Philosophy in the News
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Apparently Anthony Appiah has not read Carnap (or Thomas Nagel’s “The Last Word”)
Two editors at CHE have interviewed four of the authors of the “Boghossian Report” (including the NYU philosophers Paul Boghossian and Anthony Appiah). Professor Boghossian says in the interview, “We say how we are taking the term ‘relativism’ to mean the very narrow view that epistemic values are always relative to nonepistemic values, to moral…
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The Lukács archive and research center re-opens in Budapest…
…now that the authoritarian Orban is gone. (My own view is that no one did more philosophical damage to Marxism in the 20th-century than Lukács, but there should obviously be a Lukács archive in the city that was his home for so long.) (Thanks to J.P. Loo for the pointer.)
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Philosopher Daniel Greco is training AI systems to replace him
He explains at CHE. An excerpt: [O]ne of my main takeaways from gig work [for AI companies] over the last few months is just how hard it is to catch the most sophisticated frontier LLMs in philosophical blunders. When ChatGPT first emerged, a common pastime among my philosopher friends was posting screenshots on social media of its…
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The “Boghossian Report” on the state of scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences (UPDATED)
The full report is here, and there is a collection of choice excerpts here. Readers of Professor Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge* will recognize themes from that book in the report. (Of course, it has to be open to scholars to defend relativism and constructivism, especially since relativism and constructivism in some domains are probably true!)…
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“Growing market demand for ontologists”
A software engineer comments.
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CUNY Graduate Center’s Saul Kripke Center now hosting “Analytic Salons”…
…to bring philosophy to the public. Readers in NYC may want to check it out.
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More on the persecution of Professor Mesyats and colleagues by the Russian government
A propos this earlier report, philosopher Elizaveta Shcherbakova at the Humboldt University in Berlin has now kindly shared this very detailed account of what is happening. Please take a few minutes to learn more about this case. I will post updates about any initiatives that the international community can take on behalf of these victims…
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Open access philosophy books, a thread: Part IV (moving to front from May 20)
The last thread had fewer entries than earlier ones, but several months have past, perhaps readers can supply some new links. The 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…
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Russian Aristotle scholar Svetlana Mesiats put under house arrest (UPDATED)
From Oxford historian Georgy Kantor on Twitter: The best Russian expert (and genuinely important scholar) on Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, Svetlana Mesiats, has been put under house arrest in the investigation of ‘fraudulent translations of Aristotle’. https://iphras.ru/messiats.htm He explains: About 10 people been called for interrogation, there are searches in the Institute of Philosophy building.…
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“Virtual Dissertation Groups”
Philosopher Joshua Smart writes: Virtual Dissertation Groups (VDG) will be running again this June – August. The VDG sign-up form is open for this summer’s groups through Saturday, June 6th. What it is: Virtual Dissertation Groups is a free service for those currently working on their doctoral dissertations in philosophy departments (or philosophy of science or…
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Nottingham faculty protesting proposed bloodbath
A philosopher at the University of Nottingham calls my attention to this: He summarizes the situation as follows: – the removal of just over 600 FTE posts, if necessary through compulsory redundancy in January 2027 (that’s around 50% of academics in arts). – local union (UoNUCU) has declared a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) starting on the…
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Habermas and the Israeli mass killings in Gaza
As is well-known, Habermas and others issued a statement of “solidarity” with Israel about a month after the October 7 atrocities by Hamas. This was, no doubt, borne of his long efforts to resist any attempts to whitewash the Nazi atrocities, which brought the state of Israel into being. And a month after the October…
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No more Marx or Spinoza in the secondary school philosophy curriculum in Italy…
…but students will read Gentile, the philosopher of fascism.
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that