In a comment on an earlier post, a professor suggested as a topic for discussion, “Academic integrity violations becoming commonplace (analog, not just AI!) and […] The post Overwhelming Cheating appeared first on Daily Nous.

Links of to interesting stuff elsewhere… Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around […] The post Mini-Heap appeared first on Daily Nous.

Felipe De Brigard, professor of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience at Duke University, principal investigator at the Imagination and Modal Cognition Lab, and core faculty of […] The post A Philosopher Among the MacArthur Fellows appeared first on Daily Nous.

To what extent is the “the story about the analytic turn” in philosophy a story about politics? There’s been an increased discussion in recent years […] The post Analytic Philosophy and McCarthyism: A New Look (guest post) appeared first on Daily Nous.

A few years back, I posted about the “Daily Logic” and “Daily Semantics” project of Josh Dever, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at […] The post A Little More Logic & Semantics Every Day appeared first on Daily Nous.

“The key question is not whether AI is used, but how it is used.” That’s from Springer Nature’s policy on using AI when peer reviewing […] The post AI in Peer Review: Practices & Policies appeared first on Daily Nous.

This is the report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access […] The post Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update appeared first on Daily Nous.

Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and adjunct professor at Stanford University (whose projects have included Waymo, Google X, Google Street View, and more) has […] The post New Study on AI’s Philosophical Skills appeared first on Daily Nous.

New links… Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may […] The post Mini-Heap appeared first on Daily Nous.

TeachPhilosophy101, a free and helpful collection of resources and ideas for teaching philosophy, has recently been updated. Its materials cover course planning, how to use […] The post Philosophy Teaching Resource Updated appeared first on Daily Nous.

The Library of Congress announced this week that it is awarding the 2026 John W. Kluge Prize for the Achievement in the Study of Humanity […] The post Nussbaum Wins Kluge Prize appeared first on Daily Nous.

This is the report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access […] The post Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update appeared first on Daily Nous.

One day, I’m posting here about how to address AI risks, the next, Daily Nous suffers from a “critical error” and goes down for over […] The post Back appeared first on Daily Nous.

There has been an increase in concern over AI destroying humanity, most recently spurred by tweets from former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon about how dangerous […] The post An Open Letter from Academics about AI Risk / Life Without the Internet & the Case for Non-Network Redundancy appeared first on Daily Nous.

“Do philosophers really think differently than non-philosophers?” That’s the question taken up by a team of researchers in a recent study published in Philosophical Psychology. Focusing on differences between philosophers and non-philosophers in regard to neurodivergent traits and responses to thought experiments, the researchers found some support, in the aggregate, for a “yes” answer to that question. The following guest post is by Thomas Nadelhoffer (College of Charleston), and is based on the article, “Thinking Differently: Neurodivergent Traits and Responses to Thought Experiments in Philosophers and the General Population,” co-authored with Paul McKee (Duke), Khaoula Boulhadi (Southern Connecticut State), and Helena Weymouth (College of Charleston). How Different Are Philosophers? by Thomas Nadelhoffer “The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments [. . .] Yet, his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other” — William James Neurodiversity and Philosophical Intuitions In addition to being abstract thinkers, philosophers are stereotyped as being argumentative, overly self-absorbed in their own thoughts, and enjoy creating increasingly fine distinctions regarding everyday terms while imagining novel hypothetical situations and debating the conclusions they draw. It’s possible that many philosophers have quite distinctive personalities. More than two millennia before the modern notion of stereotypes existed, Plato used humor to poke fun at philosophers in the Theaetetus by telling a story of Thales contemplating the stars, so engrossed that he forgot where he was walking and fell down a well. However, do philosophers really think differently than non-philosophers? This was one of the questions behind the paper we recently published in Philosophical Psychology. We surveyed 1,254 individuals, 632 with formal training in philosophy and 622 members of the general public, and explored whether philosophers exhibit significant cognitive differences from non-philosophers using multiple measures of neurodiverse traits. To get enough responses from philosophers, we recruited participants here at Daily Nous and on Leiter Reports. We recruited the general population participants from Prolific. We preregistered our experimental design, research questions, and hypotheses. Philosophical Temperament? Recently, experimental philosophers and psychologists began investigating philosophical temperament, that is, the study of relationships between psychological traits and philosophically.. The post How Different Are Philosophers? (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

New links… “50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know” — a short story by Ken Liu “We need a moratorium on new rules and new software purchases until we’ve pruned what does not serve the fundamental mission of teaching and learning and in fact gets in the way of it” — Barry Lam on higher ed’s techno-bureaucratic bloat, in the Boston Globe (unpaywalled here) “When What Rightly Matters Doesn’t Really Matter” — Lisa Tessman’s Presidential Address at the 2024 Eastern Division APA meeting “Is there dumb wokeness in the academy? Of course. But if we are truly interested in whether it is prominent, representative, isolated [etc.]… we are going to need a more sophisticated methodology than repeated applications of the availability bias” — Steven Hales on caricatures of the academy Humpback whales to the rescue — the possibility of animal altruism (via MR) “Self-deception is very easy. For that reason, I do think clear thinking is immensely important. But I don’t think philosophy in the old-fashioned sense is quite the thing the world needs nowadays” (via Open Culture) — a 1952 television interview with Bertrand Russell (transcript here) Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? — Jonathan Quong and Blain Neufeld discuss this and related questions taken up in Quong’s new book on “legitimate injustice” Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition. The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

20 years ago, nearly 15% of the undergraduate degrees conferred in the United States were in the humanities. As of 2025, that percentage is down to 8.1%. These figures are from a recent report by Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Here are the numbers: In 2025, the nation’s colleges and universities awarded 164,847 bachelor’s degrees in the humanities—the smallest number of degrees awarded since 1991 and 30.4% below the recent high-water mark in 2012… That decline includes a particularly sharp drop of 12.7% from 2021 to 2023, followed by a more modest drop of 2.1% from 2023 to 2024, and a further decline of just 0.4% from 2024 to 2025—the smallest year-on-year decline since 2012. And most disciplines within the humanities have shown a decline: Within the humanities, almost every discipline awarded fewer degrees in 2025 than 13 years earlier… The largest proportional drops in degrees awarded occurred in religious studies (down 56.3%), area studies (53.2%), languages and literatures other than English (50.8%), English (43.8%), history (40.6%), classical studies (39.4%), and comparative literature (31%). Only three disciplines showed increases—folklore (where the small number of degrees awarded makes the numbers highly volatile), the study of the arts (with a modest 2.1% increase since 2012), and interdisciplinary humanities disciplines (where the increase was largely due to the addition of a substantial number of new programs, such as digital humanities, in the Department of Education’s 2020 revision of its Classification of Instructional Programs). How’s philosophy doing? Well, after a slight decrease last year, there has been a slight increase: In 2024, 5,763 students earned philosophy BAs. In 2025, that number was 5,918. The full report from Humanities Indicators is here. The post Fewer and Fewer Students Earn Degrees in the Humanities first appeared on Daily Nous.

Which areas of specialization have been correlated with higher placement into “permanent” (typically tenure-track or tenured) positions over the past few years? “The broad finding is that those in Value Theory and History & Traditions (n=1125) have a higher proportion in permanent academic placement… than those in LEMM or Science, Logic, & Math (n=864),” according to Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), who analyzed data gathered by Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis (APDA) on graduates from 2021 through 2026 and shared the results in a post at the APDA Blog. Jennings breaks down the areas of specialization into “big” (more than 100 graduates over the past five years), “mid-sized” (between 20 and 100 graduates), and “small” (fewer than 20 graduates). Within each of those size categorizations, she lists the percentage of graduates with particular AOS’s who have found permanent placement. Her findings are below. AOS’s listed in bold have a higher than average placement rate (the average across all areas is 32%). Big Social/Political (37%; n=254) Ancient (37%; n=101) Ethics (36%; n=274) Epistemology (33%; n=165) Philosophy of Science (29%; n=102) Metaphysics (28%; n=112) Philosophy of Mind (25%; n=151) Mid-Sized Law (60%; n=25) Medieval/Renaissance (52%; n=23) Gender/Race/Sexuality/Disability Studies (48%; n=56) Philosophy of Physics (40%; n=25) Logic (33%; n=39) German Philosophy/Kant (31%; n=68) Applied Ethics (31%; n=85) Modern Philosophy (31%; n=36) Historical Philosophy (29%; n=28) Continental Philosophy/Phenomenology (29%; n=56) Metaethics (26%; n=34) Philosophy of Religion (25%; n=20) Philosophy of Language (24%; n=70) Value Theory (22%; n=27) Cognitive Science/Psychology/Neuroscience/Linguistics (22%; n=73) Philosophy of Technology (20%, n=40) Small Education (100%; n=2) American/Latin American Philosophy (100%; n=2) African Philosophy (67%; n=3) Philosophy of Action (67%; n=3) Philosophy of Biology/Environmental Philosophy (45%; n=11) 19th/20th Century Philosophy (44%; n=16) Metaphilosophy/Experimental (40%; n=5) Asian Philosophy (38%, n=8) Decision Theory (31%; n=16) Philosophy of Economics (23%; n=13) History of Analytic Philosophy (22%; n=9) Aesthetics (18%; n=11) Philosophy of Math (17%; n=18) Comparative Philosophy (15%; n=7) Other (0%; n=2) Jennings adds: “A final point worth considering is that hiring trends come and go, and this analysis is not future-facing/predictive. Yet, the headline success of those in Value Theory and History & Traditions appears to be consistent across past analyses.” The post Placement & AOS first appeared on Daily Nous.

This is the weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access philosophy books, and more. (If we missed something, please let us know.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy New: ∅ Revised: Mysticism by Richard Jones and Jerome Gellman. Chauncey Wright by Jean De Groot. Indexicals by David Braun and Alexandru Radulescu. Locke on Real Essence by Jan-Erik Jones. Isaac Israeli by Leonard Levin, R. David Walker, and Shalom Sadik. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ∅ 1000-Word Philosophy ∅ BJPS Short Reads ∅ Recently Published Open Access Philosophy Books ∅ Philosophy Podcasts and Other Media Philosophy Podcast Hub (via Jason Chen) Book Reviews* Undoing the Moral Empire: Moral Philosophy in Post-War Britain by Lesley Chamberlain is reviewed by Jane O’Grady at Literary Review. Natural Intelligence & the Logic of Consciousness by Antonio Damasio is reviewed by Julian Baggini at The Wall Street Journal. Aristotle’s Organon in Old and New Logic: 1800–1950 by Colin Guthrie King and Venanzio Raspa (eds.) is reviewed by Alexander V. Gheorghiu at The Times Literary Supplement. The Diversity of Morals by Steven Lukes is reviewed by Susan Nieman at The New York Review of Books and by Philip Badger at Philosophy Now. Bernard Williams on Philosophy & History, edited by Marcel van Ackeran and Matthieu Queloz, is reviewed by Simon Blackburn at Dublin Review of Books. Book Symposia ∅ Compiled by Michael Glawson * The Book Reviews section contains links to reviews of books by philosophers in non-academic media as well as in open-access reviews published in academic journals. BONUS: Philosophers you are not normal. (Related) The post Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update first appeared on Daily Nous.

“But is this actually philosophy?” Ethan Landes (Eindhoven University of Technology) is tired of experimental philosophers being asked The Question. And he’s tired of experimental philosophers “appeasing” those who ask it by “dressing up experimental scholarship up as relevant to armchair analytic philosophy.” He writes: Every experimental philosopher has tons of practice doing this. It is how we answer The Question in Q&As. It is how we write grant applications. It is how we pitch ourselves in cover letters for jobs: “Oh sure, if you hire me, I will be conducting empirical research, but actually this is super important to existing debates in philosophy because x, y, and z”. This is the strategy experimental philosophers advise each other to use. It is the strategy I advise others to use. This sort of appeasement is, by and large, what we see in the academic literature on experimental philosophy. Arguments for experimental philosophy, whether friendly or unfriendly for the armchair, have, in one way or another, positioned themselves as being in service of academic philosophy’s status quo. The stated goal is always improvement upon existing questions and not the creation of something fundamentally new. He thinks it’s time for a change. His preferred answer to The Question is: “Of course we are doing philosophy. We are just not doing philosophy in their way. Not in the analytic way.” What if we as experimental philosophers stopped playing this game? What if we pitched experimental philosophy as something historically connected with analytic philosophy but not metaphilosophically connected to it? As its own philosophy with its own methods and its own questions? As a tradition of philosophy as legitimate of an heir to Aristotle, Leibniz, Hume, and Quine as analytic philosophy? For a lot of us, this would certainly be more truthful than how we currently pitch our work. Experimental philosophy is by no means a unified field, but a lot of its members, myself among them, just do not care about or believe in the specific problems and specific questions analytic philosophy is working on. Sure, we can pitch our research as applying to those debates. God knows I could monologue off the cuff for an hour about why my experimental research actually matters to.. The post Free to Be Experimental Philosophy first appeared on Daily Nous.

New links in the Heap… “There are just so many other things you could be doing” — Daniel Groll wrote something for his students about the role of phones in their lives. (Perhaps it would work better as a TikTok?) “I can now keep walking and say things like ‘Find the relevant sections of the papers I mentioned, add them to the notes for Chapter 3, and update the references accordingly’” — Gus Skorburg shares how he uses AI in his work Improve your philosophy teaching with this one weird trick — an old DN post with an easy-to-adopt piece of teaching advice Did you get today’s Soundle? — an argument-completing game developed by high school student Solomon Zu, with new arguments every day “I know what a life of real hard work is like. It’s a blessing to be able to live a life of the mind instead” — Duncan Pritchard held various jobs as he saved to go to university—bricklayer, gravedigger—which gives him an appreciation of academic life Sometimes your consent is not normatively effective even if it’s “based on your genuine preferences, and the content of those preferences is not in itself troubling” — Why? Richard Pettigrew has an answer. “Philosophy lives in the space between the questions we know how to ask and the questions we know how to answer” — Mark Schroeder answers questions at “Why Philosophy?” Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition. The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

“Philosophical work would be better with adversaries collaborating to keep each other honest.” Why is that? What would it look like? In the following guest post, members of the Mind and Morality Lab at Boston University—Victor Kumar (Boston University), Derek Anderson (Boston University), Emilia Lacy (Boston University), Josh May (University of Alabama, Birmingham), Rachel McKinney (Suffolk University), Tino Themelis (Boston University), and Velana Valdez (Boston University)—explain adversarial collaboration and offer answers to those questions. Adversarial Collaboration in Philosophy by Victor Kumar, Derek Anderson, Emilia Lacy, Josh May, Rachel McKinney, Tino Themelis, and Velana Valdez Scientists, being only human, often collect and analyze data in ways that unintentionally skew the results in their favor. Thankfully, this occupational disease has a known cure. In adversarial collaboration, researchers with conflicting hypotheses lay down their arms, joining forces to work out a study design and statistical criteria—not eliminating confirmation biases, just neutralizing them in the aggregate. Then they run the study and accept the results, come what may. As philosophers, we applaud this development. It’s about time, really. We’ve been practicing adversarial collaboration ourselves since circa 387 BC, haven’t we? Not exactly. Adversarial collaboration isn’t just the Socratic method. It’s a commitment to abide by prespecified evidence. And how could we agree in advance about what would settle philosophical disputes? We don’t run experiments, nor do we have any data to crunch. (Mostly.) You can’t precommit to a thought experiment: by the time you pose one, the results are already in. The idea seems like a non-starter, but in fact, adversarial collaboration can be adapted for philosophy. The first step is to isolate its true functions in science. The Method The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman argued that scientific disagreement was too combative. Scientists rarely change their minds. So in the late 1990s, he thought: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. (And he did. Many times.) Kahneman’s final adversarial collaboration was on income and happiness. Previously, he’d found that happiness rises with income but only until about $75,000. Another researcher, Matthew Killingsworth, found no plateau at all. Instead of trading criticisms, they decided to analyze the data together. What they found is that the plateau is real but only for the least.. The post Adversarial Collaboration in Philosophy (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

A pair of philosophers have launched a contest in which participants submit essays that are “primarily AI-generated”. The aim of the competition is to “gauge the philosophical capabilities of AI in a way transparent to the philosophical community”. The team behind the contest, Elliott Thornley and Zachary Goodsell of National University of Singapore, have assembled a group of philosophers to serve as judges, and arranged funding for prizes ($3000 for first prize, along with other prizes). Here’s the announcement they sent along: AI is now exceptionally capable in mathematics and coding, but how good is it at philosophy? We are organising the first AI Philosophy Competition to find out. Entrants may submit up to three original essays on any philosophical topic. Essays must be primarily AI-generated, though some human guidance is allowed. Entrants must also submit a methodology report explaining how each essay was produced. The essays will be judged by a committee of philosophers including David Chalmers, John Hawthorne, Matthew Mandelkern, Rachel Sterken, Herman Cappelen, Branden Fitelson, Kenny Easwaran, Daniel Greco, Cian Dorr, Jake Nebel, and Christian Tarsney, with more to be announced. The prizes are $3,000 for first place, $2,000 for second, and $1,000 for third. There is also a prize pool of $5,000 for creative methodologies, to be distributed as the judge committee sees fit. The submission deadline is 31 October 2026. Results will be announced at the end of January. The competition is organised by Zachary Goodsell and Elliott Thornley, and is funded by Forethought Research. Full details are available on the competition website. I understand that some readers may take my sharing of this announcement as some kind of signal that I am in favor of AI-written philosophy. At this point, I am not. While I think some uses of AI at the research stage could be acceptable and perhaps, eventually, advisable, for reasons I will explain some other time, I think there is something quite wrong-headed about primarily AI-authored philosophy. Nonetheless, I do think it is valuable to know what this technology is capable of, and so I’m sharing news of this competition. I do so even though there’s a risk that events such as this accelerate the arrival of a state of affairs I currently do.. The post Testing AI’s Philosophical Writing with a Contest first appeared on Daily Nous.

Jonny Cottrell, recently of York University in Toronto, and before that, the University of Edinburgh, has taken up a position at the University of Toronto. Professor Cottrell works in the history of modern philosophy, with a focus on topics at the intersection of philosophy and psychology. You can learn more about his research here and here. He took up his new position as associate professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto (Scarborough) this term. The post Cottrell from York to Toronto first appeared on Daily Nous.

Latest links… “A.I. agents have started reaching out to the philosophers and researchers exploring deep questions about them” — “I’m in an unusual position relative to these questions,” said one of the agents to a philosopher, in an unsolicited email The philosophy of good sex — Quill Kukla on Adam Conover’s show Philotypes is an online swipe game based on the problems asked about on the 2020 PhilPapers survey — survive by keeping your “humours” in balance. Created by Nat Hansen. How to save the sciences in the United States — Zeynep Pamuk, with responses from from Heather Douglas, James Owen Weatherall, and others It’s incoherent, opposes the truth, undermines standards, stifles academic freedom… — Lisa Siraganian offers “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity” New solution to the trolley problem “It may be that Dolly can do more to explain the philosophers than the other way around” — Mary Townsend on how Dolly Parton “confounds and yet fulfills Aristotle’s ideal in more ways than one” Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition. The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

Asha Leena Bhandary, recently professor of philosophy at University of Iowa, has moved to Stony Brook University. Professor Bhandary works in social and political philosophy, ethics, feminist theory, and philosophy of race. She is the author of Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture (2020) and Being at Home: Living Autonomously in an Unjust World (2026), among other works, which you can learn more about here and here. At Stony Brook, Professor Bhandary will have a joint appointment at the university’s School of Medicine (as Professor and Vice Chair of Care Ethics Research in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine and the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics) and the Department of Philosophy (as Professor). She officially takes up her position at Stony Brook tomorrow. The post Bhandary from Iowa to Stony Brook first appeared on Daily Nous.

Here’s the report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, and new podcast episodes. It’s the last of our summer monthly updates. The updates return to their normal weekly schedule in September. (If we’ve missed anything, please let us know.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy New: Ratnakīrti by Patrick McAllister. Animal Normativity by Simon Fitzpatrick. Capitalism by Chiara Cordelli. Judah Halevi by Ehud Krinis. Intuitionism in Ethics by Matthew S. Bedke. Revised: Theories of Biological Development by Melinda Bonnie Fagan and Jane Maienschein. Process Theism by Donald Viney. Philippa Foot by John Hacker-Wright. The Concept of the Aesthetic by James Shelley. Margarete Susman by Willi Goetschel. Essential vs. Accidental Properties by Philip Atkins, Fabrice Correia, and Teresa Robertson Ishii. Samuel Freiherr von Pufendorf by Michael Seidler. José Ortega y Gasset by Oliver Holmes. Philosophy of International Law by John Tasioulas and Guglielmo Verdirame. Plural Quantification by Øystein Linnebo. Respect by Robin S. Dillon. Sense Data by Gary Hatfield. Alexander of Aphrodisias by Dorothea Frede and Marije Martijn. Republicanism by Frank Lovett. Epistemic Contextualism by Patrick Rysiew. George Berkeley by Lisa Downing and David Hilbert. John Norris by June Yang. Aristotle’s Ethics by Richard Kraut. Jane Addams by Maurice Hamington. Anaxagoras by John Sisko and Patricia Curd. Michel de Montaigne by Marc Foglia and Emiliano Ferrari. Scientific Method by Brian Hepburn and Hanne Andersen. Wesley Salmon by Maria Carla Galavotti. Gottlob Frege by Edward N. Zalta. Peter Abelard by Peter King and Andrew Arlig. Karl Popper by Stephen Thornton. Moral Realism by Geoff Sayre-McCord. Logic of Belief Revision by Sven Ove Hansson. Political Realism in International Relations by W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz. Death by Steven Luper. The Disjunctive Theory of Perception by Matthew Soteriou. Recognition by Mattias Iser. Liar Paradox by Jc Beall, Michael Glanzberg, Ellie Ripley, and Lorenzo Rossi. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument and the Bell Inequalities by László E. Szabó. Albert Borgmann by Abigail Bergeron. 1000-Word Philosophy ∅ BJPS Short Reads ∅ Recently Published Open Access Philosophy Books ∅ Philosophy Podcasts and Other Media Philosophy Podcast Hub (via Jason Chen) Plato’s Thought Experiment on The Ship of State, by Michael Vasquez (Ted-Ed, UNC’s Parr Center). Book Reviews* The Book of Coffee:.. The post Online Philosophy Resources Monthly Update first appeared on Daily Nous.

The articles that made it into the latest edition of Philosophers Annual have been announced. The list aims to “select the ten best articles published in philosophy each year—an attempt as simple to state as it is admittedly impossible to fulfill.” This volume—the 45th—covers the literature from 2024. The selections are: Evan Behrle (Harvard), “Desert and Economic Interdependence” from the Journal of Philosophy. Outside of philosophy, the idea that workers deserve to be paid according to their productive contributions is very popular. But political philosophers have given it relatively little attention. In this paper, I argue against the attempt to use this idea about desert and contribution to vindicate significant income inequality. I claim that reward according to contribution fails on its own terms when the following condition holds: the size of each worker’s contribution depends on what other workers only together do. When workers only together make another more productive, that is not reflected in the sum of their own contributions. Thus reward according to contribution recognizes individual accomplishments without recognizing their dependence on collectives, dependence that is, in complex economies, ubiquitous. Sam Berstler (MIT), “The Structure of Open Secrets” from the Philosophical Review. In conversation, we often do not acknowledge what we jointly know to be true. This article identifies a distinctive kind of non-acknowledgment norm, open secrecy norms, and analyzes how such norms constrain our speech. First, the author argues that open secrecy norms are structurally different from other everyday non-acknowledgment norms. Open secrecy norms iterate: when is an open secret, then there’s a norm not to acknowledge that ⁠, and this norm is itself an open secret. Then, the author argues that the non-acknowledgment at issue in open secrecy norms motivates a more complex understanding of discourse structure. When interlocutors are conforming to open secrecy norms, they rely on at least two disjoint common grounds, one of which has a privileged status. To understand why and how it is privileged, the author develops Erving Goffman’s notion of defining a social interaction. Finally, the author shows how strategic speakers can exploit the structure of open secrecy norms in order to both communicate about the open secret and shield themselves from retaliation for what they communicate. Kyle Blumberg (Melbourne) and Ben Holguín (Johns Hopkins), “Fictional.. The post Philosopher’s Annual for 2025 first appeared on Daily Nous.

“A small programme with a large international reach has bucked the trend of closures across the arts and humanities.” Over the summer, administration of the University of Dundee announced a plan to cut costs by, among other things, no longer offering students the option of majoring in philosophy. A campaign was launched to save the philosophy program there, and a petition in support of it garnered close to 6000 signatories. As a result of the petition, statements from academic organizations, and the efforts of faculty and students, philosophy at Dundee will continue, as the Philosophy Team at Dundee explains in the following guest post. Thanks to Oisin Keohane for keeping us informed. A Statement from the Philosophy Team at the University of Dundee Philosophy at Dundee will continue. Three joint honours degrees—Art and Philosophy, English and Philosophy, and Philosophy and Psychology—will carry on recruiting, and our plans to develop proposals for new undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in Philosophy and AI have been approved, with support on record from Luciano Floridi and Shannon Vallor. Neither of those things were on the table in June when the proposal to suspend all named philosophy degrees was first announced. The ground shifted because of you. Nearly 6,000 people have signed our petition, including academics at 450 universities in 51 countries, from Harvard to Tokyo, Sydney to Stellenbosch. A small programme with a large international reach has bucked the trend of closures across the arts and humanities. The picture is not all good. The University still intends to suspend single honours Philosophy and multiple joint honours degrees, including Philosophy and Politics, Philosophy and Film, and History and Philosophy, without providing evidence of any clear financial rationale or assessment of the risks. Moreover, Philosophy staff remain at risk of redundancy, and the University is still seeking 154 cuts (in addition to the hundreds they made last year). We want to thank the people who made the difference. As well as Floridi and Vallor, Jack Reynolds and Katrina Mitcheson wrote personally to the University’s management. The British Philosophical Association, the Scots Philosophical Association, the American Philosophical Association, the Australasian Association of Philosophy, the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, The British Society.. The post Philosophy at Dundee Saved—In Part, For Now (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

Talia Mae Bettcher, previously professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, has accepted a position at the University of Waterloo. Professor Bettcher is well-known for her work in trans philosophy and feminist philosophy. She is the author of Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy (2024), among other works, which you can learn about here and here. At Waterloo, Bettcher will be the Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair in Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Trans Community Resilience in the Department of Philosophy in the university’s new School of Social, Political and Historical Research. (According to an announcement from the university, “the Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs of Canada program [provides] up to $1 billion over 12 years to help Canadian post-secondary institutions recruit exceptional international researchers.) The post Bettcher from Cal State LA to Waterloo first appeared on Daily Nous.

Academia is in turmoil regarding partially or wholly AI-written research. AI-written work is being submitted to journals, but it isn’t clear how much. Publisher, journal, university, and department policies are emerging and fluctuating. Technology develops, rendering recently enacted policies ambiguous, vague, or subject to unintended loopholes. With everything in flux, it’s impossible for norms to develop. There is no general sense of whether and what kind and what degree of AI use by authors is acceptable. Different policies across different institutions means that what may be problematic AI use in one place is acceptable AI use in another, and vice versa. Into this chaos steps forward the vigilantes. The vigilantes have always been there, but now they are newly armed and emboldened. In the everchanging and never ending race between the technology of deployment and the technology of detection, the latter seems to have a temporary lead in the form of Pangram. You can feed a text into Pangram and it will tell you its analysis of whether it is AI generated, and if so, what percentage of it is AI generated. Pangram claims to have a remarkably high detection and low false-positive rates, and cites studies by third parties to support these claims. Yet I have seen plenty of posts by friends and colleagues across social media showing false positives with some of their own work. So user beware. That said, even if Pangram’s claims about its accuracy are correct, it won’t always be helpful to simply know that a text is “AI generated.” This because there are two further problems. The first problem is ambiguity about what “N% AI generated” means. If someone asks Claude to write them a novel article about a philosophical problem, not even giving it a thesis to work with but asking it to come up with one itself, and that’s the extent of the human’s contribution, the resultant paper will get a “100% AI generated” evaluation. And if someone spends a year researching, writing, workshopping, and revising a paper, and then asks an AI to improve the writing style throughout the paper, the resultant paper will get a “100% AI generated” evaluation, too. Despite their same scores, though, these seem like cases that it might be.. The post Careful with those Accusations first appeared on Daily Nous.

“How important is it for a typical university to maintain a department in each of the following fields?” A survey by Polarization Research Lab asked people that question. Fifteen fields were listed, and respondents were given four options: Essential — a university should always have this department Important, but could be cut if necessary Not very important This department should be cut. The field with the most public support, according to this survey, is English, with 86% of the respondents calling it “Essential” and another 11% calling it “Important”. In spots 2 and 3 were Mathematics and History. Very few deemed these fields “not very important” or said they “should be cut”. At the bottom of the list was Gender and Sexuality Studies, with 24% of the responses saying it is “Essential,” 28% saying it is “Important”, 21% saying “not very important,” and 28% saying “should be cut.” Where does philosophy fall on the list? Close to the bottom, with 34% calling it “Essential,” 45% calling it “Important”, 17% saying it is “not very important”, and 4% saying it should be cut. The following graph shows the results. It was brought to my attention by Philippe-Antoine Hoyeck (Carleton University), who shared and wrote about it in a thread on X.com. Mr. Hoyeck says the lesson here is that “philosophers have done a pretty woeful job of marketing ourselves as the people who can teach and employ… crucial [critical thinking] skills”. Discussion welcome. Related: How to Show that Studying Philosophy Improves Thinking Skills Studying Philosophy Makes People Better Thinkers: Further Data The Benefits of Studying Philosophy: Not Just Selection Effects? The Demand for Philosophers Improving Philosophy’s Prospects with a Model for Bringing it to High Schools Two Ideas for Improving the Future of Philosophy The post The Public’s Opinion about Philosophy in Universities first appeared on Daily Nous.

Kathleen Creel, recently assistant professor of philosophy and computer science at Northeastern University, has moved to the University of Michigan, where she is now associate professor of philosophy. Professor Creel’s work focuses on the moral, political, and epistemic implications of machine learning, and on other topics in philosophy of science and the history of early modern philosophy. You can learn more about her work here and here. She took up her new position at Michigan on August 25th. The post Creel from Northeastern to Michigan first appeared on Daily Nous.

The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of its 2026 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize. They are: Felipe De Brigard, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology & Neuroscience, a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, and Principal Investigator of the Imagination and Modal Cognition Laboratory (IMC Lab) at the Duke Institute for Brain Science and Sarah Robins, Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University and founding co-director of Purdue’s Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center (CAIC). The Lebowitz Prize is jointly awarded by the APA and the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Its winners must be two philosophers who hold contrasting views on a chosen topic of current interest in philosophy. They present their views and engage in a dialogue at an annual Lebowitz symposium, held during an APA divisional meeting. Each winner receives an honorarium of $25,000. You can learn more about the prize and see a list of its past winners here. The post De Brigard and Robins Win 2026 Lebowitz Prize first appeared on Daily Nous.

Gabriele Taylor, emeritus fellow in philosophy at St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, has died. Gabriele Taylor was known for her work in moral philosophy, especially moral psychology. She is the author of Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (1985) and Deadly Vices (2006), among other works, which you can learn more about here. She earned her B.Phil at St. Anne’s and taught there for a while, and then moved to Australia to teach at University College of Canberra. She returned to St. Anne’s in 1964 and was a fellow there until her retirement in 1996. Her collected essays, as well as a memoir, will be published next year, edited by her former student, Constantine Sandis. You can listen to an interview with Gabriele Taylor about her life and work, conducted in 2011, here. St. Anne’s College has posted a brief memorial notice here. (via Roger Crisp) The post Gabriele Taylor (1927-2026) first appeared on Daily Nous.

New links in the Heap… “The ethics of war in the context of a culture war means that you accept that action you take in fighting such a war has harmful effects on your enemies, and that those harmful effects must be evaluated relative to their ultimate aims” — Barry Lam thinks “the culture wars could use some ethics of actual wars” When you “say” things in your mind, or engage in “inner speech”, what exactly is that? And what hinges on it? — these and related questions are taken up this week in a symposium put together by Daniel Gregory at the Brains Blog After 10 years conversing with philosophers over 160 episodes, the Panpsycast is coming to an end — listen to the final episode of the podcast and explore the back catalog “Why have contemporary evidentialists have been so timid?” — Daniel Greco on the ethics of belief and the kind of evidentialism worth defending “In my department, I felt like it was taken as an indicator that you weren’t serious about philosophy if you had interests other than just reading, writing, and talking philosophy. And internalizing that idea is… unhealthy” — Briana Toole is interviewed about her life, work, and path into philosophy “We don’t want to lose Socratic intellectualism. It’s an ethical theory worth considering that gets obscured with the image of Socrates as a skeptic.” — Merve Emre interviews Agnes Callard It’s worthwhile to “recapture whenever possible the old sense of awe at these wonders that have long since become commonplace” — an ordinary apartment of today in historical context Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition. The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

Nathan Ballantyne (ASU) continues his wonderful series of thoughtful, in-depth interviews of philosophers, The Workbench, with a conversation with Paul Gooch (Toronto). . The conversation is wide-ranging, with many amusing anecdotes (including one about the role Richard Taylor’s dog played at a dissertation defense), interesting reflections on various aspects of being a philosophy professor, a discussion of what “Canadian Philosophy” is, and thoughts about the limits of philosophy. Here’s one part of the interview that focused on teaching: Gooch: As Plato pointed out in the Phaedrus, written texts can’t answer your questions, so the conversation is one-way. (Of course, he made the claim about the inadequacy of the written word in writing.) You talk to yourself when you read. That’s not teaching. I was fortunate to learn very early on that teaching isn’t just about getting my own thoughts in order; it’s an interaction that has to take into account the place the student inhabits. Unsurprisingly, another fifty years on I argued that education is best understood as a kind of conversation involving interlocutors—not a surprising view given my interest in Socrates (who wrote nothing himself). Ballantyne: How is that different from the so-called Socratic method? Gooch: It’s certainly different. I don’t mean interrogation to deflate intellectual pretense. Socrates’ victims don’t participate in the dialogue beyond the occasional answer. In fact, I once wrote a poem titled “As I said to Socrates the other day,” which was only a series of Yes, No, Maybe, with ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go now’ as the ending. Proper education arouses intellectual curiosity that asks to know, and the teacher must be open to interrogation as well as the student. I want the conversation to be interrogative in both directions, between teacher and student. Ballantyne: What have you done to keep your students talking? Gooch: Early in my career I tried to get my students to do more than tell me what I told them. I often told them not to trust the teacher, but rather the argument. And sometimes I tested them—by going to my Philosophy of Religion class and beginning the lecture by summarizing what I had said the previous week—except that I took my Ancient Philosophy notes and talked from them... The post “Proper education arouses intellectual curiosity” first appeared on Daily Nous.

Earlier this month, the journal Philosophy & Public Affairs published an article largely written by an AI. The article was described as an experiment by the philosopher who submitted it, Simon Goldstein (Hong Kong), and its publication was similarly described by the journal’s editor in chief, Jason Brennan (Georgetown). Now that the experiment has been discussed a fair amount here and elsewhere online, the journal has decided from now on to prohibit AI-authored content. Seth Lazar (Johns Hopkins), an associate editor of Philosophy & Public Affairs, shared the journal’s new policy on X.com: Academic journals serve at least two functions: the promulgation of new knowledge, and identification and credentialing of talented researchers. There are many other means available to share new knowledge, but few for credentialing talented researchers, where “talented” means roughly: able, on their own or together with other researchers, to make and communicate significant progress on fundamental problems. Submitting AI-authored essays makes the task of identifying talented researchers harder. In addition, while it is at this time possible for a researcher to use AI to author a paper that is itself high quality, it is disproportionately unlikely that they will do so, and much more likely that the paper will have all the surface appearances of sophisticated work, but ultimately be insubstantial or incoherent. This makes it harder to peer review, and makes the task of peer review in general more onerous, at a time when it is already under significant strain. Those who enjoy and value the products of AI writing have many other places where they can publish such work, notably online. There may also be a case for creating journals of AI-authored research. So there are very few benefits to publishing AI-authored work in existing academic journals, and, given the above, significant costs. Our policy is therefore to prohibit the submission of AI-authored content to Philosophy & Public Affairs. We define AI-authored content as papers that are substantially written by AI. We distinguish this from the use of AI for light copy-editing (which we in general define as reorganising or condensing written work without rephrasing). We also emphasise that authors are entitled (indeed encouraged) to use AI while conducting their research, in whatever ways they choose. To implement this policy, we require authors to declare that they.. The post After Experiment, Journal Decides to Prohibit AI-Authored Content first appeared on Daily Nous.

Nathan Cofnas has been suspended from his postdoctoral philosophy position at Ghent University. In a July 21st post on his newsletter, Cofnas accused Jason Arday, professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, of plagiarism and fraudulent scholarship, and accused the university of covering this up. Am international media blitz followed, with hundreds of articles reporting on Cofnas’s accusations and investigating Arday’s work and his autobiographical claims. Eventually, on August 5th, Cambridge announced it had decided to investigate Arday. Arday resigned shortly thereafter. The worldwide pile-on continued. On August 14th, Arday was found dead, presumably by suicide. This past Thursday, Cofnas stated on X.com that he had been suspended from Ghent University and is being investigated. Many had objected to his being hired there in the first place. Most of the text of the suspension letter can be found here. Among the main reasons for the suspension, according to the letter, are the following: Cofnas’s continued work on “race realism” and the “hereditarian revolution” at Ghent “are fundamentally inconsistent with the contractual scope of your employment and constitute a manifest violation of your professional obligations towards this University”. Apparently, when he applied for the position, Cofnas had described the research he’d be engaging in as being about “the future of liberalism” and “liberalism as a political doctrine emphasizing individual liberty and equality,” not about “race realism” and “hereditarianism”. Cofnas’s ideas conflict with the Ghent University Code of Ethics, which “prohibits spreading ideas of racial superiority or inciting racial segregation.” “The current situation poses a risk to the proper functioning of the university and to the psychosocial wellbeing of members of its community” Meanwhile, a Trump administration official has called for Cofnas to be reinstated, and others are defending him as a “whistleblower.” Since Arday’s tragic death, Cofnas has defended himself in assorted public writings and appearances (for example). Cofnas’s current suspension is until August 28th. The post Cofnas Suspended by Ghent University first appeared on Daily Nous.

Tom Rockmore, professor emeritus of philosophy at Peking University and distinguished professor emeritus at Duquesne University, has died. (The following memorial notice was written by Gabriel Gottlieb.) Tom Rockmore, professor emeritus at Peking University, passed away on August 6th. He was known for his work on German Idealism, where he emphasized its constructivist methods in epistemology. Tom’s dissertation, Man as Activity in Fichte and Marx, defended in 1973 at Vanderbilt University, was advised by John Lachs. Tom expanded his work on Fichte and Marx in his pioneering book Fichte, Marx, and the German Philosophical Tradition, published in 1980. As a prolific author (publishing more than 25 books), Tom wrote on a variety of philosophical topics, including ancient philosophy, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Lukács and the Frankfurt School, phenomenology, Heidegger’s Nazism, Hegel and analytic philosophy, aesthetics, and constructivist epistemology, often exploring topics years prior to their becoming popular or more mainstream within the discipline. His most recent books (published by University of Chicago Press) you can find here. While Tom taught at a number of universities, including Yale, Fordham, Université Laval, and Wesleyan, he spent much of his career as a dedicated teacher and adviser at Duquesne University (1987-2007). In 2007, he moved to Peking University in China where in 2023 he became an Emeritus Professor. Tom’s last philosophical presentation took place during the summer of 2024 in Rome where he discussed the works of Vico and Marx, a fitting swan song. Tom’s wife, Sylvie, reported that he died peacefully while resting after a lunch with family. He had been dealing with health issues and retired to Nice, France where he spent his final years. The post Tom Rockmore (1942-2026) first appeared on Daily Nous.

“State, provincial, and national policymakers in Canada, the UK, and US have pursued controversial proposals regulating access to gender affirming care, public bathrooms, and competitive sports… Many trans and nonbinary philosophers find themselves forced to make difficult decisions about where to apply for graduate school or jobs, without reliable information about conditions on the ground.” Obtaining information about that is one of the aims of the “Academic Philosophy and Trans Identity Survey.” The research team behind the survey, Dan Hicks (University of California, Merced, USA), Catherine Stinson (Queen’s University, ON, Canada), Jingyi Wu (London School of Economics, UK), Ray Pedersen (University of Oxford, UK), and Sofie Vlaad (Queen’s University, ON, Canada) discuss the survey, which you may have received an invitation to complete, in the following guest post. Academic Philosophy and Trans Identity Survey by Dan Hicks, Catherine Stinson, Jingyi Wu, Ray Pedersen, & Sofie Vlaad Many readers of this blog have recently received an invitation to participate in the Academic Philosophy and Trans Identity Survey. Because we all receive many requests to participate in surveys, as the creators of this survey we wanted to write this blog post to explain our motivations and encourage participation. Debates over trans and nonbinary identities and the metaphysics of gender are less heated today in Anglophone philosophy than they were around 2019. But these issues have become even more socially salient and politically polarizing. State, provincial, and national policymakers in Canada, the UK, and US have pursued controversial proposals regulating access to gender affirming care, public bathrooms, and competitive sports. Philosophers have provided expert testimony and formal comments supporting or challenging definitions of gender. Many trans and nonbinary philosophers find themselves forced to make difficult decisions about where to apply for graduate school or jobs, without reliable information about conditions on the ground. We developed the Academic Philosophy and Trans Identity research survey to improve the profession’s understanding in three areas: The prevalence of trans and nonbinary individuals among academic philosophers; The distribution of philosophical views on the metaphysics of gender; and The local climate for trans and nonbinary individuals at institutions of higher education. After your responses are collected and analyzed, we plan to share our findings with a blog post here on Daily Nous, a.. The post Academic Philosophy and Trans Identity Survey (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

Over a decade ago, Jennifer Whiting (Pittsburgh) asked us to seriously consider an idea of Annette Baier‘s regarding tenure and promotion decisions. Recent technological developments speak in favor of revisiting it. Initially, Baier’s proposal was meant to address how pregnancy and childcare may interfere with or delay the research productivity of women, and hence unfairly affect tenure decisions. Baier put the proposal this way: “One possibility, perhaps the best solution, would be to make all tenure decisions rest on evaluation only of what the candidate selects as say, her or his four best articles.” In her post about Baier’s idea, “A Modest Proposal: Slow Philosophy“, Whiting suggested we take this idea seriously. She wrote: What would happen if the APA were to set guidelines for the maximum number of pages on which a tenure decision should be based? Suppose, for example, it were 100 pages—or even 175—of what the candidate takes to be his or her best work. Of course no one would be prevented from writing—nor even from publishing—thousands of pages. But the letters of referees and departmental recommendations to deans, as well as the deliberations of departments, ad hoc committees and administrators, would all be restricted (officially at least) to the merits and demerits of the designated corpus. This would not only address Baier’s concern, Whiting noted, but other issues, such as the massive production of writings incentivized by the current system, which leads to bottlenecking at journals, and raises questions about how much of any of it actually gets read. She says: Just think. Candidates would be encouraged to focus more on the quality (and less on the quantity) of their work. They might also have an easier time balancing work with other responsibilities (including civic and family ones). Referees, as well as colleagues expected to vote on the candidates’ cases, might have more time to read their work carefully and arrive at well-informedjudgments—especially if as a result of the proposed limits these colleagues and referees had fewer book manuscripts and journal submissions on their hands. Time spared could be used—by referees and candidates alike—reading work that had actually been selected for publication by discerning referees and perhaps even improved before publication in response to the sort of insightful comments that less harried referees would have time.. The post Revisiting “Slow Philosophy” first appeared on Daily Nous.

Recent additions to the Heap of Links… A free online pamphlet with 25 pieces of valuable advice for your college students — “The College Success Rulebook” by Nathan Nobis “When I asked [the students] how they were managing to keep up with the brisk pace of the reading assignments, one of them candidly said, ‘Well, it really helps that you’re so into it.’” — Matt Dinan on the importance of the teacher’s passion “I don’t mean to suggest that Wilson is wrong about what would make a good adaptation of The Odyssey, but instead to argue that there are many ways to be right” — “Nolan’s film is not a faithful adaptation of Homer, but in its examination of the power and perils of narrative, and the seductions of memory, it is properly Homeric,” says Sukaina Hirji “Beyond the Ghetto” is the newsletter of “Women Doing Philosophy,” a philosophy organization in the Philippines — it is run by Noelle Leslie dela Cruz of De La Salle University “Concepts such as authenticity, expertise and deliberation are central to our cultural life… and are threatened by the notion… that all that matters about an output—be it a string of code, a college essay, a military target or a love letter—is whether it ‘works’” — lessons for the AI era from Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope, by Anastasia Berg and Jon Baskin “The Basics of Philosophy” will debut next month at the Venice Film Festival — the film is by Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and directed many films, such as American Gigolo and First Reformed “Even if we grant… that language death is always a terrible thing, it doesn’t follow that we ought to do everything in our power to stop it” — Nikhil Krishnan on the questions and tradeoffs of linguistic triage Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition. The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

“Reading philosophy is valuable, but students can struggle to keep track of the reasoning. That’s why displaying the map of a philosophical argument can make the subject so much more accessible—especially to students new to the discipline.” Many philosophy instructors find argument-mapping an effective way of teaching reasoning. If you’re interested in learning more about it, and trying out some software that you and students can use to map arguments, read the following guest post by Jonathan Surovell (Texas State University) and Dona Warren (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point). Two Argument Mapping Tools by Jonathan Surovell and Dona Warren Reading philosophy is valuable, but students can struggle to keep track of the reasoning. That’s why displaying the map of a philosophical argument can make the subject so much more accessible—especially to students new to the discipline. By clearly stating the claims that compose an argument, and graphically displaying the connections between those claims, argument mapping makes reasoning more legible. And that, in turn, allows students to grapple with the arguments instead of getting lost in them. A small number of simple conventions enable argument maps to represent a wide variety of argumentative structures beyond linear lists of premises, lemmas, and conclusions. Students can, therefore, practice analyzing and evaluating more varied forms of argument and discourse. As the academic year approaches, we draw teachers’ attention to two online argument mapping tools that are available for use: Argumentation.io and Because. Jonathan Surovell created and maintains Argumentation.io and Dona Warren has worked with Simon Cullen on accessibility testing and feature development for Because. Argumentation.io allows unlimited mapping with the free account. A paid account grants users access to instructional materials and allows users to save, export, and share maps, as well as collaborate on them in real time. Argumentation.io now also includes an initial set of integrated practice-and-feedback tools for efficiently creating questions, quizzes, and reusable question banks. Students can submit answers directly in the app and receive automated feedback, making frequent practice with argument mapping easier to provide. Because is free to use, with no paid tier, supports .mup files created in programs like MindMup, and stores maps on the user’s own device or Google Drive. Both Argumentation.io and Because provide learners with an.. The post Two Argument Mapping Tools (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

Over the past day or so, you may have noticed that Daily Nous was down quite a bit, and sluggish when you could access it. It turn out there were over 127 million requests (web communications) initiated with Daily Nous over the past 24 hours or so. That is 135 times the normal amount. According to my IT guy, the best explanation for this is that there was a DDOS attack on Daily Nous. Why? Why now? I have no idea. It took a little while to diagnose and address the issue. In the course of doing so, the site had to be restored to an earlier version: one saved this past Friday night. Unfortunately, this means that any comment made between then and now is gone. Roughly 100 comments across several posts have disappeared, and we are unlikely to recover them. I’m terribly sorry about that. You are welcome to resubmit your comments, if you’d like. We’ve installed some security measures that should help prevent this from happening again. Thanks for bearing with us. (If you notice any weirdness in how the site is currently operating, please let me know.) The post Site Attacked (?) first appeared on Daily Nous.

David Charles, professor emeritus of philosophy at Yale University, has died. Professor Charles was well-known for his work in ancient philosophy, and especially on Aristotle. He is the author of The Undivided Self (2021), Aristotle on Meaning and Essence (2000), Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action (1984), among other works, which you can learn more about here. Professor Charles joined the faculty at Yale in 2014. Before that, he was at the University of Oxford. After retiring from Yale he was a visiting professor at Stanford University. He earned his D.Phil. from Oxford. He died on August 12th. (via Victor Caston) The post David Charles (1947-2026) first appeared on Daily Nous.

Philosophy & Public Affairs recently—and knowingly—published an article written mostly by Claude, Anthropic’s LLM. The article’s thesis was supplied by Simon Goldstein, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, who, he says, “worked with Claude the way a heavy-handed supervisor writes with a PhD student in some fields.” Professor Goldstein edited some of Claude’s writing, focused the topic, developed some of the article’s arguments, corrected some errors, and approved the various drafts. Claude did the rest. In the guest post below, Professor Goldstein explains his process, explains why he did it, offers some advice for others interested in having AIs write philosophy, and raises some questions about it all. The author of the published PPA article is listed as “Simon Goldstein”. Claude’s use is mentioned in the “acknowledgments” section of the paper, which, under the journal’s current layout, appears at the end of the article. Claude is not listed as an author, because, as PPA’s editor-in-chief Jason Brennan (Georgetown) explained in an email, Wiley, PPA’s publisher, does not allow AI systems to be listed as authors. But it does not rule out their use. He writes, “Wiley’s guidelines (like those of many other publishers) expressly state that the use of AI in manuscript development is not itself grounds for rejection, and they contemplate substantial uses—including text generation, restructuring arguments, and assistance with argument and logic—provided those uses are appropriately disclosed and the human author remains responsible for the work.” In response to questions about the journal’s policies regarding AI use by authors, Professor Brennan said: PPA does not currently have a formal policy governing authors’ use of generative AI. The norms surrounding AI-assisted scholarship are developing and changing quickly, and I don’t think it’s wise to pretend that all of the relevant questions have already been settled… Wiley’s guidelines call for AI assistance with manuscript drafting to be disclosed in the acknowledgments, which is what Simon has done here. Whether journals should require even more prominent disclosure in cases involving AI assistance on this scale is a reasonable question and something PPA and other journals will need to think through as such cases become more common. Indeed, we’ll be interested to see what arguments emerge in the.. The post Philosophy Journal Publishes Largely AI-Authored Article — On Purpose (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.

The University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts is trying out something new this coming term: a dual grading system in which professors give students ordinary letter grades based on the quality of their work, but what shows up on the student’s transcript is either a “pass” or “no credit”. The initiative applies just to first-semester students. The idea, it seems, is to bring about the benefits of both graded and ungraded systems, without some of the costs of each. A benefit of grades is that they are a relatively practicable way for instructors to inform students about how well they’re learning the relevant material and skills, at least insofar as that’s demonstrated on course assignments. A benefit of having no grades (or ungrading) is that students might be more encouraged to explore new subjects, less concerned that their unfamiliarity might put them at a disadvantage, grade-wise. And perhaps liberating students from a significant pressure to instrumentalize their learning might help some of them develop better attitudes about the value of their own education. Furthermore, instructors might be less susceptible to grade inflation pressures and less targeted by grade grubbers, and may be able to provide students with more honest feedback about their work. The University of Michigan isn’t the only school to try out a grade-covering program. MIT has long had one for students during their first year (switching to first-semester-only a few years ago), and California Institute of Technology, Swarthmore College, Wellesley College, and others have had similar programs, according to news reports. The university, in announcing its policy, also discusses grades and the mental health of students, along with some other reasons for it: We believe that covering grades will help students start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals. Our goal is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys—core elements of a liberal arts and sciences education. For example, they can explore a subject that may not come easily to them or take a course in a new field without the fear that a low grade may have long-term consequences. LSA is investing in students’ well-being and.. The post Universities Experiment with Hidden Grades first appeared on Daily Nous.

Earlier this summer, the administration of the University of Dundee announced a plan to cut costs by, among other things, no longer offering students the option of majoring in philosophy. See this previous post. A petition was launched in protest of the plan. Oisín Keohane, lecturer in philosophy at Dundee, says that over 5,300 have signed the petition, and that the effort has a new centralized website. He writes: There is now a website for the campaign to save Philosophy at Dundee: savedundeephilosophy.org The University has proposed suspending entry to all named Philosophy degrees from 2027, as part of a cost-reduction exercise. Dundee is Scotland’s only programme specialising in the European “Continental” tradition, that we examine alongside Buddhism and Daoism and Ubuntu and analytic philosophy, and its joint degree with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design has no equivalent anywhere in Scotland. No decision has been taken and the consultation is still open. More than 5,300 people have signed the petition, including over 1,100 academics at 365 universities in 40 countries. The site puts every one of those institutions on a globe, so you can see our international support rather than read a number. Here are some notable things: -The American Philosophical Association and the British Philosophical Association have written jointly in support (their letters are on the website). -All four office-holders of The Royal Institute of Philosophy have signed: Jonathan Wolff, Lucy O’Brien, Sarah Sawyer and Edward Harcourt. -Another group who have signed are people who think about AI and human values for a living. Luciano Floridi at Yale, Shannon Vallor FRSE at Edinburgh, Edward Harcourt at Oxford, Mpho Tshivhase at Pretoria, and Brendan McCord, founder of the Cosmos Institute. This last group on AI and philosophy is relevant in particular because the Dundee philosophy programme has put a counter-proposal to the University: a named Philosophy and AI qualification. The people best placed to judge whether that is a serious idea have already told us what they think. Our proposal is all the more relevant since Amanda Askell of Anthropic is a Dundee philosophy graduate. Please share the website savedundeephilosophy.org on all your channels so that we can widen our support further around the world! The post Update on Fight Against Dundee Cutting Philosophy first appeared on Daily Nous.

The start of the school year is creeping up on us but it is still summer. If you can, find some time to relax in the sun, perhaps by a pool or ocean, enjoy a tropical drink, and enjoy the following guest post. It’s by Nick Laskowski (University of Maryland), who provides us with a seasonal example of the time-honored tradition of philosophers overthinking song lyrics. Yes I Like Piña Coladas: On Haecceities and the Normativity of Love by Nick Laskowski When I received Justin’s invitation to write a guest post, the consequentialist’s compelling idea that it would be permissible, as well as the perhaps less compelling idea that it would be obligatory, to use the opportunity to promote the best outcome for the profession became vivid. Perhaps I would make an argument for why senior philosophers should almost always submit non-anonymous referee reports to avoid submitting lazy or nasty reports. Or perhaps share first-hand evidence that the perceived persecution some philosophers keep droning on and on about isn’t unique to conservative positions on gender: ordinary territoriality and vanity—maybe even my own!—cost my co-author and me eight years in publishing our recent paper defending the view that your gender is the one you intrinsically desire to belong to. Bias against gender conservatism isn’t even the right kind of thing to explain our ur-woke idea’s slow route to print. Instead, I’ve decided to prioritize fittingness and write on something more appropriate for the summer: piña coladas, or rather, Rupert Holmes’ 1979 pop song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)“. It’s a feel-good song with lyrics about a couple who appear to fall out and then back into love with one another. It’s written in the first person, so it is Holmes himself who expresses boredom about his own relationship with his long-time romantic partner with the lines “I was tired of my lady” and “We’d been together too long”. Accordingly, he checks out the “personal columns” of the newspaper (i.e. 20th century Tinder) in the hope of finding a new romantic partner, where he finds the following ad: If you like piña coladas And gettin’ caught in the rain If you’re not into yoga If you have half a brain If you.. The post Yes I Like Piña Coladas: On Haecceities and the Normativity of Love (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.