Fantasy Philosophy

At the Lighthearted Philosophers' Society meeting last weekend, I came up with my next great idea. Fantasy football has completely transformed the way football is watched and followed, so why not expand upon the idea and transform the way we read philosophy with a fantasy philosophy league. We'll need to fill in the details a bit to get it off the ground, but here's the general idea:

Every participant has to come up with a name for his or her own "university" and each university will have a philosophy department consisting of twelve positions:

- Ethics
- Epistemology
- Continental
- American
- Social/Political Philosophy
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Mind
- Philosophy of Science
- Aesthetics
- Ancient
- Modern
- Emeritus (Open AOS)

We'll have a draft to determine each participants' department, such that each department will fill each position, plus have three additional faculty members "on leave". You can move your sabbatical faculty in and out once a month. If your emeritus member passes away during your semester, you must wait one month to fill the position. For every book published by one of your philosophers during the year, you get twenty points.* For every journal article, you get five points, with certain journals (to be determined) earning seven points. Articles that are direct responses by other philosophers or book reviews in a journal get you three points. Posts on the Leiter Reports dedicated to one of your philosophers gets you one point. If your figure is department chair of their actual department, all direct publication values are increased by 50%.

If we have enough people express an interest, we can work out the details and schedule a draft.

So, what do you think? Other AOSs, rules, or point values needed?



*If you have Nicholas Rescher in your department, the point value for any new book will be that of an article for any other philosopher just to keep it fair.