J. Angelo Corlett (PhD, 1992, University of Arizona) is Professor of Philosophy & Ethics at San Diego State University. He specializes in Philosophy of Law; Rights; Punishment; Race, Racism, and Reparations; Social Epistemology; Moral Responsibility Theory; the Right to Freedom of Expression; Plato’s Socrates and Plato; Philosophy of Sport; and Academic Ethics. He is the author of almost 200 peer-reviewed philosophy books and articles and has earned numerous teaching awards throughout his career. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Ethics: An International Philosophical Review (Springer: 1995-2018). What excites you about philosophy? Being able to explore and contribute plausible solutions to some vital historic and contemporary problems demonstrates how philosophy is extraordinarily relevant to our lives and exciting, especially when philosophical progress in understanding is made. What is your favorite thing that you’ve written? J. Angelo Corlett, “Offensiphobia”, The Journal of Ethics, 22 (2018), p. 113-146. J. Angelo Corlett, Heirs of Oppression (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), Studies in Political, Social, and Legal Philosophy Series. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/black-reparations/ What are you most proud of in …

Rachel Zuckert grew up in Northfield, Minnesota. She studied philosophy at Williams College, Oxford University, and the University of Chicago. She has taught at Bucknell University and Rice University, and is now Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. What excites you about philosophy? I am most attracted to theoretical systematicity, and to the sense that there is always another concept, claim, or argument to be thought through beyond what I have so far understood. This is why I was initially hooked by Kant, and then the other grand thought-systems of German Idealism, and why I am perpetually drawn back to the aesthetics of the sublime—the overwhelming-exhilarating experience of something as (if) beyond oneself and one’s powers. What is your favorite thing that you’ve written? What are you most proud of in your professional life? Usually, the current thing I’m writing is my favorite—it’s exciting to explore new intellectual terrain—until it gets to be about 75% finished, and then I start being disappointed. I am proud that I …

Rida Jafar is an MA student in Philosophy at the University of Guelph. She is interested in the ethics and phenomenology of human-machine integration, with a focus on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). She also has interests in AI and robot ethics, especially when and where these intersect with cyborg ethics. Link to your website: rida-jafar.github.io What excites you about philosophy? Whenever I’m conversing with someone on a topic, or observing a debate online, and I encounter fallacious arguments, sophistry, or muddled communication in general, I experience this friction in my mind that drives me to figure out where exactly the line of reasoning has broken down and why. Philosophy provides me with the tools to do that. If I were to describe the feeling I get from reading a well-written philosophy paper, it would be like having cool water poured over my mind; the heat produced from the mental friction goes away. The fact that this cooling effect can be applied to the topics I care about most is something I learned in an AI ethics …

Akshay Ganesh is a high school senior whose work explores the intersection of philosophy, LLMs, education, and learning. He’s the founder of Deskpad, a nonprofit focused on ensuring AI adoption in classrooms preserves student thinking. He hopes to study philosophy in college with a focus on ethics and education. What excites you about philosophy? Philosophy is incredibly exciting to me because it really forces me to question assumptions I would otherwise leave untouched. Earlier in my life, I thought I’d want to study something STEM-adjacent in college, but after taking a philosophy summer course, I realized that the abilities to think and reason that philosophy forces you to develop are universally applicable across every field. Since then, I’ve become especially interested in the ethics of AI in classrooms, where questions about learning and autonomy are becoming increasingly difficult to answer. What are you working on right now? Aside from college applications, the thing I’ve been spending the most time on has been my initiative, Deskpad. I started it at the end of my sophomore year …

The APA Blog is publishing excerpts from Cliff Sosis’s long-form interviews with philosophers, which appear at his blog, What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher? The excerpts below are from an interview originally published on August 20, 2026 and are reprinted with permission from Cliff Sosis. In this interview, Briana Toole, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, talks about growing up in Chattahoochee, Florida, Left Behind, Crash Bandicoot, geometry, Greenpeace, beauty pageants, money anxiety, Myspace, 9/11, Florida State University and the Bright Futures scholarship, a difficult to comprehend accent, working evenings at TCBY, working with David McNaughton, a brutal but helpful epistemology TA, switching from law to philosophy, committing to grad school and going to University of Sheffield, her first snowfall, Jenny Saul, Teach for America and meeting her husband, pursuing a PhD at UT, sexism and the “golden boys,” grounding, complaining to her understanding dissertation advisor, standpoint epistemology, depression, a fellowship at MIT, Sally Haslanger, Corrupt the Youth, landing a position at Claremont McKenna College just before COVID hit, bouncing between positions …

Edward DeLia is a philosopher and social scientist who holds graduate degrees from both Hofstra and Fordham Universities. He believes great writing must inspire one to discuss philosophical issues and motivate in a clear, enlightened manner, a cathedral of illumination. What excites you about philosophy? Philosophy defines the significant. The intensive study of philosophy acquaints one with the most significant questions or issues enveloping the human experience. Questions of truth, beauty, wisdom, art, freedom, equality, ideal government, goodness, and the sublime, among others. These queries have a noble and illuminating capacity to lift one to a higher level of conceptual understanding. To a degree, they negate the trivial or the inconsequential through which the world is darkened.             “When foolishness becomes the mainstay of society, wisdom is banished.” What is the favorite thing that you have written? Definitely the ‘Philosophical Discourses‘ published earlier this year. The purpose of this work is to analyze the meaning of philosophy in addition to providing a creative interpretation of the nature of the field. The …

Jessica Castellani is a philosophy adjunct professor who will be teaching Ethics at Owen’s Community College this fall. She gained her Master of Arts degree from the University of Toledo, where she also taught for two years. She is also an editor for the American Philosophical Association, particularly for this blog. Link to Website: https://jlcastel172pjesv.blog/ What excites you about philosophy? What excites me most about philosophy is that it can be transformative. Many of the belief systems we hold today are philosophical concepts that have been passed down through generations. These philosophers had a real-life impact on how people not only consciously thought of things but also unknowingly as philosophy, science, and literature went hand in hand. This is also what troubles me about philosophy at times. This idea that there are so many different ways ‘the world’ or ‘society’ could be but through power certain theories and ideologies come to the forefront. What is your favorite thing that you’ve written? My favorite thing I’ve ever written was for a political philosophy course I took …