Category: Public Philosophy and Outreach

Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy of Science Summer Program for Underrepresented Groups

January 25, 2017

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh will be hosting a summer program in philosophy of science for undergraduate students from underrepresented…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

From Prison in Illinois to Publication in The New Yorker with Help from a Philosophy Professor

January 11, 2017

Fifteen inmates at Statesville Correctional Center in Illinois took a course on mass incarceration with Northwestern University philosophy professor Jennifer Lackey. It was an interdisciplinary…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy In An Inclusive Key

January 10, 2017

Philosophy In An Inclusive Key, or PIKSI, is a philosophy summer program “designed to encourage undergraduates from underrepresented groups to consider future study in…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Is This The Breakthrough Philosophy Podcast?

January 5, 2017

Barry Lam, associate professor of philosophy at Vassar College and a fellow at Duke University has been working on a new philosophy audio program…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

What Philosophical Term or Concept Should Be More Widely Known?

January 4, 2017

Each year, Edge.org publishes responses to an “annual question.” This year’s question is “What scientific term of concept ought to be more widely known?”…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

More Funding To Study Effects on Teaching Kids Philosophy

October 21, 2016

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), an independent charity in the United Kingdom, has awarded a £1.2 million ($1.46 million) grant to SAPERE for it to expand and…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Tips for a Successful Philosophy Demo

September 26, 2016

The president of a university philosophy club writes in seeking advice on how to attract new students at the activities fair to their table. One idea…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

The Changing Role of Philosophers As Public Intellectuals

September 15, 2016

Via a chock-full-of-philosophy-links post at the wonderful Omnivore blog at Bookforum comes “The Philosopher As Public Intellectual” by Patrick Baert, a sociologist at Cambridge University. The…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

How To Teach Philosophy In Comedy Clubs (Guest Post by Michael Connell)

September 13, 2016

The following is a guest post* by Michael Connell, an Australian comedian. Connell has a thing for philosophy, especially Stoicism, which he incorporates into his act…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Who Does Public Philosophy?

August 31, 2016

The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Public Philosophy is compiling a list of philosophers who have careers doing public philosophy, either exclusively or concurrently with…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy of War Audio Miniseries Available

August 31, 2016

A new philosophy show is in the works, and its creator has made three of its episodes—which together make up a miniseries on the philosophy…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Graded Assignments in Philosophy MOOCs

August 25, 2016

Philosophy professors generally like to assign papers to students. The format of a paper allows the student to exercise certain skills of careful exposition…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Snobbery, Outreach, and the Academic

August 23, 2016

Nancy McHugh, professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University, teaches philosophy in prisons as part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. These classes are held…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

How To Treat Your Fellow Philosophers In Public

August 19, 2016

Jason Brennan (Georgetown) thinks that facts about public ignorance haven’t been sufficiently appreciated by political philosophers and political theorists. Such facts should temper our…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Details On Starting and Running a Pre-College Philosophy Camp

August 9, 2016

The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization, PLATO, “advocates and supports introducing philosophy to children and youth through programs, resource-sharing, and the development of a…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy Talk’s Fundraising Troubles

July 20, 2016

During its last fundraiser, Philosophy Talk, the weekly radio show hosted by Stanford University’s John Perry and Kenneth Taylor, failed to make it more…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy For Children on the US/Mexico Border

June 21, 2016

Local school teachers, professors and students of philosophy at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), and several community organizations have teamed up for a…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Public Philosophy Award Update

April 5, 2016

As reported in December, the Marc Sanders Foundation, which offers several philosophy essay prizes, has created a new award for public philosophy. Barry Maguire…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

More On Whether Philosophy Has Lost Its Way

March 23, 2016

Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, the digital wing of the journal Social Epistemology, has featured an exchange of short articles in the wake of…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy Needs Better Marketing

March 21, 2016

The plans for growing and diversifying philosophy can’t be a shotgun approach. We need to find places every year where we can advocate and…

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

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…
Adam Rigoni on The Future Currency of Achievement in Human Philosophy
I think I understand the complaint. Some people seem glib and or even jolly about something that, if true, is going to screw a lot of people over.…