Philosophers' Carnival #117

Welcome to the Philosophers' Carnival #117. I'm Matt Hoberg, Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. With (American) Thanksgiving coming up this week, we have a fine feast of philosophy to enjoy.

First, let's break the ice with some philosophy interviews.

• Mary Midgley discusses games, language, and animals.  
• Berit Brogaard and Gualtiero Piccinini chat about empirical psychology and the philosophy of mind. 

Now let's flout the absurd maxim against talking politics and religion at the table.

• Jules Evans explores an alternative to liberalism: virtue politics. 
• In philosophy of religion, Mike Almeida argues that Plantinga's felix culpa theodicy has God violate the doctrine of double effect. 
• And Kenny Pearce has a go at analyzing omnipotence. 

These last two posts about divine agency provide a nice segue to posts about human agency.

• Neil Levy reports on some data from the philpapers.org survey about free will. 
• Alexander Pruss offers a contrastive theory of responsibility.

With all the brandied eggnog, tempers tend to flare. When Aunt Hilda calls Uncle Joe a jerk, Eric Schwitzgebel intervenes diplomatically to explain the phenomenology of being a jerk.

Uncle Joe's feelings are hurt, but he might benefit from thinking about the episode from another perspective. That much is suggested by Jules Evans' overview of cognitive re-appraisal.

Our meta-ethics course is provided by Jussi Suikkanen, who explores a meta-ethical dualism inspired by Chalmers' phenomenal property dualism in The Conscious Mind.

As we squabble over how to split the pumpkin pie, we turn to ethics. 

• Dale Dorsey engages John Broome on the issue of lexical priority. 
• Richard Yetter Chappell brainstorms about why consequentialism might be perverse. 
• Your humble correspondent argues that consequentialism can consistently incorporate the principle of double effect, and is probably more plausible if it does so.
• Wayne Yuen ponders the morality of choosing disabilities. 
• Duncan Ritcher considers whether something can be wrong by being 'against nature,' in reference to Jeff McMahan's piece in the New York Times. 
• Finally, how should we regulate global trade in human tissue? Stuart Rennie tackles that question.

A row breaks out over the distinction between analytic and synthetic philosophy. Tom has a go, as does Dave Allen.

After dinner, conversation turns to the state of the profession. 

• Brian Leiter asks readers how the APA can improve given the results of a poll on how the APA is doing. 
• A post at Feminist Philosophers discusses evidence that letters of recommendation for women tend to use more 'communal' terms (like 'helpful' or 'tactful') than do letters for men, and that this difference is perceived negatively by those who read the letter. This effect might be related to the apparent fact that when a female academic is first perceived as likable, she is less likely to be seen as competent, and vice versa, according to another study discussed at Feminist Philosophers. 
• A new blog shares some first-person accounts from female philosophers.

That's all for this edition, thanks for reading. Want to host a future carnival?