The Point, 2016 APP Editors’ Note: Nakul Krishna is currently a Temporary Lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge University. I was summoned to my tutor’s office a day or so after I’d arrived in Oxford. It was the last day of summer. A bumpkin from the tropics, I’d never seen an autumn before. I watched the … [continue reading]
From Professional Vocabularies and the Ethics of Terminology to Presentational Polymorphism: A Conversation about Otto Paans’s “The Pre-Structured Professional Philosopher.”
Z: OP’s essay, “The Pre-Structured Professional Philosopher,” leads in many fascinating directions, and has correspondingly many important implications. But before I get down to that, I want to quote, between the horizontal lines directly below, a few pages of a highly APP-relevant, prescient, and characteristically beautifully-written, jargon-free essay by Susan Haack from the late 2000s, … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 5, Double Feature: 2. “Wanted: A Future for Philosophy” (CHE Re-Post).
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2014 How goes it with the institution of philosophy? Consider the situation of “Jeremy,” a Ph.D. student in the graduate program at the University of North Texas. As a second-year student, he has a teaching fellowship. This means that in addition to taking nine credit hours of graduate coursework, … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 5, Double Feature: 1. “A New Philosophy for the 21st Century” (CHE Re-Post).
Chronicle of Higher Education. December 11, 2011 We have devoted our lives to philosophy. We want the field to survive and, if possible, prosper. But it is increasingly doubtful that academic philosophy can thrive in an era of declining budgets, soaring debts, antipathy to tax increases, and new technologies such as distance education. Of course, … [continue reading]
The Pre-Structured Professional Philosopher: Vocabularies in Action.
At least since Bacon’s 1620 Novum Organum, the ideal of acquiring knowledge about the natural world as well as the world of human affairs has critically hinged on the ideal of a distanced, dispassionate observer who just documents the observations he makes. In philosophy and science, formal logic and clear, transparent methods have long been … [continue reading]
“I Sure Don’t Need to Read This”: One Way of Dismissing APP.
“I’m afraid I don’t like your manner,” he said, using the edge of his voice. “I’ve had complaints about it,” I said. “But nothing seems to do any good.” –Philip Marlowe* *In R. Chandler, Farewell My Lovely (New York: First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1992), p. 51. APP Editors’ note: Y’All is a tenured full professor … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 4: “The Fragmentation of Philosophy, The Road to Reintegration” (AC.EDU Re-Post)
Münster Lecture, Universität Münster, November 2013. Forthcoming soon in E.M. Jung and J. Göhner (eds.), Susan Haack: Reintegrating Philosophy (Springer Verlag), and also posted on Academia.edu. … every fact leads to every other …. . Only men do not yet see how, always. And your business is to make plainer the way from some one … [continue reading]
“Failed Academics”: Schopenhauer, Peirce, and the (D)evolution of University Philosophy.
1. The relationship between philosophy and academia is tricky, and sometimes even tragic. For individuals living in the 21st century, the standard path towards a “quality” education is to enroll in universities. Those among us who are deeply interested in philosophy are naturally led to philosophy departments, and accordingly, we spend a great deal of … [continue reading]
APP is Not Alone 3: “The Ph.D. Octopus” (Harvard Monthly Re-Post)
Harvard Monthly, 1903 Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the … [continue reading]
Philosoflicks 3: On the Metaphysics of Puppets.
WHAT IS A PHILOSOFLICK? In “Let’s Make More Movies,” the epistemological anarchist Paul Feyerabend wrote this: The separation of subjects that is such a pronounced characteristic of modern philosophy is … not altogether undesirable. It is a step on the way to a more satisfactory type of myth. What is needed to proceed further is … [continue reading]