AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

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.