Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Rutgers in the news

The New York Times has published an article on philosophy at Rutgers, here. The article points out Rutgers' #2 ranking in the Gourmet Rankings. In discussing why some schools choose not to participate in the Philosophical Gourmet rankings, John Stuhr notes:

“Schools like Rutgers and N.Y.U. emphasize analytic philosophy, and most of the evaluators emphasize that, so schools like Vanderbilt and Northwestern and Penn State, which don’t, aren’t going to do as well... It’s like asking about the best painters of all time. If you asked Cubists, you would get a list of Cubists; Impressionists, the same thing. I’m sure Rutgers has a good department. It just doesn’t emphasize what we do.”

Stuhr's comment makes me wonder; is it possible to compare the merits of analytic and continental philosophy? Or are the two incommensurable?

(Thanks to Jason Stanley, aka Jigga, for the link)

*Brian Leiter comments on Stuhr's comments here.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Compositionality Sessions

There is an exciting new group meeting this semester at Rutgers. The Compositionality Sessions, organized by my man Martin Jonsson, will bring philosophers such as Jerry Fodor, Paul Horwich, Zoltan Szabo, Stephen Schiffer, Peter Pagin, and linguist Maria Bittner to discuss their work in the area of compositionality. You can find information about the group here.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Conditionals

This semester I'm taking a class on conditionals which will be taught by Jason Stanley and Barry Loewer. It should be interesting. Predictably, much of the subsequent posts will be on issues I encounter and questions I have about the material. Until then...