Karl Schafer @schafer_karl Twitter profile

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@BinBiin207

Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

@RobDenBleyker hey, some of us are posting

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

"We have a diverse community of Kant scholars at home." The diverse community of Kant scholars at home:

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 month

@NoamChompers This is a joke right? RIGHT?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

"I'm a bit of a historian myself," he said, as he arranged a few facts in rough temporal order.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

We analytic philosophers claim to hate nothing more than sloppy thinking. But what if the idea of a completely rigorous form of thought is itself self-contradictory? What if the essence of rational thought and understanding lies precisely in its sloppiness? (1/4)

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

Look at this transparent attempt to cash in on the Kant craze.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 months

Analytic philosophers showing their humanistic side by using examples from literature (James, Austin, Proust, whatever) to illustrate their point...

Chris Cameron

@ChrisCameronNYT

2 months

JD Vance has brought his dog, Atlas, to campaign with him today in Milwaukee

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

Disturbing thought: If Schelling, Hegel, and Hölderlin were alive today, they very well might have started a podcast.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Excited to debut my new children's book. NO LIE: SANTA CLAUS WITHIN THE LIMITS OF REASON ALONE. In it, I prove conclusively, on unobjectionably Kantian grounds, that Santa's existence is NO LIE, but rather a practical postulate of reason itself.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

On Twitter, contemporary ethics is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who worship Kant, and those who mock him. ... These are their stories.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

There's a lot of haters out there, but personally I think Kant looks great in a septum ring.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

reading the Phenomenology of Spirit really brings out my inner reply guy

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

911 Operator (in disbelief): “… and then, after you had climbed up it, you *threw away* the ladder?”

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

4 years

who is the Guy Fieri of philosophy? and what is the philosophical equivalent of Flavortown?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

philosophy just absolutely bodying chemical engineering here.

King Crocoduck, Gigazionist

@crocoduck_king

1 year

1) To absolutely no one's shock, everybody gets BTFO by physicists. Here are the compared aggregates of the aforementioned scores. You'll notice that the top spots are dominated by the usual suspects, with the only black sheep being philosophers. I suspect the reason for this is

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

5 years

Liking a grad student’s tweet counts as mentoring, right?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Not proud of it, but I have to admit that I get quite defensive about the suggestion that Kant’s philosophy is fundamentally racist at its core – after all, it implies that I’ve spent a fair portion of my life trying to understand an essentially racist philosophical project…

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 months

What if it were doctors of philosophy?

New York Post

@nypost

3 months

Biden says ‘medical condition’ could prompt him to drop out ‘if doctors came to me’

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

Did everyone know that Anscombe invented the term scare quotes? I'm literally shaking here.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Having an epic Jason-Stanley-style meltdown because someone on the internet said something mean about Tom Nagel.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

9 months

The completed system of German idealism…

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

10 months

Listen, virtually every philosophy paper *deserves* to be rejected. Acceptance for publication is never *earned*. It is given only through an act of extraordinary grace.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I wil

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Here are 2 claims that, with the wisdom of time, seem pretty plausible to me: 1. Descartes and Leibniz are both operating on a different level than Spinoza in terms of general intellectual ability. 2. Spinoza is the greatest philosopher of the three, possibly by a large margin.

Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

@lastpositivist @d08890 the dirty little secret of Spinoza studies is that while he was indeed a truly great philosopher, in terms of intellectual ability he was, frankly, a bit mid.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Very curious. Arguing about academic philosophy makes me feel sad, while caring for a baby makes me feel … good? Much to consider.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

a friendly reminder: when transferring health insurance, don't forget to list *all* twelve categories and *both* forms of intuition as preexisting conditions.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Get this. NOT ONE funding agency will approve my application for support for a "silent decade" of reflection on the "sources of my dogmatic slumber". Apparently my application "isn't serious"? Our obsession with "productivity" is killing real philosophical thought, people.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

Can somebody please explain to me what this referee report means?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

11 months

Just in time for Cyber Monday, a bold new treatment of the unity of theoretical and practical reason in Kant. Perfect for anyone with excess grant money to spend, or for any institutional libraries on your list. Now at a slightly less absurd price.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

If early modern philosophy begins with the rejection of many scholastic distinctions as empty or (at least) unproductive of real understanding, perhaps the path forward in philosophy requires a rejection of many of the distinctions we analytic philosophers have come to hold dear?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

In EA's defense, it is hardly the first philosophical school to rise to prominence by capturing the attention of a bunch of over-rich, self-important dilettantes.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

4 years

all professors should be required to publicize their attachment style, so that grad students can make an informed decision about who to work with

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

I agree that utilitarianism is what you get when you try IN ONE WAY to take seriously the idea that everyone matters equally, but the idea that it is the ONLY WAY of doing so is so arrogant, and so obviously false, that I have a hard time taking such claims themselves seriously.

Richard Chappell🔸

@RYChappell

2 years

Utilitarianism is just what you get when you take seriously the moral datum that *everyone matters equally*. Other views blatantly deny this, while trying to pretend otherwise.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Oh no...

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

4 months

Philosophy has depth and flexibility because of its hidden surplus of meaning. Analytic philosophy’s drive for "clarity" and "rigor" can be a method of producing just this, but it often degrades into the attempt to cleanse philosophy of precisely the surplus that gives it life.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Earlier today, I was convinced that self-consciousness can prove its worth to itself and others ONLY THROUGH A LIFE AND DEATH STRUGGLE … but luckily it turns out I was just a little dehydrated.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

11 months

The naturally fat and the naturally thin live sad lives, trapped in a single metabolic rate. Only those oscillating wildly between fat and thin have a taste of true freedom, of the self-mediating Concept. This is the world historical significance of Ozempic.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

A short thread on how I think many people view the current state of analytic philosophy (inspired of course by @lastpositivist ). I'm not sure how much of this I agree with in the end, but it captures something of the contemporary zeitgeist, I think:

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

If that’s right, then the effort to make thought perfectly precise and rigorous might be the death of thought itself? Perhaps that's a reason for a certain degree of cautious optimism about the sloppiness we see around us in both human and artificial thought today? (4/4)

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

This email goes so freaking hard: "In the late eighteenth century, an airplane took off from the University of Konigsberg. It was loaded with mind altering drugs and its pilot was Immanuel Kant..."

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

Helpful to remember that depression often develops as a form of self-care. One first gives in to a depressive episode in something like the spirit someone else might ease into a day at the spa.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

even though I've left UCI for Texas, I plan to remain actively involved in mentoring PhD students at both institutions (liking their tweets)

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

9 months

This is EXACTLY how I felt getting a tenure track job in philosophy at Pitt.

DiscussingFilm

@DiscussingFilm

9 months

When offered the role of Rey, J.J. Abrams told Daisy Ridley to “understand the scale. This is not a role in a movie. This is a religion for people. It changes things on a level that is inconceivable.” Ridley’s anxiety was so severe by the time ‘THE LAST JEDI’ released that she’d

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

9 months

First day of class is reaching in my pocket to pay for coffee only to discover that my toddler has replaced my wallet with a wad of tiny pink socks.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

Dreamt that (in the service of public philosophy) the APA replaced one of its conferences with its own version of the Met Gala. The first year’s theme was “a reformed empiricism”, and AOC appeared in a gown that read “All Concepts are Bastards”…

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

If thought is driven forward by such associations, metaphors, or analogies – if the fabric of understanding is knit together by those links – then genuine understanding might essentially require a certain degree of sloppiness in thought? (3/4)

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

Anyone have a sense of which philosophy departments are going to tank in this year’s PGR to get a higher future draft pick?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Remember: If you're texting someone to make plans, you only really make a *shared plan* if *everyone* responds with the following phrase: "This plan is now common knowledge between us".

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

4 years

Just to clear up a frequent source of confusion, when I write “lol” on a student’s work, it stands for “listening out loud” and signals my readiness to be proactively receptive to their ideas

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

correct spelling is beneath the true philosopher.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

oh dear, what have I done now?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

@jonathanbfine They may have *written* in German, but they were already *thinking* in the language of Absolute Knowledge (international academic English).

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Gonna tell my kids this was Allen Wood.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

6 months

Worrisome news: my book seems to be out of stock at OUP. It's very hard not to see this as a sign that someone is trying to read it. Everyone, that was NOT my understanding of how academic publishing worked.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

7 months

░N░O░U░M░E░N░A░ ░I░N░ ░B░I░O░

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

11 months

Inside you are two wolves. They both hate Kant scholars.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

I recommend starting to expose your baby to Hegel when they are about five months old. But remember, each baby is different, and their readiness to explore German Idealism will vary. Your baby may not know what to do at first, look confused, or wrinkle their nose.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

10 months

If you’re a Nate Silver reply guy, contorting yourself in absurd ways in defense of an obvious confusion, you might just have a future in the highly rewarding world of Kant scholarship.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

6 months

I always knew faculty self-governance had become a bit of a joke, but I don't think I had internalized just how big a joke it was. For all the talk about the "infantilism" of our students, the true case of self-imposed immaturity in the university must be the faculty.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

The owl of Duolingo spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Any sufficiently advanced [German Idealism] is indistinguishable from magic.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

If Hume wasn't woke, why did he spell connexion with an x?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

Warning Philosophers at Work…

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

"How do I mute 'Agnes Callard's halloween candy'?"

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

So when Taylor Swift rereleases old material in a new form it’s “an artist bravely reclaiming control over her art” … but when I do the VERY SAME THING it’s “self-plagiarism”? Make it all make sense.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Submitting a paper to the Philosophical Review just to feel something.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

This might seem a silly idea. Surely rational thought requires rigor and precision, after all? But isn't the active force in thought often not these qualities, but rather the way it moves (almost carelessly as Hume might say) from one idea to another associated one? (2/4)

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Germanists on summer vacation: "You're on a camping trip, I'm on a Suhrkamp-ing trip. We are not the same."

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 month

My daughter just told me she’ll let me in her clubhouse when I’ve published in the Philosophical Review 😿

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

How many historians of philosophy grew up in families where they had to work hard as children to harmonize the viewpoints and feelings of their parents? The urge to make a coherent whole out of a blizzard of seemingly conflicting texts and arguments runs very deep for us...

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race ... Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a himbo

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

If EA goes the way of German Idealism, we’re going to start seeing a lot of manifestos with titles like “A New Presentation of the Altruistic Efficacy of Effective Altruism in a Systematic Form”

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

logging on to twitter to see what people are saying today about Immanuel Kant

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

2023 status symbols for men • < 5'3" height • Reading solely out of a duty to oneself of self-care • Complete control over synthesis of reproduction • Humanity as a kingdom of ends • Ambiguous relationship with manservant • Practical postulation of immortality What else?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

6 months

Everything I think about this seems obvious and boring, so I hesitate to say it… But university campuses can only be a site for real free speech and inquiry if they allow students pretty extensive freedom to engage in non-violent forms of protest.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

10 months

Hard not to feel disappointed in the analytic philosophical community here.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

Explaining to my students why I *still* haven't graded their midterm essays.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

I think my two-month-old might have just said her first word ... it sounded like "Gauguin" ... ? No idea where she learned *that*, but looks like we're going to have to have 'the talk' about colonialism and modern art a bit earlier than expected.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

6 months

It’s always *such* a honor when a leading scholar in your area takes the time to write a blurb for your new book 🙌

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 month

New parents: It's never too early to start thinking about the philosophy job market.

noam chompers

@NoamChompers

1 month

JOB MARKET ADVICE: one time i learned that i (most likely) would have advanced to the interview stage for a faculty position had my last name started with a different letter, so BE SURE your last name STARTS WITH THE RIGHT LETTER

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

6 months

@MattNoahSmith Sounds like proper (17th century) English to me.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

Remember: some people experience birthdays as a horrible reminder of their existential burden. For them “happy birthday” may sound like a taunting provocation. Try “sorry for your birthday” or “my condolences on your birth” instead.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

"I'm a philosopher" (I whisper to myself as I close the SpeedGrader window having managed to grade only one essay)

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

I know I'm biased, but aren't Swabian babies just the cutest?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

did Schelling have to go this hard

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

5 months

One thing to understand about graduate school and the job market is that they are implicitly designed to produce a specific sort of wounded attachment to one's discipline (sometimes called "a sense of vocation") in the student.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

Ultimately, a lot of what is painful about the peer review process is due to how it forces us to take our writing seriously as an attempt to *actually communicate* with someone else. Never easy to confront the reality of just how hard that is.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

4 months

Speak for yourself; as a member of our department of philosophy, I spend every day surrounded by extremely normal, caring, and well-adjusted people with a 145+ IQ

Mariè

@p8stie

4 months

People’s conception of IQ is so overinflated. You probably don’t know many people with a 130+ IQ Having a 130 IQ is a form of NEURODIVERGENCE it causes PROBLEMS. 130 IQ people are NEUROTIC and WEIRD Having a 145 IQ is a HANDICAP There are more autistic ppl than 130+ IQ ppl

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

8 months

WRONG. Average time to degree in philosophy should be AT LEAST twice as long as it is now.

Daily Nous / Justin Weinberg

@DailyNousEditor

8 months

Does it take too long to get a PhD in philosophy? If so, what should be done about that?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

Instilling a proper sense of respectful distance in my grad students by accidentally leaving zoom unmuted while I scream “just work” at my email software during seminar break.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

I’m getting the sense that jokes about the academic job market from tenured profs don’t really land right now … not sure why.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

referring to new forms of expressivism as "variants of concern"

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

9 months

Forthcoming chapter on how Hume's philosophical system bottoms out in a teleological picture of our mental faculties, and why he thinks he is more entitled to make use of such "tactics of the Peripatetics" in his own philosophy than they are in theirs:

Karl Schafer, Mental Faculties and Powers and the Foundations of Hume’s Philosophy - PhilPapers

philpapers.org

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

Lecturing for the first time in a wig and I can already feel my petite perceptions becoming more clear and distinct

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

2 years

confusing day for those of us in the anti-Van-Gogh/pro-oil quadrant of the political compass.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

15 days

We don’t like to talk about it, but if any of us time-traveled back to 1820’s Berlin, we would absolutely HUMILIATE Hegel with our knowledge of the methods of analytic philosophy.

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

4 years

Philosophy is what happens when you forget to set a safe word for the "game of giving and asking for reasons"?

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

10 months

A new year brings new hope.

Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

3 years

I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I will not argue about Kant on twitter I wil

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Karl Schafer

@schafer_karl

1 year

My dude, you’re literally famous for creating a bullshit machine