GAP and GPS Essay Award 2024

The 2024 prize question is:
Can we be responsible for what is not up to us?

Submissions of essays of up to 3,000 words are possible until 31 October 2024. Please note the conditions of participation and submission instructions in this document.  A poster on the current essay prize can be found here.

Jury decision on the 2023 joint essay prize of the GAP and GPS

The Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP) and Grazer Philosophische Studien (GPS) are pleased about the interest in the essay question: What, if anything, will AI never be capable of?

31 submissions were received (eleven of which were from women). A jury consisting of eleven experts thoroughly considered the contributions, which were rendered anonymous. After careful deliberation, the jury has awarded the prizes to:

• 1st Prize: –

• 2nd Prize: Marius Mumbeck (Universität Duisburg-Essen): »Is there a domain of linguistic competence AI cannot grasp?« (abstract)

• 3nd Prize: Julian Braunwarth (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen): »Was eine KI niemals können wird, wird auch der Mensch niemals können« (abstract)

Members of the jury were Martina Fürst, Gregor Hörzer, Siegfried Jaag, Giacomo Giannini, Mario Günther, Kristina Musholt, Christoph Schamberger, Eva Schmidt, Sebastian Speitel, Corina Strößner und Eva Weber-Guskar. The winning essays will be published in the Grazer Philosophische Studien in the second half of 2024. We congratulate the winners and thank all participants for their contributions!

june 1, 2024

Georg Meggle Turns 80

Today, on 21 May 2024, Georg Meggle, Honorary President of the GAP, will be 80 years old. The GAP Board would like to offer its warmest congratulations! Ulla Wessels and Christoph Lumer have written a laudation for the GAP to mark Georg Meggle's 80th birthday. You can find the laudation here (in German).

May 20, 2024

Statement by the GAP Executive Committee on the BILD campaign of 8 May 2024

The BILD tabloid defamed lecturers who spoke out against police operations on campus and in favour of a dialogue with demonstrating students in an open letter as "UniversiTÄTER" and pilloried them with photos and names. Science Minister Stark-Watzinger questioned in an interview with BILD that the signatories of the letter »stand on the ground of the Basic Law«.

Both the protests themselves and the open letter have been criticised and intensively discussed in the media and in politics, in some cases rightly so.

The GAP Executive Committee considers the role and statements of the Science Minister in this context to be problematic. We strongly oppose the repulsive and demagogic media campaign of the BILD tabloid.

The Executive Committee of the GAP

May 21, 2024

Nominierung für den Frege-Preis

Beim GAP.12-Kongress – Pathways to Truth / Wege zur Wahrheit –, der vom 8.–11. September 2025 in Düsseldorf stattfindet, wird die GAP zum sechsten Mal den Frege-Preis verleihen. Mit diesem Preis werden alle drei Jahre deutschsprachige Philosoph:innen, die sich in der Analytischen Philosophie besonders ausgezeichnet haben, für ihr philosophisches Werk geehrt. Der Preis ist undotiert, doch zu Ehren der Preisträger:in wird auf dem GAP-Kongress ein Kolloquium veranstaltet. Die bisherigen Preisträger:innen waren Wolfgang Künne, Rüdiger Bittner, Wolfgang Spohn, Dieter Birnbacher und Martine Nida-Rümelin.

Wir bitten Sie, Vorschläge für die nächste Preisträgerin oder den nächsten Preisträger mit einer kurzen Begründung (max. 250 Wörter) bis zum 30. April 2024 per E-Mail an This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. einzureichen. Es können Personen aus allen Bereichen der Analytischen Philosophie ausgezeichnet werden. Ein inhaltlicher Bezug zu Freges Werk ist für die Nominierung nicht erforderlich. Die Jury besteht aus dem Vorstand der GAP.

Position Paper on Electronic Publishing and Assessing Scientific Expertise

Nicola Mößner (Leibniz Universität Hannover) and Klaus Erlach (Fraunhofer IPA Stuttgart) have presented a position paper that offers a diagnosis of the problem and proposed solutions on the subject of electronic publishing and the evaluation of philosophical expertise. The GAP links here to the noteworthy position paper, which can contribute to strengthening the autonomy of the sciences and humanities because it contains, among other things, important and valuable information on electronic publishing, the 'market' of information, scientist tracking, information service providers and the metrisation of science. The proposed solutions offer a starting point for further discussion.

February 28, 2024

Hybrid GAP lecture series 2024 – »Contested concepts: Philosophical perspectives on racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, …«

What is racism, what is anti-Semitism, sexism, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, etc.? Our lecture series pursues the project of discussing the difficult conceptual demarcation problems that arise when defining the different types of group-related discrimination in context.

The program and a detailed description of the lecture can be found here. The link to participate via Zoom will follow shortly here and in one of our special emails.

january 29, 2024

Doctoral workshop 2024

thematically open, for first-generation academics, organised by Hamid Taieb and Barbara Vetter in cooperation with the GAP, 24-25 April 2024 at HU Berlin, application deadline: 31 December 2023. Further information can be found here.

On the 175th Birthday of Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)

8 November 2023 marks the 175th anniversary of Gottlob Frege's birth. To mark the occasion, Dolf Rami (Ruhr University Bochum) has written a text for the GAP that honours Frege's work, but also takes a critical look at insights into Frege as a person. The text is available here (in German).

november 8, 2023

Death of Hans Albert

On 24 October 2023, our honorary member Hans Albert died at the age of 102. Hans Albert held the chair of sociology and science at the University of Mannheim from 1963 to 1989.

He is one of the outstanding representatives of critical rationalism, which rejects in particular any form of infallibility, dogmatism and the claim to ultimate justification. He formulated the Münchhausen trilemma, which impressively illustrates this attitude: it shows that a conclusive justification of our knowledge is impossible, since we would either lose ourselves in endless justifications, resort to circular argumentation or cling dogmatically to unfounded assumptions.

On the occasion of Hans Albert's 100th birthday, Rainer Hegselmann had written a detailed appreciation of the life and work of this great philosopher and sociologist, to which we link again here (in German).

july 14, 2023

GAP.12: Save the date!

8.–11. September 2025 in Düsseldorf
Watch this Space!