Tag: philosophy

Issues in the Philosophy Profession

Philosophy in 10 Years

October 27, 2015

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…
Teaching

Does Philosophy Improve Critical Thinking?

October 22, 2015

Following on the heels of last week’s discussion of non-philosophers teaching critical thinking, the Chronicle of Higher Education drew attention to a meta-analysis of studies about whether…
Philosophical Resources

Open Access Philosophy Textbooks

October 22, 2015

Open educational resources (OER) are “any kind of material that you can use in teaching and learning that is openly available.” Richard Zach (Calgary) explains that “openly available” in…
Philosophy and Culture

Back to the Future Day: To When Should A Philosopher from 2015 Go?

October 21, 2015

In the movie Back to the Future II, Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel 30 years into the future, to today, October 21st, 2015. The…
Teaching

Intellectually Safe Space

October 20, 2015

What is an “intellectually safe space”? In “What Does Intellectual Safety Really Mean?” Katelyn Hallman (North Florida) notes: An intellectually safe environment, as typically construed,…
Teaching

The Lecture Strikes Back

October 20, 2015

Lecturing as a teaching style is not particularly trendy these days, but perhaps it is particularly well-suited for the humanities. Writing in the New York…
Philosophy Websites

Six Degrees of Francis Bacon

October 19, 2015

You may have heard of, and if so probably by now forgotten about, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” A meme before the age of…
Academic Labor

Challenges of Chairing Philosophy Departments

October 19, 2015

One thing that a Philosophy Head or Chair has to bear in mind continuously is “out-of-sight, out-of-mind.” I’ve always made it a point to…
Teaching

When Non-Philosophers Teach “Critical Thinking”

October 16, 2015

“Critical thinking” means a very particular sort of thing to philosophers (mostly identifying, reconstructing, and evaluating arguments), but in the desperate struggle to stay relevant,…
Daily Nous Features

Mistaking Criticism for Discrimination (Ought Experiment)

October 14, 2015

Welcome back to Ought Experiment! This week’s question is a sensitive one, indeed. A professor writes that s/he’s struggling to reach a grad student who…
Awards Grants Honors

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

October 14, 2015

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…
Issues in the Philosophy Profession

How to Encourage Service to the Profession?

October 12, 2015

A professor writes in: We hear a lot of complaints about how the APA and about how journals are run from folks who don’t…
Daily Nous Features

Meet the Daily Nous Cartoonists!

October 10, 2015

I am very excited to announce that Daily Nous will soon have its own comic strips! The call for cartoonists generated so many good submissions…
Graduate Programs

Pre-Grad School Logic Preparation

October 9, 2015

An undergraduate who is interested in pursuing graduate studies in philosophy writes in seeking advice about making up for deficits in his logic background:…
Philosophy Websites

The Tricky Truth about Tractatus Trees (updated)

October 9, 2015

Earlier in the week I put up a website that allows one to click through the tree-like structure of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the Heap of Links…
Awards Grants Honors

A Nobel Prize for Philosophy? (updated)

October 8, 2015

When Alfred Nobel, the renowned inventor of dynamite, died in 1896, he left behind a will that laid a foundation for the prestigious Nobel…
Philosophy Job Market

Cognitive Biases and Limitations of Search Committees

October 7, 2015

A philosopher whose last name starts with a letter towards the end of the alphabet writes in: I wonder how often members of search…
Philosophy Websites

Live From 2003: BEARS Is Back Online

October 7, 2015

BEARS? Sounds familiar. Then I clicked and saw this — —and it all came back to me. Yes, kids, this is what the internet…
Academic Labor

Should Professional Philosophy Be More Like Grad School?

October 6, 2015

Graduate student Nick Byrd (Florida State) sends in an interesting thought to ponder: maybe professional philosophy would be improved in certain respects if it were…
Writing

Writers: Love Your Ideas, But Love Your Readers, Too

October 6, 2015

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a philosopher who has written nonfiction for non-philosophers, as well as novels, is interviewed in The Chronicle of Higher Education about writing. Some…

Heap of Links

Is there anything to the concept of “intrinsic human dignity”? — yes, says Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and "it names a burden as much as a distinction"
“Intuition is the cognitive means by which the conceptual structure of a situation is revealed to us” — whether that situation is a stylized thought experiment or a real world experience, says Marc A. Moffett
“Professors can’t fix the problem on their own” — Victor Kumar on what university administrators need to do address AI's threat to higher education
“The wall between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, which had sustained his theory for almost half a century, was no longer sturdy” — a profile of Michael Walzer, focusing on his thoughts about just war theory and the Israeli-Palestine conflict
We may think that we lose something significant when AI beats us to a discovery — if we do, Daniel Greco says, that seems to imply we gained something significant, too
“Once upon a time there were a couple of handsome naturalistic philosophers working in and around the philosophy of fiction” — thoughts on new directions in philosophy of fiction, from several philosophers
What is the debate over whether trans women are women even about? — Katie Zhou argues that it's about which facts are granted "the cross-contextual significance and stickiness characteristic of gender"
We’re putting human brain cells into mice brains — One moral risk of this, says Mackenzie Graham, is a decrease in our ability to interpret what mice behavior tells us about their experiences and welfare
The Rawls Game — with instructions, background, advice, and downloadable character cards
“The central question would shift from ‘How do we maximize shareholder value?’ to ‘How do different forms of organization distribute power, risk and reward — and which should we strengthen?'” — Chris Marquis on the case for abolishing, or at least radically changing, business schools
Asking “How did I get here?” may help us reflect on the nature of personal identity in ways that asking “Who am I?” cannot — Marya Schechtman's 2024 Central Division Meeting Presidential Address
“Collecting is a game, but what kind of game? It is an imperfect information game of acquisition” — a theory of collecting, from Steven Hales
“A general human tendency: to overestimate how far we have come in the progress of human knowledge” — a lengthy interview with Thomas Nagel
“Many couples do not survive trauma like this” — A profile of Susan Brison—who was brutally attacked in 1990, and who wrote about it in Aftermath—and her husband, Thomas Trezise, who has now written his own book stemming from those events
“Bad AI Consciousness Takes” Bingo Card — Henry Shevlin's area of specialization is becoming a popular topic in popular discourse, and he can't stand the "cavalcade of terrible takes"
Does the principle of sufficient reason imply panpsychism? If it does, do we then ponens or tollens? — Sam Kimpton-Nye on these questions and the "demand for intelligibility"
PTSD flashbacks may be harmful, but they may also be helpfully “resupplying phenomenal experience” to those who, owing to trauma, are “grasp alienated” — Michaela McSweeney on trauma and "madness-as-strategy"
A look at the very first issue of Mind — Brett Mullins surveys its articles on the occasion of the journal's 150th anniversary
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

All Links →

Latest Comments

Kenny Easwaran on Coordinating the Philosophy Profession’s Response to the Use of AI in Research
I am skeptical that coordination on something like this is either possible or desirable for an entity as large and diverse as the philosophical community. But I do…
Rollo Burgess on Linguistic and Conceptual Justice in AI
I saw a great lecture from some researcher one of the labs about this: it's much more interesting. The LLM isn't fundamentally working in any language; the patterns…
Patrick Lin on Linguistic and Conceptual Justice in AI
Signed! The Conversation had published several articles that speak to or are related to this important but hidden concern, e.g.: https://theconversation.com/large-language-models-often-prioritize-western-moral-values-overlooking-other-cultures-285660 https://theconversation.com/ais-fluency-in-other-languages-hides-a-western-worldview-that-can-mislead-users-a-scholar-of-indonesian-society-explains-276865 https://theconversation.com/ai-systems-are-built-on-english-but-not-the-kind-most-of-the-world-speaks-249710 https://theconversation.com/how-generative-ai-could-change-how-we-think-and-speak-267118
Patrick Lin on Coordinating the Philosophy Profession’s Response to the Use of AI in Research
Very timely. Best of luck, Barry and team!
Filippo Contesi on Linguistic and Conceptual Justice in AI
Not English-only but English is superdominant and so most LLMs default to English. China's LLMs might be different…
philatetelist on Linguistic and Conceptual Justice in AI
This is all news to me. So, is it true that most LLM's are trained on a corpus that is English-only, and then generate non-English output only at…
Matthew Duncombe on Timothy Smiley (1930-2026)
Very sorry to read about this. I only met Tim Smiley a handful of times, but his erudition, intelligence and kindness, and interest in ancient logic made a…
James Mackay on Calls for Papers / Grants / Etc.
Byung-Chul Han and Contemporary Culture. Online (hosted by European University Cyprus). 19 March 2027. Abstracts due 18 January 2027. https://byungchulhanstudies.org/call-for-papers/An online symposium putting Byung-Chul Han’s concepts – burnout,…
Student Philosopher on Where Intuitions Conflict
But the history of philosophy shows us no cases in which adept questioners left their interlocutors in aporia Mad Max – That's Bait
Vinicius Rodrigues on Where Intuitions Conflict
One of my main concerns with your answer to x-phi studies is that it makes having an intuition a difficult thing to pick out in the stream of…
philatetelist on Where Intuitions Conflict
This is a startling hypothesis, because if one and the same individual can have conflicting intuitions about cases, then a philosophically adept questioner should be able to elicit…
Patrick Lin on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”— Dita Von Teese, American philosopher
Non-classical? on Where Intuitions Conflict
I guess I can see that reading of the call, but then I just know even less what to do with the call. Consider that, at least as…
PhilCon Ed on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
That which makes plainspoken language more accessible and meaningful to you is the same mechanism which makes flowery, emotive language more meaningful and accessible to others.
Jason Aleksander on Death Just Got Out of This Truck (guest post)
it is disingenuous to claim that the academic life is somehow purely a life of the mind It's not impolite, but I'm not sure if you thought I…