Awards Grants Honors
CategoryPhilosopher Wins €2.5million Leibniz Award
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, professor of philosophy at the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Würzburg, is one of ten winners of the 2016 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. The prize, which includes 2.5 million euros, is awarded by the German Research Foundation. Begun in 1985, it “aims to improve the working conditions of outstanding scientists and academics, expa..
2015 Sanders Prize Winners
The Marc Sanders Foundation, which “aims to stimulate renewed appreciation for traditional philosophy by encouraging, identifying and rewarding excellent research in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion” has announced the winners of its 2015 prizes. They are:
Epistemology: Sophie Horowitz (Ric..
Winners of the APA’s Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2015 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize. The prize is for the two best published philosophy articles written by adjunct professors, and includes $1000.
This year’s winners are Ben Bramble (Lund University) for “Whole-Life Welfarism“, published in American Philosophical Quarterly, and Mar..
Columbia Philosophy Outreach Program Wins Award for Excellence & Innovation (updated)
Rethink: A Philosophy Community Outreach Program at Columbia University, has been awarded the 2015 APA/PDC Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. The aim of the prize, which has been jointly sponsored by the American Philosophical Association and the Philosophy Documentation Center since 1999, is “to recognize philosophy departments, research ce..
Nearly $15m For Philosopher-Led Artificial Intelligence Center
The University of Cambridge has received a £10 million (approximately $14.9 million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust to create a new interdisciplinary institution on artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity, called the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Huw Price, the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, will be the ..
New Public Philosophy Prize
The Marc Sanders Foundation, which already sponsors a number of philosophy prizes, has agreed to sponsor an award for public philosophy: $4500 and publication of the winning essay in Philosophers’ Imprint. Four runners-up will receive honorable mentions. The award committee is chaired by Susan Wolf, and includes Thomas Hofweber, Barry Maguire, and Patricia O’Toole. ..
Nussbaum Wins Quinn Prize (updated)
Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, has won the American Philosophical Association’s Quinn Prize. The prize, named for Philip L. Quinn, is “awarded in recognition of service to philosophy and philosophers, broadly construed.” The award includes $2500 and an engraved plaque.
UPDATE ..
Best Philosophy Blog Post of the Year
3 Quarks Daily has opened up nominations for the 2015 edition of its best philosophy blog post or online-only writing contest. The judge this year is John Collins (Columbia). You can check out who won the prize in previous years at links from here.
The editors at 3QD write:
As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open. There will ..
Jonardon Ganeri Wins Infosys Prize
Jonardon Ganeri (NYU) is the winner of the 2015 Infosys Prize in the humanities category. It is the first time a philosopher has won this prize.
The jury panel, headed by Harvard professor and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, awarded Ganeri for his outstanding scholarship and originality in interpreting and scrutinizing analytical Indian Philosophy and shedding light ..
Frederick Beiser Wins Award from German Government
Frederick Charles Beiser (Syracuse) has been awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, “honoring his lifelong teaching of German philosophy to American students,” according to a press release from the German government. It adds:
Professor Beiser has been critical in introducing important works of German philosophers from Kant to..
Philosophers Among The Browser’s Nominees for Best Writing
You don’t often hear praise in popular culture for the writing of contemporary philosophers, yet The Browser, a popular aggregator of online writing, has included several among their nominees for their 2015 “Golden Giraffes” writing award.
They include:
- David Benatar, “We Are Creatures That Should Not Exist”
- Alain de Botton, “We Hate Cheap Things”
- Les Gre..
Four Philosophers of Biology Win $2.1m
Alan Love (Minnesota), C. Kenneth Waters (Calgary), Marcel Weber (Geneva), and William Wimsatt (Minnesota, Chicago) have won a $2.1 million grant from the Templeton Foundation for their project “From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics”. The funding will support, among other things, summer institutes, lectures, post-docs, and graduate students. More infor..
Sanders Graduate Student Prizes Awarded
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2015 Sanders Graduate Student Prize, sponsored by the Marc Sanders Foundation. They are:
- Joshua Brandt (University of Toronto), “Partiality’s Negative Analogue”
- Kevin Dorst (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “A Contextualist Solution to Miner Disagreements”
- Matthew Shields (G..
APA Book Prize Results Announced
The winner of the 2015 American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize is Manuel Vargas (University of San Francisco) for his Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press).
Honorable mentions went to Adrienne Martin (Claremont McKenna) for her How We Hope: A Moral Psychology (Princeton University Press) and Michael Titelbaum f..
Bernecker Selected as Humboldt Professor at Cologne (updated)
Sven Bernecker, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, is one of the recipients of the latest round of Humboldt Professorships. The award, which includes 3.5 million euros, will bring him to the University of Cologne. Professor Bernecker works in epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, Kant, and German Idealism. According to the Alex..
Bank Stops Paying Colleges to Teach Ayn Rand
BB&T, a banking firm, has apparently stopped its multi-million dollar campaign to buy space in college curricula for the work of Ayn Rand. For years it had provided gifts to colleges and universities called “Moral Foundations grants,” which came with various provisions for bringing attention to the work of Rand. According to a study discussed at Inside Higher Ed, “a..
18 “Hope & Optimism” Projects Receive $2m Funding
Hope and Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations, an interdisciplinary initiative headed by Andrew Chignell (Cornell) and Samuel Newlands (Notre Dame) which last year received about $4.5 million from the John Templeton Foundation, has just announced $2 million in funding for 18 projects. Philosophers receiving funding in this round include:
- Matthew Ben..
A Nobel Prize for Philosophy? (updated)
When Alfred Nobel, the renowned inventor of dynamite, died in 1896, he left behind a will that laid a foundation for the prestigious Nobel Prizes.
He directed most of his wealth to fund prizes for those who confer the “greatest benefit on mankind” in a number of specified fields. Hence we have the Nobel Prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, liter..
Projects Funded by New Directions in the Study of Mind
New Directions in the Study of Mind, a project headed by Tim Crane (Cambridge) and funded primarily with a £1.25 million grant from the Templeton Foundation, has announced the initiatives it will be supporting:
- “Attention, Not Self: The Nature of the Conscious Mind” — Jonardon Ganeri (NYU)
- “Primitive Colours and Non-reductive Minds” — Derek Brown (Brandon)
- “..
Three Philosophers Honored by Royal Society of Canada
Last year, the Royal Society of Canada launched a new initiative to provide recognition for notables among the “emerging generation of scholarly, scientific and artistic leadership in Canada.” Called the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, it will be welcoming 48 new members this fall, including three philosophers: Kristin Andrews (York University), Ant..
Examples of Public Philosophy
Barry Maguire (UNC) is attempting to get a new prize for public philosophy up and running. By “public philosophy” he means “anything with significant philosophical content or method written by someone with significant philosophical trainining primarily for an audience of non-philosophers.”
He is collecting examples of public philosophy but is having trouble findi..
Bioethics Groups Win $3.6m NIH Grant on Pregnancy and HIV/AIDS
Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Center for Bioethics, and the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Department of Bioethics and Humanities have won a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project on ethi..
2014 Lakatos Award Given To Two Philosophers
The 2014 Lakatos Award has been won jointly by Gordon Belot (Michigan) for his book Geometric Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2011) and David Malament (UC Irvine) for his book Topics in the Foundations of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravitation Theory (Chicago, 2012). Each will receive the full award amount of £7500.
From the award website at the London ..
Philosopher Wins $50,000 Hiett Prize
Scott Samuelson, associate professor of philosophy and humanities at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, is the 2015 recipient of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. The Hiett Prize is awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, whose purpose is “enrich and deepen lives through the wisdom and imagination of the humanities.” According to the Dallas Inst..
New Philosophy Center Aims to Bridge American – Chinese Gap
The Berggruen Philosophy and Culture Center is an initiative launched to “look past contemporary political differences” between the United States and China “to their deeper intellectual roots.” A project of the Berggruen Institute, the Philosophy and Culture Center
will include a fellowship program between Chinese and American universities; an “ideas contest,” co..
Buchanan Wins 2015-16 PBK Romanell Professorship
Allen Buchanan (Duke/KCL) is the 2015-2016 winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Professorship. The Romanell Professorship is awarded on the basis of one’s “distinguished achievement and substantial contribution to the public understanding of philosophy.” It includes a $7,500 stipend and three lectures. More details about Buchanan’s work and why he won are here.
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Philosopher to Receive 2014 National Humanities Medal
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of the novels The Mind-Body Problem and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, as well as books on Gödel and Spinoza, and who wrote last year’s hit work of non-fiction, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, will be a recipient of one of the ten 2014 National Humanities Medals awarded at a ceremo..
$3.9 Million for “Moral Superstars” Search
The Beacon Project is a new three-year initiative in psychology and philosophy “to find and define the morally exceptional and better understand how to improve moral character,” according to a press release from Wake Forest University. The project is led by professor of psychology William F. Fleeson (Wake Forest) and includes philosophers Christian B. Miller (Wake F..