interdisciplinary

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Philosophy in 10 Years

Here are five predictions about the state of philosophy in ten years:

1. Philosophy’s popularity as a major will increase. This will be owed in part to the swing of the cultural pendulum, to economic growth making people more comfortable with a major lacking a clearly-defined career path, to efforts by the profession to emphasize the practical value of philosophy..

18 “Hope & Optimism” Projects Receive $2m Funding

Hope and Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations, an interdisciplinary initiative headed by Andrew Chignell (Cornell) and Samuel Newlands (Notre Dame) which last year received about $4.5 million from the John Templeton Foundation, has just announced $2 million in funding for 18 projects. Philosophers receiving funding in this round include:

Matthew Ben..

Plot Philosophy’s Subfields

Yesterday’s post about interdisciplinary work in philosophy got me curious about how philosophers understand their work in relation to other disciplines.

One question we can ask of academics is: “what do they take themselves to be studying?” Of course, there are various ways of answering this question. One way of doing so is trying to determine where on a spectru..

Keeping it Real in Philosophy: an Exchange

This summer has seen a series of guest posts by Elijah Millgram (Utah) on his new book, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization. One theme of the book is that there has been a steep increase in specialization that in some ways threatens knowledge. In the following post*, Millgram starts an exchange with Jerome Ravetz, author of Scientif..

$190k in Grants on “The Self, Motivation, and Virtue” Awarded

The aim of the Self, Motivation, and Virtue (SMV) Project is “to open avenues of inquiry into virtue using the framework of the ‘self,’ instead of ‘personality,’ to require deep and ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration, and to stimulate methodological innovation into the study of virtue.” As part of their project, they recently held a grant competition, awarding ..

“Not Really A Philosopher”

Chris Eliasmith holds a Canada Research Chair in theoretical neuroscience at the University of Waterloo. He has a joint appointment in philosophy and systems design engineering. He also holds an appointment in computer science there. Over at the Ideas Can blog he discusses the challenges of interdisciplinary work. He says:

Not really a philosopher. And not really..

World’s Largest Philosophy & Music Festival

HowTheLightGetsIn bills itself as “the world’s largest philosophy and music festival.” With 650 events, 370 acts, and 200 speakers on 9 stages over 11 days, it probably is. It takes place in the town of Hay-on-Wye, about 160 miles or so west of London. The schedule for the festival was recently released, and includes panels and debates with philosophers such as Sim..

Can We Save Philosophy? (Guest Post by Robert Kirkman) (updated)

The following is a guest post * by Robert Kirkman, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech and director of its Center for Ethics and Technology, in which he takes up the problem of academic philosophy’s seeming irrelevance to others both inside and outside of academia.

Can We Save Philosophy?
by Robert Kirkman

I write this from the ..

The Philosophy of Philosophical Institutions

Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle (both of the University of North Texas) have published an essay, “Socrates Untenured,” at Inside Higher Ed that makes a case for what they call “field philosophy” — a “context-driven, problem-focused, and interdisciplinary” approach. Their hope is that “a new philosophical practice, where philosophers work in real time with a variet..

Free Porn Studies

The inaugural issue of the academic journal Porn Studies is out, and it’s a big one, by which I mean it is a double issue. Not that size matters. The publisher, Taylor & Francis, has made the entire contents free to download, and after a cursory inspection I can report two things my readership probably wants to know: (1) it seems to be entirely SFW, and (2) it seems..