Monthly Archives: May, 2026

The Police Can Lie to You

The police can either lie to Jane or they can be honest with her. If the police lie to Jane, it is probable that...

Killing Cleanly: The Ethical Illusion of Humane Execution

I’m going to start with an admission; I oppose the death penalty. There are several reasons for this. First, I consider it barbaric. Second,...

Creation as Cosmic Revelation: AI and the Purpose of Human Existence

In this series on Philosophy and Technology, I have returned repeatedly to a question that refuses resolution: what is the purpose of human existence,...

Words Without Knowledge: Augustine and the Use of Language in the Age of LLMs

In 2022, when Blake Lemoine shared his experience with LaMDA 2, he took the AI's responses seriously and claimed that artificial intelligence (AI) consciousness...

Race, Risk, and the VBAC Calculator: The Politics of Race Correction in Childbirth

I started noticing a pattern. Every Black woman I know who has given birth in the past decade delivered by cesarean. Some of those...

Who Controls the Future? On Capitalism, Democracy, and Social Alienation

Who controls the future? The answer to this question concerns the role and politics of financial investment under capitalism. Through its mode of investment,...

Atmospheres of Parenthood

Anyone who has visited the home of parents with a newborn baby can recognize from the outset a specific kind of atmosphere that seems...

2022 Central Division Dewey Lecture: The Question Is How to Live

Below is the audio recording of Allan Gibbard’s John Dewey Lecture, “The Question Is How to Live,” given at the 2022 Central Division Meeting....

Unironically Good? Hegel, Irony, and Nicolas Cage

When we think about irony, what comes to mind is often something like Socratic or dramatic irony. The first describes instances in which a...

APA Member Interview, Elena Comay del Junco

Elena Comay del Junco is Assistant Professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the history of philosophy, primarily Ancient...

The Ethics of Refugee Protection

Around 42.5 million refugees worldwide have been forced to flee their own states and are unable to return because of severe threats to their...

Survey and Community Conversation about APA Online Programming

As announced earlier this year, the APA’s three divisions collectively decided to suspend the  2+1 experiment, returning to hosting only in-person divisional meetings beginning...

A New Three Volume Edition of Leibniz’s Philosophical Papers (1677–1686)

For a philosopher whose ideas have rippled across logic, metaphysics, mathematics, and beyond, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz remains surprisingly under-translated. Descartes has his Cambridge edition;...

Why Casting Isn’t Coming Out: Heated Rivalry and Sexual Orientation

The actors in Heated Rivalry don’t leave much to the imagination. While many viewers tuned in for the steamier shower, penthouse, or cabin scenes,...

Protesting For Our Humanity

Every Sunday for two years, from October 2023 to October 2025, protesters gathered in the center of Melbourne, Australia, to march against Israel’s war...