disagreement
TagDeontology 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…)
What Predicts Professional Philosophers’ Views? (updated)
A new study looks at correlations between professional philosophers’ philosophical views and their psychological traits, religious beliefs, political views, demographic information, and other characteristics. (more…)
How Do I Figure Out What To Think? (guest post by Martin Lenz)
“Picking a side helps you to play the game. But it doesn’t help you in figuring out what you should think. In other words, in order to work out what to think, you don’t have to pick a side at all.” (more…)
“An Optimistic Bet”
The relationship between truth and social progress is then an optimistic bet. I hope that knowing the truth is part of what sets us free. But that’s an empirical hunch that could well turn out to be wrong. (more…)
Epistemic Humility, Ideological Mercy, Legitimation, and Disagreement
“the whiplash of (rather quickly) moving from an intensely conservative, fundamentalist world into a progressive, academic world… taught me two things…”
Flourishing with Controversy: How Philosophy of Race Does It
One of the popular narratives about higher education is that the discussion of and disagreement over controversial ideas is imperiled, owing to the dominance of political correctness on college campuses. (more…)
Philosophers On the Ethics and Politics of Abortion
This year, nine U.S. states have passed legislation that bans early abortions in an attempt to provoke a challenge to the abortion rights protected by the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision. (more…)
Trans Women and Philosophy: Learning from Recent Events
“I am a trans woman and a philosophy grad student, and I have decided to leave the discipline and seek a non-academic job because of transphobia in the academy.” (more…)
Don’t Roll Your Eyes at the Guy Who Recently “Invented Philosophy”
Philosophers may be forgiven for doing a double take at this headline at The Atlantic: “The New Science of How to Argue—Constructively“. New??? Hello there? Perhaps you’ve heard of… philosophy?
Crying “Crying Wolf”
Suppose that instead of one shepherd boy, there are a few dozen. They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes. One of them proposes a plan: they will start using the word “wolf” to refer to all menacing animals. They agree and the new usage catches on. For a while, the villagers are indeed m..
Nussbaum Uses Berggruen Winnings to Fund Discussions on Challenging Issues
Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Chicago, is using some of her Berggruen Prize winnings to fund a series of roundtable discussions at her school on controversial and challenging issues. (more…)
Leave Room for Uncertainty and Confusion
“My trouble is usually… that I don’t entirely know what I think. And not knowing what to think is itself sometimes cast as shameful.”
The “Disciplined and Humble Speculation” of Metaphysics
How do we decide whether a metaphysical system is the right one or not? Empirical evidence doesn’t seem to be decisive, and given that some metaphysicians have impossible worlds and Meinongian objects it seems anything might happen in such a system. Are all metaphysical issues undecidable—and extending this thought to philosophy generally do you agree with the tho..
A Philosophy Course Based On Consensus, Not Conflict
In introductory college courses in the sciences and social sciences, and even some humanities disciplines like history, the material taught largely consists of basic claims, findings, and ideas that most of those in the discipline agree upon. Could there be such a course in philosophy? (more…)
Quality Control, Methodological Bias, and Persistent Disagreement in Philosophy
Recently, mainstream philosophy journals have tended to implement more and more stringent forms of peer review (e.g., from double-anonymous to triple-anonymous), probably in an attempt to prevent editorial decisions that are based on factors other than quality. Against this trend, we propose that journals should relax their standards of acceptance, as well as be les..
Academics Author Statement on Freedom of Thought and Expression
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and Cornel R. West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard Divinity School have jointly authored “Truth Seeking, Democracy, and Freedom of Thought and Expression,” a public statement in favor of civil discourse and respectful disagreement on u..
Philosophy and the Illusion of Explanatory Depth
Virtually everyone in the United States, and indeed throughout the developed world, is familiar with toilets. A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled with water. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the water—and everything that’s been deposited in it—gets sucked into a pipe and from there into the sewage system. But how does this actuall..
When Professors Express Intimidating Opinions
We’ve seen the following: the questioning of a professor’s ability to teach well because of the effect on his or her students of the professor’s expression of a controversial opinion. This was one element of the debate surrounding Steven Salaita’s tweets. For example, he wrote on Twitter, “If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being.” Concerns ..
A Tale of Two Conferences (UPDATED)
Last weekend, the Society for Analytical Feminism (SAF) held its 2016 conference. This weekend, the Society of Christian Philosophers (SCP) held its 2016 Midwest conference. I did not attend either of these conferences, but I did hear about them. As one might expect, they had a lot in common with other conferences: a fair amount of anticipation in advance, a mix of ..
“Staring Contests That Make Philosophy Interesting”
Imagine two people arguing about free will. One of them, let’s call her Olga the Optimist, has just heard about compatibilism and happily accepts the view that of course she has free will—after all, if she wants to raise her arm she raises her arm and if she doesn’t she does not. The other one, let’s call him Paul the Pessimist, points out to her that she hasn’t c..
Friendly Fire & Fiery Friendship: the Tenor of Philosophy Conversation (guest post by Joshua A. Miller)
The following is a guest post* by Joshua A. Miller (Loyola University Maryland). It is slightly edited version of a post originally published at his blog, Another Panacea, partly in response to the post here by Nomy Arpaly (Brown), “Is Polite Philosophical Conversation Possible?“
A Problem With Studying One’s Own Oppression (updated)
Joseph Heath (Toronto) describes an obstacle to inquiry:
The problem is that, when you’re studying your own oppression, and you’re obviously a member of the oppressed group in question, people who are basically sympathetic to your situation, but who disagree with your specific claims, are going to be extremely hesitant to challenge you, because they don’t want to..