USUPhilosophy

This article discusses the difficulty Occupy Wall Street protestors have had in coming up with a series of demands.  One sees in their meeting minutes the difficulty (and frankly absurdity) of democratic processes that refuse structure.  Coming up with a list of demands is hard enough (especially when they are so keen on not marginalizing anyone that they want 90% consensus), but even the call for demands is controversial.  My favorite remark was this:

“Inherently, in asking for demands, you are accepting that there is a power greater than yourself, which is something that this movement is categorically against.”

Good luck with that whole “brotherhood of man” without any structure thing, what Occupiers are calling “this beautiful society we are creating in this park.”  This is a perfect example of why John Lennon’s song Imagine is so stupid. He asks us to imagine there is no heaven, no hell, no countries, no property, no religion too.  The assumption is that without these “alien forces” of civilization, life would all come up roses.  Sut such a view is utterly naive about human nature.  Wisdom of the ages – whether it be religious wisdom or the wisdom of the Greek tragedians like Sophocles and Aeschylus – knows that something has gone wrong with the human condition.  The cookie jar has been broken, things are not “all good” and won’t be fixed y just getting rid of things like the civilizing forces of things like rule of law and culture.

So yes, Lennon is a “dreamer”, as he admits in his song.  But a hopelessly idealistic one, idealistic to the point of absurdity.  For my part, in the city of man I prefer the structure of the rule of law.

Anyway, when I think of these movements and the issue of demands, I immediately think of this classic scene from Life of Brian.  After all, “What have the Romans [capitalists] ever done for us?!”  I love the demand made: “We are giving Pilate 2 days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the roman imperialist state.”  I wonder if the Occupy Wall Street demands are any less absurd.

Stance, an undergraduate journal of philosophy, is calling for papers, reviews, and ‘musings’ over the next 2-3 weeks. Click on the “Interested in presenting a paper at an UNDERGRADUATE PHILOSOPHY…” link over on the right for more details.

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.