Author: Justin Weinberg

Awards Grants Honors

Shagrir Wins Covey Award

April 4, 2023

Oron Shagrir, professor of philosophy and cognitive and brain sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the winner of the 2023 Covey Award.
Awards Grants Honors

Philosophy Book Recognized by Association for Asian Studies

April 4, 2023

The Joseph Levenson Prize is awarded by the Association for Asian Studies to “the English-language books that make the greatest contribution to increasing understanding…
Awards Grants Honors

Altman Wins Journal of Applied Philosophy Best Essay Prize

April 3, 2023

The Journal of Applied Philosophy has awarded its 2022 Best Essay Prize to Scott Altman (USC).
Daily Nous Features

Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update

April 3, 2023

The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books…
humor

Mini-Heap

April 1, 2023

Links of the day…
Uncategorized

Mini-Heap

March 30, 2023

The latest links…
Lives of Philosophers

Maria Rosa Antognazza (1964-2023)

March 30, 2023

Maria Rosa Antognazza, professor of philosophy at King’s College London, has died.
philosophy

Better Philosophy Through Time Travel

March 29, 2023

Here’s one way of thinking about progress in philosophy.
technology

A Petition to Pause Training of AI Systems

March 29, 2023

“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This…
technology

Thinking about Life with AI

March 28, 2023

“What kind of civilization is it that turns away from the challenge of dealing with more… intelligence?”
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Mini-Heap

March 28, 2023

Recent additions to the Heap of Links…
News

Sex Discrimination in a Philosophy Job Search at BGSU (guest post)

March 27, 2023

Last week we reported on how Christian Coons, associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), is facing disciplinary proceedings that may lead…
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Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update

March 27, 2023

The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books…
Data

2023 QS Rankings in Philosophy

March 24, 2023

The 2023 “QS World University Rankings” have been published. These contain rankings by subject matter, including philosophy.
Uncategorized

GPT-4 and the Question of Intelligence

March 23, 2023

This Daily Nous item is temporarily unavailable while its historical content completes a security review. The title and publication record are preserved; the original…
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Katz Among Finalists for Cherry Award

March 23, 2023

Claire Katz, professor of philosophy at Texas A & M University, is one of three finalists for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great…
Daily Nous Features

Mini-Heap

March 22, 2023

New links…
publication

It’s All Too Hard to Get Plagiarizing Philosophy Publications Retracted (guest post)

March 22, 2023

“It can involve an unreasonable amount of time, an unreasonable amount of work, and an unreasonably uphill struggle to obtain retractions of philosophy publications,…
Philosophy Websites

SEP Currently Down (updated: now back up)

March 21, 2023

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is currently down, reportedly owing to a power outage at Stanford.
philosophy

Optimism about Philosophy

March 21, 2023

“I know a lot of people on twitter and social media complain about the current state of philosophy but I tend to be an…

Heap of Links

We may think that we lose something significant when AI beats us to a discovery — if we do, Daniel Greco says, that seems to imply we gained something significant, too
“Once upon a time there were a couple of handsome naturalistic philosophers working in and around the philosophy of fiction” — thoughts on new directions in philosophy of fiction, from several philosophers
What is the debate over whether transwomen are women even about? — Katie Zhou argues that it's about which facts are granted "the cross-contextual significance and stickiness characteristic of gender"
We’re putting human brain cells into mice brains — One moral risk of this, says Mackenzie Graham, is a decrease in our ability to interpret what mice behavior tells us about their experiences and welfare
The Rawls Game — with instructions, background, advice, and downloadable character cards
“The central question would shift from ‘How do we maximize shareholder value?’ to ‘How do different forms of organization distribute power, risk and reward — and which should we strengthen?'” — Chris Marquis on the case for abolishing, or at least radically changing, business schools
Asking “How did I get here?” may help us reflect on the nature of personal identity in ways that asking “Who am I?” cannot — Marya Schechtman's 2024 Central Division Meeting Presidential Address
“Collecting is a game, but what kind of game? It is an imperfect information game of acquisition” — a theory of collecting, from Steven Hales
“A general human tendency: to overestimate how far we have come in the progress of human knowledge” — a lengthy interview with Thomas Nagel
“Many couples do not survive trauma like this” — A profile of Susan Brison—who was brutally attacked in 1990, and who wrote about it in Aftermath—and her husband, Thomas Trezise, who has now written his own book stemming from those events
“Bad AI Consciousness Takes” Bingo Card — Henry Shevlin's area of specialization is becoming a popular topic in popular discourse, and he can't stand the "cavalcade of terrible takes"
Does the principle of sufficient reason imply panpsychism? If it does, do we then ponens or tollens? — Sam Kimpton-Nye on these questions and the "demand for intelligibility"
PTSD flashbacks may be harmful, but they may also be helpfully “resupplying phenomenal experience” to those who, owing to trauma, are “grasp alienated” — Michaela McSweeney on trauma and "madness-as-strategy"
A look at the very first issue of Mind — Brett Mullins surveys its articles on the occasion of the journal's 150th anniversary
The most bizarre plagiarism-related story ever — featuring: a death, an investigator, a dissertation, a mysterious red book, and more
New data on earnings by major and university — though not all universities
“AI poses two different existential threats to [our] valuing practices” — Jordan MacKenzie offers an account of why negative judgments about AI taking over our creative and caring activities are justified
“Submission” is a humorous clicker-style game about starting a career in academic philosophy (or not) — created by Nat Hansen
“The best investment in education is to become the most human human—a challenging, fulfilling, exciting pursuit that connects us across generations” — an interview with Christa Acampora, philosopher and dean of Arts & Sciences at UVA
“What would happen if we tried to live without the mythology of agency at all?” — It's worth pondering, since "agency is just an internal command hallucination," says Alexander Douglas

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Latest Comments

Darren on Putting the Pub in Public Philosophy
The Practical Philosophy Club in Toronto gets over 100 people at their Madison Avenue Pub nights each week – https://www.meetup.com/practical-philosophy-club-ontario/
dmf on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
lot's of limits to the uses of understanding when it comes to living through….
V. Alan White on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
I'm a longtime fan of her writing just because of essays like this.
Keith Douglas on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
I imagine a lot of philosophers may wish to analyze the "autonomy" involved, too.
Paul Wilson on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
Start with Descartes. Can't go wrong with Descartes. But freshmen are not so engaged with such purported proofs of God as they are with the meaning of life…
David Wallace on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
They explore this question: they evaluate 339 dissertations in toto to see how predictive AI in the abstract is of AI in the main text. From the paper:…
Keith Douglas on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
This seems parallel to the concerns many of us have about bug reports in software – people can use (currently hyped) AI to great effect to reason about…
Keith Douglas on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
There's a lot of work from us in cyber security about backdooring models – and that's about the ones you can download. "Open Source" doesn't apply – in…
Keith Douglas on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
But does that need a currently hyped AI system? Corpus searches and such at enormous scale have been around for a long time. That's one problem I see…
Keith Douglas on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
Basic research in chemistry was also highly funded for a few decades post WWII and petered off in the 1970s and 1980s like everything else. Chemists in industry…
Paul Wilson on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
Amy Olberding's sensuous and thoughtful prose reminds me of Annie Dillard at her best. Ordered.
Luke on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Interesting work, but I do think there may be a step between using AI in abstracts and more substantively. Surely the first indicates a greater chance of willingness…
Animal Symbolicum on New: “Why Teach Philosophy?”
Thanks! I clearly need a healthy dose of anti-cynicism serum.
Russell Marcus on New: “Why Teach Philosophy?”
Part of what motivated this WTP project (and so much of my recent work) is my conviction that a good way to save philosophy is to teach it…
Charles Bakker on A New Tool for Curbing AI Cheating (guest post)
For what it is worth, I am a TA monitoring one of these writing labs as I write this. The possibility of one of the students cheating is…