philosophy
CategoryQuality Control, Methodological Bias, and Persistent Disagreement in Philosophy
Recently, mainstream philosophy journals have tended to implement more and more stringent forms of peer review (e.g., from double-anonymous to triple-anonymous), probably in an attempt to prevent editorial decisions that are based on factors other than quality. Against this trend, we propose that journals should relax their standards of acceptance, as well as be les..
Do Philosophers Care Too Much About Fallacies?
I used to teach a course in critical thinking at Ghent University. As behooves a good skeptic, I first presented my students with the usual laundry list of fallacies, after which I invited them to put the theory into practice. Take a popular piece from the newspaper or watch a political debate, and try to spot the fallacies.
I no longer give that assignment. (m..
“Old Barriers Are Coming Down”
There’s another great interview up at What Is It Like To Be a Philosopher?—this time with Graham Priest (CUNY). Interviewer Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) asks Professor Priest about a his life, education, work, and the philosophical world. (more…)
Why Progress Is Slower In Philosophy Than In Science
“Since science took its modern form in the seventeenth century, it has been one long success story.” By contrast, we philosophers “don’t seem to have progressed much in the two and a half millennia since Plato wrote his dialogues.” That’s the conventional wisdom, as described by David Papineau (King’s College London) in The Times Literary Supplement. But if there’s ..
How Philosophers See The Arts And The Rest Of The Humanities
I can only speak for myself, but being trained by a philosopher, I often feel I was exposed to an expectation of argumentative rigor that, to be perfectly frank, I can’t say I always find in the field of political theory proper. But this can result in drawbacks. Philosophers sometimes look at the rest of the humanities in the way that social scientists look at socia..
Feminist Philosophy and Its Controversies (guest post by Laurie Shrage)
…I expect there will be deep and lasting tensions going forward among feminist philosophers. Most of the tensions have to do with perceptions of harm: harm to the author, the journal, communities of people who are marginalized and threatened, and to feminist philosophy. I hope feminist philosophers will explore and critically discuss questions about the harms caus..
If Anglo-American Philosophy Is So Great, Where Is Its Las Casas? (guest post by Manuel R. Vargas)
Many of my philosophical friends are puzzled by my interest in Anglo-American philosophy… If Anglophone philosophers—especially those who have studied in the U.S.—have done anything important, anything that matters, they tell me, surely there would be evidence in the other humanities, in the architecture and ambitions of the great universities, or in the visib..
Virtues of Philosophers: Humility, Curiosity, Charity, Courage, and Grace
What are the virtues of a philosopher?
I won’t pretend this is an uncontroversial question, but I leave aside the tasks of defending it and arguing for particular specifications of its concepts. What I have in mind are aspects of character in virtue of which philosophers are able to do whatever it is they are supposed to do, well—especially in light of the fact..
Hypatia Controversy Updates (updated)
Below is a list of assorted commentaries on the ongoing Hypatia controversy, mostly lifted from one of the updates on the original post on the story. Recent additions at time of posting include: (more…)
Focus On The Fire, Not The Spark (guest post by Sally Haslanger)
The following is a guest post* by Sally Haslanger, Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, regarding the recent Hypatia controversy.
Don’t Turn It Off (guest post by Danielle Wenner)
The following is a guest post* by Danielle Wenner, assistant professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s a response to Monday’s post, “When To Turn It Off.” (more…)
When To Turn It Off
Here’s a… hypothesis for why many habits of philosophical thinking might not come naturally. The hypothesis is that some tools for critical evaluation run counter to another valuable set of tools: our tools for effective social engagement. These tools help us make sense of what someone is saying by encouraging us to interpret underspecified claims in the most posi..
Three Observations About Moral Philosophy Today
Below are three features of contemporary moral philosophy that I’ve observed, and that may be worth discussing. I present them largely without judgment, except to say here that each seems like a mixed bag. Feel free to discuss, evaluate, elaborate, etc. These aren’t the only observations I have about moral philosophy today, but they are ones that recent events have..
When Philosophers’ Skepticism Sacrifices Other Intellectual Values
The following is an excerpt from “Degenerate Skepticism and the Thieves of Philosophy” by Amy Olberding (University of Oklahoma), an essay presented at a recent meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) and posted at her blog, Department of Deviance. Though written in regards to the reception of Chinese philosophy in today’s profession, it elucidates a..
How Socratic Was Socrates?
Adversarialism, eh? Alright then, to start I want to point out that philosophers have been pushing this macho schtick from the beginning. Socrates is indeed their hero; if only they could do what he does, whether it be reducing their debating partners to silence or, even better, extracting succinct concessions to their intellectual superiority: “Yes, Socrates,” “You..
Protecting Philosophy from Budget Cuts
This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education has three pieces on protecting philosophy departments from budget cuts. All currently paywalled, they include an interview with Amy E. Ferrer, Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association (APA), an article on “how to help your department avoid the ax,” and some tips on supporting philosophy on campus. (more…)..
Nationalism, Universalism, & Diversity in Philosophy (guest post by Bharath Vallabha)
The following is a guest post* from Bharath Vallabha, former assistant professor of philosophy at Bryn Mawr College. In it, he raises questions about the relationship between the geopolitical location of a philosophy department and the philosophical work done in it.
2017 QS Philosophy Rankings Released
London-based education firm Quacquarelli Symonds has published its annual “QS World University Rankings,” The Guardian reports, including a ranking of universities at which to study philosophy. (more…)
On Not Being Able To Imagine Being Satisfied Doing Anything Else
The rhetoric that describes philosophy as a kind of special calling has always struck me as smuggling in much overdetermined sociology. The most irritating version of this to me is the claim that one ought not pursue philosophy unless “one cannot imagine any other satisfying or worthwhile life for oneself.” (more…)
Hopes For Your Philosophy Book — Its Sensible Ideas And Its Mistakes
Joseph Raz, professor of philosophy and law at Columbia University and Kings College, London, has written reflections on his well-known and nearly 30 year-old The Morality of Freedom for a collection of critical essays by others on it, forthcoming in the Jersualem Review of Legal Studies. Rather than engage point-by-point with the criticisms the other contributors ..
The “Self-Valorizing Vanity” of Philosophers
Philosophy professors, is your job (A) just a way to pay the bills, (B), a “fun and challenging” career but certainly not the only thing worth doing, as “there is more to living,” or (C) the best career, and so, properly the overwhelmingly dominant focus of most of your life?
That’s a question Eric Schleisser (Amsterdam) asks at Digressions & Impressions and that..
Philosophy and the Illusion of Explanatory Depth
Virtually everyone in the United States, and indeed throughout the developed world, is familiar with toilets. A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled with water. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the water—and everything that’s been deposited in it—gets sucked into a pipe and from there into the sewage system. But how does this actuall..
How Applied Ethics Has Changed
Some thoughts on how “applied ethics” has changed over the years:
hen I was in grad school, ‘applied ethics’ was an embarrassment. It basically involved feeding concocted, simplistic, depoliticized case studies mechanistically through static, caricatured versions of ethical theories. It was also completely ghettoized, and no one else in philosophy paid the slight..
Ethics Professors and Ethical Standards
Should ethics professors be held to higher ethical standards in their personal behavior? A post on that topic by Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR) at The Splintered Mind (which I had put in the Heap of Links last week) asks that question. (more…)
Dennett on Politics, Philosophy, and Post-Modernism
Daniel Dennett (Tufts) is visiting the UK to promote his new book, but most of this interview with The Guardian is about US politics.
Some excerpts, including a bit about how some philosophy might be responsible for our current political predicament: (more…)
Audio Recordings of J.L. Austin Lecture
Via Eric Johnson-DeBaufre, librarian at the Robbins Library of Philosophy at Harvard University, come a pair of audio recordings of J.L. Austin discussing performatives. (more…)
Indigenous Philosophy and Philosophers in the US
What’s the state of Indigenous philosophy and Indigenous philosophers in the US? Kyle Whyte (Michigan State University), himself an Indigenous philosopher, has an informative post answering that question over at Philosopher, the blog edited by Meena Krishnamurthy (University of Michigan). (more…)
How Journal Capture Led to the Dominance of Analytic Philosophy in the U.S.
How is it that analytic philosophy came to be the dominant philosophical style in the 20th Century in the United States? From inside the practice, the answer seems to be, “because it is a particularly good way of doing philosophy.” But “that it seemed good to them at the time” is not much of an historical explanation. For any other historical development, we’d want ..