What is philosophy?
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The huge demand for “philosophy and AI” faculty (UPDATED)
On Twitter, philosopher Brandon Warmke noted that just in the last 48 hours, six jobs were posted seeking philosophers with AI-related interests. As I wrote on Twitter, this seems to me “a foolish waste of philosophy lines, no doubt partly a result of administrators hopping on the bandwagon and pressuring departments to find warm bodies.”…
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Reichenbach on ethics
A propos this, philosopher Johannes Steizinger calls my attention to this remark of Hans Reichenbach’s in The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (p. 297): Whoever wants to study ethics, therefore, should not go to the philosopher; he should live in the community of a group where life is made vivid by competing volitions, be it the…
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A survey seeking responses from philosophers about “exploitation”
Roberto Veneziani and colleagues write: We are conducting a survey about academic philosophers’ views of (1) the effect of exploitation on subjective wellbeing, (2) how morally wrong exploitative relations are, and (3) norms around that wrongfulness, by asking you to evaluate various abstract scenarios. It takes roughly 10 minutes to complete the questions, with the…
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“What if mental disorders aren’t defects”?
Philosopher Justin Garson has a new substack, which draws on his published work on these topics.
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Canonical thought experiments and interactive “Socratic” dialogues…
…powered by AI, via philosopher Nat Hansen. I learned about it via Joshua Knobe on Twitter. If you try it out, please share your thoughts in the comments about the utility of this for teaching or other purposes.
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From the working class to academic philosophy
A quite interesting essay by philosopher Duncan Pritchard (UC Irvine); some excerpts: I grew up in what was once the industrial heartlands of England, in the Midlands city of Wolverhampton. The industry is now long gone, and in its wake there’s a lot of economic hardship. Growing up I didn’t know anyone from where we…
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Searle on P.F. Strawson
Galen Strawson kindly shared this address John Searle gave at a memorial for Peter Strawson, which includes, among other things, a charming description of tutorials with Strawson: Early on, Searle writes that while studying at Oxford in 1954-55, I attended lectures and seminars not only by Peter, but by J L Austin,Paul Grice, Isaiah Berlin,…
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What is it like to be a philosopher? Briana Toole edition
Courtesy of Clifford Sosis, as always. A really interesting trajectory into philosophy, I encourage folks to read this one. (What she says about UT Austin, although after my time, does ring true. I hope it’s better now.)
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Habermas’s destruction of the Frankfurt School, an ongoing saga
I’ve remarked on this for years (and more systematically), and although Habermas has a lot of groupies and loyalists, occasionally others do remark on this as well. This rather uneven piece by the philosopher Lorna Finlayson is the latest example. (You have to skip the first part of the essay to get to the interesting…
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“Philosophy in 3D”
Wittgenstein and Kant. Pretty weird! Has anyone tried these? Are they any good? (Thanks to Guy Elgat for the pointer.)
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Who were the invited guests at Alfred North Whitehead’s 70th birthday party in 1931?
There’s a website that answers this pressing question! It’s an interesting snapshot of philosophy and elite intellectual culture at the time. Among the guests was the logician Henry Sheffer, about whom we learn: Henry Maurice Sheffer (1882–1964) was born in Odessa, Russia (now Ukraine) later becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States (1904). He…
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The demand for “philosophy of AI” in job ads is as huge as you thought it was
Based on this analysis by philosopher Charles Lassiter, more than 20% of job ads now mention AI. This is going to result in a lot of weak appointments, given how few philosophers really have expertise in this area.
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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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What is analytic philosophy?
I came across this chart on FB, and it’s not a bad description of analytic philosophy when it existed (except, of course, the image next to Kripke is not Kripke!):
On the hiring side of things: I’m faculty at a US department in the PGR top 20 department, and there…