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

Featured Article · Daily Nous

Problems with Philosophy on Facebook

“What happens and what should a philosopher do if the academic community massively has moved on to making its informal engagements happen on one platform, specifically, Facebook?” ¶ So asks Helen De Cruz (Saint Louis University) in a post at The Philosophers’ Cocoon.  ¶ ¶ De Cruz takes it for granted that the philosophical community has in fact “massively… moved on to making its informal engagements” on Facebook. I’m skeptical. I would bet that the overwhelming majority of academic philosophers would answer “none or very few” to a question that asked them how many of their philosophical conversations take place on Facebook. ¶ When you’re asked about the activities of other philosophers, the philosophers that are likely to come to mind will include the philosophers you most interact with, which, if you’re spending a lot of time philosophizing on Facebook, will be other philosophers on Facebook. This is a version of the availability heuristic. ¶ The fact that Facebook is a kind of availability heuristic trap (in multiple...

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Recent Media · Podcasts & Lectures


The Mysterious Reappearance of Consciousness
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Companion to Wisdom Literature : Due to drop in March — featuring of course, Philo of Alexandria. fourth gospelhellenismJewish Identitylogosphilo of alexandriaPlatoseptuagintwisdom literature ...
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McTaggart’s philosophy of time : Nice explication by Emily Thomas of McTaggart’s classic argument for the unreality of time. It was Michael Dummett who reinvigorated interest in McTaggart after decades of neglect. British IdealismMcTagg ...
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Will gene editing unlock new potentials for progress?
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Why you don’t know your own mind
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Problems with Philosophy on Facebook
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Philosophy Twitter, YouTube, & Podcasts Over The Past Decade (guest post by Kelly Truelove)
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Night of Philosophy and Ideas 2020
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How Familiarity with Philosophy Impacts Moral Decision Making
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Mini-Heap
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I Wrote This Poem: The Customer Is Always RightSo American, howYou ripped me open and tossedMe, a broken toy. ...
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quote of the day: "Words had separated me from my body. The sun released me. Greece cured my self-hatred and awoke a will to health. I saw that beauty and ethics were one and the same. Creating a beautiful work of art and a beautiful oneself ...
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Natural deduction for quantifier logic: It’s very late in the day, as I hope to get IFL2 finally off to the Press within the next fortnight or so. But since the natural deduction chapters are new to the second edition it is understandab ...
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What Can Philosophy Do For Humanity?, #3–Kialo.: Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Phildialogues III. Principled-Negotiation-&-Participatory-Decision-Making IV. Kialo V. Meta-Kialo V.1 A Critique of Kialo: Eight Worries V.2 Meta-Kialo ...
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Two Recent Podcasts about Automation and Utopia
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Can Stoicism Help Us Live Well? Forthcoming

Bust of Seneca I have written extensively about Stoicism but lately, I’ve been researching it extensively. The goal of my research is to distill the essence of Stoic wisdom as it pertains to helping people live well—primarily by achieving inner peace. Then I’d like to share these insights in easy to understand language. In other words, I’d like to write a short essay that someone can read and say, “I understand Stoic wisdom and I see how it will help me to experience more peace of mind and happiness.” Note that while the internet supplies many excellent explanations of Stoicism (Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) they tend to be more detailed and academic than I want to be. There are also many simple accounts of Stoicism but most of them are, in my view, disappointing. This gap in the literature has motivated me to try to write my own version. I’m also inspired by the notion that by presentin... Read More ›

Against Professional Philosophy · Featured Blog

What Can Philosophy Do For Humanity?, #3–Kialo.
Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Phildialogues III. Principled-Negotiation-&-Participatory-Decision-Making IV. Kialo V. Meta-Kialo V.1 A Critique of Kialo: Eight Worries V.2 Meta-Kialo in the Narrower Sense: Critiques of Current...Read More ›

The End of Mechanism, #5–Scientific Pietism and Scientific Naturalism.
Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Natural Piety and the Limits of Science III. From Kant’s Anti-Mechanism to Kantian Anti-Mechanism IV. Organicism Unbound: In Defense of Natural Piety V. Scientific Pietism and Scientific Naturalism V...Read More ›

Beyond the Academic Ethic, #5–The Tragedy, & Learning as a Value.
APP EDITORS’ NOTE: The essay below, Stephen Turner’s “Beyond the Academic Ethic,” appearing here in serial form, originally appeared in F. Cannizzo and N. Osbaldston (eds.), The Social Structures of Global Academia (London/New York: Rout...Read More ›

London Calling Back, #3—“Career Opportunities” Revisited? Work, Leisure, and The Four-Day Week.
APP EDITORS’ NOTE: LONDON CALLING BACK, by Emre Kazim, is a series about philosophy, society, and politics, from a British and non-North-American point of view, emphasizing a new critical-dignitarian, edgy, and thoroughly push-backarian ...Read More ›

Morality and the Human Condition, #4–How Morality Relates to Rationality, & Six Famously Hard Cases.
Table of Contents I. Introduction II. The Standard Conception of Morality II.1 The Moral Question and The Meaning Question II.2 How Ethics Relates to Morality II.3 How Morality Relates to Rationality II.4 Six Famously Hard Cases III. Thr...Read More ›

Beyond the Academic Ethic, #4–The Love of Learning in a Time of Academic Cholera.
APP EDITORS’ NOTE: The essay below, Stephen Turner’s “Beyond the Academic Ethic,” appearing here in serial form, originally appeared in F. Cannizzo and N. Osbaldston (eds.), The Social Structures of Global Academia (London/New York: Rout...Read More ›

What Can Philosophy Do For Humanity?, #2–Phildialogues, & Principled Negotiation + Participatory Decision-Making.
Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Phildialogues III. Principled-Negotiation-&-Participatory-Decision-Making IV. Kialo V. Meta-Kialo VI. Conclusion This installment contains sections II and III. You can also read or download a .pd...Read More ›

Herbert Simon and Agent-Based Computational Economics : The seventh in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Shu-Heng Chen and Ying Fang Kao Herbert Simon is a quintes ...
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The Great Escape Motorcycle Jump : Yet another Christmas viewing of “The Great Escape”, this time with the twofold expertise of Bud Ekins and Guy Martin firmly in mind. The former was the stunt double for McQueen orchestrating the ...
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Theology and Geometry: Essays on John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces : Webpage now up. a confederacy of duncesBoethiusJohn Kennedy Toolenew orleansphilosophical literature ...
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The Mysterious Disappearance of Consciousness
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Bourbon, Moral Philosophy and Christianity : After one glass of bourbon, we agreed that our work consisted largely of reminding moral philosophers of truths about human life which are very well known to virtually all adult human beings except ...
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Boundedly Rational Decision-Making under Certainty and Uncertainty: Some Reflections on Herbert Simon : The sixth in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Mark Pingle ...
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How to value your time and not just your money
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APA Member Interview: Christopher A. Riddle: Christopher A. Riddle is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Utica College, where he is also the Director of the Applied Ethics Institute. He works in political philosophy and applied ethics, with...
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Emotion, Reason, and Action in Kant: 2020.01.11 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Maria Borges, Emotion, Reason, and Action in Kant, Bloomsbury, 2019, 209pp., $114.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781350078369. Reviewed by Melissa...
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THE OLD BOY HAS STILL GOT IT: I started today preparing my first lecture on Book I of Hume’s Treatise, for videotaping February 5th. As I was typing the outline of my opening remarks, a lovely idea struck me regarding Hume’s rela...
meta pro The Philosopher’s Stone -

Hans Vaihinger: [New Entry by Timothy Stoll on January 23, 2020.] Hans Vaihinger (1852 - 1933) was a Neo-Kantian philosopher, who made important contributions to epistemology, philosophy of science and mathematics, and to the historiography ...
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THE TRIAL: 1. Say what you will, we can all agree that Adam Schiff is doing a brilliant job. He won’t change any minds, as he well knows, but he is a class act, and I for one enjoy watching a virtuoso performance of any sort.2. ...
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Prize Competition: Feminist analytic theology : Thanks to funding from the American Philosophical Association’s Diversity and Inclusiveness Fund, the editors of the Journal of Analytic Theology are pleased to announce a prize competition for...
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Enowning: The video on Heidegger and Miyazaki that’s circulating is worth the download. Especially if you’re a fan of both. And who isn’t?...
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Too much to do: In a perfect world I’d be submitting something to each of these:1. Contextual Ethics II: Methods and ApproachesThe 11th conference of the Nordic Wittgenstein SocietyMay 8-9, 2020. Åbo Akademi University, FinlandThis conf ...
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Ethics Review Forum: Thomason’s ‘Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life’, reviewed by MacKenzie
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Latest News, including even some jobs: Here’s the latest news, all with deadlines approaching very quickly. If you’re hoping to close a gap between your aspirations and your achievements, don’t put off reading this email for ...
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Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part IV: Marx
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The Precarity of Utopia: The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer
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Thinking Marx Through Harvey
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Personal interpretation News For Wombats -

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