interview
TagPhilosophical Exceptionalism & Philosophical Writing
“I like to think that academic fields often have a proprietary emotion. In the case of philosophy, the proprietary emotion is embarrassment.” (more…)
Failure, Stealth, and Philosophy
“Every success is the tip of an iceberg of failure.”
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Creativity and Pluralism in Philosophy
“Philosophy at its best is a kind of intellectual exploration, and the more methodological and stylistic constraints are placed on it, the less well it will function as such.” (more…)
“Very often, corralling is not an option in philosophy”
That’s philosopher Frank Jackson (ANU), in a recent interview published in The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia. (more…)
Interview with Peter Hacker
“Philosophical investigation must engage with a significant part of our forms of thought and reasoning, with a large fragment of our conceptual scheme. Otherwise it is of little value to its author, and probably of little value to its readers.” (more…)
How Are Today’s Philosophers Philosophical?
In a recent live interview, Tyler Cowen (GMU) asks Elijah Millgram (Utah), “To what extent do you think philosophers today are even still philosophical, in the true sense of that word?” (more…)
Optimism about Metaphysics (and Philosophy in General)
Is there reason to be optimistic about progress in metaphysics? Jessica Wilson (Toronto) thinks so. (more…)
The Art of Philosophical Writing: An Interview with William Lycan (by Nathan Ballantyne)
“There has to be a balance between the formal and the conversational.” (more…)
Philosophical Quality Now and Then
“I find no good reason to think that philosophers today do philosophy better than philosophers 600 or 2000 years ago.” (more…)
Bad Arguments Against Teaching Chinese Philosophy
“ME: Have you considered teaching Chinese philosophy in your department?
COLLEAGUE: Philosophy is by definition the tradition that goes back to Greece…” (more…)
Intuitions, Common Sense, and “Earning the Right” to Judgments about Philosophy
“Intuitions and common sense are not, I claim, a good basis on which to reach philosophical conclusions.” (more…)
Philosophy of Science Communication: an Introduction & an Interview (guest post)
Philosophy of Science Communication is not just the Philosophy of “Science Communication,” but also the Communication of “Philosophy of Science”. Philosophy of science is not well-known outside of the philosophical discipline. (more…)
Common Sense and Philosophical Method
What’s the relationship between common sense and philosophy?
Learning, Without Illusions, From A Nazi Philosopher
I do take seriously Heidegger’s claim that some of his key philosophical ideas provided the basis for his political commitments. I have tried to understand how he might have conceived of those connections and to trace some of his efforts to develop those lines of thought. I don’t think that this renders his philosophy irredeemable but neither do I think that one can..
Triumphantly Breaking Free from Academic Philosophy, But Still…
In 2015 I received the National Humanities Medal at a ceremony at the White House. President Obama himself put the medal around my neck, and the rumor was that he made the final choice. In the speech he gave before awarding all the medals, in addition to citing my work on Gödel and Spinoza and Plato, he spoke of me as the philosopher who sometimes chooses to write n..
“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…)
The State of Contemporary Metaphysics
“I think metaphysics is what it’s always been—and it’s hard to say what that is!”
Expanding Philosophy By “Re-Appropriating the Slur that it Is to Be Called ‘Analytic'”
Anthony Booth, reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, called his 2017 book Analytic Islamic Philosophy, yet he doesn’t think there is much to the division between analytic and Continental philosophy. (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…”
Agnes Callard’s List of “views that are considered controversial that shouldn’t be”
“There’s no such thing as being good or bad at philosophy.” (more…)
Contemporary Philosophy Is “Only the Most Recent Part of the History of Philosophy”
Why study the history of philosophy? That’s a question Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) asks Peter Adamson (LMU) in a new interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher? (more…)
“We’re Going to Get More, and More Interesting, Kinds of Philosophy”
That’s, uh, me, from a conversation with Daniel Kaufman (Missouri State) on his Sophia program on MeaningOfLife.tv. (more…)
When Scientists Read Philosophy, Are They Reading The “Wrong Philosophers”?
“The trouble with physicists who denigrate philosophy is that they read the wrong philosophers, which sad to say is most philosophers.”
That’s Clark Glymour (Carnegie Mellon) in an interview with Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine. (more…)
Philosophy’s Plagiarism Patrol
The body of published scholarship in my discipline—academic philosophy—suffers from a host of authorship violations, including plagiarism, undisclosed pseudonyms, and duplicate publication. These problems appear to be largely unknown to many in the field, even though some of the most egregious cases have appeared with the top presses. (more…)
Examples that Distort
“I worry that when most of the authors we read are white and male, some aspects of the subject matter get distorted, and it’s hard to tell where the essential stuff ends and the accidental stuff begins.” (more…)
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..
The Parochialism of Mainstream History of Philosophy
Our histories of philosophy are astonishingly parochial. Across two and half millennia and a whole planet, there are basically only 9 historical figures you can write about without running the risk of marginalizing yourself as a young philosopher. (more…)
How Religion Informs Philosophizing
In an interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?, Christian Miller, the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, discusses, among other things, the relationship between his religious and philosophical commitments. (more…)