Daily Nous

News for & about the philosophy profession

  • Thoughts on the PGR and the Recent Controversy (Guest Post by Alex Rosenberg)

    Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is known for his work in philosophy of science, particularly…

  • A Moment of Calm

    “Nietzsche stayed in Sils-Maria during the summers of 1881 and 1883-1888. In Sils itself is Lake Sils, where the Chasté peninsula was a favorite site of…

  • Alfred Mele’s New Blog

    Alfred Mele has announced a new blog project called Free Will for All. He explained on Flickers of Freedom the other day one of its distinctive features:…

  • Academic Ice Bucket Lesson Plan

    Arthur Ward (Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State) teaches a unit on charitable giving in his ethics course and has come up with a way…

  • Nominal Versus Real Change

    As I noted here, and as he announced on his own site here, Brian Leiter has asked Berit Brogaard (Miami) to serve as a…

  • Evaluating Philosophy Graduate Programs

    Wednesday’s post on the future of the Philosophical Gourmet Report has a lot of thoughtful comments on it, with some interesting ideas for and alternatives to…

  • The Chronicle on this Week’s Controversies

    The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story on the recent events involving Brian Leiter’s emails to certain members of the profession and the future…

  • Heap of Links

    1. A defense of majoring in philosophy, by Joseph Tinguely (South Dakota). 2. Artist Tino Seghal’s latest installation places philosophers in the Roman agora…

  • What Can I Get for a Counterexample and a Jar of Homemade Pickles?

    The American Philosophical Association has created “marketplace forums” for its members, in which they can barter with one another for various items (or simply…

  • Giving a Philosophy Talk

    Ole Koksvik (Bergen), along with the help of friends, has put together a very useful set of tips for giving a philosophy talk.  I appreciated…

  • Should the Philosophical Gourmet Report Continue? (Several Updates Added)

    Brian Leiter (Chicago), who created and organizes a reputational survey of philosophy graduate programs known as the Philosophical Gourmet Report, is asking whether he should continue…

  • Top Ten Ways Daily Nous Should Respond to the Current Fracas

    11. Learn to count. 10. Take a poll. 9. Do some work around the house, such as tighten hinges, remove all fans. 8. Finally…

  • Heap of Links

    1. “I’m not sure, for example, what the philosophy REF panel would make of Berkeley’s research on tar-water, or even Bentham’s on prisons, for…

  • Scam Journals and Publishers

    Scholarly Open Access is a website run by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at Auraria Library at the University of Colorado Denver, that provides “critical…

  • Should MA Students Write Theses?

    Sherri Irvin (University of Oklahoma) writes in asking what PhD admissions committees think about master’s theses. Her query is below. Please share your thoughts. Our…

  • Agnes Heller to receive Wallenberg Medal

    Agnes Heller, a Hungarian philosopher who was, for a while, the Hannah Arendt Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate Studies Program of The New…

  • What if a Metaphysician Had Written This?

    Cass Sunstein (Harvard) delves into the philosophy of history, particularly counterfactuals and causation, with his review in The New Republic of Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History by Richard…

  • Can We Know Whether God Exists?

    I don’t think the arguments for either theism or atheism lead to knowledge of their conclusions. But there are arguments on both sides from…

  • Heap of Links

    1. “Something as ‘mundane’ as coffee tasting generates one of the most challenging philosophical questions…” Anna Marmadoro (Oxford) on Aristotle on perception. 2. The…

  • Ebola and Humanity

    We must find a method of caring without touching, of contacting without making contact. The physiological barriers are, for the time being, necessary. But…