Category: Public Philosophy and Outreach

Guest Post, Public Philosophy and Outreach

Can We Save Philosophy? (Guest Post by Robert Kirkman) (updated)

February 20, 2015

The following is a guest post* by Robert Kirkman, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech and director of its Center for…
Philosophy and Culture, Public Philosophy and Outreach

The Philosophy of Philosophical Institutions

January 13, 2015

Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle (both of the University of North Texas) have published an essay, “Socrates Untenured,” at Inside Higher Ed that makes a case…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Famous Philosophy Majors Poster (updated with new link)

December 8, 2014

Catherine Nolan, a philosophy graduate student at SUNY Buffalo, has created a great poster featuring names and photos of well-known people who majored in philosophy,…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Journal of Philosophy in Schools

November 12, 2014

The inaugural issue of Journal of Philosophy in Schools (JPS) is now online. It is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, based in Australia, which will appear twice a year.…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

World Philosophy Day Plans

October 20, 2014

This year’s World Philosophy Day is one month away, on November 20th. From the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) website: In establishing…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophical Op-Ed Contest

October 18, 2014

The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Public Philosophy is seeking nominations for the best opinion pieces or editorials published by philosophers in 2013. We…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Bioethicists on Ebola

October 17, 2014

We are now experiencing the tragic consequences of failing to appreciate the need to invest more resources, expertise and support in developing countries, including…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy on Homelessness

October 14, 2014

The University of Oregon Department of Philosophy has “Community Philosophy Institutes” on various topics, and one of its current projects is “Homelessness and Home.”…

Heap of Links

Asking “How did I get here?” may help us reflect on the nature of personal identity in ways that asking “Who am I?” cannot — Marya Schechtman's 2024 Central Division Meeting Presidential Address
“Collecting is a game, but what kind of game? It is an imperfect information game of acquisition” — a theory of collecting, from Steven Hales
“A general human tendency: to overestimate how far we have come in the progress of human knowledge” — a lengthy interview with Thomas Nagel
“Many couples do not survive trauma like this” — A profile of Susan Brison—who was brutally attacked in 1990, and who wrote about it in Aftermath—and her husband, Thomas Trezise, who has now written his own book stemming from those events
“Bad AI Consciousness Takes” Bingo Card — Henry Shevlin's area of specialization is becoming a popular topic in popular discourse, and he can't stand the "cavalcade of terrible takes"
Does the principle of sufficient reason imply panpsychism? If it does, do we then ponens or tollens? — Sam Kimpton-Nye on these questions and the "demand for intelligibility"
PTSD flashbacks may be harmful, but they may also be helpfully “resupplying phenomenal experience” to those who, owing to trauma, are “grasp alienated” — Michaela McSweeney on trauma and "madness-as-strategy"
A look at the very first issue of Mind — Brett Mullins surveys its articles on the occasion of the journal's 150th anniversary
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"

All Links →

Latest Comments

David Wallace on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
“But how will we paying for humans to do philosophy research, if machines can do it better for less money?” – TBD. (I’m not convinced machines will be…
Dr M., an adjunct on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
Here’s a quaint notion: philosophy pursued so as to become wiser, where this wisdom cannot be gained by an LLM feeding you a preprocessed “answer” to a question…
Kenny Easwaran on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
The AI companies are taking out lots of debt to build new data centers. But the revenue they are bringing in right now is more than enough to…
PhD student on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
I disagree with Jonathan Weisberg, though not about his prediction that AI will make journals and the current peer review system unsustainable. What I disagree with is his…
Nigel on Those OpenAI Math Results
Cool 😎
AGT on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
According to OpenAI our smart vacuum cleaners will kill us all in a few months time, so who cares about publications. Let them come! (Remember the lady on…
Kim Balu on Cain Todd (1976-2026)
I am so saddened to hear this. Cain was my lecturer and dissertation supervisor during my BA at Lancaster. He was such an intelligent, spirited, erudite and inspiring…
why on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
Well even if it was significant, we had twenty other posts discussing a variation of this theme in the past week, so maybe we could move on
Kevin Richardson on PIKSI’s in Peril but You Can Help (guest post)
I just wanted to give some additional support for this. I remember co-founding PIKSI-Boston when I was graduate student at MIT (alongside Matthias Jenny, A.E. Jaques, and Sally).…
Peter on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
One worry I have is that this will exacerbate prestige bias (which is already pretty rife). As someone at an institute that does not have great prestige, it's…
Another Philosopher on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
My thoughts exactly.
ERW on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
No, it can't on any serious definition of "do philosophy." There is plenty going on in our profession unrelated to tech fads.
Zach Goodsell on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
A computer can autonomously do philosophy now. Is that not a significant thing?
David Wallace on Is a “Hardwired Pause” of AI Possible?
The lower bound of both is presumably zero (AI might be harmless; for any economic crash, there is another one that causes less harm). The upper bound of…
assopro on Is a “Hardwired Pause” of AI Possible?
the upper bound will have lower likelyhood than the lower bound and the lower bound of economic disaster is far higher than the lowerbound of ai harm. the…