Kieran Healy’s Weblog Sociology and other distractions

Skeptic Dudes

Found by chance on Flickr. If Laurie runs another Arizona Ontology Conference next year, this should absolutely be the conference t-shirt.

Targeted Marketing

Amazon just suggested I should buy Causation and Counterfactuals edited by Collins, Hall and Paul. Maybe this means the Amazon recommendation engine is broadening its scope, and we’ll soon see suggestions like, “People who bought this book also married …”

Women in U.S. Philosophy Departments

There’s a discussion going on at Brian Leiter’s about the role of race and gender. There are a lot of anecdotes, which is fine, but little in the way of good data. Just for some context, here’s a figure showing the number women in full-time positions, as a percentage of all full-time positions, at U.S. […]

Wikipedia Follies

Via Teresa Nielsen Hayden come Lore Sjöberg’s views on Wikipedia. He says in part: Wikipedia is a new paradigm in human discourse. It’s a place where anyone with a browser can go, pick a subject that interests them, and without even logging in, start an argument. … The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up […]

Philosophers

Via Jason Stanley, a link to some now classic photographs of philosophers taken by Steve Pyke, together with a new batch by the same photographer. Here is the much-missed David Lewis. Here is a terrific shot of Elisabeth Anscombe and husband Peter Geach. Amongst the new batch, here is Rae Langton. Here is Anthony Appiah. […]

Blogging avant la lettre

Analysis publishes a lot of relatively short papers, but this one—by G.E.M. Anscombe—from 1966 seems close to the limiting case. The link goes to the JSTOR copy, which requires a subscription. No matter. I shall reproduce the paper in full here, including notes:
A Note on Mr Bennett By G.E.M. Anscombe

The nerve of Mr Bennett’s argument […]