An unusually good newspaper piece on free will, for which several philosophers were consulted

 

Peter Singer On His New Yorker Interview

In a recent interview in The New Yorker, Daniel Gross asked philosopher Peter Singer (Princeton) a question about race and who he chooses to cite and engage with in his work. (more…)

Katherine Hawley (1972-2021)

Katherine Hawley, professor of philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, has died.

Extraordinary spectacle not befitting of Australia’s oldest Parliament

Professor Hawley was known for her philosophical work on trust, various questions in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, and other topics such as impostor syndrome and creativity. Her most recent book, How To Be Trustworthy, was published in 2019. She is also the author of Trust: A Very Short Introduction (2012) and How Things Persist (2001). You can learn more about her research here and here.

Her work in public philosophy included interviews, radio and podcast appearances, government consulting, and a long-running column in Psychology Today (more…)

1. “How philosophy is making me a better scientist” — genomics data science PhD student Rasha Shraim recounts various ways her philosophy background informs and improves her science work (via Michael Dale)
2. An unusually good newspaper piece on free will, for which several philosophers were consulted — its author, Oliver Burkeman, deserves a lot of credit… or does he? (sorry)
3. “The only idea we are in fact able to conjure of what intelligent beings elsewhere may be like is one that we extrapolate directly from our idea of our own intelligence” — Justin E.H. Smith (Paris) on how this is “a gross failure of imagination”
4. Scientists have created human-monkey embryos — is this a problem? a possible solution to a problem? both?
5. Junior scholars in philosophy of science on the effects of the pandemic on their work — testimonies collected by the European Philosophy of Science Association
6. When Rudolf Carnap visited three imprisoned Mexican philosophers — Carnap’s own account of his visit (via Nathan Ballantyne)
7. “Our challenge is to see how he can both endorse restrictions on a range of expression of opinion and yet argue for absolute freedom of discussion” — several philosophers on updating Mill on speech

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. Discussion welcome.