Update 22 Dec: Winners announced here.

Update 01 Dec: Finalists have been announced here.

Update 26 Nov: Voting round now closed, semifinalists announced here.

Update 20 Nov: Voting round now open, will close on 25 Nov 11:59 pm EST. Go here to vote.

Dear Readers, Writers, Bloggers,

We are very honored and pleased to announce that Huw Price has agreed to be the final judge for our 5th annual prize for the best blog and online-only writing in the category of philosophy. Details of the previous four philosophy (and other) prizes can be seen on our prize page.

Huw Price is Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and a Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He was previously ARC Federation Fellow and Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where from 2002—2012 he was Founding Director of the Centre for Time. In Cambridge he is co-founder, with Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn, of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

His publications include Facts and the Function of Truth (Blackwell, 1988; 2nd. edn. OUP, forthcoming), Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point (OUP, 1996), Naturalism Without Mirrors (OUP, 2011) and a range of articles in journals such as Nature, Science, Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Mind and British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. He is also co-editor (with Richard Corry) of Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited (OUP, 2007). His René Descartes Lectures (Tilburg, 2008) have recently appeared as Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism (CUP, 2013), with commentary essays by Simon Blackburn, Robert Brandom, Paul Horwich and Michael Williams.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow and former Member of Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a Past President of the Australasian Association of Philosophy. He was consulting editor for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy from 1995–2006, and is an associate editor of The Australasian Journal of Philosophy and a member of the editorial boards of Contemporary Pragmatism, Logic and Philosophy of Science, the Routledge International Library of Philosophy, and the European Journal for Philosophy of Science.

As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open. There will then be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the editors of 3 Quarks Daily will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add up to three wildcard entries of their own choosing. The three winners will be chosen from these by Huw Price.

The first place award, called the “Top Quark,” will include a cash prize of 500 dollars; the second place prize, the “Strange Quark,” will include a cash prize of 200 dollars; and the third place winner will get the honor of winning the “Charm Quark,” along with a 100 dollar prize.

(Welcome to those coming here for the first time. Learn more about who we are and what we do here, and do check out the full site here. Bookmark us and come back regularly, or sign up for the RSS Feed.)

The schedule and rules:

November 10, 2014:

The nominations are opened. Please nominate your favorite blog entry by placing the URL for the blog post (the permalink) in the comments section of this post. You may also add a brief comment describing the entry and saying why you think it should win. Do NOT nominate a whole blog, just one individual blog post.

Blog posts longer than 4,000 words are strongly discouraged, but we might make an exception if there is something truly extraordinary.

Each person can only nominate one blog post.

Entries must be in English.

The editors of 3QD reserve the right to reject entries that we feel are not appropriate.

The blog entry may not be more than a year old. In other words, it must have been first published after November 9, 2013.

You may also nominate your own entry from your own or a group blog (and we encourage you to).

Guest columnists at 3 Quarks Daily are also eligible to be nominated, and may also nominate themselves if they wish.

Nominations are limited to the first 100 entries.

Prize money must be claimed within a month of the announcement of winners.

November 17, 2014

The nominating process will end at 11:59 PM (NYC time) of this date.

The public voting will be opened soon afterwards.

November 25, 2014

Public voting ends at 11:59 PM (NYC time).

December 1, 2014

The finalists are announced.

December 22, 2014

The winners are announced.

One Final and Important Request

If you have a blog or website, please help us spread the word about our prizes by linking to this post. Otherwise, post a link on your Facebook profile, Tweet it, or just email your friends and tell them about it! I really look forward to reading some very good material, and think this should be a lot of fun for all of us.

Best of luck and thanks for your attention!

Yours,

Abbas