Category: Philosopher Demographics

Philosopher Demographics

Diversity in Philosophy: Is the Problem Lack of Pre-College Exposure?

September 12, 2016

Recall these figures from “What is the State of Blacks in Philosophy?” by Tina Fernandes Botts, Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntur Mallarangeng, and Quayshawn…
Philosopher Demographics

Philosophical Gentrification

May 31, 2016

That the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy recently added five entries on Latin American philosophy is one indication of growing recognition of the area, writes Axel…
Philosopher Demographics

Penn State’s Efforts at Diversifying Philosophy

March 28, 2016

Five black women earned Ph.D.s in philosophy from Penn State this year, according to an article at The Chronicle of Higher Education (currently paywalled) that looks…
Philosopher Demographics

Demographic Data on U.S. Philosophy Faculty

March 14, 2016

Trends show a slow decrease in the extent to which U.S. full-time philosophy faculty at four-year institutions is male and white, according to data…
Philosopher Demographics

Bias, Subjectivity, and Superficiality in Philosophy

March 4, 2016

The philosophy profession in the United States is overwhelmingly male and white. What explains this? In an essay in The Los Angeles Times, Myisha Cherry (UI Chicago)…
Philosopher Demographics

King Award Recipient: “Neither thrilled nor honored”

January 20, 2016

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (may be paywalled) this morning that Naomi Zack, professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, is the recipient of…
Philosopher Demographics

Women’s Participation At APAs Has Doubled over 40 Years

November 17, 2015

Over at the Splintered Mind, Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) reports on research he has conducted into the participation of women on the main programs…
Philosopher Demographics

Philosophers by Subject Area (updated)

October 7, 2015

The Philosophy Documentation Center‘s mailing lists provides a breakdown of how many U.S. and Canadian philosophers claim various areas of specialization. I don’t know…
Philosopher Demographics

Diversity in Moral and Political Philosophy Journals

June 1, 2015

Alex Guerrero (U. Penn) looked at four leading journals in moral and political philosophy to see how they have been doing in terms of racial…
News, Philosopher Demographics

Philosopher Attributes Job Loss To Challenging White Hegemony (updated)

May 22, 2015

Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, a research associate with a term appointment at University College London, is claiming that his contract was not renewed “because…
Philosopher Demographics

Update on Changes to US Census Question

April 29, 2015

You may recall that this past December, Kathleen Wallace (Hofstra) brought to our attention that the U.S. Census Bureau was considering eliminating from its…
Academic Labor, Philosopher Demographics

Sexism in Academic Hiring — A Myth? (updated)

April 14, 2015

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences produced findings that appear to show that hiring practices in certain fields are…
Philosopher Demographics

Why Are So Many Philosophers of Religion Theists?

January 30, 2015

72.8% of the 3226 philosophers who took the PhilPapers survey in 2009 said that they accept or lean towards atheism. Among philosophers of religion,…
Data, Philosopher Demographics

Minorities in Philosophy: Data Visualized

January 11, 2015

Data from 860 philosophers who identified themselves on the UPDirectory (previously) as belonging to minority demographic groups has been analyzed and depicted in various graphs…
Philosopher Demographics

Lack of Political Diversity: A Problem?

December 22, 2014

In a recent paper, a group of social psychologists—Jonathan Haidt (NYU), José L. Duarte (ASU), Jarret T. Crawford (College of New Jersey), Charlotta Stern (Stockholm), Lee Jussim (Rutgers ),…
Philosopher Demographics

Directory of Philosophers from Underrepresented Groups

December 17, 2014

The UPDirectory is a new website that provides a directory of philosophers from traditionally underrepresented groups in philosophy. From the site: The purpose of…
Philosopher Demographics

Separating Philosophy from Religious Studies and Theology (Updated)

December 4, 2014

In research on higher education, philosophy majors, religious studies majors, and theology majors are often grouped together. This is because the questionnaires used to create…
Issues in the Philosophy Profession, Philosopher Demographics

Another Explanation for Philosophy’s Whiteness

October 23, 2014

In most philosophy classes the religious traditions of the Middle East and Asia are in the periphery as the other to philosophy – the impulses to…
Philosopher Demographics

APA Member Demographics

October 9, 2014

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has published a table that provides some basic demographic information about its membership, including gender, race/ethnicity, LGBT status, disability status,…

Heap of Links

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
“Reading List” is a free Mac app for keeping track of papers to read — philosophy PhD student Hayden Kajercline created this productivity tool for researchers, with help from Claude
How should we react to scary predictions about AI? “First: by asking questions” — "If you believe predictions uncritically, it amounts to obeying in advance," says Carissa Véliz
“I feel unbelievably lucky that I was able to make philosophy my profession” — Karen Ng reflects on her path into philosophy, at #first-genphilosophers
The ordinary concept of knowledge “doesn’t work at all the way philosophers said it does” — a round-up of studies shows how weird the philosophers' version of the concept is
1000 or so psychiatrists were asked to diagnose standardized clinical case vignettes. “Two doctors agreed on the diagnosis only 55% of the time” — What does this tell us about psychiatry? Or about other fields in which experts disagree?
Where Aristotle taught Alexander — "this newest dig may be the most revealing yet, offering insight into the specifics of Alexander the Great’s education"
Over 4000 of the Justice Department’s lawyers have left their jobs since Trump’s second term began — The New Yorker on the moral dilemma facing some government employees: resign and avoid complicity, or stay and resist where one can?
Underappreciated philosophy published between 1970-2019 — some old posts to which you can still add works that should be better appreciated
The AI threat to independent student writing is not necessarily a threat to student learning — what's needed, says Joe Cruz, are courses "in which ideas are expressed in real time and analytical thought unfolds as a debate or an oral defense or a group discussion"—and small enough classes to make that work
Would you take a pill that allows you, with no ill health effects, to permanently forgo sleep? — Rebecca Lowe thinks you have no good reason not to, though she neglects to consider that sometimes it's the world that needs a break from you
Fifty essays in the philosophy of paleontology — by Max Dresow at the Extinct blog
“Asking whether [an AI] model ‘has a world model’ leaves much unresolved. Our findings point toward mechanistically studying its world modeling; uncovering the structures it learned [and] the world modeling capacities that recruit these” — further research on the internal representations of AIs
Sixty Years of Philosophy in America — Ernest Sosa's Dewey Lecture from the 2024 APA Eastern Division Meeting
“You’re responsible for other people’s learning of this material, so you better know it at a higher level yourself” — for 20 years, the Socrates Project at the University of Toronto has hired senior philosophy undergrads to run weekly tutorials for introductory students

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Latest Comments

Student Philosopher on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
'Personally, I am excited by this development. Although I very much enjoy engaging in philosophy the old-fashioned way, one reason I turned to computer science was that I…
David Wallace on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
At last: a nuanced and thoughtful take on this complex situation.
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
I think you are underestimating how geeky (in a good way!) leadership is at Anthropic and OpenAI. I think if you said to them, “we’ve proved the Riemann…
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
I completely disagree with that description of math. And much of the criticism of openAI by Tao and others is because they disagree, too. No interesting academic discipline…
Michael Gorman on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
"Part of me wonders if all my philological training will end up being less useful than I imagined if AI can help in these areas" — or the…
Michel on Those OpenAI Math Results
I have no such opinion, because not only am I not a mathematician or a logician, but my math chops don't go very far, and my logic chops…
Mathieu Rees on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
There was once a time where the definition-counterexample method was dominant in analytic philosophy. I think that good insight was produced by that method, though some philosophers have…
tfortarski on Those OpenAI Math Results
Then that's setting the bar pretty high indeed. Math (or in any case its subset transformed by AI) could be described easily : it's about proving theorems. There's…
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
"Your claim, ultimately, is that AI is not and could not be useful in way that’s as transformative in philosophy as in mathematics. Right?" No, I didn't say…
Noah Gordon on Those OpenAI Math Results
I had never heard of the term "gish gallop" before reading your first comment so I had looked it up. All the definitions say that it involves putting…
tfortarski on Those OpenAI Math Results
One of the things I realized in the past 2 months is that the accuracy of AI models is entirely dependent on the conditions under which they run…
tfortarski on Those OpenAI Math Results
Your claim, ultimately, is that AI is not and could not be useful in way that's as transformative in philosophy as in mathematics. Right? My view is that…
oxan on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
It seems to me that there is so much about the philosophy part of the academic-industrial complex that already militates against the writing of good philosophy by humans…
David Wallace on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
I certainly don't have a knock-down argument that it would be impossible to jettison most of modernity while keeping the crucial health and sanitation bits (and whatever other…
HotWheelReggie1991 on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
There's a lot in here Socrates! "What is the point of doing anything at all?" To develop and exercise or capacities in the service of flourishing, individual and…