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Philosophers Win Artificial Intelligence Award

The Tetrad Automated Causal Discovery Platform, a software and text project developed by Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, Richard Scheines and Joe Ramsey of Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy, earned the “Leader” Award at the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference this past July. (more…)

A Philosophy & COVID-19 Bibliography

Jef Delvaux, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at York University, has undertaken the project of putting together a bibliography of writings by philosophers about the COVID-19 pandemic and related issues. (more…)

Rigor in Math

Sometimes progress requires rigor, and sometimes progress can’t wait for rigor—at least in math. (more…)

Philosophers Among Recent NSF Grant Winners

The National Science Foundation (NSF) may not be the first place people think of when they think about support for philosophical research, but several philosophers are among recent winners of grants from the agency. (more…)

Scholars Object to Publication of Paper Defending Race Science

Scholars are objecting to the decision of the editors of the journal, Philosophical Psychology, to publish an article that calls for “free inquiry” into possible inherited genetic bases of group differences on IQ tests. (more…)

A Philosopher Takes on Evolutionary Psychology

“Evolutionary psychological inferences commonly fail to satisfy reasonable epistemic criteria.” The failures are so significant that good evolutionary psychology may not be possible. (more…)

Philosophers Win NSF Grant to Study False Beliefs

Two philosophers have won a $431,892 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the formation and spread of false beliefs and their implications for the public understanding of science. (more…)

2019 Popper Prize Winner Announced

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS) has selected Carlos Gray Santana (University of Utah) as the winner of its 2019 Karl Popper Prize for his “ground breaking” paper in the philosophy of geology. (more…)

Philosopher Wins €3 Million Grant for Project on Public Trust in Expert Opinion

Maria Baghramian, Head of the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin, has won a €3 million (approximately US$3.3 million) grant for three-year research project on “the role of science in policy decision making and the conditions under which people should trust and rely on expert opinion that shapes public policy.” (more…)

Should We Get Rid of Peer Review?

“Where philosophers of science have claimed the social structure of science works well, their arguments tend to rely on things other than peer review, and that where specific benefits have been claimed for peer review, empirical research has so far failed to bear these out. Comparing this to the downsides of peer review, most prominently the massive amount of time a..

“Philosophers for Future” – Focusing Philosophical Work on Climate Change

There is now a call for philosophers to join with others who have been protesting the lack of action on climate change.

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Writing Philosophy and Developing Curricula with Undergrads

Some professors see their students, at least sometimes, as partners in education, but Matthew Slater, professor of philosophy at Bucknell University, does impressive work to make that partnership a reality.

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Philosophers On a Physics Experiment that “Suggests There’s No Such Thing As Objective Reality”

Earlier this month, MIT Technology Review published an article entitled “A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.” It was one of several publications to excitedly report on a recent experiment conducted by Massimiliano Proietti (Heriot-Watt University) and others. (more…)

The NSF and the Rise of Value-Free Philosophies of Science (guest post by Joel Katzav & Krist Vaesen)

Why were social, moral and political issues relatively neglected in philosophy of science during the 20th Century? Joel Katzav (Queensland) and Krist Vaesen (Eindhoven) continue their investigation of the institutional and sociological influences on the history and development of analytic philosophy in the following guest post.*

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Challenges Facing Philosophy of Science

What are the most significant challenges facing philosophy of science today? Nick Zautra, a PhD student in the history and philosophy of science at Indiana University Bloomington, interviewed 30 philosophers of science over the past two years, asking them this question, and presented a summary of their answers at the recent 2018 Philosophy of Science Association (PS..

2018 Lakatos Award Winners Announced

The Lakatos Award is given annually “for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted, in the form of a book published in English during the current year or the previous five years.” This year two recipients were selected: (more…)

Resurrecting Brains: Philosophical Questions and New Ethical Territory (guest post)

A team of scientists led by Nenad Sestan (Yale) have “restored circulation to the brains of decapitated pigs and kept the reanimated organs alive for as long as 36 hours,” reports MIT Technology Review. The method used to keep pigs’ brains alive outside the body will work on other animals, including primates, Sestan said. The following is a guest post * by Carolyn Di..

New Home for Reviews of Philosophy Books

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science has created a new online home for the book reviews published in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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Naturalism, Science, and the Possibility of Philosophy

“It is perfectly possible to do philosophy (even metaphysics or epistemology) if you do not believe that your views about mind, language, and reality can be used to ground (or dismiss) science.” (more…)

Large Grant to Fund Philosophical Work on Scientific Testimony and Diversity

Mikkel Gerken, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Denmark, has been awarded a DKK 4,259,520 (approximately $666,750) grant for his research project, “Scientific Testimony in a Diverse Society,” from Independent Research Fund Denmark (Dansmarks Frie Forskningsfond, or DFF). (more…)

Philosophy and Science Student Wins $10,000 Essay Prize

The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) has awarded a number of prizes in response to its call for essays answering the question, “What is fundamental?”, and the top prize has gone to Emily Adlam, who studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and is now a PhD student in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. (more…)

Experimental Philosophy and the Replication Crisis

The replication crisis in psychology and other fields, in which researchers have found it difficult or impossible to replicate the results of many earlier experiments (see the Reproducibility Project) is now being addressed by those working in experimental philosophy (x-phi), a subfield of philosophy that borrows surveying and experimental methods from psychology, w..

When Scientists Read Philosophy, Are They Reading The “Wrong Philosophers”?

“The trouble with physicists who denigrate philosophy is that they read the wrong philosophers, which sad to say is most philosophers.”

That’s Clark Glymour (Carnegie Mellon) in an interview with Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine. (more…)

Does Philosophy of Math Need a Practical Turn?

When we dig beneath the neatly composed surface we find a great buzzing, blooming confusion of ideas, and we have a lot to learn about how mathematics channels these wellsprings of creativity into rigorous scientific discourse. But that requires doing hard work and getting our hands dirty. (more…)