Heap of Links

"Anger implicates all of us in moral corruption... How much immorality should we permit ourselves?" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago), in the lead essay in a new Boston Review forum on anger
Suppose belonging to a certain demographic group correlates with being 100 times more likely than others to commit a crime. Should this be admissible evidence in a court of law? -- a discussion of an argument from Marcello Di Bello and Collin O’Neill (Lehman)
"One thing I believe in, to the bottom of my heart, is that we should elect more scientists to the US Congress" -- Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) is interviewed about her work and politics in The Nation
On the Cofnas paper, "the latest entry into the jam-tomorrow-never-jam-today of RDI [Race Difference in Intelligence]" research -- John Jackson (Michigan State) on how RDI research "was never about pure science," but embedded in an "ugly history" of racist social policy
"Heroism is aspirational, and worthy of admiration, but it is a pedagogical, moral and historical error to spend our moral capital insisting on it" -- It is enough to refrain from welcoming and helping with the oppression and murder, argues Rivka Weinberg (Scripps) in the NYT
An intellectual history of culinary philosophies and a sketch of a food ethos for today -- "there was never a golden age", says Rachel Laudan
A woman pretending to be Alan Turing daughter's stole his doctoral degree, his knighthood medal, and other pieces of memorabilia from an archive in England in 1984 -- Federal officials just announced that she was caught (2 years ago), and the materials recovered, in Boulder, Colorado
A former philosophy professor keeps a journal during the zombie apocalypse -- that's the central element in the new "ethical guidebook" from Bryan Hall (Regis), subtitled, "how to keep your brain without losing your heart"
The “Twitter presidency” versus democracy -- Boris Litvin (Stetson) on Rousseau on Trump on Twitter
Bond evolution, breaking and formation -- recorded on film, at the atomic scale, for the first time
Love and lust in Lolita -- Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) & Becca Rothfeld (Harvard) on "the tensions we readers are forced to navigate between the awesome beauty of Nabokov’s prose and the ugly perversion that is the central focus of our attention in the novel"
"Who, on Earth or on distant planets, would aim to engineer consciousness into AI systems themselves?" -- Susan Schneider (Connecticut) on why there may be nothing that it's like to be a superintelligent alien
A summer institute to help philosophy instructors design courses that convey the value of philosophy -- put on by the Council of Independent Colleges, it is directed by Ned Hall (Harvard)
New research on the logical operations that the brain's individual dendritic compartments can perform -- one possible upshot: "Brains may be far more complicated than we think"
The impeachment of Donald Trump is a teaching moment -- especially if you're teaching Rousseau, says David Williams (DePaul)
"What It Is Like To Be" is an anamorphic sculpture by Thomas Medicus made of 144 hand-painted glass strips -- it was inspired by Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?". Watch the video. (via Colossal)
The meaning of nihilism -- Nolen Gertz (Twente) distinguishes nihilism from other concepts in its vicinity, such as pessimism, cynicism, and apathy
"What else from philosophy influenced the construction and design of LinkedIn?" -- Tyler Cowen (GMU) interviews Reid Hoffman, who has an MA in philosophy and who helped develop PayPal, LinkedIn, & other ventures (via Robert Long)
"At 97, he wondered whether he’d been deceiving himself about the meaning of life and death" -- a documentary about philosopher Herbert Fingarette made during the last few months of his life
"If our actions are harming other animals, then we have a responsibility to try to reduce or repair these harms" -- Jeff Sebo (NYU) on what humans owe to animals
"Philosophy has a profound impact on me" -- an interview with Cixin Liu, author of the tremendous Three-Body Problem science fiction trilogy
"The protests have been extraordinarily popular and remarkably effective---not in spite of but because of... tactics of uncivil disobedience" -- Candice Delmas (Northeastern) on the uncivil disobedience of the Hong Kong protestors
Scientists use frog cells to build the first "living robots" -- this "new form of life" has "enormous potential" but it also "raises a bevy of ethical questions"
The ethics of migration -- Adam Hosein (Northeastern) talks with Jack Weinstein (North Dakota) on the public radio show, "Why?"
Anti-plagiarism norms tend to over-run their justifications -- (via Agnes Callard)
"The Repugnant Conclusion has become one of the most popular and famous results of modern moral philosophy. What seems to be much less well known is the story of how it came to be" -- Simon Beard (Cambridge) on Derek Parfit
Human and animal minds -- Peter Carruthers (Maryland) is guest-blogging at Brains this week
Equality of what? -- Joshua Rothman surveys some varieties of egalitarianism in The New Yorker
The editors of the revamped Philosophy describe "changes to the editorial process" at the journal -- they're "intended to bring it more in line with current peer-review practices"
What to think of "near death experiences"? -- John Martin Fischer (UCR) in a lively video interview
What does "Western" mean in "Western philosophy"? -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) on Russell's history
"The popular perception that strong AI will eventually grow out of our control risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, despite the present reality that weak AI is very much the product of human deliberation and decision making" -- Annette Zimmerman, Elena Di Rosa, and Hochan Kim (Princeton) on the important choices we face *now* regarding this technology
The "Ask a Philosopher" booth comes to Philly -- The Philadelphia Inquirer has the story
Contemporary moral philosophy "is riddled with metaphysically unexplained claims about reasons and our responsiveness to them---about, in other words, reasons as exercising a power to move" -- an interview with Thomas Pink (KCL)
Handouts for introductory philosophy students on various philosophical skills -- from Neil Mehta (Yale-NUS)
"I find it difficult to believe that exposure to relentless criticism is truth-conducive" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen), whose worry about philosophical practices "is not that we keep too many options on the table; it is that we cast aside ideas too soon"
"Philosophers" was a category in the "Greatest of All Time" edition of Jeopardy! last night -- do you know the right questions?
"The machine sees the world in a different way than we see the world. Just like an artist does." -- Arthur I. Miller (UCL) is interviewed about machine-created art by someone skeptical of its value
Minds, patterns, and the scientific image -- Daniel Dennett (Tufts) in conversation with Sean Carroll (Caltech)
"Do we really want to encourage first-generation college students from low-income families to play a 1-in-10 winner lottery with their lives?" -- Jason Brennan (Georgetown) on why we should be wary of recruiting students from low-income backgrounds into academia
"I just have to give the rock credit for what it did out there. In all of our matchups, it’s used a similar strategy, and, I have to admit, it’s working." -- sports coverage of Sisyphus, in The New Yorker (via Andrew Mills)
Was killing Suleimani justified? -- Peter Singer (Princeton) takes up the question
How academic organizations can benefit from shared, multi-institutional collaborative academic event calendars -- an example of the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) ecosystem, from Lynn Chiu (Bordeaux/CNRS, St. Andrews)
Students protest tenure denial of assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago -- the students seem to think he was denied tenure because of the kind of philosophy he specializes in
"I am the last philosopher left in the [House of] Lords." -- Baroness Onora O’Neill (Cambridge) discusses her work in philosophy and government in an interview at Justice Everywhere
The value of manners -- John Schwenkler (Florida State) looks at Amy Olberding's work on civility
"Even if true neutrality is ultimately impossible, it is a terrible overreaction to give up on the aspiration to balance." -- Daniel Callcut on what the philosophy classroom can teach us about journalism
"Shaking free of the pedagogy of fear in Israel and restoring honor to children’s questions demands a fundamental conceptual change within education in Israel' -- Arie Kizel (Haifa) argues for teaching philosophy to children
"The judge ruled that ethical vegans should be entitled to similar legal protections in British workplaces as those who hold religious beliefs" -- Ethical veganism qualifies as a "philosophical belief" for the purposes of UK anti-discrimination law
"When the relatively uncomplicated reduction of the carbon footprint of the American military is compared to the complexity of other attempts to decarbonize... the former seems like startlingly low hanging fruit" --Eric Winsberg (South Florida) on climate change & the military
Liar paradox nightmare -- via Tanya Kostochka
Problems with wishes -- Charlie Huenemann (Utah State) converses with the genie in the bottle
A comparison of academia in the US and the UK -- by Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami), who much prefers the US system
Why run a philosophy summer camp, and how does one do it? -- Adam Waggoner (Michigan) and Charlie Kurth (Western Michigan) share their experiences and what they've learned
"Unquestioned teleological bullshit" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on a recent account of progress in philosophy
Alex King (Buffalo), Daniel Star (Boston), and others on the best art of the past decade -- at Aesthetics for Birds
For the purposes of determining who has human rights, is "substantially human" enough? -- human rights in the era of biotechnology that mixes non-human and human cells
"Buddies of mine who I love, they say things like; “how are things up there with the liberal snowflakes?” Let me assure you, I have not met one kid who fits that description." -- a 52 year-old Navy veteran, currently a freshman at Yale, reports on his experience
"Psychology is an indeterministic science, and many self-proclaimed naturalists in the philosophy of mind are statistical illiterates. Without an understanding of the relevant statistical evidence, confirmation bias is a real risk." -- an interview with Mark Kalderon (UCL)
Is it possible to overdo democracy? -- Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) discusses why the answer is yes on the Democracy Works podcast
The search for the part of the brain that is "the seat of consciousness" -- lessons from the study of the claustrum
The new Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia (UPJA) has just published its inaugural issue -- it's the first undergraduate philosophy journal run by students from the Australasian region
Cambridge University Press is offering free access to some of the articles and chapters it published this past year -- check out their "Philosophy Highlights" (via Andy Lamey)
"Silicon Valley’s vigorous promotion of 'ethical AI' has constituted a strategic lobbying effort, one that has enrolled academia to legitimize itself" -- the author asserts that "the majority of well-funded work on 'ethical AI' is aligned with the tech lobby’s agenda"
Philosophy job market wiki -- incomplete and possibly misleading, but some people believe its existence is better than the nothing they often hear from hiring departments
Climate change will force people from their homelands -- Matthew Lister (Deakin) looks the various forms such migration will take and some possible responses to it
Oxford University press temporarily gives free access to the articles in its journals that were most popular in 2019 -- (via Edouard Machery)
Self-driving Mercedes cars will be programmed to save their drivers, not pedestrians and occupants of other vehicles, in potential crash situations. -- the moral costs "will be outweighed by the fact that cars will be better drivers overall"
"Students were repeatedly reminded that they should begin the design process by asking, 'What do *other* users need?'" -- Evan Selinger (RIT) and Albert Fox Cahn are teaching future engineers & designers how to build ethics into their ideas from the start
Laws of nature, causation, and more -- a conversation between philosopher Ned Hall (Harvard) and physicist Sean Carroll (Caltech)
"There is something wrong if we systematically accept papers we can find no fault with but that don't stir our imagination, whereas the papers with holes but new ideas get shot down by objections" -- Helen De Cruz (SLU) thinks academic philosoph should make more room for wonder
"Positing theories is not confirming theories. Traditional philosophy tries to pretend positing and confirming are the same thing by sliding intuition into the equation as a source of putative evidence." -- one of a few provocative remarks in a recent interview of Michael Shaffer (St. Cloud State)
Philosophers and others list their top TV shows of the 2010's --
The 2019 Optical Illusion of the Year -- it's the "Dual Axis Illusion" by Frank Force (via Kottke)
Grad student unionization is crucial for addressing the mental health crisis among graduate students -- so argue philosophy graduate students Sebastian Ramirez and Kelly Swope (Vanderbilt) in Times Higher Ed
A call for philosophers to appreciate not just arguments, but the experience of philosophical ideas in a diversity of forms -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) directs us to meditations, examples, stories, perceptions, etc.
Students think Avital Ronell, who NYU found responsible for sexually harassing one of her graduate students, got off too lightly with a 1-year suspension -- a group of them attempted to read a statement to her and are calling for her to be fired (via Caroline Bowman)
"Duck season!" "Rabbit season!" "Duck Season!" "Rabbit Season!" -- clever art by UC Davis philosophy graduate student Megan Parks (via Zoe Drayson)
Do you have a lot of books checked out from the university library? -- not compared to this professor, you don't
"She Speaks: Academic Muslimahs" is a podcast hosted by philosopher Saba Fatima (Southern Illinois) -- it just concluded its first season
"Modesty involves breaking out of a way of experiencing life rooted in comparing yourself with others" -- an insightful take on modesty from Nicolas Bommarito (Buffalo)
Can you produce a philosophical argument that convinces real research participants to donate a surprise bonus of $10 to charity at rates higher than control? -- if so, you could win $500 for yourself and $500 for the charity of your choice
Virtues and the microbiome -- new research on how microbes affect their hosts' fearfulness
"Technology has displaced religion as the main driver of passive nihilism" -- a brief interview with Nolen Gertz (Twente)
"The root problem is that it is just too easy for us, the professors, to spend other people’s money" -- Tim Wu (Columbia) on using expensive textbooks
Philosophers and others on their favorite writing (outside of academic philosophy) of the 2010s -- part of the Aesthetic for Birds Decade-Best series
"There are countlessly many biological distinctions we could make, but do not, because there is no social need to do so" -- once again Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) looks beyond boundaries most of us don't realize constrain our thought, here, on "women" and species
"If life without death has no value and meaning, and if life with death has a value and meaning that death itself eventually takes away, then this signals one of the greatest tragedies of human existence" -- Adrian Moore (Oxford) on immortality
It looks like polarization, but it's more like an inchworm: both sides are adopting more progressive views on moral issues, just at a different pace -- Delia Baldassarri (NYU) on culture wars (via MR)
"In its public interactions, philosophy is in danger of being at once too conservative and too radical for the tastes of society" -- "But it’s not as if philosophers lack resources to deal with such problems," argue Robert Frodeman and Evelyn Brister (RIT)
With whom may a search committee share a candidate's letters of recommendation -- a discussion at PEA Soup
"Our findings suggest that there is no single clear path to a faculty job offer" -- a study of the academic STEM job market. Is there one of these for philosophy? (via Nathan Ballantyne)
Existentialist Tarot cards -- created by Melanie McQuitty (Los Angeles Pierce College)
When a representative of the queen mentions the "space-time continuum," it may be time to call a philosopher of physics -- Macleans asks Christopher Smeenk (Western) to explain
Learn more about the Underrepresented Philosophy of Science Scholars (UPSS) Initiative -- a program of the Philosophy of Science Association
Cricket--the sport--and moral philosophy -- really just for people who are into cricket and moral philosophy
Do grad school grades matter? -- a discussion at The Philosophers' Cocoon
"Women come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes... Every elite athlete has competitive advantages. Some are physical... Other advantages are social or economic." -- philosopher & champion track cyclist Rachel McKinnon (College of Charleston), a transgender woman, on accusations she cheats by competing in women's races
Was Camus murdered by the KGB? -- a new book makes the case: “They rigged the tyre with a tool that eventually pierced it when the car was travelling at high speed”
Reductivism and other topics in the philosophy of war -- Helen Frowe (Stockholm) interviewed by Daniel Rhodes at Epoché Magazine
"The best set of principles for judging whether statistics are being communicated in a trustworthy fashion come from the philosopher Onora O’Neill" -- Teddy Groves (a philosophy PhD and statistician at Novo Nordisk) on transparency in political polling (via Liam Bright)
The CEO of Kitu Life was feeling uneasy about the bro-culture at his firm, so he hired a philosopher to help -- that philosopher is Reid Blackman, a philosophy prof-turned-"ethical risk" consultant
Neuroscientists and a novelist on the nature of consciousness -- a look at their recent books, in The New Yorker
Best films of the 2010's -- lists from several philosophers and others
"I'm very comfortable with Peter [Singer's] way of thinking", says Paul Simon -- the singer is helping Singer promote the new edition of his book, "The Life You Can Save"
"The thing that’s really key to me is that my money could do 100 times more good for other people than it did for me" -- an interview with Toby Ord (Oxford), who founded Giving What We Can
The landscape on which liberty and equality are depicted in opposition demands scrutiny -- David Faraci and Philip Goff (Durham) on inequality and ownership of land and resources
"There’s no general algorithm for designing experiments to guard them against failure" -- Philip Kitcher (Columbia) provides an informative review of a pair of books on problems with biomedical research (via Dan Weiskopf)
"Practical Suggestions for My Cis Colleagues in Philosophy" -- some advice, plus a list of resources, from Ray Briggs (Stanford)
"I sometimes characterise my work as a midwife for philosophy—I don’t do the philosophy, but I help bring it into the world!" -- an interview with Elizabeth Hannon (of The Forum for Philosophy and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science)
"On average, replication success rate was 30% and effect sizes were 38 times smaller than those in the original study." -- Jonathan Haidt's "moral foundations" theory, correlating particular moral concepts with particular political positions, faces replication problems
If contraceptive sex is permissible, then so is gay sex, oral sex, and mutual masturbation---and so it's not -- some of the views, and events in the life, of G.E.M. Anscombe, as detailed by John Schwenkler (FSU), based on his research at U Penn's Anscombe Archive
"'Individualistic' philosophical ethics serves us well... in correcting such misplaced fatalism" -- reflections on moral mathematics from Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami)
The Philosopher Cocoon's excellent series on professional philosophy around the world continues -- with a post by Paloma Atencia & Miguel Ángel Sebastian (UNAM) on being philosophers in Mexico
"Virtue signalling has its place in moral discourse, and we shouldn’t be so ready to denigrate it" -- argues Neil Levy (Oxford/Macquarie)
The arguments against impeaching Trump -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) explains what's wrong with them
"I do not so much reject the supernatural, as explore how far the large-scale defects of human life might be authentically met within a non-reductive naturalistic framework." -- a wide-ranging, interesting, and informative interview with Mark Johnston (Princeton) by Daniel Kodsi at Oxford Review of Books
Is scientism a threat to philosophy? -- further discussion by Catherine Wilson (CUNY)
and more on the subject -- from Ian James Kidd
The opportunity costs of poverty -- a way of understanding poverty, from Jonathan Wolff (Oxford)
Applied philosophy of the near future: minds & privacy -- a conversation between Susan Schneider (Connecticut / NASA) and Evan Selinger (RIT)
George Eliot translated Spinoza’s Ethics in 1856 — If her manuscript had been published then it would have been the first published English translation of the work (via Brian Weatherson)
"We cannot, nor would we, fire Professor Rasmusen for his posts as a private citizen, as vile and stupid as they are, because the First Amendment... forbids us to do so." -- a Provost's statement on a professor who "for many years, used his private social media accounts to disseminate his racist, sexist, and homophobic views"
How can moral theory be practical? -- Andrew Sepielli (Toronto) and others discuss Holly Smith's (Rutgers) answer to this question
"Be happy to be worth stealing from" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) is opposed to anti-plagiarism norms
Three women philosophers in the history of philosophy of mind -- by Emily Thomas (Durham)
"There has long been confusion over the location of the remains of de Montaigne" -- but they now appear to have found them in the basement of a museum
Bees "appear to have at least some of the principal hallmarks of consciousness": they seem to be able to represent time and space, plan, perhaps even imagine -- if bees are conscious, what else is?
"Sad Prof" is a comic strip about academic life -- created by Carrie Jenkins (UBC)
A crash course in inductive logic -- from Jonathan Weisberg (Toronto)
What happens when you let AI play hide and seek? -- after 390 million games, they developed some unexpected moves
The reading list of John Stuart Mill, ages 3–7 -- including works in English and Greek
"What one finds in the classical pragmatists is a series of substantive disputes about enduring philosophical topics, including meaning, truth, knowledge, value, experience and the nature of philosophy itself" -- Cheryl Misak (Toronto) and Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) explain
"The game is never really “over” and neither is his despair" -- The Myth of Super Mario by Albert Camus
Legal theorist Wojciech Sadurski, an outspoken critic of the Polish government, is facing legal proceedings intended to silence him -- the "sue to scare" tactics of the ruling party and its hounding of Sadurksi "is a clear violation of freedom of expression under EU and ECHR law"
"You must be very erudite, but not really part of the sociology of philosophy" -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) on how "erudition is necessary for philosophy"
"This analysis revises our perception of the classical interpretation of the experiment and its putative relevance to the explanation of state atrocities" -- Milgram "suppresses the relative impact of the different levels of belief on obedience and defiance... Where belief in the shocks was greatest... subjects were most defiant" (via Ben Hale)
"When we allow the travails and categories of democratic life to penetrate the whole of our social experience, we actually impede crucial and essential kinds of social activity, and this leads to democracy’s unraveling" -- an interview with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
"You may know that it works, but not have a clue how it works... and that is exactly what is happening in quantum theory" -- an interview with Tim Maudlin (NYU)
An online book forum on "Moving Up without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility" by Jennifer Morton (City College/CUNY) -- you needn't have read the book to participate
Designing a logical methods course that addresses various "variables associated with students’ inability to do college level mathematics" -- the course is taught by Greg Restall and Shawn Standefer (Melbourne)
The low-tech cameras of the past would typically take a mediocre photo, but "through its very mediocrity, each image told us that the real world was better than the one it depicted" -- "But things are different now," explains Jenny Judge (NYU)
"Manne might spend most of her days arguing that women should not be coerced into providing care and attention to everyone they meet, but she sometimes wonders if she is giving enough of herself" -- a long, detailed profile of philosopher Kate Manne (Cornell) in The Chronicle of Higher Education
"I conjecture a correlation of approximately zero between how one would rate oneself in relative jerkitude and one’s actual true jerkitude" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) summarizes his theory of jerks
"The mathematics we have today is the result of countless decisions, big and small, and, in that sense, I think it is best to think of mathematical concepts as being designed" -- an informative and interesting interview with Jeremy Avigad (CMU)
"If your go-to image of the theory involves internet anger, then you’re probably being over-influenced by personal memories of arguing with people who may or may not understand the theory themselves." -- Regina Rini (York) tries to figure out why some philosophical ideas become magnets for the belligerent and ignorant on social media
A new fashion collection inspired by the ideas of ancient Greece -- including "fringe dresses embroidered with blurring quotes by Socrates and Aristotle"
"As is always the way, truth has been a casualty of war." In this case, it's a theory of truth and a culture war. -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) kindly takes one of the culture warriors du jour seriously enough to share a useful philosophical distinction with him
"I take the recent rise of public philosophy as an attempt by the neoliberal academy to claim for itself everything we do" -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) is "against public philosophy", and is also "not some jovial country vicar who, for the good of the parish, joins in for a bean-bag toss or a three-legged race at carnival time"
"Features of everyday life are overwhelmingly transformed into expressions of political identity, and... this transformation undermines democracy itself" -- Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) discusses his new book on democracy with Carrie Figdor (Iowa)
A special issue of Forma de Vida on the occasion of the centenary of Anscombe's birth includes a postcard from her to a Portuguese philosopher -- (via Pedro Ferrão)
A strange 1756 opera that satirized David Hume -- "The Philosopher's Opera" by John McLaurin
"People tried to reject Aristotle on the same grounds that they now try to reject Confucius or the Bhagavad Gita" -- on the racism that helped build the philosophy canon
"How come nobody played cards with the pirate? Because he was standing on the deck! The other pirates had no universal moral perspective from which to criticize him" -- postmodern pirate jokes, from Alex Baia
"Why the university and the Chinese government invests so much in the growth of philosophy (and internationalization more broadly) is, of course, a complicated sociological question" -- Peter Finocchiaro (Wuhan) on being a foreign philosopher in China
If someone imprisoned for life comes to meet the legal definition of death, but is then revived, have they completed their sentence? -- the court says: the prisoner "is either still alive, in which case he must remain in prison, or he is actually dead, in which case this appeal is moot"
A video of Barry Stroud's memorial, with remarks from several philosophers -- including Niko Kolodny, Sam Scheffler, Antonia Peacocke, Jason Bridges, Janet Broughton, Tom Nagel, and Sarah Stroud (via Julie Stroud)
Assorted 1-page infographics about various aspects of the humanities -- from Humanities Indicators
The popular caricature of scientific method "is not just bad philosophy, entirely inadequate to account for scientific practice. It is also bad history, with tenuous links to the growth of early modern science" -- Philip Kitcher (Columbia) on science and its methods, in a review of Why Trust Science by Naomi Oreskes (Harvard)
At the end of Reasons and Persons, Parfit asks about the relative differences between three possible futures -- a team of researchers has now asked thousands of people the same thing. What can we learn from their findings?
The Spring 2020 Met Gala---the famous fashion party hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute---will be based on a philosophical concept -- "Employing Henri Bergson's concept of la durée (duration), it will explore how clothes generate temporal associations that conflate past, present, and future"
"Although individuals may have a right to be misinformed and to share their false beliefs with others, there is no legal framework entitling them to have those beliefs amplified by algorithms." -- Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall (UC Irvine) on the problems of social media and how to best approach them
Continuum of Selves is a "jazz-philosophy fusion project" -- it's led by James Tartaglia (Keele) and funded by Adrian Piper's foundation
Depictions of fields like ethnic studies, gender studies, etc., as "harboring the academic villains of popular imagination" are leveraged into broader critiques of higher ed -- but there are very few faculty working in these areas (via Jason Stanley)
Will philosophy beat hydroengineering in post-apocalyptic importance? -- geek fun disguised as what may be the world's weirdest debate
A philosopher has guest-curated an art exhibition that "invites you to reflect, question, and explore the ways in which art can depict moral virtue and vice" -- an innovative form of public philosophy from Kevin DeLapp (Converse)
"Phi on New York: Philosophy for the City" is a new online magazine that brings philosophy to bear on life in NYC -- it's a project of the Gotham Philosophical Society
The blog, "Understanding Society," which focuses on philosophy of social science and the workings of the social world, turns 12 -- it is written by Daniel Little (Michigan-Dearborn)
"It gives us an idea of the changes that were made at the last moment when they had to commit themselves to what was going to be in print" -- McMaster University's Bertrand Russell Archives has acquired the page proofs of Principia Mathematica, with Russell's hand-written notes on them (via @BRussellSociety)
"Rather than biological automata, they might be understood as creatures with capacities that in animals are readily regarded as learning, memory, decision-making, and even agency" -- an interview with biologist Suzanne Simard (UBC) on plants
What makes something horrifying? -- David Livingstone Smith (New England) on horror
What does John Stuart Mill's life tell us about what a meaningful life is? -- Elijah Millgram (Utah) in conversation with Robert Talisse
"Drone warfare departs from Just War Theory. But this isn’t the only ethical issue it raises." -- Trish Glazebrook (Washington State) on military drone deployment
"How can a double success be a failure?" -- a variant on one of Parfit's thought experiments forms the basis of the Netflix show "Living With Yourself"
Complaining, done well, can bring us closer together -- Kathryn Norlock (Trent) defends complaints, be they about large scale political issues or "quotidian whinging"
"Banning academic travel would cement existing hierarchies and privilege." -- "But at the same time," says Jonathan Wolff (Oxford), "our carbon use is huge and growing. What is to be done?"
When the author of the book you've reviewed criticizes your review, badly -- M.G. Piety on critical reasoning skills and civility
A course on the philosophy of the environment that brings students from DC to Mexico -- taught by Michele Friend (George Washington University)
Did da Vinci paint a portrait of Machiavelli? -- or is it of Montaigne? An artistic investigation is underway
"I think the benefits of the vast majority of academic research are tiny at best, possibly negative, and much less than the costs" -- says Michael Huemer (Colorado), who has "no intention of ceasing philosophical research"
How Huemer's "framing of the issue leads him to overlook the main sources of value" of the institutions that produce such research -- a reply from Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami)
Must we mean what we wear? -- Marilynn Johnson (San Diego) on the meaning of clothes and other adornments
"We should at least be able to agree that it is not acceptable for us to exploit them so thoroughly that, afterward, we have no choice but to keep them confined or kill them" -- Jeff Sebo (NYU) on research on chimpanzees and other nonhuman subjects
The metaphysics of the self -- Majid Davoody Beni (Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran) is blogging at Brains this week
AI is already doing things no human can do. For example, it's getting the Pentagon to hire an ethicist! -- The Pentagon is looking for an ethicist to help with the moral issues that arise in using AI in military contexts
"I am carrying out a debate of ideas, and getting the ideas right is the most important thing I can do." -- an interview with John Roemer (Yale)
"We use this fantasy canvas to talk about real-life issues" -- a brief interview with Keisha Ray (McGovern Medical School), who is teaching bioethics to med students using science fiction
"Visitors can either formulate their own questions or reach into one of two fishbowls filled with sample conundrums" -- Rena Goldstein (UC Irvine) brings "Ask A Philosopher" to southern California
"I don’t find my voice, or certainly not in that moment. Rather I hear all the others, and the feeling grows: I have nothing to say." -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) offers some practical advice for helping you "find your voice"
"Free will and its prerequisites are emergent, higher-level phenomena. They emerge from physical processes, but are not reducible to them...They are irreducibly higher-level phenomena, but that makes them no less real." -- Christian List (LSE) begins a series of posts on his "naturalistic case for free will"
"The best questions are short. If a question requires a long set-up, it’s probably not an effective question." -- and other advice for interviewing academic job candidates, from Steven Cahn (CUNY)
"Self-control is fundamentally a set of practices. Innate traits, as well as environmental supports and constraints, modulate access to these practices" -- Polaris Koi (Turku) on what ADHD can teach us about responsibility
Can you write a philosophical argument that effectively convinces research participants to donate money to charity? -- if so, you could win $500 for yourself and $500 for the charity of your choice
"Potential illegal migrants have no moral reason to respect immigration laws" -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) on illegal immigration
On "what counts as a 'causal' effect of race and what types of causal effects are permissible" -- Lily Hu (Harvard) on "recent causal counterfactual methods in algorithmic fairness" that go "beyond the forms of justice and injustice recognized in the law"
Coldplay's newest member: Friedrich Nietzsche on saxophone -- at least according to the posters. (Little known fact: Nietzsche and the saxophone were both created around the same time.)
What does AI see when it looks at the duck-rabbit? -- a duck. No, a rabbit. Wait, a duck. Now it's a rabbit...
After reading about her life, you may be surprised this philosopher says "I am the luckiest person I know" -- an autobiographical essay from Candace Vogler (Chicago). (CW: rape, sexual abuse, child abuse) (via Kevin Scott)
Philosophy and "The Joker" movie -- commentary from five philosophers
"Privacy is both a personal and a collective affair, because data is rarely used on an individual basis" -- Carissa Véliz (Oxford) on the collective dimensions of personal privacy
"Only if we can see that our thoughts are the product of myriad factors beyond our conscious control, can we hope to figure out how to develop the necessary subliminal skills to successfully address the world’s most urgent problems" -- a neurologist's skepticism about rationality
Universities are tracking the web activity of identified individual prospective applicants -- some use the data for "formulating predictive scores to measure each student’s likelihood of enrolling"
The metaphysics of memory -- Jordi Fernandez (Adelaide) is blogging at Brains this week
Transitioning from philosophy to tech -- a guide with concrete steps and useful information from a recent philosophy PhD who is now a software engineer
"The 'kids these days' effect has been happening for millenia." Why? -- "Two mechanisms contribute to humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids: (1) a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels, (ii) a memory bias projecting one’s current qualities onto the youth of the past"
Poems for philosophers -- by Justin E.H. Smith (Paris)
The winner of the 2018 Doak Walker Award for top running back in college football, Wisconsin's Jonathan Taylor, is a philosophy major -- his interests include Kant's philosophy and the semantics of questions, according to Sports Illustrated (via Alex Scott)
Bridging rancorous political divides: what lessons about how to do this can be gleaned from teaching a moral problems course? -- quite a few, says Evan Mandery (John Jay)
One ethical concern with the treatment: it aims to benefit patients by restoring their consciousness, but if successful it may harm those patients by making them aware of their pain -- Andrew Peterson (George Mason) and others are looking at the bioethics of using "magic mushrooms" to treat disorders of consciousness
A majestical goddess, Athena, / swooped down from the sky - you'd have seen her / as some kind of bird / when she gave the word / men's yearning for fighting got keener -- The Odyssey in limerick form, from classicist and translator Emily Wilson (U. Penn)
In a liberal democracy, neither distributive justice nor social equality can justify coercive policies aimed at promoting "de-gendered" parenting -- but autonomy can, argues Gina Schouten (Harvard)
Faces: they are central to our identities, windows to our thoughts & feelings, hard to hide, and visible from a distance -- all of which support reasons to ban facial recognition technology, argue Evan Selinger (RIT) and Woodrow Hartzog (Northeastern) in the NYT
A personal remembrance of an adjunct philosophy professor who died by suicide -- JB Manchak (UC Irvine) on Nathan Westbrook
"Should we just cancel the history of art?" -- No, but now that #timesup for the idea that artistic talent can excuse immorality, what should galleries and museums do?
On Twitter, women academics have fewer followers, likes, and retweets than their male counterparts -- What about philosophy in particular? Follow Carolyn Dicey Jennings(@diceyjennings) on Twitter, where she posted our numbers
Lawsuit against conspiracy theorist and emeritus philosophy professor James Fetzer successful -- he was sued by the father of one of the children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting
"What is the point of secular pilgrimage?" -- Julian Baggini reflects on his visit to Wittgenstein's restored home and other philosophical landmarks
"How should we understand (conceptually) and assess (morally and politically) leaks, whistleblowing, and espionage?" -- Candice Delmas (Northeastern) looks at these issues in the context of the current impeachment inquiry
"Adjunct Barbie™ is a part-time college instructor who’s almost, but not quite, ready to give up on her dreams" -- comes with accessories such as "mix-and-match lanyards" for her four different school IDs, and a purple briefcase that holds "up to 200 ungraded papers"
Against letters of recommendation for job candidates (until they're on the shortlist) -- they aren't very informative, they're too time-consuming, and they perpetuate biases
"Under the guise of protecting speech and defending viewpoint diversity, the government is promoting a political ideology---an effort that people... who are committed to academic freedom should reject." -- Sigal Ben-Porath (U. Penn) on government threats to academic freedom
"People who we thought had high self-control to achieve great life outcomes instead are really good at forming the right habits. They seem to understand the influence of situations and choose ones in which it’s easier to repeat desired actions." -- Wendy Wood (USC) on habits
Why worry about AI? -- Evan Selinger (RIT) surveys the array of reasons
Attention may seem like the brain casting a "spotlight", but it is closer to the metaphor of "lowering the lights on everything else" -- recent work on the neuroscience of attention and the importance of "filtering"
"Now, today, going to the museum and putting on one's serious-art-face is something very, very different from going to the national park and putting on one's nature-loving-face." -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) on Nabokov, Kant, art, and nature
The San Francisco Urban Film Fest has a philosophy advisor -- the benefits are a two-way street, says Ron Sundstrom (U. San Francisco)
"Traditional school debate discourages the kind of listening and reasoning that is critical to a healthy democracy... [it] doesn’t have to be this way, though -- Jon Ellis (UC Santa Cruz) and Francesca Hovagimian (Berkeley) on the virtues of ethics bowls (NYT)
"It’s a weird thing to have your book appear as a character on a TV show. It’s sort of like having your child chosen to be in the school play. You’re pleased that they’re there, but worried that something embarrassing is going to happen." -- a brief interview with T.M. Scanlon (Harvard)
The variety of philosophical issues involved in, and related to, legal personhood -- an interview with Visa Kurki (Helsinki)
A multi-platform media project featuring a woman "armed with puppets and dressed as Hannah Arendt" -- it includes interviews with Noam Chomsky, Pussy Riot, Arendt's students, and a variety of others
"The number of jobs listed on PhilJobs has been fairly steady since 2013" -- data from Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced)
"One key problem with the primacy of consent in our sex politics is that its conceptual thinness has been remedied by increasingly more robust, sometimes ridiculous redefinitions" -- an insightful, informative essay from Joseph Fischel (Yale) on Title IX, sexual norms, and "democratic hedonism"
52 hours per person, per year -- how much time researchers, on average, spend reformatting manuscripts for publication
Blast from the Past: "We have been observing behavior like [this] for over a decade. Why was he so rarely called on it by other philosophers?" -- five years ago
"Why aren’t more doctoral students writing protest letters to their departments? Let’s not wait for them to do so before we act ourselves." -- reflections on the "polite revolt" in Columbia's English and Comparative Literature Department
Quiet justice -- this could yield interesting work in political philosophy, bioethics, philosophy of science, philosophy of perception...
Pythagoras: philosopher, mathematician, prankster -- an explanation of how his "Greedy Cup" works
"A, B, C, D, and E go into a bar and E is next to A and A is next to B and C must be two spaces over from E. Where is D? I’ve never had to answer a question like that in any state or federal court" -- Will this change to the LSAT mean an end to philosophy majors' top performance on the exam?
The Blog of the APA has been redesigned -- and it looks great
"WFF 'n Proof", the game of modern logic -- a set of 21 games, with 36 special dice, a timer, and a 184-page manual (via Christopher Reighley / @reighleyc)
A collection of posts about what it is like to be a philosopher in different parts of the world -- "The Cocoon Goes Global" series already has four entries in it
"There are both deontological and teleological reasons to want to build an open society that includes lots of diverse perspectives" -- Kevin Vallier (Bowling Green) is interviewed about liberalism, religion, trust, and related topics
"Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) can be weaponized to justify undermining academic freedom and subjecting untenured and contingent faculty to surveillance and bullying" -- a professor reports on his experience at a liberal arts college (via Ben Hale)
Conspiracy theories assert that events have a "deeper meaning" but it is the "theories themselves that have a deeper meaning and that meaning is political" -- Quassim Cassam (Warwick) in The New Statesman
Scientists have used shortwave-infrared hyperspectral imaging to read previously inaccessible parts of Philodemus' history of Plato's Academy -- "it provides a unique view of an ancient philosopher's writing process," says Kilian Fleischer (Würzburg)
"Nietzsche remains a heroic figure in intellectual history because his lonely, desperate quest seems to join up with so many other expeditions of the mind and soul" -- Alex Ross, The New Yorker's longtime music critic, on understanding Nietzsche and his significance
"Democracy is government by discussion, and, if you make discussion fearful, you are not going to get a democracy, no matter how you count the votes" -- an interview with Amartya Sen (Harvard) on democracy in India (The New Yorker)
"What we need isn't so much more philosophy that tries to speak to a non-philosophical audience, as more philosophy that comes from a place of engagement with the non-philosophical world." -- an interview with Amia Srinivasan (Oxford)
One of Trump's judicial nominees has a Master’s degree in philosophy from Georgetown -- Sarah Pitlyk has some controversial views, including opposition to in vitro fertilization
On "which epistemic virtues are needed by agents who navigate epistemic networks such as the Internet" -- a special issue of the open-access Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective on trust in a social and digital world
"We... are not big fans of Justin Weinberg... [H]is his latest take may be his greatest outrage" -- David Ottlinger did not like my critique of The Good Place
The octopus is an extraordinarily intelligent creature. Is it conscious? -- Michael S. A. Graziano (Princeton) on why this is a difficult question
Philosophers on #MeToo -- a variety of pieces in the latest Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy
On the rich variety of philosophical moves within the category of "responding to a text" -- thoughts from Martin Lenz (Groningen)
"Approaches based on methodological reductionism---like grand unified forces, supersymmetry, string theory, preon models, or technicolor---have failed for the past 30 years" -- Sabine Hossenfelder (Frankfurt) suggests trying an approach that "does not rely on taking things apart into smaller things"
"For all we know... self-improving AIs might tend to engineer consciousness out. Or certain AI companies simply judge conscious AI to be a public relations nightmare" -- reasons for a "wait and see" approach to AI consciousness, from Susan Schneider (Connecticut)
Wondering if the book by the dudes of the "Grievance Studies Hoax" team is any good? No? But are you wondering how bad it is? -- then check out this enjoyable review of it by Oliver Traldi (Notre Dame)
A paid two-year training fellowship run by the US gov't for recent or imminent earners of graduate degrees has its short application window coming up -- several philosophers have been through the program (via Shane Wilkins, who is happy to answer questions about the program at [email protected])
Perceptual common knowledge: what is it? how is it possible? what does it imply about us and our world? -- Axel Seelman (Bentley) in conversation with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
The skull of the tyrannosaurus rex raises some philosophical problems -- Leonard Finkelman (Linfield) chews them over
The professional climate in economics -- the methodology and results of the American Economic Association's survey of its membership (via MR)
"The myth of the classless society allows the critics of university admissions to pretend that selective universities could somehow be less elitist but still just as elite" -- Richard Ford (Stanford) on how the Harvard affirmative action ruling "misses the point"
"In most sports where it is applied, video review has actually created more confusion and less clarity. Why is this the case?" -- in an impressive piece of public philosophy, James Darcy (Virginia) introduces the readers of a sports site to the philosophical problems of vagueness (via Galen Barry)
"Your own consciousness is a sort of illusion, a fiction created by your brain to help you keep track of its activities" -- Keith Frankish (Sheffield, Crete) defends illusionism
"What lawmakers and companies often call 'consent' is an abuse of the term that sanctions unfair arrangements" -- Evan Selinger (RIT) on the "inconsentability" of Facebook's facial surveillance technology, and why it is worrisome
From existentialism to global responsibility -- John Davenport (Fordham) is interviewed by Richard Marshall at 3:16AM
"Readers will discover the minds of Karl Barks (Karl Marx), Sun-Shih-tzu (Sun Tzu), and Mary Woof-stonecraft (Mary Wollstonecraft)" -- a crowd-sourced philosophy and dogs book project offers supporters the chance to have illustrations of their dogs in the book
"The public good of climate change mitigation would become so valuable for at least one consumer---a country or corporation---that it would buy it for itself. The rest of us could free ride." -- Alex Rosenberg on escaping the prisoner's dilemma of global warming
Could virtual reality be an "empathy machine"? -- remarks from philosophy student and filmmaker Emmanuel Ordóñez-Angulo (Oxford) (BBC)
"The Good Class" -- a course based on the TV show "The Good Place", and which had the show's creator as a guest lecturer
The "age effects" in who is most cited in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) explains with "The Winnowing of Greats" and "The Baby Boom Philosophy Bust"
"Human research ethics has received guidance from The Belmont Report principles... since the late 1970s. Animal research ethics needs a comparably robust touchstone" -- David DeGrazia (GW) and Tom Beauchamp (Georgetown) offer one (via What's Wrong)
Achieving work-life balance in philosophy -- advice from Jason Brennan (Georgetown)
Does "do us a favor" imply a quid pro quo? -- It might depend on what Trump intended, and so Brian Robinson (Texas A&M-Kingsville) tries to figure that out
Using social network and semantic network analyses to check the accuracy of reference materials on early modern philosophy -- from an interdisciplinary team of researchers
What makes for a great critic? -- philosophy of criticism from Antonia Peacocke (Stanford)
On being a philosopher from a working-class background -- a new series of posts at The Philosophers' Cocoon begins with one by Adriel Trott (Wabash)
"The relationship between the Hegel-wife and her Hegel-husband appears to be marked by a tragic failure of recognition" -- Tom Whyman on the Reddit relationship post making the rounds
A new philosophy blog focused mainly on "how people with diverse perspectives, tempted to live at odds with one another, can cooperate nonetheless" -- from Kevin Vallier (Bowling Green)
The good and the bad of The Good Place -- the final season of the philosophy-friendly network sitcom begins this week
"If we can in some sense be said to be one person, that’s a metaphor for an emotional state, not a metaphysical fact. But it’s a very special emotional state" -- Helena de Bres (Wellesley) reflects on twins, love, and identity
1 night, 48 philosophy lectures, 12 performances -- the next "Night of Philosophy" will be held at the New School starting the evening of October 5th
A physicist, after 3 years of marriage, finally reads the work of her husband, a philosopher. What happens? -- a cautionary tale (via Paul Gowder)
Wittgenstein as elementary school teacher -- go for the comic, but be sure to click on the "knocked an 11 year old boy unconscious" link in the text beneath to learn about his abuse of schoolchildren
"The 'natal woman' is a creature of ideologically motivated pseudo-science" -- Carrie Jenkins (UBC) on vagueness, gender, and millenials
In defense of philosophizing about comic books -- Chris Gavaler and Nathaniel Goldberg (Washington & Lee) take in Bill Maher's claim that "comics are for kids"
Should there be a limit to how much wealth a person can have? -- Ingrid Robeyns, a defender of "limitarianism", discusses history of the idea
"Mainstream philosophy... suddenly demands work on trans issues, but the impact of tenuous trans employment and the silencing of trans perspectives are deprioritized as issues of free and open academic inquiry" -- a brief history of trans philosophy from Amy Marvin (Oregon)
"Our confusion is what makes us such easy marks" -- Michael Lynch (Connecticut) on how, when we communicate online, we often don't know what we're doing
"I regularly get students to observe me now... Colleagues say, 'It’s very courageous of you to ask for feedback.' It isn’t. I want to improve. They’re undergraduates. I have tenure." -- lots of valuable insights from Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) on improving one's teaching
Knowing how challenging a puzzle is can be more difficult than the puzzle itself -- a charming video about a fun math puzzle that makes a point about the value of abstract reasoning (via Aeon)
"Neural networks... are often called black boxes because of the mysteries of how they work," which poses a problem for the research -- the reproducibility crisis in AI (via Eric Schliesser)
Women "do not trust that the department will protect them from faculty sexual misconduct" and "conservative views have been disrespected by faculty" -- two of the findings of a recent climate survey of Yale's Department of Philosophy
How can state laws be changed to benefit the lives of children whose parents are divorced? -- philosopher Donald Hubin (Ohio State) provides an answer
What do admissions committees for philosophy PhD programs look for in transcripts? -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) continues his series on getting into philosophy graduate programs
The UK government's strategy for reducing loneliness could be improved -- suggestions from philosophers Kimberley Brownlee and David Jenkins (Warwick)
Cross-cultural normative philosophy -- a new series at PEA Soup
What teachers of philosophy can learn from pro wrestling -- from philosophy professor and pro-wrestling fan Douglas Edwards (Utica)
(plus: matching philosophers to pro wrestling catchphrases)
"I searched for an alternative to progressivism in part because I thought its intellectual foundations were incredibly weak. How does my new milieu fare in comparison? Well, there are quite a few problems." -- a philosophy graduate student who was drawn into the "Intellectual Dark Web" reflects on the movement
Improving conversations about how to feed babies -- a new public service website based on the research of philosopher Fiona Woollard (Southampton) and public health scholar Heather Trickey (Cardiff)
"The art and science of knowing you don't know" -- Mark Alfano (Australian Catholic University) talks about intellectual virtues, machine learning algorithms, social media, Nietzsche, and more, on the On Wisdom podcast
"The discussions got so loud and intense that the correctional officers came to check on us" -- Chris Lauer (UH Hilo) is teaching philosophy to prisoners in the Kulani Correctional Facility
"Navigating between populism and technocratic governance" in criminal justice reform -- philosopher Seth Mayer (Manchester) looks at recent works in legal theory and sociology on punishment in democracies
Philosophers and others on meritocracy in higher education -- reflections from Anastasia Berg (Cambridge), Jason Brennan (Georgetown), Agnes Callard (Chicago), Jennifer Morton (City College), and others
What makes fictions fiction? -- an animated video explaining Kendall Walton's (Michigan) ideas about make-believe
"Paradoxically, to improve critical thinking... we need to abandon the idea that we can teach generic thinking skills and instead allow students to devote more time to learning 'useless knowledge'" -- Johann N. Neem (Western Washington) on the importance of substantive knowledge for critical thinking
"If we refute and exclude the falsehoods of others, it seems, we’re making progress on our way to finding out the truth" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on why he thinks this is not likely
A biological truth that "logic and metaphysics, in the form we have inherited them, still require us to reject on a priori grounds" -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) on mutualism, parasitism, microbiomes, our imagined relations with others, and our conspiracy with the corn
"The technologies have the potential to interfere with rights that are so basic that we may not even think of them as rights, like our ability to determine where our selves end and machines begin." -- the ethics of commercial neurotech and the need for a new "jurisprudence of the mind" (Vox)
Public Reason, the political philosophy website, is closing down after 12 years -- "times have changed and, with that, the need for there to be a website serving as the central clearing house for political philosophy/theory information and discussion has dissipated," says its editor, Simon C. May (Florida State)
"Life is what got us into this trouble to begin with; who needs more of it?" -- reflections from Anastasia Berg (Cambridge) and Rachel Wiseman (The Point) on the decision to have children and "how to affirm life in the face of suffering, sacrifice and likely failure"
Headline for an article about neurological arguments on free will: "A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked" -- but as one commenter put it, "the assertion of the headline might be a Gettier case" (via David Morrow)
"Is it possible for academics to use their time more effectively?" -- thoughts on the relevant tradeoffs from Jonathan "I arranged my office furniture so colleagues could not stop to talk" Wolff (Oxford)
If you lose conscious experience, "what implications does this have for your other mental capacities for representing, reasoning, and knowing about the external world?" -- Declan Smithies (Ohio State) is blogging about consciousness this week at Brains
Heideggerian environmentalism -- Aaron Wendland (Higher) on the need for "an alternative to the technological worldview that has governed our interaction with nature since the 17th century"
"Most people aim to be morally-mediocre" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) on how people "aim to be about as morally good as their peers -- not especially better, not especially worse"
"My mixed motivations make me distrust my ‘righteously uncivil’ impulses" -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) explores and reflects on what tempts her towards "righteous incivility"
A fair amount of Swedish moral philosophy is, predictably, in Swedish -- an interview with Lars Bergström (emeritus at Stockholm), conducted & translated by Simon Knutsson, offers a glimpse of the landscape to those who don't know the language
"Trying to characterize animal thought is like trying to describe the Mona Lisa. Approximations are possible, but precision is not." -- Jacob Beck (York) on whether we can know what animals are thinking
A new Confucius museum officially opens -- it contains around 700,000 cultural relics, including 300,000 files about the Confucius family, 40,000 books, 8,000 ancient costumes, and even musical instruments
"As philosophers and artists, it would be a good thing if we did more to criticize the implicit assumptions underlying our cultures’ views of art and artmaking" -- an interview with philosopher and musician Matt Lindauer (Brooklyn College, CUNY)
"Mathematics and empirical science don’t come as a package deal. To some extent they’re in tension." -- Alexander Douglas (St. Andrews) responds to those chiding philosophers to "study maths and science"
"Understanding why a self-proclaimed radical feminist group would side with conservatives arguing for the right to force cisgender women into skirts at work" -- a Vox explainer on the broader political and legal context in which philosophy's disputes over trans issues is occuring
"For some obscure reason, physicists have taken to presenting Schrödinger’s example as an illustration of the very thing he found ridiculous" -- Tim Maudlin (NYU) clarifies what about quantum theory is and isn't at odds with common sense
What did Al-Ghazali have to say about no-platforming and inductive risk? -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) fills us in
An empirical study of the nature of the "threat" scientism poses to philosophy -- from Moti Mizrahi (Florida Tech), who believes it provides evidence for "a methodological shift in philosophy"
"The knee-jerk contrarianism of opposing civility because elites have abused it... [is] an adolescent politics that is without radical or revolutionary potential, whatever its pretensions" -- Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) on civility, incivility, and the new book from Amy Olberding (Oklahoma)
...and here's an interview with Olberding about the the book
13 secondary schools in Ireland offered the relatively new optional short course in philosophy -- up from just 7 schools in the previous year
Reformatting classic philosophical texts -- Brian Weatherson (Michigan) is creating better-formatted, better-looking (and still free) versions of philosophical works found on Project Gutenberg
"Kenyan academics are working grueling 12-hour shifts writing essays for hundreds of thousands of British and American students" -- "highly educated experts earn as little as a dollar an hour while their millionaire bosses cream off the profits – and cheating Western teenagers take the credit"
What is the connection between memory and political polarization? -- philosophers are using computer simulations to figure this out
The new album from Femi (aka Georgetown philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò) -- a mix of hip-hop, blues, Latin rhythms, and electric guitar (w/ guest vocals on one track from GW philosophy prof. Vanessa Wills)
A new open text on set theory is now part of the Open Logic Project -- it was written by Tim Button (UCL)
"A sufficient account of the evolution of mind must go deeper than our power of propositional thinking" -- "We will have to understand a much older capacity – the power to feel and respond appropriately," write Stephen Asma and Rami Gabriel (Columbia College Chicago)
The secret philosophers of Silicon Valley -- "Greater transparency about the work philosophers do for tech companies would help convince skeptics and cynics about Silicon Valley’s willingness to listen and adapt"
A philosophy professor just ended a six year stint teaching philosophy of science to Tibetan monks -- David Henderson (Nebraska) provided the monks with "an important bridge to connect their spiritual background and modern science"
Sparkle-pooping unicorns and other future moral problems -- imagining the ethical quandaries of bioprinting technology
To vote well involves voting as an informed voter would, which you can now do without bothering to become an informed voter -- Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (Birkbeck) explains
Marie and Otto Neurath developed a pictographic language to "educate children through visual icons and visible chains of reasoning" -- and Marie Neurath led a team that produced over 80 children's books, many about science, now on display at London’s House of Illustration
Revise & Resubmit: a guide -- by David McCarthy (Hong Kong), at The Philosophers' Cocoon
"When we’re looking for a spouse or friend, we strongly prefer deontologists, viewing them as more moral and trustworthy than consequentialists" -- a conversation with neuroscientist Molly Crockett, who studies how we perceive different kinds of moral agents
The way out of real-world collective action problems begins with understanding the "unruly relationship" between individual and political agency -- Matthew Noah Smith (Northeastern) on trust, costly signals, structural change, and the future of the planet
Public philosopher reads Shakespeare live on Twitch for charity -- Oliver Thorne of the popular PhilosophyTube channel has raised nearly $100,000 in 3 days for Samaritans UK
A philosopher's gorgeous rainforest glass house -- with rooftop terrace "to read and smoke a cigar looking at the stars" (via Simon C. May)
Is all of philosophy politicized? That depends on what we mean by "politicized" -- Oliver Traldi (ND) makes some distinctions
Neurathian unity of science + realism about normativity = all philosophy is political -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) on the question of philosophy's politicization
Only 0.13% of education articles published in the field’s top 100 journals are replications -- education scholars worry the field's focus on novelty discourages work needed to legitimate its research
"In a wide variety of situations it's impossible to make fair predictions" -- Cosmo Grant (MIT) walks the reader through a way to think about and test for how fairness in predictive algorithms
"If members of the philosophy guild aspire to become public intellectuals, style must become part of the philosophical curriculum" -- Gordon Marino (St. Olaf) on the importance of style in philosophical writing
Real live raven-rabbit? (play the video) -- the most viral subtweeting of both Wittgenstein and Hempel
Philosophers on mescaline -- the experiences of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Benjamin with the hallucinogenic drug
The snuggle for survival -- what we can learn about evolution by shifting our focus from competition to cooperation and the "relaxation of selective forces"
Hume, Einstein, time, and "natural philosophy" -- Matias Slavov (UCLA) on the "grey area in which physics and philosophy overlap"
The importance of time to various issues in political theory -- a conversation with Elizabeth Cohen (Syracuse)
Plato invented the alarm clock? -- a video shows how it worked (via Mikhail Valdman)
Independent scholar finds new John Locke manuscript -- the article contains a link to a digital reproduction of the hand-written "Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with others"
"From the standpoint of a political analysis of sexual politics, basing morality in nature is contrary to everything feminism has achieved" -- an interview with Catharine MacKinnon (Michigan)
The 295 most-cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) with help from his son
"Make friends with people you disagree with" -- and plenty of other good advice for new college students from Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin)
"No son of mine is going to be a Benthamite utiltarian. This is a John Stuart Mill family, dammit!" -- "And as long as you live under my roof, you’re gonna be following my extremely niche (and extremely specific) perspective on philosophy"
"I much prefer this work to adding to the now painfully overspecialized journal literature in philosophy" -- Tom Sorrell (Warwick) on his work as an "embedded ethicist", in an interview that also covers his writings on Descartes and Hobbes
"College is probably the last time in your life you'll be around people (your professors) whose job is to make you a more interesting person. Take advantage of that." -- my contribution to a long thread of advice to students starting college
"Asking the humanities to save STEM is a variant of 'educationism'—the fallacy that getting our school curriculums right will fix our society" -- Paul Musgrave (UMass Amherst) thinks "the humanities should be saved... but not because they will help the C-suite develop better products or stop executives from making disastrous ones" (WP)
The International Social Ontology Society debuts its YouTube channel -- with a keynote address by Sally Haslanger (MIT) on ideal and non-ideal social ontology
"Seeing the truth will make you extinct" -- We ought not think our senses are veridical. How, then, can they be useful? Donald Hoffman (UC Irvine) explains
Great suggestions for how to have a great first day of class -- advice from James Lang (Assumption College)
Morality? There's an app for that. -- Michael Klenk (Delft) thinks we should "take proposals for artificial moral advice seriously"
A critique of ideal theory -- at PDL
At the root of "tribal arrogance" is "a confusion about truth" -- Michael Lynch (Connecticut) is interviewed on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"
When the question, "do running backs matter in the NFL today?" comes up, ask an expert... on what matters -- philosopher Erin Tarver (Emory) is interviewed at Slate about football's "hottest profound question" (via Owen Schaefer)
How we might end up killing ourselves with AI -- Susan Schneider (Connecticut) on replacing brains with tech
Artisanal ethics -- the customer is not always right---especially when it comes to coffee, says Matt Strohl (University of Montana, Missoula)
"It can be hard to make a causal claim connecting speech and action, between nasty discourse and harms that go beyond the social or psychological" -- but "there is a case to be made," argues Lynne Tirrell (Connecticut) in The Guardian
Is there academic tenure in the UK? -- answers from Michael Otsuka (LSE)
Brainjacking, personality changes, and other risks of deep brain stimulation -- Jonathan Pugh (Oxford) discusses a range of ethical issues raised by the increasingly used technology
Aesthetic tribalism: "It’s bad for us aesthetically. It’s bad for us generally. And we can do something about it." -- commentary from Dominic McIver Lopes (UBC)
"In philosophy we tend to theorise too soon, about things that we don’t yet understand well enough because we haven’t looked at them hard enough before we rush into theory." -- Sophie Grace Chappell (Open University) on what it has been like for her to be a trans woman, and what can be learned from her experiences
Political Science deploys devastating new weapon in best-disciplinary-conference wars -- I think this is one of those situations in which no one will object to someone starting a petition
Attempts to find out whether we're simulated minds in a simulated world will be "either extremely uninteresting or spectacularly dangerous" -- Preston Greene (Nanyang) in the NYT
The charge of politicizing tragedy "has its purchase only if one thinks that the political considerations brought out in the grief are misguided or irrelevant" -- Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) on the charge of politicizing tragedy
Ned Block (NYU) talks consciousness -- on The Partially Examined Life podcast
Philosophy Job Market Mentoring Program -- those seeking mentoring and those able to offer it: sign up!
Different theories in the philosophy of mind as illustrations -- by Jasper van den Herik (EUR), with other suggestions in the replies
Synthetic wombs and the abortion debate -- the ideas of a few philosophers are discussed in this NYT article
"The aesthetic and the moral are not as separate as we would like to believe" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) on the "fine line between respecting others’ right to their bad taste, and opting to participate in it"
"There is no established orthodoxy about gender in academic philosophy" -- a statement from 33 philosophers
The top ten places for an undergraduate degree in philosophy in the UK, according to The Telegraph -- more noteworthy for the publicity it brings to philosophy than its content
"The people you want to listen... aren’t the ones who are listening" -- Mark Alfano (Australian Catholic University) is attempting to burst the anti-vaxxer bubble.
"The rapid speed at which this science is advancing suggests the potential for promising applications of memory-editing techniques in the future" -- a discussion of recent advances in memory editing and how they might translate to current clinical practice
There's no such thing as the direction of time -- Matt Farr (Cambridge) lays out the C-Theory of time, which "goes a significant step further even than the B-theory"
"The ritual of a Killing Day is known to all adults. It is taught to children first in outline only, and then gradually in more detail as they get older." -- Kieran Healy (Duke) on how the U.S. has "institutionalized the mass shooting"
In defense of the marriage-free state -- Clare Chambers (Cambridge) on the problems with government being involved in marriage
Philosophers, "hold on to the thing that should have brought you in in the first place, which is your own desire to understand things" -- Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton) in a wide-ranging and interesting conversation with Tyler Cowen (GMU)
Carelessness, dogmatism, gullibility, wishful thinking, and other epistemic vices -- Quassim Cassam (Cambridge) talks with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) about his new book
"I felt phenomenology could provide a way of explicating our existence in its singularity while doing so in light of its universal structures and truths. There is conceptual rigor without existential superficiality." -- philosopher Steven DeLay (Woolf), in an in-depth interview on phenomenology with Richard Marshall at 3:16AM
"The academic freedom worries are overblown" -- Shannon Dea (Waterloo) on the discussion of transgender issues, academic freedom, and why "it is important not to allow social media flame wars to distract us"
"They thought that my rather different approach... was not only wrong, but it was stupid, and it was undermining philosophy." -- a brief interview with Patricia Churchland (UCSD)
"Conscience is not an isolated space, cut off from the rest of the world. It is what reminds us of our own fallibility, and what makes us accountable to others." -- author Eula Biss and philosopher Mavis Biss (Loyola Maryland) on conscientious objection, particularly in the context of vaccination
Aphorisms: the way thinkers have "encrypted their philosophies in brief bursts of memorable obscurity" -- Adam Gopnik looks at the literary form and some new writing about it (The New Yorker)
"I came at this expecting to find evidence of discrimination, but the data didn't support it." -- a new study on whether college professors discriminate against conservative students
“Medical Ethics in Sickbay” and “Time Travel, Transporters and the Terran Universe" -- two panels philosophy professor Beth Seacord (Southern Nevada) is putting on at the Star Trek Convention this week in Las Vegas
"If the artworld appears to cater increasingly to the desires of the global rich elite, we have to ask how this impacts the assessment of the value of an artwork" -- Sarah Hegenbart (TU Munich) on art, financial value, aesthetic value, and the responsibility of curators
The APDA blog compares details on philosophy PhD programs, two at a time -- this week it's Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania
"Know Thyself" is an interactive theater experience which "transforms abstract philosophy into a series of delightful and challenging analog games" -- it will run as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September
"The term 'medieval' is a sticky one and won’t go away, but in combination with 'philosophy' it will continue to sound like an oxymoron. " -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on problems with "medieval philosophy"
The philosophy of smugness -- it's "akin to both bullshitting and epistemic insouciance in virtue of its normative carelessness" says Grant Rozeboom (St. Norbert)
Language, logic, and the future for the Anglo-American tradition in philosophy -- a conversation between Saul Kripke (CUNY) and Timothy Williamson (Oxford)
"When you act wrongly, you incur a debt of sorts" -- and this helps get at the difference between good and bad excuses, according to Pauline Sliwa (Cambridge)
"I think the better way to look at the world is as structured around the 'stuff we’re all going along with'" -- Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) is interviewed by Richard Marshall on political philosophy, race, climate change, and other topics
"If cryonics works, then society---including law and ethics---will radically change" -- Patrick Lin (Cal Poly) discusses the ethics of waking the dead and other issues related to cryonics
"Since pro-choice positions depend on more precise and complex theoretical thinking, they are harder to effectively communicate" -- Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) and Kristina Grob (South Carolina, Sumter) on the communication of arguments about abortion
Three disadvantages of treating English as the lingua franca of philosophy -- from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
Senior academic brazenly encourages his followers to help him gaslight a younger philosopher -- the person he's trying to encourage others to think of as "crazy" happens to be the author of a book that discusses gaslighting and other forms of misogyny
The Logos Institute for Analytic and Exegetical theology at the University of St Andrews has a blog and podcast -- with several philosophers contributing
"Already, it is clear that melding digital technologies with human brains can have provocative effects, not least on people’s agency" -- a survey of the variety of ethical issues arising with brain-computer interfaces
How to launch and run a summer diversity institute in philosophy -- a guide from the American Philosophical Association
Quantum supremacy (in computing) -- what is it? why is it important? and when will it happen? (maybe this year)
"9-5 I’m sat in the library in my track-pants, and for the last few months I’ve been whisked away to the most exotic places by SI" -- meet Erin Willerton (Manchester), philosophy student and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, whose thesis is on diversity in philosophy
"Grand Theories" is a new podcast that "tells stories about highly ambitious but obscure ideas from philosophy... in a way that anyone can enjoy" -- from Mark Ryan
10 years ago a neuroscientist announced his plan to simulate a complete human brain on a computer within a decade -- He didn't succeed. Why not? And why do it at all?
Roger Scruton rejoins British government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission -- he had been let go after the publication of remarks of his selectively edited to appear maximally offensive
Philosophizing about pregnancy -- Elselijn Kingma, Fiona Woollard, and Suki Finn (Southampton) discuss their work on BBC Radio
"Owning one’s own luck is an unavoidable part of being an agent who takes responsibility for herself and the impact she has on others in the course of leading her own life" -- Alec Walen (Rutgers) is interviewed by Richard Marshall on rights, killing, and other issues in moral philosophy
The Canadian Medical Association Journal Podcast has "philosophers on medicine" series -- four episodes so far
"Many of the acclaimed advances in modern fundamental theoretical physics have yielded no predictions that can be tested in the near future. But that is no reason to despair." -- a brief review of a new history of recent physics "where evidence is spare or absent" and "other criteria, including aesthetic ones, have been allowed to come into play"
"Humor is philosophically interesting because amusement can be justified... without any expectation that the reasons we give speak to rational beings, as such" -- Kieran Setiya (MIT) on Terry Eagleton's new book on humor
12 philosophers "condemn the too frequently cruel and abusive rhetoric, including accusations of hatred or transphobia, directed at [trans-exclusive] philosophers in response to their arguments and advocacy" -- at Inside Higher Ed
"Joe Biden is the old professor still teaching off of notes he typed up in 1975 who gets handsy at the holiday party after one too many scotch and sodas" -- Democratic Party candidates for president as members of a history department
The psychology and philosophy of perverse (not necessarily perverted) actions -- Paul Bloom (Yale) in The New Yorker
To help students avoid their knee-jerk political reactions, "look more globally, to contexts foreign to students so that they must try to use the philosophical tools and concepts in their interpretation" -- 廖顯禕 / Shen-yi Liao (Puget Sound) guides us through a good example
Lower-ranked PhD-programs in philosophy admit students from a wide range of U.S. undergraduate institutions -- data and analysis from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
"The disagreement over scholarly debate about gender identity rages on" -- Inside Higher Ed covers the discussion of trans issues taking place in philosophy and elsewhere in the academy
An online Bernard Williams archive -- it includes work by and about him, videos and interviews, and more
"Sometimes, people who lack philosophical training write books and essays on philosophy. These books and essays are usually very bad." -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) on amateur philosophy
Bringing together philosophy of causation and philosophy of medicine -- an interview with Rani Lill Anjum (NMBU) on her CauseHealth project
More on Colin McGinn's "ethical awareness" and "catastrophe avoidance" business consultancy -- for example, if you are caught emailing a student about handjobs, argue that "virtually all jobs are 'hand jobs'... for all human work is manual work"
An interview with Aristotle on slavery and labor practices -- (via David Gross)
"How experimental methods and findings from psycholinguistics can be adapted to analyse philosophical arguments" -- a symposium at Brains on an article that seeks "to take experimental philosophy beyond the study of intuitions"
"While white supremacy places the white man at the centre of all things good, white guilt places him at the centre of all things evil" -- Karthick Ram Manoharan (Calcutta) responds to Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson) on the racism of Western philosophy (via Preston Stovall)
Cosmopolitanism, statism, and avant-garde political agency -- Lea Ypi (LSE) discusses her work and the role of political philosophy in current affairs with Carmen Pavel (KCL)
"There isn't a lot of room in philosophy---analytic philosophy---for somebody who wants to do something that has some kind of aesthetic value" -- Barry Lam (Vassar) is interviewed at The Public Life of the Mind
"It seems worth exploring ways to boost the philanthropic sector whilst avoiding the potential downside of concentrating power in the hands of the ultra-wealthy" -- Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami) has an idea: charity vouchers
Letter to a young black philosopher -- observations and advice from Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
Text-reading algorithm uses word-association analyses of scientific works to predict ideas humans missed -- "In one experiment, researchers analyzed only papers published before 2009 and were able to predict one of the best modern-day thermoelectric materials four years before it was discovered in 2012" (via Gregor Flock)
Update on the philosophy teacher accused of trying to set fire to St. Patrick's Cathedral -- he will be undergoing psychiatric evaluation
An art exhibit all about Chinese philosopher Laozi opened earlier this week in Cairo -- with more than 30 works by 40 artists from 18 countries
The New Statesmen apologizes to Roger Scruton for not accurately representing his views -- at the bottom of the linked article (via David McPherson)
In 2015, bioethicist Travis Rieder (Johns Hopkins) was involved in a motorcycle accident that crushed his left foot -- he discusses his recovery, his struggle with opioid addiction, related policy matters, and the book he wrote about it, with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air
Bringing together philosophy and archaeology -- a profile of philosopher Alison Wylie (UBC)
Have you heard of the Lawn Chair Philosophy Foundation? -- it donates philosophy library packages to Philadelphia’s local homeless shelters and half-way houses and provides free philosophy courses throughout the city
Using statistics to determine when humanity's time will be up -- a look at the Doomsday argument (Vox)
Using a graphic design archive to shed light on Otto Neurath's goals of unified science and informed democratic decision-making -- John Capps and Evelyn Brister (RIT) curate the fascinating online exhibit, "Words Divide—Pictures Unite: Otto Neurath, Isotype, and the Unity of Science”
Where are all the women in ancient philosophy? -- It's complicated, says Peter Adamson (Ludwig Maximilians Universität)
Sociologists on the belief that nature is good, cities, and conservationism -- Hillary Angelo looks at four recent works
"It requires an unsettling, introspective honesty about what moves and motivates me" -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) on one's own incivility
The true origins of famous philosophical ideas -- (EC)
Colin McGinn launches consulting firm handling matters "from workplace ethics to catastrophe avoidance" -- I'm assured this is not a joke. Do check out the list of advisors.
"Cute is one – perhaps very trivial, very tentative – way of exploring whether and how the paradigm of power can be exited" -- Simon May (KCL) on cuteness
"The hidden nature of imagery (and qualia more generally) explains why a significant minority of humans are shocked and dismayed when they learn that other people are capable of generating visual [mental] images" -- a discussion of aphantasia, with multiple links
How two ideas from Chinese philosophy are relevant to leadership in philosophy -- Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes) on cultivating propriety and instituting proper structures
A rather stunning optical illusion -- with a helpful animation
The ethics of the movie "Yesterday," in which a contemporary singer-songwriter is the only person to be aware of the Beatles ever existing -- a writer consults with philosophers Elizabeth Anderson, Louise Antony, Benjamin Chan, Barry Lam, Todd Lekan, Ben Lennertz, Todd May, and Neal Tognazzini
"It’s unsettling to witness the ease with which a few men writing over two millennia ago laid the groundwork for centuries of sexism. It’s crushing to realize that so many of our contemporaries embrace the logic of those ancient arguments" -- Christia Mercer (Columbia) in The Nation
Using the witch scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to teach logic -- a lesson plan from William A. B. Parkhurst (South Florida)
"The sort of metaphysics and ethics they [Plato, Descartes, or Kant, Fischer, Korsgaard] all endorse grew up in connection with white supremacism and helped shape it." -- Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson) on western philosophy and white supremacism
A new open access philosophy book on the arguments and controversies regarding abortion -- by Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) and Kristina Grob (University of South Carolina, Sumter)
Wittgenstein's hut in Norway -- it has recently been restored and is now open for visitors
Philosophers and physicists on whether new findings have implications for the "black hole information paradox" -- Eric Winsberg (South Florida), Sean Gryb (Bristol) and others quoted on a new "sonic black hole" discovery
"Leave the most important and complicated items until the end of the meeting." -- advice on how to chair an academic committee from Robert S. Coleman
A symposium on Down Girl by Kate Manne (Cornell) -- with contributions from Kate Norlock (Trent), Agnes Callard (Chicago), Briana Toole (Claremont McKenna), Ishani Maitra (Michigan), Audrey Yap (Victoria), and Elle Benjamin (U. Mass)
"Information is the real vital force: it is what separates living from nonliving" -- two scientists reflect on what life is
"With my concussion, I found myself suddenly freed from the professional obligation to think. I even had a doctor’s note" -- Megan Craig (Stony Brook) on how "a concussion has a way of changing one’s sense of the balance between mind and body" (NYT)
The World Phenomenology Institute is now on Facebook -- (via Randy Dible)
"Causation is one of the most fruitful concepts in philosophy... but it is at the same time one of the most intriguing and controversial" -- Carolina Sartorio (Arizona) on causation and free will in an interview with Richard Marshall
Don't "referee-proof" your paper -- for one thing, "it's a buzzkill," says Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes)
Book XI is a new journal of literary philosophy -- it's "dedicated to publishing personal essays, memoir, fiction, science fiction, humor, and poetry with philosophical themes"
Should you apply to graduate school in philosophy, and if so, where? "Warning: This might be depressing!" -- advice from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
"Academic freedom does not exempt philosophers and other academics from the duty to treat their colleagues and students with dignity and respect" -- Chris Bertram (Bristol) on a recent letter some philosophers and others sent to The Times complaining about trans-inclusive policies at UK universities
Why is a crater on the moon named after Anaxagoras? -- the story involves his arrest, trial, and being sentenced to death
Wabash College adds "Philosophy, Politics, and Economics" to its list of majors -- and an endowed professorship to lead the program
Understanding and assessing China's "social credit" system -- an online symposium
"They were some of the most intelligent, kind and real people I have interacted with" -- students at the University of Texas San Antonio took part in a "Philosophy and Literature Circle" with inmates at a local prison this past semester
"How, then, do corporate executives---who, through manipulation and deception, sell products they know to be potentially lethal---differ morally from ordinary murderers?" -- Jeff McMahan (Oxford) on this and related questions
"One can wonder whether the next generation of young people will be as focused on and obsessed with discussion as their predecessors were between 1950 and 2000" -- Jürgen Habermas turns 90, and Raymond Geuss reflects critically on his legacy
A history study using machine learning vindicates... Hegel? -- "many events that will one day be viewed as historic attract little attention at the time" (from the abstract linked to in the article)
"How much does it matter that our future is biological?" -- an interview with David Chalmers (NYU) in the NYT
The Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy has a new website -- and a new editorial team
An internet radio station churning through nearly 900 episodes of some of the best philosophy podcasts, playing them on continuous shuffle -- created by Kelly Truelove
"The thing that I learned from philosophy was an ability to articulate theories crisply, which led to an ability to express crisp theories of human nature, which aligns with some of the most interesting things around" -- an interview with tech entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman, who has an MA in philosophy, in the NYT (via Eddy Nahmias)
A virtual conference, "David Lewis and his place in the history of analytic philosophy," is taking place over the next couple of days -- you can watch it live and submit questions for the q&a's
"No superintelligence could never become so intelligent as to put all philosophical questions permanently to rest" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) on whether philosophy will ever come to an end
"Those who take themselves to be fighting for ethical and political progress ought to be fostering a culture in which critics feel free to challenge their beliefs and ideals" -- Jonny Thakkar (Swarthmore) on political correctness
The PEA Soup blog turns 15! -- reflections on its history from David Shoemaker (Tulane) and some of the site's other contributors
"The standard journal article has severe repercussions on the way we teach and practise scholarship in the history of philosophy" -- "It narrows our way of reading texts and counters attempts at diversification of the canon," argues Martin Lenz (Groningen)
"It is better when many people are at a lower quality of life than a few at a higher quality of life" -- Torbjörn Tännsjö (Stockholm) in an interviewed at Vox
Universities are under siege because they "represent an idea of society that contains freedom and social solidarity" -- Daniel Peres (Federal University of Bahia-Brazil) on the Brazilian government's attack on higher education
What can we learn from auditory illusions about the relationship between mind and reality? -- an especially delightful episode of Hi-Phi Nation, from Barry Lam (Vassar)
How much enhancement can the self take? -- Susan Schneider (Connecticut) on the philosophical issues raised by the prospects of human-AI mergers
"The devised multi-disciplinary program failed to transition to a mature inter-disciplinary coherent field" -- doubts about the field of cognitive science (via Evan Thompson)
"The graduate students are on strike, and I have crossed picket lines to be in my office. Later today, I will cross them again to teach my class" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) on civility, Socrates, and strikes
and one of the striking graduate students responds
The conditions under which "morality unseats humour" -- Noël Carroll (CUNY) in The New Statesman
"This is a world in which unsubstantiated opinion is treated as logical simply because those peddling this opinion know how to speak in the language of analytic philosophy––and thus don't have to do any research" -- J. Moufawad-Paul on recent discussions of trans issues in philosophy
Is Trump eroding people's respect for our Constitutional system? -- David Lay Williams (DePaul) tries to figure out what he can learn from his students' changing reactions to The Federalist Papers
"The internet logic fan imagines that [better logic] would often lead to us agreeing on what is true---by contrast, I imagine it would lead to us agreeing on how much we don't know" -- brilliant post from Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) on how logic opens up possibilities
With new forms of convincing fake video, epistemologically, "we ought to think of images as more like testimony than perception" -- Regina Rini (York) on deepfakes (NYT)
"To claim that there is a debate with sides in it is itself not a neutral act" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) on no-platforming
Because of philosophy's nature, "outsiders to the cultural mainstream and people who have lived with the disadvantages of existing cultural structures and worldviews, ought to be especially valued" -- but in reality... Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) with data & discussion
"What seemed to the quantum pioneers to be unavoidable randomness in the physical world is now shown to be amenable to control. We can take charge of the quantum." -- a physics experiment with possible implications for philosophy of science and other fields (via Joshua Synon)
"You are, in fact, being followed" -- conspiracy theories for the ultra-rational from philosopher-humorist Alex Baia and Thatcher Jensen, in The New Yorker
"Going for a Sunday drive has the expected effect of ruining someone’s afternoon" -- the NYT looks at the impact and ethics of your summer vacation travel, with several philosophers quoted. The above's from Av Hiller (Portland State).
"We may never completely realize the ideal of democracy as a space of reasons... But that does not mean that it is not ideal worth struggling to reach, and it would be perverse to give up striving for it just when it is under threat." -- Michael Lynch (Connecticut) on "information pollution"
Is it time humanities professors went on strike? -- Nathan Eckstrand (Fort Hays State University) thinks it may be
Southern Utah University hosts free philosophy summer camp for local middle and high school students -- it's led by professors Kris Phillips and Kirk Fitzpatrick
What can be learned from drawing or visualizing philosophical thought experiments? -- Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes), who has a book with 42 illustrations of them forthcoming, shares her thoughts
"Writing is an ethical activity, and becoming a better writer can make you a better person." -- Bob Fischer (Texas State) and Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) with the whys and hows of ethical writing
Program prestige and job placement in North American philosophy -- Jonathan Weisberg (Toronto) looks at the data
“To deny us this option is to not honor our humanness.” -- Karen Warren, a philosopher with a terminal neurodegenerative disorder, is fighting for right-to-die legislation in Minnesota
"The concept of knowledge is a hangover from a stone-age way of thinking that has long outlived its usefulness" -- so argues David Papineau (KCL), who notes, "this needn't mean anything goes"
A newly hired philosophy professor on their good luck -- "For all of the success I’ve had due to my hard work and 'talent”', there are people who were equally 'talented' and worked just as hard... but haven’t been recognized or rewarded"
"We found that people were more likely to judge that God could make logical contradictions true than that God could change foundational moral facts" -- an empirical study on beliefs relevant to divine command theory, metaethics, and the relationship between normative and non-normative cognition
"Perhaps we should presume that U.S. forces obey the law of war as DoD understands it. But we cannot presume that U.S. forces obey the law of war, since DoD misunderstands it" -- Adil Haque (Rutgers) responds to Paul Ney, Jr. (General Counsel to the U.S. Department of Defense) on civilian deaths and urban warfare
"Sound must be experienced as moving in order to be experienced as music... But once we experience sounds as moving, I don’t think we could stop experiencing them as expressive" -- Jennifer Church (Vassar) on how imagining contributes to our ability to hear sounds as music
The science and ethics of transplanting uteruses into transgender women -- in the British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology (via Kathleen Stock)
"I had serious misconceptions about the job of philosophers. I thought you change the world through your thoughts and writings. Ha!" -- an interview with Saba Fatima (SIU-Edwardsville) on her life, education, religion, and philosophical work
"Democracy as a whole benefits from the non-conforming moral fanatics" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) responds to Weatherson's piece (below) on political opponents
Should you respect your political opponents because they're principled? -- it depends on the principles, argues Brian Weatherson (Michigan)
What the re-evolution of an extinct species of bird has to do with philosophy of biology -- and questions about what would happen if we rewound evolutionary history and set it going again
Should radio stations stop playing Michael Jackson? -- Alfred Archer (Tilburg) and Benjamin Matheson (Stockholm) take up the question
"She was so dispirited that her prized capacity to reason had not worked, she decided to find out how we change our minds" -- an article about Eleanor Gordon-Smith (Princeton) and her book, "Stop Being Reasonable"
"What Climacus does... is to discuss (and enact) an alternative manner of doing philosophy... which he thinks can be practiced without interfering with an individual’s ability to live an ethical or religious life" -- Paul Muench (Montana) talks with Richard Marshall about Kierkegaard, Socrates, anger, philosophy, and more
"We owe each other not only better actions and better words, but also better thoughts" -- Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna) on the moral importance of seeing a person as a person
"I reject the idea that philosophy is argument" -- "Most real philosophy, as experienced by most people, takes the form of fiction" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
"Lately, I’ve been wondering whether it’s OK for me to be a philosophy professor." -- Robert Gressis (CSU Northridge) lays out the case against... himself
A film about an "intense debate" between a longtime mayor in an existential crisis and a "brilliant, if dry, young philosopher" just won the best European Film Award at the Cannes Film Festival -- "Alice and the Mayor" is "beautifully written, clear, concise and intellectually stimulating without being at all pretentious"
20 ways to be a great--or not so great--literary citizen, gleaned from Leibniz -- or "How to Be a Dick If You Have Gout and/or an Arch Nemesis" by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Several "gender-critical" philosophers jointly author essay responding to criticisms -- but the absence of citations and attributions raises questions: are these criticisms ones typically advanced by other philosophers in their scholarly work? are they the strongest criticisms? etc.
Online speech, varieties of pseudonymity, controversial ideas, and more -- Carissa Véliz (Oxford) in conversation with John Danaher (Galway)
"These new ‘pro-life’ laws are deeply inhumane" -- Neera K. Badhwar (Oklahoma) & Eva M. Dadlez (Central Oklahoma) on abortion at What's Wrong?
What can be legitimately expected if a piece of art? -- Sean T. Murphy (Indiana) takes up the question in light of the final episodes of Game of Thrones
"The return of this book is a nice reminder to anyone who has any overdue books not to be afraid" -- last week, someone returned a book to a library that was 80 years overdue
The unusual kind of typewriter Nietzsche used, of which only 35 are known to remain, just sold at auction for €100,000 -- it was so special a machine Nietzsche wrote a poem about it: "The writing ball is a thing like me..."
If avocados, almonds, and the like are not vegan, then what? -- Dominic Wilkinson (Oxford) on the implications for different moral arguments for veganism (via Jean Kazez)
A rope, a planet, Wittgenstein, and certainty -- a great animation to share with those other folks who are too confident in their beliefs, from Jonathan Ellis (UC Santa Cruz) & Adam Ansorge
"Conspiracy Theories are political gambits whose real function is to promote a political agenda" -- so argues Quassim Cassam (Warwick)
A school in London introduces a "Eudaimonia" program -- it uses "the teachings of Aristotle in an attempt to boost pupil wellbeing"
Trans women are victims of misogyny, "and we can see this without having to engage in debates over what 'makes' someone a woman" -- Robin Dembroff (Yale) in The Guardian
"If we are searching for free will at the fundamental physical level, we are simply searching in the wrong place" -- an interview with Christian List (LSE)
"Dying is worse for the last mortals than for earlier generations" -- Regina Rini (York) explains why, in this essay that won last year's Sander's Prize for Public Philosophy (TLS)
"Scientists have created a living organism whose DNA is entirely human-made — perhaps a new form of life, experts said, and a milestone in the field of synthetic biology." --- "the Cambridge team is just one of many racing in recent years to build synthetic genomes" (NYT)
A recording of the official soundtrack of "A Theory of Justice: the Musical" is now available for pre-order -- the musical features a time-traveling John Rawls visiting famous historical philosophers while being pursued by an evil Robert Nozick
(here's a preview of The Utilitarian Barbershop Quartet singing "The Total Happiness")
When we cry for fictional characters, what are we thinking? -- Elizabeth Picciuto surveys some options
An SEP secret -- hidden in plain sight
"The evidence points... towards there being genuine sensory changes due to learning and expertise" -- Kevin Connolly (Minerva Schools KGI) on how experts perceive the world differently
Dax Cowart, a man whose story became a famous example in the right-to-die literature, has died -- 46 years after his doctors refused his requests to be allowed to die from severe burns he sustained
An interview with legal philosophy Hillary Nye (Alberta) -- come for the discussion of eliminativism about law, stay for the Hume cross-stitch
Wondering how to get your students to come to office hours? -- prescribe them this video (via Danielle Wenner)
"When I consider each of these arguments on its own, I am convinced that it is sound. But when I consider all of them together, something strange happens. I am unable to form a belief in the theory they support" -- Bart Streumer (Groningen) on general error theory
An ethics bowl... for faculty -- John Ellis (UC Santa Cruz) has organized an ethics bowl on future generations in which the competitors will be faculty from a variety of disciplines
Should children have the right to vote? -- a "no" answer may be harder to justify than you think, argues Nicolás Brando (KU Leuven)
"Reductio: Adventures In Ideas" is a new philosophy podcast -- it's put together by recent UCLA philosophy PhD Andrew Lavin
"A Phenomenology of Professional Failure" -- an essay by Ben Sheredos (UC San Diego) is discussed at The Philosophers' Cocoon
Do wasps engage in transitive reasoning? -- scientists take a look (via Wes Hansen)
"The goal of the philosophical novella should be to show that ideas are alive and motivating features of people’s lives" -- an interview with philosopher and novelist Matthew McKeever (Oslo)
Trans women, penis panics, sociology, metaphysics, and the younger generation -- discussed by Barry Lam (Vassar), Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne), Robin Dembroff (Yale), and others in the latest episode of Hi-Phi Nation
The human experience of time -- Philosophers Keith Ansell-Pearson (Warwick), Emily Thomas (Durham), & Mark Sinclair (Roehampton) discuss ideas of Henri Bergson on the BBC
Use your own school's login when you're at or near other schools for free wifi access -- there's a good chance your school is a part of the eduroam network (via Samantha Brennan)
"If you take Collegra 256 times a year for four years, Collegra will improve your critical reasoning, moral reasoning, analytic, and quantitative skills" -- Jason Brennan (Georgetown) and Phillip Magness (AIER) argue that a lot of academic advertising is unethical
Cookbook ethics -- Andy Lamey and Ike Sharpless (UCSD) look at how many animals would have to die to prepare the recipes in various cookbooks
"We find that faculty’s work environments, not selection effects, drive their productivity and prominence, establishing that where a researcher works serves as a mechanism for cumulative advantage" -- a new study published in PNAS, discussed at IHE
Is "Philosophy, Politics, and Economics" (PPE) a viable research area, and if so, what could PPE research be? -- thoughts from Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) in the wake of a recent PPE conference
What is "compression plagiarism"? -- a brief interview with philosophy's plagiarism patrolman, Michael Dougherty (Ohio Dominion)
"Plato’s dialogues show possibilities for intellectual progress across disagreement...not in the first instance by coming to agreement, but by exploring one another’s points of view" -- an interview with Rachana Kamtekar (Cornell)
"We’re playing god every day" -- an interview with Julian Savulescu (Oxford) on reproductive technologies
Will biotechnology allow us to "have our meat and our ethics too"? -- moral philosophy, cultured meat, and "the pig in the back yard"
"The philosophy of business, innovation and technology" -- a new "three-course cognate and major specialization" at the University of New Hampshire
Current disputes over philosophical, political, and practical issues concerning transgender people go back to the 1970s -- those origins are the subject of the latest episode of Hi-Phi Nation, from Barry Lam (Vassar)
100 philosophers share what Iris Murdoch's philosophy means to them -- It's part of a public philosophy project called "Philosophy By Postcard" (see the update)
"The assessment of all against all" -- H.E. Baber (San Diego) rants, colorfully, against assessment culture
---but some people are really, really, really into it.
"Reducing the status divide between humans and animals helps to reduce prejudice and helps to strengthen belief in equality amongst human groups" -- Will Kymlicka (Queens) on the psychological aspects and political implications of our thoughts about animals
Joe Biden's preoccupation with Kant -- He doesn't appear to have heard that
Kant is wrong for America
Alone or as a subject in a study we may be poor at reasoning, "but in a more ecological setting, when we can argue and reason collectively, the right answer spreads like wildfire" -- thoughts about how we should be studying reason from Sacha Altay (École Normale Supérieure Paris)
"Postulate no entity / Unless it’s really necess’ry. / (And keep your poems short.) -- "O is for Ockham's Razor," from the growing poetical philosophical abecedarium of Sarah Adams
An online repository of material on debates about the centrality of work in human life -- maintained by Jean-Philippe Deranty (Macquarie)
A collection of links on issues concerning robots and artificial intelligence -- at Bookforum's Omnivore
Should I take a nap? -- what the ancients would say
"Before we create an AI with humanlike sophistication deserving humanlike ethical consideration, we will very likely create an AI with less-than-human sophistication, deserving some less-than-human ethical consideration" -- John Basl (Northeastern) and Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) discuss what that might be
"Testing quantum mechanics with a new, unique, ready-to-hand measurement apparatus---the human visual system" -- Rebecca Holmes (Los Alamos) on the whys and hows of doing so
Are philosophers underestimating the epistemic usefulness of imagination? -- Madeleine Hyde (Stockholm) provides some reasons to think so
"I place a lot of good things under the heading 'irrationality'" -- Justin E. H. Smith (University of Paris, Diderot) is interviewed at Vox about "the dark side of reason"
One problem may be that "the two sides are talking past each other" -- a response to a recent criticism of the gender-critical view, by Sophie Allen (Keele)
Mapping disagreement over freedom of speech -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) explores what we can learn by distinguishing two conceptions of what speech is
Teaching a philosophy course on the future -- Leigh Johnson (Christian Bros. Univ.) provides a helpful guide on why to do it and what to assign
Not from The Onion: Professor who sexually harassed a student will teach course on how "boundaries... limit the possibility of experience" -- Avital Ronell (NYU) will be back in the classroom this Fall
"I'm lucky to have gotten a tenure-track job, but... I'm still not sure it was worth it, all things considered" -- thoughts on what it takes to finally "succeed" in the philosophy job market, from Marcus Arvan (Tampa)
The Feminist Philosophers blog is closing down -- “Many of us, myself included, have become increasingly pessimistic about the potential for internet-based discussions of difficult issues to help us make philosophical and real-world progress,” writes Jenny Saul
Skill, thought, and a self-taught record-breaking runner -- Josh Habgood Coote (Bristol) on the role of thinking in practical skills
Beauty vs. Physics -- physicist Sabine Hossenfelder on how "relying on beauty as a guide to new laws of nature is not working"
Ethical loneliness, the moral psychology of human attitudes to animals, and the point of knowledge -- recent subjects discussed in interviews at New Books in Philosophy
Nietzsche was "someone who was really key to artistic discourses around 1900... [with] a huge impact on the arts, and not just visual artists" -- and now there's an art exhibit about him at the National Gallery of Canada
Philosopher charged with attempted arson after being caught with cans of gas and lighters at St. Patrick's in NYC -- the Brooklyn College adjunct prof, Marc Lamparello, had booked a one-way ticket to Rome for the next day
A surprising amount of the good things in life depend on obscurity -- Evan Selinger (RIT) and Woodrow Hartzog (Northeastern) explain the idea, its value, and how it is threatened. They're onto something important. (NYT)
Brexit and the problem that "the majoritarian definition of the popular will, uncritically adopted by the Prime Minister and many others, is not generally coherent" -- remarks from Christian List (LSE)
"Argument and inquiry are the engines of Tim Blake Nelson’s 'Socrates,'... a play that hums with intelligence" -- the New York Times reviews the new off Broadway production
"While we should want students to be free to speak their minds, we also want them to develop the skills necessary to navigate complex and diverse environments" -- Jeffrey Sachs (Acadia) on student self-censorship (Washington Post)
Contemplating "the possibility of a future in which human beings really do not need to do anything at all" -- Jeff Noonan (Windsor) on being needed
"What could be better than a good old-fashioned philosophy battle?" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) likes a good fight, even (especially?) if she loses
"The process began with Emerson’s words as much as with the bombast of Public Enemy" -- sneakers, hip-hop, poverty, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the 80's
The "Philosophy as a Way of Life" project has a new website -- it includes course-building resources, grant opportunities, and a blog
"I’m sure Socrates would have been widely blocked on social media" -- Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) is interviewed in the NYT about Socrates, in light of the new play about him
"To write and rewrite with a roving eye on philosophical politics... in such a way that philosophical possibilities are constantly revived and re-opened" -- lessons from Eileen O'Neill on how to write the history of philosophy, as interpreted by Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam)
"The common claim that the brain is a computer is not, at the moment, a concrete, precise, well-understood scientific hypothesis" -- "Still, the claim is almost certainly true," argues Kevin Lande (Antwerp)
"Nobody goes home from Twitter" -- thoughts on what makes the platform problematic, and an interesting suggestion
Chinese scientists have created "transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence" -- I, for one, welcome our new macaque overlords. Or overladies (they're matriarchal).
"Diametrically opposed assessments of the worth of Aristotle and his philosophy tend to derive from same source, namely a failure to read what he actually wrote" -- Christopher Shields (Notre Dame) talks about Aristotle in an interview with Richard Marshall at 3:16
Stories that have "the germ of philosophical argument without quite articulating it" -- the object of study of Hans Blumenberg
Some people think that to understand consciousness we need a very detailed map of the brain -- scientists are now using artificial intelligence to help produce that map
"Unsettling our conceptions of sex and gender... can be part of the solution to gendered... disparities" -- Georgia Warnke (UC Riverside) on the definition of "woman"
Roger Scruton remarks on a "Soros Empire", Muslim invasions, and the Chinese -- and loses his government position as Chairman of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission
Psychology Today has launched a new blog on science and philosophy -- run by Walter Veit (Bristol), it features essays and interviews
Presidential candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg talks philosophy -- in an interview with Meghan Sullivan (Notre Dame) (via Michael Morrisey)
Certain Doubts, an epistemology-focused blog that has been running for nearly 15 years, is coming to an end -- Jon Kvanvig (Washington U. St. Louis) makes some farewell remarks
Campus racial incidents -- the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education maintains a page listing them
You've heard of the Dark Triad? Psychologists have created a positive counterpart to it, the Light Triad, and one of its elements is Kantian ethics -- a description, with links to the original paper and to a Light Triad test you can take
"The result is an anti-'Godot': two and a half hours of non-stop talk, during which the Athenians bully Socrates... into shutting up or else" -- The New Yorker, on actor-writer-filmmaker Tim Blake Nelson's new play, "Socrates"
An interview with "The Philosophical Investigator" -- Todd Altschuler is the guest on Peter Limberg's "Intellectual Explorers Club" podcast
"To insist on calling transgender students (or faculty) by anything other than the name and pronouns they prefer is a gratuitous insult" -- a suggestion from Les Green (Oxford) to those who do this: "grow up"
Bringing "a needlepoint of detail to the ways in which different conceptions of both happiness and well-being are embodied in different traditions" -- a special issue of the open-access Science, Religion and Culture features 16 articles on well-being in different cultures
What kind of thing is race? -- a discussion with Quayshawn Spencer (U. Penn)
Is anxiety valuable? -- Charlie Kurth (WMU) on "an unappreciated variety of anxiety"
There's a story about the painting behind the podcast that uses literature to explore philosophy -- Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) explains
"We do not believe that campuses are experiencing a unique crisis" but there's a concern that "our bedrock faith in free speech... could give way" -- from the PEN America report on campus speech
"The dinosaurs did not go entirely extinct after all" -- Joyce C. Havstad (Oakland) on how to handle scientific disagreement
What is the most democratic way to solve the Brexit crisis? -- answers from several philosophers, political theorists, and others
"Applied Ethics April" begins -- a series of guest posts and discussions at PEA Soup
A smart, witty, and moving video that engages honestly with concerns some people have about trans women -- "Gender Critical" by Natalie Wynn / ContraPoints
Internet memes "afford us an entry point into thinking about communities, solidarity, performance, practice, and meaning" -- Simon Evnine (Miami) explains
Who gets to decide whether a territory can secede, and what reasons to secede are good ones? - David Miller (Oxford) takes up these questions in the latest installment of The Agora Series at The New Statesman
Raphael's full-scale preparatory drawing for his "The School of Athens" has undergone a painstaking 4-year restoration -- it is now on display in Milan
Various lessons to help bring philosophy, thoughtful conversation, and critical thinking to younger students -- developed by "The Enquiring Classroom"
One philosopher's response to a bill in Georgia that would practically ban abortion: "lawmakers, take a philosophy course" -- Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) asks legislators to consider some of the questions and complications of the ethics of abortion
Recent empirical work suggests people believe that in order to have free will, an agent must be capable of caring -- a fascinating post by Eddy Nahmias (Georgia State)
"Feminists have finally started to realize that the varied experiences of trans women have a thing or two to teach us" -- Carol Hay (U. Mass Lowell) on who counts as a woman
John Malkovich as Seneca -- the actor will play the Roman philosopher in an upcoming film, "Seneca - On The Creation Of Earthquakes"
Hundreds of medieval and early modern Greek manuscripts will be digitized and made available for free on the internet -- the project is a collaboration between Cambridge University, Heidelberg University, and the Vatican
It's Public Philosophy Week in Burlington, Vermont -- organized by Tyler Doggett (UVM), it includes many events aimed at bringing philosophy “out of the academy and into the public square”
“We’re just wicked people living among wicked people. Only one thing can give us peace, and that’s a pact of mutual leniency.” -- anger management with Seneca, by James Romm
Philosopher Luciano Floridi (Oxford) is part of a new independent panel set up by Google to review its AI projects and plans -- it's called the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC)
How a successful philosopher has "squeaked by" -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) tells his tale
Using cognitive psychology to show that philosophical concepts "are in certain important respects like natural kind concepts, rather than being built around mental definitions" -- Michael Strevens (NYU) is blogging at Brains this week
God's limits -- Peter Atterton (San Diego State) on the coherence of the idea of a morally perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God
When it comes to talking about bodies, "the supposed conflict between trans inclusion and feminism rests on a simplistic understanding that ignores individual difference" -- Ray Briggs (Stanford) and B R George (CMU) offer tools with which to "engage critically with alarmist reports about the ‘trans language police’"
“Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem” -- an explanation, along with advice for managing the feelings that bring on procrastination
"I feel as if I am... someone you can trust because [I am a scientist] honest enough to admit that the scientific enterprise has limitations---which doesn’t mean it’s weak!" -- physicist Marcelo Gleiser (Dartmouth), winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize, cautions against scientism & other departures from humility
"Giving a platform to... incitements strengthens them. Yet, de-platforming might turn their protagonists into martyrs." -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on responding when propagandists are given a university platform
"Loss of intimacy... does not seem to be a concern among the young people actually growing up online. But do these young people even know what they are missing? And does it matter?" -- Stephen Asma (Columbia College Chicago) on friendship and online life
"There is an art to asking questions, and the leaders dealing with very hard problems in government are eager to master it" -- faculty at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative are teaching mayors and others how to ask, widen, and deepen questions
A practical philosophy needs to acknowledge both "that this world of ours is full of piss and shit, death and suffering" and that it is "rich and lush, sexy and beautiful" -- an interview with Marcus Hedahl (US Naval Academy)
Academics and activists object to Peter Singer's upcoming appearance at Halifax -- what does the fact that Singer's talks and protests of them have been happening for 20+ years tell us about free speech on campus?
"I’m hostile to the pursuit of originality in legal philosophy---and also in most other areas of philosophy" -- an interview with Les Green (Oxford) on a variety of topics in and related to law
"Democratic governance requires the mediation of public emotion to promote the flourishing of political and social life" -- Danny Li (UCL) takes a look at the response to the Christchurch shooting through the lens of Martha Nussbaum's work on anger
Police stings and possible worlds -- philosophical problems related to entrapment and undercover investigations, from FBI-agent-turned-philosopher Luke Hunt (Radford)
The college admissions scandal, meritocracy, and equal opportunity -- thoughts from Thomas Mulligan (Georgetown)
The new president of the University of Dallas is a philosopher -- Thomas Hibbs is moving from his position as Dean of the Honors College at Baylor back to his alma mater
"Direct, unaffected, uncompromising and perhaps a little severe, but..." -- John Schwenkler (FSU) on Anscombe on the centenary of her birth
"We even have contemporaneous accounts suggesting Socrates doxxed his opponents, posting their addresses all over the Acropolis and inciting his followers to harass them." -- The Onion reports on some newly discovered Socratic dialogues
A course in 20th Century Analytic Philosophy that's all about women philosophers -- some suggestions for what to include, from Paul Franco (Washington)
The anti-semitism of the great philosophers -- Laurie Shrage (Florida International) on its significance for understanding and teaching the history of philosophy
"Who could possibly have the gall to tell the entire human race what it should and should not feel? Philosophers, that’s who!" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) polices hatred
"If you want to judge the quality of a food culture, don’t look at its finest restaurants and best food. Look to its low-end." -- C. Thi Nguyen (Utah Valley) presents a "Rawlsian Theory of Food Culture"
How scientists are using some work of Thoreau's to observe the effects of climate change -- specifically on wildflowers
"Today I’m overcome with astonishment / At the way we girls denied all that was mean / In those revered philosophers we studied; / Who found us loathsome, loathsomely seductive; / Irrelevant, at best, to noble discourse" -- "The Erotic Philosophers," a poem by Carolyn Kizer (1998)
The problem is "the comprehensive infiltration of politics into our social lives" -- and bipartisanship, which "still puts politics at the center of our collective lives" is not the solution, argues Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
Academic networks exist owing to "academic friendships," and so need "functional institutional structures to... counterbalance the threat of nepotism" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) reflects on networks, friendship, and merit in the wake of receiving a weird conference announcement
"The ultimate life coaching team: Marie Kondo and Socrates" -- Freya Mobus (Cornell) explains
A philosopher is running for a seat in the European Parliament -- Alicja Gescinska has a PhD in philosophy from Ghent, hosted the Belgian philosophy interview show Wanderlust, and is running for the Flemish Liberal Democrats (via Helen De Cruz)
Is "locker room culture" a good subject for a contemporary moral problems course? -- some thoughts about how to approach the subject as a teacher, from Jeff Frank (St. Lawrence)
Via a television screen embedded in a robot wheeled into the room, the doctor told the patient he did not have long to live -- Evan Selinger (RIT) and Art Caplan (NYU) on hospital policies, body language, empathy gaps, and the need for face-to-face dialogue
The effects of newer technologies on the workplace, employee relations, and power -- Lisa Herzog (Technical Univ. of Munich) on "whether the digital transformation of work redounds to the benefit of workers, or to the benefit of capital"
The origin of Peter Singer's Instagram account -- a student asked herself, "what's the most good I can do?" (The New Yorker)
The campaign to raise awareness about Lady Mary Shepherd -- one of Scotland's earliest female philosophers
Curved Spacetimes: where Friedrich Nietzsche meets Virginia Woolf -- an upcoming performance by philosopher Barbara Gail Montero and the Logos Dance Collective
"Into the Coast" is a site of video interviews with philosophers -- 10 so far (the site's name comes from Gareth Evans' metaphor for the rare times in which philosophy comes easy: "like riding a surf into the coast")
Philosophy professor by day and bassist by night -- a brief article on philosopher Marc Bobro (City College, Santa Barbara) and his punk band, Crying 4 Kafka
How to write better when you're working in the more formal parts of philosophy -- advice from Richard Pettigrew (Bristol)
Philosopher wins defamation lawsuit -- against someone on Twitter who accused him of being a pedophile
Landmark moments for women in philosophy -- a timeline from the Oxford University Press blog
What is a just wage? -- a series of posts by philosophers and economists begins at the Justice Everywhere blog
Women philosophers suggested by women philosophers -- Elizabeth Anderson, Michelle Moody-Adams, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and others make some recommendations
As machines come to be more sophisticated, look more like us, and interact with us more, fundamental aspects of human behavior may change -- "humans do not have the time to evolve... innate capacities to live with robots"; we must begin to take explicit steps to protect what we value (The Atlantic)
"Anti-depressants can have genuine, and very powerful, individual-level effects" -- Marcus Arvan (Tampa) replies to the piece by Jacob Stegenga on the evidence for the effectiveness of anti-depressants (linked to earlier)
Assholes: A Theory -- the documentary -- the book by Aaron James (Irvine) is the basis of a new documentary featuring him, John Cleese, and others
"Undergrads Stage Philosophy Takeovers in Area High Schools" -- a look at the philosophical outreach work developed by David Levy (SUNY Geneseo)
Did Socrates get his ideas from his girlfriend? -- an argument that the Symposium's "Diotima" is a thinly-disguised Aspasia, with whom Socrates appears to have had a relationship early in his life.
17 black women philosophers -- an unprecedented philosophical event
"We have plenty of reasons to think that antidepressants have no clinically meaningful benefits for those suffering from depression." -- philosopher of science Jacob Stegenga (Cambridge) looks at the evidence
"Success at something difficult is one thing we can rightly care about. It’s present in a pure form in games, which can enrich our lives in a way that more passive forms of entertainment cannot." -- Thomas Hurka (Toronto) revisits a classic philosophical work on games
If the brilliant philosopher or artist was a bad person, use that to help understand their work, not as a reason to ignore it -- especially if they're dead, argued Les Green (Oxford)
The ethics of Instagram's new slider emoji -- thoughts from philosopher Evan Selinger (RIT) and his 7th grade daughter, Rory
We aren't playing a 'language game,' Wittgenstein, we are playing Scrabble! (EC)
Michael Cohen said Trump used "code" to direct him to lie -- but a little philosophy of language can explain why that's not correct, as Jennifer Saul (Sheffield) explains
Smarter parts don't necessarily make for a smarter whole -- the counterintuitive science of systems
Does merit deserve a place in our political and moral thought? -- Thomas Mulligan (Georgetown), Jo Littler (City University of London), Stephen McNamee (UNC Wilmington), and Christopher Paul (Seattle) discuss it on ABC's "Future Tense"
A good comedian faces the darkness, knows what she's talking about, and preserves the "eternal balance of shitposting and snowflakery" -- Natalie Wynn does some philosophy of comedy
University of California system cancels its multi-million dollar subscriptions to Elsevier journals because of disputes over open-access. -- "UC has been pushing for a so-called read-and-publish deal with the company, which would offset the cost of open access publishing against the cost of access to subscription content"
Joint know-how: an overlooked part of the story of human evolution? -- Jonathan Birch (LSE) explains
"I have to admit that one of the best parts of philosophy conferences is being corrected" -- Landon D.C. Elkind (Iowa) finds his inner Socrates
How can we learn from humans what they actually value? -- a philosopher and a computer scientist working on AI safety call for social scientists to take up specific questions central to this inquiry
"Many members of the academic philosophical community continue to hold on to and actively promote a kind of faux meritocracy" -- Helen De Cruz (Oxford Brookes) on aiming for greater inclusiveness in philosophy
What is probability? -- Chances are, philosophers disagree over that, too. Nevin Climenhaga (Australian Catholic Univ.) explains.
Scientists appear to have discovered a new way neurons communicate, even if they aren't physically connected to one another -- "unprecedented weirdness" (via MR)
Is your notion of democracy personalist or populist? -- Philip Pettit (Princeton) on the difference and its implications for Brexit and other refererendums
A philosopher's three rules for deciding what to write: it must be delightfully interesting, elegantly argued, and actually helpful -- Thi Nguyen (Utah Valley) overcame writer's block by making sure he wouldn't be boring himself with his writing
Pain, parts, and consciousness -- Luke Roelofs (Ruhr-University Bochum) thinks that "minds built out of other minds may be quite common"
Are you indoctrinating your students? -- David Gooblar (Iowa) suggests professors model open-mindedness and intellectual humility
"I didn't go into philosophy because I thought it would make me a lot of money; I found it intellectually interesting. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had great instrumental value as well." -- investor Bill Miller on how his study of philosophy contributed to success
"I have mostly become less harshly critical. Many of the views that I formerly thought to be false, absurd, and evidence of feebleness of intellect, I now think merely to be false." -- an interview with the ever-amusing Alastair Norcross (Colorado) at What Is It Like To Be a Philosopher?
Could there ever be an AI that's an artist? -- no, argues Sean Kelly (Harvard), for we must be able to interpret an artist's work as responding to "social necessity" or as expressing value, and we can't think of AI as doing that
Protecting cultural landmarks from destruction by terrorists and others is often justified by connecting such protection to the saving of human lives -- but what, precisely, is the nature of that connection? Erich Hatala Matthes (Wellesley) breaks it down
It turns out that, contra the Telegraph's reporting, that letter from Einstein about Hume's influence on him is not newly discovered -- here's a paper by John Norton (Pittsburgh) about it (via Kevin Meeker, who contacted the person supposed to have made this "discovery" and confirmed that the journalist misrepresented the situation)
Would you like a visit from Henry David Thoreau? -- Brent Ranalli, a Thoreau scholar, portrays him and is available for visits and performances
To be a good academic philosopher, you need to be more than just a good philosopher -- Ian James Kidd (Nottingham) discusses this difference and the skills of each
"The multifariousness of the laws suggests a different conception of what physics is all about. We’re not building a machine that calculates answers... instead, we’re discovering questions" -- a way physics is similar to philosophy, in The New Yorker
This month is the 200th anniversary of "one of the most significant statements of the principles of liberalism" -- that would be "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns" by Benjamin Constant. Jacob Levy (McGill) celebrates.
A newly-discovered letter from Einstein in which he discusses Hume's influence on his work -- “It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I can not say that the solution would have come." (The Telegraph)
"Most people do not realise that Aristotle wrote works designed for the general public" -- they did not survive, but we know something of them, and they provide a model for public philosophy, argues Edith Hall (KCL)
In 1964 John Stewart Bell published his eponymous theorem, now regarded by many as one of the most important discoveries in physics. -- 55 years later, BJPS is commemorating this by making available a selection of past papers exploring the implications of Bell's Theorem
On deriving an 'ought' from an 'is' -- Rick Lewis at Philosophy Now recently discovered a note Philippa Foot wrote to him about this 18 years ago
Online, "I want... to be boring to argue with... That way, the only people who will do it are the ones who sincerely care about the argument" -- Regina Rini (York) on arguing on the Internet
An important lesson for academics: saying no -- Kevin Timpe (Calvin) shares some advice
"As a professor who regularly teaches East Asian philosophies, I die a little inside every time we experience a cultural phenomenon with a veneer of ‘wisdom from the East’ on it." -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) on Marie Kondo, tidying, plain sense, joy-sparking, and usefulness
If there are epistemic facts, does that imply there are moral facts? -- Spencer Case (Colorado) says yes. David Enoch (Hebrew University) and others discuss.
Mary Whiton Calkins studied philosophy and psychology under William James and was the first woman president of the APA -- there's now an effort underway to get her the PhD she appears to have earned but which Harvard refused her
The high price of justice is an injustice -- three posts from Michael Huemer (Colorado) on the subject
Wrestling with the Stoics -- a discussion with philosophy PhD student and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitor Michael Tremblay (Queen's) and others
"Nationalism and cosmopolitanism are, far from being incompatible, actually intertwined" -- Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) on global citizenship in Foreign Affairs (via Paul Wilson)
Marx's grave vandalized again -- "Memorial to Bolshevik Holocaust... 66,000,000 Dead" was part of the graffiti written on it
A philosopher's new band aims to make music for kids that the adults like, too -- check out Louis & Dan and the Invisible Band from Daniel Groll & Louis Epstein (St. Olaf). Also available on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
"A diverse elite is better able to advance the interests of all sectors of society. Unfortunately, the way that this principle has been practiced is too narrowly focused on the demographics of elite institutions." -- Jennifer Morton (CUNY) on elite education, diversity, and "real difference"
The mascot for a new museum about poop in Japan is a philosopher named Unberuto --he's "an anthropomorphized poop pile who carries his toilet around with him" when he's not sitting on it pondering "the nature of universal truths" (via Tanya Kostochka)
"By looking carefully---by looking with love---we can see others for who they are" -- Anil Gomes (Oxford) on Iris Murdoch, morality attention, and love
"Planned, coordinated violence gave us a social order that made virtue adaptive. But that social order also made exploitation and oppression possible." -- a primatologist's attempt to explain the development of morality
Google Translate and philosophy of language -- "Wittgenstein’s theories gave them a breakthrough in making their translation services more effective," reports Olivia Goldhill at Quartz
The life of the mind is being destroyed by technological distraction and administrative overload -- Cal Newport (Georgetown) discusses what can be done about the "crisis of concentration that has hit higher education particularly hard"
"Having applicants provide letters of recommendation only after the initial screening stage can reduce stress and unnecessary paperwork for candidates, letter-writers and hiring committees" -- the American Historical Association changes its hiring process guidelines
"The philosophical community needs to do some soul searching about how we managed to unnecessarily isolate ourselves and what can be done to reverse that trend." -- Kevin Zollman (CMU) has some ideas
"Is there in your opinion, professor Carnap, also in philosophy any progress that corresponds to the idea of progress in science?" "Yes" -- a video interview with Rudolf Carnap (link to downloadable English captions in the credits)
"'Socrates' is a witty and endlessly fascinating new drama about a complicated man who changed how the world thought." -- it opens in NYC in April
"Rawls maintains [that] the stability of otherwise just institutions depends on their embodying an idea of reciprocity." And "reciprocal" is "one of Mr. Trump's favorite terms." -- Samuel Scheffler on liberalism in theory and politics in practice (NYU)
"The Encyclopédie was expressly designed to pass on the temptation and method of intellectual freedom to a huge audience" -- the creation and significance of "the supreme achievement of the French Enlightenment"
Just released: 10 new conversations with women philosophers -- at Myisha Cherry's UnMute Podcast
"All emotions represent a contrast between the current state of affairs and some other state not in the here and now" -- Tom Cochrane (Flinders) shares his theory of the emotions at The Brains Blog
"The purpose of a scientific approach to art is not to take the mystery out of the art. It’s to give you new insight into why you think it’s so wonderful and mysterious." --neuroscience, beauty, and art
"You can look at a human being as just a... bunch of circuitry of muscles and neurons... but if you want to find things that are relevant to their accountability... you have to zoom out" -- a brief interview with Helen Beebee (Manchester) on free will
Sometimes political institutions should apologize -- Allison Don and Per-Erik Milam (Twente) at the Ethical War Blog
Karen Detlefsen (U. Penn) is bringing philosophy to the Philadelphia community -- check out this profile of her impressive, multi-pronged work
"Evel Knievel applied to graduate programs in philosophy with a writing sample that solved the trolley problem, the Ship of Theseus puzzle, and six other vehicular paradoxes." -- Alex Baia with an over-the-top funny tale of academic dare-devilry
"Did the philosophy professor – just this once, of course – overthink it?" -- a philosopher is asked by his four year old: "Daddy, why are we real?"
"Futuremakers" is a podcast about the future of society, and season 1 focuses on artificial intelligence in various contexts -- hosted by philosopher Peter Millican (Oxford)
Can we finally be done with the "campus free speech crisis"? -- yes, according to a variety of metrics
A man plans to take his parents to court for creating him without his consent -- anti-natalism in (legal) action
"Criminal convictions should not lead to the denial of basic rights and human dignity" -- Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern) on the treatment of prisoners in the United States
"If you think cronyism in academia is a thing, wait until you’re leaving academia and spending time in the business world. It’s a way of life." -- a philosopher who left academia to enter the business world shares some advice (via the Philosophers' Cocoon)
"During the night, each cyclist will dig a trench in the snow and burrow into their sleeping bag" -- Jose Luis Bermudez (Texas A&M) is embarking on a 1000-mile bike race through the Alaskan winter to raise $20,000 for charity
"I thought that the armchair was at the end of its useful life. But I have become convinced otherwise." -- Michael Strevens (NYU) uses empirical psychology to defend armchair philosophy
The rich, complicated, and difficult philosophy of transitional justice -- explained by Colleen Murphy (Illinois) in an interview at 3:AM Magazine
A petition to erect a statue of Lady Mary Shepherd, considered the first Scottish woman philosopher, in Edinburgh -- her works in metaphysics and epistemology were highly regarded by her contemporaries, but after her death received little attention until relatively recently
The philosophers are in -- what happens when three philosophers open an advice booth on a corner in NYC? A report from Lee McIntyre (BU)
The philosopher who created a book of over 100 versions of the Batman-slapping-Robin meme sits down for an interview to explain what he was thinking -- the interviewer? Himself. "KAPOW!!"
A series of videos elaborating on the philosophy discussed in the TV sitcom "The Good Place" -- featuring Todd May (Clemson), who is one of the philosophy consultants for the show
Short videos for philosophy students on skills useful for finding and evaluating arguments in texts -- a growing collection from Mark Schroeder (USC)
Attempts to control what Muslim women wear -- Alia Al-Saji (McGill) takes a closer look at the justifications for doing so
The Karl Marx memorial at Highgate Cemetery has apparently been vandalized -- no witnesses have come forward, leading some to conclude that the memorial contained the seeds of its own destruction
Is the dominance of liberal views in U.S. academia owed to the fact that most research universities and liberal arts colleges are located in liberal communities? -- if so, those interested in pushing for more "viewpoint diversity" should convince policymakers and taxpayers to fund more institutions of higher education in underserved areas
Academics should be more respectful in how they refer to each other in writing -- says Professor Benatar (Cape Town)
"The challenge is not getting them to talk, but doing so without sacrificing too much rigor" -- Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) on "how to ensure high-quality thinking and talking which engages the whole class"
How a philosophy professor is making a difference in health care across her state -- a profile of Jessica Miller (University of Maine) (via Paul Kelleher)
The tendency to "focus our discussions of sexual negotiation on consent and refusal has resulted in a narrowed and distorted view of the pragmatics of sexual communication." -- Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown) on the overlooked variety of norms related to good sex
How could algorithmic decision-making driven by "bias-free math" and "clean data" be racist? -- Danny Li (UCL) explains
New moral concepts come into use and become authoritative for us. How does that happen? -- Henry Richardson (Georgetown) explains
Philosophy for Music for Airports -- John Lysaker (Emory) uses Eno as an entry point to the philosophy of listening
"If the hoax shows anything, it’s that uncritical reverence for ideas clad in scientific clothing... is at least as much a problem as progressive political bias" -- scientism and the recent hoaxing of academic journals
Interested in philosophy at the intersection of ethics and aesthetics? -- perhaps you should join the new Aesthetics & Ethics Research Group
Students, GIF your comments -- how one professor got her students to read the comments she makes on their papers
A new anime series about the life of Karl Marx, produced by China's Communist Party, appears to be a hit -- "This Marx is so cute" writes one commenter
What was prescient and what was problematic in Andrea Dworkin's feminism -- a look back on the controversial thinker and activist
Do philosophers care enough about economic growth? -- polymath economist Tyler Cowen, emphasizing pluralism and epistemic modesty, explains his "stubborn attachments"
“Philosophy tends to equip you well for reasoning through ambiguous and interdependent problem spaces, by equipping you to objectively identify what really matters, separate concerns and produce a practical, success-maximising plan." -- how an education in philosophy "arms one well" for a career in data science
Is social media killing democracy? -- Regina Rini (York) talks about it with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
Sometimes your gut feelings might clue you in to important details about the world; sometimes they might be a lead you to act wrongly or irrationally -- Michael Brownstein (CUNY) on the virtues and vices of spontaneity
Logic is under attack from the Social Justice Warriors! -- and a real practical epistemological problem regarding experts and novices
Which edition of Hobbes' Leviathan should researchers reference? -- a discussion at the European Hobbes Society in the wake a of new and costly scholarly edition
“Dad, do you know where my sunglasses are?” “No, do you know where my dad glasses are? If you find them, give them to someone whose eyes have not yet forsaken the noxious tedium that surrounds us all.” -- more nihilist dad jokes from Alex Baia
"In a future dominated by driverless cars, moral texture will erode away in favor of a rigid ethical framework." -- subtlety, relativism, and moral machines, discussed in The New Yorker
Frank Ramsey's rebellion against Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle -- Cheryl Misak (Toronto) on the the importance of the "subjective side" to philosophy
Addressing hermeneutic injustice "is about ensuring that epistemic barriers are not in place for individuals themselves to understand and articulate their experiences, and to self-advocate" -- how philosophers are working to improve the treatment of the mentally ill
Erik Olin Wright, influential sociologist and theorist of "real utopias", has died -- an appreciation at Dissent
-- and reflections on Wright by Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) at Crooked Timber
"Suppose that I could look into a crystal ball and see myself twenty or forty years after the decision to go to college or emigrate or get married or have children. What do I look for to check whether the undertaking was a success?' -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) on making big decisions
When Socrates chatted with the Marie Kondo of ancient Greece -- is there something to be learned about today's fad of "the life-changing magic of tidying up"?
"Vengeful approaches [to politics] deny others the capacities for moral learning... foreclose unanticipated forms of reconciliation and community, and judge, a priori, the life horizons of others based on their worst transgressions" -- Yet at the same time we must engage in "unyielding confrontation in pursuit of the greater goods of a more just world". Brandon Terry (Harvard) on what to learn from Martin Luther King, Jr.
W.E.B. Du Bois, race, power, and how art can transform society -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) on the BBC radio's "Start the Week" (at around the 11:30 mark)
"The right question to ask is: what can I do without an arbitrary deadline that I could not do with one?" -- Lawrence Solum (Georgetown) with some advice for post-tenure life (via Elizabeth Cohen)
To beard or not to beard? -- Henry Pratt (Marist) takes up philosophical questions about facial hair
"The top people in our discipline are such a bunch of delusional narcissists" -- Dan Kaufman (Missouri State) and Oliver Traldi (Notre Dame) discuss the philosophy profession
The circular reasoning at the heart of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper -- elucidated by Stephen White (Northwestern)
"We should see one important social function of practical ethicists as widening the Overton window" -- Rebecca Brown (Oxford) explains
"It remains to be seen how much of embodied-cognition theory will remain intact following the replication crisis" -- at Quartz
"There is very good reason to expect that she will produce sound and interesting work in philosophy" -- a letter of recommendation for G.E.M. Anscombe, written by Wittgenstein
"What are the cognitive processes that underlie successful social understanding and interaction---and what happens when we misunderstand others"? -- Shannon Spaulding (Oklahoma State) is guest-blogging at Brains
Is it gay for me to love Natalie Wynn? -- the philosopher takes on tough questions, and just when you think "but what about this further question she definitely won't ask because it raises politically incorrect problems for her own view?" she asks it. Watch the whole thing.
How to make big decisions wisely -- the ideas of L.A. Paul, Agnes Callard, and others are discussed by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker
"Du Bois - never did a day's real work in his life and most certainly did not even lift, but without anybody forcing him to wore a top hat and Prussian cavalry officer gloves, so maxing out on preppishness at least." -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) locates philosophers on the Jock-Nerd-Prep-Goth map
"Efforts at silencing academics seem to me often unjust and almost always self-defeating" -- Jeff McMahan (Oxford) on campus speech, in The New Statesman
"Academic freedom is a principle worth defending, but it is foolish to ignore its costs, and who (disproportionately, quietly) bears them" -- Sophie Smith, a colleague of John Finnis, on the (complicated?) issues publicized by the recent petition to have him removed (via John Bogart)
"I found a manuscript a friend had asked me to read so long ago the book had since been published and gone out of print." -- a professor cleans his office
Should the journal hoaxters have submitted their project to an IRB? -- yes, say the experts (via Justin Tiehen)
Socrates the human being, who danced for exercise and conversed as friend and flirt -- one of several pictures of the ancient world we get from Xenophon, according to Eve Browning (Texas San Antonio)
The inaugural issue of Open Philosophy, a new open access journal, is now available -- the journal "does not favour any particular philosophical school, perspective or methodology"
Should philosophers think more about the fact that we're born? -- Alison Stone (Lancaster) thinks so
"A space for publicly minded thinkers to draw on their education and experience in order to address contemporary social, cultural, and political issues from a philosophical point of view" -- The New Statesman is starting a philosophy column, curated by Aaron James Wendland (Higher School of Economics)
Why we need more science and philosophy books for children and teenagers -- a brief from Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY), who is currently co-authoring a graphic novel-style philosophy book
Ethics blog PEA Soup will begin awarding various prizes to its contributors -- some will be offered on an annual basis, others quarterly
"Almost every paragraph of the chapter contains at least one misleading claim, problematic quote, false assertion, or selective presentation of the evidence" -- an expert on existential threats writes a detailed and informative critique of Steven Pinker's take on the subject that's fascinating in myriad ways (via Eric Schliesser)
A play, a song, and now a mini-opera based on "the doomed relationship of the great David Hume and society beauty Nancy Ord" -- you can catch a new production of the play this coming weekend if you happen to be in Edinburgh
"For each relevant submitted article, create a prediction market estimating its chance of replication, and use that estimate as one factor in deciding whether to publish that article" -- an opportunity to contribute to an experiment in improving editorial decision-making
Who stabbed Spinoza? And why? -- Steven Nadler (Wisconsin) investigates
"Wynn has managed the remarkable feat of bringing the spirit of Socratic dialogue to one of the most vicious battlefields of the online culture wars." -- Natalie Wynn, the philosophy-student-turned-YouTube-sensation, is profiled in The Atlantic
"If you reject and ridicule philosophy altogether, you probably end up doing bad philosophy" -- a look at a supposed empirical refutation of panpsychism
"I have roughly three weeks left of existence." -- influential sociologist Erik Olin Wright (Wisconsin) is dying of leukemia, and is blogging about his condition, treatment, and thoughts
"Should we not think that a paper is particularly promising when met with two opposing reviews?" -- if we value risk-taking in philosophy, as we should, what institutional implications follow?
A roundtable on empirically-informed approaches to weakness of will -- at Brains
Does the prestige of a philosophy PhD program affect how long it takes to get a tenure-track job? -- Jonathan Weisberg (Toronto) investigates
A series of posts about philosophy podcasts by the podcasters themselves -- at the Blog of the APA
What you think you know about genetics is wrong -- genes "cannot possibly serve as instructions for the more complex task of putting the proteins together into a fully functioning being, no more than the characters on a typewriter can produce a story"
"Philosophy’s getting a lot less boring" -- Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown) in conversation with Tyler Cowen (George Mason)
A world without humans would not be a regrettable state of affairs -- but even so, we shouldn't attempt extinction, argues David Benatar (Cape Town)
"Plato’s whole defense of philosophy as a way of life rests on the idea that there’s more to human motivation than our desire for pleasure alone" -- a conversation with Tushar Irani (Wesleyan) in the LA Review of Books
A new blog on "biopolitical asymmetries and other mechanisms and effects of power in philosophy and beyond" -- from Shelley L. Tremain and Melinda C. Hall (Stetson)
"We don’t have to give up on market society if we can recognize and correct for its limitations---it may even be our best hope, because it’s friendlier to pluralism than most alternatives are" -- a lengthy profile of Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan) in The New Yorker
Holding a coherent set of philosophical views may be more difficult than you thought -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) provides some examples of the trouble
"Defying an explicit directive from his government, Sousa Mendes issued visas to tens of thousands of refugees" fleeing Nazis -- including the family philosopher Sylvain Bromberger, who died this past year (NYT)
"Our creation is now coming back to devour our souls" -- Justin E. H. Smith (University of Paris, Diderot) with moving thoughts on the "gutting of our human subjecthood"
Some structural disadvantages of interdisciplinary research, and what to do about them -- thoughts from Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR)
Is conscious thought an illusion? -- an interview with Peter Carruthers (Maryland) in Scientific American
The all-night philosophy extravaganza will be taking place in five US cities -- Houston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC
"The two disparate bodies of work share an uncanny ability to invite an easing of traditional boundaries of understandings and experience" -- a review of adjacent exhibits of artwork by Adrian Piper and Victor Hugo at the Hammer Museum
Should parents lie to their children about Santa? -- James Mahon (CUNY) considers the arguments
"The important thing this time is to appreciate the importance of freedom of expression to the development of philosophy" -- commentary on the decision to teach philosophy in high schools in Saudi Arabia
A must-read letter from a chemistry professor to a university president on the latter's decision to close some departments -- from 2010, but just as relevant today (via Laurie Paul)
Big philanthropy versus democracy -- an interview with Rob Reich (Stanford) at Vox
"It may well be... that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off and yet would be a tragedy." -- Todd May (Clemson) on the value of humanity
A new interdisciplinary podcast about the mind -- philosophy, neuroscience, and psychiatry
The task is feasible. But there's one problem. It's logically impossible. -- The Web Page That Cannot Exist, by Geoffrey Pullum
Unconventional teaching ideas that work -- a new series of posts at the Philosophers' Cocoon
Ethical issues in conducting research on using artificial intelligence to help solve difficult social problems -- David Gray Grant (MIT) at the Phenomenal World blog
Is "shmidentity" culturally shminsensitive? -- on the philosophical practice of using the “shm-“ prefix for properties that resemble other properties but for some stipulated feature
Nervous about that philosophy exam? Does it help to learn that David Lewis failed his metaphysics exam when he was a grad student? -- he mentions this in a letter to David Armstrong
Fortunately, very few philosophers have signed onto the latest episode of academic mobbing -- it concerns a fellowship appointment in psychology (via Nathan Cofnas)
A key machine learning task is "modeling fuzzy, changeable patterns implicit in human behavior" -- and that's a central goal of the humanities
The New X-Phi Blog, focusing on the "new experimental philosophy" -- it's new
The two types of Jane Austen fans -- a philosophical look at the distinction by Eva Dadlez (Central Oklahoma)
Where's that paper you once glimpsed at on the web that you're now trying to recall the details of for something you're writing now? -- here's a free tool that makes that search much easier
Martha Nussbaum on her work, Mozart as a philosopher, and what she plans to do with the $1 million Berggruen Prize -- an interview in The New Statesman
Can we separate the art from the artist? -- several philosophers contribute to the latest "Artworld Roundtable" at Aesthetics for Birds
A new Facebook group focused on the teaching of philosophy -- professors and graduate students who teach philosophy can ask to join
"A couple of old blokes dominating a dinner party with old insider jokes" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) discusses problems with allusions in scholarly writing
"The philosophical profession runs on institutional logic rather than philosophical logic" -- a collection of responses to Bryan Van Norden's "Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto" (quote from David Seltzer's piece)
Each month, a different philosopher writes about a different piece of correspondence from David Lewis -- it's part of the "Age of Metaphysical Revolution" project
A new blog by a philosophy graduate student is a place "for fellow graduate students to relate, commiserate, and enjoy" -- "PhDoing Life"
Three arguments for the thesis that sex is socially constructed -- deconstructed by Alex Byrne (MIT)
"A student at the local state university... was questioned by police after proposing a rally in support of the philosopher on his social networking page" -- "the philosopher" is Kant; vandalism of the statue of him last week was owed to growing tensions over whether to name the local airport for him
"Being a physicist gives a person a certain standing in conversations that have something to do with physics. So why shouldn’t being a woman give me a certain standing in conversations that have something to do with gender?" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) on "managerial standing" in conversations
"Do we have the right to defend [possibly with violence] ourselves and others from government injustice when government agents are following an unjust law?" -- yes we do, argues Jason Brennan (Georgetown)
Central European University is moving from Budapest to Vienna -- owing to the Hungarian government's Hungarian government refusing to let it continue to offer U.S. degree programs
A political philosophy experiment at an arts and sciences festival -- conducted by Ingrid Robeyns' Fair Limits Team
"Our fervor for democratic politics bears seeds of democracy’s undoing" -- a closer look at political polarization, from Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
An free, online intro philosophy text in which "each chapter offers a sustained argument for some controversial thesis, specifically written for an audience of beginners" -- by Dan Korman (UCSB)
"Philosophy in plain Arabic" -- a program in Cairo aimed at bringing philosophy to the public and improving its image (apparently in Egypt philosophy is an undergrad major with very low standards, according to the article)
The illiberalism of ordinary police practices -- a brief survey of some issues by Luke Hunt (Radford)
"The resentment of the left behind" -- thoughts on #MeToo and the distribution of compassion, from Mikhail Valdman (VCU)
Was Nozick correct about why academics tend to dislike markets? -- yes, according to a study of 1500 French academics
"Perhaps the problem is not that insects lack an inner life, but that they don’t have a way to communicate it in terms we can understand" -- a philosopher and an ecology professor on evidence of "consciousness-like phenomena" in insects
We should be wary of approaches to history that present "a false picture of the impossibility of independent thought, against the grain, of one's own times" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) on recent discussions of the racism and sexism of canonical philosophers
Having trouble figuring out whether your syllabus is gender balanced? -- there's an app for that (via Colleen Murphy)
David Hume's shiny toe -- featured at Atlas Obscura
"The exclusion of non-European philosophy from the canon was a decision, not something that people have always believed" -- and Kant and his defenders are among those responsible for this exclusion, argues Bryan W. Van Norden (Vassar, Yale-NUS, Wuhan)
Vandals threw paint on a statue of Kant and on his tomb -- will their defense be that it's universalizable?
Polls conducted by the people who brought us Cards Against Humanity -- not sure how rigorous they are, but they do (amusingly? despairingly?) motivate the "against humanity" part (via Jason Brennan)
Skeptical pressure and climate change -- N. Ángel Pinillos (Arizona State) on how some epistemology can help improve discourse about the environment
A Chinese researcher claims to have used CRISPR to edit the genes of two humans to improve their resistance to HIV -- "If true, this experiment is monstrous," says Julian Savulescu (Oxford)
A Nordic perspective on applying to graduate programs in philosophy -- from a Swedish philosophy PhD student
"The present warrants criticism, but it will do no good if it’s based on a myth about some glorious, dispassionate past that never was" -- the Enlightment: both its celebrators and detractors are "deeply mistaken"
Is the reason to give great historical figures of philosophy a pass on their racism and sexism also a reason to not consider them great? -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on the downsides of "greatness"
Is it immoral to keep using Facebook? -- it depends on whether the company "has crossed certain moral 'red lines,' entering the realm of outright wickedness," argues S. Matthew Liao (NYU)
Eddy Nahmias talks free will -- on Robert Wright's Blogginheads.tv show
An NGO which uses art and philosophy to help the homeless, the poor, and other populations "at risk of exclusion" -- this story at the CBC has some information, but check out its website (Exeko.org) for more details
"Philosophy was once a woman’s world." -- on the women who "helped to shape the world's oldest philosophy"
"Both novels depict a profession in severe decline. But in their speculative leaps, they offer different strategies for the defense of humanities scholarship." -- some recent fiction on "saboteurs in the modern academy"
Michael Huemer (Colorado) has started a blog called "Fake Nous" (smart branding!) -- check out his tips for political debate
"Personal autonomy is valuable for many reasons: some of them do bear, in the way Mill stressed, on our capacity for and success at self-creation" -- "but others bear even on those aspects of ourselves that lie beyond choice," says Les Green (Oxford)
A depiction of philosophical integrity? -- from Reza Farazmand
A recent study shows that "exposure to a Singer-style philosophical argument had no statistically detectable effect on charitable giving" -- "but exposure to a narrative about a family rescued from slavery did have a detectable effect"
A journal encourages authors to "cite inclusively" -- in attempt to take concerns about status signaling seriously
"Sometimes they are offensive and terrible and bad, but you don’t win by saying that." -- a profile of Natalie Wynn, a former philosophy PhD student who now makes a living making excellent Youtube videos on politics and ideas (via Matt McAdam)
A conversation about sexism, misogyny, pyschology, politics, and more -- with Kate Manne (Cornell) and Robert Wright
What would a non-ideal theory of academic freedom look like? -- thoughts from Shannon Dea (Waterloo)
The first traffic jam on Broadway was caused by a philosophy lecture -- before clicking, can you guess who it was? Hint: this was in 1913
How not to be an atheist -- an interview with Tim Crane (CEU)
A philosophy graduate student lost his eyesight while working on his PhD -- what he learned has changed the way he teaches
"Sartre helps us to appreciate how individuals come together to create hope where there was none by acting collectively." -- Ronald Aronson on Sartre’s existentialist Marxism
A fictionalized biography of Hannah Arendt in the form of a graphic novel -- by well-known cartoonist Ken Krimstein
"The deeper reason that technology so often disappoints and betrays us is that it promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard." -- on Plato's prescience regarding social media
Is this an argument for corporal punishment? -- Or a reductio of retributivism?
"You hear about the moon restaurant? Good food, no atmosphere! If you eat there, you forfeit your life, which would make no difference to the universe as a whole." -- nihilist dad jokes by Alex Baia
"I think we’ve demonstrated between us that it is possible to debate this issue frankly and even bluntly, and without agreeing on everything---and still get somewhere." -- Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open University) and Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) discuss transgender identity
Over 55% of the Members of Parliament who majored in philosophy support Brexit -- the second-highest proportion, after classics (via Mihail Evans)
Is sex binary? A response to Alex Byrne's recent essay on the subject -- from Ellen Clarke (Oxford)
and a rejoinder by Byrne
Are these student's tweets advocating genocide? -- even if they are, they should be allowed, argues David Benatar (University of Cape Town) (via Rob Sica)
"Reason and argument are the best tools we have, but... they get little purchase without good stories, empathy and understanding too" -- Andy Clark (Edinburgh) answers questions about his work and life, at IAI
Do the stories of your life contribute to the meaningfulness of your life, and if so, how? -- the ideas of Helena de Bres (Wellesley), critically discussed by Antti Kauppinen (Helsinki)
Should search committees be looking for kindness and compassion in prospective colleagues? -- can we get "decent" colleagues while avoiding harmful stereotyping?
The institutional and intellectual issues at the heart of the replication crisis in psychology -- a discussion with Brian Earp (Yale, Oxford)
"Things Ought To Make Sense" -- a song by Rachel Lark which she wrote for her mom, Louise Antony
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Philosophy---do you even use that in business?’ And I actually do all the time, especially in the world of Silicon Valley." -- entrepreneur and venture capital fund director Dan Peate
Too many interesting podcasts with philosophers at the Panpsycast recently to pick just one to post about -- have a look and a listen
"Since we broke up, I’ve come to realise that we’re just very different in terms of what we value." -- a philosopher who has found success in the public realm writes to his old love, academia
It looks like sociology is about to have its own Ronell case -- Philosophy students: if something like this is happening to you, I can put you in touch with people who can help.
The play "follows the philosopher's growing prominence in democratic Athens through the military and social upheavals that led to one of the most infamous executions in Western history" -- "Socrates," the play, will be premiering in NYC in May
On academia and activism -- Mark Lance (Georgetown) reflects on 35 years of "a second career in activism"
Philosophy and magic -- interesting interview with Jason Leddington (Bucknell) about his research and teaching on the subjects and how he got into them
In pursuing the good life, can too much reflection be dangerous? -- Valerie Tiberius (Minnesota) is the guest in the latest episode of the On Wisdom podcast
"Why do so many find it impossible to believe that any so-called genius could fail to see that their prejudices were irrational and immoral? One reason is that our culture has its own deep-seated and mistaken assumption..." -- Julian Baggini on admiring the racist and sexist philosophers of the past
The power of imagination, or care, or sugar, or what? -- a fascinating possibility researchers are exploring: some placebos are not placebos
The ethical issues in play in the police-informant relationship -- Luke Hunt (Radford), an FBI agent-turned-philosophy professor, investigates
Poster advertising an Africana philosophy course defaced with racial slur at Midwestern State University (Texas) -- the course will be taught by Nathan Jun, who praised the university administration's quick condemnation of the vandalism
What the folk really believe about mental states: our beliefs, desires, emotions, and judgments are under our control -- results of six studies (via Fiery Cushman)
Is sex binary? That question doesn't have the relevance many seem to think it has -- so argues Alex Byrne (MIT)
We're neglecting the future -- how can we change that?
The risk faced by "those who would jettison civility in the interest of justice" -- Matt Dinan (St. Thomas) on whether niceness is a virtue
The UK Government's new commission on architectural design will be chaired by a philosopher -- Roger Scruton. In related news, Leon Kass has been appointed Secretary of Ice Cream.
What universities are doing to shore up humanities majors -- philosopher Debra Satz, dean of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford, is among those consulted for the article
"Calling bullshit might be one of the most insidious forms of bullshit." -- three articles on the anxieties, insecurities, and insights of the humanities, in light of the recent hoaxing, at The Point
Varieties of nothingness -- in science and philosophy
What were the most influential academic books of the past 20 years? -- the Chronicle of Higher Ed gets answers from a variety of academics
A competition to encourage non-Christian philosophy of religion -- from the Journal of Analytic Theology, funded by the APA
"Questions about what categories should guide our social lives cannot be answered by simply describing the world, because they ask how we should describe the world." -- gender nonbinary people and the messy details about (and uncertain future of) sex and gender
Reincarnating a Rawlsian device for a discussion of climate change -- Michelle Alexander in the NYT
Open Culture puts up a lot of philosophy-related content -- here are their philosophy-tagged posts
When it comes to perception, "your brain is doing a lot of work behind the scenes" -- and that is one reason these optical illusions work
Is there a cherished ethical ideal that the academic study of ethics tends to overlook? -- yes, says Amod Lele (Boston U.): "be yourself"
The Constitution and the oath of office can function as applied ethics texts for U.S. Presidents -- one lesson from a discussion on the presidency with Corey Brettschneider (Brown)
A table that plots the pragmatists along dimensions of quietism/metaphysics and humanism/scientism -- from Joseph Clark
"Even if you work 60 hours a week and sleep eight hours a night, that leaves you 52 hours a week---a full seven hours a day---to do other things" -- how a time audit can help academics
Who will teach Silicon Valley to be ethical? -- Chief Ethics Officers, perhaps
How do stereotypes distort our perception of the truth? -- Greg Restall (Melbourne) is interviewed on the subject on ABC Radio
Life in academia can be great. So can life outside of it. -- on being encouraging to grad students in philosophy while being realistic about job prospects
Steven Pinker's "silly interpretation" of Nietzsche is a lesson on the value of the humanities -- Robert Crease (Stony Brook) in the WSJ
When was a word first used in print? What words were first used the year you were born? -- check out Merriam-Webster's new "Time-Traveler"
Podcast discussions with philosophers, economists, and others interested in altruism -- at 80,000 Hours
PhD Students, a show on CBC Radio wants to turn your research into a 54-minute episode -- well, maybe yours.
Virtual reality, sympathy, and empathy -- Erick Ramirez (Santa Clara) on what the technology can and cannot do
"If anything, our current post-truth moment is less a product of Latour’s ideas than a validation of them." -- a lengthy and interesting NYT profile of Bruno Latour and discussion of his ideas, philosophy of science, and "post-truth"
CEU is likely moving from Budapest to Vienna -- Tim Crane (CEU) explains why in a Twitter thread
A wine bar named for Diogenes will be opening next month in London -- one wonders how closely the staff will follow his example
"I am a sexist!" proclaims one philosopher -- George Yancy (Emory) says to other men: "We need to tell the truth about ourselves."
In praise of "author-meets-critics" events -- they help counter "one of the more dispiriting elements of our profession," says Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam)
What one learns running a public "ask a philosopher" booth -- Ian Olasov (CUNY) reflects on his two years of distinctive public philosophy
Commit to encouraging your students to vote on Election Day (Nov. 6th) -- a pledge for educators
There's a new open access philosophy text: "Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science" -- by Hakob Barseghyan, Nicholas Overgaard, and Gregory Rupik (all Toronto)
"I prioritize and protect my weekends, evenings, holidays, and sleep. And yet I maintain a productive academic career." -- important advice for philosophers & other academics
Add “Zombies, Serial Killers, and Madmen” to the "interesting philosophy courses" file -- Eric Smaw (Rollins) is interviewed by the Miami Herald about his course
"What, morally speaking, are journalists doing in conflicts?" -- Richard Stupart (LSE) and Katherine Furman (Cork) on the moral role of "bearing witness"
"A feminist case against the feminist case against trans inclusivity" -- by philosophers Lorna Finlayson (Essex), Katharine Jenkins (Nottingham), Rosie Worsdale (Cambridge)
Most humanities PhDs---inside and out of the academy---think getting their PhD prepared them well for their jobs and would do it again if starting over (via IHE)
An Italian philosopher has received over 40,000 hostile messages, including death threats -- philosopher Raffaele Ariano (Vita-Salute University San Raffaele di Milano) had published an open letter objecting to a train conductor's racist announcement
Challenges confronting the online philosophy community -- remarks from Adriel Trott (Wabash)
We should think of philosophy talks as taking place in "intellectual safe spaces" -- "where one’s ideas are bracketed from certain social contexts in order to examine them simply as ideas," says Bharath Vallabha
The creation of a database of materials on Zhu Xi is underway -- estimated to be completed in 5 years, it will contain books, videos, audio, academic articles, and other items related to Zhu Xi and those influenced by him
"How does one decide the potential of an as yet un-had dialogue?" -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) on disputes over the absurdity and/or plausibility of ideas (and the recent academic hoax)
Is Bojack Horseman a story about Stoicism? -- an interesting look at the acclaimed television show (but too many spoilers if you haven't watched through season 4) (via Chike Jeffers)
The American Society for Aesthetics issues an apology for its handling of a sexual harassment allegation -- and has appointed an ombudsperson
Figuring out the costs and benefits of cognitive biases in light of the multiplicity of epistemic goals and different types of epistemic agents -- it's complicated, as Lisa Bortolotti, Andrea Polonioli, and Sophie Stammers explain
"What is particularly troubling about some societal disagreements is that they concern factual matters that tend to be almost impossible to resolve" -- Klemens Kappel (Copenhagen) on the problem of "deep disagreement"
How to recognize fascism before it's too late -- a brief video primer from Jason Stanley (Yale)
In support of the college lecture -- new study finds that undergrads taught via lecture are less likely to drop out
A look at what's happening to our reading brains at this historic juncture between the old ways and the new" -- what does it mean for the future of reading, learning, and teaching that the average person now reads 100,000 words a day on electronic devices?
A philosopher is the first transgender athlete to win a world championship cycling event -- Rachel McKinnon (Charleston) won the gold in the sprint at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships. See her Twitter for an informative discussion.
Kindness in academic philosophy -- Em Walsh (McGill) on why and how
"To fight fake news, we need to take the same norms that keep us (relatively) honest over cocktails, and apply them to social media" -- Regina Rini (York) on a way to do that
"Critical theories of the post–Frankfurt School period... can be viewed as plausible rearticulations of a project of critique initiated by Kant" -- Seyla Benhabib (Yale) on the "illuminating pluralization of critical theories"
An esoteric reading of "The Good Place" -- Robin James (UNC Charlotte) thinks the show is more progressive than it appears
Human experience in the aggregate -- "more of human experience has happened recently than time would suggest"; what should we take from that? (via MR)
Political success is not moral victory nor legal vindication -- Jacob Levy (McGill) on Kavanaugh, with the help of Bernard Williams
Philosophy and race in South Africa? -- David Benatar (Cape Town) responds to a recent article in Quartz
"What does philosophy have to teach us about running a business?" "Oh, I think everything..." -- a discussion with a philosopher-turned-plumber (who still teaches some philosophy courses part time)
"I have to find a new question now" -- Urmila Mahadev, a graduate student who recently solved the fascinating quantum verification problem
"How can we get better at talking civilly to people who are very different from ourselves?" -- maybe we need billy goats, says Agnes Callard (Chicago)
Does Harriet Taylor get too little credit for her role in Mill's writings? -- or too much?
"Even if right-leaning authors appear on syllabi as frequently as left-leaning authors, students remain at risk of receiving an unbalanced presentation of the views." -- one reason Christopher Freiman (William & Mary) argues for "viewpoint diversity"
"Democracy depends on the capacity of citizens to sustain their commitment to the political equality of even those who they regard as their most benighted, vicious, and depraved political opponents." -- It ain't easy, observe Scott Aikin & Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
"What is more practical than thinking hard about how to live one’s life?" -- in a local Texas paper, a defense of philosophy's "messing with minds," by Robert Baird (Baylor)
The optimal number of academic hoaxes is not zero -- Justin E. H. Smith (University of Paris, Diderot) offers some examples to show why
Is the United States on its way to having something "quite a bit like law, in several respects, but not actually a legal system"? -- In a few ways that seems to be the case, says Les Green (Oxford)
A good look at the show-nothing hoax -- by Daniel Engber in Slate
"Narratives seduce you into thinking you really understand what’s going on and why things happened, but most of it is guessing" -- Alex Rosenberg (Duke) is interviewed about how narrative thinking leads historians astray
"If scientists can disagree for years on end, what does this mean for the objectivity of science?" -- Scientific American brings in a philosopher---Kevin Zollman (CMU)---to discuss a philosophical question---and he picks a good one
“The types of skills we’re bringing in are psychologists, philosophers, that type of profile, that can solve really complex philosophical problems" -- IBM exec Ana Paula Assis, speaking at Fortune’s "Most Powerful Women Summit"
What does the latest academic hoax show? -- ten things, says Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam)
The meaning and value of interestingness -- discussed by Lorraine Besser (Middlebury)
"One of the biggest things I have experienced as a trans student [in philosophy] has been silence" -- and "in the face of intensifying anti-trans rhetoric... silence begins to look like complicity."
"This hoax thus doesn’t tell us anything at all about the overall quality of the academic subfields targeted" -- James Stacey Taylor (College of New Jersey) argues that the hoax was neither interesting nor unethical
Should we be held morally responsible for our actions? -- a discussion between Gregg Caruso (SUNY Corning) and Daniel Dennett (Tufts)
Hiking with Nietzsche -- John Kaag (U Mass, Lowell) reflects on Nietzsche's life, his own, and philosophy
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP-UK) now has a blog -- and a revamped website. Check it out
Connecting philosophy to a character's fortune and building a story around it -- Barry Lam (Vassar), the creator of the marvelous Hi-Phi Nation, shares some of his secrets
"So much ingenuity wasted" -- Stephen Yablo (MIT) discusses the problems of philosophy, and the philosophical problems he has worked on
The racial politics of philosophy--African and Western--in South Africa -- includes remarks from African grad students and their white professors, including David Benatar and Thaddeus Metz
"Being hyper-alert to whether one is being philosophical enough can prevent one from yielding to the creative process that is required for doing philosophy" -- Subrena Smith (New Hampshire) on questions about what makes for a good philosophy paper
"I just thought of a bad opinion someone could have, and now I'm searching to see if anyone does" -- philosophy research or unhealthy internet tendency?
Philosophy professor who was charged with possession of child pornography this past February has been convicted and sentenced -- Scott Lowe will serve 1-2 years in prison and pay a fine
Sarah Silverman talks with Socrates (Will Ferrell) about democracy -- and panini. (some NSFW language)
"Even as I argued and swore... I could see that this wasn’t a productive way to engage. That people were getting more angry. More hurt. More frustrated." -- Tracy Isaacs (Western) on the lure and limits of calls for kindness
What's going on at the Blog of the APA? -- new editors are joining the team, for one thing
Are boring talks that seem to go on forever really longer than non-boring ones? -- Yep (via Matt McAdam)
The largest statue of Confucius has just been unveiled -- it's 236 feet tall
The Kavanagh hearings and "himpathy" -- Kate Manne (Cornell) in the New York Times
and on a similar theme -- here's a piece in Pyschology Today by Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin (Sam Houston State)
Increasing the diversity of philosophy you're teaching -- a discussion with John Ramsey (Northern Colorado)
Is this philosopher "a hidden giant, a profound thinker who... has been unable to commit his ideas to paper"? -- the NYT writes about Irad Kimhi, who got his PhD from Pitt in '93
"Formal Africana philosophy conspicuously refutes the old Eurocentric lie that only European thought has developed ideas which are appropriately universal" -- thoughts from Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
Waxing philosophical about fantasy football -- "You can take a reflective attitude to just about anything," says Theodore Bach (BGSU-Firelands) in USA Today
What are you going to do with a degree in that? -- it turns out that physics majors get that question, too. What are physics departments doing about it?
"We can identify some patterns that keep women who have been assaulted conveniently quiet---especially when the assailant is a privileged boy or powerful man" -- Kate Manne (Cornell) writing at CNN on the Kavanaugh nomination
"The way this debate is conducted is unedifying... [and] even the philosophers party to the debate seem to be unable to recognize explicitly each other's vulnerabilities" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) on discussions of transgender issues in philosophy
Academics "work inhumane hours; are grossly underpaid; face unstable future prospects; and rarely have access to basic professional resources" -- maybe *staying* in academia, not leaving it, is "the real failure"
"A surprise second-place showing in a local beauty contest provides temporary relief, but an academic conference at Marvin Gardens wipes out your savings" -- board games for adjunct professors
"Know thyself". Sure. But how do the 140 or so other Delphic maxims fare? -- Charlie Huenemann (Utah State) on which may still serve us today
A first edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" is going up for auction -- it is expected to sell for over $65,000
The epistemic advantage of being susceptible to confusion -- a human quality that's difficult to build into artificial intelligence
Where Friedrich Nietzsche meets Virginia Woolf -- philosophy of time through dance, happening this weekend
"Should we get lobsters high on marijuana? Let's ask a philosopher" said no one -- until the other day.
More tricks for teaching Aristotle -- from Adriel Trott (Wabash)
Great Grannie's pie, the stolen watch, the drowning child, and the imperialist queen -- misleading metaphors in philosophical work on global justice
"How The Light Gets In," the world's largest philosophy festival, is happening this weekend -- Daily Nous readers can get 20% off ticket prices by using the code DNous20
Philosophizing about animals, women, the disabled, and prisoners -- an interview with Lori Gruen (Wesleyan)
Students, take that philosophy course -- the president of Johns Hopkins makes a case for the humanities in the Washington Post
"The Trolley Problem is not a problem or a puzzle to be solved." -- how a philosophy professor responds to students who want to know what its solution is
To know the answers to many philosophical questions, "one must gain knowledge about metaphysical possibilities and necessities" -- and "we typically cannot," argues Edouard Machery (Pitt), guest blogging at Brains this week
On humility, kindness, and professionalism -- in academic philosophy
Newly found, heretofore unpublished fragments of Husserl---or Heidegger? -- (via Sebastian Luft)
How one professor teaches students to ask philosophical questions of complicated texts -- and gets them to do the reading, too
Can today's musicians sell out? -- six philosophers consider the question
"Good parenting is not about providing as much advantage for your kid as you can harness" -- Gina Schouten (Harvard) on tradeoffs in parenthood
"You cannot understand Paleolithic cave art if you have not seen it in situ... the works gain their sense from their milieu." -- Justin E. H. Smith (University of Paris, Diderot) on the meaning of cave art
What is to be made of Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures? -- "what matters is how we enjoy them," argues Julian Baggini
On the prospects for "real, open conversation" in philosophy on trans issues -- Asia Ferrin (American U.) takes a look at recent exchanges
A list of known sexual harassers in academia -- the database is limited to cases in which there is “an institutional finding of some sort of sexual misconduct,” says its creator, Julie Libarkin (MSU)
John Locke's complicated relationship with slavery -- "attention to historical context matters," argues Holly Brewer (Maryland)
Philosophy is "thinking about precisely the kinds of things that ordinary people think about all the time, without distraction" -- a journalist reflects on lessons learned about philosophy from Stanley Cavell (via Daniel Brunson)
Santa Barbara City College settles with philosophy prof accused of harassment -- Mark McIntire will receive $120,000 from the school
Hiring in philosophy is "not a matter of giving out awards for philosophical worthiness" -- it's about a department trying to solve problems or meet goals, argues Meghan Sullivan (Notre Dame)
In 2014, hundreds of political scientists signed a petition *opposing* greater data transparency -- has the field made any progress since?
The coddling of the "heterodox" professor -- add some facts and subtract some bias, and the central thesis of the Lukianoff-Haidt book gets turned upside down (via Tamsin Shaw)
(related)
"A college---the very place devoted to complex, contextualized consideration of the most challenging questions facing human beings---is the place where a simplified memorial makes the least sense" -- Steven Miller (Ripon College) on campus 9/11 memorials
"An uncomfortable feeling follows from knowing that one has enjoyed the work of a vicious person." Why? -- Nate Sheff (Connecticut) takes a stab at the question
When the reasonable people drop out of online discussions -- "that can't be good," says David Sobel (Syracuse), even if it may be reasonable
"There’s little research on our reception of work such as 'Artist’s Shit,'" but that is changing -- Paul Bloom (Yale) discusses some recent work on the psychology, science, and philosophy of modern art
Should you teach grad students the work of an accused harasser who is still a professor in your department? -- Claire Newfeld (UC Berkeley) on the Searle situation
How researchers and doctors are determining whether patients in apparently persistent vegetative states are actually conscious -- Mackenzie Graham (Oxford) on the technology of ethics
Philosophy as the study of philosophers' misunderstandings -- Guy Longworth (Warwick) reminds us of the lessons of J.L. Austin
A philosopher and one of his undergrads read through 63 transcripts of the Rush Limbaugh Show to research "concept doubling" -- interesting work and great mentoring from Jeff Engelhardt (Dickinson)
"We need to return philosophy to its previous wide perspective." How? -- by looking at The Tractatus, argues Hans Sluga (Berkeley)
You've heard of Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees," but what about his heretofore unpublished "Parable of the Ants"? -- "discovered" by Julia Driver (Washington Univ. St. Louis)
Is your cat a mind reader? -- Ali Boyle (Cambridge) unpacks the philosophy in that question and considers some answers
How to get students into Aristotle's Metaphysics -- Adriel Trott (Wabash) shares an "active classroom" technique
Looking to bring texts from philosophy in the Islamic world into your philosophy courses? -- check out this guide from Peter Adamson (LMU)
"Should I get a PhD and become a professor?" -- Jason Brennan (Georgetown) offers some career advice to those considering the question
Sneaking libertarian ideology into elementary schools in the form of critical thinking software -- even if you agree with the politics... why, Elon Musk, why? (via Daniel Brunson)
Effective altruism and moral uncertainty -- the Very Bad Wizards talk with Will MacAskill (Oxford)
With increased use of AI, "companies will require more philosophy graduates in... roles to look into AI-related outputs through a human lens” -- so says Pratik Dattani, Managing Director of Economic Policy Group (EPG), a London and Bangalore-based consulting group
"I realized better what it means to be American. It is not simply about an economic dream. It is about a lived, philosophical project" -- an immigrant's letter to Western Philosophy
How should we explore and learn about Mars? -- philosopher Ian Stoner (St. Paul College) makes some very interesting points in a discussion on BBC Radio
In philosophy, the professors and the formal institutions are like the classically trained musicians at a big concert hall. What about philosophy's club scene? -- an interview with Kilian Jörg, the founder of Philosophy Unbound
"Philosophy of science can’t simply be based on what scientists say and do... ...But, on the other hand, there are other aspects of what scientists say and do that need to be taken more seriously," argues Angela Potochnik (Cincinnati)
"Up to a certain level, leisure time should be understood as a basic need, analogous to education" -- Blain Neufeld (Wisconsin-Milwaukee) on justice, fairness, and free time for adults and children
"Are trans women really women?" "Do I really have to respond to that?" "Yes, yes you do" -- a debate over trans women, the use of "TERF", and how to eat ribs like a lady
What are jokes? -- It's a very serious question, says Justin E. H. Smith (University of Paris Diderot)
Move over analytic and continental and philosophy, there's a new (old?) game in town: synthetic philosophy -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) explains what it is, and why Daniel Dennett is an exemplar of it
Surviving getting your Ph.D. -- helpful advice from Asia Ferrin (American University)
And some more advice for new grad students -- from Dorsa Amir (Yale)
A new multimedia play on the life and philosophy of Simone Weil makes use of dialogue, dance, video projections, animation and original music -- it begins its run at Merseles Studios in September
Diversity within identities, blameless privilege, essentialism, and more -- an interview with Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU)
"Beg the question" has a new meaning -- and it's perfect
An update on how the American Society for Aesthetics has dealt with recent accusations of sexual harassment -- the accused has agreed not to attend the conference, but is there more the ASA should do?
How can a woman have a penis? -- Katharine Jenkins (Nottingham) provides a primer on how "gender/sex is actually a complex, multifaceted cluster of things that interrelate and interact in myriad ways"
"The idea was to approximate... the experience of going out for a beer with fellow students after the seminar and continuing to talk about the material---and share this with the world" -- about the "Partially Examined Life" podcast and the folks behind it
Hypatia, the feminist philosophy journal, has a new editorial team in place -- the new co-editors are Bonnie J. Mann, Erin McKenna, Camisha Russell, and Rocío Zambrana (all at the University of Oregon)
Take some things for granted -- it will make for a better life, argues Neal Tognazzini (Western Washington)
Should the "empirical falsity of claims in an article published in [a philosophy journal]... be a condition of retraction, correction, or apology"? -- a discussion by Eric Schliesser (Amsertdam) at Digressions & Impressions
A philosopher's interdisciplinary project on pain reveals findings about the doctor-patient relationship -- Adam Swenson (CSUN Northridge) looks at what makes patients seem trustworthy
There is a Medieval canon: it's shaped by "the dominance of theology in the Middle Ages" -- and it should be challenged, argues Martin Lenz (Groningen) in response to Bob Pasnau (Colorado)
Enlightenment is "a tender thing, worth cultivating, coaxing, exercising, smiling on---worth succoring" -- even (especially) when its your "enemies" who are seeking it, says Jennifer Uleman (Purchase)
Should you "fake it 'til you make it"? -- philosophy and psychology raise some helpful follow-up questions to that, argues Julia Staffel (Colorado)
The virtue of dark humor -- Mark Alfano (Delft, ACU) delivers the Simone Weil Lecture on Human Value
"People who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-profound from the actually profound are more prosocial" -- recent social science (via Jason Brennan)
Movies about logic -- a list compiled by Mats Volberg (Tartu)
"I wanted to... explore not what technology is doing to us, but what we’re doing to technology" -- Nolen Gertz (Twente) is interviewed about nihilism and technology
"It is our pervasive irrationality that in some circumstances contributes to our success" -- Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham) on reaping the "benefits of positive illusions" while avoiding the "dangers of optimism"
When is cultural appropriation permissible? -- several philosophers contribute to a post at Aesthetics for Birds
There's no "common core" in Medieval philosophy -- but it would be good if there were, argues Bob Pasnau (Colorado)
How does our biology constrain our imagination, and, in turn, our knowledge? -- Max Jones (Leeds) and Tom Schoonen (Amsterdam) consider the question
What 30 terms should every student know at the end of an introduction to philosophy course? -- "argument," "ethics," "epistemology,"...
What does it mean to be human? -- the question "is not just narcissistic, it involves a culpable obtuseness," writes Martha Nussbaum (Chicago)
"The reasons one gives to ban speech---where there are good reasons to do so---are complicated, must be drawn with as much clarity as possible, and will inevitably be subject to misuse." -- Gerald Dworkin at 3QD
"You should never, ever, edit a volume" and other blanket early career advice -- to what extent is it warranted?
"The humanities are subversive" -- what a prof at a science-oriented school tells his students about why they should care about the humanities
An online magazine the contents of which is viewable only on devices not connected to the internet -- an interesting response to the distractions of online reading (via Nautilus)
What is rationality and why is it valuable? -- a discussion of "The Value of Rationality" by Ralph Wedgewood (USC)
To reduce the risk of moral catastrophes, should society hire lots more philosophers? -- Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) is somewhat skeptical
"Odysseus texts Penelope to let her know that he’s running late." -- Classical tragedies that could have been prevented with smartphones
Chico the Philosurfer has a series of videos aimed at bringing philosophy to high school students and others -- he's a former teacher at a prep school in California
"Let me admit up front that, until this interview, I hadn't thought much at all about disability's relations to philosophy" -- Stephen Yablo (MIT) is interviewed at Discrimination and Disadvantage
"We can never really be post-truth" -- Simon Blackburn (Cambridge) interviewed at Vox
"Professors with voices critical of dominant ideologies have long been targets" -- Jason Stanley (Yale) interviewed about fascism and anti-intellectualism
To really expand the canon, philosophy needs not just more historical texts but "a way into them" -- Lisa Shapiro (Simon Fraser) on the importance of secondary literature on non-canonical figures
"The reason to cultivate hope in uncertain times is Kant's reason: we have a duty to work for the improvement of our societies, but energetic action to serve the public good is not possible without hope" -- an interview with Martha Nussbaum (Chicago)
18th Century fan art by Jacob Böhme enthusiasts -- who is going to make a pop-up book of your philosophy?
A philosophical appreciation of the hip-hop magazine "The Source" -- from Lawrence Ware (Oklahoma State)
Avital Ronell (NYU), a professor of German and Comparative Literature known for work in contemporary Continental philosophy, is found to have sexually harassed a male student -- NY Times looks at the case and a now infamous letter from other academics defending her
What is media impartiality? -- Joe Mazor (LSE) offers an account
"The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood" by Tommy Curry (Texas A&M) is one of the winners of the American Book Awards -- awarded by the Before Columbus Foundation
"An incident of sexual harassment occurred at the annual American Society for Aesthetics conference last November. ... I am the accuser."
A philosopher is writing a book composed of "Batman slapping Robin" memes and commentary thereon -- the author is Simon Evnine (Miami), and he's blogging about it
What's going on when people preface their remarks with phrases like, "as a [member of some demographic group]"? -- Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) takes a look
The ethics of miscarriage, reproductive loss, and fetal death -- Kathryn Norlock (Trent) on Radical Philosophy Radio
"Historians [of philosophy] will chide you for claiming something about the past that they are happy to claim about the present" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on "myths in the history of philosophy"
Novel teaching practices in philosophy courses -- share yours
Black Mirror & Philosophy: The Syllabus -- as if philosophy itself weren't disturbing enough!
The costs and benefits of philosophical argumentation -- Stephanie Kapusta (Dalhousie) is inteviewed on the discursive norms of obligation, trans* issues, feminist philosophy, and more
"We would rather secretly believe we are special than confront the real consequences of the paradox" -- ruminations on Fermi's Paradox from astrophysicist Milan Ćirković (University of Novi Sad)
Do Parfit’s “Harmless Torturers” hang out on social media? — Paul Bloom and Matthew Jordan think so
"The accused harasser is on the program" -- the American Society for Aesthetics has new discrimination and harassment policies but some have raised concerns about its upcoming meeting
What is it to be fit? -- Self Magazine interviews philosophers Samantha Brennan (Guelph) and Tracy Isaacs (Western)
Are universities trying to do too much? -- a professor and an administrator agree on the answer: yes
"Academic philosophers are slow to accept outsiders as thinking with the depth and rigor that they expect from their peers" -- Tommie Shelby (Harvard) on the philosophical thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Enraged by idiots? -- maybe they're not idiots
"I'm really very proud to be following on in the footsteps of people like Peirce and James and Dewey, even" -- Simon Blackburn (Cambridge) talks about truth
Feminism and philosophy -- Elinor Mason (Edinburgh) is interviewed as she prepares for her upcoming show at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Ethics vs. Batman -- action, intention, and responsibility (via Paul Bloom)
A venue for "in-depth discussion of scholarly works published within the last year" in the History of Modern Philosophy -- check out The SGIR Review
Buy Thoreau's house: 6 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 3-car garage, updated kitchen -- They even quote Thoreau in the sales blurb. Yours for just $3 million (via Carol Hay)
Moroccan government reintroduces philosophy into its high school curriculum -- it had been removed in 2017 following controversy over its content
The Western canon "challenges both the political left and the political right" -- argues David Lay Williams (DePaul)
When is a ban on the development of technology the wisest course? -- a balanced yet frightening look at a possible future with widespread facial recognition technology
A philosopher is helping develop appealing diets for cancer patients and others with altered taste -- Barry Smith (UCL) is known for his work on the senses
Originality in philosophy is "nothing but the reformulation of theses or arguments" -- but that's not a dismissal, as Martin Lenz (Groningen) explains
The Nietzsche-inspired playlist -- a lot of heavy metal, plus some... David Bowie?
DC and Maryland have a philosophy-trained law professor to thank for a decision allowing their anti-corruption lawsuit against Trump to proceed -- John Mikhail (Georgetown) was mentioned 17 times in the decision
"Researchers who leave academia are not failed academics" -- what to do to change perceptions and prepare graduate students for professional careers outside academia (via Branden Fitelson)
"Whether an influence is manipulative depends on how it is being used" -- Robert Noggle (Central Michigan) on the difference between persuasion and manipulation
How to teach usually neglected women philosophers by showing them as "active participants in the philosophical dialogues of their era" -- new teaching materials from Project Vox
"The Good Place," NBC's philosophy-centered sitcom, has a podcast (via Philosophy Matters)
"It is not the transition from premises to conclusion that is often at fault but the premises themselves." -- Gerald Dworkin on the need to adjust critical thinking courses in light of current information technology and its abuses
Philosophy begins with doubt, some say, but what is doubt? -- Andrew Moon (VCU) introduces his view of doubt using ants (see the fuller argument in the linked paper)
"Though some think that Western philosophy has entered a golden age, others of us fear that it may have ended, that there is and will be no next member of the series after Cavell, after Lewis, after Derrida" -- Abe Stone (UC Santa Cruz) on lessons learned from Stanley Cavell
Over 20 interviews with philosophers on philosophy of action -- at the Philosophy of Action website (via István Zárdai)
Against trends, this university just last semester launched a philosophy major -- it is based in UC Merced's Cognitive and Information Sciences Department
Academic books are not meant to be read cover to cover -- they are meant to be "gutted" or "broken"
A philosophy PhD student at Oxford takes on the pseudo-science of anti-Semitism -- but would it have been better to leave it ignored? (via Benjamin McKean)
"We have the aspiration to the domestic rule of law, an international arena where it is only ever partly at work, and the problem of what happens---literally and figuratively---at the border between the two" -- Jacob Levy (McGill) on the Trump administration's battle against the rule of law
"I do remember the surprise I felt at her anger. I remember expecting her to understand." -- the ethics of privacy-violating art (via Michael Spicher)
From Trolleyology to vaccination policy -- can the former help us understand the latter? (via Danielle Wenner)
Watercolor and ink chibi-style portraits of philosophers -- by Yuzuko Nakamura (via Liam Kofi Bright)
"There’s no reliable way to separate free will from luck." -- The Boston Globe takes up questions of luck, freedom, and criminal law (via Gregg Caruso)
Is the key to further advances in artificial intelligence teaching machines about causation? Is a clue to their autonomy their engagement in counterfactual reasoning? -- a pioneer in AI talks about possible next steps for the field
"An unfortunate side effect of democracy is that it incentivizes citizens to be ignorant, irrational, tribalistic, and to not use their votes in very serious ways" -- an interview with Jason Brennan (Georgetown) who discusses his "attempt to correct for that pathology while keeping what’s good about a democratic system"
An invention to solve the trolley problem -- from SMBC
Is the passage of time an illusion? -- Huw Price (Cambridge) and Alison Fernandes (Warwick) discuss time with physicist Erik Verlinde
Students are required to attend three Phish shows during the course -- in the philosophy of Phish course taught by Stephanie Jenkins (Oregon State)
Some instruments used to understand conservatism may, in a way, beg the question -- a look at the social science of political identity, in New York Magazine
"Deciding what we eat and why is very much a reflection of our character" -- Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) on the Stoic case for vegetarianism
"Your dissertation will be the longest and most thorough thing you've ever written. That's all." -- Check out "Dr. Eric's 3-Step Remedy" to get your dissertation moving
"Historical evidence regarding the influence of philosophy on science is overwhelming" -- physicist Carlo Rovelli at Scientific American
Discovered under the hardened lava of Vesuvius, the 2000 blackened papyrus scrolls are "the only intact library known from the classical world," and were thought mostly unreadable -- until now
The Jean-Paul Sartre welcome mat -- you know what it says (via Nigel Warburton)
Skepticism about some forms of service-learning in philosophy courses -- "Diverting attention away from theoretical concerns in an effort to make philosophy ‘relevant’ will instead make it redundant and irrelevant," argues Spencer Case (Colorado)
"The logic puzzle you can only solve with your brightest friend" -- can you figure it out?
Women thinkers in antiquity and the middle ages -- a 10-lecture series by Peter Adamson (KCL/LMU) on YouTube
Of all the possible titles for a guide to the poisonous plants of Virginia, they chose "The Socrates Project" -- further evidence that philosophy is in, right?
What is meat? -- if you're interested in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, ethics, and food, dig in
How evidence, theory, models, simulations, probability, and values factor into climate science -- Eric Winsberg (USF) in conversation with Carrie Figdor (Iowa)
"Love and envy thrive in the same conditions of similarity and equality... Is that as bad as it sounds?" -- it depends on the kind of envy, argues Sara Protasi (Puget Sound)
To credibly and responsibly call Russia on its electoral interferences, we need to establish multilateral norms for such interference in general, and to do that, we need to be honest about what the US itself has done -- Jack Goldsmith (Harvard) discusses some "uncomfortable questions"
"If we’re not careful, we will be living in an entirely synthetic age," and we will have lost something very valuable: "the world outside our control" -- an interview with Christopher Preston (Montana-Missoula)
Wonder Cupboard is a new philosophy and history of science podcast aimed at non-specialists -- the latest episode asks: "why does science work?"
A philosophical project on powerlessness aims to change the care of terminally ill patients -- Béatrice Han-Pile (Essex) is interviewed about the work she has done with healthcare professionals
"We feel shame when something happens to make us feel like we’re no longer ourselves" -- Krista K. Thomason (Swarthmore) on how shame is about our identities
"Transwomen are to women as adoptive parents are to parents" -- is this a useful analogy? Sophie Grace Chappell (Open U.) thinks so.
Interviews with over 20 philosophers who each do some form of public philosophy -- at Engaged Philosophy
"Most of all, we feel like a bad joke... like impostors.... Why, from the top of a nasty gender hierarchy, should we feel so risible?" -- "What Is It Like To Be A Man?" by Philip Christman (Michigan)
"Psychology research by philosophers is robust and replicates better than other areas of psychology" -- a nice write-up of recent work, posted about here in May, on reproducibility in experimental philosophy
Martha Nussbaum discusses emotions, politics, philosophy, feminism and more -- in an interview at Moment
Four factors that explain how "Aristotelian metaphysics can be scientifically defensible" -- from Tim Crane (CEU)
Want to help transcribe letters by David Lewis on a variety of philosophical topics? -- Manchester's David Lewis Project is looking to "crowdcraft" some work
When philosopher Joel Kupperman (now emeritus at U Conn) was a kid, he was "the most famous prodigy in America" -- his childhood is now the subject of a graphic novel by his son, Michael Kupperman (via Benjamin McKean)
"Is the concept of being 'philosophically interesting' something other than a fancy way of re-stating one’s personal intellectual tastes?" -- one of several questions Ethan Mills (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga) asks at his blog, "Examined Worlds"
"The very atmosphere in which we move and breathe deprives us of the perception we need to recognize our predicament" -- reflections from Rochelle Gurstein on what we lose when we lose our privacy
"The people I know who have [been] the most successful in the profession have indeed been, by and large, those who developed good relationships" -- from an entry in the "Mid-Career Reflections" series at The Philosophers' Cocoon
"Socially-centered virtue ethics" -- Sebastian Purcell (SUNY Cortland) on what the Aztecs contribute to moral philosophy
"I would require all students to take two philosophy courses---one in their first year and another just before graduation" -- psychologist Howard Gardner (Harvard) on why philosophy is an important part of college education
"Until viewers do become better interpreters of photographic portraits, Pyke’s portraits will not always serve the public image of philosophers, and philosophy, well." -- Michael Newall (Kent) takes a critical look at Steve Pyke's portraits of philosophers
Are you opposed to meritocracy and the institutionalized celebration of genius? -- here's a list of readings that may convince you to be, curated by Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
"An NHS doctor is teaching philosophy to eight and nine-year-olds in the hope of safeguarding their mental health" -- using Legos, costumes, conversations, and movies to give kids the skills to think clearly
The acclaimed anime of Miyazaki and the later thought of Heidegger -- Edward McDougall (Durham) on what we can learn about technology, nature, and transformation, by looking at them together
Are people who think we lack free will more likely to behave immorally? -- Surpisingly, no, according to a new study
"Facial recognition technology poses serious and imminent threats to civil liberties and human rights." -- philosophers & other academics make the case in The Guardian
Electoral reform, John Rawls, and... Dr. Who? -- Stephen Tweedale (Simon Fraser) is thinking philosophically about British Columbia's upcoming referendum
You'd think that Scientific American would be a publication that respects expertise -- so why do its editors choose to publish error-riddled columns on philosophy by Michael Shermer?
"Our moral relations to people are different from our moral relations to the other animals... -- But we have reason for treating what is good for an animal as good absolutely," says Christine Korsgaard (Harvard) in Prospect Magazine
Love, humor, and the good life -- Mark Alfano (Delft) on why we look for a sense of humor in potential mates
"If we measure the danger to our institutions by the number of disagreements they must manage, then diversity is dangerous. However, disagreement can also protect us from danger." -- Ryan Muldoon (Buffalo) offers a clear-eyed and empirically-informed account of the value of diversity
"Human anomalies receive little or no attention in philosophy, because they destabilize those deeply embedded conventions of thought in the field that undergird most of the research that goes on in it." -- an interview with philosopher and artist Adrian Piper, a self-described "anomaly", about her ideas and art, on the occasion of her MOMA retrospective.
The political philosophy of time -- Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) talks with Elizabeth Cohen (Syracuse) about her innovative "The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice"
"Everyone knows about grade inflation, but this is GPA distortion, and few people looking at a student’s GPA know it happens" -- research by philosophy professor David Meeler (Winthrop) on grade forgiveness, discussed at The Atlantic
"I thought I would die. I assumed I would die... because if the symptoms didn't kill me outright, I'd kill myself." Travis Rieder (JHU), who has a bioethics research program on the ethical and policy issues surrounding America’s opioid epidemic, discusses his personal experience with opioid withdrawal and its lessons
"You need to be able to disagree, even strongly, with people and still respect and even trust them. This means thinking them people of good will who are trying, as you are, to solve problems, [but] there are limits" -- Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) interviewed about fear, trust, and hope in today's political climate
The philosophy of Mexicanness -- an excerpt from a 1951 essay by Emilio Uranga, introduced by Carlos Alberto Sánchez (San José State) & Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr. (Mt. St. Mary's, LA)
Don't raise the significance level; acknowledge the significance of Bayes -- David Papineau (KCL) explains Bayesianism and why it is important for addressing today's replication crises
Avital Ronell (NYU), accused of sexually harassing a male philosophy student, has