The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at (CASBS) Stanford University was founded in 1954 as an interdisciplinary research institute with a mission of “advancing human welfare” and creating “knowledge for the maximum benefit of individuals and society.” Each year the center invites a number of fellows to take up residence at Stanford and join in a ..

James Andow (Reading) has been compiling a list of philosophers in fiction, including novels, films, plays, etc. He says:

For no reason in particular, I thought it would be nice to have a list of fictional works in which one of the main characters is an academic philosopher. The rules are somewhat arbitrary. I am prepared to be flexible as to what counts as ficti..

A half-dozen academics have contributed brief essays to a collection at Times Higher Education on how to handle the academic workload and how to appropriately manage their time—especially in regards to accepting or declining various “opportunities.”

Some choice quotes:

“Why don’t you just say no, non-academic friends asked? Because, I explained, when you don..

Thane Naberhaus, the associate professor of philosophy who earlier this week was fired from his tenured position at Mount St. Mary’s University by current university president Simon Newman of “drown the bunnies” fame, has received a new letter from Newman, informing him that though he has been “suspended” from his duties, he remains on the payroll “during the notice..

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of ten grants—eight from its Small Grant Program and 2 from its Diversity and Inclusiveness Grants Program. What follows is from the APA’s press release:

Small Grant Program

Each year, the APA Eastern Division provides $25,000 for the APA’s Small Grant Program. This year’s grant applicati..

Liam Kofi Bright, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, has produced a study on the number of publications by black philosophers in the U.S. (“US BIPs”) that have appeared in highly regarded philosophy journals from 2003-2012. The results appear in a guest post at The Splintered Mind:

In total there were 30 publications by US BIPs for all journals dur..

The following is a guest post* from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside). It also appears on his blog, The Splintered Mind.

Percentages of U.S. Doctorates in Philosophy Given to Women and to Minorities, 1973-2014
by Eric Schwitzgebel

The Survey of Earned Doctorates is a questionnaire distributed by the U.S. National Science Foundation to doctorate recipients at a..

The comments system change is in progress, with most of the features in place. Since the system works differently than the old one in some important respects, I’ve updated the comments policy. Here’s the new version. The beginning is similar to the old one, but there are a number of additions.

Before you comment, imagine the following. You are seated in a com..

Slightly more philosophy books were published in North America in 2013 (the last year for which there is complete information) than in each of the previous four years, according to data from Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the same year, philosophy ranked 7th in numbers of books published among the 8 humanities disci..

Three philosophy professors have been recognized as 2015 U.S. state-level “Professors of the Year” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. They are:

• Jeffrey Hause — Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University (Nebraska)
• Joshua ..

What about when they’re not at work? That’s what the new site Things Philosophers Make is about. (via Samantha Brennan)

(Pie by Kate Norlock)

Abner Shimony, professor emeritus of philosophy and physics at Boston University, has died. Professor Shimony was known for his work in philosophy of physics. A detailed obituary is here, and an entry in Wikipedia on him is here.

From the obituary:

After graduating Summa cum Laude in mathematics and philosophy from Yale in 1948, Abner was a student of Austrian..

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the recent winners of four honors:

Carol Gould (CUNY Graduate Center) has won the 2015 Joseph B. Gittler Award for “an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences” for her book, Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice.

Diana ..

Julia Edelman collates excerpts from philosopher..

David Barnett, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will be resigning from the school with a $210,000 settlement. Barnett had gone through termination proceedings last year on grounds that he had retaliated against a student who had complained about another student sexually assaulting her (previous stories on this here). The D..

No, no one has created one yet, but it would be useful. Something close to it is the philosophy page at TV Tropes, which lists various philosophical themes that, when clicked on, will take  you to a page describing the theme in more detail and giving examples of it in a variety of mediums, including television.

Speaking of TV, Alison Gopnik (Berkeley) sent over t..

There’s an interesting post at Show and Tell about the speaking styles of philosophers. It begins with this:

There is a telling anecdote about G.E.M. Anscombe and A.J. Ayer. Anscombe said to Ayer, “You know, if you didn’t talk so fast, no one would think you were so clever.” Ayer rapidly replied, “And if you didn’t talk so slowly, no one would think you were so v..

Ned Markosian, currently professor of philosophy at Western Washington University (current website, Academia.edu page), has accepted an offer as professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, effective Fall 2015. Professor Markosian received his PhD from UMass, Amherst. He works primarily in metaphysics.

(No word yet on whether the Bel..

The first ever issue of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association is now available online. According to a press release from the APA, “All current APA members have free online access to the journal. Members will also receive a complimentary copy of the journal in the mail.” The journal is published by Cambridge University Press. The journal’s editor-in-c..

FAZ, one of the main newspapers in Germany, reports on the unraveling scandal regarding Heidegger’s anti-Semitic writings. The latest, I am told, is that Peter Trawny, one of the editors of the Gesamtausgabe, the definitive collection of Heidegger’s works (he edited the now infamous Black Notebooks) has admitted in a recent interview that he was pressured by the lea..