Congratulations to Michael Ruse, who is the recipient of the 2014 Bertrand Russell Society Award. Further details are available here.

FSU's Department of Philosophy, together with the editors of the Brains blog and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Houston, is proud to sponsor the first annual Minds Online Conference, which will be held at the Brains blog from August 31 - September 25, 2015. The conference is co-organized by Cameron Buckner (UH), Nick Byrd (FSU), and John Schwenkler (FSU). For details and to participate in the conference, see the conference website: http://mindsonline.philosophyofbrains.com/.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, virtue ethics has enriched the range of philosophical approaches to normative ethics, often drawing on the work of the ancient Greeks, who offered accounts of the virtues that have become part of contemporary philosophical ethics. But these virtue ethical theories were situated within a more general picture of human practical rationality, one which maintained that to understand virtue we must appeal to what would make our lives go well. This feature of ethical theorizing has not become part of philosophical ethics, although the virtue theories dependent upon it have.

A conference on Evolutionary Ethics will be held at Florida State University, March 27 and 28, 2015. The conference is organized by Michael Ruse (Florida State University) and Robert J. Richards (University Of Chicago). The full program is here.

Over the last decade, "New Atheists" such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have pushed the issue of atheism to the forefront of public discussion. Yet very few of the ensuing debates and discussions have managed to provide a full and objective treatment of the subject.

Congratulations to FSU graduate student Mirja Perez de Calleja for winning the 2014 Philosophical Explorations Essay Prize for her paper "Cross-world luck at the time of decision is a problem for compatibilists as well". Further details are available here.