Simon Blackburn On Philosophy’s Contributions

In the UK, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills intends to assess “the benefits of postgraduate study for all relevant stakeholders” and “the evidence about the needs of employers for postgraduates.” Philosopher Simon Blackburn answered a request for faculty comments with a letter worth reading in full. A couple highlights: (1) Our postgraduate philosophy […]

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Does Being A Theologian Require Being A Religious Believer?

Earlier today Deane Gilbraith discussed Kurt Noll’s distinctions between theology and philosophers of religion from The Chronicle of Higher Education (which we linked to three weeks ago without much comment.)  Gilbraith’s commentator Roland objected to Noll in the following way: On another line – ‘theologians practice and defend religion’. In short, theology is apologetics, a […]

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A Trove Of Experimental Philosophy Papers

For those unfamiliar with the growing “experimental philosophy” movement, there are some philosophers in tandem with psychologists doing interesting work that has tried to study questions posed by contemporary moral philosophers by employing experimental means.  They are trying to uncover what our moral intuitions really are like and how they actually function. Of course moral […]

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Religion And The Alternatives Of Modernity and Post-Modernity

Via Uncertain Principles, a recent article tries to draw inferences about effects of different college majors on students’ attitudes towards religion and religious practices.   The authors of the study purport to show that study in humanities has a more adverse effect on religious belief than scientific studies: The Michigan scholars who wrote the study — […]

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Theologians Vs. Professors Of Religion

A terrific article from The Chronicle from K.L. Noll, (via a not-surprisingly miffed An und für sich) that addresses the issues that I covered here.  Noll brings considerably more depth and distinctions than I did and on some points may disagree with me, but has the same basic perspective at many essential points.  Check it […]

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Some Qualifications Of My Suggestion For Moving Philosophy Debates To The Internet

I appreciate Professor Harman’s willingness to exchange a couple rounds of debate with me across blogs against his stated desire to avoid such exchanges and so I will remain grateful to him even if we do not hear further reply from him.  Here are his reasons for rejecting my notion of having a centralized message […]

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Can Scientists Infer About Naturalism And Its Limitations?

John Pieret is not thrilled with Sean Carroll’s foray into the philosophy of science and metaphysics from Thursday. Particularly, he is (rightly) critical of Carroll’s dismissal of major theories of scientific demarcation as mere “mottos” and his apparently unnuanced and uncritical preference for Occam’s Razor in all cases.  Only in the final paragraph does he […]

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Philosophy Not As Exceptional, But As Specialized

Recently in the philosophy blogosphere there has been a bit of a stir over a request for grant proposals from the NEH for new classes on the “enduring questions.”  In response philosophy Professor Jude Jones and I have had several exchanges on questions related to the relative academic value of specialists from other fields teaching […]

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On The Various Disciplines’ Resources For Engaging The Enduring Questions

Professor Jude Jones has stopped by to offer an excellent retort to my recent remarks in reply to her. Our topic is whether a new NEH call for grant proposals presumes that non-philosophers can address “the enduring questions” usually considered the domain of philosophy better than philosophers have or equal to how we have.  Here […]

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On The Goals Of Introductory Philosophy Courses

In reply to my previous post on grants offered by the NEH to non-philosopher academics for creating novel classes on “enduring questions,” a philosophy professor writes to me in private: Interesting. I share your general sensibilities on this, but it’s not clear to me that they are being sought “to teach philosophy classes”. They are […]

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“Wanted: Non-Philosophers To Do Philosophy”

The National Endowment for the Humanities is offering grants to academics outside of philosophy to develop courses on “enduring questions” that have long been the domain of philosophers and philosophy classes: They make the dubious and ambiguous claim that these questions are “pre-disciplinary” because they are, supposedly “questions to which no discipline or field can […]

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