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…

Read More

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…

Read More

“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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

Tortured Reasoning

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 4 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…

Read More

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,…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More