The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of its latest round of prizes.
Below are the prizes and their winners.
2025 AI2050 Prizes
($10,000 each. Awarded in recognition of outstanding philosophical scholarship relating to artificial intelligence.)
- Early Career Researcher: Raphaël Millière (University of Oxford), “Normative Conflicts and Shallow AI Alignment” (Philosophical Studies, 2025)
- Established Researcher: Mathias Risse (Harvard University), “Moral Status and Political Membership: Toward a Political Theory for Life 3.0” (Political Theory of the Digital Age, 2023)
2025 APA/PDC Prize
($3000 worth of electronic philosophy resources from the Philosophy Documentation Center; plaque. Recognizes philosophy departments, research centers, institutes, societies, publishers, and other organizations for creating programs that risk undertaking new initiatives in philosophy and do so with excellence and success.)
Philosophy Slam (University of Louisville)
Jon Barwise Prize
(Plaque. Awarded for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing by an APA member)
2025: Dana S. Scott (Carnegie Mellon University)
2026: Shannon Vallor (Edinburgh Futures Institute)
2025 Book Prize
($4000. Awarded in odd years for the best published book that was written by a younger scholar during the previous two years.)
Daniel Smyth (Wesleyan University), Intuition in Kant: The Boundlessness of Sense (Cambridge University Press, 2024)
2025 David W. Concepción Prize
($1500; plaque. Recognizes a philosophy teacher who has had a profound impact on the student learning of philosophy in undergraduate and/or pre-college settings.)
Alex Stehn (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)
2026 Arthur Danto/American Society for Aesthetics Prize
($1000, APA Symposium. Awarded for the best paper in the field of aesthetics, broadly understood, in a refereed journal, or an original book chapter or original essay published in a collection with a multiplicity of contributors.)
Nick Riggle (University of San Diego), “Aesthetic Value and the Practice of Aesthetic Valuing“
Honorable Mention: James Young (University of Victoria), “The Myth of the Aesthetic“
2026 John Dewey Lectures
($1000. Three annual lectures, one at each divisional meeting of the APA, given by a prominent and senior (typically retired) philosopher associated with that Division, who is invited to reflect broadly and in an autobiographical spirit on philosophy in America as seen from the perspective of a personal intellectual journey.)
- Eastern: Susan Wolf (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
- Central: Jim Joyce (University of Michigan)
- Pacific: Patricia Churchland (University of California, San Diego)
2025 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought
($500. Awarded to the author of the best unpublished, English-language, philosophical essay in Latin American thought. The winning essay will be published in APA Studies on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy.)
Juan Carlos Gonzalez (Colorado College), “Living Uneconomically: The Aesthetics of Antonio Caso”
2025 Joseph B. Gittler Award
($4000. Given for an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences.)
John M. Doris (Cornell University), Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality (Oxford University Press, 2022)
2026 William James Prize
($300. For the best paper in the area of American philosophy that is both (a) written by a philosopher who received their PhD within five years of the beginning of the calendar year in which the paper is submitted, or is a graduate student, and (b) accepted for inclusion in the Eastern Division program by the program committee through the normal process of anonymous-reviewing.)
Anton Dolmatov (University of Wisconsin–Madison), “Equal Opportunity for Future Citizens”
2026 Lenore Bloom Munitz Prize
($1000. Awarded annually to a scholar at any career stage who has a paper accepted for inclusion in the APA Eastern Division program through the normal anonymous review process that contributes importantly to an understanding of how philosophy can help to cultivate or enhance our understanding of civic virtue.)
Samuel Dishaw (University of Louvain), “Justifiability and the Other’s Point of View”
2026 Milton K. Munitz Prize
($1000. Awarded annually to a scholar at any career stage who has a paper accepted for inclusion in the APA Eastern Division program through the normal anonymous review process that deals significantly with metaphysics, cosmology, or ontology, or explore Munitz’s approaches to these questions.)
Patrick Cronin (University of Wisconsin–Madison), “The Collapse of Hume’s Everlasting Check”
2025 Alvin Plantinga Prize
($10,000 for winner, $5000 for honorable mention. The prize recognizes original essays that engage philosophical issues about or in substantial ways related to theism.)
Brian Ballard (Loyola Marymount University), “Faith Because of Evil”
Honorable mention: Amber Griffioen (Independent Scholar), “Just Pretend? Religious Make-Believe as Theological Virtue”
2025 Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest
($100 each. Winning submissions will call public attention, either directly or indirectly, to the value of philosophical thinking. The pieces will be judged in terms of their success as examples of public philosophy, and should be accessible to the general public, focused on important topics of public concern, and characterized by sound reasoning.)
- Graham Parsons (Vassar College, Bard Prison Initiative), “There’s a Dangerous Misconception about the Military’s Obligations to the President” (The New York Times, 2024)
- Rachel Robison-Greene (Utah State), “The Temptations of Nostalgia” (3 Quarks Daily, 2024)
- Joe Slater (University of Glasgow), James Humphries (University of Glasgow), and Michael Townsen Hicks (University of Glasgow), “ChatGPT Isn’t ‘Hallucinating’—It’s Bullshitting!” (Scientific American, 2024)
- Mary Townsend (St. John’s University), “What I Am Looking for in Empty Churches” (The New York Times, 2024)
2025 Philip L. Quinn Prize
($2500; plaque. Awarded in recognition of service to philosophy and philosophers, broadly construed.)
Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University)
2025 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize
($1000 each. Awarded for the two best published articles in philosophy written by adjunct professors.)
- Mahmoud Jalloh (California Institute of Technology), “Metaphysics and Convention In Dimensional Analysis, 1914–1917”
- Austen McDougal (New York University), “Amnesia and Punishment”
2026 Sanders Graduate Student Awards
($1000 each. Awarded to each of the three best papers in mind, metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics submitted for the annual APA Eastern Division meeting by graduate students, as chosen by the Eastern Division program committee.)
- Eno Agolli (Rutgers University and Saul Kripke Center), “On Hats: A Counterpart Theory for the Third Reading”
- Hans Shenk (Temple University), “Revisiting Hornsby and Stanley: In Defense of Productive Practical Knowledge”
- Margot Witte (University of Michigan), “You Should Be Tortured: The Relational Value of Internal Conflict”
2026 Sanders Lecture
($3500; travel stipend. Presented annually at a divisional meeting of the APA on a topic in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, or epistemology that engages the analytic tradition.)
Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard University), “Foregrounding the Background”
2025 Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize
($1500. Awarded every other year to the best unpublished essay or monograph on the philosophy of war and peace submitted for the competition.)
Linda Eggert (Stanford University), “Defensive Harming, Autonomous Weapons, and the Laws of War”
2026 Stephen J. White Prize
($1000. Awarded biennially to the best published paper by a junior philosopher that engages directly with Professor White’s work or with themes that were central to his thinking.)
Pascal Brixel (Northwestern University), “Freedom First: On Coercion and Coercive Offers” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2025)
The APA’s announcement of the prizes is here.
