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Undergraduate demand for philosophy at Harvard
A nice profile of the Department’s successful undergraduate program; an excerpt: Since the 2005-2006 academic year, the number of Arts and Humanities concentrators of all kinds at Harvard has decreased by 12.6 percent overall, according to data from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and some of the biggest concentrations have shrunk by more…
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“Danielle Allen is wrong about Trump”
An understatement. One wonders what planet she is on!
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How Trump will try to steal the midterm elections on or right after election day
We’ve noted some alarming scenarios that take place long after election day by which the criminal-in-chief might try to steal the election. My worry is that he will move much sooner: with fake allegations of fraud and “foreign meddling” (the only meddling is domestic, of course, and emanting from the White House), Trump will send…
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World University Rankings: peeking a bit behind the curtain
Clarivate, which does the reputational surveys for the USNews.com global university rankings, reveals something that neither the QS (“Quirky Silliness”) or THE rankings reveal: the geographic distribution of evaluators: here. There are only about 3,400 respondents, of whom 665 are in the United States and 618 in China: so that’s one-third of the respondents from…
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Reichenbach on epistemology as a branch of sociology
A propos an earlier reference to Reichenbach, philosopher of science Brad Wray shared this interesting quote from Chapter 1 of Experience and Prediction (1938; 2006 for the University of Notre Dame edition from which the reference comes): Every theory of knowledge must start from knowledge as a given sociological fact. The system of knowledge as…
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A useful summary of the damage wrought by the U.S. super-legislature (i.e., the “Supreme Court”)…
…from Cornell law professor Michael Dorf: Some of these decisions are much worse than others, but the overall picture is ugly. The only solution will be to appoint additional “judges” to the super-legislature who will make different political choices.
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Tempting fate, while avoiding catastrophe
Philosopher Duncan Pritchard discusses.
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In Memoriam: Rex Martin (1935-2026)
Professor Martin, who spent most of his academic career at the University of Kansas (where he was emeritus), was well-known for his work on philosophy of history and political and legal philosophy. There is an obituary here. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Martin or for those who would like to…
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A recent interview with Thomas Nagel about “consciousness” and related topics.
Here. (Thanks to Guy Elgat for the pointer.)
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AI in chemistry
Readers may find this account interesting, especially the observation that the output of “Large World Models” are essentially “alien intelligence,” not intelligible to humans. Meanwhile, this article discusses Anthropolic “hype” about discoveries in biology (and another possible instance of AI stealing from its users).
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Exam fellows at All Souls College, Oxford: the exam questions
Last year’s exam questions are circulating on Twitter. Fun questions, many quite interesting.
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Pausing AI development is feasible…
…says a new academic study from an AI governance project organized by Berkeley philosopher Wesley Holliday and statistician Will Fithian, working with an interdisciplinary team that also includes philosopher Thomas Icard (Stanford) and political theorist Gregory Conti (Princeton), among others. Let us hope they’re right!
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The huge demand for “philosophy and AI” faculty (UPDATED)
On Twitter, philosopher Brandon Warmke noted that just in the last 48 hours, six jobs were posted seeking philosophers with AI-related interests. As I wrote on Twitter, this seems to me “a foolish waste of philosophy lines, no doubt partly a result of administrators hopping on the bandwagon and pressuring departments to find warm bodies.”…
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Time to bring back the GRE?
A senior philosopher at a top 20 PhD program writes: I was talking to a few grad directors recently, and all report some growing concerns about ongoing effects of no-GRE requirements for Philosophy PhD programs. Any program could require them, but unless a notable-enough number requires them, otherwise promising students might skip applying to the…
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Open AI’s math proofs
Reader Blake Myers calls to my attention this story about the mathematical proofs released by OpenAI. Dr. Myers kindly compiled what seemed to him the most interesting or important results here. The total collection of papers is here. Readers knowledgeable about math are welcome to comment on these, how they will affect mathematics, etc.
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Berlin and Hart, now Fuller and Kelsen
I was teaching Kelsen last year (a big chunk of the 2nd edition of the Pure Theory), and while doing background research I came across this remarkable story (that called to mind Isaiah Berlin’s infamous “recommendation” of H.L.A. Hart). Roscoe Pound at Harvard Law School had, correctly, identified Hans Kelsen as the preeminent figure in…
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Can you use your writing sample for philosophy jobs as your job talk?
For a long time (in the 1990s and into the early 2000s) that was standard practice, but more and more I hear from job seekers who have been told that their writing sample can’t be their job talk. What do readers think? If you do not post with a full name, please indicate whether you…
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Rome redux
As I noted, I was in Rome last week for a day-long workshop (which was great), but also had an opportunity to be a tourist. My wife and I have been to Rome at least four times over the last 30+ years, so we long ago exhausted the “obvious” attractions. Here’s three we saw last…
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Another piece on AI notices that it will destroy capitalism itself
Here; the key bit: The closer you look, the more you see doom loops everywhere. Journalists, for example, used to publish work under the assumption that online platforms would drive readership to them. But now, tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini simply summarize their articles without sending readers to their sites, sparking a crisis that…
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Reichenbach on ethics
A propos this, philosopher Johannes Steizinger calls my attention to this remark of Hans Reichenbach’s in The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (p. 297): Whoever wants to study ethics, therefore, should not go to the philosopher; he should live in the community of a group where life is made vivid by competing volitions, be it the…
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On some of the oddities of being a philosophical scholar working on Marx
Marx did have a doctoral degree in philosophy (he wrote a dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus), and was for a period of time under the influence of Hegel (the decisive account of his break with Hegel is this one). But by the late 1840s, his approach to theory and intellectual work was wholly different. What…
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Another interesting story about a first-generation student’s journey into professional philosophy…
…from Vanderbilt’s Karen Ng.
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Philosopher Ann Cudd’s war on Portland State University
The saga continues.
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Faculty strikes at Edinburgh, Dundee, and Nottingham in the UK…
…as the financial catastrophe in UK higher education continues. (Thanks to Courtney Cox for the pointer.)
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Do as I say, not as I do
Via Moti Gorin: “At Dartmouth, Dr. Schnell’s A.I. use in public writing came up in an investigation in August by the news site Semafor about A.I.-created writing appearing in the opinion pages of major publications. That investigation said an Aug. 9 commentary by Dr. Schnell [the Dartmouth Provost] in The Washington Post was written by…
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The idiosyncratic MacArthur Foundation finally picks a philosopher for the Fellowship windfall after many years of ignoring philosophy
Felipe de Brigard (philosophy of mind and cognitive science) at Duke University was the lone philosopher among this year’s winners. As we noted long ago, these are definitely not “genius” awards, but it’s still nice to see a meritorious award to a philosopher!
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Lateral moves/retirements since the 2024 Philosophical Gourmet Report: 2026-27 edition
In addition to the separate posts announcing (generally tenured) faculty moves, I will keep a running list of all lateral moves (and retirements and deaths) not reflected in the faculty lists for the 2024 PGR (some moves that took place after the 2024 PGR were reflected in the faculty list, because the editors knew of…
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Three philosophers in Europe win ERC grants
The ERC announcement is here. The recipients are: Piotr Bystranowski (Jagellonian University, Poland) here: https://en.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/news/-/journal_content/56_INSTANCE_SxA5QO0R5BDs/81541894/161451667 Caspar Jacobs (Leiden University, Netherlands) here: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2026/09/caspar-jacobs-investigates-what-physical-theories-actually-tell-us-about-the-world Matthew Rachar (Free University of Berlin, Germany) here: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/informationen/fup/2026/fup_26_108-erc-rachar-solidaritaet/index.html
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A survey seeking responses from philosophers about “exploitation”
Roberto Veneziani and colleagues write: We are conducting a survey about academic philosophers’ views of (1) the effect of exploitation on subjective wellbeing, (2) how morally wrong exploitative relations are, and (3) norms around that wrongfulness, by asking you to evaluate various abstract scenarios. It takes roughly 10 minutes to complete the questions, with the…
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An experience with feedback from an LLM
A colleague elsewhere, who subscribes to Astra, Open AI’s high end LLM model (at least $100/month), told me that he has found it useful for giving feedback on early drafts–he compares it to the feedback one gets from a good first-year graduate student. Not doing any historical work, he was curious how it would perform…
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The decline in humanities majors
The latest from the AAAS. The decline has a simple explanation: the extravagant cost of college education.
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A survey of academics about their AI use…
…from Oxford University Press. Does this ring true to readers based on their experiences?
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2026 Kluge Prize for the “Study of Humanity” goes to Martha Nussbaum
I’m pleased to report that my friend and colleague Martha Nussbaum has been awarded this year’s Kluge Prize. Past philosophy winners include Anthony Appiah, Charles Taylor, and Jurgen Habermas. (Martha joked with me a few days ago that she hoped Trump wouldn’t try to take over the Library of Congress after this, but I assured…
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How Trump will try to steal the midterm elections (not on November 3, but January 3)
An important (and alarming) piece by former federal judge Michael Luttig (younger readers will not know how conservative Judge Luttig was as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit–this was befor “conservative” meant fascist or authoritarian). He writes: Everyone knows that the greatest threat to the upcoming midterm elections is…
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“What if mental disorders aren’t defects”?
Philosopher Justin Garson has a new substack, which draws on his published work on these topics.
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Editors (!) of higher education journal publish editorial about academic freedom…
…with multiple fake references! I trust these editors will soon be ex-editors. (Thanks to Moti Gorin for the pointer.)
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Pittsburgh’s John Norton wins Lakatos Award…
…for his two recent books on induction. (Thanks to Peter Carruthers for the pointer.)
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News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
In the context of this blog, I am somewhat surprised nobody has mentioned Nietzsche! “What then is truth? … a…
We haven’t discussed this in our department (lower ranked PGR but tend to get highly competitive/very large applicant pool) but…
If you were the head recruiter for a professional basketball team, would you require height and weight measurements for prospective…
I wonder if people are familiar with Fred Schauer’s essay on Kelsen and Fuller. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3607099
If knowledge is sociologically conditioned, then what, exactly, happens to the truth-status of the sociology of knowledge itself? This is…
To a large degree, Kuhn’s Structure is an attempt to deliver on the descriptive task of epistemology as Reichenbach conceived…
Indeed that remark resonates with our topic, but note that it comes from a very early and never published essay.…