philosophy

New Writings by Empedocles Discovered

The ideas of 5th Century BCE philosopher Empedocles have reached us mostly* through paraphrases or fragmentary quotes of his work by later authors, but a new set of his own writings have now been found. (more…)

Philosophy Facts

Philosophy is a “fact-based discipline” that makes progress, says Bryan Frances, and to prove it he offers up “200 straightforward facts directly about philosophical matters that virtually all philosophers know and non-philosophers don’t know.” (more…)

A Brief Appreciation of Rawls

If you appreciate Rawls, you should read this brief essay by Joseph Heath. If you don’t appreciate Rawls, you should read this brief essay by Joseph Heath. (more…)

Calling Dibs in Philosophy

Barry Lam (UC Riverside) wrote recently about the practice of “calling dibs.” (more…)

Does the Size of the Universe Matter to Whether Anything Objectively Matters?

“The universe is old, big, and empty. In comparison, we are new and small.” (more…)

What Can Professional Philosophers Learn from Philosophy for Children? (guest post)

“I should have presented my topic using the p4c method,” said a philosopher about about his talk at a conference on Plato’s theory of forms, after taking part in a demonstration of it. (more…)

Gratitude

In a previous Thanksgiving post that first appeared in 2016, I noted that a 1975 article in Ethics by Fred Berger (then a philosopher at UC Davis), “Gratitude“, begins with the following: (more…)

What’s in a Name? “Philosophy” in Non-European Traditions (guest post)

If certain cultures didn’t have the word “philosophy,” or a word that can directly be translated with “philosophy,” is it illegitimate, maybe culturally imperialist, to impose it on them? (more…)

The Paradox of Analytic Philosophy’s Success

“The paradox is that the more analytic philosophy became dominant in the universities, the more it became removed from the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests.” (more…)

On Being Seriously Funny (guest post)

“I got into philosophy at least partly because it was comic and that’s still much of what I enjoy about it.” (more…)

Against “Throwaway Culture” in Philosophy

Throwaway culture refers to a culture in which the consumption and production of many goods is based on the practice of discarding them after just one or a few uses. (more…)

A Way Analytic Philosophy Is More Accessible than Other Humanities?

Philosopher Samantha Brennan (Guelph) is the daughter of bakers who emigrated from Northern England to Canada, and who never went to college. (more…)

A Manifesto for a Future Philosophy (guest post)

“This project of re-envisaging, looking at past ideas, and developing new ones to deal with our difficult situation will take the work of many people…” (more…)

New Interactive Visualization of Philosophy

Designer Deniz Cem Önduygu has built a new interactive visualization of philosophy. (more…)

Most Cited Recent Philosophy Articles, Year by Year

“What philosophy journal article, published less than ten years ago, has the most citations in philosophy journals?” (more…)

Philosophy of Mind is Very Different Now (guest post)

A field of study may change over time, but since, whatever a field of study is, it’s made up of various kinds of things—researchers, norms, institutions, publications, questions, assumptions—its components may not change at the same rate, or in the same ways.

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What Philosophical Idea Or Position Do You Find The Scariest?

It’s Halloween, and philosophers everywhere are dressing up as obscure ideas and concepts that they’ll have to spend too much time explaining. Costumes are fun, but let’s not forget the horror, shall we? (more…)

Some Very Good Recent Philosophy Articles

Let’s call a philosophy article “recent” if it has been published in the past five years. (more…)

The Not-So-Silent Generation in Philosophy (guest post)

“What explains the Silent Generation’s disproportionate representation among the most influential philosophers in the mainstream Anglophone tradition?” (more…)

“The Constraints Imposed by the Discipline”

“When I finished my dissertation, a professor who had served on the admissions committee six years earlier told me that I was more interesting when I arrived. Philosophical training is something to survive, and this professor wasn’t sure I had made it.” (more…)

What Aren’t We Philosophizing About, But Should?

“The singular magic of philosophy lies in its pairing of imaginative liberty with analytic clarity, but the field has come to privilege the latter at the expense of the former” (more…)

The Outsider Perspective

At one point in his 2017 Dewey Lecture (the audio of which was recently posted at the Blog of the APA), William Lycan (UNC) remarks on a comment of Dave Chalmers‘ (NYU) that “the age of the greats has passed.” (more…)

Academic Philosophy on “Contingent Current Affairs”

“According to one founding myth, philosophy begins in Ancient Greece with Socrates abstracting from concrete examples of just activity in order to determine the timeless and eternal essence of justice. To this day, few philosophy journals are dedicated to the analysis of historically contingent current affairs, let alone a specific event of historical significance.”..

The Collapse of Academic Marxism?

In an entertaining post at In Due Course, Joseph Heath (Toronto) tells the tale of the “death” of Marxism in analytic political philosophy. (more…)