“In this post, I want to encourage a conversation about active steps that we—all of us who love, teach, and write philosophy—might take to help philosophy’s future.” There are many concerns about the future of philosophy in higher education. In the following guest post, Alex Guerrero, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, puts forward two ideas he thinks are both feasible and effective about how to improve philosophy’s prospects. This is the fifth in a series of guest posts by different authors at Daily Nous this summer. (Posts in this series will remain pinned to the top of the ..read more

Sara Bernstein and Daniel Nolan, currently professors of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, will be moving to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where Bernstein will be professor and chair of philosophy, and Nolan will be professor of philosophy. Professor Bernstein works in metaphysics, particularly the metaphysics of causation and related topics in ethics and law, as well as the metaphysics of time and time travel, and the metaphysics of feminist theory. You can learn more about her work here and here. Professor Nolan works mainly in metaphysics, especially modality and inte ..read more

Phi Sigma Tau is an honor society for undergraduates in philosophy. It currently has over 230 chapters in the United States at various institutions of higher education, and is looking for faculty to serve as officers for its national leadership. – Charlie Huenemann, professor of philosophy at Utah State, is the new president of Phi Sigma Tau. He writes: So far as I know, it’s the only honor society in philosophy, and it’s been around for nearly a century (!). Its principal effects are at the level of local chapters. They host local conferences, induct new members, sponsor lectures, and so on ..read more

The international academic publishing company Taylor and Francis says “it is providing Microsoft non-exclusive access to advanced learning content and data to help improve relevance and performance of AI systems”. That “learning content and data” is your writing and research. The statement from Taylor and Francis, published in an article at The Bookseller, follows the recent circulation on social media of details about an agreement between its parent company, Informa, and Microsoft. The Bookseller reports: Informa will be paid $10m+ for “an initial data access” of the works it has t ..read more

“Dynamism is the core of liberalism. The reason why liberalism is better than its global competitors, such as authoritarianism or different forms of perfectionism, is because it harnesses disagreements and diversity and channels it into productive outcomes.” That’s Ryan Muldoon, professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo and director of its Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, describing the project “Diversity, Dynamism and Inclusion: A New Multi-Method Approach for Studying Liberalism.” The project, for which he is the principal investigator, has been awarded a $2.5 million ..read more

The British Academy has announced the selection of 86 new fellows, and several philosophers are among them. [The British Academy Building in London] They are: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University (International Fellow) David Chalmers, University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science, New York University (International Fellow) Joseph Chan, Distinguished Senior Research Fellow, Research Center for Humanities and Social Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan (International Fellow) Adrian Moore, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford; Fellow, S ..read more

What I sometimes call the “great Millian hope” is that freedom, knowledge, and happiness are positively correlated. A new study conducted by a philosopher and a psychologist provide some reasons to think that, in the college classroom at least, the hope can be realized. [“Ulysses and the Sirens” by John William Waterhouse] – In “Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education“, published yesterday at Science Advances, Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer (both at Carnegie Mellon University) report on a pair of studies they conducted about college student autonom ..read more

“As editors of one of our field’s leading journals, we feel a strong responsibility to help build collective momentum towards a better arrangement: a publishing model that no longer wastes massive amounts of public resources feeding profits to private corporations, secures editorial independence against the pressures of profit-making and makes research available to everyone, free of charge.” That’s Arash Abizadeh (McGill), writing in The Guardian about the mass editorial exodus from Philosophy and Public Affairs earlier this year. He makes clear the problems with the current dominant for ..read more

New links… Discussion welcome. AI and agency — a brief conversation between David Papineau (KCL) and Majid D. Beni (METU/ODTU Ankara) “US politics is trapped in a Schmittian vortex, where it is impossible for anyone to seek common ground without being perceived as capitulating to the side of evil” — Justin Smith-Ruiu on the “feedback looping” of political life Not everyone has an “inner voice” — and variations in inner speech have “consequences for our cognition” according to recent research “The most effective guarantee against presidential lawbreaking has been, for over 200 ..read more

Recent links… Discussion welcome. “I think what you should be looking for here is not so much a way of telling people what they should and shouldn’t get worked up about and more a way of disagreeing zealously but civilly” — Robert Goodin (ANU) is interviewed by Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) in Quillette. “I asked several of his students whether their professor had stirred up any serious controversy during the semester—all said no” — a profile at Mother Jones of Peter Singer, who taught his last course at Princeton this past Spring.  “Despite his self-assessment that he ..read more