Scottish Nous

Another Blogroll Update!

Visit the new blogs: Janus Blog (Virtue Theory), Ideally Speaking (SUNY g.s. Adam Taylor), De Crapulas Edormiendo (Michigan g.s. Nate Charlow), The Web of Belief (Tufts Group), The Fighting Mongoose (Western Michigan Group), Making the Cooler Argument the Stronger (ND g.s. Eric Hagedorn), Transcendental Idealism (St. Andrews g.s. Ralf Bader), Lemmings (Missouri's Berit Broogard), American Philosophy (RIT's John Capps), In Search of Enlightement (Waterloo's Colin Farrelly), Blogitations (Biola g.s. James Gibson), Seeing Things (Princeton's Sean Kelly), Footnotes on Epicycles (SUNY's P. D. Magnus), Dulcius Ex Aspersis (Notre Dame g.s. Alex Arnold), Brain Hammer (WPU's Pete Mandik), Brains (also Mandik), Per Caritatem (Dallas' g.s. Cynthia Nielsen),  Knowability (St. Louis' Joe Salerno), The Splintered Mind (UC Riverside's Eric Schwitzgebel), Philosophy Hurts Your Head (Univ. of Newcastle g.s. Sam Douglas), hpb etc. (Cincinnati's Robert Skipper), Ratiocination (ND g.s. Andrew Bailey),  Logic Matters (Cambridge's Peter Smith), dim lit philosophy (Ultrecht's Rob van Gerwen), This is the Name of This Blog (Rochester g.s. Trent Dougherty), Virtual Philosopher (Open University's Nigel Warburton), Mnemosynosis (Rutgers g.s. S. Kate Devitt), Theories 'n Things (Leeds' Robert G. Williams), The Glfer (g.s. Greg),  Philosophy Blog (St. Louis' g.s. Aaron Cobb), Aspiring Lemming (Arizona g.s. Adam Arico), Scribo (Calgary's Nicole Wyatt), Staff of Ra (ND g.s. Dan Hicks, et. al.), Philosophical Remainders (g.s. Jeff Dauer), and Stop That Crow! (g.s. Jeffrey Giliam).

Sixteen Days Without A Blog Post

I'm sorry.  I'm busy, but I'll try to do better.

Slow Blogging

Once again, I have to report that blogging has slowed down and will stay pretty slow for some time.  I have two good reasons for this.  I'm working on finishing up the thesis, and I've got two recitation sections to TA for Michael Tooley.  I wouldn't check back here too often this semester if (counterpossible antecedent) I were you.

Maintenance

The blogroll has survived another long overdue overhaul.  Several group blogs didn't make it, such as Rochester, Western Michigan and Tufts (inactivity).  These were replaced by three heavy hitters: Plato's Beard (Notre Dame),  Hesperus/Phosphorus (USC), and the UCSB Philosophy Blog.  Enjoy the freshened links.

Internet Access Down

I'm sorry about the lack of recent blogging. I lost my internet access at home, and I am not sure when it will be back up. (My internet access was my neighbor's wireless connection, which is now down.) I've also been training for a new job at the Cheesecake Factory on the Pearl Street Mall. I suspect I will make good money, but the training period, which is coming to a close, has taken a week and a half already. It will be another week and a half before I am officially on the schedule, which amounts to about three weeks of so far unpaid labor. Grrr. In any case, internet access will definitely return once I start making a bit of cash at the CF.

Wisdom From On High

Ask Philosophers has been online for a few days over one month now, and in that space of time they have managed to spit out answers to 424 questions.  Not to disparage any of the contributors, but the panel includes several of my personal favorite philosophers: Simon Blackburn, Mark Crimmins, Tamar Szabo Gendler, Richard Heck, and Peter van Inwagen.  Unfortunately, neither Blackburn nor PvI have answered any questions yet.  This can be remedied through blogging activism.  If you study philosophy at Notre Dame or read philosophy at Cambridge, you have a duty to goad one or the other of these gentlemen into paying the curious masses more attention.  AskPhilosophers has been reviewed by Open Access News, Brian Leiter, and The Age.  Articles appear in Inside Higher Ed, The Guardian, and the Times Higher Education Supplement. [Via Majikthise via Guardian NewsBlog]

Keith Burgess-Jackson

Keith Burgess-Jackson, whom I long ago dropped from my blogroll despite my very non-discriminatory linking policy*, has popped up again.  Go see Leiter's post for a nice history of Keith's "weirdness" (to put it ever so mildly).   Keith is a clear cut case of an academic whose blogging has devastated his career.  I will refrain from further comment.

*I link to almost any blog run by M.A. students in philosophy on up.  There are also one or two links in my sidebar to blogs run by advanced undergraduates, as well as a brief smattering of political blogs with a heavy philosophical bent.

Breaking Headlines: Scottish Nous Mentioned On Front Page of National Newspaper

The title is a bit of hyperbole, but I'm nevertheless linked to by the Washington Post!  Wowsers!  Granted, it's an automated link feed from Technorati rather than intentional inclusion by an intelligent agent, but it's still damn cool.

Blogroll Overhaul

David Chalmers may not know it, but I am in a friendly competition with him  (you can compete with someone without them knowing you are competing with them) to keep the most up-to-date philosophy blogroll in the entire blogoverse.  (His is much better organized, of course.)  A complete overhaul has once again, I believe, resulted in my overtaking his recently updated list.  I presume this will not last long since I intend to give up my current advantage by suggesting the following blogs from which he may draw possible blogroll additions:

Fordham Graduate Student Jared Woodard: A Gauche
Anonymous Graduate Student: AppleCiderCheeseFudge
Philosophy Professor Robert Loftis: Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk
American Journal of Bioethics Editors: blog.bioethics.net
Anonymous Philosophy Instructor: Cognitive Abortions
University of Newcastle Undergraduates: Dialectic
Unknown: E. G.
Chicago Ph.D. Candidate C. N. Todd: Freiheit und Wissen
Molinari Fellow Charles Johnson: Rad Geek People's Daily
Toronto Grad Student Brandon Watson: Houyhnhnm Land
Anonymous Linguist: Language Hat
Cornell Law Prof. Brad Wendel: Legal Ethics Forum
Anonymous Logic Blog: Lumpy Pea Coat
Mormon Phil/Theology Group Blog: Mormon Metaphysics
Villanova Graduate Group Blog: Nova Ph.D.'s
Lenoir-Rhyne Philosophy Professor Philip Blosser: Philosophia Perennis
University of Colorado Ph.D. Candiate Tom Metcalf: Vintage Piranha

I take no responsibility for errors in blog attributions above, but please send a heads up if I've misattributed your blog to someone else.  If you think I should be linking to you, but I'm not, please let me know.  If I am linking to you yet you wish me to stop, drop me a line and I'll give it some thought.  And if you have a philosophical internet presence, I'd love it if you'd link back to me! =)

Self-Indulgent Nonsense

My thesis advisor has posted here that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence, if people have been searching hard for evidence for a long time."  Dr. Pretorius pointed this out here in response to a previous post of mine, and I returned with a comment stating that "there certainly are situations in which the absence of evidence would well be the evidence of absence, namely those situations in which one has carefully searched for the evidence of presence.  Strictly speaking, I take it that the *mere* absence of evidence is never itself evidence for absence. That is, only in conjunction with other relevant information can the absence of evidence count as evidence of absence."  Not that you were wondering.  There may be an interesting point in the vicinity regarding how one reads these pithy little slogans and subsequently puts them to use.