Monthly Archives: April, 2024

Should We Continue to Read and Honor Immoral Historical Philosophers?

In 2020, the University of Edinburgh renamed what was then called Hume Tower, removing the name of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume...

LuFlot: The first philosopher-powered chatbot

Portraits by Mara Lavitt; Image courtesy of Yale University Students now have a new tool at their disposal. The Luciano Floridi Bot, also known as...

Two Principles of Academic Ethics

Some time ago, while I was advising a doctoral student regarding her search for an academic position, she showed me her graduate school transcript....

APA announces new AI2050 Prizes

The American Philosophical Association (APA) is pleased to announce the establishment of the APA AI2050 Prizes, supported by Schmidt Sciences. The APA AI2050 Prizes...

An Alternative to Argumentation: Persuasion via Questions

In my last post, I introduced Julia Galef’s way of thinking about motivated reasoning, what she calls soldier mindset: people take ideas personally, and...

Philosophical Mastery and Conceptual Competence

I roughly sort pedagogical issues into two broad categories: engagement and mastery. By “engagement” I mean roughly discussion and reflection on teaching methods that...

The Power of Pan-Africanism: A Dialogue with Dr. LaRose Parris

Dr. LaRose T. Parris, originally from Jamaica in the West Indies, and shaped by the diverse cultural landscape of New York City, is Associate...

The Supreme Court’s Symbolic Code of Conduct

Two things seem true about modern professional life. One, most professional activities nowadays (legal ones, anyway) are backed by a code of conduct—roughly, a set...

Epistemic Refusal as a Form of Indigenous* Resistance and Respect

“Refusal is simultaneously a negation of access to information and resources, as well as an affirmation of sovereignties.” Rachel Flowers I am an Indigenous philosopher, and...

Dusty Slay and Zhuangzi’s Three in the Morning

Comedian Dusty Slay tells a story about trying to purchase some DVDs at a flea market. The DVDs are cheap: three for five dollars....

History of American Philosophy, Robin M. Muller

The origin story for this course is a bit unusual. State law in California requires students in the California State University system to engage...

How to Practice Embodied Pedagogy

When preparing my poster for the AAPT/APA conference in New York in January 2024, I had to consider not only what topics would interest...

Engineering and Embodiment

Ideas about technological knowledge (in contrast to technical knowledge and to scientific knowledge) in philosophy of technology provide a powerful lens through which to...

Why Arguments (Almost) Never Work: Motivated Reasoning And Persuasion

Were I writing this essay a year or two ago, I’d have started it this way: When disagreements arise, the first impulse for many...

Philosophy Club Vox: Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, Astana

Somewhere almost in the middle of the Eurasian continent, on the wuthering planes of Central Kazakhstan, in Astana, our university arose just 13 years...