The Development of Experimental Philosophy
A recent survey of publications in experimental philosophy provides a picture of the field's growth and range. (more…)
In Defense of Boring and Derivative Philosophy (guest post)
"Even if you prefer the sexiness of radicalism or the glory of revolution: you need boring, work-a-day normal conservative philosophy." (more…)
December 12, 2022 10 19
36 Answers to "What Is the Value of Philosophy?" (updated)
Friction, a philosophy channel featuring interviews of professional philosophers, recently released a supercut of three dozen thinkers answering the question "What is the value of philosophy?" (more…)
December 2, 2022 120 13
Why the History of Philosophy Matters to Philosophy (guest post)
"Studying the history of philosophy can help us see ourselves from the outside and that can help us inhabit philosophy from the inside." (more…)
Organizing for Answers
Suppose the main aim of the enterprise of academic philosophy is to generate philosophical knowledge, and that said knowledge is mainly answers to big philosophical questions. How should the discipline be organized so as to best achieve this aim? (more…)
October 11, 2022 23 3
A New Topography of Philosophy: Analytic, Continental, and Philosophy of Science
When it comes to mapping the territory of academic philosophy, "the timeworn analytic-continental divide should be replaced with a three-way split, between analytic, continental, and philosophy of science programs." (more…)
October 3, 2022 8 8
Article Spotlight: "The End of History" by Hanno Sauer
Daily Nous is launching a new series, Article Spotlight, in which the authors of recent journal articles are invited to write brief posts here about them.
September 21, 2022 60 16
Analytic Philosophy and the Big Questions of Life
At the start of each term, Helena de Bres (Wellesley) holds "get to know you" office hours with her students. "So what made you sign up for a philosophy class?" she asks. (more…)
To Be a Department of Philosophy (guest post)
"There are many reasons to expand the story we tell about philosophy. But a main reason is just that the best, most interesting, and even the correct answers to philosophical questions that interest us might be found anywhere." (more…)
May 31, 2022 83 35
The Contingency of Philosophers' Philosophies
In an interview, Josef Mitterer is asked about how approaches to philosophy may vary by whether they provide "an escape from contingency." (more…)
April 15, 2022 8 5
"The Way Philosophy Is Personal"
Wittgenstein's early private notebooks have just been published in English, translated by Marjorie Perloff (Stanford). Towards the end of an essay about them, Kieran Setiya (MIT) draws attention to "the way philosophy is personal." (more…)
March 29, 2022 8 18
Philosophers, Concepts, and Cognitive Biases
"We found some evidence of differences in conceptual competence between philosophers and laypeople, and documented a difference in linguistic diet; but these differences did not translate into different susceptibility to even the most pertinent cognitive bias, or render philosophers' judgments appreciably more accurate." (more…)
Creativity and Pluralism in Philosophy
"Philosophy at its best is a kind of intellectual exploration, and the more methodological and stylistic constraints are placed on it, the less well it will function as such." (more…)
February 16, 2022 3 12
Which Questions Can't Philosophy Answer By Itself?
In an interview in The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia, Thomas Spiteri asks Peter Godfrey-Smith (Sydney) about "how best to make epistemic progress" answering philosophical questions about minds and consciousness. (more…)
January 20, 2022 22 9
Increased Specialization & Competent Peer Review
Is increased specialization in philosophy a problem for high-quality peer review? (more…)
December 23, 2021 10 3
Philosophy that "Tries to Get You to See Something"
At the beginning of his interviews of philosophers, Richard Marshall asks his subjects, "What made you become a philosopher?" (more…)
"Very often, corralling is not an option in philosophy"
That's philosopher Frank Jackson (ANU), in a recent interview published in The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia. (more…)
November 30, 2021 23 21
In Defense of the Details (guest post)
Are today's younger philosophers "focusing too much on detailed investigations of individual things and not enough on the big picture"? (more…)
World Philosophy Day & the Growth of Philosophy
Today is World Philosophy Day, a day designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to celebrate "the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual." (more…)
An Empirical Approach to the Analytic-Continental Divide
What's the difference between analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy? In a new paper, a pair of researchers use a computer analysis of the content of different journals to test one way the distinction is sometimes characterized. (more…)
Evidence for a Probabilistic Turn in Philosophy (guest post)
"If our data is representative of the philosophy literature, then the use of formal methods in philosophy changed starkly over the course of just a single decade." (more…)
Shaping the AI Revolution In Philosophy (guest post)
"Despite the great promise of AI, we maintain that unless philosophers theorize about and help develop philosophy-specific AI, it is likely that AI will not be as philosophically useful." (more…)
July 6, 2021 20 5
Optimism about Metaphysics (and Philosophy in General)
Is there reason to be optimistic about progress in metaphysics? Jessica Wilson (Toronto) thinks so. (more…)
June 18, 2021 13 12
Intuitive Expertise in Moral Judgments (guest post)
"People's intuitive judgments about thought experiment cases are influenced by all kinds of irrelevant factors… the issue of intuitive expertise in moral philosophy is anything but settled."
Analytic Philosophy's "Triple Failure of Confidence"
"Analytic philosophy suffers from a triple failure of confidence, especially among younger philosophers." (more…)
"Hey Sophi", or How Much Philosophy Will Computers Do?
While we have seen increased use of computing in philosophy over the past two decades, the continued development of computational sophistication and power, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies, suggest that philosophers in the near future could do more philosophy through computers, or outsource various philosophical tasks to compute..
Philosophical Quality Now and Then
"I find no good reason to think that philosophers today do philosophy better than philosophers 600 or 2000 years ago." (more…)
December 10, 2020 2 2
2020 PhilPapers Survey Begins
In 2009, the PhilPapers team—David Bourget of the University of Western Ontario and David Chalmers of New York University—conducted a survey of the views of professional philosophers in the English-speaking world. How have those views changed in the past 11 years? (more…)