I worry that even well-intentioned attempts to "improve nature" (say by reducing suffering) will make things worse even in their own terms.

The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!

Philosophers (and probably most intellectuals) are more interested in pursuing what they see as the logical implications of their theories than they are in paying attention to the shlumpy diversity of defensible values that people actually have, and then trying to figure out how these might be negotiated in the life of an agent or community.

We think of history as another specialization, like philosophy of language, rather than as something that informs everything we do and think.

We know the "great men" and a handful of heavily cited papers in our specialization. When there is a historical frame around a paper it's often a caricature that has become canonical.

Environmental philosophy just is philosophy full stop. It only sprung up as distinct subfield because mainstream philosophy was ignoring some of the most important philosophical challenges of our time.

Sometimes I say philosophers should be at the table because they're the only people who know that they're not going to walk away with big money to support their research or to fund their crackpot solutions.