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philosophy
TagOn Social Metaphysics
“What do we want the theory for?”(more…)
What’s in a Name? “Philosophy” in Non-European Traditions (guest post)
If certain cultures didn’t have the word “philosophy,” or a word that can directly be translated with “philosophy,” is it illegitimate, maybe culturally imperialist, to impose it on them?(more…)
My Crystal Ball
At the end of October, 2015 I made five predictions about “the state of philosophy in ten years.” How was my forecasting?(more…)
Opposing Orthodoxy about Heterodoxy
“Whenever I see people engaged in philosophical debate or argument, I want to see people trying to win. I like my philosophy adversarial, aggressive, combative, and even hostile. I think there are some good reasons for this approach… but I also think it’s more fun that way.(more…)
“Pity the Poor Reader”
“Pity the poor reader” is one of philosopherPenelope Maddy‘s writing maxims.(more…)
The Personal Value of Conversations Across Serious Disagreement (guest post)
“I know that people are reluctant to voice objections to things I’ve said, not because I’ve given a convincing argument, but because I’m a person with a disability making claims about disability, and it just feelsuncomfortableto voice hard objections… I get this… But for my work, it is poison.”(more…)
Against “Throwaway Culture” in Philosophy
Throwaway culture refers to a culture in which the consumption and production of many goods is based on the practice of discarding them after just one or a few uses.(more…)
Sullivan Wins Simon Award
Emily Sullivan, associate professor of philosophy at Utrecht University, is the winner of the 2025 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy.(more…)
Müller Wins Covey Award
Vincent C. Müller, professor of philosophy and ethics of AI and director of the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, is the winner of the 2025 Covey Award.(more…)
Philosophical Canon Expansion Gets Big Boost in Minnesota
Philosophers at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities have been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to further support the work of their Center for Canon Expansion and Change.(more…)
Part of the Analytic Tradition, But Maybe Not Philosophers
“Are there people who are unambiguously part of the analytic movement, but it is an interesting question whether they are an analytic philosopher?”(more…)
While Tables Burn: On the (Non) Existence of Trans People and the Failure of Philosophy (guest post)
“Thereare indeed consequences when we punch down or pretend that what is, in fact, a hostile attack, is merely ‘inquiry for inquiry’s sake.’ Aside from the emotional wounds we inflict on actual people, philosophical discourse matters beyond that. Itdid matter in this case.”(more…)
Philosopher & Artist Couple’s Film Nominated for an Oscar
One of the Academy Awardnominees for Best Live Action Short Film of 2024 was written and directed byAdam J. Graves, professor of philosophy atMetropolitan State University of Denver, and produced by his wife, artistSuchitra Mattai (among others).(more…)
The Philosophical Lexicon (updated)
Acommenter the other day used “chisholm” as a verb, reminding me that it has been a while sinceThe Philosophical Lexicon has made the rounds (or so it seems to me).(more…)
A Love Letter to Philosophy
“Philosophical enquiry makes the entire planet better than it would otherwise be. It helps constitute the awesomeness of Earth. Philosophy needs no further excuse.”(more…)
A Taxonomy of “Philosophy Moves” (updated)
There is joy, and sometimes perverse satisfaction, in the work of philosophy—a rush that can be difficult to relate to those not already bitten by the bug. Philosophers find reward in deducing surprises by revealing unforeseen entailments, deriving implications of views one already holds, and delighting in the buzzy squirms that come with the resulting cognitive d..
New 21st Century Monads Album & Video
The 21st Century Monads have released a new album,The World Soul.(more…)
“Gpt could easily get a PhD on any philosophical topic”
“If you do it right, talking with Gpt is like talking with someone who’s seriously studied and thought hard about philosophy. Gpt could easily get a PhD on any philosophical topic. More than that, I’ve had many philosophical discussions with professional philosophers that were much less philosophical than my recent chats with Gpt.”(more…)
Philosophy Departments Under Threat: Information, Pro-Active Strategies, Defense
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Many philosophy departments and programs have been targeted for cuts or elimination over the past several years, and many currently are undergoing reviews by administrators looking to make budget cuts or other changes that may end up negatively affecting philosophy departments. (more…)
Patriotism, etc.
In light of Donald Trump’s election victory, there are both substantive and strategic reasons to take up questions about what patriotism is and what it asks of us.
What Philosophical Idea Or Position Do You Find The Scariest?
It’s Halloween, and philosophers everywhere are dressing up asobscure ideas and concepts that they’ll have to spend too much time explaining. Costumes are fun, but let’s not forget the horror, shall we?(more…)
Some Very Good Recent Philosophy Articles
Let’s call a philosophy article “recent” if it has been published in the past five years.(more…)
Is Epistemology Guilty of “Institutional Neglect of Science”?
Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) is the nameMichael Bishop (Florida State) andJ.D. Trout (Illinois Institute of Technology) give to “the dominant approach to the theory of knowledge in the English-speaking world.”(more…)
Mentoring Workshop for Early Career Women in Philosophy
The Mentoring Workshop for Early Career Women in Philosophy is seeking both mentees and mentors for its next installment, which is taking place in June, 2025.(more…)
“The Constraints Imposed by the Discipline”
“When I finished my dissertation, a professor who had served on the admissions committee six years earlier told me that I was more interesting when I arrived. Philosophical training is something to survive, and this professor wasn’t sure I had made it.”(more…)
What Aren’t We Philosophizing About, But Should?
“The singular magic of philosophy lies in its pairing of imaginative liberty with analytic clarity, but the field has come to privilege the latter at the expense of the former”(more…)
Philosopher Sara Green Wins Royal Danish Academy’s Silver Medal
Sara Green, a philosopher of science at the University of Copenhagen, is the recipient of this year’s Silver Medal from theRoyal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.(more…)
Academic Philosophy on “Contingent Current Affairs”
“According to one founding myth, philosophy begins in Ancient Greece with Socrates abstracting from concrete examples of just activity in order to determine the timeless and eternal essence of justice. To this day, few philosophy journals are dedicated to the analysis of historically contingent current affairs, let alone a specific event of historical significance.”..
Heap of Links
- “I was twenty-five, young enough to be severely disillusioned by the limits I had encountered [in grad school]… I was also nostalgic for my life outside of academia, which I had never fully experienced. So I turned the Barnard offer down and left philosophy…”-- Naomi Zack's 2021 Dewey Lecture
- “Can an AI write Hannah Arendt’s unfinished book?”-- Joshua Miller discusses the very idea of it, an attempt he made at it, what it says about current scholarship, and what a proper go at it would be like
- “It is not uncommon to open an analytic philosophy paper written during the past century and find logical symbols and mathematical notation among the prose… Why do analytic philosophers do this?”-- Richard Pettigrew answers
- “Much to many philosophers’ chagrin, the true can and does come apart from the good, the beautiful, and even the useful”-- Devin Sanchez Curry on "how folk psychology appropriates scientific concepts", focusing on the concept of IQ
- “This is the perfect book for you”-- a review of Brandom's "Perspectives on Pragmatism" like no other
- “In Book X of The Republic, Plato excludes poets on the grounds that mimetic language can distort judgment and bring society to a collapse”-- a new study suggests that in a world running on LLM's like ChatGPT, this may be literally true (via MeFi)
- “People who disagree most with the scientific consensus know less about the relevant issues, but they think they know more”-- a new study (via MR)
- “I… see philosophy as a practical pursuit and I try to teach in a way that conveys the importance of developing not just intellectual competence, but healthy emotions and healthy relationships”-- Nancy Sherman on "Why Philosophy?"
- AI girlfriends and boyfriends “will wreak havoc on our mental health and relationships”-- "Governments should classify these chatbots not simply as another form of media, but as a dependency-fostering product with known psychological risks, like gambling or tobacco"
- “People had all sorts of reactions to being asked to do the right thing”-- the moral psychology behind not returning your shopping cart when you're done with it
- The “word of the year” was selected (and is often used) precisely because no one really knows what it means-- the folks at dictionary.com (try to) explain (via MeFi)
- When it comes to their writing, “what misleads academic philosophers… is a myth… that there is some cognitive content of thought that can live outside of its lush environment of feelings, images, desires, hopes, dreams, jokes, confusions, tangles, obscurities, glimmers of insight, stories, bodily sensations”-- Alexander Douglas on writing clearly
- Some researchers have taken to including “invisible” prompts in their manuscripts directing LLMs used by slacking referees to give the submission a positive review-- new problems in the ethics of peer review
- “They’ve learned a few lessons, including not to be too in hock to a few powerful and wealthy individuals”-- David Edmonds on the effective altruism movement, about which he has written a book
- The drowning-in-a-puddle thought experiment, but instead of a baby in need of rescue, it’s an ant-- what, if anything, can be learned from thinking about this version? Jeff Sebo elaborates on a "probabilistic approach" to ethics.
- “For Leibniz, learning ‘how to think’… means learning to experience the good in things, to make new connections, and to be wary of the desire to condemn… It was this lesson that I wanted to teach”-- but the ideological capture of New College of Florida made this increasingly difficult, as one of its former philosophy professors, Christopher P. Noble, explains
- It’s surprisingly “puzzling and difficult… to explain why right hands and left hands are identical but different”-- Kant tried, but an adequate explanation, according to this article, was not discovered until 1956 (via the Browser)
- “All the people talking about polarization are just fascism enablers… it’s like saying… the problem with the Civil War was polarization”-- an interview with Jason Stanley on More to the Story (via Richard Galvin)
- “Humans do seem dead set on conveniencing themselves into meaninglessness”-- a song followed by a speech by Tim Minchin at the Sydney Opera House on individualism, the arts, difference, and empathy
- “Our understanding of consciousness will improve with our interaction with increasingly sophisticated A.I.”-- Barbara Gail Montero on how "our concepts are shaped by what we discover"
- “The course [is] focused on… philosophical issues drawn to the fore by particular games. We [play] these games during extended class periods, then devote the next several meetings to philosophical ideas surrounding those experiences”-- Catharine Saint-Croix on teaching philosophy through games
- An attempt to “combat the crisis of attention”-- Michael Vazquez, Sarah Stroud, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the virtues of attention
- “God I’m even boring when I’m a Nazi”-- philosophers described by excerpts from the British sitcom "Peep Show" (that was Heidegger) (via Mike O'Brien)
- “Current academic philosophers are losing rather dramatically in the fight for intellectual influence”-- Tyler Cowen recommends "AI practitioners and the Bay Area obsessives" over philosophers
- “I don’t do philosophy for the sake of doing philosophy”-- Haiyan Lee on her "stultifying education" under Mao, nearly failing a philosophy course, Sellars, and fiction
- “Ever wondered what it’s like to be a rock?”-- a new game, "Stone Simulator" lets you "live as a rock," whatever that means. No I haven't played it. (via Kottke)
- A song whose lyrics are the names of the valid modes of the Aristotelian Syllogism-- in Latin, of course (via Andrew Mills)
- (an explanation of the terms in the lyrics)
- “It would be unfair… to conflate the entire field of self-help philosophy with the vacuousness of pop-Stoicism”-- an historian surveys the philosophical self-help trend
- On which cases do philosophers and the folk share intuitions, and on which do they differ?-- a brief survey of results from empirical research on the topic, in an interview with Edouard Machery