sociology of philosophy
TagOptimism about Philosophy
“I know a lot of people on twitter and social media complain about the current state of philosophy but I tend to be an optimist.” (more…)
How Risk-Averse is Academic Philosophy?
“Philosophical inquiry thrives when it is conducted in a spirit that risks overreaching a bit,” yet “the current incentive structure of academic philosophy in the United States favors cautious and modest research agendas for early career philosophers.” (more…)
Why a Philosopher’s Racist Email from 26 Years Ago is News Today
Influential Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, well-known for his work on philosophical questions related to ethics, the future, and technology (existential risk, artificial intelligence, simulation), posted an apology for a blatantly racist email he sent to a listserv 26 years ago. (more…)
Is Any of Analytic Philosophy’s Dominance Owed to McCarthyism?
“It is clear enough that McCarthyism and its legacy were sufficient to make life hard for a particular strand of opposition to the analytic mainstream, characterized by its general adherence to empiricism and liberalism: those who were broadly Marxists.” (more…)
Citation Rates by Academic Field: Philosophy Is Near the Bottom (guest post)
Academia’s emphasis on citation rates is “mixed news” for philosophy: it can bring attention to high-quality work, but tends to make philosophy and other humanities fields look bad in comparison with other areas, says Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside), in the following guest post. (more…)
To Be a Department of Philosophy (guest post)
“There are many reasons to expand the story we tell about philosophy. But a main reason is just that the best, most interesting, and even the correct answers to philosophical questions that interest us might be found anywhere.” (more…)
Escaping the “Feedback Loop” of Sexism in the History of Philosophy
“Some of the women discussed in this Issue cannot be slotted easily into a history that did not include their ideas in the first place.” (more…)
The Contingency of Philosophers’ Philosophies
In an interview, Josef Mitterer is asked about how approaches to philosophy may vary by whether they provide “an escape from contingency.” (more…)
“Departments of Cognitive Poker”? Competitiveness and Philosophy (guest post)
Is philosophy an especially competitive discipline? How? Is its competitiveness a problem? If so, what might we do about it? (more…)
“The Way Philosophy Is Personal”
Wittgenstein’s early private notebooks have just been published in English, translated by Marjorie Perloff (Stanford). Towards the end of an essay about them, Kieran Setiya (MIT) draws attention to “the way philosophy is personal.” (more…)
Comparing Three (No, Four) Top 20 Lists in Philosophy (guest post)
What, if anything, can be learned by comparing several different accounts of philosophers’ citation rankings and other indicators of disciplinary impact? (more…)
What Philosophers Believe: Results from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey
Results from the 2020 PhilPapers survey, with responses from nearly 1,800 philosophers (mainly from North America, Europe, and Australasia), to questions on a variety of philosophical subjects and problems, have now been published. (more…)
Optimism about Metaphysics (and Philosophy in General)
Is there reason to be optimistic about progress in metaphysics? Jessica Wilson (Toronto) thinks so. (more…)
Analytic Philosophy’s “Triple Failure of Confidence”
“Analytic philosophy suffers from a triple failure of confidence, especially among younger philosophers.” (more…)
The Leaky Pipeline into Academic Philosophy for Black Students in the U.S. (guest post)
In the following guest post*, Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) shares data he and other philosophers have collected on the percentages of philosophy students and degree holders in the U.S. who are black, in an attempt to understand the causes of the relative lack of black philosophers in the country. (more…)
The Philosophy Profession, Mid-20th Century
It has been known for some time that there would be few openings for people receiving their Ph.D. degree in philosophy this spring. But how dire their prospects are was not really brought home to us until last week when the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association met in Ann Arbor. (more…)
Midgley on Dummett & Strawson on Closing Philosophy Departments
He told me flatly that it was wrong in principle to try to preserve all these provincial academic departments. Philosophy, he said, was a serious and highly technical subject which should only be studied at its own proper level. Any less professional approaches to it were useless and might even do harm. (more…)
Visualization of Philosophers’ Twitter Networks
As a “fun Friday afternoon project,” Maximillian Noichl created a visualization of “the network of academic-philosophy-Twitter.” (more…)
Can Small, Non-Mainstream Philosophy Departments Flourish?
“It has been painful to witness the end of a programme in which we invested so much of our energy and creativity, a programme that was praised by students and external examiners, that featured innovative modules and assessments, that defied being classified as either European or analytic, that was for the larger part run by two women, neither of whom identify as ‘Wh..
The Race and Gender of U.S. Philosophy PhDs: Trends Since 1973 (guest post)
The following is a guest post* by Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) on trends in the race and gender of people earning Ph.D.s in philosophy in the United States over the past 47 years. (more…)
Black Students Are Increasingly Interested in Philosophy (guest post)
“Over the past several years, Black students have become increasingly interested in philosophy, both upon entering their first year of undergraduate study and upon completing the major.” (more…)
2020 PhilPapers Survey Begins
In 2009, the PhilPapers team—David Bourget of the University of Western Ontario and David Chalmers of New York University—conducted a survey of the views of professional philosophers in the English-speaking world. How have those views changed in the past 11 years? (more…)
A History of Philosophy Journals Using Topic Modeling (guest post by Brian Weatherson)
When you go looking for patterns in over 32,000 academic philosophy articles, what will you learn? (more…)
Philosophy and “The Empirically Tractable”
I think you are right to be suspicious of the tendency of this institutional paradigm to postulate truths that are ‘basic’, ‘ultimate’ or ‘fundamental’ just at the point where things begin to look interesting or problematic from the point of view of those we in the profession pretentiously refer to as ‘non-philosophers’. (more…)