What I've been reading
Fall 2024 edition
It’s been three months. I will ease back into it by recommending things I’ve been reading since June (more or less).
Work
Classes
For my Politics, Philosophy, and Law (PPLW) seminar on policing, prisons, privacy, and speech (highlights):
Jake Monaghan, Just Policing
Tommie Shelby, The Idea of Prison Abolition
Brandon del Pozo, The Police and the State
Charles W. Mills, “‘Ideal theory’ as ideology”
Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani, “The injustice of under-policing in America”
For Philosophy 101 (highlights):
Plato, Theaetetus
Eric Schwitzbegel, The Weirdness of the World
Helen De Cruz, Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think
Helen De Cruz, ed., Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-Two Thought Experiments to Broaden Your Mind
Mary Midgley, “Philosophical plumbing”
Agency
Michael Tomasello, The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans
Commentary by Alan C. Love, “Reflections on the study of biological agency and its evolution” in a special issue of Spontaneous Generations on “Levels of biological agency”
Mathilde Tahar, “Agency, Inventiveness, and Animal Play: Novel Insights into the Active Role of Organisms in Evolution” in the same special issue
Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
Matt King and Joshua May, eds., Agency in Mental Disorder: Philosophical Dimensions
Jenann Ismael, How Physics Makes Us Free
Michael Bratman, Structures of Agency: Essays
Several papers by Elijah Millgram
C. Thi Nguyen, “Value capture”
Eddie Keming Chen and Daniel Rubio, “Evil and the quantum multiverse”
Hans van Hateren, “Minimal agency”
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (partially read)
Animals
Peter Alagona, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities
Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
Claudia Hogg-Blake, “Loving somebody: accounting for human-animal love”
Erik Nelson, “Kantian animal moral psychology: Empirical markers for animal morality”
Lorini, G., Grasso, D., & Loi, A., “Are ants not only ‘social insects’, but also ‘nomic insects’? In search of clues of normativity in the ant world”
Podcast: Meghan Barrett on challenging our assumptions about insects (80,000 Hours Podcast)
A Dystopian Effort Is Underway in the Pacific Northwest to Pick Ecological Winners and Losers (Avram Hiller, Jay Odenbaugh, and Yasha Rowher, NYT)
Also listen to Jay on WBUR
Also read Avram’s substack post at Philosophy Happens
Misc
Aesthetic value and the practice of aesthetic valuing (Nick Riggle, Philosophical Review)
Genetic reproductive freedom (Richard Y Chappell, Good Thoughts)
Philosophers should blog (Richard Y Chappell, Good Thoughts)
Killers of the Flower Moon: A consequentialist movie review! (Avram Hiller, Philosophy Happens)
I’m not sure I agree with Avram’s take but I enjoyed reading it and liked the movie a lot (maybe more than Avram and probably for the reasons that make him like it less). I say that without prejudice to my consequentialist leanings.
Moral progress is annoying (Evan Westra and Daniel Kelly, Aeon)
Interesting theory of why changes in social norms often rub us the wrong way.
See commentary by Eric Schliesser
and by Paul Bloom
Leisure
Novels
George Orwell, 1984
Elizabeth Taylor, At Mrs Lippincote’s
Elizabeth Taylor, The Soul of Kindness
Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds
Honoré de Balzac, Illusions perdues
Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
Started recently: Jane Austen, Emma
Nonfiction
Katie Arnold, Running Home: A Memoir
Started recently: James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
It took me a while to tackle Scott, even though his work had long been recommended to me. His recent passing was, as is often the case, a pretext to fill the gap. I’m starting with his classic, Seeing Like a State, the core thesis of which is that states need, promote, and enforce legibility, which has numerous advantages (for the state and certain social groups) but also major costs. It simplifies and thwarts organic processes that draw on autonomous agency and local knowledge. I’m only 20% in but it’s even more enjoyable and a work of genius than I suspected. Every single page bubbles with insights. Genius.
Pairs nicely with 1984.
Misc
Let’s face it, morality sucks, much philosophizing about it is cope (Helen De Cruz, Wondering Freely)
Moving reflections on her own mortality and a justified dig at philosophers.
A pianist who’s not afraid to improvise on Mozart (on Robert Levin) (NYT)
The loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player (Conor Niland, The Guardian)
How crossing American streets became impossible and Top 10 Strava airport segments (Sam Robinson, Footnotes)
How should the world deal with cyclists who don’t stop at red lights (Jonny Long, Escape Collective)
Interesting data, sensible thoughts, though I take issue with the overwhelmingly positive characterization of the changes in Paris. Restructuring the city to accommodate cycling and reduce pollution? Yes, please! Enabling cyclists to behave like jerks and endanger pedestrians at every single crosswalk? No, thank you. I was in Paris last summer and more than once I was nearly hit by cyclists who refused to give way. It’s their space, theirs first, and only theirs, they seem to think.
NOFX farewell tour in The New York Times!
Learning to live with fear (on Alex Honnold) (NYT)
Kilian Jornet’s (the GOAT) Alpine Connections project:
Big Milk has taken over American schools (Kenny Torella, Vox, part of the generally excellent Future Perfect series)
As Torella notes, this began 80 years ago. Dairy is one the greatest scams of the century—an environmental disaster and a mass purveyor of animal cruelty whose health benefits are at best substitutable, at worst very dubious.
The political economy of anti-price-gouging (Cyril Hédoin, The Archimedean Point)
On some bad policy proposals from Harris