Mission
PEA Soup is a blog designed to provide a forum for discussing philosophy, ethics, and academia. Its mission is to transcend geographical barriers so that moral philosophers from across the globe can converse in much the way that they would with their nearby colleagues. The primary subject matter is ethics, where this includes not only metaethics, normative ethical theory, and applied ethics, but also cognate areas of philosophy, including political philosophy, philosophy of action, and personal identity. The secondary foci are other philosophical issues and professional issues, such as those that arise in teaching philosophy.
A Brief History
PEA Soup was founded in June, 2004, by Dan Boisvert, Joshua Glasgow, Douglas Portmore, and David Shoemaker. The first three stepped down in December 2012. David Sobel agreed to come on board at that time and now co-edits the blog with David Shoemaker. In early 2013, several associate editors were added to take charge of numerous features of the blog. Kate Manne and Hille Paakkunainen are now in charge of the blog’s partnership with Ethics and the Oxford Studies series. Jussi Suikkanen is in charge of the relationship with Philosophy & Public Affairs, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, and Philosopher’s Imprint. Zofia Stemplowska and Avia Pasternak are in charge of the relationship with Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. And Brad Cokelet is in charge of the “Featured Philosophers” series.
Editorial Policy
There are four categories of participants on PEA Soup (or ‘PEA Brains’): readers, commentators, contributors, and editors. Many people participate in more ways than one. Only contributors may initiate and post original threads for discussion; the current list of contributors can be found at anytime on the upper left-hand column of the blog. New contributors are added intermittently at the invitation of the editors, sometimes in consultation with current contributors. Anyone is welcome to comment on any post. And, of course, anyone is welcome to read the posts at PEA Soup.
One benefit of PEA Soup is that it provides a relatively informal and noncommittal venue for working out new arguments and ideas. We believe that in the service of developing such arguments and ideas, the more readers and commentators, the better. Accordingly, we encourage participation from non-contributors as well as contributors. However, we also realize that this open access, in combination with the sometimes controversial nature of our topics, might appear to invite off-topic comments at times. The editors therefore reserve the right to delete any such comments. Anonymous or pseudonymous comments are especially discouraged, and will very likely be deleted. Furthermore, each contributor is given the editorial discretion to delete any such comments from his or her own posts.
The author of each post is solely responsible for its content. It should not be assumed that the editors or other contributors assent to the views put forth in any discussion to which they have not directly contributed. Furthermore, many authors put forth their contributions tentatively, as a way of trying out new ideas; therefore, the views expressed in any given post should not be assumed to be the author’s ‘final word’ on the topic. Accordingly, any citations of PEA Soup posts, barring independent correspondence with the post’s author, should reflect their provisional quality. For further questions about any particular post, please contact its author.