Mini-Heap

Recent additions to the Heap of Links…

Discussion welcome.

1. How, if at all, is the biography of a philosopher relevant to assessing their philosophy? — biography, argues Paul O’Grady (Trinity), can elucidate “the background or second-order conception of philosophy that shapes how… first-order debates are conducted”
2. “What are smells? One would assume we know the answer, yet despite the best efforts of chemoscientists and philosophers, it is still an open area of research” — Benjamin Young (U. Nevada, Reno) gives us a whiff of his answer
3. “He sees us coming into a golden age of philosophy due to the growing influence of AI and all of the questions that it’s raising” — Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram thinks that the AI industry needs philosophers
4. Looking for new episodes of philosophy podcasts? — check out this regularly updated feed from Jason Chen (Ohio State)
5. Philosophy against toxic positivity — a conversation with Mariana Alessandri (Texas Rio Grande Valley)
6. “Philosopher’s Friends Constantly Pitching Him Ideas For Dilemmas” — at The Onion
7. “I was at work [in a warehouse] for eight hours a day. Seven hours of it would be spent reading philosophy, listening to philosophy” — now Stephen West’s “Philosophize This” podcast has 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify,150,000 subscribers on YouTube, and is the third most popular philosophy podcast on Apple (ungated version)

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.

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