The Philosopher’s Annual attempts to judge the 10 best articles published in philosophy each year. Jc Beall’s “The Simple Argument for Subclassical Logic” from Philosophical Issues was one of those selected for 2018.
Recent Graduate Student Placements
- After successfully defending his dissertation on April 22, Dana Francisco Miranda begins as a new Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College starting in Fall 2019.
- Nathan Kellen successfully defended his dissertation, titled “Pluralisms about Truth and Logic” in August. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Kansas State University’s Department of Philosophy.
- Jared Henderson successfully defended his dissertation, titled “Degrees and Deflationism”, on April 11. In June, he started a new career in artificial intelligence development as an Ontological Engineer at Cycorp in Austin, TX.
- Kristin Culbertson will be teaching Buddhism and Social Justice as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University in the spring of 2020.
- Phillip Barron will be a Predoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Lewis & Clark College for 2019-2021.
Bar-On notes for latest Millikan book
The notes available here were produced by Dorit Bar-On in preparation for meetings of a reading group on Ruth Millikan’s Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information, and were lightly edited by Ruth. The notes were prepared for online publication with the help of Drew Johnson.
Michael Lynch: Know-It-All Society
See an interview with Michael Lynch about his new book, Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture.
Read an excerpt of the book in the fall issue of UConn Magazine.
Recent and Forthcoming Graduate Student Publications
Heather Muraviov and Taylor Tate co-authored “Black Women Philosophers Conference at the CUNY-Graduate Center,” which uses the pedagogical framework developed by Fanonian scholar Erica Burman to review the conference. Their analysis appeared in the “Black Issues in Philosophy” series of the Blog of the APA.
Drew Johnson has two forthcoming articles: “Hinge Epistemology, Radical Skepticism, and Domain Specific Skepticism,” The International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, doi 10.1163/22105700-20191302 and “Epistemological Disjunctivism: Perception, Expression, and Self-Knowledge” (With Dorit Bar-On). Forthcoming in New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism (2019), Doyle, C., Milburn, J., & Pritchard, D. (eds.). Routledge.
Recent graduate Jared Henderson has a forthcoming article, ‘A Neglected QUA Solution to the Fundamental Problem of Christology’, (co-authored with Jc Beall) in the journal, Faith & Philosophy.
Recent graduate Dana Francisco Miranda has an article titled “Review: Jessica Blatt’s Race and the Making of American Political Science,” forthcoming in The Journal of African American History. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jaah/current
Michael Lynch: Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor
Michael Patrick Lynch has been designated a University of Connecticut Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. Michael is our fourth BOT Distinguished Professor from Philosophy, along with Ruth Millikan, Joel Kupperman, and Jc Beall. As the provost’s website says, “The Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor is the highest honor that the University bestows on faculty who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research and service” and who have spent at least 10 years of their career at UConn. https://provost.uconn.edu/about/awards/
Phillip Barron: Book Award for Philosophical Poetry
Grad student Phillip Barron wins book award for philosophical poetry
Philosophy graduate student Phillip Barron will receive the 2019 Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award for his book of poetry, What Comes from a Thing (Fourteen Hills Press, 2015). The Guillén Award, given by the Caribbean Philosophical Association, recognizes contributions to philosophical literature. The award will be presented at the CPA’s annual conference, June 6-8, at Brown University in Providence, RI.
Barron earned an MFA in creative writing before entering UConn’s Philosophy program. What Comes from a Thing is his first book of poetry. An excerpt from the referee report submitted to the Awards Committee calls the book “a stunning piece of poetic philosophical work. It is a masterpiece of phenomenological description in which poetry is not application or a technique for profundity but instead at the heart of philosophical/poetic evocation. ”
First Things First: Why I Study Philosophy
Why Study Philosophy?
From an interview with legendary investor and philanthropist Bill Miller.
Q: What advice would you give students about areas of study and being prepared for the working world?
I was recently giving a talk at a conference, and there was a speaker there who specialized in disruptive technologies and had a PhD in computer science. He described all the different technologies that would be changing significantly over the next 10 to 20 years and would upend the work force. During the audience Q and A, somebody asked, “If that’s the case, what should we advise our children to do, because so many of the things that they would be trained for might become obsolete?”
He said, “You need to think about this in a way in which an economist would think about it. Mainly, what’s the scarcest resource?” The scarcest resources get more valuable, and the abundant resources get less valuable. He said, “In that kind of an environment, the scarcest resource will be critical and analytical thinking, and moral reasoning. That would indicate you might want to have them take philosophy, or other disciplines in the humanities that might encourage those habits of mind.”
That was an interesting point, and I think it’s exactly right.
Susan Schneider: Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Library of Congress
Susan Schneider has just begun a four-month appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in The John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. The award is to enable her to pursue a research project entitled “Mind Design: Artificial Intelligence, Brain Enhancement, and the Nature of the Self.” She will confab with other top scholars, make use of the Library’s rich resources, and interact with policymakers and the public, plus give a public presentation about the nature and results of her research.