January 2026
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2026 Schock Prize in “Logic and Philosophy” goes to Bas van Fraassen.
Announcement here. Certainly an appropriate choice! Past winners include Quine, Putnam, Kripke, Rawls, Thomas Nagel, David Kaplan, Michael Dummett, and others. For those who may have missed it, here was a fascinating discussion on this blog of some of van Fraassen’s ideas, with comments from Sober, Dupre, Maudlin, Skyrms, Wallace, Woodward, Hazen, and others.
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Canada PM Carney, speaking to the ruling class at Davos, speaks the truth…
…which politicians almost never do. It’s fair to say he has risen to the occasion! Some excerpts: It’s a pleasure — and a duty — to be with you at this turning point for Canada and the world. I’ll speak today about the rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the…
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Most cited books of Anglophone (analytic) political philosophy over the last hundred years, according to Google Scholar (CORRECTED)
I list only those books with at least 4,000 citations.
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What to do about the sycophancy of large language models?
I don’t use them a lot, but I had noticed this tendency even for rather mundane queries.
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The 25th Amendment will not save the US (or the world)
Mark Graber, a leading public law scholar at the University of Maryland, posted this on Facebook (his response to a Newsweek inquiry that he did not expect to be published in full) and kindly gave permission for me to share it here. It seems to me exactly right. There are both political and legal problems…
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I’m falling behind on email…
…and will probably not be able to respond to everyone. It’s a very busy quarter for me, with a lot of new preparation (for both my seminar and my Jurisprudence II course). My apologies to those who do not get replies. I still welcome, of course, emails with information and/or links.
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Henry Clarke to be the new OUP Philosophy editor based in Oxford
Clarke took his PhD in philosophy at University College London. I’ve enjoyed working with him on Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law in the past, and wish him success in his new role. He can be reached at henry-dot-clarke-at-oup-dot-com.
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The *real* reason Texas A&M did not want that bit of Plato taught
At last the truth comes out about the A&M academic freedom scandal; a scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy elsewhere writes: If you have given much thought to Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium, you can see why Texas wanted to step in to remove it from the curriculum. 1) It reinforces the oppressive gender…
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Evangelical Christian organization, World Relief, condemns Trump persecution of refugees in Minnesota
Let’s hope the monster child loses the support of evangelicals: This weekend, federal immigration agents detained dozens of lawfully present refugees in Minnesota, including children. The agents, some dressed in plain clothes, lured refugees out of their homes where they were transported to holding facilities and then, in many cases, out of the state. Individuals who have followed every rule and submitted their Green Card applications, as allowed and required one year after their resettlement, are now detained and fear being returned to situations of persecution. World Relief categorically condemns the aggressive tactics ICE agents…
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2025 in review, 4th quarter: October, November, December (moving to front from Dec. 31 for those who may have missed it)
October On dreading the AI future Journals that publish symposia on recent books? Still more on the authoritarianism unfolding daily Williamson “the bullet-biter” The U.S. “Insurrection Act” is our “Enabling Act” “Bloodless pedantry“ H1-B visas and the $100,000 fee: the latest November What is the University of Chicago’s “Committee on Social Thought”? Most cited living…
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Texas launches portal for the public to lodge complaints against colleges
This should do wonders for the already fragile state of academic freedom in this benighted state. (Thanks to Jason Stanley for the pointer.)
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Profiles in real courage: Franca Viola
She defied Sicilian custom, and refused to marry her rapist, instead taking him to court, changing both Italian mores and law.
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My top 50 songs of 2025 according to Spotify, #3: Foghat, “She’s Gone,” 1973
Foghat, which came out of the British blues rock band Savoy Brown, is best-remembered for mid-70s “classic” rock standards like “Fool for the City” and “Slow Ride,” but this song from their second album was always my favorite. Here’s the studio version: And here’s a live version, where “Lonesome” Dave Peverett is having some trouble…
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We’re just two weeks into 2026, and already the monster child and his minions…
That’s just in two weeks. God knows what horrors are coming.
I never met Alan, sadly, but his work leading the charge in making philosophy of sex “a thing” in contemporary…