A safe and supportive forum for philosophers.
Owned & Moderated by Marcus Arvan (University of Tampa)
Contact: marvan@ut.edu
Blog mission & moderation policy
I have a decent teaching profile for history (have taught Chinese philosophy, can also teach early modern and early analytic/pragmatism),…
Can I ask if you have a strong history of philosophy profile? Curious how much they wanted that vs phil…
Should you ask references to update their letters every single year? I’ve been on the market 4 years in a…
Just saw that there’s a new editorial assistant at AJP. Is this related to what Anonymous of Oct. 10 says…
In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:
What are some must knows regarding applying for a tenure-track job when one is already in a tenure-track position?
For example, what should one do about letter writers? Should one minimize talk about their dissertation?
Any helpful tips from readers?
Now that it’s September, it’s time for a new “how can we help you?” thread.
For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query.
As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon’s mission) that you could use help with. Ask away – we’re here to help!
Finally, a quick reminder of the following RULE: Please do not submit replies to other comments in this thread. It makes these threads unwieldy and difficult for me to keep track of. If you’d like to respond to a comment in this thread, please wait until I dedicate a new post to the person’s query myself and comment in that thread instead! I have not been enforcing this rule consistently recently, but need to recommit to it as it has been hard to manage these threads. Thanks!
Wendy Salkin (Stanford University) writes in:
We are pleased to announce the 14th annual Legal Philosophy Workshop (LPW), and to invite you to participate. We are excited to host the 2027 workshop in-person on June 17-18 at Stanford University.
Click here to submit an abstract, or to volunteer to comment, for the 2027 LPW.
LPW is an annual pre-read workshop designed to foster reflection on the nature of law and the philosophical issues underlying its different areas. Our aim is to promote work that connects legal philosophy with other branches of philosophy (e.g., moral and political philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of race, epistemology, feminist philosophy, or philosophy of action) and to create a venue for the critical examination of different viewpoints about law. All sessions are plenary and you can find more Information about LPW for this year and years past on our website.
We would like to invite you to submit an abstract or to volunteer to comment. Please ensure that the abstract is for unpublished work, anonymized, and does not exceed 1,000 words. The deadline for submitting your abstract is January 8, 2027. This is also a call for commenters. You can volunteer to comment or submit an abstract by filling out form above. (If you would like to join the LPW listserv about this or future events, please join the Legal Philosophy Workshop Google group.) We expect to notify all participants in March 2027.
Once we have received abstracts, we aim to put together a diverse program that we hope will be of interest to a wide range of people interested in legal philosophy. Please note that this is an open call for abstracts, so please feel free to forward this information to anyone who you think might be interested in presenting a paper, commenting on a paper, or attending the workshop.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Elliott Thornley and Zachary Goodsell (National University of Singapore) write in:
AI is now exceptionally capable in mathematics and coding, but how good is it at philosophy? We are organising the first AI Philosophy Competition to find out.
Entrants may submit up to three original essays on any philosophical topic. Essays must be primarily AI-generated, though some human guidance is allowed. Entrants must also submit a methodology report explaining how each essay was produced.
The essays will be judged by a committee of philosophers including David Chalmers, John Hawthorne, Matthew Mandelkern, Rachel Sterken, Herman Cappelen, Branden Fitelson, Kenny Easwaran, Daniel Greco, Cian Dorr, Jake Nebel, and Christian Tarsney, with more to be announced.
The prizes are $3,000 for first place, $2,000 for second, and $1,000 for third. There is also a prize pool of $5,000 for creative methodologies, to be distributed as the judge committee sees fit.
The submission deadline is 31 October 2026. Results will be announced at the end of January. The competition is organised by Zachary Goodsell and Elliott Thornley, and is funded by Forethought Research. Full details are available on the competition website.
In the adjunct-y role I’m currently in, I’m a bit all over the place. There are some classes I’ve taught…