Philosophy
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The department of philosophy is committed to the principle that the study of philosophy is a cornerstone of a liberal arts education, an education that enriches and empowers students by introducing them to rigorous analysis of their ways of thinking and acting. We take philosophy, broadly construed, to be the process of investigating and questioning human beings’ place in nature and history as well as their responsibilities to one another and to themselves, based upon the most complete, presently available understanding of science, culture, art, and religion. What distinguishes a philosophical mind is a habit of weighing the coherence, completeness, and trenchancy of various beliefs, arguments, and theories, and of doing so self-consciously within the historical context that marks our finite, human condition. The cultivation of these habits of mind enhances students’ abilities to learn across the curriculum, to contribute to the advancement of institutions, from arts and sciences to governments and global relations, and- not least- to grapple with the challenges and wonder of their own lives. For all these reasons, the overriding aim of the department of philosophy’s program is to help students develop these philosophical habits. Reflecting its history and the present make-up of its members, the department is in the advantageous position of being able to pursue this aim through six main areas of research: analytic philosophy and logic, ethics and political philosophy, history of philosophy, phenomenology and pragmatism, philosophy of religion, and philosophy and history of science. Website: www.bu.edu/philo
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The fanatic and the last man
(Penn State University Press, 2022-10-01) -
What makes the affirmation of life difficult?
(Cambridge University Press, 2022) -
Group fanaticism and narratives of ressentiment
(Routledge, 2021-12-01)The current political climate is awash with groups that we might be tempted to label irrational, extremist, hyper-partisan; it is full of echo-chambers, radicalization, and epistemic bubbles. Philosophers have profitably ... -
Data models, representation and adequacy-for-purpose
(2021)We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational (PR) view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the ... -
Recent Work on Nietzsche's Ethical Theory
(Walter de Gruyter, 2021-08-01) -
Review of Agnes Callard, aspiration
(Wiley, 2021) -
Towards a taxanomy of the model-ladenness of data
(University of Chicago Press, 2020-12)Model-data symbiosis is the view that there is an interdependent and mutually beneficial relationship between data and models, whereby models are not only data-laden, but data are also model-laden or model filtered. In ... -
Losing sight of the forest for the Ψ: beyond the wavefunction hegemony
(Oxford University Press, 2020-05)Traditionally Ψ is used to stand in for both the mathematical wavefunction (the representation) and the quantum state (the thing in the world). This elision has been elevated to a metaphysical thesis by advocates of the ... -
Teaching and learning with Wittgenstein and Turing: sailing the seas of social media
(2019)A history of the mutual impact of Turing and Wittgenstein on one another points to the contemporary foundational significance of our artful capacity to embed everyday words in forms of life. Wittgenstein’s mature focus on ... -
Heideggerian ruminations on being and presence
(2019-05-20)As Aristotle puts it, ‘being’ (used interchangeably with ‘existence’ here) is said in many ways, including many opposing ways. Potentialities exist precisely as potentialities for specific actualities but the potentialities ...
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