Daily Nous

“I’m teaching care for their own particular point of view, a disdain for all things ‘vibes’ that aren’t carefully thought out, and a deep understanding of the courage it takes to withdraw from other people for a while, to have braved a thought all on your own.” That’s Robert Wallace, associate professor of philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly). In the f…

Summer is here, and with it, as you may have noticed, a more relaxed pace at Daily Nous. There will be somewhat fewer news stories and more guest posts. Travel and other commitments may mean less time for comment moderation, which may mean that comments on some posts are closed, or that comments sometimes take more time to appear than usual. Thanks for your patience. I hope your summer is off to …

“In our view there are several worrying tendencies in contemporary academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, all of which reflect, to varying degrees, a distinctive form of politicization in which the scholarly enterprise is taken to be subordinate to, or in the service of, political (social or moral) goals beyond the advancement of knowledge and understanding.” That is from a r…

Virginia Held, professor emerita of philosophy at the City University of New York and an influential figure in ethics and social and political philosophy, has died. Professor Held is especially well known for her work on the ethics of care and feminist philosophy. She is the author of several books, including The Public Interest and Individual Interests (1970), Rights and Goods: Justifying Social…

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a reporter working on a story about the extent to which AI, as a topic of research and an area of specialization demanded by employers, was becoming dominant in philosophy. Here’s one thing I said to her: People should be cautious when inferring how much philosophy of AI work is actually happening from how much philosophy of AI work they’re hearing about. AI is…

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 anything, please let us know.) SEP New:  ∅ Revised: Nāgārjuna by Jan Christoph Westerhoff. Disability and Justice by Jessica Begon, Daniel Putnam, David Wasserman, Jeffrey Blustein, and …

Mark Murphy, currently professor and chair of philosophy at Georgetown University, will be moving to the University of Notre Dame. Professor Murphy is known for his work in moral philosophy, philosophy of law, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Action and the Argument from Evil (OUP, 2017) and God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Moralit…

Earlier this week, it was reported that Russian Philosopher Svetlana Mesyats was placed under house arrest and the offices and homes of several other employees of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences were searched. What is going on there, and why? In the following guest post, Elizaveta Shcherbakova (Humboldt University of Berlin), who used to work at the Institute of Phi…

Has your department instituted an AI policy? If so, whom does it govern, and what does it say? What should such a policy say? Has your department considered an AI policy but held off on writing or implementing it?  If so, what issues, disputes, or questions have contributed to the delay? Does your department even have the institutional authority to have such a policy? Would it be better to not ha…

Russian Philosopher Svetlana Mesyats is under house arrest and the offices and homes of several other employees of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences were searched, according to social media postings from a pro-Russian government account and other media sources. Meduza reports: 10 researchers were taken to the Investigative Committee of Russia and interrogated until la…

New virtual writing groups for people working on dissertations in philosophy are forming now. Joshua Smart (St. Bonaventure University), once again, is organizing them. He writes in with the following information: Virtual Dissertation Groups (VDG) will be running again this June – August. The VDG sign-up form is open for this summer’s groups through Saturday, June 6th. What it is: Virtual Dissert…

Recent links… “A lot of kid stuff involves situations where the risk of something bad happening is very low, but if it does happen, then it’s really terrible.” How should a parent approach these decisions? — perhaps the concept of moral luck could be helpful What is a woman? — a discussion between Talia Mae Bettcher and Tomas Bogardus, moderated by Miles Donahue “Liberal learning” is “a kind of l…

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 anything, please let us know.) SEP New: Susanne Langer by Juliet Floyd. The Liar Paradox in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy by Ahmed Alwishah and David Sanson. Descartes’ Ethics by Denis K…

Richard Pettigrew, currently professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol, will be moving to the University of Oxford, where he will be the new Wykeham Chair of Logic. Professor Pettigrew works on questions across a range of philosophical subfields, including epistemology, formal epistemology, decision theory, logic, philosophy of math, and ethics. He is the author of several books, inclu…

The administration of the University of Nottingham is planning on reducing its full-time faculty by 600 beginning next January, using layoffs (redundancies) if need be. In response, the local university and college union began a “marking and assessment boycott” on Wednesday and are striking today. They may undertake a longer strike beginning in June. According to the Nottingham Post: Nottingham’s…

Where in the world should you buy philosophy books? Sure, there’s the convenience of large online retailers, but there can be more to buying a book than just getting a good price on it. Do you want books and reading to be a live part of your city’s culture or the places you visit? Do you want to live in a place where people are attending book-related events at a bookstore nearby? Do you want to p…

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has bestowed its Berkson Courageous Colleague Award on two philosophers. Those two philosophers are Mike Gregory and Charlie Kurth, both of Clemson University. After two faculty and a staff member at Clemson were fired for social media posts in the wake of the killing of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Professors Gregory and Kurth “spran…

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation has announced the winners of its 2026 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships. The fellowship program provides support to PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences writing dissertations on questions of religion, ethics, morals, or values. Twenty new fellows were announced, and two are based in philosophy departments. They are: Ross Edwards (The New School…

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 anything, please let us know.) SEP New: Plato’s Laws by Chris Bobonich and Katherine Meadows. Economic Democracy by Lisa Herzog. Revised: Martin Buber by Michael Zank and Zachary Braiter…

A study by The Economist looked at how the employment prospects of college graduates have changed over the past few years as AI use by potential employers has increased. The concern is that firms will hire fewer people if they can use AI to complete the tasks that otherwise would have been handled by entry-level workers. Data about this has been mixed, so The Economist conducted its own study bas…