Philosophy

American Philosophy and/or Philosophy in America

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 3 Comments

Several years ago, when I was still at Penn State, I learned of Phillip McReynolds’ film project on American Philosopher (or philosophers in America) through my dissertation advisor (and McReynolds’ wife), Shannon Sullivan. Since then, I’ve seen a few segments of it appear here and there on the internet, but I had yet to see…

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The Uncanny Valley 7: Sonzai-Kan

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Uncanny Valley 4 Comments

Every time I try to put away my obsession with the uncanny valley, some new robot or robot-story invades my world and reanimates that fascination all over again. Regular readers of this blog will know that I first became interested in robotocist Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley back in October of 2010, when…

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“American Values” Video Project…. or, The Little Idea That Could

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson American Values video project, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, The Search for Values 4 Comments

I’m not yet finished editing the “American Values” video, some of the images of which are in this collage on your left, but I wanted to share a bit about the making-of the project, which is turning into one of the most serendipitously rewarding things I’ve stumbled into in quite some time. I’ll start at…

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Help Me With My Video Project!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson American Values video project, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, The Search for Values 1 Comment

I’m soliciting your help, readers, with a video project I’m putting together focusing on “American Values.” Think of it as a cross between the old NPR program “This I Believe,” a Pew Research Poll, a snapshot of American diversity a la Flickr, and something like your senior thesis. I want to know what you– all…

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Kyle Ference Mans Up

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 6 Comments

The picture to the left is of a former student and advisee of mine, Kyle Ference (author of the Refudiating Through Life blog). During his time at Rhodes, Kyle was in many ways the very ideal of a liberal arts student. He was smart and hardworking, affable and well-liked, committed to socially-conscious extracurricular activities, a…

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Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 7

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

You may not recognize the reference in the title to this post above . It’s a reference to the the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (a.k.a., “The Logical-Philosophical Treatise”), the only book ever written by eminently influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Tractatus consists of seven philosophical propositions, the seventh of which reads:Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must…

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Tortured Reasoning

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 5 Comments

I haven’t posted much on human rights recently, the primary focus of my research, though I continue to plug away at thinking and writing about it every day. One of the topics that I spend a lot of time with is torture, an issue that I intend to use as the go-to “case study” in…

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Notes From the Other Side of the Job Market

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 4 Comments

In my first 3 years at my current position, I served on 2 tenure-track search committees, a process that literally took up every spare moment of my time (and many non-spare moments) for the 4 or 5 months that it lasted. Although I certainly learned a lot in my time on SLAC Search Committees– including,…

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The King, The Clown, The Colonel: Axis of Evil?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 7 Comments

There are debates about a few really important issues that have a tendency after a while to fade into a kind of white noise for me. I generally find this to be true about debates over capital punishment, abortion, the existence or nonexistence of God, and the legalization of drugs. It’s not that I think…

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What Is Philosophy?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 18 Comments

A strange confluence of events recently has led me to consider more seriously the question above: What is philosophy? One might think that this is a perennial question within the discipline of Philosophy, but one would be wrong. Truth is, most of us (professional philosophers) are too busy teaching/researching/thinking about our own projects, the history…

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