All Recommendations
100 articles scored and available for review
by Rory O’Sullivan
How the persecuted Vietnamese philosopher became one of the first theorists of the divide between colonised and coloniser- by Rory O’SullivanRead on Aeon
by Roger Crisp
[Revised entry by Roger Crisp on January 13, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] The concept of well-being is most commonly used in philosophy to describe what is non-instrumentally or ultimately good for a person - what it is in their life, such as pleasure or friendship, that makes that l...
by Brian Bix
[Revised entry by Brian Bix on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] John Austin is considered by many to be the creator of the school of analytical jurisprudence, as well as, more specifically, the approach to law known as "legal positivism." Austin's particular command theory of...
by Michael Trestman, Jonathan Birch, and Colin Allen
[Revised entry by Michael Trestman, Jonathan Birch, and Colin Allen on January 13, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, evidence.html] Is there something it's like to be an octopus, a bee, a snail? For much of the twentieth century, research into animal cognition tended to avoid questions of...
by Michel Bourdeau
[Revised entry by Michel Bourdeau on January 13, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) is the founder of positivism, a philosophical and political movement which enjoyed a very wide diffusion in the second half of the nineteenth century. It sank into an almost comp...
by Michael Beaney and Siobhan Chapman
[Revised entry by Michael Beaney and Siobhan Chapman on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Susan Stebbing was a leading figure in British philosophy between the First and Second World Wars. She made significant contributions to the development of the analytic tradition, both in...
by Jeff Nagy
Rarely considered together, the intertwined legacy of this odd couple, Skinner and Lilly, has given us the world we live in now: the world of surveillance capitalism and generative AI, of high-tech woo-woo and algorithmic self-optimization, a world that is a weird and improbable synthesis between th...
by Michael Wade
[Revised entry by Michael Wade on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Bibliography] Ecological genetics is the broad field of studies that investigates the relationship between genetic change and features of the biotic and abiotic environment. In population genetic theory, the role of the environment in...
by David Wendler
[Revised entry by David Wendler on January 14, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Clinical research attempts to address a relatively straightforward, and vital challenge: how do we determine whether one medical intervention is better than another, whether it offers greater clinical benefit...
by Charley Burlock
You can buy an AI version of your lost loved one. But should you?
by Toby_Ord
Published on February 2, 2026 8:44 AM GMTThe shift from scaling up the pre-training compute of AI systems to scaling up their inference compute may have profound effects on AI governance. The nature of these effects depends crucially on whether this new inference compute will primarily be used durin...
by Thomas Feeney
[New Entry by Thomas Feeney on January 12, 2026.] [Editor's Note: The following new entry by Thomas Feeney replaces the former entry on this topic by the previous author.]...
by Ben Thompson
Microsoft got hammered on Wall Street for capacity allocation decisions that were the right ones: the software that wins will use AI to usurp other software.
by Christopher Mole
[Revised entry by Christopher Mole on February 2, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Attention is involved in the selective directedness of our mental lives. The nature of this selectivity is one of the principal points of disagreement between the existing theories of attention. Some of th...
by Daniel Munro, Shen-yi Liao, and Tamar Gendler
[Revised entry by Daniel Munro, Shen-yi Liao, and Tamar Gendler on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] To imagine is to represent without aiming at things as they actually, presently, and subjectively are. One can use imagination to represent possibilities other than the actual,...
by Nora Mills Boyd and James Bogen
[Revised entry by Nora Mills Boyd and James Bogen on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Scientists obtain a great deal of the evidence they use by collecting and producing empirical results. Much of the standard philosophical literature on this subject comes from 20th century l...
by Greg Mania
Two years ago, I stood in Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes’s home office in the South Bay, surrounded by a whirlwind of color-coded index cards, open notebooks, and stacks of books, all orbiting a large whiteboard crowded with both historical facts and imagined possibilities. She told me—almost casually—that th...
by Mike Mariani
Coursing through Catholicism is a radical tradition of environmental justice that will help combat the climate crisis- by Mike MarianiRead on Aeon
by Charles T. Wolfe and J.B. Shank
[Revised entry by Charles T. Wolfe and J.B. Shank on February 2, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Because of his public leadership of the philosophe party in eighteenth-century France, Voltaire stands today as the iconic example of the French Enlightenment philosopher. Denis Diderot (171...
by James E. Crimmins
[Revised entry by James E. Crimmins on January 13, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Jeremy Bentham, jurist and political reformer, is the philosopher whose name is most closely associated with the foundational era of the modern utilitarian tradition. Earlier moralists had enunciated seve...
by Bence Nanay
[Revised entry by Bence Nanay on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] If you close your eyes and visualize an apple, what you experience is mental imagery - visual imagery. But mental imagery is far more pervasive in our mental life than just visualizing. It happens in all sense ...
by Thomas Kasulis and Raquel Bouso
[Revised entry by Thomas Kasulis and Raquel Bouso on January 11, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Japanese philosophers have historically interacted with a multitude of philosophies outside their native boundaries - most prominently Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Western. As a result. they...
by Andrea Branchi
For Mandeville, humankind has a bottomless need to be liked: it is this perennial craving that forms the foundation of society- by Andrea BranchiRead on Aeon
by Ryan Wasserman
[Revised entry by Ryan Wasserman on January 14, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] What is the relationship between a clay statue and the lump of clay from which it is formed? We might say that the lump constitutes the statue, but what is the relation of material constitution? Some insist ...
by Kevin Mulligan and Fabrice Correia
[Revised entry by Kevin Mulligan and Fabrice Correia on January 13, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, history-facts.html] Facts, philosophers like to say, are opposed to theories and to values (cf. Rundle 1993) and are to be distinguished from things, in particular from complex objects, c...
by Megan Milks
“No More Cows,” an excerpt from Mega Milk by Megan Milks Most evenings I drank a tall glass of 2% milk while being watched by cows. Boxy Holsteins grazed on pastoral landscapes above the kitchen cabinets. On the counters beneath them, one cow leered with wooden spoons and rubber turners sprouting fr...
by Susan Tallman
Major exhibitions are upending the way people understand Native American and Aboriginal artists.
by Maxime Riché 🔸
Published on February 3, 2026 11:47 AM GMTSummaryConditionalization in Inoculation Prompting. Inoculation Prompting is a technique for selective learning that involves using a system prompt at train-time that won’t be used at test-time. When doing Inoculation-style training, using fixed arbitrary pr...
by Gina Frangello
“Slut Lullabies” by Gina Frangello I found out my mother was a slut from my best friend, at a bar with my secret Greek boyfriend who was possibly a homosexual and his uptight brother who pretended to know nothing of our affair. I was high on myself that evening. It was a buzz I got […] The post At L...
by Justin Taylor
Dunn was quite possibly the last writer anyone would have expected to resurface, after nearly two decades of silence, with the 1989 bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award.
by Siddhant Ritwick & Tomi Koljonen
For people with chronic illnesses, the relief and recognition of online communities can set up a toxic psychological trap- by Siddhant Ritwick & Tomi KoljonenRead on Aeon
by Andre Gallois and Irem Kurtsal
[Revised entry by Andre Gallois and Irem Kurtsal on January 12, 2026. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] The problem of identity through time can be introduced by noting that the following two statements both seem true but, on the assumption that change is real, appear to be inconsistent:...
by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Despite centuries of trying, the term ‘religion’ has proven impossible to define. Then why does it remain so necessary?- by Kwame Anthony AppiahRead on Aeon
by Lucie Shelly
A raven, poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin told me, is one of the few birds that will look at you as it sings. Ornithology has shown that birdsong patterns are passed down through generations, much like human language; they contain sounds that no longer have a source. Birdsong, in a sense, is an archive o...
by Jane Dykema
When our taekwondo master spars with us, it’s slow, instructive. He’s demonstrating a drill we’re about to do in pairs or walking through possible attacks or counters with a student to show them their own tendencies. I hadn’t seen him spar for real until a former student, a heavyweight finance bro w...
by Matteo Wong
According to some predictions, 2026 is the year that an all-powerful AI will arrive.
by Charlotte Blease
Medical error kills hundreds of thousands yearly. If AI is sophisticated enough to help, doctors must not stand in the way- by Charlotte BleaseRead on Aeon
by Olivia Paschal
In retrospect, the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration was an inopportune time for Walmart to hold the grand opening of its new corporate campus.
by Toni Morrison
The novels of Ernest Hemingway, as well as most fiction of the twenties, thirties, and forties, are no longer obliged to do the technically strenuous work of establishing racial difference that we observed in the nineteenth century with Edgar Allan
by Ed Simon
For nineteen years, until his retirement in 1885, Herman Melville would awake, slick back his dark hair and unsnarl the snags from his beard, don a uniform of dark navy pilot cloth and affix to his chest the brass badge
by Paul Katsafanas
Politics today is driven by grievances that can never be assuaged. For democracy’s survival, we must grapple with this dynamic- by Paul KatsafanasRead on Aeon
by Irus Braverman
All our laws and rules to protect coral reefs now stand in the way of radical action to save them from heat death- by Irus BravermanRead on Aeon
by Walt Hunter
College kids aren’t reading novels—but that’s because not enough teachers are asking them to.
by Rebecca Fallon
The Complete Works of Shakespeare sits biblical on many a writer’s shelf, looming with almost patriarchal intensity over blank pages, scoffing at timid, non-iambic sentences. As a body of work, it’s far too much—too comprehensive, too masterful—to aspire towards. But
by W. Ralph Eubanks
Since my first visit to Parchman to teach writing and literature in 2019, I have come to see prison writing as a unique body of literature that offers a commentary on the conditions that exist broadly in American society, specifically
by Mary Pappalardo
“Go West, young man!”—a phrase that looms large in the United States’s history of westward expansion. It’s a history dominated by the displacement of Indigenous peoples, the exploitation and destruction of land, and a drive to claim more, more, always more: more resources, more gold, and more land, ...
by EU Policy Careers
Published on February 1, 2026 11:40 PM GMTContext: The authors are a few EAs who currently work or have previously worked at the European Commission.In this post, wemake the case that more people[1] aiming for a high impact career should consider working for the EU institutions[2] using the Importan...
by Forethought
Published on February 3, 2026 8:50 AM GMTThis note was written as part of a research avenue that I don’t currently plan to pursue further. It’s more like work-in-progress than Forethought’s usual publications, but I’m sharing it as I think some people may find it useful.IntroductionThere have been m...
by Toby_Ord
Published on February 2, 2026 8:44 AM GMTThe new scaling paradigm for AI reduces the amount of information a model can learn from per hour of training by a factor of 1,000 to 1,000,000. I explore what this means and its implications for scaling. The last year has seen a massive shift in how leading ...
by Jood AlThukair
In Tracing the Ether: Contemporary Poetry from Saudi Arabia, theorist and translator Dr. Moneera Al-Ghadeer gathers sixty-two poems by twenty-six poets who have inherited both the ruins of pre-Islamic longing and the blue light of a world digitally mapped and endlessly refreshed. Tracing the Ether i...
by Sally Jenkins
Even before competing in his first Olympics, 21-year-old Ilia Malinin has transformed the sport of figure skating.
by Liz Kruesi
Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology. The post How Modern and Antique Technologies Reveal a Dynamic Cosmos first appeared on Quanta Magazine
by Toby_Ord
Published on February 2, 2026 8:44 AM GMTBuilding on the recent empirical work of Kwa et al. (2025), I show that within their suite of research-engineering tasks the performance of AI agents on longer-duration tasks can be explained by an extremely simple mathematical model — a constant rate of fail...
by Justin Weinberg
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of its latest round of prizes. Below are the prizes and their winners. 2025 AI2050 Prizes ($10,000 each. Awarded in recognition of outstanding philosophical scholarship relating to artificial intelligence.) Early Career Researche...
by Najla & Asad Nariman
I am banned from working now, but as I look back on my long, challenging career in Afghanistan I feel hope for the future- by Najla & Asad NarimanRead on Aeon
by Nick Stocker
Published on January 14, 2026 10:09 PM GMTIf you're passionate about effective giving and want to help close the funding gaps for many charities, setting up an EA community within organizations might be your goal for this year.SummaryStart an intracompany EA community to support EA organizations. By...
by Naveeth Basheer
Published on February 2, 2026 2:27 PM GMTThis report was produced by @Naveeth Basheer from AWASH and @Emmanuel Awuni from SHARED Africa. The report is intended to support people working in the Effective Altruism and Animal Advocacy community, including:Funders: by identifying high-impact interventi...
by David Roza
At the heart of the Air Force's combat search and rescue corps is its aging fleet of rescue helicopters. But as the Air Force phases in new HH-60Ws, the size of the force is set to shrink. The post The big problem facing Air Force combat search and rescue appeared first on Task & Purpose.
by Judson Bergman
In a stack of CDs in my parents’ black 2006 Chevy Colorado in the suburbs of New York City sits a matte black cardboard case containing three discs so scuffed and scratched that certain songs stutter and skip at all
by Kyle Gunn
The Pentagon says China’s strategy of “national total war” aims to mobilize the country's civilian industry, tech, logistics, and cyber power to aid the nation's military. The post Inside China’s plans for ‘national total war,’ according to the Pentagon appeared first on Task & Purpose.
by Karim Sadjadpour
The American and Iranian leaders are complete enigmas to each other—and the asymmetry in their beliefs is driving the crisis between their countries.
by James Diacoumis
Published on February 1, 2026 12:50 PM GMTImagine a being very much like a human, with rich conscious experience but no affective conscious states. Call such a creature a Philosophical Vulcan (or p-Vulcan for short.) p-Vulcans differ from the regular Vulcans on Star Trek who are low-affect, hyper-lo...
by Will Gottsegen
Traders have barely budged in response to recent Trump-related shocks.
by Raymond Tallis
An expert in both disciplines makes a bold attempt to convince sceptics, and partially succeeds Vladimir Nabokov notoriously dismissed the “vulgar, shabby, and fundamentally medieval world” of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, whom he called “the Viennese witch doctor”. His negative judgment has been shar...
by Shannon O’Brien
There’s something undeniably compelling about stories of getting lost. They capture not only literal misplacement but also the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual ways we can feel unmoored. Being adrift is rarely just a setback; it can be a catalyst for insight, resilience, and self-discovery. Mo...
by Gabriel Payares
Growing up in Caracas in the ‘90s, I remember seeing a series of posters advertising Venezuela’s most important tourist destinations, such as El Salto Ángel, Canaima National Park, and the Los Roques archipelago. The caption “Venezuela, el secreto mejor guardado del Caribe”—“the best kept secret of ...
by Ann Larson and Alissa Quart
I helped create and run the media non-profit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which the late great Barbara Ehrenreich founded. In a time of journalism lay-offs, newsroom shut downs and right-wing-media takeovers, we support heavily reported and fearless nonfiction, including books.
by Introduction by Lisa Allardice
Democracy, birds and hangover cures – famous fans put their questions to the visionary authorAfter the phenomenal global success, not to mention timeliness, of the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale in 2017, Margaret Atwood has been regarded as “a combination of figurehead, prophet and saint”, th...
by Julie Beck
Stephen Fishbach mines the drama of competition shows to write a cautionary tale about trying to edit down the mess of life.