A few months ago during a discussion here about the demand for philosophers, the importance of philosophers in high-level administrative roles came up. – Here’s the relevant bit: One thing we should do is encourage universities and colleges to better promote the distinctive value of philosophy and the study of the liberal arts more broadly. But how do we get universities to take up the mission of sending that message? What you need are people in positions of power who care about sending that message. That’s us… And so it would serve philosophy well if more philosophers took up admin ..read more

Sandrine Bèrges, professor of philosophy at Bilkent University, has been awarded one of eight “Global Professorships” by the British Academy. The British Academy’s Global Professorships are “large investigator-led awards to attract internationally recognised established scholars to work in the United Kingdom, to undertake new, coherent and cutting-edge research projects.” For her Global Professorship, from September 2024 through August 2028, Professor Bèrges will be in the Department of Philosophy at the University of York. Her project is “Finding Diversity in Enlightenment’s Philosophy’s Att ..read more

The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford closed earlier this week. The FHI was an interdisciplinary research group founded in 2005 by philosopher Nick Bostrom, who served as its director for its entire existence. He will now be leaving Oxford. The closure of the FHI appears to be the result of decisions by Oxford’s Faculty of Philosophy. A statement on the FHI website says: Over time FHI faced increasing administrative headwinds within the Faculty of Philosophy (the Institute’s organizational home).  A “final report” on the FHI by Anders Sandberg provides a litt ..read more

Appropriately enough, Luciano Floridi (Yale), known for his work in the philosophy of information and technology, may be the first philosopher with a… well, what should we call this thing? It’s an AI chatbot trained on his works that can then answer questions about what he says in them, but also can extrapolate somewhat to offer suggestions as to what he might think about topics not covered in those works. “AI chatbot” doesn’t quite capture the connection it has to the person whose thoughts it is trained on, though. Its creator gave it the name “LuFlot.” But we need a name for the kind of thi ..read more

Robert M. Adams, Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Yale University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has died. Professor Adams was very well-known for his work in philosophy of religion, ethics, metaphysics, and the history of modern philosophy. He is the author of What is, and What is in Itself: A Systematic Ontology (2022), A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (2006), Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (1999), Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist ..read more

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced the winners of its latest round of grants. Several philosophy faculty are among them. The philosophers and their projects include: Emann Allebban (Providence College) Women, Philosophy, and the Islamic WorldResearch and writing leading to an article about the intellectual contributions of Sitt al-‘Ajam Bint al-Nafis, a female Islamic philosopher in 13th-century Baghdad. ($6,000 / Summer Stipends) Audrey Anton (Western Kentucky University) Aristotle’s ViceResearch and revising two book chapters on Aristotle’s (384–322 BCE) ethical ..read more

Kate Manne is interviewed by Céline Leboeuf. Why Philosophy? Kate Manne interviewed by Celine Leboeuf What is philosophy to you? I’m going to take a slight liberty with this question of interpreting it not as a definitional or constitutive one, about what I take philosophy to be. (I despair of giving even a loose characterization of what counts as philosophy, let alone necessary and sufficient conditions—for both substantive and political reasons crystallized by the philosopher Kristie Dotson.) Instead, I’ll say something about what philosophy means to me, and why it has b ..read more

A new website features autobiographical essays by philosophers who were first-generation college students. Launched today, First Generation Philosophers already has contributions from Helen De Cruz (Saint Louis University), Kevin Harrelson (Ball State), Christine Korsgaard (Harvard), Graham Priest (CUNY), and John Tasioulas (Oxford). Here’s a passage from one of them: I was good at academics, but I did not come from that part of the social world in which college is considered inevitable. It was a real decision whether to go, and I decided that I did not want to. My picture of college was ..read more

Recent links… Discussion welcome. “Metaphysics begins with the distinction between appearance and reality, between seems and is, and the play constantly plays with this distinction” — Brad Skow (MIT) on the philosophy in Hamlet Beliefs aim at the truth, you say? — the New Yorker covers work by philosophers and others in an article about the complications of misinformation “Philosophical theories are very much like ‘pictures’ or ‘stories’ and… philosophical debates often come down to ‘temperamental differences’” — Peter West (Northeastern U. London) on the metaphilosophy of Mar ..read more

Joseph H. Shieber, professor of philosophy at Lafayette College, has died. Professor Shieber worked in epistemology, especially the epistemology of testimony and social epistemology, as well as in philosophy of language and the history of philosophy. He is the author of Testimony: A Philosophical Introduction, among other works. You can learn more about his writings here and here. Professor Shieber joined the Department of Philosophy at Lafayette College in 2003. Prior to that, he taught at Connecticut College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Brown University, where h ..read more