Heap of Links

Disagreement, democracy, and civic friendship -- Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) is interviewed on the Parlia podcast
Masks: for the greatest good -- making the best of Bentham
Wittgenstein's favorite detective novels -- no, not a McSweeney's post, but a real article about his love of crime fiction
Feminist responses to COVID-19 and pandemics -- a special issue of the APA's Feminism and Philosophy Newsletter
The racism of earlier philosophers is built into some of their more abstract philosophical ideas -- "the actual improvement of philosophical thought" involves examining and acknowledging this, says Avram Alpert (Princeton)
Do we now live, as Derek Parfit wrote, "during the hinge of history"? -- the BBC talks to a few philosophers and others to find out
A student who majored in engineering and philosophy discusses which elements of her education most contributed to her success as an engineer -- Rosemary Barnes on the "need to rethink giving degrees aimed at 'job readiness'" (via Andy Lamey)
The value of research on honesty -- in Scientific American
"Intellectual humility might make prejudice more severe" -- one of a few findings from an empirical study of intellectual humility
Writing philosophy means confronting "a many-branching regress" of explanation and defense with every sentence -- which is one reason it is so hard, says Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
"The biological definition of sex shouldn’t be the battleground for philosophers and gender theorists who disagree about the definition of ‘woman’" -- Paul Griffiths (Sydney) on how biological sex is--and isn't--important
"If you're not getting multiple journal rejections, you're not doing your job right" -- that's what Arash Abizadeh (McGill) tells his grad students, and to inspire them he created a "CV of Rejections"
"Engaging with your perception on an analytical level... makes a difference in the quality of your experience by fine-tuning your brain to its input" -- Ann-Sophie Barwich (Indiana) on sensory expertise, consciousness, the philosophy of perception, and wine
"Ask a Philosopher" on public radio in NY -- Ian Olasov (CUNY) and Denise Vigani (Seton Hall) on the show All of It.
A philosopher says goodbye to academic freedom -- "It may seem counter-intuitive that a job higher up the organizational chart should come with a reduction in freedom, but it makes sense," says Shannon Dea (Regina)
"The case against Hume is that his racism is not a minor aberration in his thought, but a significant element of his larger views" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) shows how we can "confront the complicity of our heroes in justifying really important evils"
A biographical memoir of Derek Parfit by Jonathan Dancy -- published by The British Academy (via Martin O'Neill)
Complaints about ignorant or irrational voters tend to be based on some mistakes -- Michael Hannon (Nottingham) explains, but will that explanation leave you feeling better about democracy?
The editors of a crowdfunded volume on women philosophers are featured in The Irish Times -- Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting discuss the book they put together "for our younger selves"
Quantum modal realism -- Alastair Wilson (Birmingham) interviewed by Siddharth Muthukrishnan on Natural Philosophers
Can virtual reality help us better understand what it's like to be in others' shoes? -- Erick Jose Ramirez (Santa Clara) raises some concerns about this increasingly popular idea
Nominations are open for leadership positions in the American Philosophical Association -- nominees and nominators must be APA members
Exploring Descartes' Meditations with the "philosophical autopilot" turned off -- an interview with John Carriero (UCLA)
"Panpsychism also offers a solution to the even harder problem of how to ground objective truths about value" -- Philip Goff (Durham)
A problem with the perception of size -- and Malebranche's solution, explained by Colin Chamberlain (Temple) (via Alison Peterman)
The idea that academics should not also be activists seems to be based on an unduly narrow idea of what an activist is -- that there are certain types of activists who academics ought not emulate only tells us so much, says Anh Le (Manchester)
"What is it for a thought to be clear? What made our initial thought unclear? And how do we make a thought clear, in the relevant sense?" -- Eli Alshanetsky (Temple) on the philosophical problems of thinking clearly
"Criticizing bad science from an abstract, 10000-foot view is pleasant... But actually diving into the sea of trash that is social science..." -- what is wrong with the social sciences? (via MR)
Five big questions about expertise -- Jamie Carlin Watson (Arkansas) uses social epistemology to "synthesize the disparate fields of expertise studies" in a series of posts at The Brains Blog.
"Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing." -- GPT-3 writes an opinion piece for The Guardian, with some help from the editors (via Naomi van Steenbergen)
The Stoa is a digital space that hosts online events in philosophy and related areas -- scroll down on the page to check out their upcoming sessions
Is analytic philosophy "just another woke humanities field"? -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) looks at the evidence from recent journals
A 1973 film recording of a conversation between Peter Strawson and Gareth Evans is the basis of a series of articles edited by Huw Price -- contributions from 15 different philosophers so far
Is Heraclitus's ink pot the key to understanding Raphael's "The School of Athens"? -- Kelly Grovier on the "fluidity of identity" in the painting
"Without an active commitment to refuse to honor the dishonorable, universities will likely do so... seduced by the illusion of merit attached to power and celebrity, and then dressing up the decision as intellectual openness" -- Jacob Levy (McGill) on the future honoring of "those who took direct part in the most shameful aspects of the Trump presidency"
A philosopher is trying out a new version of an old medium -- check out "The Hinternet," the newsletter of Justin E.H. Smith (Paris)
"It's clear that her work will last": an overview of the philosophy of Karen Neander, who died earlier this year -- by Christopher Hill (Brown) and Carlotta Pavese (Cornell)
Is the universe too thin? -- the challenges of measuring the universe and fitting new findings into standard cosmology
Is the meritocratic principle helpful in "distinguishing the morally acceptable forms of 'cancellation' from the unacceptable ones"? -- Thomas Mulligan (Georgetown) thinks so
A heavy metal concept album about Socrates -- "Question Everything" by Helion Prime will be out in October; in the meanwhile you can listen to the first single, "The Gadfly"
What is happening in philosophy of science in Russia? -- Daria Drozdova (Higher School of Economics, Moscow) is interviewed on developments in the field there
The rationality of political polarization -- the first in a series of posts by Kevin Dorst (Oxford/Pitt)
The importance of "team reasoning" -- David Papineau (KCL) on how "choices that seemed puzzling for individuals become obvious for groups"
New editors and new features announced at the Brains Blog -- including symposia on cognitive science and neuroscience
Tim Crane, Jane Heal, Tom Baldwin, Alva Noë, Helen Steward... -- recent interviewees at the "Five Questions" podcast by Kieran Setiya (MIT)
Environmental & social scaffolding for overcoming procrastination -- the start of the school year is a good time to revisit this useful piece by Joseph Heath and Joel Anderson
"I don’t claim to have a priori knowledge about the extent to which people should or shouldn’t rely on cancellation" -- interesting thoughts from Irfan Khawaja about cancel culture, discussion of which, he says, "strikes me as time-bound polemics masquerading as moral philosophy"
“I started Corrupt the Youth so they don’t have to play catch up like I did" -- a moving profile of Briana Toole (Claremont McKenna) and her work teaching philosophy to high school students from low-income or underrepresented groups
CNN interviews philosopher about fascism -- Jason Stanley (Yale) warns about "massive use of fascist tactics"
What kind of achievement is it to give birth? -- Fiona Woollard (Southampton) guides us between the mistakes of idolization and invisibility
The almost impossible chessboard puzzle -- a math-obsessed warden makes an offer to two prisoners...
The tech that's a stepping stone towards a "'digital super-intelligent [cognitive] layer' that enables humans to 'merge' with artificially intelligent software" -- details on the latest brain-machine interface from Neuralink
The author of "An Unknown Woman", a book sometimes described as "a feminist's Walden", has died -- Alice Koller had PhD in philosophy from Harvard, "provided inspiration for so many," yet struggled throughout her life
"To call education 'job training' is, quite simply, to call it 'learning how to follow someone else’s orders'" -- Zena Hitz (St. John's College) on the "liberating power" of a liberal arts education
Free Hegel! -- to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth, Cambridge University Press is making a lot of Hegel content open access & putting out new blogs & podcasts
Probability, Bayesianism, epistemology, explanation, and more -- an interview with Darren Bradley (Leeds)
"Philosopher AI" uses GPT-3 to answer your questions -- but not particularly well
Diversify your philosophy of art readings -- a list of works from over 60 authors from racial & ethnic groups often marginalized in Western, Anglo-European philosophy, from Alex King (Simon Fraser)
We should "see our opponent’s political views as an expression of their sincere attempt to think clearly about politics, to act in the office of citizenship according to their best judgment" -- Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) argues for "political sympathy", in Culturico
"For me, the greatest philosophical thrill is realizing that something I’d long taken for granted might not be true" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) on the difference philosophy that opens and philosophy that closes
"When you enter the walk-in closet of your soul, are your politics just a youthful fad, as dispensable as drunk-ordered harem pants?" -- Kim Kierkegaardashian offers advice to a young anti-capitalist Marxist who longs for a collection of designer handbags, in The New Yorker
"If there's one thread running through most of my published philosophical work, it's that introspection isn't good for shit" -- an interview with John Schwenkler (Florida State)
A book complaining about "cynical theories" itself suffers from "misplaced cynicism combined with unwarranted confidence in such cynical interpretations" -- and contains so many misinterpretations of philosophers' views that it "looks much more like incendiary fan fiction than scholarly analysis"
This philosopher "has spent his career studying concepts like truth, justice, and freedom. Now he wants to put these principles into practice" -- a profile of Richard Dien Winfield (U. Georgia), who is running for Senate, in Jacobin
It would be perfect irony if Voltaire was "canceled" -- ask yourself before clicking: do you want it to be true that he was?
"We come to view our own inability to conform to the structures of philosophy... as proof that we’re not suited for philosophy" -- what it's like to be a philosopher with ADHD
The minimal amount of energy needed for life is lower than previously thought -- which "opens up the possibility that life exists in realms where scientists might not have looked before"
Animal Ethics from the Margins has a new website -- the project is "an attempt to highlight the work of underrepresented voices in the animal ethics literature"
"The Epstein affair brings to light a much larger problem: it undermines the integrity of the research enterprise when individuals can pick and choose lines of inquiry that appeal to them simply because they can pay for them." -- Naomi Oreskes (Harvard) in Scientific American (via Steven DeLay)
A statue of Hypatia has been erected -- in a new culture and arts district in Cairo
"How I reduced student email load by ~95%" -- and other posts about teaching at "New Normal," a new blog from University of Toronto philosophy PhD student Boaz Schuman
Scholars, should you study what you love? -- many people say yes, but Martin Lenz (Groningen) dissents
"I’m willing to engage—usually, and unless people are just trolling or monstering or gaslighting or sealioning me—because that’s what philosophers do: they replace conflict with dialogue" -- Sophie Grace Chappell (Open University) interviewed by Jean Kazez (SMU)
"Dear Miss Arendt..." -- a 1975 note from Joe Biden to Hannah Arendt (via @Helenreflects on Twitter)
"The data support something that could be referred to as rationalist pessimism: rationality is real, but rare" -- Hanno Sauer (Utrecht) argues that attacks on human rationality from social psychology and behavioral economics aren't as devastating as some believe
A discussion of quantum spacetime, "the idea that our familiar spacetime might be actually emergent from some complex quantum mechanical system" -- with Sean Carroll (Caltech) and Siddharth Muthukrishnan (Pitt), on "Natural Philosophers"
Epistemic corruption by YouTube algorithm -- Fabio Tollon (Bielefeld) on autoplay, conspiratorial content, bottom-up seduction, and a murder
20 philosophers on the pandemic -- in the new---and open access---issue of The Philosophers' Magazine
"In the current activities of police and law enforcement, we can see the seeds of the response to climate crises" -- Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) explains
Over time, "various forms of hostility, exclusion, silencing, and devaluation multiplied," yet "the idea that this was a pattern of mistreatment based on gender became less and less accessible to my colleagues" -- Brook Sadler (South Florida) sees how her own story fits with a recent philosophical account of misogyny
Secret allegations and unknown accusers: a philosophy professor describes what it was like to be the target of Title IX investigation -- Robert Frodeman, who was cleared of a Title IX sexual harassment complaint but fired for having been found to have violated his university's relationship policy, tells his story
"Graduate school should be the place where you can develop a skill set... that is tailored to you and that will serve you well, but that are general enough that they will be useful in a wide range of contexts" -- How one philosophy professor will be welcoming new graduate students in her department this year
"Bacon, eggs, oatmeal... we simply have no convincing theory to explain how such disparate, seemingly inert components give rise to the phenomenon we subjectively experience as 'breakfast'" -- Jonathan Bines explains the "Hard Problem of Breakfast"
Moral enhancement as an alternative to vaccines -- we should consider pharmaceuticals that boost "the brain’s ability to cooperate with others", says Parker Crutchfield (Western Michigan)
The harm of testimonial injustice -- a discussion at PEA Soup
People should get vaccinated for COVID-19 when it's possible to do so. Should it be illegal for them to refuse? -- an argument from David Copp and Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis)
Interested in writing public philosophy but aren't sure what the editors who publish such materials want? -- here's an opportunity to ask them
Pandemic restrictions and moral luck -- commentary from Roger Crisp (Oxford)
A repository of materials for instructors who want to teach critical thinking with argument mapping and mastery learning -- the site, from Javier Hidalgo (Richmond) includes exercises, study guides, a syllabus, guides on how to teach this kind of class effectively, and more.
Significant enrollment jump in philosophy at ANU -- reported in the Canberra Times
Taylor Swift does some philosophy covers -- sort of
"Why was Walzer spitballing about what 'racial capitalism' means in the first place? He could have just asked." -- Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) & Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) explain
...and Michael Walzer responds.
A philosopher, some comedians, and a business owner walk into a podcast -- to discuss cancel culture
"Humans are natural conformists" and because of this, "individuality, each nugget of genuine idiosyncrasy that is successfully maintained, is a precious achievement worth defending" -- Don Ross (Cork) interviewed on the philosophy of economics, individualisms, minds, and more
With the move online, "the web of informal connections that’s sustained on campus" is gone, but there are some things professors can do for students to make up for this -- Greg Restall (Melbourne) shares what he has done
Diversity in philosophy vs. the strong barriers put up by "the prestige economy of academia" -- Barry Lam (Vassar/Hi-Phi Nation) with a thoughtful analysis of the obstacles to broadening philosophy
The world's oldest philosophy major just graduated. 96 years old, he was first in his class with top honors. -- "I've finally realized my dream," said former railway worker and WW2 veteran Giuseppe Paternò (via John Bogart)
A student's path from philosophy to work as a tech analyst and now to studying artificial intelligence -- there are "a lot of touch points" between philosophy and the tech world, says Iva Simon Bubalo
We should "learn to relish the fruits of idleness" -- Max Hayward (Sheffield) on leisure, education, and the "tedium of lockdown"
Australasian philosophers on the pandemic -- a bibliography of recent public-facing work
"There are disputes about the fundamental subject matter of the area, the corresponding permissible theoretical assumptions, and the most conducive methods for engaging in research" -- Hanna Kiri Gunn (UC Merced) on the boundaries of social epistemology
"Cancel culture": Republican politician calls for adjunct lecturer to be fired for anti-police tweet -- his school, the public Auburn University, does not appear to be standing up for him
The "largest and most comprehensive investigation" of the ethnographic record of over 250 cultures "provides strong evidence that there are indeed universal moral values" -- explore an interactive set of data on virtues and vices across cultures from Mark Alfano (Macquarie)
"Free Will Matters" just completed a season of nine episodes featuring interviews with various philosophers -- the podcast is part of the LATAM Free Will project, and is hosted by Santiago Amaya (Universidad de los Andes)
"The first authoritative collection to establish trans philosophy as a unique field of inquiry" is in the works -- it will be edited by Talia Mae Bettcher (Cal State LA), Andrea Pitts (UNC Charlotte), and Perry Zurn (American)
Using Dungeons & Dragons to teach ethics -- Rebecca Scott (Harper College) shares an interesting, active, and fun teaching strategy
"Philosophers don’t have a monopoly on critical thinking — but it is their core business" -- a case for the value of philosophy, and against the reasoning behind raising the costs of studying it in Australia, from Daniel Gregory (Eberhard Karls Univ.)
New: The Free Will Show -- a philosophy podcast, with interviews, that covers the basics as well as advanced new work on the topic, hosted by Taylor Cyr (Samford) Matt Flummer (Porterville)
Teaching in a socially distanced classroom -- professors at Siena College share what they learned from testing out three different scenarios
Hegel turns 250 this summer -- to mark the occasion, The Hegel Bulletin and Cambridge University Press have made some of their Hegel-related resources free to access
"When the dead are only respectable and seemly, they truly do seem dead" -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) on the differences between how we remember the great and how we remember our own
"The winners in unjust systems always want the oppressed to assume their fate was inevitable" -- David Lay Williams (DePaul) on Tom Cotton, John Stuart Mill, and "necessary evils"
The Chronicle of Higher Ed's new & improved database of Fall 2020 college reopening plans -- (you may be asked to create a free Chronicle account)
"New research shows that people’s capacity to experience pleasure or enjoyment contributes at least as much to a happy and satisfied life as successful self-control" -- imagine that!
"Life is just one specific instance of lyfe" -- NASA engineers a new concept, "lyfe", intended to capture life as we know it on earth but also life as we may not know it (via Dan Weiskopf)
"The book is like a road map through the intricacies of disappointment" -- this year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Albert O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Is X-phi's depiction of non-experimental philosophy a caricature? -- Tomasz Herok (Lancaster) thinks so
"The barriers to speech are not just about the threat from the state but also about the social atmosphere in which speech is conducted and about who has the standing to speak" -- Chris Bertram (Bristol) on "cancel culture"
Charcoal portraits of philosophers -- from Paula Pereira, a librarian in California
The chemistry and ethics of love drugs -- a discussion from Brian D. Earp and Julian Savulescu (Oxford)
“The Last Days of Immanuel Kant" is a 1996 movie now streamable on YouTube -- "It follows the famously abstemious and abstruse philosopher as he’s anticipating his death, yet it’s a physical comedy filled with neo-slapstick intimacy"
"In other contexts, we would rather that the state not take sides in contested moral and political disputes. But taking a stand is inevitable in symbolic state speech" -- Jacob Levy (McGill) on statues honoring "the dishonorable dead"
"If you’re not a fan of seeing scientists’ views attributed to personal racism, transphobia or misogyny, then nor should you tolerate commentary about scientists supposedly being biased by their feminist motives" -- Cordelia Fine (Melbourne) on bias and objectivity in science
Oxford University Press is launching a book series on Philosophy, Politics, and Economics -- co-edited by Ryan Muldoon, Carmen Pavel, Geoff Sayre-McCord, Eric Schliesser, and Itai Sher
Does "the phenomenological interpretation of quantum physics deserves to be rescued from history and considered on its own merits"? -- Steven French (Leeds) thinks so
"Academic freedom must continue to protect much research that is immoral in one or another way" -- "This immorality needs to be recognized and discussed, but not punished," says Elizabeth Harman (Princeton)
"Here’s a peculiar thing about people: often what they do doesn’t match what they say they believe" -- a week of posts on the philosophy and psychology of implicit bias, starting off with one by Gabbrielle Johnson (NYU)
What are the 233 most-cited works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy? -- a list from Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside)
When it comes to re-opening schools, "the well-being of members of one group depends upon the suffering, and perhaps even death, of the members of another group" -- a possible way out of this stalemate, from Matthew Noah Smith (Northeastern)
The kinds of activities associated with "canceling" may be part of "the best way to bring about well-functioning marketplace of ideas" -- Justin Khoo (MIT) on the "messy and unprincipled" processes of figuring out "which positions are deserving of serious discussion"
Masks and mistakes in moral mathematics -- Daniel Muñoz (Monash) applies Parfitian insights to pandemic problems
"Have you felt a sense of friendship, or at any rate, a sense of fellow-feeling with philosophers in the past?" -- Helen De Cruz (SLU) on philosophy "stans"
In rationing scarce medical resources, should we give priority to people who are parents? -- Moti Gorin (Colorado State University) discusses this idea in an interview conducted by Katrien Devolder (Oxford)
"We all have philosophical love stories" -- here's one from Fleur Jongepier (Radboud), along with some more general thoughts about philosophical love
A poetry contest for children aimed at celebrating the work of Mary Midgley -- from In Parenthesis, a project of Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool) and Clare MacCumhaill (Durham)
On the idea "that it is okay (or maybe even required) to make people feel uncomfortable because of their biases or prejudices" -- some cautionary notes from Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (Roskilde)
Teaching from home? Check out this excellent guide to practices, equipment, technology, and setup -- from Mikio Akagai (TCU) (via Nick Byrd & Lewis Powell)
"The difference between use and mention is not a categorical one but one of degrees" -- " if this correct, then what about reading racist or sexist classics?" asks Martin Lenz (Groningen)
"Sophisticated naturalism, no less than extreme naturalism, undermines itself" -- Joel Katzav (Queensland) on Marie Collins Swabey's early 20th C. critique of naturalism
"It is indefensibly vague at key points, particularly about what 'cancellation' is and about what the supposed threat to Aristotle is" -- Bryan W. Van Norden (Vassar) responds to Agnes Callard (Chicago)
"Quite impressive in some areas, and still clearly subhuman in others" -- GPT-3, the new language generating tool, takes a Turing test
"Make your next pitch instantly more compelling by using this one philosopher's framework" -- apparently one business writer thinks the Grice is right (sorry)
"It is not only that the benefits of reading Aristotle counteract the costs, but that there are no costs" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) on literal speech, messaging speech, and "cancel culture"
"Doctoral students’ prodigious intelligence consigns them to a life of 'purgatory' as they pursue largely unattainable dream jobs and reject more realistic careers as failure" -- many young academics are "victims of their own 'above the data' brains", according to a study of "quit lit"
Nostalgia doesn't need your memories -- Felipe De Brigard (Duke) on the evidence for, and implications of, revising our traditional understanding of nostalgia
Did you attend a protest recently? Your face might be in a police database. -- Evan Selinger (RIT) and Albert Fox Cahn on a new way "protesters are risking their safety and wellbeing standing up for justice"
Are the great thinkers all dead? Why? -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) shares some possible explanations
"Transitional justice provides an important lens for ongoing national conversations in the United States about police brutality and racial injustice" -- Colleen Murphy (Illinois) explains
Plato, 360 BCE: "the element of 'earth' is cubical in form" -- geophysicists & mathematicians, 2020 CE: "Ummm, yeah. He nailed it"
When is the conjunction fallacy not really a fallacy? -- to answer this, keep in mind there's sometimes a tradeoff between being "accurate" and being "informative", says Kevin Dorst & Matt Mandelkern (Oxford)
"Games are a part of an under-respected, and under-theorized, category of art — what I call the arts of action" -- C. Thi Nguyen (Utah) on the philosophy of games
Even when we've "engaged seriously with the other side’s arguments... we make mistakes that we can’t correct by sincere engagement with opposing viewpoints" -- "I think this happens a lot in philosophy," says David Christensen (Brown) in an interview all about disagreement
"Anyone with Hume’s intelligence would recognise the enormity of slavery. But Hume sought to benefit from it." -- Felix Waldmann (Cambridge) on Hume's connections to slavery
How can mathematics inform philosophical inquiries? -- Silvia Jonas (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy) takes up that question and others
Philosophers in non-academic careers -- a new series at the Blog of the APA
"How do we respond to linguistic and stylistic diversity?" -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on language, diversity, and teaching
Philosophy job market mentoring program -- at the Philosopher's Cocoon
The spacey tunnels and Escher-esque stairs at China's Zhongshuge bookstores -- for our "ever-growing post-quarantine travel wish lists" (don't miss the linked images)
Three ways of diversifying a philosophy syllabus -- Muhammad Ali Khalidi (CUNY) goes over the menu of options
How Gödel’s proof works -- a "simplified, informal rundown" of Gödel's argument for his incompleteness theorems
"Cancel culture is one of the ways in which otherwise dispersed and often disorganized individuals can make the more powerful take notice of their views" -- Cancel culture "just is the market-place of ideas," says Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam)
Articles on science and philosophy -- curated by Walter Veit (Sydney)
"Scientists typically select well-understood questions and employ well-tried techniques to answer them. Philosophers don’t do that – they get to explore beyond the bounds scientists would venture" -- an interview with Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Yale)
"Scientific advisors should not tell policy-makers what they want to hear, but, rather, what they ought to want to hear" -- Stephen John (Cambridge) on expertise, policy, and the pandemic
Inclusion in philosophy -- a video of a discussion between Charles Mills, Linda Alcoff, & Shelley Tremain, hosted by Matt LaVine & Dwight Lewis of the Larger, Freer, More Loving Podcast
"Radical Classical Liberals" -- a new group political philosophy blog
Philosophy in a Time of Coronavirus: a short series of videos -- from the philosophers at the University of York
A 19th Century moral philosopher you probably have not heard of crafted an "original synthesis of Kantianism, intuitionism, theism and anti-utilitarianism" -- Alison Stone (Lancaster) tells us about the philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe
"Reactionary Liberalism": a useful coinage for understanding tensions "internal to liberalism for ages" -- "between those who take the associative nature of liberal society seriously and those who are determined not to"
"Despite appearing as mutually exclusive opposites, horror and comedy are related as cousins under the skin" -- Noël Carroll (CUNY) explains
Philosophy of disability in the thought of Zhuangzi -- John Altmann & Bryan Van Norden (Vasser) on how "this ancient Chinese Taoist reminds us that it is the material conditions of a society that determine and define disability"
Corrupt the Concept is a card game that "invites players to rethink concepts... that we take for granted" -- from the philosophy outreach program Corrupt the Youth
Time travel in "Dark" -- the popular German Netflix show -- a discussion by Taylor W. Cyr (Samford University)
Are people reasoning well about what is morally right in the pandemic? -- Frances Kamm (Rutgers) has some concerns
"Here’s why I love philosophy: For all X, you can do philosophy of X, just by diving down deep and long into the most fundamental questions about that topic" -- an interview with Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) at Scientific American
We should think of a virus as a process rather than a thing -- doing so "has important implications for how we think about viruses and how we design sustainable strategies to deal with them," says Stephan Guttinger (LSE)
The tradeoffs between two ways of expanding how the history of political philosophy is typically taught -- thoughts from Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam)
What is meat? -- Andy Lamey (UCSD) takes up the question, and why it matters, in the NYT
A podcast/discussion series on consciousness -- "Consciousness Live!", created by Richard Brown (CUNY/LaGuardia), currently has over 40 episodes featuring philosophers, scientists, artists, and others
The neoliberal case for a universal basic income -- from Matt Zwolinski (San Diego)
Sometimes, irrational beliefs deliver "significant epistemic benefits that could not be easily attained otherwise" -- Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham) and other philosophers on "epistemic innocence"
Decolonizing political theory -- a reading list compiled by David Owen (Southampton)
"I think of myself as a very passionate and committed naturalist." Also, regarding consciousness, "it's the only thing." -- an interview with Galen Strawson (Texas)
"Extreme economic inequality, whether it matters as such or 'merely' for its effects, is pernicious" -- Samuel Scheffler (NYU) in the New York Times
"The self is really a self-pattern" -- Shaun Gallagher (Memphis) explains what this means and why we should accept it
Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) will be hiring two organizers to help run MAP International -- check out what the position involves and consider applying
"Cultural conservatives aren’t trying to protect language from politics; they are simply sanguine about the politics that language already has" -- Amia Srinivasan (Oxford) on pronouns
Special issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal on COVID-19, pandemics, and ethics -- edited by Quill R Kukla (Georgetown) and Travis N. Rieder (Johns Hopkins)
Animal ethics from the margins -- a resource for finding work on animal ethics and related areas by members of groups traditionally underrepresented in philosophy
A new blog of news and commentary on university policies and affairs — from Daniel Star (BU), the site is currently mainly focused on COVID-19 and the ethics of university policies, at BU and beyond
Philosophy and black holes -- David Wallace (Pittsburgh) is the first guest in a new series of interviews with philosophers conducted by Siddharth Muthukrishnan (Pittsburgh)
A series of online talks this summer in moral philosophy -- organized by Gwen Bradford (Rice)
"The objective of this study was to empirically test the wide belief that Reviewer #2 is a uniquely poor reviewer" -- Conclusion: "Reviewer #2 is not the problem. Reviewer #3 is. In fact, he is such a bad actor that he even gets the unwitting Reviewer #2 blamed for his bad behavior."
Imagine a flood destroying all of your books -- this happened to philosophy professor Glenn Moots (Northwood), who lost 15,000 volumes, and now his colleagues & others & maybe you are helping him rebuild
"Even feminist activists can fall into the trap of implying that ‘real’ or ‘serious’ pain can’t be psychological in origin" -- Elizabeth Barnes (Virginia) on the entangled issues related to taking seriously women's pain
"Being harassed by a senior colleague who threatened to kill my beloved dog" -- one of the career "low points" of Anne Margaret Baxley (Wash. U. St. Louis), interviewed at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?
What will happen when the robots go into business? -- at the intersection of artificial intelligence, business ethics, and political economy
The third annual "Young Philosopher Award" contest was held online this year -- the Irish Times reports on the event
"It is an opportunity to think together about the big questions that matter to them" -- the New York Times on philosophy instruction for young children during the pandemic
Mentees interviewing their mentors -- a new series at PEA Soup
The risk of doing moral philosophy -- Jason Brennan (Georgetown) and Christopher Freiman (William & Mary) argue that moral philosophers face a deplatforming dilemma
Philosophers most retweeted by philosophers on Twitter (with over 1000 followers) -- also check out the graph, linked at the top, of philosopher retweet relationships
"How philosophy did and did not prepare me for business" -- former philosophy professor Zachary Ernst reflects on his experiences in the private sector
"When we’re doing things to better our society, the body assumes there’s a society there to better. We’re technically alone, but it doesn’t feel that way." -- dealing with the loneliness of isolation during a pandemic
The contest to create a philosophical argument that convinces research subjects to donate to a charity has a winner -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) shares it and the way it was assessed
200 Proof Liberals -- a new group political philosophy blog
In a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, it isn't always clear what ethicists should be focusing on -- so the first step is to "triage" ethical issues themselves, says David Shaw (Basel, Maastricht)
40 logicians from 8 countries took part in a 24-hour meeting earlier this month "to discuss ways we might make logic more inclusive and thereby take a small step in efforts to mitigate racism" -- Teresa Kouri Kissel (ODU) reports on #ShutDownLogic
Why you should self-archive your research and how to do it -- advice from Rebecca Lea Morris
"It it will be extremely important for students to refrain from all contact with one another outside of academic and residential settings." Uh oh. -- new research on how to contain the spread of COVID-19 on campuses this fall.
"They succeed in keeping people in their place" -- to see what something's function is, see what it actually does. Todd May (Clemson) and George Yancy (Emory) on the police
Malala Yousafzai, the youngest recipient ever of a Nobel Peace Prize, has graduated from Oxford --the NYT couldn't resist noting in the sub-headline that the philosophy, politics, and economics major is "currently unemployed"
"The head of the colonizer lying on the street speaks volumes" -- Elizabeth Scarbrough (Florida International) on allowing, documenting, and appreciating the ruin of monuments
"There is a runaway trolley speeding down the tracks toward millions of people. But has anybody thought about how, if you had dropped a nuclear bomb on the trolley for no reason, many more lives would have been lost?" -- Presidential trolley problems, in The New Yorker
"The core problem with policing and incarceration is the same problem that plagues our whole political system: elite capture" -- Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) makes the case for community control over police
"Science is our best guide to the world. But reliable science takes time and contributions by many different kinds of people" -- Neil Levy (Oxford), Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam), and Eric Winsberg (South Florida) on the broader dangers of rushed research and policy on COVID-19
"His support for slavery has been glossed over down the years. Is it time to make amends?" -- on George Berkeley, who owned slaves and "justified slavery as a path to Christian conversion"
"A pair of brothers can’t see eye to eye. Both are suffering losses... In this uplifting story both eventually come to see that the holes in our lives are not just absences; they are shaped by the presences around us. Four Stars." -- Kristie Miller (Sydney) reviews philosophical works as if they were movies. Two thumbs up!
Identity politics and class struggle are often framed as being at odds with one another -- but, as we see in the Black Lives Matter movement and elsewhere, they can be mutually reinforcing, argues Vanessa Wills (GW)
"Imagine volunteering for a challenge study and the very worst happens: you die... What conditions would need to be in place for you or your family to conclude that you had been treated fairly?" -- Carl Elliott (Minnesota) in the NYRB
Is Schopenhauer the philosopher for our times? -- well, at least The New York Times -- with remarks from Agnes Callard, Tamsin Shaw, and others
Two former philosophy students make up half the team running "The Invisible College" -- it's a science and technology scholarship program aimed at people who haven't graduate from college (via MR)
How should professors supervise/guide their teaching assistants? -- a discussion at The Philosophers' Cocoon
"When does playing with ideas become intellectual work?" -- Anil Gomes (Oxford) on boredom, isolation, children, and philosophy
Racial Diminishment Syndrome: "like the coronavirus, is hard to detect, highly contagious and often deadly" -- "social distancing will decrease the likelihood of extreme illness or untimely death," says Chris Lebron (Johns Hopkins)
"It is remarkable that Western philosophy should feel entitled to claim the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy as its property" -- and that's just one of the problems with the very idea of "Western Philosophy," says Christoph Schuringa (New College of the Humanities)
#BlackintheIvory & Philosophy -- tweets with the hashtag used to highlight racial inequities in academia that also mention philosophy
"This is the wild egalitarianism of philosophy that I love... even a prisoner may disagree with Aristotle" -- Sahanika Ratnayake (Cambridge) on a knife attack, philosophy, and learning from helping with a course for prisoners
A new philosophy podcast about "critically engaging the popular culture that we live in, particularly with a focus on justice, care, the arts, and community" -- check out "Larger, Freer, More Loving" from Matthew LaVine (Potsdam) and Dwight Lewis (UCF) (and they're on YouTube, too)
"Ms Rowling, it’s certainly not my intention, or the intention of any trans activists whom I personally know, to erode or erase the biological reality of (cis) women’s experience" -- Sophie Grace Chappell (Open University) responds to JK Rowling on gender and sex
A summary of recent data on diversity in philosophy -- from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) at the Blog of the APA
The issues surrounding the possibility that U.S. military personnel may refuse to follow unconstitutional or immoral orders from President Trump -- from two former soldiers-turned-military-ethicists, Marcus Hedahl (US Naval Academy) & Bradley Jay Strawser (Naval Postgraduate School)
The Trans Philosophy Project -- it aims to explore "philosophical work that is accountable to and illuminative of transgender experiences, histories, cultural production, and politics"
The Logic Supergroup -- "an alliance of logicians in quarantine" putting on various online events
University of South Carolina administration thinks the term "social distancing" is a downer, recommends use of "physical distancing" instead -- that makes everything better, sings philosophy professor Michael Dickson
"Progress is measured in terms of the accumulation of empirical successes, rather than stable truths, so progress does not require consensus." -- the "social empiricism" of Miriam Solomon (Temple)
Renaissance-era manuscripts of the Phaedo and Gorgias, along with items from Kant, Wittgenstein, Darwin, Lobachevsky and others -- currently up for auction
"Brutal systemic racism is a vast tragedy where both complacency and resistance lead to frightening outcomes" -- Regina Rini (York) on the moral complexity of current events and how "easy or comforting verdicts" are not options
In some ways, the human brain is 10 million times slower than a computer -- so how does the brain have "superior flexibility, generalizability, and learning capability than the state-of-the-art computer"?
"We want our students to know that we see you and hear you---that we are aware of the racist past and present of philosophy and the UC and that we stand in solidarity with you." -- a statement from UCSD philosophy graduate students
"Infectious diseases don’t just spread or disappear. They also evolve." -- Elliott Sober (Wisconsin) on understanding and modeling virulence
Racism and protest during a global pandemic -- an online discussion with Elena Comay del Junco (Toronto) and Yolonda Yvette Wilson (National Humanities Center) this coming Wednesday
"We stand committed to continued examination of the ways in which racism, economic, and institutional violence mar our society" -- a statement from the President, Vice-President, and Officers of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy
"Anonymization provides something like the Ring of Gyges to commentators, with predictable results." -- what is a wise commenting policy for philosophy blogs?
"Let’s give some love to the philosophers" -- several philosophers are named as "especially good on America’s racial politics" in a NYT interview with sociologist and writer Michael Eric Dyson (Georgetown)
"If we centralize training in fewer departments, we will become far more homogeneous" -- one of several reasons against eliminating PhD programs in philosophy, from Kevin Zollman (CMU)
Philosophy as "the original 'talk therapy'"" -- Samir Chopra (Brooklyn College/CUNY) is blogging about philosophical counseling
A philosopher who recently signed his fourth book contract offers advice on how to publish a book in philosophy -- advice from Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
People can submit a question about COVID-19 issues to the philosophers at University College Dublin's Centre for Ethics in Public Life and they'll give you a video response -- they've done about 20 responses to questions from the public so far
"To be anti-racist in philosophy, we must reconsider the nature of our field—not only who belongs, but what belongs" -- Alexus McLeod (Connecticut) inaugurates a new series on anti-racism in philosophy at The Philosophers' Cocoon
"For human beings to flourish in our contemporary world, we need to make space both for self-determining states and for improved global governance regimes" -- Gillian Brock (Auckland) on COVID-19 and cosmopolitanism
"Anti-racism work needs to be ongoing if it is to be effective" -- to help people do this, philosopher Michelle Panchuk (Murray State) compiled 50 weeks' worth of anti-racist activities
"Lack of leadership doesn't just erode trust in the government, it also erodes trust between citizens" -- Max Hayward (Sheffield) on trust and current British politics
"I worry we have lost the moral basis for deeply committed non-violence" -- Kevin Vallier (Bowling Green) on trust and race in the United States
"If one is sure there is no loving God, there is a pretty decent argument against doing philosophy" -- Alexander Pruss (Baylor) on the relation between the true and the beneficial
"The world, independent of our input, does not settle how confident we must be in our claims before we may rationally accept them for purposes of making a decision" -- Richard Bradley and Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) on COVID-19 immunity testing
Scientific understanding, the use of deep learning in neuroscience, and the computational theory of mind -- Mazviita Chirimuuta (Pittsburgh) on the Brain Inspired podcast
A new program supporting early career scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences -- the "Emerging Voices" Fellowship from the ACLS
The Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog says farewell -- "the variety of libertarian and classical liberal views within the academy has become better known"
A philosophical conversation on COVID-19 -- with Alec Walen (Rutgers), Sophia Moreau (Toronto), and Christian Barry (ANU)
In praise of aphorisms -- in their interpretation is an invitation for the readers to engage in their own philosophical enterprise – to do philosophy themselves
"That the analytic philosophy we have ended up with exists as a ‘sociological’ phenomenon is a very important fact about where academic philosophy has been since, and still is today" -- Christoph Schuringa (New College of the Humanities) on the various "deaths" analytic philosophy has undergone
Some non-human animals can do math -- Erik Nelson (Dalhousie) on what implications this may have for our understanding and treatment of them
They "can distort as much as they illuminate" -- James Wilson (UCL) offers a thoughtful set of critiques of thought experiments in moral philosophy
A series of interviews with Swedish philosophers about the pandemic and how it relates to philosophy -- interviewees include Torbjörn Tännsjö, Åsa Wikforss, and (soon) others
"All the things I learned in school were crap. Some of it might have been true some of it false but who could tell? You just have to start from scratch." -- Descartes' Meditations and many other philosophical works described with one-syllable words only
Meet the cousin of security theater: "public health theater," or the deployment of "props for perpetuating the illusion that hazardous conditions are under control" -- and beware of violations of the "prime pandemic policy rule," argues Evan Selinger (RIT)
The uniformity illusion -- "a visual illusion that shows that detailed peripheral visual experience is partially based on a reconstruction of reality" (via Tom Breed)
The history of the symbol for disjunction -- Landon D.C. Elkind (Alberta) investigates
What is the philosophy of technology? -- Dan Little (University of Michigan-Dearborn) on some answers to that question
Over a hundred free philosophical activities for children -- "PhiloQuests" are "a series of thinking and creative missions" from the new Institute of Philosophy, Citizenship and Youth at Université de Montréal
"I don’t think it’s going to be one size fits all." -- Anthony Fauci on how colleges should operate in Fall 2020
The University of Connecticut Foundation is starting a graduate fellowship in memory of Joel Kupperman -- Professor Kupperman died last month
The guilt of those doing fine during the pandemic -- several philosophers are consulted in this WSJ article
A podcast aimed at discussing a "range of ideas found in South Asian philosophy" -- hosted by Malcolm Keating (Yale-NUS)
"Far from Western philosophy being the unfolding of Absolute Spirit, it was all along... an enfolding of foreign spirits, faintly discerned, generally misunderstood" -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) looks at the intellectual history of the history of philosophy
Discussions of discounting the future are common in climate ethics, and it should be in pandemic ethics, too -- Eric Winsberg (South Florida) explains
The US Postal Service issues an Alain Locke stamp -- he is one of four people featured in the "Voices of the Harlem Renaissance" series
Reports of partisan divide are "hugely exaggerated", but to the extent it exists, "it doesn’t arise from their stupidity or our rationality" -- rather, says Neil Levy (Oxford) "it arises from the fact that we place our trust in different sources"
"I think often of philosophy but as one thinks of someone lost. I want to turn to her and say, 'Remember when we…'" -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) on how, under these conditions, "I don't really want to do philosophy"
"Ethics in Action" is a podcast features academics as well as people from industry on questions at the intersection of ethics and public policy -- it's hosted by Nir Eisikovits (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
How does philosophical expertise influence language comprehension? -- Eugen Fischer and Paul Engelhardt (UEA) invite professional philosophers from PhD students upward to participate in an online study
What would Hobbes do? -- David Lay Williams (DePaul) thinks "Hobbesian reasoning strongly advises that all calls to reopen the economy be subordinated to a focus on preserving human life."
"In many ways, Spinoza is now replacing Kant and Descartes as both the compass and the watershed of modern thought" -- Clare Carlisle (KCL) and Yitzhak Y. Melamed (JHU) on Spinoza on God and nature
"Intersectionality" triggers some rightwingers, but it's an important tool for libertarianism / classical liberalism -- Jacob Levy (McGill) explains
How the pandemic is affecting how people feel time -- Adrian Bardon (Wake Forest) is interviewed on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show
The collective dimensions of individual ethical behavior in a pandemic -- commentary from Martin Lenz (Groningen)
“He believed the world must be made safe for differences” -- Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton) reviews three books on Franz Boas
"Tenure-track philosophy jobs are tough to come by, even in a non-pandemic year" -- CNN article on future plans disrupted by COVID-19 focuses on a philosophy graduate student
"It really bothers me to see philosophers who have thought about this stuff for about a minute or two, begin to pontificate as if they knew it all, as if they didn’t have to do any work. It’s so arrogant" -- Talia Mae Bettcher (Cal State LA) is interviewed at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?
Oil's low price presents an opportunity to introduce a carbon tax -- Peter Singer & Kian Mintz-Woo (Princeton) make the case
"Left to their own devices, most capital investors will not care for the dignity of labor investors; nor will they lead the fight against environmental catastrophe. Another option is available." -- a few thousand academics see in the pandemic's lessons a call to reorganize the economy
"If you think about this whole thing less as a school with an endowment and more as an endowment with educational benefits, our budget adjustments start to appear quite reasonable" -- your university president responds to those who've suggested the school dip into the endowment
The "How The Light Gets In" Philosophy Festival is happening later this month -- but it will be online
"Ethical Theory Review" is a new podcast featuring interviews with philosophers about their recent work -- it's hosted by Bradford Cokelet (Kansas)
"Thinking about uptake does not come naturally to bread and butter philosophers of science" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) responds to Jacob Stegenga (Cambridge) on fast science and philosophy of science
Is pandemic panic pushing us even faster to a "Black Mirror" government-tech domination of our lives? -- until recently "public pushback was surging", but then came COVID-19 (via Hili Razinsky)
Teaching philosophy online: what worked and what didn't -- Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) shares his experiences
"What if I told you that as a black man living in white America I feel as if I am already dead?" -- George Yancy (Emory) on the "black reality white friend can't see" (NYT)
A defense of Karl Popper against "confused", "bizarre", and "strange" criticisms -- Jonathan Livengood (Illinois) responds to the recent critique of Popper by Michael Huemer (Colorado)
The top 20 universities will grow, numbers 20-50 may be ok, "but numbers 50 to 1,000 go out of business or become a shadow of themselves" -- Scott Galloway (NYU) on what the pandemic portends for higher education
ASMR isn't necessarily sexual, but it is a kind of pornography: intimacy pornography -- Rachel Elizabeth Fraser (Oxford) on the meaning, aesthetics, and ethics of "autonomous sensory meridian response"
The philosopher who is challenging the fundamentals of evolutionary psychology -- Subrena Smith (New Hampshire) is interviewed at Gizmodo
Interested in learning about the use of corpus methods (statistical analyses of textual data) in philosophy? -- attend a Zoom event about it that starts next week, put on by the Australasian Experimental Philosophy Group
The philosophy faculty at William Paterson University thank their students for hanging in there this term -- and talk about the value of philosophy and why they chose to go into it
"We are embodied beings, not streams of consciousnes" -- Kieran Setiya (MIT) thinks our experiences with Zoom contain lessons for us about personal identity
"Sometimes, fairness can demand that we act stupid, even when we’re not" -- Stephen John (Cambridge) on autonomy, expertise, and the lockdown rules
A new blog on the philosophy of philosophy -- from Tomasz Herok, a PhD student at Lancaster University
"Armchair Opinions" is a new ask-a-philosopher type Facebook page -- it takes questions from the public and provides responses from philosopher-volunteers
Hi-Phi Nation's Season 4 has started -- Barry Lam (Vassar) focused his popular philosophy podcast on issues related to crime and punishment for the season
Taurek and Parfit and ventilators -- Scott Hershovitz (Michigan) on whether, for doctors' decisions regarding, say, the use of ventilators, the numbers count
A philosophy major won this year's Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing -- Ben Taub graduated from Princeton in 2014.
Knowledge, truth, and science -- physicist Sean Carroll (CalTech) interviews philosopher Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
"My husband would not survive a triage decision" -- Kathleen Dean Moore (Oregon State) teaches ethics and "would have argued against his care in theory". In theory.
"Five Questions" is a new philosophy podcast -- in each episode, Kieran Setiya (MIT) asks a philosopher five questions
"Philosophy Friends!" is a series of story books introducing philosophy to young children -- by Francisco Mejia Uribe, an economist who studied philosophy and created the books for his daughter
"Reconciling two competing philosophies in the science of COVID-19" -- Jonathan Fuller (Pittsburgh) takes a closer look at two types of epidemiology
Season 5 of the UnMute Podcast--"The Quarantine Edition"--just dropped -- 10 new episodes featuring Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) in conversation with different philosophers
"Drillosophy": a combination of drill (a type of hip hop music) and philosophy -- "In each of six episodes, they take a philosophical concept and break it down using metaphors thrown up in some of drill and UK rap’s most popular songs"
"If you are interested in grappling with hard questions and examining diverse views while considering your own beliefs, philosophy might be the right major for you" -- what U.S. News & World Report thinks readers "need to know about becoming a philosophy major"
What To Do About Now? is a new group blog on applied political philosophy and political theory -- initiated by Hannah McHugh (UCL), it aims to give early career political theorists a platform for their more publicly-minded work
"People become misinformed because they tend to trust those they identify with" -- philosophers Cailin O’Connor & James Owen Weatherall (UC Irvine) explain with the peculiar example of hydroxychloroquine
"The informal and untraceable talk, the socializing, the comradery, and the sheer serendipity that results from being in the space space and time together..." -- videoconferenced academic events lack these, so despite their alleged advantages, Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) is not a fan
"Her drawings are imaginative, often elliptical responses to philosophical writings" -- the philosophical art of Maria Bussmann
"What is the appropriate governmental response in respect to holding elections during pandemic times?" -- Alexandru Volacu (Bucharest) on the "pandemic electoral trilemma"
"In my final year as a professor, I created and executed a plan to start a non-academic job in project management... Here’s how I did it." -- former philosophy professor Katharine Schweitzer discusses her transition from academic to non-academic employment
"Appiah’s list started to read like a premonition" -- an article from 2010 reads like "a rundown of the most prominent and brutal vectors of Covid-19 in the US" (via Robert Long)
A work of art that is "best described not as prescient, not before its time, but apart from time as we currently experience it" -- Interesting and thoughtful reflections from Ben Roth (Harvard) on his visit to The Lightning Field
"A few months ago, you were talking smack about my year in a cabin. Now you’re trapped in your condo." -- Henry David Thoreau has a few words for you
Ways to be blameworthy -- a discussion at PEA Soup
Faculty members in the Department of English and Philosophy at Idaho State created an emergency fund for their students -- it was the idea of assistant professor of philosophy Evan Rodriguez
"The mental processes of crafting and rehearsing a narrative that has the credible appearance of genuine reasoning, but whose arc inevitably bends toward exculpation" -- Jason D'Cruz (Albany) on the "remarkable cognitive achievement" of rationalization
AI algorithms are sometimes thought of as a corrective to human biases but may amplify them instead -- Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers) explains
Computer games that are "philosophically intriguing" -- a list from Helen de Cruz (SLU)
Is there progress in philosophy? -- a discussion at The Philosophers' Cocoon
"Our goal is to inculcate ethical reasoning across the entire company" -- a profile of Will Griffin, the chief ethics officer at Hypergiant, an AI firm
"On this issue there’s an ideological wormhole that takes you from the right to the part of the left that’s concerned with standpoint epistemology" -- an interview with Spencer Case (Wuhan)
"If healthy volunteers, fully informed about the risks, are willing to help fight the pandemic by aiding promising research, there are strong moral reasons to gratefully accept their help." -- Peter Singer (Princeton) & Richard Yetter-Chappel (Miami) on testing COVID-19 therapies on humans
"There is no more fascinating figure in early modern philosophy than..." -- someone most people haven't heard of
"The critical ethical challenge is to render the relationship between individual agency and structural change more perspicuous" -- Vafa Ghazavi (Oxford) on how philosophers can help make sense of the pandemic's "complicated chains of harm"
"Even now one is ashamed of resting, and prolonged reflection almost gives people a bad conscience." -- What did Nietzsche have to say about work?
What philosophical work should you do if you want to influence the rate of technological development? -- reflections from Caleb Ontiveros
Interested in philosophy of law or the theoretical study of legal institutions and practices? -- join the Legal Philosophy Network, a new Facebook group started by Alex Guerrero (Rutgers)
You may not know her name, but some ideas this philosopher discussed in the early 1900s may sound familiar -- Joel Katzav (Queensland) on Helen Huss Parkhurst's imaginative approach to radical realism
Highly charged debates, journals with high standards, "increasingly technical fine-points," and the "sharp-edged and somewhat cliquish" environment -- some reasons the field of Indian philosophy can be intimidating to a younger scholar, according to Douglas Berger (Leiden)
"The same openness that enables health authorities to innovate with Bluetooth data will also permit everyone from advertisers to police to immigration officers to do the same unless new privacy laws are enacted to stop them" -- concerns about the plans of Google and Apple to help with COVID-19 contact tracing, from Evan Selinger (RIT) and Albert Fox Cahn
The Journal of Controversial Ideas now has a website -- edited by Jeff McMahan (Oxford), Francesca Minerva, and Peter Singer (Princeton), it is now accepting submissions
(previous discussions of the Journal)
9 questions about the pandemic, political philosophy, policy, and more, addressed by 9 different philosophers -- at the Justice Everywhere blog
Would you choose to live forever? -- a recording of a webinar with John Martin Fischer (UCR)
In situations of despair and tragedy perhaps the best we could hope for is "accompaniment" -- Nicholaos Jones (Alabama, Huntsville) reflects on the importance of "enriching, and making manifest the value of, the other’s efforts"
The philosophy on Pete Buttigieg's bookshelf -- Dworkin, Korsgaard, Rawls, Raz, and more (via Bruno Leipold)
Refraining from the "weaponization of contemporary analytic philosophy" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) draws some lessons from Seneca
An a priori proof that there's a super-spreader in your department -- from Philosophy Defense Force Chief Roy Sorenson (Texas)
Information zombies, idea contagion, and retraction resistance -- Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall (UC Irvine) on the "pandemic of misinformation about COVID-19 spreading on social media sites"
"Dr. Fauci is George the chemist" -- Laura Nelson on when life imitates philosophy
The data regarding COVID-19 is so bad that "none of us would be able to publish a paper in a third-rate econ or poli sci journal" using it -- so, asks Jason Brennan (Georgetown), is the government's reliance on it for issuing policies & orders a sign of delegitimizing incompetence?
"I started doubting the reality of everything, even myself. But if I didn’t exist, then how could I already have over a dozen subscribers on Spotify?" -- noted philosophers reconsider their key insights after a month of social distancing
Influential mathematician John Horton Conway, known for inventing the "game of life," "surreal numbers," "the free will theorem," and more, has died -- a memorial for the "magical genius" from Princeton University
"Expertise in any field must join technical knowledge in the field with certain virtues" -- a brief q&a with Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan) on expertise and democracy (via Anna Alexandrova)
"For all the puffery in calling ourselves Homo sapiens, the “wise human,” we display remarkably little wisdom, even of a prudential kind" -- David Benatar (Cape Town) on how human choices about the treatment of animals led to the pandemic
In short supply during the pandemic: masks, ventilators, and "the realization of how little we know" -- Erik Angner (Stockholm) on epistemic humility
Non-contradiction contradiction? -- or not?
"One reason death can seem freshly invented in loss is because the death we find in our philosophies is not the one we find in life" -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) on meditates on the "the stuff of lives that have no more use for stuff"
The Big Number Duel between Agustín Rayo (MIT) & Adam Elga (Princeton) -- a video from Numberphile (via Dmitri Gallow)
The philosophy and science of the television show "Devs" -- with remarks from Bill Blattner (Georgetown), Erin Flynn (Ohio Wesleyan), David Landy (San Francisco State), Ben Lennertz (Colgate), & Neal Tognazzini (Western Washington)
How will the pandemic change higher education? -- a collection of answers from academics, editors, administrators, and policy analysts
Reformulating the laws of physics in a new mathematical language in order to make sense of the passage of time -- an explanation of the recent work of physicist Nicolas Gisin
Free audio recordings of books by Bertrand Russell and others -- from Landon D.C. Elkind (Iowa)
Truth Machines -- a new presentation of a classic logic puzzle (via Matthew Ferguson)
T.M. Scanlon on ethics, the pandemic, and his work -- in an interview along with The Good Place's Michael Schur on public radio (Scanlon's segment begins at 31:40)
The philosophical questions behind the "death rate" number -- Jonathan Fuller (Pittsburgh) on understanding the pandemic
"Journal Entries" is a new podcast in which researchers in philosophy and cognitive science discuss their work, motivation, and background -- it's hosted by Wesley Buckwalter (Manchester)
Are lockdowns a good way for Africa to respond to the pandemic? -- No, argues Alex Broadbent (University of Johannesburg)
"A year ago, 'TT or bust' was a common but ill-advised attitude toward the job market. That attitude should be unthinkable today." -- Samuel Kampa, a philosophy Ph.D., encourages others to look for work outside of academia and provides advice on how to do it
The rectangles are indeed lined up and moving at the same speed -- a new optical illusion (via Gregg Caruso)
When humans are quiet and stay put -- what happens to the rest of the world?
A new site website is publishing English translations of Deleuze's seminar lectures at the University of Paris between 1971 and 1987 -- among other things, it is crowdsourcing recordings of the lectures (via Will Anderson)
"We should resist the widespread view that political theory always has to be... addressing practical problems and giving us guidance about what to do" -- a video interview with David Estlund (Brown)
"What does his fall from such exalted heights tell us about the sorts of intellects that do—and do not—shine brightly for posterity?" -- Ray Monk (Southampton) on G.E. Moore
Why aren't academic philosophers wise? -- because they live narrow, stable lives. Or so argues Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside)
"The demand for the sort of work I do seems to be increasing, and newly minted philosophy PhDs would be a good fit for many comparable positions" -- Jason Schukraft talks about his work at a think tank
Zoomiathan -- clever image or trenchant commentary on our willingness to accept Zoom's privacy-intrusive practices and misleading claims?
Scientists think something called "ideal glass," which may never have existed "in all of cosmic history," is the key to understanding actual glass, which apparently is a scientific mystery -- anyone else reminded of questions regarding "ideal theory" in philosophical discussions of justice?
"I believe in opportunistic utopianism. Crises can provide opportunities for major breakthroughs." -- Philippe Van Parijs (UC Louvain) answers a few questions about economics, social welfare policies, and the coronavirus in The Brussels Times
A "new way of representing and thus acknowledging our extreme uncertainty can lead to serviceable practical advice" -- Liam Kofi Bright and Richard Bradley (LSE) on policy, uncertainty, and the pandemic
Talk of who is "naturally" vulnerable to Covid-19 obscures the role various institutions play in making people vulnerable to it -- commentary from Shelley Tremain
“The ability to work collaboratively, setting aside your personal academic progress, is occurring right now because it’s a matter of survival” -- at least in the sciences (NYT)
The pandemic has given us a set of "natural experiments" in approaches to public health -- an interview with Jennifer Prah Ruger, director of the Health Equity and Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, in The New Yorker
"Wondering how cleaning became a preferred form of procrastination" -- pandemic-prompted self-isolation or graduate school? A list.
"Many of us feel ashamed at now having so little to contribute to the public good, especially if we were educated (as I was) entirely at the public expense" -- Les Green (Oxford) tries to understand academics' unwillingness to sacrifice work in order to help others
Terms of art -- in a new series at Aesthetics for Birds, Alex King (Buffalo) provides short definitions of words/concepts in aesthetics and philosophy of art
"The self-help approach to impostor syndrome is fundamentally misguided, for several interlocking reasons" -- Katherine Hawley (St. Andrews) on how our collective practices and professional environment contribute to the problem
Shakira is taking an ancient philosophy course at the University of Pennsylvania -- one of "a number of abnormal events" prompted by the pandemic
A ranking of countries in terms of academic freedom -- by a team that believes that "academic freedom must be resurrected as a key criterion for academic reputation and quality"
"There is a logic... that governs the totality of life on earth, and human history has been much more significantly shaped by that logic than by any of the stories we have told ourselves about who we are" -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris), who is NYC with symptoms of COVID, reflects on the pandemic
Using Zoom for your online course? Beware "zoombombing" -- such as "racist vitriol or pornographic content shared with the group by an unwelcome user"
A crowdsourced list of schools that have instituted some kind of hiring freeze or pause -- compiled by Karen Kelsky (via Malcolm Keating)
Finding the online teaching experience a bit clunky? -- Roy Sorenson (Texas) has an alternative, though apparently it has its downsides, too
"The question is not whether to set priorities, but how to do so ethically and consistently, rather than basing decisions on individual institutions’ approaches or a clinician’s intuition in the heat of the moment" -- Ezekiel Emanuel (Penn) and others on the allocation of medical resources during the pandemic
"In Africa, millions will starve if the global economy enters a protracted downturn" -- Alex Broadbent and Benjamin Smart (Johannesburg) on the challenges of knowing what anti-pandemic measures to take
A new Dischord server aims to be a place where professional philosophers can share and receive academic support and advice -- "We hope that through the channel, people from socio-economically different backgrounds will be able to seek help with setting up online resources for the very first time" (via Sahana Rajan)
"A cartography of impact" to help philosophers "recognize, reconcile and mobilize their professional and public role" -- how "field philosophy" looks from the point of view of Britain's Research Excellence Framework
Philoso-piece Theatre -- from Christina Van Dyke (Calvin). Part One: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
"Much has been said comparing the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change with the growing consensus of public health officials about how to respond to Covid-19" -- "We think this comparison is inapt and dangerous," write Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) and Eric Winsberg (South Florida)
A helpful visualization about the value of social distancing and staying home -- created by Siouxsie Wiles, a microbiologist and science communicator based in New Zealand
"Molecular jitter in the system" -- Nature or nurture? It turns out there may be a third option: random "noise"
Philosophers on Medicine -- a series of conversations with various philosophers, hosted by Jonathan Fuller (Pitt)
A philosophy professor is part of a group of parents who take turns providing an online educational experience for their kids -- Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin (Sam Houston State) shares how he has introduced them to philosophical questions about identity
The COVID-19 Open Research Map -- a means by which to interactively explore research related to COVID-19, coronavirus, and SARS-CoV-2 published since January 1, 2020
"The skeptics and pessimists need the optimists, just like the sick need the well. What happens when the whole planet falls into one category? It’s a disaster either way." -- Helena de Bres (Wellesley), a "non-joiner" and "anti-silver-lining-er" who likes the darkness of philosophy, comes to appreciate the light
"JSTOR and our participating publishers are making an expanded set of content freely available to our participating institutions where students have been displaced due to COVID-19" -- they're working to get books as well as journal articles available
Washingtonian Magazine now has a coronavirus ethicist column -- Karen Stohr and Dan Sumalsy, both at Georgetown, will be alternating as the ethicist on call
The APA will be holding a webinar for those who are moving their courses online -- "Teaching Philosophy Online: Advice and Tips from Experienced Instructors" is taking place Tuesday, March 24th at 3pm Eastern time
Ethicists on who gets treated when hospitals are overcrowded -- Olivia Goldhill at Quartz asks several philosophers their views
Peter J. King, formerly a lecturer of philosophy at Oxford, has received a 7-month prison sentence -- the sentence follows a conviction for possession of indecent images of children
What Lucretius taught us about pandemics -- Stephen Greenblatt in The New Yorker
How irrational are humans? -- Kevin Dorst (Oxford, Pitt) brings a skeptical eye to the irrationalist picture we get from behavioral economics & social psychology
The ethics of social distancing during the pandemic -- Wired seeks guidance from T.M. Scanlon (Harvard), Debbie Roberts (Edinburgh), and Max Hayward (Sheffield)
Should the schools close because of the coronavirus? One way to turn that question into a lesson plan -- an argument map for the both "yes" and "no" positions and a link to discussion question (via Aidan Kestigian)
"How could he see so clearly the need to respect the vulnerable and then abuse those under his spiritual care?" -- reflections on philosopher & theologian Jean Vanier, who was found to have sexually abused six women, from a philosopher who once worked for him
"When race scholars ask whether or not race is modern, they end up answering six entirely different questions" -- Adam Hochman (Macquarie) on what we can learn from disentangling these questions
Philosophers on videogames -- GamesRadar asks philosophers: what topics should the new installment in the BioShock series address?
"99% of college professors say that developing critical thinkers is the most important thing they do and they’re already doing it. But 75% of employers say the kids they hire after 16 years of school don’t have those skills." -- the first episode of a new podcast series features an interview with education researcher Jonathan Haber
"The first thing I would stress to those of you new to online instruction is that instructor presence is a big deal in online teaching: -- Fritz McDonald (Oakland) inaugurates a new series at The Philosophers' Cocoon on transitioning to online teaching
How is the market like the soul? They both have the "dual quality of being both an obvious illusion and the most real thing there is" -- Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) on philosophy and investing
"I don’t think there is anything in the nature of Jewish philosophy that makes it more amenable to Continental philosophy than to Anglo-American analytic philosophy, which in any event is a false dichotomy" -- an interview with Daniel Frank (Purdue) on a wide range of subjects in Jewish philosophy
"The last generation is going to have to be composed of people better and braver than we are now—and it is our job to help them end up that way" -- Agnes Callard (Chicago) on the end of humanity
The key to emotional intelligence is "emotional granularity" -- Lisa Feldman Barrett (Northeastern) explains
Check out the Aesthetics Research Lab -- a "digital think tank" focused on "theoretical and practical issues in aesthetics" run by Michael Spicher (Boston U.)
"Philosophers who change their mind often are not deficient in belief, and don’t lack sufficient conviction, because no conviction need be required" -- Alexandra Plakias (Hamilton) on philosophers who change their mind
The takeover of Philosophical Review by analytic philosophers in the early 20th Century is correlated with a reduction in the number of articles it published by women -- more historically- and sociologically-informed analysis of philosophy from Joel Katzav (Queensland)
The threat of constant surveillance on college campuses -- Evan Selinger (RIT) and Evan Greer (Fight for the Future) on the use of facial recognition technology at universities
The brief life and enormous legacy of Frank Ramsey -- Cheryl Misak (Toronto) & Steven Methven (Oxford) on the BBC's Arts & Ideas, plus a discussion of philosophers & travel with Emily Thomas (Durham)
We are overqualified for certain forms of cognitive labor, and underqualified for others, and recognizing this is part of understanding the threat artificial intelligence may pose to us -- Ken Taylor submitted this essay on artificial intelligence to Boston Review a few weeks before he died
What's wrong with child labor? -- Nicolás Brando (Queen's University Belfast) looks at the arguments
Some history, methods, and benefits of online conferences -- timely work from Nick Byrd (Florida State)
"I always know things are not going well in my personal life if I’m thinking about Nietzsche at 4:00 a.m." -- an in-depth interview with Kathleen Higgins (UT Austin) at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?
Another philosophy-centric television show? -- "Devs," from the maker of the movie "Ex Machina," is a show about free will, morality, and "the intersection of philosophical thinking and scientific logic"
"Western societies continue to rely upon an ethics of membership that we are less and less able to articulate" -- Will Kymlicka (Queens) on human rights and membership rights
If it is almost impossible to raise good kids, don't have them. And in 2020, it is almost impossible to raise good kids -- a once would-be mother of 8 and bioethicist Thalia Arawi (American University of Beirut) on how she became an anti-natalist (via Owen Schaefer)
A philosopher who had to embed her ideas and arguments in poetry and plays to get around her censors -- Adriana Clavel-Vázquez (Oxford) and Sergio A. Gallegos (John Jay) tell us about the work of Juana Inés de la Cruz
The cubes are not rotating -- a new one for your optical illusions file
When it comes to the origins of the coronavirus, "vital human interests so clearly run parallel to the interests of nonhuman animals" -- Peter Singer (Princeton) and Paola Cavalieri argue for shutting down "wet markets"
The connection between philosophy and travel -- as explored by Emily Thomas (Durham)
Lao-tzu, Plato, and "Parasite" -- David Lay Williams (DePaul) brings ancient philosophy to bear on the award-winning movie
A call for "a groundswell of insurrection against the ableism in philosophy that continues to subordinate disabled philosophers, especially disabled philosophers of disability" -- from Shelley Lynn Tremain
"One of the main lessons of the 20th century is that good things can be pursued in terrible ways" -- Alex Guerrero (Rutgers) on why Sanders should stop praising Castro
"There was footing to be found in Aurelius’ instruction ‘not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and should’" -- a moving account from Jamie Lombardi (Bergen Community College) on how she dealt with her husband's unexpected death
"John Rawls: It takes you three hours to explain how to divide a group check" -- Alex Baia explains what your favorite philosopher tells us about you
"Our intuitions about the meaning of this word are highly unreliable" -- Matthew Chrisman (Edinburgh) on the meaning of "ought" and other metaethical matters
Are principles of justice defective in virtue of being unrealistic? -- David Estlund (Brown) in conversation with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
"List three beliefs held by eliminative materialists," "Explain why more people aren't solipsists," and other questions -- an old but good philosophy quiz from P.D. Magnus (Albany) and Ryan Hickerson (Western Oregon)
How can public philosophy contribute to philosophical progress? -- Ian Olasov (CUNY) looks at three possible ways
"In subsequent generations the Pythagoreans probably capitulated and accepted the name, as happened with ‘freak’ or ‘queer’" -- how philosophers came to be called "philosophers"
A lecturer in philosophy at Pembroke College of Oxford University has pled guilty to "three counts of producing indecent photographs of a child" -- Peter King, who authored a 2008 article in Ethical Theory & Moral Practice on child pornography, will be sentenced next month
An interesting philosophy class assignment to develop students' listening skills -- pairs of students discuss a topic, record the discussion, and then separately write up reports on it in which the emphasis is explaining their interlocutor's view
A map of mathematics -- an annotated visualization of the field as practiced by mathematicians
How did the term "western philosophy" come into use? -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) does some digging
Teaching "On Bullshit" -- C. Thi Nguyen and Imree Parma (Utah Valley) share their experiences
Physicist Sean Carroll regularly interviews philosophers -- recent guests on his Mindscape podcast have included Laurie Paul (Yale), Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton), Jenann Ismael (Columbia), & Daniel Dennett (Tufts)
The force of nonviolence -- an interview with Judith Butler (Berkeley) at the Partially Examined Life podcast
When we seek someone who truly understands us, what are we looking for? -- Iskra Fileva (Colorado) has started blogging at Psychology Today
"We are stuck here now, and we don't know when we will be free" -- Xiao Ouyang, associate professor of philosophy at Wuhan University (via Joel Walmsley)
The rhetorical trick of using conditional arguments to make pseudoscience seem scientific -- Regina Rini (York) in the TLS
A democracy, but without professional politicians -- The New Yorker on "open democracy", an idea developed by Hélène Landemore (Yale)
Morally disgusted by something? -- maybe a ginger pill would help
Jeremy Bentham has been moved -- and apparently the kids call him "Jezza"
"At 10 a.m. the Chinese army surrounding the city sealed it off, trapping me and about 9 million others inside" -- Spencer Case (Wuhan University) recounts his "escape from Wuhan"
Substantial update to the Diversity Reading List -- 351 texts by underrepresented philosophers recently added
Wondering Freely is a new philosophy blog -- by Helen De Cruz (SLU)
Zeno's paradoxes -- today's "daily obsession" at Quartz
Feminism would be improved if it was less caught up with backward-looking, retributivist anger -- Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) on oppression, feminism, and varieties of anger
Is the philosopher's love of disagreement tied to the idea that we form our personal identities in part by setting ourselves apart from others? -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on a way in which philosophical disagreement may be personal
Extremism may be best understood as a complex of psychological factors rather than as a type of political doctrine or affiliation -- Quassim Cassam (Warwick) in The New Statesman
"Trial By Trolley" is a "party game of moral dilemmas and trolley murder!" -- a video overview of the game (via Pete Mandik)
Theorizing racial justice -- video of the 2020 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the University of Michigan by Charles Mills (CUNY)
"Stranger Apologies" is a new blog on politics, polarization, and (ir)rationality from Kevin Dorst (Oxford) -- in this post he argues that the central problem of today's political discourse is not polarization, but demonization that begins with seeing our opponents as irrational
"Where moral improvement of the world is concerned, concepts that don’t answer to the mixed nature of human experience won’t be effective at steering that experience" -- Amy Olberding (Oklahoma) thinks that when discussing anger, it's a mistake to "conceptually isolate it from other emotions"
"After Dinner Conversation" is a website that publishes original short stories aimed at prompting conversations about ethics -- each story is accompanied by discussion questions
"Line Edit" is a show about writing short pieces for wide audiences about the big questions -- its latest episode features S. Matthew Liao (NYU) talking about his piece on the ethics of Facebook
The Journal of Social Philosophy has published its 50th Anniversary issue -- all of the articles in it are freely accessible (for a few months)
On philosophizing about disability -- Elizabeth Barnes (Virginia) appears on the Embrace the Void podcast
A discussion of panpsychism -- between novelist Philip Pullman, who makes use of the idea in his fiction, and philosopher Philip Goff (Durham), who defends it in a recent book
Planet Word is a new museum about language -- it's opening in Washington, DC this spring
"Why should I as a professional philosopher engage in this activity? Simply put, because I have become a better philosopher by doing it" -- Cristina Cammarano (Salisbury University) on teaching philosophy to children
Are "near-death experiences" real? Probably. Are they accurate, though? -- John Martin Fischer (UCR) on how to understand and appreciate near-death experiences
The work, achievements, and influence of Frank Ramsey, who died at age 26 -- Cheryl Misak (Toronto) shares some highlights from her biography of the mathematician, philosopher, and economist
Debates over "whether sex is fixed and binary or complex and changeable, appear to be about scientific truthiness. But they are really part of the for-the-moment unsettled process of world-building" -- Anne Fausto-Sterling (Brown) on how "the science of sex and gender will not settle itself until we, as diverse societies, settle the substantive social questions"
How pregnant migrants face "social illegalization" even if they cross the border legally -- Amy Reed-Sandoval (UNLV) on "the larger forces that permit this mistreatment to occur" (via David Forman)
"Great philosophers embrace bizarre views because our ordinary commonsense understanding of the world is so radically deficient that no non-bizarre view is defensible" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) defends the great philosophers
Even if the left weaponizes compassion and the right weaponizes free speech, both compassion and free speech are important values -- Robert M. Simpson (UCL) on protecting our morals during political warfare
There's a new public philosophy series at the TLS: "The Morals of the Story" -- authored by Regina Rini (York), her first installment concerns the coronavirus
A short film about Agnes Heller is currently in production -- learn more about it and see how you can help
"Despite the efforts of ‘science’, two definitions of death live side by side to this day" -- Sharon Kaufman (UCSF) on the complications of death
"Being 'great' in the sense of 'the Great Philosophers' isn’t really about being good at thinking" -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) on why the great philosophers were bad philosophers
"I believe most of these people are genuinely confused about how science works" -- Sabine Hossenfelder (Frankfurt) thinks the public--especially climate change deniers--need to hear more from philosophers of science
"To further discussion on philosophical problems that arise in the study of games" -- did you know about the Game Philosophy Network?
"Science has not refuted free will, after all. In fact, it actually offers arguments in its defense" -- Christian List (LSE) on how "an agent’s future choices can be open at a psychological level even if the underlying physics is deterministic"
Academic Placement Data and Analysis continues its comparisons of philosophy PhD programs -- Miami, DePaul, Georgetown, and Arizona are among the recent programs looked at
Academia is “the last bulwark of serious evidence-based discussion" -- a profile of Onora O'Neill in Times Higher Ed
Generous Questions is a podcast "asking philosophers what they're up to, and then asking them to explain it some more" -- their latest episode is with Clare Moriarty (KCL)
Kripke on interpreting Wittgenstein -- a video interview at IAI
"It’s not just me that matters, not just “us”---a particular group of human beings with whom one identifies---that matters, and not just human beings that matter" -- an interview with Marion Hourdequin (Colorado College)
A new venue for "work on subjects like philosophy, politics, and literature which is nuanced and original, but not bound by the stylistic conventions of academic publication" -- The Oxonian Review introduces a new "Essays" section, and the first contribution is by Paul Lodge (Oxford)
What we can learn from the Neverending Story? -- Helen De Cruz (SLU) on the novel's philosophical lessons
Imagine if you could only apply for one job at a time, and the interview process consisted of four days of exams -- Nastassja Pugliese (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) explains what it's like to be a philosopher in Brazil
"The lack of racial diversity allows for more open and honest philosophizing" -- Brandon Hogan (Howard) is interviewed about teaching at an historically black university
Bertrand Russell's "theoretical antidote to the irrational, sectarian vitriol between European nations" was logic and analytic philosophy -- Alexander Klein (McMaster) on the connection between politics and metaphilosophy, and the value of the history of philosophy
"Illegitimately devaluing others’ goals and ignoring their opinions---this is the essence of being a jerk," a vice that "works to prevent its own detection" -- Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) provides a partial classification of academic jerks. What types did he miss? (Thanks to The Chronicle's Evan Goldstein for the link)
"Because people take subjectivism to be such a wildly implausible view they make no effort to see the world from a subjectivist's point of view" -- Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) on taking subjectivism seriously
The philosophers who advised The Good Place got cameos in the show's finale -- Click for a photo of Pamela Hieronymi (UCLA) and Todd May (Clemson) on set with Kristin Bell, but if you don't want spoilers don't read any of the article
Regulative epistemology: the aim is "not to describe what knowledge is, but to make people into better thinkers who are more aware of their cognitive limitations" -- John Schwenkler (Florida State) looks at the ideas of Nathan Ballantyne (Fordham)
Instead of asking students to write a short essay on their exam, how about have them develop a "structured question"? -- Martin Lenz (Groningen) on the teaching of philosophical questioning
Neural Mechanisms Online, a site about the philosophy of neuroscience, holds periodic webinars -- up next is one with Ruth Millikan (Connecticut)
The Journal of the Philosophy of Emotion has published its first issue -- it's open-access
Most firms have a CEO. How about a CMP? -- a call for business to hire "chief moral philosophers"
What's wrong with "addicts"? -- Maggie Taylor (Colorado) on the importance of distinctions between persons and their conditions
Coronavirus on your mind? Or the flu, for that matter? -- philosopher Dana Tulodziecki (Purdue) on the origins of hand-washing as a public health measure (via John Brunero)
The moral is political -- judgments of moral responsibility are political artifacts, so "we can’t treat moral responsibility as an ‘apolitical’ endeavour," argues Michelle Ciurria (Missouri, St. Louis)
Newly discovered home audio recordings of Bertrand Russell -- "the tapes offer new insights into his life, humour and behind-the-scenes influences" reports the BBC
"While contemporary academics worry about the dearth of women in the history of philosophy, George Eliot’s philosophical accomplishments too often go unacknowledged" -- Clare Carlisle (KCL) on why the novelist should be remembered as a philosopher, too
The indie rock band that's 75% philosophers has a new album out today -- check out "Better, Sometimes" by The Counterfactuals
Why are the answers scientism gives us to some big philosophical questions hard for us to accept? -- Alex Rosenberg (Duke) identifies the culprit: the theory of mind
"I became even more intrigued when I began to get the feeling that Wilfrid was seducing me, just by the use of opportunistic double entendres, sprinkled ever so casually amongst the clever tracery of the history of ideas" -- recollections from Wilfrid Sellars' late second wife about their relationship and his death (via Leiter Reports)
Computer modeling in philosophy -- a special issue of the open-access journal "Open Philosophy" (link takes you the issue's introduction)
"As a public service, I am here to explain to you that no, you probably do not agree with Popper at all — unless you are completely out of your mind" -- Michael Huemer (Colorado) on Karl Popper
"Low income itself is a key, and arguably the major, cause of the debilitating outcomes in cognition, emotional stability, and health for poor children" -- a survey of some recent research by Jeff Madrick
Political disagreement is greatest among the "cognitively sophisticated", but why? -- one explanation, that cognitive sophistication magnifies politically biased processing of new information, is challenged in a new study (via Lisa Bortolotti)
On speaking ill of the dead -- Iskra Fileva (Colorado) in the NYT on what can be learned from controversies surrounding the discussion of Kobe Bryant in the wake of his recent death (via What's Wrong)
"Certainly many misdeeds do occur because of the misure of science. But I worry that they also presupposes that when science is functioning properly there are no misdeeds" -- Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) responds to Chirimuuta and Dietrich
The varieties of theories about time travel and causation represented in fictional works -- by Henry Reich of MinutePhysics
“There’s a temptation once you know how to solve a philosophical problem, to make everything into a philosophical problem. But lots of problems don’t have [that] shape.” -- Amia Srinivasan (Oxford) is profiled in the Financial Times
"A collection of resources for higher education faculty and administrators to use in making the case for the value of studying the humanities as an undergraduate" -- the "Study the Humanities" toolkit (via the Blog of the APA)
"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, a medal of his, 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