Clear skin and smells like roses.

Two out of three ain't bad.

Who Is a bad philosopher? Well, it depends on the standard you're using. I was taking myself to be an average philosopher; compared to me, Critchley is certainly not a bad philosopher. On the other hand, if you're talking about people like Kant and Descartes, well, they're of course world-shatteringly great, and it's really hard to compare modern-day people to them. Critchley would be a bad philosopher compared to them because his ideas won't stand the test of time, and insofar as they do, it will only be because they're perfectly ordinary or worse than ordinary examples of philosophy done in this day and age. Still, if by average philosopher you mean someone who gets the respect of his peers as being expert at least in his or her area of specialization, then Critchley would probably count as an average philosopher. A bad philosopher would be probably be someone like Peter Kreeft (Boston College) or Bruce Wilshire (Rutgers)--people who seem to make fallacious arguments time and again, and who don't really add anything for their areas of specialization. Of course, in Kreeft's case, he's almost entirely a popularizer, so the incompleteness of his arguments is probably a function of that. I've also heard Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia) is a bad philosopher, in that he's a very mean person, he's very political, and his contributions are derided as muddled by people who are expert in his field. For all that, though, I'm sure he's very smart.

fact, there's a whole burgeoning field of philosophy, "experimental philosophy", which is all about uniting the techniques of psychology with philosophy.

I've been curious about this field of "experimental philosophy" because it sounds a lot like social or cognitive psychology to me, though more careful in its premises.

It seems to recreate the original split between philosophy and psychology 100-150 years ago, when restless empiricists increasingly found themselves at odds with their colleagues in philosophy departments. Most of the original psychology departments were founded by exiled philosophy professors. It will be insteresting to see where the experimenal philosophers end up.

Congrats, Cash and Mr!!

DH and I are going out tonight--we've been married for 14 years today. I still can't quite get over that amount of time. Our marriage is old enough to be a freshman in high school.

It was so GREAT to meet him and see the kids on Saturday. You and husband are like the perfect fit of all perfect fits. I am insanely happy for you and also very envious.

That was some serious academic hair-pulling and slapfighting there.

Dude, you don't spend enough time around academics. That's an average day's slapfight-before-lunch.

Dude, amych is right.

Oooh, bob bob, named names. I will be sure not to buy a used dictum from those guys.

} It seems to recreate the original split between philosophy and psychology 100-150 years ago, when restless empiricists increasingly found themselves at odds with their colleagues in philosophy departments. Most of the original psychology departments were founded by exiled philosophy professors. It will be insteresting to see where the experimenal philosophers end up.

That's intriguing. I like hearing about secret histories. I guess it's not that secret, but if you're not in that world you wouldn't have ready access to How Changing Modes of Philosohical Inquiry Affected Academic Departments.

Hmmm, now I'm in the mood for a juicy academic farce. I think I'll go dig up Small World again.

Leiter is pretty infamous, so I asked Bob to break away from Guitar Hero long enough to explain him.

Dude, you don't spend enough time around academics.

That is by design.

Though I'd totally pay to see a real academic slapfight (with non-metaphorical slapping).