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

Featured Article · The Philosopher’s Stone

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT OLD AGE

Yesterday, one of the anonymati wrote with regard to my allusion to Socrates’ put down of Callicles, “You've repeated that bit about repetition many times.” I was curious, so I used Google’s powerful search facility and quickly discovered that I had indeed cited that passage a total of five times in eight years. That works out to roughly once every 585 days, which does not seem to me excessive, but it reminded me of a lovely old story that I heard during the years that I was living in Massachusetts. It seems that the wife of a nouveau riche businessman trying to make his way into the rarefied world of the Boston old Brahmans asked a Beacon Hill lady, “where do you buy your hats?” The lady looked down her nose at this upstart and responded, “we don’t buy our hats. We have our hats.”That got me thinking about my own clothes and I realized that like the uppercrust Boston...

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Recent Media · Podcasts & Lectures

Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe : 44 years ago. Cracking read. EntebbeIsraelOperation Thunderbolt ...
pro trad Man Without Qualities -

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (9) : I was then so meek that now, when I’m tortured by remorse for not having loved him enough before he died, I always summon up that scene. To be sincere, I have to add that it was easy for me to submit to his arr ...
meta pro trad Man Without Qualities -

The Moviegoer: quotes (10) : “What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the ...
meta trad Man Without Qualities -

Dislocating the self: The self is not in the brain, or the mind : Shaun Gallagher for The Institute of Art and Ideas. consciousnessEmbodied cognitionExternalismpersonal identityShaun Gallaghersituated cognition ...
pro sci Man Without Qualities -

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (9) : I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come ...
meta trad Man Without Qualities -

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT OLD AGE: Yesterday, one of the anonymati wrote with regard to my allusion to Socrates’ put down of Callicles, “You’ve repeated that bit about repetition many times.” I was curious, so I used Google’s powerful search ...
meta pro trad The Philosopher’s Stone -

Metaphysics and Woo: An outsider’s perspective on academic philosophy’s social role: As someone who has published a number of books on the nature of life and reality, I regularly receive emails from ordinary members of the reading public who ...
pro Blog of the APA -


Visualizing the Connections among Philosophical Topics
pro sci Daily Nous -

Finding Philosophy: Below is the audio recording of Gary Watson’s John Dewey Lecture, given at the 2017-2018 Pacific Division Meeting. In his talk, “Finding Philosophy,” Watson introduces the listener to how he found his way from adolescent s ...
pro trad Blog of the APA -

A REPLY TO PAUL: Paul writes: “Bob, I’ve seen you post this thought at least once, and maybe even twice before. I’ve got to ask you: what do you think are the practical implications of this analysis? Because I can’t see any, beyond not being ...
meta trad The Philosopher’s Stone -


Independence Day for Conflicted Americans
meta pro trad Examined Worlds -


Colleges & Covid: Time to Start Pool Testing
pro Error Statistics -

THE FATE OF ANALYSIS, #16–Naming Objects or Things, and Picturing Atomic Facts.: TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction                     &# ...
sci trad Against Professional Philosophy -


The Pavel Haas Quartet at Litomyšl
meta Logic Matters -

Lakatos Award 2020: Nicholas Shea’s (Open Access) Representation In Cognitive Science: We are pleased to share the news that friend of the Brains community, Nicholas Shea, has been awarded the 2020 Lakatos Award for their open access book Rep ...
meta pro Brains Blog -

Who was Angelo Herndon?

In a previous post I quoted Langston Hughes' 1938 poem "The Kids Who Die", which is very powerful in the context of our current crisis of police use of deadly force against black men. "Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi / Organizing sharecroppers / Kids will die in the streets of Chicago / Organizing workers / Kids will die in the orange groves of California / Telling others to get together / Whites and Filipinos, / Negroes and Mexicans, / All kinds of kids will die / Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment / And a lousy peace." In the third stanza Hughes writes "To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together". Who was Angelo Herndon?Herndon was a self-educated advocate and organizer for workers' rights and racial equality in the 1930s. He describes his early life of labor and social activism in Let Me Live, published in 1937 when he was only twenty-four years old. His life and arrest and conviction in Georgia for insurrection are described in Charles Mar... Read More ›

Man Without Qualities · Featured Blog

Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe
44 years ago. Cracking read. EntebbeIsraelOperation ThunderboltRead More ›

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (9)
I was then so meek that now, when I’m tortured by remorse for not having loved him enough before he died, I always summon up that scene. To be sincere, I have to add that it was easy for me to submit to his arrangements because at that t...Read More ›

The Moviegoer: quotes (10)
“What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of ev...Read More ›

Dislocating the self: The self is not in the brain, or the mind
Shaun Gallagher for The Institute of Art and Ideas. consciousnessEmbodied cognitionExternalismpersonal identityShaun Gallaghersituated cognitionRead More ›

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (9)
I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this . . . “A firm rule...Read More ›

Oakeshottian Modes at the Crossroads of the Evolution Debates
Zygon: Volume44, Issue1, March 2009, pp. 197-222 Christopher Hitchenscorey abelexperience and its modesMichael OakeshottRichard Dawkinsscience and religionStephen Jay GouldRead More ›

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (8)
One evening he asked me: “Do you think everything stops when we’re dead?” The mystery of death is something I think about every day, but I was not yet in a position to give him the information he was asking of me. To please him, I invent...Read More ›

Oakeshottian Modes at the Crossroads of the Evolution Debates : Zygon: Volume44, Issue1, March 2009, pp. 197-222 Christopher Hitchenscorey abelexperience and its modesMichael OakeshottRichard Dawkinsscience and religionStephen Jay Gould ...
meta pro sci trad Man Without Qualities -

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (8) : One evening he asked me: “Do you think everything stops when we’re dead?” The mystery of death is something I think about every day, but I was not yet in a position to give him the information he was asking of ...
meta trad Man Without Qualities -

The Moviegoer: quotes (9) : I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over h ...
meta pro Man Without Qualities -

Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series : Brill, the preeminent Philonic studies publisher, has two new titles to this series in the pipeline: Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life and Philo of Alexandria: On the Life of Abraham. Chris ...
meta pro trad Man Without Qualities -

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (8) : The Great Chain of Being had snapped like so many paper clips strung together by some drooling idiot; death, destruction, anarchy, progress, ambition, and self-improvement were to be Piers’ new fate ...
meta pro trad Man Without Qualities -

Festschrift for Susan Haack: Coming Soon : See lineup here. Charles Sanders PeirceEpistemologyevidencefeminismphilosophy of lawPhilosophy of sciencesusan haack ...
meta pro sci trad Man Without Qualities -

Oakeshott on Science as a Mode of Experience : ZYGON — Vo. 44. Issue 1, pp. 169-196. Byron Kaldisexperience and its modesIdealismMichael Oakeshottscience and religion ...
meta Man Without Qualities -

APA Member Interview: Kian Mintz-Woo: Kian Mintz-Woo is a moral philosopher; his work focuses on the applied ethics in climate change and health but also includes topics in metaethics and moral methodology. He is currently a lecturer at Princ...
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Should We Continue to Honor Hume With Buildings and Statues?
meta pro Daily Nous -


Mini-Heap
meta pro trad Daily Nous -


Demographic Trends in the Philosophy Major Might Be Mostly Due to Pre-College Factors (guest post)
pro Daily Nous -


An Argument to Move College Students to Follow COVID-19 Guidelines
meta pro Daily Nous -


New Editor at NDPR
pro Daily Nous -


Chaospet
pro value Daily Nous -

New Jobs, New Projects, Same Me: I’m excited and lucky to share some updates: new jobs and new projects. I’ll explain below. New Jobs I spent the last year on various job markets. I submitted over 280 applications to academic jobs ...
pro Nick Byrd -

The Anti-natalism Comparison: Contradiction, Equivocation, & Incommensurability: Some philosophers argue that bringing a human into existence is always wrong because it’s better (for the non-existent) to not exist. Let’s break down the ...
meta pro Nick Byrd -

Unconscious Intentions Do Not Undermine Free Will: Suppose neuroscientists could predict your intentional actions before you can. Would that mean that you lack free will? I used to think that it would. Now I’m not so sure. Via Nick Byr ...
meta pro Nick Byrd -

On Inferring Mechanisms In Cognitive Science: One of the things that cognitive scientists do is look for, identify, and describe mechanisms. For example, cognitive scientists are interested in our ability (or proclivity) to ascribe mental sta ...
sci Nick Byrd -

The Roles of Intuition & Reflection in Skill & Expertise: Some people think that skill and expertise is unreflective and flow-like. Others disagree. They think that skillful and expert actions often accompany (or even require) reflection. In ...
pro Nick Byrd -

5 Thoughts About “Liberal Hypocrites”: Must liberals tolerate everything? Are they hypocrites if they don’t? No. Of course not. In case that’s not obvious, here are five things to think about.  Via Nick Byrd - Fellow and Assistant ...
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3 Obstacles For Research About Cheating & Morality: A recent study finds that "[traveling abroad] can lead to immoral behavior by increasing moral relativism". Sexy finding, but does it survive scrutiny? Find out in this short, 1000-word essa ...
pro Nick Byrd -

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