Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

The Value of Mass Shootings

16. August 2019 Philosophy News News
On the face of it, the value generated by a mass shooting is negative. People are murdered and injured. But it is important to go beneath the bloody surface and explore the depths in terms of value. From an economic standpoint, a mass shooting has obvious negative value; but it also has positive economic value [More]
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Logic and Games

16. August 2019 Philosophy News News
[Revised entry by Wilfrid Hodges and Jouko Väänänen on August 16, 2019. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Games between two players, of the kind where one player wins and one loses, became a familiar tool in many branches of logic during the second half of the twentieth century. Important examples are semantic games used to define truth, back-and-forth games used to compare structures, and dialogue games to express (and perhaps explain) formal [More]
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The Equivalence of Mass and Energy

15. August 2019 Philosophy News News
[Revised entry by Francisco Fernflores on August 15, 2019. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Einstein correctly described the equivalence of mass and energy as "the most important upshot of the special theory of relativity" (Einstein 1919), for this result lies at the core of modern physics. Many commentators have observed that in Einstein's first derivation of this famous result, he did not express it with the equation (E = mc^2). Instead, Einstein concluded that if an object, which is at rest relative to an inertial frame, either absorbs or emits an amount of energy (L), its inertial [More]
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Philosophers Among NEH Grant Winners

15. August 2019 Philosophy News News
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced the winners of its latest round of grants.  Among the winners are several philosophy professors. They’re listed below, along with their project titles and descriptions, grant amounts, and grant types: Jose Bermudez (Texas A & M University) and Catherine Conybeare (Bryn Mawr College) Reconsidering the Sources of the Self in the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods A conference and preparation of an edited volume of essays on the influential Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity by philosopher Charles Taylor (1931–).  $48,961 (Collaborative Research) Richard Cohen (University at Buffalo) Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics of Democracy A One-week seminar for 16 college and university faculty on Levinas and democracy. $63,789 (Seminars for College Teachers) Angela Coventry (Portland State University) David Hume in the Twenty-first Century: Perpetuating the Enlightenment A four-week institute for 30 college and university faculty on the Scottish thinker David Hume. $185,975 (Institutes for College and University Teachers) Karen Detlefsen (University of Pennsylvania) and Lisa Shapiro (Simon Fraser University) New Narratives in the History of Philosophy: Women and Early Modern European Philosophy A conference on the works of early modern women philosophers (1500 to 1850) in preparation for an edited volume of essays. $50,000 (Collaborative Research) Also funded is an education researcher’s [More]
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