philosophy
CategoryPhilosophy as “The Most Minimalistic Art” and the Challenges of Interdisciplinary Work
I was attracted to philosophy because it is the most minimalistic art I can think of. To express ideas, you use only the most minimal, the most reduced resources: no body (as in theatre), no figures (as in pictorial art), no voice or sound (as in music), no story (as in literature)—just thoughts. They are ordered, ideally crystal-clear and sharp, but they are just..
Why Read Old Philosophy? (guest post by Katja Grace)
The following is a guest post* by Katja Grace, a researcher at Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and philosophy PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. It first appeared at her blog, Meteuphoric. (more…)
The Relationship Between The Philosophy And The Science Of The Mind
A persistent challenge to philosophy is whether it is rendered obsolete by science. Consider this exchange on the philosophy of mind:
Cognitive scientists are working to understand many issues raised by Kant—do you think the scientists are going to get conclusive answers to the question about consciousness and the mind—and other minds—and if they are, doesn..
Rules for History of Philosophy
Peter Adamson, professor of philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and creator of the podcast History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, has put together a list of 20 rules or “suggestions of best practice” for doing the history of philosophy. (more…)
Defending Philosophy’s Adversarial Culture
Philosophy has what could best be described as an adversarial disciplinary culture, something that manifests itself most clearly in how the Q&A goes after a research talk. Basically, after people present their philosophical views, the audience members try to tear them apart. Every question is a variation on “here’s why I think you’re wrong…” It is not supportive. Al..
The Philosophy Bubble
In her interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher? (a part of which we discussed here), Sally Haslanger (MIT) draws attention to three problematic tendencies in philosophers. The first concerns the idea of multiple intelligences:
To be honest, I think most philosophers are pretty limited in their intelligences. They may be amazing along a certain dimension ..
The “Analytic Co-opting” and Death of the Continental Tradition
A conversation about Continental philosophy between Fordham University philosophy professor Babette Babich and game-designer and “outsider philosopher” Chris Bateman is being published in parts on Bateman’s blog, Only a Game (part one, part two).
Bateman attributes to Babich the view that “the art of continental philosophy is dying out.” Babich, who works in Cont..
A Useful Philosophical Quirk
Every once in a while I read something that brings to the fore both how strange analytic philosophy can be and how useful it is that we’re accustomed to its strangeness. The latest, this morning, was in an interview with Sarah Moss (University of Michigan) at 3:AM Magazine. Interviewer Richard Marshall asks her about four-dimensionalism. Moss replies: (more…)
Topical Shifts in Submissions to Ethics Over the Past 6 Years
Ethics: an International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, one of the discipline’s leading journals, is seeking a new editor-in-chief. (more…)
Interdisciplinarity and Marginalization in Philosophy
When asked whether some of the work in experimental philosophy would be better characterized as psychology, Joshua Knobe (Yale) tells Pendaran Roberts (Warwick):
First off, it should be emphasised that analogous issues arise for just about any area of philosophy that pursues interdisciplinary research. (more…)
A Flag for Utilitarianism
Does your philosophical view have a flag? If you’re a utilitarian, it does now. Johan E. Gustafsson, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of York, has designed a flag for utilitarianism. Here it is: (more…)
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…)
Philosophy, History, and the Environment
There’s another fascinating philosophical interview at 3:AM Magazine, this time with NYU’s Dale Jamieson. Once again there is an abundance of interesting material. Two passages stood out. (more…)
The Pathologies of Philosophers
Pathologies of Philosophers
an incomplete list
Enthymemalysis – the inability to proceed with a conversation because one’s interlocutor has neglected to explicitly state a step in their thinking that any normal listener would have automatically filled in. (more…)
Naturalism, Evolutionary Biology and Theism
In yet another excellent interview at 3AM: Magazine, Richard Marshall talks with Elliott Sober (Wisconsin). There is a lot of interesting material in this interview, including Sober’s takes on the criticisms of evolutionary theory by Jerry Fodor (Rutgers) and Thomas Nagel (NYU).
On Nagel, he says:
Nagel thinks that “remarkable facts” can’t have low probabiliti..
“European Philosophy” Is No Good
At least not as a helpful label:
So I have a provocative proposal of my own: intellectually speaking, the more valid distinction is not between ‘European’ and ‘non-European’ philosophy, but between philosophical cultures that respond to Greek thought (however indirectly), and those that do not. (more…)
Why Are These Philosophers Voting For Trump?
A list of scholars and writers, including several philosophers, have placed their names on a website beneath the statement, “Given our choices in the presidential election, we believe that Donald Trump is the candidate most likely to restore the promise of America, and we urge you to support him as we do.” (more…)
The Ideas Faculty are Too Scared To Defend: A Follow-Up
Last week I wrote about the Great Academic Absorption and asked about the ideas it left unabsorbed, or squeezed out. At the time, I wrote: “Since this is a blog largely for academic philosophers, let’s limit answers to our area of expertise: philosophy (as broadly construed as you’d like). Which philosophical or philosophy-related ideas are students not being expose..
Interdisciplinarity and Progress in Philosophy
My current work on racial inequality and social justice—and to a lesser extent my earlier work—takes me into areas of knowledge outside of what we teach and learn in philosophy classrooms. In the last six years or so I have co-authored multiple works and grant proposals with an economist, sociologist, social psychologist, lawyer, and a historian. I have written wi..
Philosophers: Stop Being Self-Indulgent and Start Being Like Daniel Dennett, says Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett (Tufts) does seem to say that, but the real topic of this post is the good question he raises about how to figure out whether the kind of philosophy you’re doing is worth doing. We’ll get to that. But first, check out the following, from what might be the most clickbait-titled-but-just-for-academic-philosophers-article-ever-to-appear-on-a-mainstream-w..
Return of the Intuitions
The word “intuition” has been deployed with increasing frequency in philosophy over the past 100 years. This may be owed to an increase in philosophers’ explicit reliance on intuitions, but also to the increasing critical scrutiny that philosophers’ reliance on intuitions has been facing for 3 to 4 decades now. Here’s Richard Brandt in A Theory of the Good and the R..
The League of Notorious Philosophical Arguments
Over at Electric Agora, Daniel A. Kaufman (Missouri State) takes up what may be analytic philosophy’s most notorious argument: G.E. Moore’s proof of an external world. As Kaufman says,
If you were to pinch the nearest analytically trained philosopher and ask him for the worst, most obviously fallacious argument in his tradition, he might very well tell you that i..
The Conscious Thought of Expertise, The Distribution of Ideas, and the Truth about Chicken Sexers
In an entertaining and interesting interview, Barbara Gail Montero, associate professor of philosophy at CUNY and former professional ballet dancer, discusses, among other things, the role of conscious thought in the activities of experts. On one view (notably advanced by Hubert Dreyfuss and John McDowell ), experts get into the “flow” and act in a “nonminded” way:..
What Philosophers Aren’t Talking About, But Should (Updated)
Occasionally a comment makes its way onto Daily Nous, or into the Daily Nous inbox, along the following lines: “I find it strange that no one seems to be discussing some important topic or defending some important thesis, T. Is it because the majority of philosophers, P, find T philosophically uninteresting? Or is the moderator censoring T? Or is it because P is too..
Philosophical Belief, Philosophical Relief
I suppose there are moments in everyone’s life during which they are forced to believe something that they don’t want to believe or don’t think they should have to believe, but I would venture a guess that this happens more frequently, and in regards to more abstract beliefs, to philosophers. Consider the following: (more…)
The Right Tool for the Philosophical Job
Do philosophers fail to make use of the tools best-suited to their inquiries? Do they even fail to learn how to use these tools? That’s one of the claims made by Jerry Gaus (University of Arizona) in a rich and wide-ranging interview at 3:AM Magazine. He says: (more…)
What Are Philosophers Supposed To Do?
The summer issue of The Hedgehog Review is out and features a symposium, “On the Business of Philosophy.” The main element of the symposium is Richard Rorty’s Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia, with responses from Susan Haack (Miami), Robert Pippin (Chicago), and Matthew Crawford (Virginia). (more…)
“Staring Contests That Make Philosophy Interesting”
Imagine two people arguing about free will. One of them, let’s call her Olga the Optimist, has just heard about compatibilism and happily accepts the view that of course she has free will—after all, if she wants to raise her arm she raises her arm and if she doesn’t she does not. The other one, let’s call him Paul the Pessimist, points out to her that she hasn’t c..