The Practical Ontologist
»The Practical Ontologist« is a compendium of online philosophical production. Every few hours it automatically aggregates, analyzes, and updates.

Featured Article · Hastings Bioethics

A Student’s Perspective: Universities Must Require Vaccination

As a college student who works as an EMT and was a contact tracer at the height of the pandemic, I believe universities must universally require Covid-19 vaccinations. When I worked as a contact tracer, I saw firsthand the ways in which colleges became hotspots for Covid outbreaks, due to poor university planning, a lack of testing resources, and congregate living situations. This personal experience is supported by New York Times data, which found that “Colleges and universities [were], as a category… hot spots for virus transmission.”  ¶ As of July 30, more than 600 colleges and universities require Covid vaccination, but 11 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming) have none that do so. Obviously, appropriate exemptions and accommodations should exist for medical reasons, but without college mandates (and greater immunization rates in the larger population), the risk for variants to surge and undo the hard work and sacrifices of the...

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Recent Media · Podcasts & Lectures

Buddy Guy @ 85 : See the PBS special Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase The Blues Away. bluesBuddy GuyChicagoguitarLouisiana ...
meta Man Without Qualities -

The Classical Liberal Case for Israel : Due this autumn.  classical liberalismIsraelJew hatredwalter blockZionism ...
sci trad value Man Without Qualities -

Herzog and Krauss in Conversation : Hands down, the best conversation with Herzog yet.  Perseverance is where the gods dwell. Lawrence M. Kraussphilosophical cinemaWerner Herzog ...
meta trad Man Without Qualities -

Giving the Sickness a Name: Walker Percy and acedia : Jeff Reimer in Commonweal Magazine. The artist’s work, in other words, is not an autopsy but a diagnosis made in the hope of recovery—an attempt, he says, to “give the sickness a name, to ...
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Danny Frederick (1955-2021) : I was saddened to learn of the passing of Danny. Danny was a star example of the gentleman philosopher, beholden to no-one, following an existential calling that he saw through with absolute integrity and dignity ...
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Marisa Diaz-Waian: Philosophy, like Love, Is For Everyone: Marisa Diaz-Waian runs a community-based learning program in outdoor Montana. ...
pro Blog of the APA -

Friendship: [Revised entry by Bennett Helm on July 30, 2021. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Friendship, as understood here, is a distinctively personal relationship that is grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welf ...
meta pro trad Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -

UNWORTHY THOUGHTS: I have been appalled, angered, mystified, and frustrated by the belligerent refusal of so many Americans – even healthcare workers – to get vaccinated. Their behavior puts me in mind of the fire insurance marks or plaques t ...
pro The Philosopher’s Stone -

APA Member Interview: Thomas Colclough: Thomas Colclough is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests are generally focused on mathematical logic, the ...
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Mini-Heap
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The Many and the One, #1
meta sci Logic Matters -

François Laruelle’s A Biography of Ordinary Man Video Reading: Presentations: This is the first of a new series of videos devoted to a reading of François Laruelle’s A BIOGRAPHY OF ORDINARY MAN. ...
meta pro trad Agent Swarm -

A Student’s Perspective: Universities Must Require Vaccination: As a college student who works as an EMT and was a contact tracer at the height of the pandemic, I believe universities must universally require Covid-19 vaccinations. When I wor ...
pro Hastings Bioethics -

Natural Kinds in the Mind: On 5–6 September 2022, this conference will bring together international researchers working in philosophy of science to examine the natural kind approach to mental phenomena. Recent years have seen the rise of a ne ...
meta LSE Philosophy -

NOTHING TO DECLARE The Language of Becoming (4): The Marriage of Philosophy and the Unconscious: 4) The Marriage of Philosophy and the Unconscious ‘Does the unconscious still have anything to say to us?’ asks Guattari, not ...
meta trad Agent Swarm -

God's vision of reality

Consider the simple theory of visual sensation on which for me to have a visual sensation as of y is for x to stand in a “vision relation” to y, with the relation being external to x so that x is no different intrinsically when x has a visual sensation as of a red cube and when x does not. We know that this simple theory is false of us for the obvious reason that we suffer from visual hallucinations or illusions: there are cases where we have a visual sensation as of a red cube in the absence of a red cube. Our best explanation of visual misperception is that visual sensation is mediated by an internal state of ours that can occur in the absence of the apparently visually sensed object. Thus, we have internal modifications—accidents—of visual perception. But now consider what I think of as the biggest objection to the doctrine of divine simplicity: God’s knowledge of contingent facts. This objection holds that God must be internally different in worlds where what he knows is differe... Read More ›

Alexander Pruss · Featured Blog

Material and formal mortal sin, and an insidious form of scrupulosity
This post is aimed primarily at Catholic readers, and especially Catholic readers given to a certain mode of scrupulosity (a disorder where one is unduly and irrationally worried about one’s sinfulness) I will describe further on down. I...Read More ›

Divine simplicity and knowledge of contingent truth
I think the hardest problem for divine simplicity is the problem of God’s contingent beliefs. In our world, God believes there are horses. In a horseless world, God doesn’t believe there are horses. Yet according to divine simplicity, Go...Read More ›

Measuring rods
In his popular book on relativity theory, Einstein says that distance is just what measuring rods measure. I am having a hard time making sense of this in Einstein’s operationalist setting. Either Einstein is talking of real measuring ro...Read More ›

Verifiability
I’ve been reading Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, and been struck by how hard it is define verifiability, which is crucial since Ayer thinks that statements are meaningful if and only if they are verifiable or analytic (or, I suppose, ...Read More ›

A weird escape from the Knowledge Argument?
Take Jackson’s story about Mary who grows up in a black-and-white room, but learns all the science there is, including the physics and neuroscience of color perception. One day she sees a red tomato. The point of the story is that in see...Read More ›

The evanescent world of becoming
An old idea in philosophy, going back to Plato, is that things that are becoming are less beings than things that are timeless. This is a mysterious view, but I have just found that my own preferred four-dimensionalism implies a clear an...Read More ›

LARUELLE AND A « COMMON =X » AS POINT OF (IN)SUFFICIENCY (2): incommensurability traversed by paradoxical object: Further comments on « From Non-Standard Philosophy to « Absolute Nothingness »: Is There a Common = X » (pdf, video) by Anne-Fra ...
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LARUELLE AND A « COMMON =X » AS POINT OF (IN)SUFFICIENCY (1): self-reference vs self-reverence: In an interesting talk entitled « From Non-Standard Philosophy to « Absolute Nothingness »: Is There a Common = X » (pdf, video) Anne- ...
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AGAMBEN, LARUELLE, BRATTON: planetary pandemic vs microcosmic academic: I think non-philospher François Laruelle’s work is done, even if some are still catching up. What he has been describing is more collective than he seems to think. ...
meta trad Agent Swarm -

Cosmos + Taxis 9:7+8 : Open access classical liberalismcosmos+taxis ...
sci value Man Without Qualities -

Satchmo Slogan: Leave It All Behind Ya : Marking 50 years since Pops’ passing. For all things Pops, there is no better resource than Ricky Riccardi. Louis Armstrongmusicnew orleansRicky Riccarditrumpet ...
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Herzl’s Bicycle : (This repost marks Herzl’s death on July 3rd). The top photo is of a mini sculpture near the Budapest synagogue and is based on the second photo on display in the Vienna Jewish Museum. The third photo is of the actual ...
meta Man Without Qualities -

Benjamin Bratton’s THE REVENGE OF THE REAL (4): historical amnesia and the master-amalgam: 20) CHRONARITY: ON GENERATIONAL NARRATIVISATION Bratton fallaciously self-identifies as a « Boomer »: « Waves of Boomers, mysel ...
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Richard Double (1928-2021)
pro Daily Nous -

God's vision of reality: Consider the simple theory of visual sensation on which for me to have a visual sensation as of y is for x to stand in a “vision relation” to y, with the relation being external to x so that x is no different intrinsi...
meta Alexander Pruss -

The Contradictory Christ: 2021.07.03 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Jc Beall, The Contradictory Christ, Oxford University Press, 2021, 208pp., $60.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198852360. Reviewed by Eric Yang, Santa Clar...
meta Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews -

Why Relativism is the Worst Idea Ever: The philosopher Allan Bloom once lamented: ‘There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative...
meta pro trad Blog of the APA -

You’re Wearing That? From School Dress Codes to Rape Culture: The email from my daughter’s elementary school principal arrived one spring afternoon.  It stated that effective immediately for all elementary school students (K-6th grade), ...
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GOOD NEWS: Next spring semester, starting in early January, I will be teaching an advanced undergraduate course in the UNC philosophy department. The title of the course is “Advanced Political Philosophy” but apparently that is a placeholder ...
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Mini-Heap
meta pro Daily Nous -

NOTHING TO DECLARE The Language of Becoming (3): Philosophy and the Daimon: 3) Philosophy and the Daimon « We are made of dreams and our dreams are made of us » (Pierrot le Fou). Understanding a philosopher is like learning ...
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NOTHING TO DECLARE The Language of Becoming (2): The Axiom of Becoming: 2) The Axiom of Becoming « if becoming is a model, not only the duality of the model and the copy, of the model and the reproduction, must disappear, but the ver ...
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NOTHING TO DECLARE The Language of Becoming (1): Dark Crystal
meta trad Agent Swarm -

Online talk about George Eliot and Spinoza (Agora Series): The School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong invites you attend the online Agora Speaker Series on Thursday 5 August, 3.30 to 5.00 PM AEST. Register here Dr Sophie Frazer ( ...
meta pro trad Feminist History of Philosophy -

The Right Global Warming Message : YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO EAT. YOU WON’T HAVE ANY MORE FOOD TO EAT. ...
meta trad Ecology Without Nature -

Philosophy by the Way: Random quoteAll animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.George Orwell (1903-1950) ...
meta sci value Philosophy by the Way -


Do We Still Need Physical Media?
meta pro Aesthetics for Birds -

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