Good morning, readers! And happy Friday to you!

I was browsing through Bookforum.com yesterday, and found an interesting link, listing “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Time.”

Enjoy!

*From The Steve Miller Band song, “Fly Like an Eagle

Good morning, readers!

Here are the March 2009 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:

Moral & Political Philosophy

Metaphysics

Epistemology

Aesthetics

Philosophers & History of Philosophy

Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of Literature

Asian Philosophy

Philosophy of Religion

Good morning, readers!

Here are the February 2009 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:

Philosophy of Law

  • Peter Goodrich, Florian Hoffmann, Michel Rosenfeld, Cornelia Vismann (eds.), Derrida and Legal Philosophy, Reviewed by Douglas Litowitz, Magnetar Capital LLC

Moral & Political Philosophy

Philosophers and History of Philosophy

Critical Theory

Philosophy of Language

Aesthetics

Perception

Personal Identity

Philosophy of Religion

Logic

  • Douglas Walton, Chris Reed, Fabrizio Macagno, Argumentation Schemes, Reviewed by Leo Groarke, Wilfrid Laurier University

Good morning, readers!

Here are the latest podcasts from Philosophy Bites:

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers!

Here are the January 2009 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Though collection development is on hold for the time being at Robbins, are any of these worth considering for purchase at a later date?

Aesthetics

Philosophers

Metaphysics

Epistemology

History of Philosophy

Moral & Political Philosophy

Philosophy of Law

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Science

Food, Wine, Beer and Philosophy

January 21st, 2009

Image at left taken from here.

Good morning, readers!

Last year, I wrote a post about pop culture and philosophy, talking about an editorial that used Batman v. the Joker to show how popular culture can be used to explore and discuss (charged) philosophical topics.

In the same spirit, I will review, today, three books which I’ve recently read.  The books, from the same Philosophy and Pop Culture series as Batman and Philosophy, are:

Now, before you hold your nose and pass on today’s reading, declaring them unfit for general philosophical consumption, let me rise to their defense and say that the books in this trilogy are well worth your time to read and ponder.

For one thing, there are some fascinating discussions of philosophy of language, aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology in this book.  For instance:

  • Why do we limit artistic and aesthetic pleasure to sight and sound alone, but not to taste, touch, or smell?
  • Just what is it that we are describing when we describe a bottle of wine?  Or in a glass of beer?  Are we using metaphor alone?  Or are we describing objective, measurable features of the wine or beer?
  • How do we account for things like taste?  Is taste purely subjective?  Or is there an objective component to it?
  • What sort of legal and Constitutional issues are involved in the prohibition of shipping alcohol across state lines? In limitations on homebrewing?  How do laws in regards to these differ in Canada as opposed to in the United States?
  • In regards to food: what do our cultural dietary consumption patterns reveal about us as a people? As individuals?
  • What are the arguments for and against hunting?
  • What does it mean to say that certain food experiences are both delicious and disgusting at the same time?

These are but some of the many questions discussed in the trilogy, covering a wide range of topics of interest to philosophers.

Another reason that I liked this trilogy is that many of the essays are simply hilarious even as they explicate some serious philosophical points.

For example, Steven Hales’ essay, “Mill v. Miller, or Higher and Lower Pleasures,” in Beer and Philosophy is a witty examination of what exactly goes into performing a hedonistic calculus according to John Stuart Mill, through the example of determining which beer (a greater amount of lower-quality, less pleasurable beer v. a lesser amount of higher-quality, more pleasurable beer) should be purchased with a limited sum of money.

Likewise, Glenn Kuehn’s “Food Fetishes and Sin-Aesthetics: Professor Dewey, Please Save Me From Myself,” in Food and Philosophy, examines why we have such guilt over food in American culture, with references to Kant, Dewey, and Indiana Jones.

Finally, as pedagogical tools, the essays in these books may help to illuminate questions of perception, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics for students who may need a concrete example or two, to see how a theory might be applied in practice.

In short, I definitely recommend these books.  You will, I think, find them not only insightful, but amusing and helpful as well.

Good morning, readers!

We will be having four visiting professors in the Department of Philosophy during Spring term 2009.  I am listing them below, with links to the courses which they will be teaching.

A tentative syllabus has been posted for Professor De Dijn’s Spinoza course.  I’ve also listed primary texts for Professor Lee’s course, and for Professor Eklund’s Philosophy of Mathematics course.  I will post syllabi, primary texts, and other readings as they become available.

I’m posting this information now, so that Harvard students reading this blog will know about the courses in advance.

Good morning, readers!

Here are the November 2008 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Are any worth acquiring for Robbins?

Dean Moyar, Michael Quante (eds.), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Guide
Reviewed by Jeffrey Church, Duke University

Nathan Widder, Reflections on Time and Politics
Reviewed by Dorothea Olkowski, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Heather Dyke, Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy
Reviewed by Matti Eklund, Cornell University

Hans Bernhard Schmid, Katinka Schulte-Ostermann, Nikos Psarros (eds.), Concepts of Sharedness: Essays on Collective Intentionality
Reviewed by Peter Tramel, USMA, West Point

W.J. Waluchow, A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review: The Living Tree
Reviewed by Jeffrey Brand-Ballard, George Washington University

Douglas Walton, Witness Testimony Evidence: Argumentation, Artificial Intelligence, and Law
Reviewed by Michael S. Pardo, University of Alabama

Lewis R. Gordon, An Introduction to Africana Philosophy
Reviewed by Jacoby Adeshei Carter, CUNY: John Jay College

James Griffin, On Human Rights
Reviewed by William J. Talbott, University of Washington

Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity
Reviewed by David Burrell, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame/Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi

Stewart Goetz, Charles Taliaferro, Naturalism
Reviewed by Paul Draper, Purdue University

Robert Audi, Moral Value and Human Diversity
Reviewed by Diane Jeske, University of Iowa

Maria Cristina Amoretti, Nicla Vassallo (eds.), Knowledge, Language, and Interpretation: On the Philosophy of Donald Davidson
Reviewed by Daniel Laurier, University of Montreal

Hanno Birken-Bertsch, Subreption und Dialektik bei Kant: Der Begriff des Fehlers der Erschleichung in der Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts
Reviewed by Riccardo Pozzo, Universitä di Verona

Larry May (ed.). War: Essays in Political Philosophy
Reviewed by Helen Frowe, University of Sheffield

Diane Jeske, Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons
Reviewed by Simon Keller, University of Melbourne

Paul Weingartner, Omniscience: From a Logical Point of View
Reviewed by Daniel J. Hill, University of Liverpool

John T. Lysaker, Emerson and Self-Culture
Reviewed by Corey McCall, Elmira College

Michele Marsonet, Idealism and Praxis: The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher
Reviewed by Don Ihde, Stony Brook University

Good morning, readers!

We recently received the latest issue of InquiryInquiry 51(5) October 2008.  Here is the Table of Contents:

  • Naturalism and Un-Naturalism Among the Cartesian Physicians, Gideon Manning
  • Descartes’ Mind-Body Composites, Psychology and Naturalism, Lili Alanen
  • Spinoza and the Dictates of Reason, Donald Rutherford
  • Kant and the Myth of the Given, Eric Watkins
  • Kant and Naturalism Reconsidered, John H. Zammito

Also arrived: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 63 — Kant and Philosophy of Science Today.

  • Why There are No Ready-Made Phenomena: What Philosophers of Science Should Learn From Kant, Michela Massimi
  • Reduction, Unity and the Nature of Science: Kant’s Legacy?, Margaret Morrison
  • Invariance Principles as Regulative Ideals: From Wigner to Hilbert, Thomas Ryckman
  • Objectivity: A Kantian Perspective, Roberto Torretti
  • Einstein, Kant, and the A Priori, Michael Friedman
  • Contingent Transcendental Arguments for Metaphysical Principles, Hasok Chang
  • Arithmetic from Kant to Frege: Numbers, Pure Units, and the Limits of Conceptual Representation, Daniel Sutherland
  • Intuition and Infinity: A Kantian Theme with Echoes in the Foundations of Mathematics, Carl Posy

Good morning, readers!

Arrived last week: the latest issue of Philosophy & Phenomenological ResearchPhilosophy & Phenomenological Research 77(3) November 2008.

Here’s the Table of Contents:

Articles

  • The Causal Theory of Properties and the Causal Theory of Reference, or How to Name Properties and Why It Matters, Robert D. Rupert
  • Yet Another Paper on the Supervenience Argument Against Coincident Entities, Theodore Sider
  • Forgiving Someone for Who They Are (and Not Just What They’ve Done), Macalester Bell
  • Divine Hoorays: Some Parallels between Expressivism and Religious Ethics, Nicholas Unwin
  • Flattery, Yuval Eylon, David Heyd
  • Locke’s Problem Concerning Perceptual Error, Antonia Lolordo
  • Epistemic Goals and Epistemic Values, Stephen R. Grimm

Discussions

  • The Determinists Have Run Out of Luck—For a Good Reason, Storrs McCall, E.J. Lowe
  • Bad Luck Once Again, Neil Levy

Special Symposium

  • Understanding Simulation, Susan Hurley
  • Hurley on Simulation, Alvin I. Goldman

Book Symposium: Moral Skepticisms

  • Précis of Moral Skepticisms, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
  • Coping with Moral Uncertainty, Peter Railton
  • Contrastivism, Relevance Contextualism, and Meta-Skepticism, Mark Timmons
  • Do We Have Any Justified Moral Beliefs?, David Copp
  • Replies to Copp, Timmons, and Railton, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Critical Notices

  • Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, reviewed by Earl Conee
  • Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, reviewed by Charles Siewert

Also arrived this week: the latest issue of NoûsNoûs 42(4) December 2008 — with an article by the department’s own Jeff McDonough:

  • New Foundations for Imperative Logic I: Logical Connectives, Consistency, and Quantifiers, Peter B.M. Vranas
  • How Expressivists Can and Should Solve Their Problem with Negation, Mark Schroeder
  • The Price of Inscrutability, J.R.G. Williams
  • Deontological Restrictions and the Self/Other Symmetry, David Alm
  • Leibniz’s Two Realms Revisited, Jeffrey K. McDonough
  • The Standard Argument for Blame Incompatibilism, Peter A. Graham
  • Problems for Testimonial Acquaintance, Michael J. Raven
  • Is the Problem of the Many a Problem in Metaphysics?, Dan López de Sa
  • On What it Takes for There to Be No Fact of the Matter, Jody Azzouni and Otávio Bueno
  • Frankfurt’s Argument against Alternative Possibilities: Looking Beyond the Exemplars, Michael McKenna