philosophy
CategoryAre We Not Doing Enough Drugs?
“To admit to any intention to use chemical substances, whether found in nature or synthesized in laboratories, in the aim of changing one’s apprehension of reality, is to leave the guild of the philosophers behind, with all its constricting norms and shibboleths, and to join the company, over in the deep end of the pool of life, of sundry countercultural weirdos and..
Beloved Philosophical Writings on Love
What philosophical writing about love would you have us read? (more…)
How Risk-Averse is Academic Philosophy?
“Philosophical inquiry thrives when it is conducted in a spirit that risks overreaching a bit,” yet “the current incentive structure of academic philosophy in the United States favors cautious and modest research agendas for early career philosophers.” (more…)
Are Philosophy’s Glory Days in Bioethics Over? (guest post)
How has philosophy’s role in cognate disciplines been changing? We could ask this question about philosophy and political theory, or cognitive science, or business ethics, or theoretical physics, and so on. In the following guest post, the focus is on philosophy and bioethics. (more…)
In Defense of Boring and Derivative Philosophy (guest post)
“Even if you prefer the sexiness of radicalism or the glory of revolution: you need boring, work-a-day normal conservative philosophy.” (more…)
36 Answers to “What Is the Value of Philosophy?” (updated)
Friction, a philosophy channel featuring interviews of professional philosophers, recently released a supercut of three dozen thinkers answering the question “What is the value of philosophy?” (more…)
The Questions Today’s Philosophers Are Asking (for World Philosophy Day 2022)
Happy World Philosophy Day! (more…)
Found: Five Boxes of New Hegel (updated)
Five boxes of previously unknown transcriptions of lectures by G.W.F. Hegel have been found. (more…)
Why the History of Philosophy Matters to Philosophy (guest post)
“Studying the history of philosophy can help us see ourselves from the outside and that can help us inhabit philosophy from the inside.” (more…)
Organizing for Answers
Suppose the main aim of the enterprise of academic philosophy is to generate philosophical knowledge, and that said knowledge is mainly answers to big philosophical questions. How should the discipline be organized so as to best achieve this aim? (more…)
A New Topography of Philosophy: Analytic, Continental, and Philosophy of Science
When it comes to mapping the territory of academic philosophy, “the timeworn analytic-continental divide should be replaced with a three-way split, between analytic, continental, and philosophy of science programs.” (more…)
Philosophy’s Most Beautiful Sentence or Paragraph
Antidismissiveness
“When I started reading Derrida, I couldn’t understand what the heck he was talking about; but someone like Kripke, it was easy. I remember chatting to someone once who said to me ‘yeah, this Derrida guy is easy, but when I read Kripke I can’t understand a word he’s saying!’” (more…)
Curation, Digitization, Path Dependence, and the Urgency of the History of Philosophy
Philosophy, and especially the history of philosophy, is not known for being in a rush. But an appreciation of the factors that go into shaping our discipline and its self-understanding might give us a sense of urgency. (more…)
Analytic Philosophy and the Big Questions of Life
At the start of each term, Helena de Bres (Wellesley) holds “get to know you” office hours with her students. “So what made you sign up for a philosophy class?” she asks. (more…)
Deontology Is Compatible with Act-Consequentialism (guest post)
“It’s standard to divide the moral landscape into deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, thereby assuming that these three are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. I, like some others, find this deeply problematic…” (more…)
Moral Dumbfounding and Philosophical Humility (guest post)
“I need to have the humility to recognize that, in this case, I have not found that truth, and that I may not ever find it. And it has also shown me that I need to be more generous to people who are dumbfounded by cases where I happen to have clear and consistent intuitions.” (more…)
To Be a Department of Philosophy (guest post)
“There are many reasons to expand the story we tell about philosophy. But a main reason is just that the best, most interesting, and even the correct answers to philosophical questions that interest us might be found anywhere.” (more…)
On the Time McDowell Told Taylor and Putnam They Misunderstood Him (guest post)
“On Saturday, April 27 1996, in Chicago, at the Palmer House, there was an epic, bewildering Author Meets Critics session on McDowell’s (1994) Mind and World with Charles Taylor and Hilary Putnam as Critics and John Haugeland presiding…” (more…)
Escaping the “Feedback Loop” of Sexism in the History of Philosophy
“Some of the women discussed in this Issue cannot be slotted easily into a history that did not include their ideas in the first place.” (more…)
The Contingency of Philosophers’ Philosophies
In an interview, Josef Mitterer is asked about how approaches to philosophy may vary by whether they provide “an escape from contingency.” (more…)
“Departments of Cognitive Poker”? Competitiveness and Philosophy (guest post)
Is philosophy an especially competitive discipline? How? Is its competitiveness a problem? If so, what might we do about it? (more…)
Philosophers On The Russian Attack On Ukraine
On February 24th, Russia began an invasion of Ukraine, starting with missile strikes on several locations, including Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and since then has continued its attack via air and ground warfare, despite near universal international condemnation of its actions. (more…)
Philosophers, Concepts, and Cognitive Biases
“We found some evidence of differences in conceptual competence between philosophers and laypeople, and documented a difference in linguistic diet; but these differences did not translate into different susceptibility to even the most pertinent cognitive bias, or render philosophers’ judgments appreciably more accurate.” (more…)
“Negative attitudes toward philosophy and philosophers”
Yesterday morning, Laura Kennedy, a writer and freelance journalist who often writes about philosophy (and who recently earned her PhD in philosophy at Trinity College Dublin), asked on Twitter: “Philosophers – have you observed that academics in other disciplines tend to have negative attitudes toward philosophy and philosophers? If so, why do you think that might ..
Which Questions Can’t Philosophy Answer By Itself?
In an interview in The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia, Thomas Spiteri asks Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney) about “how best to make epistemic progress” answering philosophical questions about minds and consciousness. (more…)
Increased Specialization & Competent Peer Review
Is increased specialization in philosophy a problem for high-quality peer review? (more…)
Stepping Outside of Philosophy: Reflections on a Transdisciplinary Career (guest post)
Universities say they want their faculty to pursue “interdisciplinary” and “transdisciplinary” work. Yet it might be difficult to figure out how to do that given the structure of academia and the nature of academic training. (more…)