philosophy
CategoryImprovement in Philosophy over Time
“If Aristotle lived today, there is no way that he would be an Aristotelian.” That winning line is from a recent critique of the history of philosophy by Michael Huemer (Colorado). (more…)
“As science advances, there is more, not less, for philosophy to do”
In a recent interview, Scott Soames, distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, offers up a description of philosophy. It’s a version of one in his recent book, The World Philosophy Made. (more…)
Philosophical Intuitions and Demographic Differences
Philosophers are disagreeing over what lessons should be learned from the growing body of work on the interplay between demographics and philosophical intuitions. (more…)
Philosophy and “The Empirically Tractable”
I think you are right to be suspicious of the tendency of this institutional paradigm to postulate truths that are ‘basic’, ‘ultimate’ or ‘fundamental’ just at the point where things begin to look interesting or problematic from the point of view of those we in the profession pretentiously refer to as ‘non-philosophers’. (more…)
Philosophers as Discoverers of the Unknown (Questions for World Philosophy Day)
“I didn’t even know that was a question I could ask.” (more…)
Is X-Phi P-Hacked? (guest post by Mike Stuart, Edouard Machery and David Colaço)
Has experimental philosophy (“X-Phi”) exhibited signs of “p-hacking”? In this guest post*, Mike Stuart (Geneva), Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh), and David Colaço (Mississippi) report their findings. (more…)
A Lesson of the Global History of Philosophy: Humility
“There’s something profoundly and instructively humbling in the realization that contemporary thought is not as far advanced as we are often inclined to suppose.” (more…)
Common Sense and Philosophical Method
What’s the relationship between common sense and philosophy?
Triumphantly Breaking Free from Academic Philosophy, But Still…
In 2015 I received the National Humanities Medal at a ceremony at the White House. President Obama himself put the medal around my neck, and the rumor was that he made the final choice. In the speech he gave before awarding all the medals, in addition to citing my work on Gödel and Spinoza and Plato, he spoke of me as the philosopher who sometimes chooses to write n..
Input Sought on New Questions for Upcoming PhilPapers Survey of Philosophers
A draft of the follow-up to the 2009 Philpapers survey of philosophical positions held by academic philosophers on various topics includes about 70 new questions. (more…)
How Do I Figure Out What To Think? (guest post by Martin Lenz)
“Picking a side helps you to play the game. But it doesn’t help you in figuring out what you should think. In other words, in order to work out what to think, you don’t have to pick a side at all.” (more…)
“An Optimistic Bet”
The relationship between truth and social progress is then an optimistic bet. I hope that knowing the truth is part of what sets us free. But that’s an empirical hunch that could well turn out to be wrong. (more…)
Death and Progress in Philosophy
While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge. (more…)
The State of Contemporary Metaphysics
“I think metaphysics is what it’s always been—and it’s hard to say what that is!”
Formal Methods in Philosophy: Initial Thoughts and an Interactive Event (guest post by Liam Kofi Bright)
Plausible answers as to the nature of our mission as philosophy educators gives us no unique reason to focus on logic as the mathematical tool of interest to philosophers.
Expanding Philosophy By “Re-Appropriating the Slur that it Is to Be Called ‘Analytic'”
Anthony Booth, reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, called his 2017 book Analytic Islamic Philosophy, yet he doesn’t think there is much to the division between analytic and Continental philosophy. (more…)
A Way Philosophy Differs from the Other Humanities, or a Caricature of the Humanities?
Professors of the humanities make judgments about value. Art historians, literary scholars, musicologists, and classicists say to our students: These works are powerful, beautiful, surprising, strange, insightful. They are more worth your time and attention than others… Yet such judgment violates the principle of equality. So humanists have to pretend we’re not do..
Collingwood and the Contintental – Analytic Divide
“Possibly—the great schism would never have set in at all, had RG Collingwood, one of the most remarkable, open and eclectic minds of the 20th century, not died prematurely in 1943.” (more…)
A “Data-Driven” History of Philosophy of Science
“Philosophy of science is what philosophers of science do. But what is it that philosophers of science do?” A team of researchers has just published their answer, based on computational text-mining of every issue of the journal Philosophy of Science published from 1934-2015.
Epistemic Humility, Ideological Mercy, Legitimation, and Disagreement
“the whiplash of (rather quickly) moving from an intensely conservative, fundamentalist world into a progressive, academic world… taught me two things…”
The Current State of Early Modern Philosophy
“While no one was looking, contextualism replaced rational reconstructionism (also known as ‘appropriationism,’ ‘presentism,’ and ‘collegialism’) as the dominant methodology among English-speaking early modern historians of philosophy.” (more…)
Agnes Callard’s List of “views that are considered controversial that shouldn’t be”
“There’s no such thing as being good or bad at philosophy.” (more…)
Publishing Philosophy One Doesn’t Believe
“Is there anything wrong with publishing philosophical work which one does not believe?” (more…)
Flourishing with Controversy: How Philosophy of Race Does It
One of the popular narratives about higher education is that the discussion of and disagreement over controversial ideas is imperiled, owing to the dominance of political correctness on college campuses. (more…)
Visualization of Gender Distribution in Philosophy Research Topics
Maximilian Noichl, whose visualizations we’ve discussed previously (here and here) has produced one depicting the gender distribution in philosophy research topics. (more…)
Did a Story about a Computer Made of Humans Scoop Searle’s “Chinese Room” by 20 Years?
A story called “The Game” by Anatoly Petrovich Mickevich (writing under the pseudonym A. Dneprov), published in 1961, tells the story of a fictional event in which people who don’t individually understand Portuguese are successfully arranged into a “computer” that translates a sentence from Portuguese. (more…)
PhilPapers Planning to Conduct 2nd Survey of Philosophers in December
David Bourget (Western University) and David Chalmers (NYU), the creators of PhilPapers and related sites, are planning a sequel to their 2009 survey of the philosophical views of professional philosophers for this December. (more…)
Contemporary Philosophy Is “Only the Most Recent Part of the History of Philosophy”
Why study the history of philosophy? That’s a question Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) asks Peter Adamson (LMU) in a new interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher? (more…)