philosophy
TagPhilosophers Win NEH Grants
The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced $21 million in funding awarded to 248 humanities projects. Among them are ten (if I missed any, please let me know) which are directed by philosophers. Congratulations to the winners:
- Christa Acampora; Mariann Weierich (co-project director), Hunter College
$90,594
Project Title: The Experience of War: ..
Do Philosophers’ Personal Lives Influence Their Choice Of Research Topic?
According to the philosophical training that I received, scholars select their research topics on the basis of an impartial assessment of the scholarly potential of these topics. I recognized very early in my career that this is not the case. The reasons that academics choose the topics of their research and teaching are often related to their personal lives; early ..
More On Whether Philosophy Has Lost Its Way
Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, the digital wing of the journal Social Epistemology, has featured an exchange of short articles in the wake of “When Philosophy Lost Its Way” by Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle (both of University of North Texas), an article we previously discussed a couple of times. The exchange is between Luke Maring (Northern Ariz..
Irony of the Day: Special Issues and Political Correctness Edition
Jean-Yves Beziau (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), recently in the news for bizarre remarks he made about political correctness, homosexuality, and the attractiveness of an “old lady” in an essay on logical pluralism in a special issues of Synthese (which prompted a moratorium on special issues there, and reconsideration of policies of editorial oversi..
Philosophy Needs Better Marketing
The plans for growing and diversifying philosophy can’t be a shotgun approach. We need to find places every year where we can advocate and promote philosophical growth with precision because of our limited resources. We can do this through a robust development and advocacy process along with PR and advertising campaigns. There are lots of ways to grow and diversify ..
Philosophy as a Way of Life: The Course
Philosophers, have you ever taught a course about philosophy as a way of life? Stephen R. Grimm, professor of philosophy at Fordham University, has. During the course his students have to select one of the ways of life covered in the course, spend three days living it, and then create video reflections of the experience. It would be great to hear from others who’ve ..
Poll: Most Preferred Means for Promoting Academic Work
A reader requested a poll to help him determine how to promote and share his work online and make contact with other academics with similar interests. Let’s do it! Which of the following would you recommend? I know one popular answer might be “all of them,” but that’s not an option. You can select two, though.
(more…)
Editorial Changes at Thought
The editorial staff at the journal, Thought, has changed. Crispin Wright writes:
We wish to record our great gratitude to Jc Beall (Subject Editor for Logic), Janice Dowell (Subject Editor for Metaphysics), and Carrie Jenkins (Principal Editor) for their contributions to the editing of the journal hitherto. We are excited to announce that Catarina Dutilh-Novaes (..
Issues with Special Issues of Journals
Special issues often have guest editors, and the procedures for submission and editorial review may vary from those used for standard issues. The recent publication of an article with some rather bizarre passages in a special issue of Synthese has brought attention to how special issues are put together, with particular questions raised about editorial oversight and..
Proud Provincialism, Superficial Sophistication
Among the humanities, philosophy is the field in which provincialism has most successfully disguised itself as a universal and timeless form of inquiry. It’s not at all uncommon to hear philosophy professors demur, when the subject of, say, classical Indian logic comes up, that they “regrettably don’t know anything about that.” What they really mean is: “My professi..
$5.75 Million for Philosopher-Led Interdisciplinary Project on Public Discourse
Michael Lynch, professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, has been awarded a $5.75 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation for The Public Discourse Project: Balancing Humility and Conviction in Public Life, an interdisciplinary research and engagement project. Historian Brendan Kane is the co-principal investigator on the grant. It is the sin..
Demographic Data on U.S. Philosophy Faculty
Trends show a slow decrease in the extent to which U.S. full-time philosophy faculty at four-year institutions is male and white, according to data obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics by Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) and posted at The Splintered Mind:
Gender data:
1988: philosophy*: 91% male (vs. 75% for all fields).
1993: philosophy..
Philosophers On the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race
How is it that, at the same time, possibly the most principled and possibly the least principled politicians the U.S. has seen in recent times are both serious contenders for the presidency? How are voters weighing the progressiveness of supporting a woman candidate for president versus the regressiveness of creating another political dynasty? What does the failure,..
AI, Go, and Philosophical Argument
After more than four hours of tight play and a rapid-fire endgame, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has won a second contest against grandmaster Lee Sedol, taking a two-games-to-none lead in their historic best-of-five match in downtown Seoul. The surprisingly skillful Google machine, known as AlphaGo, now needs only one more win to claim..
Teaching and the Philosophical Canon
“Perhaps all professional philosophers have wrestled with the problem of how to cover all the important things in the limited time of a single course.” But what are the important things? And who are the important figures?
In a post at the Blog of the APA, Peter Adamson (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), who produces the podcast History of Philosophy without any Ga..
Fishing for First-Rate Philosophy Footnotes
Sought: examples of footnotes or endnotes in philosophical works that should not be missed. Of course, every footnote in everything you’ve written falls into that category, I know, but what about the works of others? Let’s be as broad-minded as possible as to what makes a note noteworthy here. It could be that the note:
- strangely makes a crucial point that quite..
New Wittgenstein (updated)
Previously unpublished notes taken by Yorick Smithies at lectures by Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1938 and 1941 at Cambridge University will be published later this year, according to a press release from the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
The notes have been edited and organized by Volker Munz (University of Klagenfurt, Carinthia) and his assistant, Bernhard Ritter. ..
Why Don’t We Study African Philosophy?
Over 100 billion people, it is estimated, have lived on earth. About one-seventh of the world’s population lives in Africa now. So, by way of a simplistic and historically irresponsible calculation, we could very roughly (and probably under-) estimate that 15 billion people have lived in Africa. 15 billion. Compare that with this estimate of the number of African ph..
Philosophy in the University: A Defense
“Far from being years of ‘enduring failure,’ the last 150 years have been philosophy’s best.”
So argues Scott Soames (University of Southern California) in an essay on the influence of academic philosophy in The New York Times column, The Stone. Framed as a response to “When Philosophy Lost Its Way,” by Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle (University of North Texas), ..
Bias, Subjectivity, and Superficiality in Philosophy
The philosophy profession in the United States is overwhelmingly male and white. What explains this? In an essay in The Los Angeles Times, Myisha Cherry (UI Chicago) and Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) offer an explanation:
One of the main causes of homogeneity in philosophy, we believe, is subjectivity and bias in the evaluation of philosophical quality.
They ..
Fricker from Sheffield to CUNY
Miranda Fricker, currently professor of philosophy at University of Sheffield, will be taking up a full-time senior position at CUNY Graduate Center this September. Professor Fricker works in social epistemology, ethics, and feminist philosophy. She will maintain an affiliation at Sheffield, where she is co-investigator on a European funded research project into epi..
Philosopher’s Guide to Bookstores
Is the best Manhattan bookstore for Nietzsche lovers East Village Books (slogan: so hardcore a bookstore that our website doesn’t work)? That’s what Stephanie Kotsikonas, a journalism student at CUNY reports in a post at her class blog, Journalistic Blogging, along with information about other bookstores in Manhattan with good philosophy sections. (UPDATE: the post ..
Talking Philosophy With Your Kids
Philosopher parents: how, if at all, do you talk philosophy with you own children?
I don’t give my children philosophy lessons, nor do we celebrate Socrates’ birthday. There may be a few more books of logic puzzles laying around the house than average, along with many of the children’s books listed here, but I don’t force philosophy on the kids. If the opportunit..
Analysis Announces New Editors
Via Ben Colburn (Glasgow):
The Analysis Committee is delighted to announce the new editors of Analysis:
Joint editors: Chris Daly and David Liggins (University of Manchester).
Associate editors:
Sara J. Bernstein (Duke University)
Stephanie Collins (University of Manchester)
Jason Decker (Carleton College)
Debbie Roberts (University of Edinburgh)
Pr..
Phones, Minds, States, and Corporations
Matthew Noah Smith (Leeds) has an article at Slate bringing together philosophy of mind and political philosophy to discuss the United States government’s attempts to get Apple to “unlock” the iPhone of a shooting suspect. It’s a great example of public philosophy. Professor Smith lays out the basics of extended cognition in clear but not oversimplified language, go..
Altmetrics in Philosophy
An article on assessing faculty activities in The Chronicle of Higher Education (mainly on the controversy concerning the services of Academic Analytics) notes the question of how schools should calculate and weigh the impact of academics’ research in the news, online contexts and social media:
Some say the next faculty-productivity battlefield might be altmetric..
Needed: A Philosophy Cheat Sheet for Scientists
What is the name of the phenomenon by which someone who is an acknowledged expert in one area is led to be overconfident about his or her knowledge in other areas? It’s a specific version of illusory superiority, and it may be related to the Dunning-Kruger effect (a product of the correlation of overconfidence and lack of skill), but I’m wondering if it has its own ..
Philosophy: Top Paid Humanities Major of 2016
Philosophy majors are predicted to have higher average starting salaries than graduates in any other humanities major, reports the National Association of Colleges and Employers in its 2016 Salary Survey:
Philosophy majors are projected to earn an average starting salary of $49,000 (See Figure 1). This is up from last year, when projected salaries for philosophy ..