Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, especially the exploration of the borderline between philosophy and other disciplines.

[3] The journal also publishes the Dewey, Woodbridge, and Nagel Lectures series held at Columbia University.

[4] The inaugural issue announced that the journal was founded with the intent of "covering the whole field of scientific philosophy, psychology, ethics, and logic" so that "the relations between philosophy and psychology should remain intimate".

Anscombe, D. M. Armstrong, A. J. Ayer, Jonathan Bennett, Henri Bergson, Ned Block, Tyler Burge, Rudolf Carnap, Stanley Cavell, David Chalmers, Roderick Chisholm, Noam Chomsky, Paul Churchland, Arthur Danto, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, John Dewey, Fred Dretske, W. E. B.

Du Bois, Michael Dummett, Ronald Dworkin, Kit Fine, Jerry Fodor, Harry Frankfurt, Peter Geach, Alvin Goldman, Nelson Goodman, Jürgen Habermas, Ian Hacking, Gilbert Harman, Carl Hempel, Jaakko Hintikka, Frank Jackson, William James, Jaegwon Kim, David Lewis, Walter Kaufmann, Christine Korsgaard, Saul Kripke, Alasdair MacIntyre, J. L. Mackie, John McDowell, George Herbert Mead, Sidney Morgenbesser, Ernest Nagel, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Martha Nussbaum, Derek Parfit, Charles Sanders Peirce, Alvin Plantinga, Hilary Putnam, W. V. O. Quine, John Rawls, Hans Reichenbach, Richard Rorty, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, T. M. Scanlon, David Schmidtz, Wilfrid Sellars, Amartya Sen, Elliott Sober, Robert Stalnaker, P. F. Strawson, Charles Taylor, Tim van Gelder, and Peter van Inwagen.