has posted a somewhat nasty response to Professor Heck (click here for that post). In a retrospect addition to his response to Professor Heck, Leiter dubs Professor Heck's efforts as "the Heckling Campaign." It is as if Leiter analogizes Heck's thoughtful criticisms with a bad bleacher seat in Fenway Park just above the right field bullpens.

Alas, what I say here makes no difference. The point is that criticism is good for philosophy. I wish more websites were dedicated to anti-PGR arguments. Leiter should invite these criticisms, too. It will only strengthen his position. Won't it?

New BDUs for US Army soldiers

The US Army soldier will have a new BDU uniform by 2007. See the Fayetteville Observer news story here. This is bad news for people with shoe shining businesses and cleaners. The new BDUs will replace the old black paratrooper boot with the desert camoflauge suede. This will all but extinguish the shoe shining businesses in towns with Army bases. If that wasn't enough, the new BDUs are wrinkle-free. The US Army, taking its lead from Dockers and Polo, will issue BDUs a soldier can dry and hang. No more starch! No more ironing! This will all but extinguish the cleaners in towns with Army bases. This will only leave strip joints, bars, and tatoo parlors as cash cows in Army towns! Unless...

Is Commitment A Priori?

Suppose that Smith goes to the parking lot, counts the cars in the parking lot, and says, "I know there are 12 cars in the parking lot." By checking the number of cars in the lot, Smith's belief is a rock-bottom experiential belief. Rock-bottom experiential beliefs are noninferential. Smith does not infer his belief from any other belief; he just goes to the parking lot and checks how many cars are there. Philosophers have tended to say that beliefs like Smith's are a posteriori, drawn solely from experience.

This does not seem to be entirely correct. Willingness to defend an experiential belief is not itself an experiential matter. Commitment to perception being correct is an a priori intuition. The feeling of conviction accompanying a rock-bottom experiential belief is what makes us defend the belief. Feeling that Smith ought to defend the belief that "there are 12 cars in the parking lot" is non-experiential. What's going on is Smith has found that in the past his senses did not deceive him, so they are probably not deceiving him now. Smith's commitment to his belief presumes that his sensory faculties are correct. Presuming his sensory faculties are correct has nothing to do with what he is actually perceiving; instead, it has more to do with his commitment that sensory faculties usually convey accurate information. If they didn't, then Smith couldn't be committed to his rock-bottom experiential belief.

Rock-bottom experiential beliefs, thus, presume the commitment to the antecedent condition that: "my sensory faculties usually convey accurate information about the external world."

Does skepticism challenge "commitment" or "experience"?

Suppose we partially submerge a straightedge in water. The straightedge appears bent. Since we know that straightedges don't bend when submerged in water, we should not trust our senses.

First, the skeptical scenario calls experience into question. We might mistake the round tower in the distance for a square one. We might mistake a person for someone else. The skeptical scenario challenges experience because our sensory data can turn out to be incorrect.

Second, the force of a skeptical scenario is not to call experience into question. There could be a being whose sensory faculties are screwed up. They always see round towers in the distance, even if they are actually square. They always seem to see some familiar person, even though the person is a complete stanger. They could always hear rumbles of thunder in the distance, even though the rumbles are 105mm howitzer shells hitting the ground (this is something I experience everyday here in Fayetteville, N.C. -- a town in very close proximity to Ft. Bragg). The force of the skeptical scenario is actually calling our commitment to "that's a round tower," "that's a guy I know," and "that's thunder" into question. If the "skeptical alien" knows that his sensory faculties are all screwed up, then the alien will compensate for this. The skeptical alien will not leave the house with an umbrella just because there is a rumble of would-be thunder in the distance. It's just another artillery round. If we know that our senses are screwed up, then our commitment to their correctness fades. We have to draw on other means of information to support a conclusion we have drawn from experience. For example, I find myself watching the Weather Channel constantly, or I find myself looking out the window for cumulo-nimbus clouds. It is the commitment we have to sensory experience that is shot, not sensory experience.

All Mackie, All the Time

There's been some great metaethical activity on C.T. Dreyer's blog regarding J.L. Mackie. In particular, check out this post and this post. C.T. has also other posts about Mackie here and here. Some of the posts are responses to what I said in early March.

Policies and the War on Terrorism

Applied ethics has never tickled my fancy, but I thought of an argument in applied political ethics recently that has me genuinely worried. Here's the argument:

1. The U.S.A.'s policy is not to negotiate with terrorists. (premise)
2. The U.S.A. is currently engaged in a war with terrorists. (premise)
3. So, the U.S.A.'s war on terrorism will not end in a negotiated settlement. (1,2)
4. Wars end with a peace treaty, a negotiated settlement. (premise)
5. Therefore, the U.S.A.'s war on terrorism will never end. (3,4)

This is a grim outlook for all of the efforts we have expended since 9/11. It appears from this argument that what follows is annihilating the enemy as a means of winning the war on terrorism.

Is the CUA promoting racism?

This week The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the Catholic University of America ("CUA") in Washington, D.C. denied the formation of an NAACP student association. CUA officials contend that students interested in organizing the assocation failed to give a "compelling" reason for its formation.

The Chronicle's article implied that CUA officials denied the formation of an NAACP student association because of the NAACP's stance on abortion. The NAACP is an outspoken supporter of "pro-choice" arguments, which conflicts with the institution's Catholic mission statement.

CUA is a private-institution, and it (like all other universities - private or public) may deny the formation of student associations for whatever reason. The formation of student associations gives students access to funds contributed by other students, alumni, and outside contributors. Permitting student organizations inconsistent with the mission of the school may jeopardize future contributions from substantial supporters. Since nothing comes without a price, it was a wise choice of the CUA to prohibit the NAACP from infiltrating their campus. Despite the NAACP's insistence that they would not actively promote their abortion stance around campus, the principle the NAACP supports contradicts CUA's mission statement. So, there is nothing wrong with CUA's denying the formation of a student association of the NAACP.

Queer Eye for the Subjective Guy

The argument from queerness argues that values are not objective. Objective values are entities of a sort vastly different from anything in the universe. If objective values are entities of a sort vastly different than anything in the universe, then awareness of these objective values requires some special sort of intuition different from ordinary forms of perception, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else. But, we don't have any special sort of moral intuition. So, there are no objective values.

Mackie seems to agree with the idea that objective values are not objective if we pick them according to the way they affect us. If objective values are truly objective, then they must be true independent of the way we perceive them. Truly objective values have nothing to do with us. Being objective entails their independence from anything else. Construed in the way I suggest, Mackie will have to argue that what results is not objective; at most, values are purely subjective. Also, Mackie's argument works not only against values being objective but also objectivity simpliciter.

The argument from queerness presumes that objectivity is beyond our comprehension. It is a sort vastly different than anything in the universe. Understanding what objective values are requires a special sort of moral intuition unavailable to humans. Mackie's argument presumes that he may draw conclusions about objective values, that we don't know them.

If objectivity is beyond our comprehension, then we cannot actually know whether there is or there is not something that is objective. Mackie's argument from queerness draws the conclusion that we don't have access to objective values. We fail to have anything like moral intuition. So, we can know, according to Mackie, that there are no such things as objective values.

If objective values have no influence upon us whatsoever, then we could not know anything about things that were objective. Objectivity is literally beyond our comprehension. We could not apprehend it no matter what we thought was objective. The only thing that remains is subjective apprehension. When we judge that some action or state-of-affairs is good or bad and others agree with our assessment, it is purely a matter of luck that we agree.

Suppose we think that Mackie is right. We will have to agree that his argument from queerness works against the existence of objective values, knowledge of objective values, which implies the dismantling of objectivity. Should we choose to accept Mackie's conclusion, it is not because the argument is correct; it's just because we happen to agree. His argument is not correct because that would be too similar to suggesting that he offers some sort of objective argument. Argument's can't be objective because we would have to use some sort of intuition as a compass for understanding the argument as objective. This is something we don't have. So, arguments are not objective.

Lukasiewicz and the truth value of conditionals in a 3-valued system of logic

In re-reading Lukasiewicz's three-valued logic stuff, I am perplexed by the truth-values for conditional statements. Let > = the "if,then" connective, let 1= "is true," let 0= "is false," and let I= "is intermediate." For a sentence, if p, then q, when p is I and q is 1, the truth value of the statement is I. If the truth-value of the antecedent of an if-then statement is either true or false, the conditional is trivially true. This should hold for Lukasiewicz's system of logic too, including the I value. So, if the truth value of the antecedent is 1, 0, or I, the truth value of the conditional is true.

Are Church and State Distinct?

In a "letter to the editor" in today's Fayetteville Observer, a disgruntled, seemingly disenfranchised Christian writes:

"The headline of the article, "Resolution attacks gay marriages," in the Local & State section on May 30 is inappropriate in reference to the resolution that was adopted. The Baptists of the New South River [a local church] are taking a stand against such immoral issues and are calling upon our elected officials to protect the biblical definition of marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman for life and to stand up against all attempts to redefine this institution.

Where is our country headed if gay marriages continue to happen? Please take a stand to keep our country known as a Christian nation and to preserve the family.

I proudly claim the name of Christian first and to be a Baptist is my choice.

May God bless the United States of America.

Ann Davis, Fayetteville"

Ought public officials heed Davis's call for action? Should local, state, and federally elected officials "protect the biblical definition of marriage," or is this an attempt to undermine the Constitution's First Amendment clause: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?"

Is perceptual evidence a foundation for practical reasoning?

In "Pleasure in Practical Reasoning" (Millgram 2001) and Practical Induction (Millgram 1997), Elijah Millgram argues that experience matters most for figuring out what to do. He draws an analogy between theoretical and practical reasoning to show that experience makes a belief rock-bottom. If we want to know how many eggs are in the egg carton, we need to go and count the number of eggs in the egg carton. Rock-bottom beliefs are non-inferential.

On the one hand, I think that a problem for Millgram's account is that he has confused a rock-bottom belief for his commitment to the rock-bottom belief. What makes the rock-bottom belief rock-bottom and non-inferential is a person's commitment to the belief, not the belief itself. Lets leave that to one side for now.

On the other hand, the term "rock-bottom" seems to imply two things. First, it might be that a person's belief is a foundation. Checking the number of eggs in the carton allows a person to determine whether the beliefs, for instance, (a) they can have omeletes for dinner or (b) a chicken produced these eggs are true. Next, it might be that "rock-bottom" means that this is a good place to start. If Millgram means the former, then his argument will crumble under the weight of any skeptical scenario. If Millgram means the latter, then Millgram must cash out what the normative conditions of trusting one's perceptual faculties. He doesn't seem to argue for or against these normative conditions. So, we should give a different account of what Millgram means by "rock-bottom."

Nonsense

There might be cases where nonsensical sentences are functionally useful. For example:

(1) Some infinite numbers are greater than other infinite numbers.

(2) Imagine a person at every point in space.

(3) When I am strong, I am weak.

All of these cases seem to say something functionally useful, while they are nonsensical on the surface.

Psychologism and Prediction

Husserl and others have argued that psychology deals with thinking as it is, not as it should be. Psychology is not a normative discipline, whereas logic is. This is true by virtue of it being a science.

Science, however, does involve prediction. For example, astronomers predict the lifespan of stars; meteorologists predict what the weather will be like tomorrow; chemists predict what will happen when two chemicals are mixed; biologists predict phenotypic characteristics of offspring. Predictions tell us how things will turn out when such-and-such occurs. Psychology involves predictions, predictions of behavior or how one will tend to think. If psychology involves predictions and the ability to say informative things about how one will tend to think, then this is just as good as saying how one ought to think. In fact, it may be better since psychology will have no need to cash out what we mean by "normativity" (a highly contentious term in philosophy). So, psychology as a foundation of logic tells us how people will tend to think, which is just as good as telling us what people should think.

Chalmer's Blog List

David Chalmers has begun to list philosophy-related weblogs. Click here for the list.

Circularity of Psychologism

Husserl gives several arguments against logical psychologism in the Logical Investigations, but one has bugged me for a while. It goes something like this: Since each science is only a science in virtue of its "harmony" with logical rules, psychology presupposes the validity of logical rules. Logical laws serve as premises in psychological proofs. So, it is circular to try to give logic a first foundation in psychology.

I have at least four complaints (maybe more) against the circularity argument. Let me try to develop one. Some parts of science fail to correspond with logical rules. For example, quantum mechanics requires special sorts of logical rules to account for some of its doctrines. In fact, quantum logic's main purpose is to accomodate quantum physics. Quantum physics is still a science, despite it's rejection of the laws of classical logic. If we can build a special set of rules for quantum physics, then we could build a similar special system for psychology. We would not have to reject the psychological foundations of logic. So, it would not be circular in the way Husserl argues.

The success of Husserl's argument hinges on what he means by "in harmony with." Something being in harmony is ambiguous between two (maybe more) concepts. On the one hand, Husserl might mean that psychology depends on logic, or, on the other hand, psychology works hand-in-hand with logic. The latter, weaker way seems harmless for psychological foundations of logic.

Oil Prices

Noam Chomsky has published an interesting blog about the price of oil and how it may be relatively low considering several factors many in the press have failed to consider. View his blog here.

Psychologism, it ain't so bad

Logical Psychologism, it ain't so bad. In re-reading Husserl's Prolegomena to Pure Logic, I am beginning to see giant gaps in his anti-psychologistic arguments. There are a series of arguments in chapters 3 and 4 that make me think he's beating a straw man. Many of Husserl's claims against psychologism are uncharacteristic of psychologistic positions, such as Mill's arguments in the System of Logic.

An argument that strikes me as queer is the one that shows logic cannot be based in psychology since logic postulates necessary laws of thought, laws we ought to follow for logically correct thinking. Psychologistic logic can only postulate contingent laws of thought. The primary aim of psychologism is to tell us the way we think, whereas the primary aim of logic is to tell us how we ought to think. Logic is a normative discipline. So, according to Husserl, we must reject psychologism.

If psychologistic laws tell us the way we think, then they also inform us of the way we ought to think. The normativity of psychologistic laws is a background assumption, and the description of psychologistic laws presumes that we understand if we follow these descriptive laws, we are thinking correctly. For example, anytime anyone purchases a piece of furniture that requires assembling the directions describe the way to put together the piece of furniture. By following these purely descriptive statements, the piece of furniture will be put together in the way that it looks on the box or in the store. It is entirely possible that I could have put together the piece of furniture in a different way, but putting it together my way may not resemble the piece I saw in the store. So, purely descriptive statements have as a background assumption something like, "if you want to do it correctly, do it like this."

The Faculty Phenomenon

The Leiter Report, aka PGR, offers a list of the top graduate programs in philosophy. Despite the relatively accurate account of the top programs in the US the PGR provides, something has troubled me about the report. Some members of faculty at universities outside of the top ten or twenty obtained a PhD from universities inside the top ten or twenty. We may assume that the education these professor's received was top-notch. A faculty member's teaching performance usually reflects his/her mentor. If a faculty member's teaching performance reflects his/her mentor, then his/her students will receive an education that is comparable to that of a top-tier PGR institution. This implies at least generally that the education they will provide at other institutions will be equally good. The students at universities outside the top ten seem to receive a formidable education that may parallel the education which the professor received at the top-tier institution.

Also, some faculty members at universities outside the top ten, twenty, or fifty, eventually assume tenure-track or tenured positions inside the top ten or twenty. For example, Terence Horgan, Mark Timmons, and David Chalmers were all members of institutions outside the top fifty before obtaining tenured positions at the University of Arizona. Horgan and Timmons were members of the faculty at the University of Memphis and Chalmers was a member of the faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz, which, until recently, did not have a graduate program in philosophy. Either the graduate students who attended the University of Memphis while Timmons and Horgan were faculty members there received an education comparable to that received at Arizona or the University of Arizona's graduate students are receiving an education comparable to that of Memphis. Arizona's graduate students certainly have more resources at their disposal than these three faculty members. In fact, the resources Arizona graduate students have more resources than those who attended the University of Memphis. So, it must be the case that graduate students who attended Memphis while Timmons and Horgan were there had a similar education to those graduate students at Arizona. There's no clear-cut distinction we can make between the schools in the top fifty and not in the top fifty, as long as schools in the top fifty continue to hire faculty members outside the top fifty at their schools. So, the distinction between the top ten, twenty, or fifty schools is much more blurry than at first supposed.

There might be some magic pixie dust that dubs some professors well-prepared for a tenured or tenure-track position at the top-tier schools. Will someone let me know where and how to pick some of this up? I am sure there are many people out there willing to pay a pretty penny for some of it.

Individual achievement - a thing of the past? Brian Leiter has reported on successful philosophers who have obtained degrees from universities outside of the PGR top ten but who are now employed at top ten universities. The tone of the posting is that even if you do not earn a degree from a university in the top ten PGR listing, you can be successful. This is evident from the number of faculty at top ten schools who have earned their degree from programs not listed in the PGR's top ten. So, a philosopher can obtain a position at a top ten school without having obtained a PhD from Rutgers, Pitt, NYU, Princeton, Harvard, Arizona, Columbia, Stanford etc.

There might be something else we might learn from Leiter's recent posting. Philosophy is an individual effort. No matter where a graduate student may study for 5 to 6 years (maybe more for some), if the student has not produced good work, then graduate study is a wash. Going to a top ten school does not (in any way) guarantee the success a graduate student will have in obtaining a tenure track position. The graduate student must put forth the effort to learn from his/her mistakes, become a more acute arguer, and write (a lot). Developing a strong research portfolio with works published in major (or even mediocre) journals will assist any graduate student obtain a position at a more prominent institution. Excuse the cliche, but no one can help someone who is not willing to help themselves.

The open question is whether those who attend schools outside of the top fifty programs (like myself) will be afforded an opportunity to break into the top fifty. The answer is probably, an emphatic, no! The PGR has established itself as THE ranking system for graduate programs in philosophy. In establishing itself as such, the PGR has standardized, at least implicitly, how schools outside the top ten ought to hire for tenure-track positions. Those schools ranked outside the top ten either need to hire a person from inside the top ten to have a prayer of moving up the rankings or they need to hire a graduate of those schools in the top ten. For the latter to occur, the hire must be the 800lbs. gorilla (using terminology from a source not to be named here) -- the person who everyone wants to hire, including many of the top ten programs. If the programs don't do that, then they'll be sorry!

The best that students graduating from schools outside the top fifty may hope for is publishing a Gettier-type article, something that changes everything. Without it, these graduates will be populating the teaching universities and colleges around the country.

Coke is NOT it! So, there's some recent talk around the blog world about the great soda v. pop debate. See Matt Weiner's blog here for the latest information. Basically, there have been some studies conducted to show that some parts of the country refer to the bubbly, non-alcoholic beverage as "soda," while other parts refer to it as "pop" or "Coke" or something else (a category researchers call "other").

What I want to discuss is the use of calling the drink "Coke." Coke, presumably, refers to a particular type of drink, Coca-Cola. Calling the average soda "Coke" creates confusion. For instance, suppose that some patron asks a waitress for a "Coke." When the waitress brings a Coca-Cola to the table, the patron may insist that he did not order the Coca-Cola. The patron says, "You see, I wanted a Sprite." What ought the waitress do? Should she charge the patron for the Coca-Cola? After all, he ordered the drink. She didn't understand that the patron wanted a Sprite. This sort of confusion has arisen elsewhere. For example, if someone says, "I am going to make a few Xeroxes," the person is not going to build a few Xerox machines. The person intends to make copies of some document. Calling the non-alcoholic bubbly drink a "Coke" generates a similar confusion. Though one may order a "Coke," the waitress must ask, "what kind of Coke?" This question seems to make a category mistake. Coke is Coke, i.e. Coca-Cola. The waitress should not have to presume she needs to ask the question since there is one and only one type of "Coke" that instantiates what the patron has ordered. So, we ought to abandon calling the thing we understand as "pop" or "soda," "Coke."

Still alive and on the right coast (east coast). There's been so much going on that I've not had a chance to post to the blogger. I'm searching for interested reviewers to read a paper I recently revised concerning Wittgenstein and the problem of incontinence. The paper needs more work in a few areas (maybe, more than a few areas). The paper is posted here. Thanks in advance for your comments.