The myth that anti-ID proponents are religiously neutral is one that the anti-ID proponents like to play up. And yet they are as eager as any side in this debate to use religion to their advantage. MORE.
Want to know more about one of the weirdest planets in the universe? Physicist David Mobley has a good review of The Privileged Planet film here.
Why doesn’t Joe Engineer buy Neo-Darwinism? Dembski has the real-life story here.
Discovery Institute fellow Francis Beckwith travels to Harvard to mix it up with the Darwinists here. And over at World magazine historian Richard Weikart describes how Germany moved from Darwin to Hitler.
Yesterday’s Nature has, on page 24 of the advertisement section, an announcement requesting grant proposals for the John Templeton Foundation’s “Purpose in the living world” research programme, titled “The Emergence of Biological Complexity” (for more go here and here). Purpose? Biological complexity? Evidence of fine-tuning in biological complexity? All in one breath? This may not be full-fledged ID, but it certainly isn’t “the literal interpretation of Darwin.” MORE.
I just noticed that the journal Ratio has made freely available its special issue on the self from December 2004. This issue includes interesting-looking articles by Barry Dainton, Ingmar Persson, Marya Schechtman, Galen Strawson, Bas van Fraassen, and Peter van Inwagen. I haven’t read all of them, but at first glance Dainton’s article "The Self and the Phenomenal" and Strawson’s article "Against Narrativity" look to be well worth checking out.
As many of you know, Michael Kelly, the executive director of the American Philosophical Association, recently resigned his position. This is just the latest evidence that the APA, the principal organization of American philosophers, is in crisis: The immediate precursor of Kelly’s resignation appears to be the APA’s handling (or perhaps, more succinctly, the Pacific Division leadership’s handling) of the controversy concerning whether to honor a local union’s call to boycott San Francisco’s Westin Hotel, the scheduled venue for the 2005 Pacific meeting.
But this is only another indication that a common impression within the field is correct: that the APA, at least at the national level, is adrift, and is failing to represent philosophy and the interests of philosophers well. (Indeed, by my count, Kelly’s resignation makes three executive directors in five years, not exactly what an academic organization needs in the way of stable leadership.) Indeed, my own informal survey of friends and colleagues within philosophy yielded few compliments of the APA and many concerns.
Since it seems like a critical crossroads for the APA, I ask: What ails the APA? What should the APA do to represent philosophy and philosophers better? What do those of us in the field expect out of a national organization?
A few thoughts to stimulate conversation:
• Should the APA retain its three divisions, with their respective annual meetings? My understanding is that this is a historical byproduct of a merger between the APA and the Western Philosophical Association, a byproduct that may have outlived its usefulness. Many people I’ve spoken with believe that the APA has a structural flaw: the national office is too weak to address systemic issues within the field (the status of philosophy in the eyes of the public, the growing use of part-time faculty, etc.), and the divisions largely devote their energies to their annual meetings, not to larger issues within the professions.
• Does the APA represent the interests of all those in the field? It’s hard not to notice that those who serve as national and divisional officers are largely senior faculty at Ph.D.-granting institutions, those with the best research pedigree. Does the organization give short shrift to the interests of younger faculty, graduate students, those teaching at junior and community colleges, etc.?
A note regarding replies to this post: I’m not aiming to criticize anyone in particular with this post, nor am I inviting anyone to criticize anyone in particular. In order to keep things civil (and non-libelous), please talk about the APA as an organization, and refrain from criticism of particular individuals, the perpetuation of rumor, and the general grinding of personal axes. Thanks!
ID theorist (and IDthefuture contributor) Steve Meyer had a friendly debate with Darwin defender Will Provine at the National Press Club in Washington DC today. Rob Crowther and Logan Gage give a report on the event over at the Evolution News blog.
George Will has written an evocative Newsweek essay on the late Pope John Paul II, Terri Schiavo, and the secularist program of willing consciousness and free will into oblivion:
A bemused John Paul II, no stranger to materialism, dialectical and otherwise, might have responded: There you go again—that word “consciousness.” What is the grandeur in the spectacle, however interesting, of the blind, brute, violent necessity of physical laws at work? Is consciousness of an existence supposedly governed by such laws really much of a privilege?
Our colleague Steve Meyer spoke at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC yesterday on DNA and intelligent design. Heritage is so well organized that they already have the lecture video available (free) at their website. To view it, go here.
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