Tag: philosophers

Philosophy and Culture

We Have Work To Do

November 9, 2016

On Friday, January 20th, 2017, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America.
Philosophy and Culture

Election Day Open Thread

November 8, 2016

Philosofriends, care to share your thoughts, hopes, fears, predictions, ideas, stories, etc., about the election?
professionalism

Criticism of the APA’s Code of Conduct

October 31, 2016

Last week, the American Philosophical Association (APA) issued a Code of Conduct. The document was produced by a volunteer task force headed by Nancy…
Issues in the Philosophy Profession

That Philosophy Is A “Cushy Gig” Explains Some Of The Profession’s Problems

October 31, 2016

Philosophy is largely male, white, cis, straight, able-bodied—why? Well, maybe it has little or nothing to do with philosophy. That appears to be the…
professionalism

APA Issues Code of Conduct

October 24, 2016

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has published a Code of Conduct. You can find it here. I’m off to a meeting but may have time…
Cuts and Threats to Philosophy Programs

Philosophy Program At IPFW To Be Eliminated (guest post by Charlene Elsby) / UPDATE: Link to Petition

October 19, 2016

The Philosophy Department at Indiana University – Purdue University, Fort Wayne (IPFW) will be completely eliminated by January, 2017, according to a plan announced by the Purdue…
Philosopher Demographics

Philosophy Departments and Journals Ranked by Gender Data at New Website

October 16, 2016

A new website presents data on women in philosophy in a novel manner: it orders departments by number of women faculty and journals by…
Philosopher Demographics

Data on Diversity in (mostly) US Philosophy

October 14, 2016

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has released a new report on its membership demographics over the past three years. Has philosophy become more demographically…
philosophy

The Pathologies of Philosophers

October 11, 2016

Pathologies of Philosophers an incomplete list Enthymemalysis – the inability to proceed with a conversation because one’s interlocutor has neglected to explicitly state…
Faculty Moves

Glasgow Hires Six New Philosophers

October 4, 2016

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow made six new permanent appointments this summer. That’s an unusually large number of hires at one…
Philosophy Websites

Filling in Wikipedia’s Coverage of Philosophy

September 21, 2016

An effort is underway to fill in some gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage of philosophy, particularly its coverage of “underrrepresented philosophers and philosophy.” As part…
Public Philosophy and Outreach

The Changing Role of Philosophers As Public Intellectuals

September 15, 2016

Via a chock-full-of-philosophy-links post at the wonderful Omnivore blog at Bookforum comes “The Philosopher As Public Intellectual” by Patrick Baert, a sociologist at Cambridge University. The…
Non-Academic Jobs

APA Issues New Guide For Philosophers Seeking Non-Academic Jobs

September 14, 2016

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has published a new guide for philosophers seeking non-academic employment, entitled Beyond Academia: Professional Opportunities for Philosophers. According to a press…
Awards Grants Honors

Philosophers among the 2016 Class of Royal Society of Canada Fellows

September 8, 2016

The Royal Society of Canada has announced its newly elected fellows. “They have been elected by their peers in recognition of outstanding scholarly, scientific and…
Philosophy Websites

Caspar Hare AMA Interview Today; Others Scheduled

August 30, 2016

The moderators of the /r/philosophy board at the discussion site Reddit have released their Fall 2016 schedule of “ask me anything” interviews with philosophers.…
Philosophy and Culture

Illustrations of Logicians

August 26, 2016

I’ve previously linked to some of the line art portraits by graphic designer Matt Leadbetter that the Open Logic Project commissioned. Well, now there are…
Lives of Philosophers

Dale Jacquette (1953-2016)

August 24, 2016

Dale Jacquette, Senior Professorial Chair in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bern (Switzerland), died this past Sunday. Prior to moving to Bern in…
Awards Grants Honors

Philosophers Among Recipients of 2016 NEH Grants

August 10, 2016

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced the winners of several of its grants programs, totaling $79 million. 300 projects received support,…
Issues in the Philosophy Profession

“Crazy Genius” Philosophers, Logic, and Mental Illness

July 21, 2016

Interestingly, having studied a lot of logic in graduate school, I observed that the culture of logic is more accepting of mental illness, though…
News

Police Shootings of Blacks in the U.S.; What Can Philosophers Do or Say in Response?

July 8, 2016

News from the past week: July 5th, 2016: Police officer shoots and kills Alton Sterling, a black man, while he was seemingly pinned to the…

Heap of Links

The most bizarre plagiarism-related story ever — featuring: a death, an investigator, a dissertation, a mysterious red book, and more
New data on earnings by major and university — though not all universities
“AI poses two different existential threats to [our] valuing practices” — Jordan MacKenzie offers an account of why negative judgments about AI taking over our creative and caring activities are justified
“Submission” is a humorous clicker-style game about starting a career in academic philosophy (or not) — created by Nat Hansen
“The best investment in education is to become the most human human—a challenging, fulfilling, exciting pursuit that connects us across generations” — an interview with Christa Acampora, philosopher and dean of Arts & Sciences at UVA
“What would happen if we tried to live without the mythology of agency at all?” — It's worth pondering, since "agency is just an internal command hallucination," says Alexander Douglas
“Reading List” is a free Mac app for keeping track of papers to read — philosophy PhD student Hayden Kajercline created this productivity tool for researchers, with help from Claude
How should we react to scary predictions about AI? “First: by asking questions” — "If you believe predictions uncritically, it amounts to obeying in advance," says Carissa Véliz
“I feel unbelievably lucky that I was able to make philosophy my profession” — Karen Ng reflects on her path into philosophy, at #first-genphilosophers
The ordinary concept of knowledge “doesn’t work at all the way philosophers said it does” — a round-up of studies shows how weird the philosophers' version of the concept is
1000 or so psychiatrists were asked to diagnose standardized clinical case vignettes. “Two doctors agreed on the diagnosis only 55% of the time” — What does this tell us about psychiatry? Or about other fields in which experts disagree?
Where Aristotle taught Alexander — "this newest dig may be the most revealing yet, offering insight into the specifics of Alexander the Great’s education"
Over 4000 of the Justice Department’s lawyers have left their jobs since Trump’s second term began — The New Yorker on the moral dilemma facing some government employees: resign and avoid complicity, or stay and resist where one can?
Underappreciated philosophy published between 1970-2019 — some old posts to which you can still add works that should be better appreciated
The AI threat to independent student writing is not necessarily a threat to student learning — what's needed, says Joe Cruz, are courses "in which ideas are expressed in real time and analytical thought unfolds as a debate or an oral defense or a group discussion"—and small enough classes to make that work
Would you take a pill that allows you, with no ill health effects, to permanently forgo sleep? — Rebecca Lowe thinks you have no good reason not to, though she neglects to consider that sometimes it's the world that needs a break from you
Fifty essays in the philosophy of paleontology — by Max Dresow at the Extinct blog
“Asking whether [an AI] model ‘has a world model’ leaves much unresolved. Our findings point toward mechanistically studying its world modeling; uncovering the structures it learned [and] the world modeling capacities that recruit these” — further research on the internal representations of AIs
Sixty Years of Philosophy in America — Ernest Sosa's Dewey Lecture from the 2024 APA Eastern Division Meeting
“You’re responsible for other people’s learning of this material, so you better know it at a higher level yourself” — for 20 years, the Socrates Project at the University of Toronto has hired senior philosophy undergrads to run weekly tutorials for introductory students

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Latest Comments

David Strohmaier on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
The questions of philosophy are quite heterogeneous, so I don't think there is a general answer to what grounds truth in the case of philosophical problems. Why is…
Mark van Roojen on Your One Piece of Philosophy Grad School Advice
What does this even mean? Who is wheat and who is chaff exactly?
DoubleA on Your One Piece of Philosophy Grad School Advice
I don’t think that hearing the same advice from several people makes the advice cliche— in most circumstances it ought to increase credence in that advice. But, if…
Student Philosopher on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
'Personally, I am excited by this development. Although I very much enjoy engaging in philosophy the old-fashioned way, one reason I turned to computer science was that I…
David Wallace on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
At last: a nuanced and thoughtful take on this complex situation.
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
I think you are underestimating how geeky (in a good way!) leadership is at Anthropic and OpenAI. I think if you said to them, “we’ve proved the Riemann…
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
I completely disagree with that description of math. And much of the criticism of openAI by Tao and others is because they disagree, too. No interesting academic discipline…
Michael Gorman on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
"Part of me wonders if all my philological training will end up being less useful than I imagined if AI can help in these areas" — or the…
Michel on Those OpenAI Math Results
I have no such opinion, because not only am I not a mathematician or a logician, but my math chops don't go very far, and my logic chops…
Mathieu Rees on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
There was once a time where the definition-counterexample method was dominant in analytic philosophy. I think that good insight was produced by that method, though some philosophers have…
tfortarski on Those OpenAI Math Results
Then that's setting the bar pretty high indeed. Math (or in any case its subset transformed by AI) could be described easily : it's about proving theorems. There's…
David Wallace on Those OpenAI Math Results
"Your claim, ultimately, is that AI is not and could not be useful in way that’s as transformative in philosophy as in mathematics. Right?" No, I didn't say…
Noah Gordon on Those OpenAI Math Results
I had never heard of the term "gish gallop" before reading your first comment so I had looked it up. All the definitions say that it involves putting…
tfortarski on Those OpenAI Math Results
One of the things I realized in the past 2 months is that the accuracy of AI models is entirely dependent on the conditions under which they run…
tfortarski on Those OpenAI Math Results
Your claim, ultimately, is that AI is not and could not be useful in way that's as transformative in philosophy as in mathematics. Right? My view is that…