philosophy
TagPhilosopher Launches Global Health Impact Initiative
The Global Health Impact is an initiative created by Nicole Hassoun, associate professor of philosophy at SUNY Binghamton, that evaluates and compares the health impact of medicine. The site assigns “impact scores” to various drugs based on how much good they do (explained here) and presents the information sorted by disease, drug, country, and pharmaceutical compan..
Life as a Philosophy Student in North Korea
A philosophy student who defected from North Korea provides some information about life as a philosophy student there in a recent interview (part of a series of interviews with David A. Caprara, a journalist working with the Global Peace Foundation in Seoul, South Korea). The student now lives in Seoul.
The access to philosophy books in North Korea is quite limit..
Ancient Scrolls of Philodemus, Carbonized by Vesuvius, Now Readable
Using a technique known as x-ray phase-contrast tomography (XPCT), a research team in Italy has figured out a way to read the text of ancient rolled-up scrolls that had been blackened, warped, and embrittled in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The scrolls were found in 1752 during excavations in Pompeii. Most of the approximately 1,800 (!) scrolls found so fa..
Lupe Fiasco Hands Off Philosophy Sunday to WiPhi
Rapper Lupe Fiasco has been running a weekly philosophy discussion on Twitter called Philosophy Sunday (#PhilosophySunday). With a new album about to come out, he is handing off responsibility for the discussion over to the folks at Wi-Phi. Their first run at it will be tomorrow, January 18th, starting at 2pm EST. Gaurav Vazirani, a philosophy PhD student at Yale an..
A “Nonproblematic” Black Philosopher
Mabogo More, who was recently awarded the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association, is profiled in the Mail & Guardian. More held appointments at University of the North – Turfloop, the University of KwaZulu-Natal – UKZN, and the University of Durban-Westville, as well as fellowships at Birmingham, University of Illinois, an..
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..
Mapping Philosophical Arguments
The students sit in pairs at a computer terminal, and after reading Cullen’s synopsis of a particular argument, they try to map it. The room fills up with whispered suggestions, lines tested and rejected, double negatives made positive. Most of the boxes into which they enter text are red or green. The green ones contain evidence supporting the above premise; the re..
Philosophy: Now Even More Popular in Germany
Philosophy is so popular in Germany right now, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education (may be behind paywall). How popular is it? So popular that at least one philosophy book may have sold more copies in Germany than the latest album by David Hasselhoff, a fact the author of the Chronicle piece neglects to mention. Perhaps because it is not true. In any event, he..
User’s Guide to Philosophy Without Rankings
A User’s Guide to Philosophy Without Rankings is a new site “intended for the use of prospective graduate students in philosophy, faculty (including chairs or heads) in philosophy, and deans, provosts, and other administrators, all of whom need resources for the decisions they make about philosophy programs.” It is based on the idea that “currently, there are no ran..
Philosophers and Theorists on the Charlie Hebdo Attacks (updated)
Yesterday, twelve people were shot dead at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine. It was reported that the gunmen shouted “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad” and “God is Great” in Arabic (“Allahu Akbar”), and so the attack is believed to be the work of militant Islamists in response to offensive cartoons that appeared in the magazine.
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Teaching As If Our Students Were Not Future Philosophers
Since most of our undergraduate students are planning to go to graduate school in philosophy and become professional philosophers, it makes sense that the undergraduate philosophy curriculum is typically filled with courses that prepare them for that future. Their courses should introduce them to the way that contemporary professional philosophers understand their f..
This Year in Philosophical Intellectual History
This fall, one of the most powerful institutions in the field of philosophy in this country began to collapse…
In “The Rise and Fall of the Philosophical Gourmet Report,” a brief post at the U.S. Intellectual History Blog, historian Ben Alpers takes a look at one of the major stories in the philosophy profession this year. Alpers is cautious about his account o..
Lack of Political Diversity: A Problem?
In a recent paper, a group of social psychologists—Jonathan Haidt (NYU), José L. Duarte (ASU), Jarret T. Crawford (College of New Jersey), Charlotta Stern (Stockholm), Lee Jussim (Rutgers ), and  Philip E. Tetlock (UPenn)—argue that political diversity is lacking in academic psychology and that
this lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of so..
Woody Allen, Please, No
On a small town college campus, a philosophy professor in existential crisis gives his life new purpose when he enters into a relationship with his student.
That is the description of Woody Allen’s currently untitled 2015 movie. It is in post-production and stars Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Jamie Blackley, and Parker Posey. More information here and here.
(vi..
Philosophers from Poverty
The announcement of the UPDirectory has prompted a number of comments about a category not included among its underrepresented groups: philosophers who grew up in poverty. One theme in many of these comments is a sense of isolation and difference that comes from having that kind of background. The point of this post is just to open up a space for philosophers to dis..
More on the Barnett story
The story about the University of Colorado beginning the steps of firing associate professor of philosophy David Barnett (previously) has been on the radio and television news here in Boulder.
Here is some further info on the story:
· Some philosophy students have come to Barnett’s defense.
· Barnett will be challenging the decision by appealing to the universi..
Philosophy in Figures
Ryan Reece, a post-doc in experimental particle physics at UC Santa Cruz, likes “carving out philosophical positions with diagrams.” It’s an interesting project, which you can view here. He welcomes comments. (Via David Grober-Morrow.)
Philosophy Student Wins on “The Voice”
The Voice is a popular televised singing competition on NBC. The finale of its sixth season aired last night, and the winner is Josh Kaufman, who took part in the competition while taking a break from pursuing his master’s degree in philosophy at Northern Illinois University. You can watch Mr. Kaufman talking about his philosophy studies here, and see him singing St..
The Philosophy and Science of Creativity
Scientific American has published an excerpt from the introduction to The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, a new collection edited by Elliot Samuel Paul (Columbia) and Scott Barry Kaufman (NYU). In the various contributions, “philosophers draw on scientific research and scientific work is informed by philosophical perspectives.”  Paul and Kaufman are two of the..
More on Teaching Philosophy in Prison
The notion of incarceration goes back to the beginning of philosophy, with the imprisonment and execution of Socrates—and the idea, expressed by his student Plato in the Republic, that we are all imprisoned by the cave of our own reflections but don’t realize it. “ face a lot of the issues ordinary people face, but in a heightened condition. We’re all doing life in ..
Five Years In Philosophy
Massimo Pigliucci, currently professor at CUNY and soon to be holder of the K.D. Irani Professorship in Philosophy there, takes the occasion of his 50th birthday to reflect on his first five years as a professor of philosophy (following 26 years as a biologist) and on the discipline as a whole, particularly the relationship between philosophy and science.
Teaching Philosophy in Prisons
Currently over two million people in the United States are in prison, and about nine million worldwide. There are many questions worth asking about the systems of criminal justice that lead to that result. The focus of this post, though, is quite narrow. It concerns just one thing academic philosophers can do, as academic philosophers, in light of this: teach prison..