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My top 50 songs of 2025 according to Spotify, #4: Terry Reid, “Tinker Tailor,” 1968
Now this is definitely an obscure one, by the British rock singer who turned down the opportunity to front both Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but never had a particularly successful solo career. This is from his first album, and is probably the best number: Feel free to add links to other Terry Reid favorites.
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Anyone asserting that the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer was “legally justified”…
…literally doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That includes the guy with an M.A. in philosophy, who self-describes as a “law enforcement officer,” whose substack post several folks have sent me. There is a scenario in which, upon further investigation, it could turn out the killing was legally justified, but there is no basis for…
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Remarkable turnout in freezing weather to protest ICE in Minneapolis
Here. And the calls to abolish ICE are growing, including from the libertarian right.
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Most cited books in Anglophone philosophy of language since WWII (according to Google Scholar) (CORRECTED)
I made some judgment calls, like treating Wittgenstein’s classic work as part of “Anglophone” philosophy of language; treating books that straddle philosophy of language and mind as belonging here; and largely excluding the kind of work professional linguists do, even when it is of interest to philosophers of language. (Chomsky is a tricky case, but…
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Open access philosophy books: a thread, part III
MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 2 The last thread had 22 submissions, so I thought it’s time for a third 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…
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What can those of us outside Minnesota do to support those resisting ICE tyranny? (UPDATED)
The response by citizens in Minnesota to the ICE killing of protester Renee Good has been extraordinary (see, e.g., this account or this). The “ICE goon squad” will likely be coming to other cities the way it has besieged Minneapolis, unless it proves too costly. So are there legitimate places to contribute funds for legal…
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In Memoriam: Alan Musgrave (1940-2026)
A well-known philosopher of science, Professor Musgrave studied under Karl Popper at the LSE, and held the Chair in Philosophy at the University of Otago from 1970 until his retirement in 2011. On the Otago Department homepage there is currently a memorial notice (scroll down for it). Comments are open for remembrances from those who…
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Texas Republican Party now following the lead of the Chinese Communist Party when it comes to universities
Party stalwarts are appointed to oversee universities (in the Texas case, via a Board of Regents), and then set criteria for the approval (or disapproval) of curricula. A new example of the Texas A&M version of this approach.
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Most cited books in Anglophone epistemology since WWII (according to Google Scholar) (CORRECTED)
I list all books with at least 1,900 citations (which got the original list to twenty). In the case of Sellars’s classic “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” the book version, published by Harvard in the 1990s, has received well over 2,000 citations, but I also included the many citations to the article version as…
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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.
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2025 in review, 3rd quarter: July, August, September (moving to front from Dec. 30 for those who may have missed it)
July The SCOTUS decision on nationwide (or “universal”) injunctions Let’s remember some facts, the propaganda barrage of the Trumpistas notwithstanding The worst President in the history of the U.S. has now ruled for six months (a list of his malfeasance) Does your university/college have a faculty hiring freeze? August It did happen here The University…
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This is what authoritarianism looks like: the “siege of Minnesota”
This editorial from the centrist Minnesota newspaper is worth reading; an excerpt: Minnesota has endured unrest before. What the state is now experiencing looks and feels different. Battalions of armed federal agents are moving through neighborhoods, transit hubs, malls and parking lots and staging near churches, mosques and schools. Strangers with guns have metastasized in spaces where…
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Babies have an innate sense for numbers
Philosophers Jake Beck and Sam Clarke discuss the evidence (with reference to Plato, of course).
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Profiles in real courage: Frank and Beatrice Lumpkin
This is an inspiring read about an interracial, working class couple, united by politics and love, who spent the bulk of their activist careers in and around Chicago.
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Joe Rogan compares ICE tactics to the “Gestapo”
That’s actually important, given his influence. Given recent events, the comparison is also apt. UPDATE: Reader Chris Byron points out to me that the full Rogan clip is full of the idiocy one usually associates with him. Fortunately, what’s being widely reported is the Gestapo comment.
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“Why a U.S. attack on Iran would backfire”
This seems right, but the monster child seems headed in that direction. Curious if well-informed readers have a different view and, if so, why?
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2025 in review, 2nd quarter: April, May, June (MOVING TO FRONT FROM DEC. 29 FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT)
April OUP’s policies on providing books for review An interview in the Shanghai Review of Books Information on the European job market? Getting ChatGPT to take a stand The Trump war on universities Another journal, this time in math, abandons Wiley Suitably scathing assessment of the first two months of Trump War on the universities,…
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Texas A&M Interim President: Plato is not banned, it’s being taught (except in that one course…)
While it’s true that many a click-bait headline about the story we broke last week said the university was “banning Plato” (or similarly) one might think this reply by the Interim President does’t really come to terms with the actual academic freedom issue: I want to address recent reports that we’re banning Plato altogether at…
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APA returning to in-person divisional meetings
The APA sets out the reasons here. In brief: online meetings attracted much lower rates of submissions and participation, and many who participated in them said they would not do so again.
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The Trump threat to Canada remains
As this article notes, [W]ith Greenland, Trump and his advisers are seeking control — even raising the possibility of military action — of a territory that is democratic, strategically located in the Arctic, and part of NATO. Canada is all of those things, too. Greenland and Canada also have substantial natural resources (Canada has far more). But Greenland is a…
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Most cited Anglophone books in philosophy of law over the last century
I list all those with at least 1,500 citations (rounded to nearest 100 as usual), since numbers drop off more quickly here (philosophy of law is a lower citation field than political philosophy).
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JHP Article Prize for 2025
Philospoher Deborah Boyle, editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, kindly shared this news: The Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded its 2025 article prize to Joe Stratmann (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville) for his paper “Autonomy without Compromise: Wolff, Kant, and the Grounds of Moral Laws” (JHP 63.1…
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2025 in review, 1st quarter: January, February, March (moving to front from Dec. 26, for those who may have missed it)
January What articles in general jurisprudence form the first quarter of the 21st-century should you read? PGR in the real world, an ongoing saga The monster child’s first day with political power Should book authors consent to have generative AI train on their work? Tonight we’ll learn something about the next four years in America…
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Academic freedom in Hong Kong
As I mentioned a few weeks back, I was in Hong Kong in December for, among other things, a conference on “Academic Freedom in Asia.” There I met Professor Cora Chan, a public law scholar at Hong Kong University, who kindly sent me her bracing paper on “Scholarship in Times of Constitutional Transformation: A View…
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Graduate school admissions in the age of AI
This is going to become a very serious issue. PhD and MA admissions depend very importantly on the writing sample. What do programs do when they later come to suspect the admitted student used AI to produce the writing sample? I think all graduate programs need to adopt an absolutely draconian rule, namely, automatic expulsion…
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News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
> I’m sure many other practical philosophy teachers feel the same way, but thirty years ago I simply would not…
I was fortunate enough to be taught logic by Timothy Smiley as an undergraduate at Cambridge. His lectures were wonderfully…
My first reaction was that this was going to be a semi-popular, magazine-type article. So I first looked for the…
Hmmm… (Much to chew on.)
https://youtu.be/G29DXfcdhBg I’m sure many other practical philosophy teachers feel the same way, but thirty years ago I simply would not…
Dear Terence (if I may) We are rather wandering off-topic, but yes I stand by my relatively low estimate of…
Given your recent interests, Mark, here’s what I would read next: Charles Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge. It…