Philosophy

More On Tenure

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a follow-up piece on the Amy Bishop story called “Reactions: Is Tenure a Matter of Life and Death?”, in which they ask several academics (at varying levels of seniority) to repond to the questions: What are the psychological effects of academic culture, particularly on rising scholars? Can or should…

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Dark Side of Theory

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 9 Comments

A few days ago, I posted an entry on this blog (“The Orchid Hypothesis“) about an article I had read in The Atlantic and found interesting. The Atlantic article was about a series of experiments and theoretical speculations that seemed to challenge some of our orthodox assumptions about the relationship between genetics and behavior, and…

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Unscrambling Marx

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 10 Comments

I’m about to begin teaching Karl Marx in my 19th C. philosophy class this week. Although students usually get some (very elementary) introduction to Marx in most of my other classes as well, this is the course in which they get the most extensive and systematic exposure to his writings. I always anticipate the Marx…

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The Orchid Hypothesis

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 10 Comments

On my way back from the APA conference a week ago, I picked up a copy of The Atlantic in Laguardia to read on the plane ride home. In it, there was a fascinating article by David Dobbs called “The Science of Success,” which discusses the influence of certain genetic factors on social/psychological development. Dobbs…

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Battle of the Sexists?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Sports, Women and Gender Issues 2 Comments

First, my apologies to regular readers of this blog for my extended absence of late. As some of you know, my department is hiring for a new tenure-track line this semester, a process which has the tendency to eat up every last moment of “spare” time for everyone involved. Second, I hope that you don’t…

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The Peter Principle

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

I just read an article in NewScientist about the “Peter Principle” (based on the theory put forth by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1998 book The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong). The Peter Principle is a fundamental law of “Hierarchiology” that states: In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to…

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Mulligan?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

One of my favorite stories ever was told to me by a colleague of mine in the Psychology Department, Dr. Julie Steel. Frustrated with end-of-the-semester appeals for better grades by wayward students, she figured there must be a better rejoinder than simply sighing in exasperation and staring-back with incredulity. So, when students ask that oh-so-familiar…

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Philosophy, Done Another Way

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Thinking in Images 0 Comments

As I mentioned a little while ago on this blog, I gave students in my Existentialism course this semester the option of making a short film for extra credit. The motivation for this was my frustration, in previous iterations of this course, with what I viewed as a deficiency on my part of adequately capturing…

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Friendly Fire

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

The disagreement between AnPan and I that has been taking place on our blogs (here and here) has reminded me of why I feel fortunate to have good friends like him. As it just so happens, this also is the time in the semester (at my instiution) when most of the first-years are deep into…

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Right, Real, True… and Other Relative Terms

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson AnPan and RMWMTMBM, Philosophy, Relativism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 2 Comments

Lest I get too comfortable with my tiny, marginally-significant place in the blogosphere, thinking that we’re all friends here and readers of this blog are basically in agreement on the stuff that really matters, all of us interacting virtually in a kind of harmonious echo-chamber of progressive philosophical wonderment… yeah, lest I get too comfortable…

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