Riding the Wave - Trends in Philosophy you're following

[Duns Eith]

Hey all,

While philosophy has had a reputation of not making progress, there are also trends in philosophy where particular topics get developed quickly. What research do you think it is a current or upcoming trend that you've been focused on? 

• Epistemic injustice
• Experimental Philosophy 
• Critical Race Theory
• Effective altruism
• Grounding
• Formal Epistemology
• Non-naturalist normative realism
• [insert your interest that is getting popular here]

(most of this list came from Leiter's philosophical "fads" post, but read nothing negative into it)

I have had interest in Grounding and, to some extent, Early Modern Women (Cavendish, Conway, Elisabeth of the Palatinate, Mary Shepherd, etc.). A lot of my friends have been into Formal Epistemology.

What about you?

[Kantattheairport]

• Epistemic injustice is definitely one that I've been interested in.
• I'm also pretty interested in (though not a big fan of) effective altruism.
• 'Ameliorative' projects on philosophical concepts, in the sense of Sally Haslanger, is something I'm quite taken by and that seems to be becoming a bit of a trend. I'm currently reading Kate Manne's Down Girl, where she does this with regards to misogyny, and it's also been employed in interesting ways with regard to race and gender.
• Does thinking about transformative experiences, in the sense of L. A. Paul, count as a trend? It's certainly had a fair bit of attention over the past couple of years, and my writing sample last cycle was related to it.
• I don't know if being interested in non-'Western' philosophy counts as a trend, since it's been ticking away in the background of anglophone philosophy for a while now. But there seems to me to be a bit of a resurgence of interest, especially in Africana philosophy (and, to a lesser extent, on Native American and Latin American philosophy), and I find this very exciting.
• Both x-phil and Early Modern Women are areas I've been meaning to get into at some point, but have not gotten around to.

[maxhgns]

Conventionalism and social world/kind stuff is just getting off the ground in aesthetics, and I  suspect it'll be widespread in the next ten years.

Social kinds are gaining a lot of steam in metaphysics.

[quineonthevine]

I really like Scanlon's fundamentalism about reasons (non-naturalist normative realism). I think his account in "Reasons Fundamentalism" provides a nice way of thinking about the irreducibility of plenty of other central topics in philosophy (I'm thinking about the irreducibility of meaning, understanding, and knowledge in particular.) I don't think nonreductionism is very popular outside of metaethics/moral philosophy, however, but I hope that will change.

I'm sure the grounding craze will die down, but I expect that people will start to think more about explanation in general, and what sorts of explanation are satisfying. I think this is especially so because certain concepts (e.g. knowledge) have failed to be analyzed in the traditional way via non-circular necessary and sufficient conditions.

Edited May 3, 2018 by quineonthevine

[WillisBell]

I have not followed closely any of the major trends, I have a mild interest and some readings done in Grounding (gasp - I actually think the best way to cash out Constructivism in metaethics is as a grounding thesis), Non-naturalist Normative Realism (although I am certainly not one of them, I think Shafer-Landau, Enoch, and Cuneo are some of my favourite philosophers), Neo-Pragmatism, and reasons-first moral philosophy (which I am told is a fad, although does that make Kant a fad?).  I also would be an excellent candidate for being interested in Early Modern Women though I haven't read any yet.

Edited August 27, 2018 by WillisBell