Objects and Arrows

Proposed closure of the Philosophy Department at UNLV

johnsymons — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:05:59 +0000

UPDATE: (4/6/11) It looks like the regents have decided not to end philosophy at UNLV. This is great news.

In reaction to news of the proposed closure of the Philosophy Department at UNLV. You can contact the regents of UNLV at the email addresses listed on Brian Leiter’s blog here

March 9, 2011

Dear Chairman Leavitt:

Yesterday, I learned that The Board of Regents is considering a proposal which would eliminate the entire Philosophy Department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. I would respectfully ask that you reconsider the wisdom of undermining a vital component of a meaningful university education.

As chairperson of a philosophy department in a large state university I have also had to cope with the constraints of our current budgetary situation. However, in spite of the serious difficulties faced by our state governments, we recognize the indispensable role of philosophy in the education of our students. My own institution, The University of Texas at El Paso, is a working-class urban university the majority of whose students are Mexican American. At UTEP, we take the view that an education in philosophy is the preeminent source of vital cognitive and communicative skills. Furthermore, we regard the discipline as a crucial component in the development of a first-class research university.

The study of philosophy combines the cultivation of analytical, creative, and interpretive capacities of our students in a writing-intensive setting. Across the curriculum, and irrespective of styles and traditions, the discipline of philosophy teaches our students to distinguish arguments from opinions, to provide clear justifications for moral judgments, and to explore alternative possibilities in a disciplined and intellectually responsible manner. Because teachers of philosophy make these skills their principal pedagogical purpose, philosophy should serve as the foundation of a decent education. We want our students to graduate from our universities equipped to think rationally, skillfully, and creatively.

It would be a disservice to future students at UNLV to deprive them of an education in philosophy. Apart from purely intellectual considerations, please remember how important it is for students to acquire the intellectual flexibility necessary to navigate a rapidly changing economic landscape.

In the spring of 2009, I was invited to speak to the Philosophy Department at UNLV. What I found there was a group of dedicated philosophers and talented students engaged with important and difficult questions. I was very impressed by the seriousness of the students and the professionalism of the faculty. In the parts of our field which I know best, the published work of Dr. Todd Jones, Dr. David Beisecker, and Dr. James Woodward is well-known and respected. As the editor of a major journal in our field, Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, I can vouch for the high quality of their scholarship.

The best philosophers are generally not inclined to make the case for the importance of their teaching role in the university or for the significance of their intellectual achievements. I suspect that one reason the Philosophy Department at UNLV is under threat is that its faculty are too busy with teaching and research to defend their importance to the administration. In these difficult economic times, we must focus on the core mission of the university. The Philosophy Department cannot be sacrificed without seriously damaging UNLV’s core mission.

I strongly urge you to find ways to balance the budget at UNLV which do not involve the elimination of the entire Philosophy Department.

Thank you for your consideration.

John Symons
Associate Professor and Chairperson,
Department of Philosophy.
The University of Texas at El Paso.

www.johnfsymons.com

Novel properties generated by interacting computational systems: A minimal model

johnsymons — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 04:44:51 +0000

In this draft paper, Fabio Boschetti and I address two questions: First, what is the smallest number of components a
computational system needs in order to display genuine novelty? And second, can the novel
features of such systems also exhibit novel causal powers? We’d be very grateful for any comments or criticism. The paper is here

Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science

johnsymons — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:19:30 +0000

Olga Pombo, Juan Manuel Torres and I recently edited this volume on Otto Neurath’s conception of the unity of science. Some of the leading scholars of Neurath’s work, along with many prominent philosophers of science critically examine his place in the history of philosophy of science and evaluate the relevance of his work for contemporary debates concerning the unity of science. We were delighted to be able to include a previously unpublished piece by Neurath responding to Horkheimer’s criticisms of the Vienna Circle.

More information

Philosophy of Physics 5+1 Questions

johnsymons — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 20:24:47 +0000

Juan Ferret and I have put together a collection of interviews on the philosophy of physics.

The following folks kindly subjected themselves to our questions and some even replied to them:

Frank Arntzenius
Guido Bacciagaluppi
Mario Bunge
John Earman
Birgitte Falkenburg
Arthur Fine
Steven French
Nick Huggett
Chuang Liu
Tim Maudlin
John D. Norton
Laurent Nottale
Roland Omnès
Carlo Rovelli
Lawrence Sklar
Paul Teller
Steve Weinstein

We’re grateful to all the participants. We think that the book provides a good way to get a sense for the views of these central figures in philosophy of physics and serves as a good introduction to some of the core conceptual issues in the field.

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Physics-5-1-Questions/dp/8792130321/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288729066&sr=8-1

Juan Ferret and I have put together a collection of interviews on the philosophy of physics.

The following folks participated:

Short paper on individuality of organisms and artifacts

johnsymons — Sat, 01 May 2010 03:02:06 +0000

Just posted this. I argue that we can make sense of the difference between organisms and artifacts in terms of a difference in their kinds of individuality. It’s forthcoming in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. It’s here

Synthese Conference 2010: Epistemology and Economics

johnsymons — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:57:15 +0000

This year’s Synthese conference will be held on the 15th and 16th of April at Columbia University. It’s free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. Details below:

Times: Sessions begin at approximately 9:00 am and run until approximately 5:00 pm on both days. A detailed schedule will be available shortly.
Location: The Faculty House at Columbia University
Invited papers by the following:
Alexandru Baltag (Oxford)
Cristina Bicchieri (Penn)
Adam Brandenburger (NYU)
Christian List (LSE)
Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund)

Contributed papers by the following:

Horacio Arlo-Costa (Carnegie Mellon) and Paul Pedersen (Carnegie Mellon)
David Etlin (Leuven)
Brian Hill (HEC Paris)
Olivier Roy (Groningen) and Eric Pacuit (Tilburg)
Giacomo Sillari (Penn)

Registration: It is free but required. To register, simply send a message to synthese.conference.2010@gmail.com with “Synthese registration” in the subject and your name and affiliation in the body.

New Mexico West Texas Philosophical Society Meeting 2010

johnsymons — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:03:25 +0000

This weekend, the annual New Mexico West Texas Philosophical Society conference rolls into Abilene. It’s usually a pretty decent meeting of our regional philosophical society and every year there are reliably a handful of excellent papers on the program. I’ll be commenting on a paper by Professor Susana Badiola on necessity and aprioricity (my comments are here). This is the second year where Thomas Urban (Houston Community College) and I will chair the undergraduate student conference within the conference. It’s a friendly venue for novice philosophers to work on their chops. Next year, the society meets in El Paso.

Game Theoretical Semantics as the Basis of a General Logic

johnsymons — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:43:26 +0000

This is a draft of a paper (co-authored with Jaakko Hintikka) where we discuss the idea of a system of logic, in the sense of a semantically interpreted formalism (language). We call it a general logic or general first-order logic. It contains conventional first-order logic as a part. It also contains the usual IF first-order logic and also what has been called extended IF first-order logic. It is essentially the same as what has been called fully-extended IF logic. We discuss some of the reasons for favoring game theoretical semantics over one in which the semantics of quantifiers is exhausted by their ranging over a class of values (universe of discourse). We’re working on this and would welcome any feedback you might have. A draft of the paper is here

Philosophy and Complexity: Paper deadline extended for the ECCS meeting.

johnsymons — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:07:19 +0000

With the newly extended deadline there are 8 more days to send a paper for the European Conference on Complex Systems. For the first time at the ECCS philosophers who work on complex systems will have a session set aside for their papers. Details of the extension are here

Logic and formal semantics for epistemology

johnsymons — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:59:58 +0000

This essay introduces some of the formal apparatus of epistemic logic and discusses its applicability to epistemological questions. A shorter version will appear as a chapter in Pritchard and Bernecker’s forthcoming Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Nothing particularly new here, but it should be useful for students.