Philosophy:
Via Crooked Timber, I see that philosopher Simon Blackburn would like to dispel some myths. (He does this in the inaugural article of a Times Higher Education series "in which academics range beyond their area of expertise".) Of the ten...
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Posted on April 27, 2008 5:35 PM • 34 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Neil Sinhababu (aka the Ethical Werewolf) lays out one approach to making an impression in a job interview teaching demo: Before giving my job talk, N[ational] U[niversity of] S[ingapore] had me give an hour-long presentation to the graduate students and...
Posted on April 20, 2008 11:54 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In case those readers trained in analytic philosophy managed to miss it, this comment at A Philosophy Job Market Blog gave me the giggles while striking me as an entirely appropriate response (given the audience) to a lazy reliance on...
Posted on April 8, 2008 11:05 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Over at DrugMonkey, PhysioProf has written a post on the relative merits of "correct" and "interesting", at least as far as science is concerned. Quoth PhysioProf: It is essential that one's experiments be "correct" in the sense that performing the...
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Posted on April 7, 2008 1:35 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What matters, from the point of view of engaging in the scientific discourse, is what you can demonstrate to other participants in that discourse. As far as your scientific activity is concerned, your other beliefs are your own private affair.
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Posted on March 24, 2008 5:17 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Get with the times and end that proof right!
Posted on February 22, 2008 6:21 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
"What is a disease?" It would be nice to think that this is the kind of question where there are clear-cut, fact-based answers to be had. "Disease" is a term that seems to pick out a category of biological...
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Posted on February 12, 2008 10:08 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Over at Bioethics Forum, Carl Elliott has an essay questioning the wisdom of the "convention interview" in the academic hiring process. As he notes, it is a fairly standard practice for philosophy departments to schedule a round of preliminary interviews...
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Posted on December 31, 2007 3:23 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A friend of mine in a philosophy department at an Ivy League school asked for my advice in helping students on the market for academic jobs prepare for their interviews: One of the things our students asked us about was...
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Posted on December 3, 2007 6:20 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As promised, I want to take a look at this article (discussed also at Corpus Callosum). I'm not a psychologist, so I won't have much to say about what causes might underlie the phenomenon of do-gooders doing bad. However, I...
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Posted on November 28, 2007 2:05 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This is not breaking news (unless your news cycle is more geological), but it strikes me as relevant on the day that I deliver my penultimate lecture in the newly-created ethics module in the Introduction to Engineering class at my...
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Posted on November 27, 2007 3:02 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This New York Times op-ed, to be precise. My questions for Paul Davies can be boiled down to these two: What kinds of explanations, precisely, are you asking science to deliver to you? Just why do you think it is...
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Posted on November 24, 2007 5:12 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the aftermath of the ScienceBloggers' assault on Manhattan, Mark Chu-Carroll put up a nice post on the ways in which bloggers' real-life manner seemed to match or depart from their online personae. Maybe philosophy's to blame, but I think...
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Posted on August 21, 2007 3:45 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As I mentioned in my last post, I was sucked out of the blogosphere for much of last week by the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) 2007 Summer Symposium . I did not live-blog the conference. I...
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Posted on August 15, 2007 7:19 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Or is there just something wrong with this instrument for self-evaluation?...
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Posted on August 2, 2007 5:48 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Who cares what philosophers of science think?
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Posted on July 16, 2007 2:01 PM • 59 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an assistant professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Email her at dr.freeride@gmail.com.
