Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Jacob Barrett's avatar
  2. F.E. Guerra-Pujol's avatar
  3. International Student's avatar
  4. OLP's avatar
  5. Roger Albin's avatar
  6. James Bondarchuk's avatar
  7. Gregory Slack's avatar

Open access philosophy books: a thread, Part II

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 6 (ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 13):  see for what counts as a suitable submission below–no anonymous posts

The last thread had 39 submissions, so I thought it's time for a second thread.  Instructions as before:

In light of the growing number of these volumes, I am going to run a thread periodically in which I invite authors or readers to share links to philosophical works that are currently or permanently "open access."  Please use your full name and a valid email address (the latter will not appear) and include the URL for the book (give the title and the author, if you are not the author).  Authors or readers can only say something about the work and what it tries to do.  Please indicate if the "open access" period is limited.

Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

25 responses to “Open access philosophy books: a thread, Part II”

  1. Mark Couch

    Francesca Strappini, Mark Couch, Antonino Carcione, & Marialuisa Martelli, eds. (2024). Evidence for Reductionist or Anti-Reductionist Approaches of Mental Processing. (Frontiers in Psychology)

    https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/27605/evidence-for-reductionist-or-anti-reductionist-approaches-of-mental-processing/magazine

    Reply
  2. Frances Egan

    Frances Egan, Deflating Mental Representation (Jean Nicod Lectures), MIT Press, permanent Open Access

    https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5927/Deflating-Mental-Representation?fbclid=IwY2xjawJAgxNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHdM_aKJDFRuYgSlBKRoZgsG8fjap3exU45UcEVc3cZS3w3m-HoyrTdpQMw_aem_TVEWewrzVWxEoLpqU-YA1g

    Reply
  3. Justin Tiwald

    Carlos Montemayor, The Prospect of a Humanitarian Artificial Intelligence: Agency and Value Alignment, 2023, permanent Open Access

    https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/prospect-of-a-humanitarian-artificial-intelligence-9781350348370/

    Reply
  4. Peter Smith

    There are now five Big Red Logic Books, all freely downloadable (and also available as minimal cost print-on-demand paperbacks).

    1. An Introduction to Formal Logic (2nd edn 2020, originally CUP)
    2. An Introduction to Gödel’s Theorems (2nd edn 2013, originally CUP)
    3. Gödel Without (Too Many) Tears (2nd edn 2022)
    4. Beginning Mathematical Logic: A Study Guide (2022)

    And now newly published,

    5. Introducing Category Theory (2nd edn 2025)

    Links and more details: https://www.logicmatters.net/books/

    Reply
  5. David Thorstad

    Hilary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on longtermism, OUP, Open Access

    Should be live in a few months here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/essays-on-longtermism-9780192883858

    Reply
  6. Facundo Bey

    Bey, Facundo (ed.) (2025). Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cuestiones abiertas / Open Questions. Quito: Filosófica, Fundación de Estudios Filosóficos, Políticos y Culturales (Colección Filosófica Actual)-Editorial Universitaria de la Universidad Central Del Ecuador (permanent Open Access).

    Hans-Georg Gadamer. Cuestiones abiertas / Open Questions (2025), edited by Facundo Bey and published jointly by Filosófica Editorial and the Editorial Universitaria of the Universidad Central del Ecuador, is a bilingual open-access volume celebrating the 125th anniversary of Gadamer’s birth. It brings together fourteen original chapters by internationally recognised scholars—twelve in English and two in Spanish—including contributions from John Arthos, Nathan Eric Dickman, Dieter Teichert, Eddo Evink, Babette Babich, Roger W. H. Savage, Mirela Oliva, Luiz Rohden, Darren Walhof, Walter Lammi, Abdullah Başaran, Antoine Pageau-St-Hilaire, Einar Iván Monroy Gutiérrez, and Facundo Bey. With a prologue by Jean Grondin, the volume is structured around five major themes: 1) Language, Tradition, and Questioning in Philosophical Hermeneutics; 2) Reason, Meaning, and Science; 3) Ethics, Politics, Practical Philosophy; 4) Philosophy and Religion; and 5) Gadamer and the Classics. The book explores the ongoing relevance of Gadamer’s hermeneutics as a philosophical response to contemporary crises, and affirms the transformative power of questioning at the heart of understanding.

    Reply
  7. Mohan Matthen

    Dominic Lopes, Samantha Matherne, Mohan Matthen, Bence Nanay (2025). The Geography of Taste, Oxford University Press, Permanent Open Access.

    https://academic.oup.com/book/59052?login=false

    Four authors discuss the wide variation of aesthetic judgement across culture and its signicance for philosophical aesthetic theory.

    Reply
  8. Dan Kelly

    Dana Tulodziecki (2025). _Underdetermination and Theoretical Virtues_; Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Science; Cambridge University Press; Permanent Open Access.

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/underdetermination-and-theoretical-virtues/1DA6B57C8A072380DA90E6A706DF9583

    The book advances a novel view – the Epistemic Labour View – about the role, limits, and potential of the theoretical virtues as the arbiters of various versions of underdetermination. A central focus is to go beyond the often abstract discussions in this area and to show how the theoretical virtues can illuminate and resolve issues surrounding actual cases of underdetermination found in scientific practice. It is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

    Reply
  9. abdessamed gtumsila

    Great to see more philosophy books becoming openly accessible. Thanks to everyone sharing!

    Reply
  10. Laura Garcia Portela

    García-Portela, L. (2025) Rectifying Climate Injustice: Reparations for Loss and Damage. New York: Routledge.

    This book provides an account of how rectificatory justice for climate change loss and damage can be realized by bridging the worlds of political philosophy, climate science and climate policy together. The book focuses on three fundamental questions: what kinds of climate impacts should count as loss and damage, how climate science can help us identify them and who should bear the burdens of providing reparations for loss and damage. I defend the appropriatness of a principle of historical responsibility proportional to emissions records grounded in my Continuity Account.

    Striving to improve the reader’s understanding of loss and damage as outlined by The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate justice, environmental justice, and environmental ethics.

    This book is based on my dissertation, which was awarded two nation-wide prizes: the Luis Díez del Corral Prize from the Center of Political and Constitutional Studies in Spain in 2022 (research centered attached to the Ministry of Presidency) and the Roland Atefie Prize from the Austrian Academy of Science in 2023. A Spanish translation will be published with the Spanish Center for Political and Constitutional Studies Press.

    The book has also been selected by Taylor and Francis to become Open Access as part of the Taylor & Francis Pledge to Open initiative. You can download the book for FREE here or read it directly below.

    Reply
  11. Catherine Elgin

    Elgin, Catherine Z. (2025) Epistemic Ecology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
    Epistemic Ecology describes how individual epistemic agents form epistemic communities and how individuals and communities both accommodate themselves to and structure the phenomena they seek to understand. Epistemic agents rely on one another to overcome individual impediments and blindspots. We devise methods, measures and mechanisms to surmount collective obstacles. We contrive benchmarks, standards and principles to assess our results. We leverage our successes and learn from our failures. Rather than construing findings as permanent achievements, we construe them as platforms on which to build.

    This book is permanently available Open Access.

    Reply
  12. Murat Aydede

    The Building Blocks of Thought: A Rationalist Account of the Origins of Concepts
    Stephen Laurence, Eric Margolis
    Oxford up
    https://academic.oup.com/book/57984

    Reply
  13. Kelly James Clark

    free downloads by Kelly James Clark

    God & the Brain: https://shorturl.at/ghIO8
    God and the Problems of Love: https://shorturl.at/mpwHM
    Raging Fire of Love: What I’ve Learned from Jesus, the Jews and the Prophet: https://jmp.sh/G9NojNzd
    Abrahamic Reflections on Randomness and Providence https://jmp.sh/AeCNFmZU
    The Story of Ethics https://jmp.sh/5lb7VgUp

    Reply
  14. Mike Titelbaum

    PhilPapers has been getting into the open access publishing business! They already published:

    The Open Handbook of Formal Epistemology, Richard Pettigrew and Jonathan Weisberg, Eds.
    https://philpapers.org/archive/PETTOH-2.pdf

    Later this year they will publish a reader on Methods in Analytic Philosophy, edited by Joachim Horvath, Steffen Koch, and myself.

    Also, my piece on "Precise Credences" from the Open Handbook has been translated into Spanish by Marc Jiménez Rolland:
    https://libros.uaa.mx/index.php/uaa/catalog/book/321

    All of these resources are permanently free online.

    Reply
  15. Josh

    A Note from a Librarian:

    I’d like to clarify that some of these books that are posted online but lack clear open access licensing or explicitly stated secondary publishing rights are generally *not* considered open access (and may be subject to takedown notices by publishers).

    Why does this matter? Aren't you just being a pedant?
    Not quite. There are important practical reasons to distinguish between genuinely open access materials and those that are merely free to view. Books without a clear open access license (such as a Creative Commons license) are at risk of being taken down due to copyright claims. Even if they remain online for now, they may become difficult to access in the future. Publishers often cease to make books available once they are no longer profitable, and unless the book has been published under an open access license, it may not be preserved or made available elsewhere.

    This can significantly impact scholarship 20 or even 70 years from now. If a book isn’t available online with a proper open access license, future researchers may find it difficult or impossible to access. Complications also arise when an author passes away and the rights holders cannot be located, creating so-called orphan works. True open access—meaning publication under a license that permits reuse and long-term archiving—is essential for ensuring that research remains accessible over time. Simply posting a PDF on Academia.edu or ResearchGate is not enough.

    Reply
  16. Mike Titelbaum

    PhilPapers is gradually getting into the open access publishing game. (And this is genuine, Creative Commons license work, per the librarian's comment.)

    Their first publication, The Open Handbook of Formal Epistemology, edited by Richard Pettigrew and Jonathan Weisberg, may be found here:

    https://philpapers.org/archive/PETTOH-2.pdf

    That work includes a piece by me on "Precise Credences", which has now been translated into Spanish by Marc Jiménez Rolland, which you can find open access here:

    https://philpapers.org/rec/TITEBU

    Finally, later this year PhilPapers will be publishing an open access reader on "Methods in Analytic Philosophy", edited by Joachim Horvath, Steffen Koch, and myself. Keep your eyes peeled!

    Reply
  17. Edmund Lazzari

    Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science
    eds. William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, and Nicholas Teh
    Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Science
    https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781315211626/neo-aristotelian-perspectives-contemporary-science-william-simpson-robert-koons-nicholas-teh

    Reply
  18. Jason Brennan

    I have a free Introduction to Political Philosophy here: https://cdn.cato.org/libertarianismdotorg/books/Political_Philosophy.pdf

    This was aimed at Cato Institute readers. It's not particularly libertarian, though I suspect non-libertarians will think it is.

    Reply
  19. Richard Yetter Chappell

    An Introduction to Utilitarianism: From Theory to Practice, by Richard Yetter Chappell, Darius Meissner, and William MacAskill, has an open access version available at: https://www.utilitarianism.net/textbook/

    (The print edition, published by Hackett, contains some minor changes, e.g. in the ordering of the chapters.)

    Reply
  20. David Stern

    Annalisa Coliva: Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology is available until August 5th from Cambridge University Press at:
    https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/wittgenstein-and-social-epistemology/3331BC00DBE9554DF3CF1083B4E34802

    Abstract: The last twenty years have witnessed a ‘social turn’ in analytic philosophy. Social epistemology has been crucial to it. Social epistemology starts by repudiating the kind of individualistic epistemology, which, since Descartes’ Meditations and through Kant’s maxim ‘Think for yourself’, has dominated philosophy. It is a sign of the deep erasure of Wittgenstein’s ideas from many debates in analytic philosophy that neither his views against fundamental tenets of individualistic epistemology, nor his positive contribution to key themes in social epistemology are considered.
    This Element on Wittgenstein and Social Epistemology is the first comprehensive study of the implications of the later Wittgenstein’s ideas for key issues at the core of present-day social epistemology, such as the nature of common sense and its relations to common knowledge; testimony and trust; deep disagreements in connection with genealogical challenges; and the meaning of ‘woman’ and the role of self-identification in the determination of gender.

    Reply
  21. Mark McBride

    'Basic Knowledge and Conditions on Knowledge' by Mark McBride

    https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0104

    Reviewed by Robin McKenna (Social Epistemology) and Arturs Login (Dialectica), and endorsed by Chris Tucker (who disclosed himself to be a referee for the book after the fact)

    Reply
  22. Josef Stern

    Josef Stern
    j-stern@uchicago.edu

    Quotations as Pictures, by Josef Stern. MIT Press, 2022.
    https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5264/Quotations-as-Pictures
    Permanent Open Access

    In Quotations as Pictures, Josef Stern develops a semantics for quotations using explanatory notions drawn from philosophical theories of pictures. He offers the first sustained analysis of the practice of quotation proper, as opposed to mentioning. Unlike other accounts that treat quotation as mentioning, Quotations as Pictures argues that the two practices have independent histories, that they behave differently semantically, that the inverted commas employed in both mentioning and quotation are homonymous, that so-called mixed quotation is nothing but subsentential quotation, and that the major problem of quotation is to explain its dual reference or meaning—its ordinary meaning and its metalinguistic reference to the quoted phrase attributed to the quoted subject.

    Reply
  23. FRANZ-PETER GRIESMAIER

    Wlliam Newman and Jutta Schickore, Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-76398-4

    Reply
  24. Gary Ostertag

    My volume on E. E. Constance Jones in the Cambridge Elements series is available for free download until August 18:

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/e-e-constance-jones/47A2E2E151519A081C2B1131708F74A2

    Reply
  25. Nicholas Schroeder

    Nicholas Schroeder
    nicholasrschroeder@hotmail.com

    Philosophical Mysticism: A Spiritual Handbook for Mankind
    https://philarchive.org/rec/SCHPMA-15
    Open Access

    Offers a substitute for religion based entirely on philosophy and the philosophical study of mind. Worth checking out if you're looking for a new theory of mind.

    Reply

Designed with WordPress