Philosophy@Utah State

Here is a review by Raymond Tallis of two recent books arguing for more sophisticated discussions about the mysteries of consciousness – i.e., discussions amounting to more than, “Hey, when I show the subject Rothko paintings, *that* part of the brain lights up!”. Representative quote from the review:

A brain in good working order is, of course, a necessary condition of every aspect of human consciousness, from basic perception to the most complex constructed sense of self. It does not follow that this is the whole story of our nature—that we are just brains in some kind of working order. Many aspects of everyday human consciousness elude neural reduction. For we belong to a boundless, infinitely elaborated community of minds that has been forged out of a trillion cognitive handshakes over hundreds of thousands of years. This community is the theater of our daily existence. It separates life in the jungle from life in the office, and because it is a community of minds, it cannot be inspected by looking at the activity of the solitary brain.

This past Friday and Saturday, a number of our students went above and beyond the call of undergraduate toil. On Friday, Mathias Fuelling and Carson Bessinger presented papers at an undergraduate philosophy conference hosted by Salt Lake Community College. The conference focused on Nietzsche’s philosophy, and Fuelling offered his own interpretation of the übermensch while Bessinger forged conceptual linkages among Nietsche, Thrasymachus, and Callicles (characters in Plato’s dialogues). Huenemann offered a keynote address which drifted myopically among Nietzsche, biological evolution, and cultural progress. Anyone interested in presenting at a conference should check our link over on the right of this page, and keep in mind that UVU will be hosting another such conference in spring 2012.

On Saturday, several of our undergraduates (I won’t list them, out of fear of leaving someone out), along with Drs. Kleiner and Holberg, traveled to Weber State and competed in the Ethics Bowl. Our team won 2 and lost 3 matches, so we didn’t make it to the nationals, but I am told we argued with brave fervor. It is truly exemplary for these students to have dedicated themselves to the task of preparing for this event and engaging in it. We are learning more each year, and will prepare to go again next November.

So to all: congratulations, and good on you!

I know that some of our students who are considering graduate school in philosophy are interested in what the job market for philosophers looks like.  The broken record spins on — not good.  But it is better than the last few years.  Looking at all jobs (not just in the US) advertised in the “Jobs for Philosophers” from the APA, this year is up from previous years but still down from pre-crash.

This year there were 194 ads.  In 2010 there were 157, 2009 140.  In 2008 there were 267 and in 2007 347.

I also did a rough and ready review of what areas in philosophy have the best prospects for jobs.  This is very rough – I collapsed categories and did a lot of simplifying with the aim of giving students a general idea of the landscape.  I ignored the web ads, senior hires, postdoc fellowships, and especially ambiguous ads (so the total number below is much less than the 194 total ads).  This is meant to give you a general sense of the landscape, nothing more.

Jobs are advertised asking for an AOS (area of specialization) and an AOC (area of concentration).  These terms are not clearly defined, but roughly an AOS is your area of research interest and what you wrote your dissertation on and an AOC is something you are competent to teach an upper division undergraduate course in (but don’t really research in that area).

Most jobs specify an AOS and an AOC.  They will say “AOS: Ethical Theory and AOC: Social and Political” or something like that.  Chances are they will have plenty of candidates who exactly fit their bill.

Some ads say “AOS open”, “AOC open” or even “AOS and AOC” open.  Such ads are exciting for graduate students since it gives you a bunch of places to apply.  But I think the excitement is largely unjustified.  First, most AOC ads go on to specify something like “department would prefer x, y, z”.  This annoys me since it means that the areas are not really open.  If they know what they want, I wish they would just list it as the AOS or AOC.  Now some places might really be looking for the best person they can find and don’t care about area.  Maybe they have so many needs that they cast a wide net hoping to get the best person.  I think other places, though, just can’t get their committee to agree on what need they want filled.

Keeping in mind the above limitations of my review, here were the most common AOS jobs (keep in mind, most of these were paired with a specified AOC):

Ethics / ethical theory / value theory: 20
Open: 17 (again, in most places something was specified)
Applied Ethics: 11 (of various stripes, environmental, business, etc)
Ancient: 7
Philosophy of Science: 7
Modern: 6
Analytic metaphysics: 5
Epistemology: 5
Social and political: 5
Continental: 5 (not a bad year for Continental, actually)
Non-western: 4
Kant: 3
Phil of Mind: 3
Phil of Language: 3
Aesthetics: 2
Medieval: 2

This is about what I would expect.  Most jobs are in ethics.  Always some jobs for people in historical areas (ancient, medieval, modern, etc).  Always some jobs for analytic metaphysics and epistemology.  Philosophy of science seems to be on the rise, though I don’t have any evidence for that sense.

UPDATE: Pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with in just six days. Going to take tomorrow off. Feel free to check out what I’ve done so far. Suggestions and criticism (constructive, please!) more than welcome. God out.

COMMENTS:

Disagree with the haters out there who have a problem with man having dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle of the earth, and so on. However, I do think it’s worth considering giving the fowl of the air dominion over the cattle of the earth, because it would be really funny to see, like, a wildebeest or whatever getting bossed around by a baby duck.

The whole piece here.

Four psychologists, in an effort to show that interpreting brain scan results requires careful correction for scanning errors, took a dead fish and showed it pictures of people in emotional states. “The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photograph must have been experiencing.” Yes, parts of the brain “lit up”, but the researchers seem reluctant to conclude from this that dead fish engage in perspective-taking tasks. See the poster of their results here.

PS – Their title for their presentation is hilarious: “Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction.” (And, by the way, “Dead Salmon Brain Scans” is an excellent name for a rock band.)

The library is celebrating Open Access week, and is featuring a panel discussion on this question with ethicist Erica Holberg, physicist Charlie Torre, and USU Press Director Michael Spooner. Each will share his or her unique perspective on our right to knowledge and the impact open access has on his or her discipline. The discussion will be held in Library 101 at 4:30 on Wednesday, October 26th.

Come hear Jay Elliott, a fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University, tell us how virtue works. His talk is this Thursday, 4 p.m., in Main 203. All are welcome!

Students may have seen that I will be teaching a PHIL 4900 Special Topics Seminar this spring (MWF 1:30-2:20).  The course will be geared to philosophy majors and will be run as a seminar.  Our topic will be Aristotle.  I am still sorting out the specific readings, but I expect we will read selections from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Physics, Ethics, and Politics.

* Modification:  I have ordered the Metaphysics, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima (On the Soul). *

We determined last night that, YES, beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and, YES, humans do have souls. I’m not entirely sure about this, but it looks like Aristotle is so far the only philosopher consistent with our results!

In a cheerful voice, turned out in a magenta tie and a blue boating blazer with broad white stripes, Tallis informs 60 people gathered in a Kent lecture hall that his talk will demolish two “pillars of unwisdom.” The first, “neuromania,” is the notion that to understand people you must peer into the “intracranial darkness” of their skulls with brain-scanning technology. The second, “Darwinitis,” is the idea that Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory can explain not just the origin of the human species—a claim Tallis enthusiastically accepts—but also the nature of human behavior and institutions.

The rest of the article here.