Category: Public Philosophy and Outreach

Public Philosophy and Outreach

Phones, Minds, States, and Corporations

February 29, 2016

Matthew Noah Smith (Leeds) has an article at Slate bringing together philosophy of mind and political philosophy to discuss the United States government’s attempts to…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Needed: A Philosophy Cheat Sheet for Scientists

February 26, 2016

What is the name of the phenomenon by which someone who is an acknowledged expert in one area is led to be overconfident about…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Funds Available for Public Philosophy Projects

February 18, 2016

Working on a project in public philosophy? Need some money to help do it? You can apply for funding from the American Philosophical Association’s…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

The Most Popular Philosophy Videos

February 2, 2016

Kelly Truelove compiles data about the online activities of philosophers, astronomers, physicists, and others, under the handle @TrueSciPhi. Recently, at his site, he posted…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Internet Abuse of Philosophers (2 updates)

January 15, 2016

A few weeks ago, George Yancy (Emory) published an essay in The New York Times philosophy column, The Stone, called “Dear White America.” In it, he calls…
Events, Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy and the Internet Public

January 4, 2016

Though the internet is, in a number of ways, good for philosophy, it isn’t always good to philosophers. The needless hostility, harassment and scary threats, personal insults,…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

NEH & APA Collaboration on Public Philosophy

December 24, 2015

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Philosophical Association (APA) are collaborating for two events at the APA’s upcoming Eastern Division…
Awards Grants Honors, Public Philosophy and Outreach

Columbia Philosophy Outreach Program Wins Award for Excellence & Innovation (updated)

December 3, 2015

Rethink: A Philosophy Community Outreach Program at Columbia University, has been awarded the 2015 APA/PDC Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Philosophy Programs. The aim…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy as Anti-Terrorism Tool

November 27, 2015

A study from 2010 cites Philosophy for Children among “teaching approaches that help build resilience to extremism among young people.” The study, commissioned by…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

The Next Celebrity Spokesperson for Philosophy

November 24, 2015

The series of brief audio clips by John Cleese on the value of philosophy is making the rounds again, this time courtesy of a post…
Philosophy and Culture, Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy’s Public Relations Moment — Were We Ready?

November 13, 2015

The Republican Presidential Primary Debate earlier this week led to a spike in public attention to the study of philosophy. Various news outlets covered Marco Rubio’s…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophers Doing “Ask Me Anythings” on Reddit

September 21, 2015

The folks at Wi-Phi are interested in doing more to bring together philosophers and the public, and one avenue they’re tentatively pursuing is having philosophers…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Who called it “Experimenting with Coffee” instead of “X-phresso”?

September 18, 2015

A pair of philosophers teamed up with a beautiful food website and a fancy coffee shop to bring some experimental philosophy to the people. Shen-yi Liao…
Public Philosophy and Outreach, Teaching

Substantive Philosophical Mistakes In Public Discourse

September 3, 2015

Public debate is rife with poor reasoning, with certain confused or erroneous claims popping up again and again to affect opinions and policies. Some…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest Winners

August 31, 2015

The American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Public Philosophy has announced the winners of the latest round of its Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest, for op-eds…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosopher and Activist

August 4, 2015

Lisa Guenther (Vanderbilt) is profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Education (paywalled) for both her teaching of philosophy in prisons and her activism regarding “the carceral…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy Snobbery and Communication

July 29, 2015

Scientists came to realise the media had an important role to play in communicating science. The media could not only inform the public of…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

More on the Benefits of Philosophy for Kids

July 22, 2015

An increasing number of American children from low-income backgrounds are coming to kindergarten lagging in both academic and non-cognitive skills critical to educational success…. Fortunately,…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

High School Summer Philosophy Program

July 21, 2015

I’ve been teaching high school students a week’s worth of philosophy each summer for the past three years, and I’ve had tremendous success doing…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

Philosophy Via Facebook?

July 19, 2015

Popular essays, fictions, aphorisms, dialogues, autobiographical reflections and personal letters have historically played a central role in philosophy. So also have public acts of…

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.…