philosophy
TagHopes For Your Philosophy Book — Its Sensible Ideas And Its Mistakes
Joseph Raz, professor of philosophy and law at Columbia University and Kings College, London, has written reflections on his well-known and nearly 30 year-old The Morality of Freedom for a collection of critical essays by others on it, forthcoming in the Jersualem Review of Legal Studies. Rather than engage point-by-point with the criticisms the other contributors ..
Association for Practical & Professional Ethics Moves to DePauw
The Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE), a “comprehensive, international organization advancing scholarship, education, and practice in practical and professional ethics,” will be moving from its current institutional home at Indiana University to the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. (more…)
The Ghost of Senator Joe McCarthy Haunts a Philosophy Graduate Student (guest post)
The following is a guest post* by Charles H. Seibert, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. It is about his experiences as a politically-minded graduate student in the 1960s—and the professional consequences that followed. (more…)
Ethics and Education Grant Winners
The Center for Ethics & Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has announced the winners of its latest round of grants. The grants include awards of up to $40,000 for research projects in philosophy as it relates to educational policy and practice (see this description of the grant program). (more…)
“Philosophy Is A Great Major” – A New Site
They told you that philosophy majors don’t get jobs.
They told you that you should practice asking “do you want fries with that?”
They told you philosophy wasn’t about real-world skills.
They were wrong.
So says Philosophy Is A Great Major, a new website about the benefits of majoring in philosophy. (more…)
Philosophy’s Use of the Visual Arts
What works of visual art (paintings, sculpture, photography, drawings, etc.) have philosophers made use of in their written works, either as examples, inspiration, or subjects of study? (more…)
Prindle Institute Receives $30,000 Grant to Study Business Ethics
The Prindle Institute of Ethics at DePauw University, whose aim is “to enrich the quality of ethical deliberation and action for DePauw’s students, as well as for its faculty and administration, and to reach out in related ways to the broader academic, geographical, and global community,” has received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to..
New Site Interviews Philosophers With Non-Academic Careers
Phil Skills is a new site featuring interviews with people who’ve had graduate training in philosophy and pursued careers outside of academia. The site was created by Eleni Manis, a former philosophy professor who received her PhD at Michigan and who is currently a research analyst and acting director of communications at the Office of the Nassau County Comptrolle..
Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
Here is the weekly report of what’s new at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR) — plus a few bonus links. (more…)
“Ought Experiment” Returns With New Advice Columnist
Ought Experiment, the Daily Nous feature offering “personalized advice for your academic life,” will be returning soon after having been on hiatus since last May. During this break, Original Ought Experiment columnist Louis Generis stepped down to pursue other interests, such as keeping his day job*. After a hardly exhaustive search I am pleased to announce Ought ..
Mentoring Workshop for Pre-tenure Women Faculty in Philosophy
The Mentoring Project For Pre-tenure Women Faculty in Philosophy will be holding its 4th biennial workshop this June. The workshop is an opportunity to “foster mentoring relationships between senior women in the field and women just beginning their careers” by providing pre-tenure women philosophers a forum in which to present and develop papers in the company of a ..
The Quality and Reach of Philosophical Writing
In an epic interview at Emotion Researcher, Martha Nussbaum answers questions about her life and her work and philosophy. At one point, the interviewer says:
Another distinctive aspect of your philosophical work is its ambition to have practical import. In your The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, you cite approvingly Epicurus’ claim ..
The “Self-Valorizing Vanity” of Philosophers
Philosophy professors, is your job (A) just a way to pay the bills, (B), a “fun and challenging” career but certainly not the only thing worth doing, as “there is more to living,” or (C) the best career, and so, properly the overwhelmingly dominant focus of most of your life?
That’s a question Eric Schleisser (Amsterdam) asks at Digressions & Impressions and that..
Philosophy and the Illusion of Explanatory Depth
Virtually everyone in the United States, and indeed throughout the developed world, is familiar with toilets. A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled with water. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the water—and everything that’s been deposited in it—gets sucked into a pipe and from there into the sewage system. But how does this actuall..
Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
Here is this week’s report of what’s new at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR). (more…)
How Applied Ethics Has Changed
Some thoughts on how “applied ethics” has changed over the years:
hen I was in grad school, ‘applied ethics’ was an embarrassment. It basically involved feeding concocted, simplistic, depoliticized case studies mechanistically through static, caricatured versions of ethical theories. It was also completely ghettoized, and no one else in philosophy paid the slight..
The Return of The Service Previously Known As Philosopher’s Carnival
Philosopher’s Carnival was a website that aimed to
- to showcase the best philosophical writing in the blogosphere in one convenient location, for the benefit of philosophically-inclined readers
- to provide lesser-known philosophy bloggers with the opportunity to gain some exposure and attract a wider audience
- to foster and promote the free online disseminat..
How To Get More From Attending Academic Talks
Some philosophy talks are exciting, others are dull. It’s pretty easy to tune out of the dull ones. But once you tune out of a talk, it is difficult to follow the argument when you tune back in,and so you just end up sitting there wasting your time. As Ravi Vakil, a professor of math at Stanford puts it, “Talks are like horses: once you are thrown off, it is hard to..
Dennett on Politics, Philosophy, and Post-Modernism
Daniel Dennett (Tufts) is visiting the UK to promote his new book, but most of this interview with The Guardian is about US politics.
Some excerpts, including a bit about how some philosophy might be responsible for our current political predicament: (more…)
New Philosophy Conversation Video Series / Conference Norms
Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse, both professors of philosophy at Vanderbilt and co-authors of Why We Argue (and How We Should): A Guide to Political Disagreement, have a new series of short videos of the two of them discussing philosophy. The series is called Philosophy 15. (more…)
Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update
Forthwith, the weekly report of what’s new at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR). (more…)
New Philosophy Teaching Prize from the APA, AAPT, and TPA
The American Philosophical Association (APA), the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT), and the Teaching Philosophy Association (TPA) have announced the creation of the Prize for Excellence in Philosophy Teaching. (more…)
Prestige Segregation by Gender in Philosophy
The distribution of genders in graduate education in the United States vary by field. Does that distribution change at all when the focus is just on the most prestigious graduate programs? A new study by Kim A. Weeden (Cornell), Sarah Thébaud (UC Santa Barbara), and Dafna Gelbgiser (Cornell), “Degrees of Difference: Gender Segregation of U.S. Doctorates by Field and..
For The First Time, A Philosopher Is Named “University Professor” In The UC System
Forty-one professors hold the title of “University Professor” across the ten-school University of California system. The title is “reserved for scholars of international distinction who are also recognized as teachers of exceptional ability.” The latest scholar to be named a University Professor is also the first philosopher to be given the honor: John Martin Fische..
Online Philosophy Materials for High School Students
A philosopher writes in seeking good materials online for high school age students who’d like to get more exposure to philosophy. Here are some suggestions: (more…)
“On The Brink of Collapse”: The Philosophical Society of South Africa
The Philosophical Society of South Africa (PSSA), a professional association of philosophers “representing the interests of the academic philosophical community in Southern Africa,” is “on the brink of collapse over allegations of racism,” according to the Mail & Guardian. At its annual meeting last month, the organization’s president, Vasti Roodt (Stellenbosch), an..
$2 Million in Fellowships for Improving Public Discourse
Humility and Conviction in Public Life, an interdisciplinary endeavor at the University of Connecticut directed by philosopher Michael P. Lynch and funded by the John Templeton Foundation, has awarded a total of $2 million to ten scholars engaged in various projects to improve public discourse. (more…)
Innovations in Philosophical Events: The Dance Dialog
The Logos Dance Collective is
a fluctuating assemblage comprised of dancers, choreographers, musicians, composers, designers, cartographers, and philosophers, rebels against disciplinary constraints as it investigates how ideas that are typically relegated to the ivory tower—ideas about the limits of human knowledge, the nature of consciousness, the moral and ..