'The tensor calculus knows physics better than the physicist': Bachelard on the role of 'Covariant Differentiation' in Relativity theory.

Last January, a few days before the semester was to begin, I was out walking with my son in the woods, and I got a call from the department secretary. A colleague was ill, and would I please, please consider teaching her class as an overload? The catch was that it was for a different department—for theology, whereas I am a professor of ancient Greek and existential philosophy. I told her I would consider it, and that afternoon got an email from theology saying congratulations, I was hired.

Abstract In 1850, Tsar Nicholas I decreed that university philosophy teaching be restricted to logic and empirical psychology, allowing only Orthodox theologians to teach these subjects and excluding university professors from teaching philosophical courses. This article explores the context behind this decree, demonstrating that it mirrored Catholic Austrian practices aimed at reducing the influence of Protestant German Idealism. Through archival analysis, we reveal that Adam Fischer (1797–1861), a philosophy professor at the University of St. Petersburg with Austrian descent, intertwined ideologically driven arguments with a new understanding of psychology as a part of philosophy. The archival evidence indicates that the initial draft of the decree did not aim to remove university philosophers. Instead, the ban, initiated by Tsar Nicholas I, became an unforeseen challenge for the administrative system. This study highlights the political and intellectual dynamics that influenced the development of philosophical education in Russia.

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943), Great Britain’s first female professor of philosophy, was an educator, a logician, and a pioneer of public philosophy with a fondness for argumentation and evidential reasoning. Stebbing, whose revival has only recently begun, proposed an original theory of critical thinking and informal logic in the 1930s, which has not yet been taken account of in the history of the field. My paper aims to recognise Stebbing as a forerunner of informal logic during the period of 1930 to 1960. What makes Stebbing an exemplar in the field is her work on critical thinking, detecting logical fallacies, and evaluating arguments.

In May 2023, the University of California, Berkeley hosted a conference in honor of Samuel Scheffler, Professor of Philosophy and Law at New

Abstract ‘Philosophy’, like ‘art’, denotes both an activity and the product of the activity, each of which has value in its own right. I start with the idea that the main role of professional philosophers, qua researchers, is to contribute to the production of the product—philosophical works that are in the public domain—and argue that neither our own doxastic states nor their justificatory status is important when it comes to our ability to fulfil that role. In particular, assertion in philosophical contexts is not governed by a norm that requires us to be in any particular doxastic state with respect to the asserted content.

The symbolic date of the founding of the Lviv-Warsaw School is considered to be November 15, 1895. On this day, the young Kasimir Twardowski (29 years old) delivered his first, introductory lecture at Lviv University, where he began his academic career as a professor of philosophy. His academic career at this University would continue until 1930, the year he retired. During these 35 years of activity at Lviv University, Kasimir Twardowski managed to create a School that became famous in Central and Eastern Europe in the interwar period, and nowadays this school is world-renowned. He was an honorary professor at Lviv and Poznań Universities. On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the Lviv-Warsaw School, we offer an interview with the President of the Kasimir Twardowski Philosophical Society of Lviv, DcS., Prof., Olha Honcharenko, and independent researcher, the Head of the Council of Founders of the Kasimir Twardowski Philosophical Society of Lviv, PhD., Stepan Ivanyk

John Nome (1904–80) was professor in philosophy of religion and ethics at Det teologiske menighetsfakultet, a faculty of theology in Oslo1, and well known as a historian, ethicist and philosopher. Less well known is that he was a pioneer in sociology in Norway. In the 1930s he wrote two books about Georg Simmel, and in 1950 he published a book about Ernst Troeltsch. Nome was fascinated by Simmel’s and Troeltsch’s sociological theories about modernity. He also wrote several reflections on Marx and Weber. He deserves to be remembered for having presented these sociologists in Norway at a time when they were little known among Norwegian intellectuals.

This article argues that a pervasive but confused theory of free will is driving unwarranted resistance to behavioral genetic research and undermining the concept of personal responsibility enshrined in our moral and legal conventions. We call this the theory of 'free-will-by-subtraction'. A particularly explicit version of this theory has been propounded by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer, who has proposed that human agency can be scientifically quantified as the behavioral variation that remains unexplained after known genetic and environmental causes have been accounted for. This theory motivates resistance to research that suggests genetic differences substantially account for differences in human behavior because that is seen to reduce the scope of human freedom. In academic philosophy, free-will-by-subtraction theory corresponds to a position called 'libertarian incompatibilism', which holds that human beings are not responsible for behavior that has antecedent causes yet maintains that free will nonetheless exists because some fraction of human behavioral variation is self-caused. However, this position is rejected by most professional philosophers. We argue that libertarian incompatibilism is inconsistent with a secular materialist outlook in which all human behavior is understood to have antecedent causes whether those causes are known to science or not - an outlook Turkheimer shares. We show that Turkheimer sustains this contradiction by adopting an untenable position we call 'epistemic libertarianism', which holds that antecedent causes of our behavior only infringe on our freedom if we know about them. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of secular materialist philosophers support a position called 'compatibilism', which maintains that free will is compatible with the comprehensive causation of human behavior. We show that compatibilism neutralizes the threat that genetic explanation poses to human agency and rescues a generous conception of personal responsibility that aligns with our moral intuitions.

In this short note, writer Geoffrey G. Attard seeks to describe the relationship that the later Maltese professor of Philosophy and one time rector of the island’s only university had with renowned Inkling author J.R.R. Tolkien while studying in Oxford. By quoting from Professor Serracino-Inglott’s personal writings as quoted in Daniel Massa’s biography of the Maltese professor, Attard explains the first impressions Tolkien left on the mind of the young Maltese scholar, thus bringing to light what is most probably the one and only indirect connection of Tolkien with the Mediterranean island.

ABSTRACT This paper presents experimental evidence that gender double standards significantly shape evaluative perceptions of men and women professors among philosophy students in Italian universities. Identical lecture passages, delivered either in written form (Study 1, N = 95) or orally (Study 2, N = 92) and attributed to authors with typically masculine or feminine names and voices, were used as stimuli. Participants were asked to respond to teaching evaluation questions. With regard to the written passages, the findings indicate that men participants’ evaluations are significantly influenced by what they believe to be the author’s gender, whereas women participants’ evaluations are not, with the exception of one single factor, namely engagement. In contrast, for orally delivered lectures, both men and women participants exhibit comparable gender biases.

The article is dedicated to the figure of the prominent Slavic studies scholar, rector of Chernivtsi University, religious and socio-political figure, senator, archpriest-stavrophore, professor, and Doctor of Philosophy, Eugen Kozak (1857–1933). Born into a large family of an Orthodox priest, after finishing gymnasium, E. Kozak obtained a theological education at Chernivtsi University and studied philology at the University of Vienna. After defending his doctoral dissertation in Slavic studies in Vienna, throughout his life he combined philological research with ecclesiastical service. A student of the renowned Slavicist Vatroslav Jagić, Professor E. Kozak headed the Department of Church Slavonic Language and Literature at the Orthodox Theological Faculty of Chernivtsi University, served as the dean of that faculty, and was rector of the university. As a researcher, E. Kozak made a significant contribution to the development of Slavic studies, publishing works on Slavic epigraphic monuments, the materials of which still retain scholarly value today. His most well-known work was dedicated to ancient inscriptions from churches and monasteries in Bukovina.

This article is a translation of a publication by Hans Albert, formerly Professor of Sociology and Philosophy of Science at the University of Mannheim and the author of numerous works and publications on critical rationalism. In 2006, a three-volume edition titled “Karl Popper: A Centenary Assessment” was published under the editorship of Ian Jarvie, Karl Milford, and David Miller. Professor Hans Albert was entrusted with the honorary task to write the introduction for the first volume. You have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the first Ukrainian translation of this article.

This article argues that a pervasive but confused theory of free will is driving unwarranted resistance to behavioral genetic research and undermining the concept of personal responsibility enshrined in our moral and legal conventions. We call this the theory of 'free-will-by-subtraction'. A particularly explicit version of this theory has been propounded by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer, who has proposed that human agency can be scientifically quantified as the behavioral variation that remains unexplained after known genetic and environmental causes have been accounted for. This theory motivates resistance to research that suggests genetic differences substantially account for differences in human behavior because that is seen to reduce the scope of human freedom. In academic philosophy, free-will-by-subtraction theory corresponds to a position called 'libertarian incompatibilism', which holds that human beings are not responsible for behavior that has antecedent causes yet maintains that free will nonetheless exists because some fraction of human behavioral variation is self-caused. However, this position is rejected by most professional philosophers. We argue that libertarian incompatibilism is inconsistent with a secular materialist outlook in which all human behavior is understood to have antecedent causes whether those causes are known to science or not - an outlook Turkheimer shares. We show that Turkheimer sustains this contradiction by adopting an untenable position we call 'epistemic libertarianism', which holds that antecedent causes of our behavior only infringe on our freedom if we know about them. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of secular materialist philosophers support a position called 'compatibilism', which maintains that free will is compatible with the comprehensive causation of human behavior. We show that compatibilism neutralizes the threat that genetic explanation poses to human agency and rescues a generous conception of personal responsibility that aligns with our moral intuitions.

Lars Fr. H. Svendsen is a Norwegian professor of philosophy at the University of Bergen and a project manager at the research organization Civita. He is the author of a large body of books, translated into more than twenty languages: The Philosophy of Boredom (1999), Art (2000), The Philosophy of Evil (2001), Man, Morality and Genes - A Critique of Biologism (2001), What is Philosophy (2003), The True, the Good and the Beautiful - An Introduction to Philosophy (2004), The Philosophy of Fashion (2004), The Philosophy of Fear (2007), The Philosophy of Work (2008), etc.

Call for Abstracts for our next special November 2025 issue of BJBio vol 16 Issue 3, 2025 of the Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics on Human, Non-Human, and other Animal Relationships. Dr Rainer Ebert, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Houston Community College, Texas, USA; Motlatsi Khosi and Kala Bopape, Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology, University of South Africa (Unisa), Pretoria, South Africa, are the Guest Editors of this issue.

This book is the continuation of two older works from 1927, which were published under the common title “Studien zum Erkenntnisproblem. Teil 1. Über gegenständliches und ungegenständliches Wissen; Teil II. Rationales und Irrationales” [“Study of the Problem of Cognition. Part I. On Objective and Non-objective Knowledge; Part II. Rational and Irrational”]. With both of these previous works, which together are almost the same length as this new essay, the latter is so strongly related that the unity of the whole is easily noticed in the parts. Regrettably, these three parts did not appear together as one book. This is even more unfortunate because, while there is certainly an interest in such works in the circle of German professionals, it is difficult for a series of publications by a foreign university with predominantly foreign-language contributions to make it on the German book market. I feel for these reasons even more that it is my duty to draw the attention of professional philosophers to this significant and, in some respects, unique work.

ABSTRACT I defend a cosmopolitan conception of philosophy. I construct a typology of cosmopolitan philosophical skill around a division into seven categories: assimilative, autonomous, comparative, diasporist, imperious, bicultural, and interjacent. I also try to begin to think through what kinds of reform of the academy will best serve to create institutions that foster the skills I identify as most helpful for philosophical progress. My paper is a reflection on what the profession of philosophy must be in a culturally polycentric world, and on what new models of institutionalisation will best serve it in the future.

Frédéric Worms is professor of philosophy and director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris). His research focuses, on the one hand, on French philosophy of the 20th century, specifically on Henri Bergson, and, on the other hand, on vital and moral relations. Indeed, he has developed a philosophy of care conceived as the origin of moral relations. Patrick ffrench and Céline Lefève interviewed Fréderic Worms in January 2023. The interview was conducted in French. In the interview Fréderic Worms engages with issues around the status of the medical humanities in relation to the discipline and mission of philosophy, his philosophy of care and the question of a relational ontology, the central role of Georges Canguilhem and the importance of his thought for the medical humanities, the related questions of violation and precarity, and more generally with the significance of his own thought for the medical humanities.

Hykel Hosni interviews Kenneth Aizawa, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Rutgers University, Newark. The interview opens with Aizawa’s reflections on the challenges currently confronting U.S. universities under the second Trump administration. It then turns to a discussion of his forthcoming book, Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A Granular Approach. Following a retrospective on Aizawa’s academic trajectory, the conversation concludes with his advice for early-stage researchers.