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Philosophy’s Happiness Literature: More of It, More Empirical (guest post)

In the following guest post, Michael Prinzing (Yale) discusses trends in philosophical discussions of happiness and well-being. (more…)

Philosophers Among Recent NSF Grant Winners (updated)

Several philosophers have been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) over the past couple of months. (more…)

Which Questions Can’t Philosophy Answer By Itself?

In an interview in The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia, Thomas Spiteri asks Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney) about “how best to make epistemic progress” answering philosophical questions about minds and consciousness. (more…)

$3 Million Grant for Interdisciplinary Project on Time & Quantum Biology

An interdisciplinary team of scientists and philosophers has won a $3 million grant to support a project on time and quantum biology called “Life on the Edge.” (more…)

Philosophy of Well-Being: A “Dysfunctional” Situation?

A “responsible definition of wellbeing,” says Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge), “needs to be appropriate to the goals of the project—epistemically accessible, reasonably simple, in other words fit for purpose… Philosophers of wellbeing in the analytic tradition think very differently.” (more…)

Discipline Size and Progress, in General and in Philosophy

When a field of study becomes large enough, its size “may impede the rise of new ideas,” according to Johan S.G. Chu and James A. Evans, in a new paper, “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science,” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)

Philosophers Cited in IPCC Report

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing science related to climate change, earlier this week released the report of its Working Group I, which is the first installment of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), to be completed in 2022. (more…)

$1 Million Grant for Work on Philosophy of Contemporary and Future Science

Darrell Rowbottom, professor of philosophy at Lingnan University, has been awarded a grant of approximately $1 million for his project, “Philosophy of Contemporary and Future Science.” (more…)

Philosophers Among New Class of AAAS Fellows

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAs) has announced its 2020 class of fellows. Most of the 489 new fellows are scientists, but three are philosophers. (more…)

Things Philosophers Know About Science That You Don’t

What do philosophers know that others don’t? This post intiates an occasional series that asks philosophers to engage with the “conventional wisdom” on various topics by sharing strongly-supported or widely-held philosophical insights and ideas about them.

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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…)

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…)

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…)

“There is no philosophical essence”

“The question I regularly encountered, and still do, is: Is that still Philosophy?” (more…)

Understanding the Brain

“Maybe human brains aren’t equipped to understand themselves.” (more…)

Countenancing Segregation Based on Imaginary Science (guest post)

“Papers like this should be left ignored, and certainly not mistaken for brave declarations of inconvenient truths.” (more…)

$2.6 Million Funding for Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider

An interdisciplinary research group has received funding totalling approximately US$2.6 million to pursue its study of “the world’s largest research instrument”: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. (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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