"guest post"
The Philosophy Special (guest post)
“I suspect I’m not alone among philosophers in finding colloquia almost universally frustrating: the speakers are more interesting than the conventional talk allows them to be…” (more…)
Deontology Is Compatible with Act-Consequentialism (guest post)
“It’s standard to divide the moral landscape into deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, thereby assuming that these three are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. I, like some others, find this deeply problematic…” (more…)
Potemkin U. (guest post)
“We are mired in inevitably betraying and ignoble practices, obliged to pay mindless obeisance to useless cant or to perform pantomimes of actually important values made ridiculous through endless, unanswered repetition…”
Intergroup Dialogue in the Philosophy Classroom (guest post)
“Over 70% of our students… reported being more likely than before to listen to someone who held an opposing viewpoint…” (more…)
Cancel Culture: A Cross-Generational Dialogue (guest post)
“Should we double down on generating controversy, or should we watch what we say? And if the latter, can we still participate in an open inquiry?”. . .
“Philosophers who ‘just raise the tough questions’ should reflect the discipline’s tradition of open inquiry back on themselves and consider the purpose that specific ‘tough questions,’ or even the call for philosop..
Why I’m a Shameless Sophist (guest post)
A “more vocational attitude to philosophy is a constant temptation; I still sometimes slip into it now. But what calls me away from it is always just being reminded of the mundane ways in which this is just a living.” (more…)
Perceptions and Appetitions: New Music About Philosophy (guest post)
“To refute a theory, but it’s my life that’s on the line…” (more…)
Moral Dumbfounding and Philosophical Humility (guest post)
“I need to have the humility to recognize that, in this case, I have not found that truth, and that I may not ever find it. And it has also shown me that I need to be more generous to people who are dumbfounded by cases where I happen to have clear and consistent intuitions.” (more…)
Light Topics, Real Philosophy: Some Lessons from Writing about the Philosophy of Cover Songs (guest post)
“Aristotle or Kant simply could not have thought about music this way.” (more…)
To Be a Department of Philosophy (guest post)
“There are many reasons to expand the story we tell about philosophy. But a main reason is just that the best, most interesting, and even the correct answers to philosophical questions that interest us might be found anywhere.” (more…)
Implicit Attitudes, Science, and Philosophy (guest post)
“Philosophers, including myself, have for decades been too credulous about science, being misled by scientists’ marketing and ignoring the unavoidable uncertainties that affect the scientific process…” (more…)
On the Time McDowell Told Taylor and Putnam They Misunderstood Him (guest post)
“On Saturday, April 27 1996, in Chicago, at the Palmer House, there was an epic, bewildering Author Meets Critics session on McDowell’s (1994) Mind and World with Charles Taylor and Hilary Putnam as Critics and John Haugeland presiding…” (more…)
Philosophy & Activism (guest post)
While some people have argued that political activism is in tension with academic inquiry (here, for example), there have been plenty of well-regarded scholars who have engaged in such activism, including in philosophy. (more…)
“Departments of Cognitive Poker”? Competitiveness and Philosophy (guest post)
Is philosophy an especially competitive discipline? How? Is its competitiveness a problem? If so, what might we do about it? (more…)
The Problems with Philosophers: A Reply to Weinberg (guest post)
Last week, I posted about an exchange between historians Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder (both of Carleton College), and philosopher Michael Veber (East Carolina), using Veber’s contribution to highlight some things philosophers sometimes do that might contribute to a negative impression about them. (more…)
How to Fix the Referee Crisis in Professional Philosophy (guest post)
In the following guest post, Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) provides a two-step solution to the referee crisis in philosophy. (more…)
Why and How to Get a Job in a Business School: A Guide for Philosophers (guest post)
Philosophers, have you considered trying to get a job in a business school? In the following guest post*, Kenneth Silver, who earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of Southern California and is now assistant professor in business ethics at the Trinity Business School at Trinity College Dublin, explains why you might want to, and how to do it. (more…)
Why a Crowd-Sourced Peer-Review System Would Be Good for Philosophy (guest post)
Would “an online, crowd-sourced peer-review system” work better than traditional peer-review as a “quality control device” in philosophy? In a paper forthcoming in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, three philosophers, Marcus Arvan (Tampa), Liam Kofi Bright (LSE), and Remco Heesen (Western Australia), argue for a positive answer to this question. (m..
A Public Database of Referee Service (guest post)
A few years ago, Neil Sinhababu, associate professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, wrote about the “publication crisis” in academic philosophy in a post entitled “2,000 Spaces for 10,000 Papers: Why Everything Gets Rejected & Referees Are Exhausted.” In this guest post*, he follows up with a proposal for how to help make things better. (more..
Assigning Public Philosophy Projects to Undergraduates (guest post)
In some of his recent courses, Daniel Munro, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, has tried assigning something different from the traditional essays and exams: creative public philosophy projects. (more…)
How Many People Are Applying for Philosophy Jobs? (guest post)
How many people are applying for academic jobs in philosophy? There have been some efforts underway to collect this information, and among them was a survey sent out by Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga) to search committees. (more…)
Stepping Outside of Philosophy: Reflections on a Transdisciplinary Career (guest post)
Universities say they want their faculty to pursue “interdisciplinary” and “transdisciplinary” work. Yet it might be difficult to figure out how to do that given the structure of academia and the nature of academic training. (more…)
In Defense of Benchmarking (guest post)
There’s a reason for instructors to meet with their teaching assistants to grade some sample assignments together, but it’s not what you think. (more…)
What a Cancellation Looks Like (guest post)
“Most readers will find what happened to this professor horrifying and wrong…” (more…)
Comparing Three (No, Four) Top 20 Lists in Philosophy (guest post)
What, if anything, can be learned by comparing several different accounts of philosophers’ citation rankings and other indicators of disciplinary impact? (more…)
In Defense of the Details (guest post)
Are today’s younger philosophers “focusing too much on detailed investigations of individual things and not enough on the big picture”? (more…)
How Military Veterans Contribute to Academic Philosophy (guest post)
Before becoming a philosopher, Descartes studied and then taught military engineering as a soldier. Wittgenstein penned the Tractatus as an artilleryman in World War I and sent out his manuscript while confined at a prisoner of war camp in Italy. Quine was a codebreaker during World War II, while Davidson trained spotters to distinguish Allied planes from Axis plane..
Advice for Applying to PhD Programs in Philosophy (guest post)
In the following guest post*, Alex Guerrero, professor and director of graduate admissions in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University, offers some advice to those considering applying to philosophy PhD programs. (more…)