AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Does philosophy make progress? Although it may seem obvious that it does, there are sceptics—both within the discipline and beyond it—who question this. In response to such doubts, Stoljar (2017) argues that we are entitled to a “reasonable optimism” about philosophy’s capacity to advance. Stoljar notes that there are recurring patterns or types of philosophical problems that we have solved—such as boundary problems and constitutive problems—that indicate progress. Moreover, as philosophical subfields evolve, new questions and positions emerge—and that, in itself, can be seen as a form of progress. Philosophers may progress their fields by extending earlier arguments, refining existing views, or make what Kelley (2024) calls “philosophical moves.” For example, one might adopt a pluralist position in one field after observing it in another. Given that these moves, or styles of inquiry, could plausibly be learned and applied through pattern recognition, a question arises: could Large Language Models (LLMs), which excel at such tasks, contribute to philosophical progress? In this paper, I argue they may be able to, by looking at issues from the self-knowledge literature. I also consider some of the ethical implications of LLM use in philosophy, including questions around authorship, privacy, and their environmental impact.

After years of reading philosophy, one is likely to pick up on several of the same or similar ‘moves’ made in distinct domains. Familiarity with the tropes of philosophy brings about an awareness of notable dialectical structures of which one can ‘copy-paste’ the form sans content. Move-literacy can uncover novel approaches to ongoing philosophical debates. A novel response to a problem in epistemology may inspire a similar response in moral philosophy; a clever distinction made in metaphysics may help one make a similar move in aesthetics; the way claims are organized in a literature review from the philosophy of science may be usefully imported into a discussion in the philosophy of religion.
In this talk, I want to further contribute to identifying moves and add to the repository of them. But I also aim - in the spirit of Alan Hájek - to promote active and ongoing engagement with one’s inventory of moves as a worthwhile heuristic. Maintaining move-mindedness facilitates an engagement with moves that goes beyond our familiarity with moves as they are commonly individuated. Some parts of moves make for useful ‘mini moves’ – often discovered when mere components or aspects of a full move prove apt or inspirational (or conversely, deserving of critique). Additionally, some approximations of moves may be more (or less) suitable than their canonical neighbor moves in some contexts. Lastly, I will discuss some pitfalls of being overly rigid when making use of move-minded methods.