I. Introduction In a recent edgy essay, “Why Hasn’t Professional Philosophy Produced Any Important Ideas in the Last 40 Years?” I argued that although it’s almost certainly the case that philosophers have produced some brilliant ideas, i.e, philosophical ideas that manifest great intellectual creativity, insight, and originality, open up a new way of looking at … [continue reading]
Monthly Archives: September 2016
Collective Wisdom, Collective Stupidity, Professional Philosophy, and Open Philosophy.
1. Collective intelligence–see, e.g., this and this–is an emergent property of human or otherwise animal mindedness, that is constituted by the cognitive capacities and cognitive activities of a group of (e.g.) people as a group, especially including group-reasoning, group brain-storming and innovation, the social production of written texts and other kinds of social media, group deliberation, … [continue reading]
Real Philosophy Re-Discovered 6: Samuel Alexander’s “Space, Time, and Deity.” With an Introduction by Z.
1. Introduction, by Z Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) was an Australian-born British philosopher, and the first Jewish fellow of a college at Cambridge or Oxford–in his case, Lincoln College, Oxford. Later he held a professorial Chair of philosophy at the “red brick,” politically socialist, or at least left-leaning, religiously tolerant University of Manchester. I don’t know … [continue reading]
Why Hasn’t Professional Philosophy Produced Any Important Ideas in the Last 40 Years?
1. By a brilliant philosophical idea I mean a philosophical idea that manifests great intellectual creativity, insight, and originality, opens up a new way of looking at a large domain of concepts, facts, phenomena, theories, and/or other information, and would have significant impact and influence if it were widely disseminated and adopted. And by an … [continue reading]
Standing United with APP, and The APP Dilemma Revisited. APP’s Readers Talk Back!
APP Editors’ Note: Ron de Weijze and Andreas Keller are independent philosophers living and working in Europe. YP is a young philosopher working on her BA somewhere in North America or Europe. RTP is a recently tenured associate professor of philosophy teaching at a public university somewhere in North America. And AG is an independent … [continue reading]