Appalling news. Too bad for the university of Kent

If you don’t know about the swashbuckling philosopher Bill Newton-Smith, do read this Times Obituary.

It's truly the end times for UK philosophy if top departments like Kent (ranked 5th on GPA in the most recent REF) are being shut down. University of Kent should value its reputation for excellence in this area, it seems to me.

University of Kent Our vice-chancellor is Karen Cox. [email protected] Please let her know how important philosophy is to a university and how important we are in particular.
kent.ac.uk/philosophy

Sadly, University of Kent has announced plans to axe a number of smaller departments, including philosophy. We perform well on all measures, including student recruitment. But smaller subjects have less clout and are easiest to cut. Help us shout out our value to the uni! They need to hear

One of my scientific heroes is Paul Ehrenfest. Unlike his contemporaries like Einstein or Bohr, or younger physicists like Heisenberg or Dirac, Ehrenfest did not make anny breakthrough contributions that changed physics.

His great contribution was in the consolidation and…

Isn’t there something fishy with this claim? From the premise that X is like Y in respects A, B, C, where Y is undesirable, it doesn’t follow that there are good reasons to take X to be a kind of Y!

Commemorative 2€ coin from Finland, in memory of GH von Wright. Probably the only 20th century philosopher commemorated on a coin?

The second letter is more sensitive so I think I’ve removed all identifying marks. I dont know the context but here is a splendid opening para showing how one can be polite and apologetic with grace.

Smart wrote briefly to Sellars asking him a straight question. Sellars wrote back a 5-6 page long reply. Smart, overwhelmed by the response wrote back thanking him and pursuing the point further. This is the opening line of Sellars’s reply

Among my papers I found a batch of Sellars’s letter copied directly from the original. I will post two excerpts. The first is to another truly great philosopher of the twentieth century: jack smart. The opening line shows Sellars’s unparalleled wit.

Here's a really nice illusion (h/t Stathis Psillos)

Throughout history, women thinkers & their ideas have been erased from public memory. There’s even a mistaken belief that women’s cultural history doesn’t exist at all. Today it’s more important than ever to put women philosophers in the spotlight again. blog.degruyter.com/the-forgotten-…

We lost a giant

I read it. It’s a masterpiece.

Trending in #PhilosophyOfScience :
ooir.org/index.php?fiel…

1) Friend or Foe? Rethinking Epistemic Trespassing (Social Epistemology)

2) Listening for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Sonic geography and the making of extinction knowledge (@Soc_Stud_Sci)

3) In Science We Trust: Larry…

It’s out & #OpenAccess 🎉🎉 My 1st book ´Chemistry’s Metaphysics’ is one of the most creative projects Ive undertaken. Filled w/ metaphysical questions explored through a chemical lens, hopefully it contributes to the interaction of chemistry & philosophy cambridge.org/core/elements/…

My obituary of Larry Laudan, titled 'In Science We Trust: Larry Laudan (1941–2022)' has been published online in Journal for General Philosophy of Science. For full-text access to a view-only version of my paper use the following SharedIt link:

rdcu.be/dtNBl