Breaking Bad Habits

Two things to note about habits: one, they are very hard to break and two, a fair number of them are bad for us. Many of us have fallen into the habit of reaching for our phones throughout the day to read the news and editorials. We watch videos of congressional hearings, we listen to […]

ChatGPT After Six Months: More Practical Reflections

When ChatGPT was released to the public late last year, its impact was immediate and dramatic. In the six months since, most people have barely had time to understand what ChatGPT is, yet its core model has already been upgraded (from GPT 3.5 to GPT 4.0) and a competitor has been released (Bard, from Google). […]

APA Member Interview: Mary-kate Boyle

Mary-kate Boyle is an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is currently interested in ethics, German idealism, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Mary-kate organizes and directs an after-school philosophy program for students of Lincoln Northwest High School. Please email her directly for her independent work in philosophy. What are you most proud of […]

Abbott Elementary and Utilitarianism

In this clip, the teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public elementary school are debating the pros and cons of having a “gifted” program that only serves a small portion of the student population. Their conversation sparks a discussion about Utilitarianism, and whether we should focus on the success and happiness of a select few, or […]

Teaching Graduate Students to Teach

As one who has urged graduate departments to offer their students a practicum in teaching, I read with interest Heather Brant’s thoughtful post A Graduate Seminar With a Unique Topic: Teacher Training, published this spring. She describes a course she took that explored how insights from cognitive science and related areas could enhance understanding of […]

Meet the APA: Lucy Santerre

Lucy Santerre is the APA’s Program Assistant for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s grant to support diversity institutes in philosophy. Introduction I am proud to say that joining the APA in 2018 was the start of my professional career. After graduating from Boston College in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, I completed a […]

APA Member Interview: Ian MacDonald

Ian MacDonald is an educator and writer at the University of Waterloo who investigates the interrelations between inquiry, meaning, and methods. He focuses on the writings of Peirce, Clifford, and Welby and defended his dissertation, Communal Inferentialism: Charles S. Peirce’s Critique of Epistemic Individualism, in 2019. What’s your favorite quote?  “We have created a Star […]

APA Member Interview: Trevor Adams

Trevor Adams is a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His primary research interests are epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion. His dissertation is focused on the nature and rationality of hope. What excites you about philosophy? Since philosophy is both an individual and group activity I think there are really two […]

Inside the APA: Applying for APA Grants

One of the many ways the APA supports philosophers and helps address issues in the field is through grants. If you’re an APA member, you’re eligible to apply for an APA grant, and in this post I’ll share a bit about each of the types of grants the APA offers and how they work. To […]

A Graduate Seminar With a Unique Topic: Teacher Training

It is not uncommon for graduate students in philosophy to be thrown into teaching without any formal training or preparation. This practice seems to rest on the misguided notion that if one knows the philosophy, then one will be able to teach it (or more pessimistically, teaching is not valued enough to prioritize it within […]

APA Member Interview: Rebeccah Leiby

Rebeccah Leiby is the Hoffberger Ethics Fellow at the University of Baltimore’s Hoffberger Center for Ethical Engagement (previously, the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics). She completed her Ph.D. in 2022 at Boston University, where she defended a dissertation entitled “Towards a Contractualist Theory of Transitional Justice.” What are you working on right now?  In addition […]

What It’s Like to be a Philosopher

The APA blog is working with Cliff Sosis of What is it Like to Be a Philosopher? in publishing advance excerpts from Cliff’s long-form interviews with philosophers. The following is an edited excerpt from the interview with David Pearce.  [interviewer: Cliff Sosis] In this interview, independent philosopher David Pearce talks about his grandparents who took in refugees from Kindertransport, […]

Syllabus Showcase: Philosophy on the Spectrum: The Philosophy of Autism and Autistic Philosophy, Travis LaCroix

Some have suggested that the “very idea of an autistic person is a philosophical one” (Murray 2011, 9) and that the “subject of autism is rich with philosophical possibilities” (Anderson and Cushing 2013, 3). At the same time, however, “the philosophy of autism is not (or not yet) a subfield of philosophy” (Bölte and Richman […]

Justin Caouette: What is it like to be a philosopher?

The APA blog is working with Cliff Sosis of What is it Like to Be a Philosopher? in publishing advance excerpts from Cliff’s long-form interviews with philosophers. The following is an edited excerpt from an interview with Justin Caouette. This interview has been edited for length. The full interview is available at What Is It Like to Be A […]

Syllabus Showcase: What is Philosophy? Global Perspectives on Philosophical History, Christopher P. Noble

I am a historian of philosophy at New College of Florida, a small, public liberal arts college. When I arrived first in 2018, one of my duties was to expand the philosophy curriculum into areas beyond the Western tradition, and I set about building a course introducing students to the history of philosophy from a […]

APA Member Interview: Michael Kirley

Michael Kirley is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His primary research interests are in the philosophy of action. He also has interests in moral psychology, normative ethics, and ancient philosophy. What excites you about philosophy? The questions people care most about are philosophical in character, and nothing […]

Undergraduate Philosophy Club: Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College’s Philosophy Club has been active for at least 40 years. The origin of the club is lost in history but is both remade by new members and continues historically beneficial practices. There is no formal advisory position, but department members work to ensure that at least one faculty member shows up to […]

The New Panopticon

With my work bringing me back in touch with public high school education, and as someone recently acquainted with a third decade of mostly continuous consciousness, connecting with my students has been eye-opening. The immortal hot topic among staff is cell phones. The students are, to put it lightly, addicted. They have had access to […]

APA Member Interview: Jeff Hawley

Jeff Hawley graduated from University of Arizona with a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Philosophy at Rutgers-Camden. His research interests include Philosophy of Sound, Epicureanism, and Logical Positivism.  What excites you about philosophy? Although it may sound cliché, the more philosophy […]

What Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone Taught Me About Teaching

Last semester I took a seminar with Renée Jorgensen on moral rights and social norms. One of the main questions we discussed throughout the seminar is how a special kind of moral ignorance about non-moral facts (what R. Jorgensen calls “normative opacity” in her book manuscript) influences how people act in a setting where some […]