Etymological Study Tool

This is a great study tool if your looking into some Greek etymologies or studying the use of a word in philosophy. It's simple to use and also gives the authors who use the word as well as page numbers ect... Find it here: Greek word Study Tool. It uses several different reference materials for its sources.

I believe the above project was actually started over at Harvard and then tufts adopted a more user friendly approach which only included Greek.  The Harvard Version is called Pollux: Archimedes Project Dictionary Access. This actually contains more information (Latin, Sumerian.....) but at least for me its harder to use.

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100 Free Online Philosophy and Theology Courses

A list of 100 free philosophy and theology courses can be found HERE

Or see list below.

Philosopher's Canival (Aug 29, 2011)

Greetings to everyone in philosophy land. Today PhilosoraptErs is hosting  The Philosopher's Carnival, which is a project started to help philosophy bloggers receive some attention for the posts they believe are their best and to help summarize them into a post for readers. There were a limited number of submissions for this edition of the Philosophers Carnival, some submissions were omitted because they were off the topic of philosophy or contained limited philosophical interest. I hope you enjoy the submissions for this edition

Philosopher's Canival (Aug 29, 2011)

Greetings to everyone in philosophy land. Today PhilosoraptErs is hosting  The Philosopher's Carnival, which is a project started to help philosophy bloggers receive some attention for the posts they believe are their best and to help summarize them into a post for readers. There were a limited number of submissions for this edition of the Philosophers Carnival, some submissions were omitted because they were off the topic of philosophy or contained limited philosophical interest. I hope you enjoy the submissions for this edition

Young Philosopher: Writing a Book and Publishing articles

Over at Leiter Reports HERE. The Comments are quite good.
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CFP: Brown University Graduate Philosophy Conference (Open Topic)

The 6th Annual Shapiro Graduate Philosophy Conference Presented by the Philosophy Department at Brown University, Providence, RI Nov. 11th and 12th, 2011 

 Keynote Speaker: Allan Gibbard (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) 

 We invite papers of high quality in any area of philosophy. Applicants must submit papers electronically as .pdf, .doc, or .rtf files. Please submit as separate documents: 1. a cover sheet with author information, 2. an abstract without any author information (maximum 150 words), and 3. a paper without any author information (maximum 3,000 words) 

 New submission deadline: September 1st, 2011 Please submit in blind review format, with all identifying information on the cover sheet only. Each page should be titled and numbered. Email submission address: 

brownphilgradconf11@gmail.com 

For more information contact Phil or Brett at 

brownphilgradconf11@gmail.com Join me on Twitter or Facebook for updates. Please email suggestions, links and questions to PhilosoraptErs@gmail.com

AAPT nominations for 2012-2014 Teaching Fellows

This notice is available at the American Association of Philosophy Teachers website.

You can also find it on In Socrates' Wake HERE

The American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) seeks devoted, excellent philosophy teachers to serve as 2012-2014 AAPT Teaching Fellows. Teaching Fellows will receive a small stipend ($500) and serve a two-year term August 15, 2012-August 14, 2014. Fellows will advance the teaching of philosophy. This may include mentoring newer teachers, blogging on the AAPT website, facilitating teaching and learning workshops, or other activities. 

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Effectiveness of track programs: University of Alabama

The following is an email sent to me by one of the professors at the University of Alabama's Philosophy department.  I wrote him asking a series of questions about how their Pre-law track had worked out, if it had attracted more students, etc...  It tells a very interesting story of how they saved their department with their track programs.

The pre-law concentration is one of many moves made on the department’s behalf when I was our chair and we were threatened with losing the right to offer a major in philosophy...
 So we didn’t just save ourselves; we saved ourselves by adding to the ways in which we can do something valuable for the students at our university.....
I would recommend it to any department that has someone who finds the law interesting...

The Importance of Thinking like a Colleague at Interviews

The new financial situation the university situation has found it self in has changed the way that job interviews are looked at by hiring committees. In an article on Inside Higher Ed,  Cheryl Reed and Dawn M. Formo, advise graduate students to starting think like colleagues rather than researchers.

Fast Web's Scholarship Search

I have been using Fast Web's scholarship finder for the last couple of months. It's a great system that is easy to use and understand. It gathers a large number of scholarships from many different arenas. You set out criteria for what kind of scholarships your interested in and they send you an email each time a new scholarship that meets your criteria comes up.  

While there are a very limited number of directly philosophical scholarships, there are many which only require you to submit an essay on some topic or another. We philosophers are good at coming up with persuasive arguments so I believe we could smash the competition on these sort of scholarships.

Your scholarships are just a click away.  Read more or Sign up HERE

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CSU Long Beach: Growing Department?

I have recently noticed that CSULB has taken an ad out on Leiter Reports which at this time of year is about $350 a month. When applying to MA's I was able to apply to all the CSU philosophy MA programs for free because of my financial situation. I just received my financial aid statement from csulb which included a grant for nearly $7000 dollars a year. If there wasn't another program that suited my interest, this would be a tempting offer for a prospective MA student  because usually grants and fellowships are not given to MA students. $14000 off your student loans could really help you out after graduating.

These seem to suggest that they have some extra cash to spend, perhaps their department is growing?

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"Philosophers' Carnival" Hosted on PhilosoraptErs

The Philosophers' Carnival Will be hosted here on August 29th. I encourage anyone interested to submit their work! 

Philosophers' Carnival project, which aims to showcase the best philosophical posts from a wide range of weblogs. We invite submissions from bloggers and readers, and collate the submitted posts into one big round-up (or "carnival") every three weeks, offering a brief summary of each entry, and a link to the complete post.

 I was hoping the carnival I host could center around issues in professional philosophy such as pre-college philosophy, racism/sexism in philosophy, the adjunct plight, pedigree vs. publishing, effectiveness of track programs, how to build a better job/phd ratio and other issues like these. For some information on these issues click HERE. While these submission will be preferred, feel free to submit on other topics as well. 

Submissions Wanted:
We need submissions for posts to include in the carnival. Do you have a philosophy blog? If so, simply choose a favourite from among your recent posts, and use the BlogCarnival submissions form to submit the link.

For more information visit philosophers' carnival

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Free Raffle: GRE Prep Material

This Free raffle is for 3 GRE prep books. They are used and most of the sample tests have been filled out but they still contain great study material such as: most commonly tested words, root words, test strategies, detailed answer explanations and sample questions. These are some of the books that helped me get into the 99th percentile on the verbal section of the GRE. I hope they can help other philosophy majors achieve their dream of graduate school. 

I ship them to your door at no cost to you!

The books:

1. Kaplan GRE Exam 2010-2011 Premier with CD-ROM (Kaplan GRE Premier Program (W/CD)) (Paperback) 

MA: A strategy for being ready to apply to PhD or other programs by the end of the Fall term of your second year.

This is some advise from Simon Fraser University philosophy department regarding how to go about your MA if one is not writing a thesis and plan to apply to PhD programs. Basically it suggests focusing on developing your paper as a writing sample and getting to know faculty for you letters of recommendation. The general philosophy education is not as important in the first year.

Graduate Application: Should the Writing Sample Reflect a Current Debate?

The basic answer from most respondents is that it should be your best work and if that happens to be current that is fine but do not submit sub par work for your writing sample just because it is current. 

I believe this would be different coming from an MA program. It seems one should at least bring some current debate into your topic to show that you are keeping up.

full article HERE

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Doubling the Philosophy Job Market?

Possibly a new job market for philosophy which doubles the current one. Basically an online university "Western Governors University, has hired 300 adjunct professors who do nothing but grade student work". Although this may take precious income away from graduate students, it seems a doubling of the job market would be well worth it. This also provides the benefit that one can do philosophy from anywhere solving one of the adjunct problems of constantly moving. The argument for it seems shaky but there could be better ones. Right now I don't know of any programs doing this with philosophy, do you?

Full article HERE

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PGR NEWS

summery of Philosophical Gourmet Report News:

Philosophy of Race will now be evaluated but Experimental Philosophy will not. 

PGR 2011 should be online in December.

Humanities Make Money

I found this article interesting. basically it suggests that humanities make a considerable profit. While they don't pull in as much grant money as the sciences, he suggests, they actually run at a greater percentage of profit vs. cost. 

He also suggests that this fact has been hushed up by the sciences which have a large control factor over the bureaucracy of university systems. He suggests that the myth that humanities are unprofitable is partially continued because of the power position that the sciences hold in the university. 

(I'm still very curious about how departments are assigned funding from the university. Could someone tell me how this works?)

Robert N. Watson is a professor of English. This op-ed originally appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Sunday, March 21, 2010.

Full article HERE

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Help me keep your fellow philosophers informed!

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Break in Posts: Moving

I apologize for the interruption in my posts. I'm currently in the moving process and it's a bit difficult to find that extra hour or two in the day. hopefully I can get back on track in the next week and bring you your daily dose of professional philosophy.

All the best,

- William

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50th anniversary SPEP conference

SPEP is the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, a professional organization devoted to supporting philosophy inspired by continental European traditions.

I just got the program in the mail, but thought I would share some of the stuff off their site.

The following is take from the page HERE

July 23, 2011

We are very happy to announce the details of the 50th Anniversary SPEP Conference to be held in Philadelphia, October 19-22, 2011.

The 2011 SPEP Program is now available here.

We invite you to visit the Philosophy Documentation Center’s SPEP Conference Registration webpage to register for the 2011 conference in Philadelphia, pay your Annual Dues for the 2011-2012 Membership Year, and register for the 50th Anniversary Banquet Dinner.

New APA website

The American Philosophical Association has a new website up HERE.

The site looks like it was designed by a 9th grade website design class from the 90's. It's even more problematic to find your way around then it was before. 

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