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A group of bloggers discussing philosophical ideas as well as the profession of philosophy
Browsing All posts tagged under »Philosophy«
CFP: WCPA submission deadline July 4th
June 7, 2016 by Alison K McConwell
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The Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta hosts the next Western Canadian Philosophical Association meeting on October 28-30th, 2016. It is in conjunction with The Canadian Society for Environmental Philosophy. Here is the original CFP. Papers submissions are to be a maximum of 4000 words and presentable in 25-30 minutes. Submissions should include […]
Summer Productivity and Relaxation: We Really Can Have It All
May 25, 2016 by Alison K McConwell
While thinking about how the month of May has zoomed by and engaging in a quasi-productive procrastination on the Daily Nous website, I conveniently stumbled upon a post concerning how to actually work during the summer. Here are some highlights from this hilarious, but scarily accurate article that truly resonated with my ‘summer self.’ Going […]
Philosophy and Industry: We Have Transferable Skills
May 20, 2016 by Alison K McConwell
Over the last year I’ve been thinking about how to identify and present the transferable skills one gains from philosophy. Recently Mike Steiner, a UCalgary alumnus, gave a presentation to grads in our department concerning his experience with the non-academic job market. Mike demystified the process of applying for jobs in industry. Although many of […]
An Unusual Worry About Jargon.
May 16, 2016 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
I was often told, especially earlier in my education, to avoid excessive use of jargon. More generally, we as philosophers are accused of writing articles that are difficult to understand, at least in part because of our use of jargon. I do think that we should be careful about the overuse of technical terminology, especially […]
An Open Letter from a New Editor
May 15, 2016 by Alison K McConwell
Hi Everyone, As the new managing editor of this blog, I oversee blog activity for the foreseeable future. Business is as usual–we will continue sharing ideas with posts ranging from research that our contributors are interested in to topics concerning the profession. I also promise that Aaron’s Grinworthy quotes series will continue to be raw […]
This Blog Post Is False…and True (or, Is a Denial of the Law of Noncontradiction Self-Refuting?)
March 7, 2016 by Gordon Hawkes
There is a straightforward objection to any denial of the law of noncontradiction: A denial of the law of noncontradiction is self-refuting because one must presuppose the truth of the law of noncontradiction in order to deny it. That is, to deny the law of noncontradiction is to allow that it is both true and […]
Why Is Biological Individuality So Strange?
February 3, 2016 by Alison K McConwell
If you find questions of biological individuality peculiar, then this post is for you. Biological individuality is an area of special interest. Classic individuality principles lurk in the background—philosophers of biology are still concerned with how to carve up a particular domain into basic units and with how to tell those units apart. There may […]
Grinworthy Quotes (11)
November 16, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Here are the final three sentences of Alberto Coffa’s “Kant, Bolzano, and the Emergence of Logicism” (Journal of Philosophy, 74, 1982, p. 689): When concepts were finally wedded to the word, a priori knowledge turned from true in virtue of concepts to true in virtue of meanings—as Carnap put it—or true ex vi terminorum—as Wilfred […]
Grinworthy Quotes (10)
November 5, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Here’s other amusing line from Paul Benacerraf’s dissertation (Princeton, 1960, p. 182): It was in fact through [Cantor’s] interest in the infinite and in infinite numbers that he developed the theory of sets. The purpose was to make an honest woman of the infinite, a task held by most mathematicians of his time to be […]
Grinworthy Quotes (9)
October 8, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these — I’ve been reading some fairly dry material recently. The following quote is at the very beginning of Paul Benacerraf’s unpublished PhD dissertation (Princeton, 1960) which I’m reading as part of my dissertation research. The quote is attributed to an unnamed undergraduate student. […]
On Sustaining Life.
June 15, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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This past weekend, the philosophy department here at the University of Calgary hosted a conference on Sustainability with a focus on intergenerational justice. A topic of much debate was what exactly should be sustained/left for future generations. Now, I am very much an outsider to this debate, but one candidate of a necessary (but insufficient) […]
Grinworthy Quotes (8)
June 5, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Here is another quote from John Burgess, this time from his book Fixing Frege (Princeton University Press: 2005). Anyone who reads logic/mathematics/philosophy of mathematics will have come across the phenomenon he’s talking about. Now it is a common mathematical practice, called “abuse of language,” to omit to distinguish notationally between items that are distinct notionally, […]
Hashtag_Octothorpe
April 26, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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A while back I was reading a paper by Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, first published in 2000 [1], in which they use the symbol “#” to denote an arbitrary matrix sentence. That was over half a decade before twitter went live. That symbol, variously known as the hash sign/symbol, the number sign, or octothorpe […]
Adrian Currie on ‘Inclusivity’ in the Philosophy profession
March 24, 2015 by Justin Caouette
Adrian Currie has posted a very succinct and important post on how straight white males can help to make the discipline a bit more inclusive. It can be found here in it’s entirety, below is a snippet. Currie offers clear ways on how we could all do better. It is very much worth the read […]
APA/BPA Journal Survey
March 18, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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The APA and the BPA have just published the results of their joint philosophy journal survey here, and here (respectively). Data includes number of submissions, acceptance rates, time to publication, percent female authors, and a few other things. I have only had a quick look through the data, and I’m sure someone will do a […]
Playing Outside Your Wheelhouse
February 2, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
Anyone who has been following the Grinworthy Quotes series here on A Philosopher’s Take will likely have noticed that I’ve been reading a fair amount of medieval philosophy recently. Some readers may also be aware that I usually work on philosophy of mathematics, logic and metaphysics. In working on medieval philosophy, and in particular medieval […]
Grinworthy Quotes (5)
January 7, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
Here is a quote from Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (M. Friedlaender trans., 1923, p. 263) that is particularly appropriate for the holiday season: Wine may be treated as food, if taken as such, but to form parties for the purpose of drinking wine together must be considered more disgraceful than the unrestrained conduct […]
Philosophers from Poverty
December 19, 2014 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in academic philosophy, and/or inequality issues to have a look at this discussion over at the Daily Nous.
Books by Contributors
A Philosopher's Take 
June 11, 2016 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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