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

Featured Article · Edward Feser

The Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Fathers have the authority to teach and discipline their children, but this authority is not absolute.  They may not teach their children to do evil, and they may not discipline them with unjust harshness.  Everyone knows this, though everyone also knows that there are fathers who do in fact abuse their children or teach them to do evil.  Everyone also knows that it is right for children under these unhappy circumstances to disobey and reprove their fathers, while still acknowledging their fathers’ authority in general and submitting to his lawful instructions. All the same, probably no father ever says to his children: “Children, here’s what to do if I ever start to abuse you or teach you to do evil.”  The reason for this is surely that the default assumption is that children will never need to know what to do under such circumstances, and that explicitly addressing it in this way would give them a false and disturbing impression. ...

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Recent Media · Podcasts & Lectures

John Stuart Mill : Born on this day. See Christopher Macleod’s overview in the SEP. Most (if not all) of Mill’s writings freely available here. free speechJohn Stuart MillLiberalismliberty fundon liberty ...
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Happy Birthday, John Stuart Mill!
pro Ordinary Philosophy -


Photobook: A Letter from David Hume, May 20th, 1776
meta pro Ordinary Philosophy -

Is nature continuous or discrete? How the atomist error was born (Aeon): ---- Is nature continuous or discrete? How the atomist error was born // Aeon The modern idea that nature is discrete originated in Ancient Greek atomism. Leuc ...
meta sci trad After Nature -

Jazz funeral : It was the Jazz funeral opening scene in Live and Let Die that so captivated me, a kid living a world away — the dirge, the sashay, the exuberance — a love affair that has never dimmed. Thus I’m very pleased t ...
meta trad Man Without Qualities -

STRANGE TIMES: This a strange time politically. It feels oddly unsettled, fractured, uncertain. The report of a second meeting with Don Jr., this one with representatives of countries other than Russia, gives the feeling of an investigation ...
pro The Philosopher’s Stone -

Enowning: Theodore Kisiel scrutinizes the horizon. the lecture courses of 1927 – 30 seek to further elaborate the ecstatical-horizonal unity of temporality, which was begun in § 69c of Being and Time in a section entitled “ The Temporal Problem of th ...
meta trad Enowning -

Enowning: The heaviness of the clearing. This clearing cannot be explained from beings; it is the “between” [Zwischen] and in-between[Inzwischen] (in the time-spatial sense of the originary time-space). The “of,” “as,” the “in the light of” are not b ...
meta sci trad Enowning -

Enowning: Charles Guignon and Kevin Aho on sensing reality. The distinction between what is in the mind, on the one hand, and what is “out there” on the other, between the “subjective” and the “objective,” seems to force the classical questions on us ...
meta trad Enowning -

Olympiodorus: [Revised entry by Christian Wildberg on May 18, 2018. Changes to: Bibliography] Olympiodorus of Alexandria, presumably a late pupil of Ammonius Hermeiou, the commentator on Aristotle and teacher of Simplicius and Philoponus, w ...
pro trad Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -


The Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances
meta trad Edward Feser -

LARUELLE ACROSS THE DIVIDE: translation dead translate: I think there is a phase divergence between Francophone and Anglophone philosophical worlds. What can seem old hat to us can seem new to the French because they vivify it in terms of the ...
meta trad Agent Swarm -

Summary of Fluid vs. Crystallized Intelligence: Fluid and crystallized intelligence are elements of general intelligence, originally identified by Raymond Cattell.[1] The concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence were further developed ...
meta Reason and Meaning -


The Meaning of My Title: Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars
meta sci Error Statistics -

The last sentence: “... a separate spot in Hell ... for tyrants ...” (La Boétie)Well begun is half done. So authors give often special attention to the first sentence of their work. In particular novelists do. But also the end of a piece of ...
meta trad Philosophy by the Way -

LARUELLE ACROSS THE DIVIDE: translation dead translate

I think there is a phase divergence between Francophone and Anglophone philosophical worlds. What can seem old hat to us can seem new to the French because they vivify it in terms of their current problematics and vice versa. For example, I think Laruelle’s book NIETZSCHE VERSUS HEIDEGGER (1977) is close to contemporary interests in Continental Philosophy in English. I think it would be a good choice for the next in the ongoing publication of translations of his work. A very useful translation of the first chapter, by Taylor Adkins, can be found here. There is also a paragraph-by-paragraph translator’s introduction and exegesis of the text to be found here. This sort of work is important as in diversifying and opening the number of points and modes of access to Laruelle’s thought we shall get a more informed and hopefully more accurate vision of its lineaments, of its strengths, and (dare one say?) its weaknesses. For the moment the Laruelle world is too small, and it n... Read More ›

Agent Swarm · Featured Blog

IDEOLOGY AND AVENGERS INFINITY WARS: Zizekian Notes
AVENGERS INFINITY WARS is a very enjoyable film, which means that comes very close to pure ideology, and its protagonist Thanos arrives at a moment of enjoyment at the end of the film. His contentment is tinged with sadness, as he has sa...Read More ›

A NEW GERMAN IDEALISM (3): Ontological Heuristics
The long-term over-arching philosophical project of this blog is to critically analyse the diverse contemporary Continental philosophical systems (those of Deleuze, Zizek, Serres, Stiegler, Badiou, Laruelle and Latour). It is my thesis t...Read More ›

ZIZEK AND THE QUANTUM MODEL: Explanatory Distance vs Formal Closeness
I think that the “mirroring” (what Zizek calls the “uncanny resemblance”) between the quantum level and that of human subjectivity is more than a simple formal homology and less than an ontological grounding. As a...Read More ›

ZIZEK, DELEUZE AND NEGATIVITY
Zizek has an ambivalent or two-tiered reaction to Deleuze on the question of ontological negativity. This response is only approximately summarised in Zizek’s idea that the pre-Guattari Deleuze of DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION and of ...Read More ›

A NEW GERMAN IDEALISM (2): THREE ONTOLOGIES (Spinoza, Kant, Hegel)
In Chapter 1 of A NEW GERMAN IDEALISM Adrian Johnston proposes a very interesting genealogical narrative covering the brief but intensely creative period in the history of German philosophy from the end of the 18th to the beginning of th...Read More ›

A NEW GERMAN IDEALISM (1): Dialectical Method and Speculative Ontology
Adrian Johnston’s new book A NEW GERMAN IDEALISM Hegel, Zizek, and Dialectical Materialism is a sustained reading, and immanent critique, of Slavoj Zizek’s speculative materialism as articulated in two of his most recent book...Read More ›

Using, not misusing, your brain organ : Marc’s latest podcast. .EpistemologyEvolutionary PsychologyJordan PetersonMarc Champagnerationalismsocial constructivism ...
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EPISTEME: Volume 15 – Issue 2 – June 2018 : EPISTEMEEpistemologysocial epistemology ...
meta value Man Without Qualities -

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion : Mishima’s classic published in English (translated by Ivan Morris) on this date in 1959. See Donald Keene’s original review “Beauty Itself Became a Deadly Enemy” in the NYT. aestheti ...
pro Man Without Qualities -

Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience : Recently released. autonomyconsciousnessEmotionFree willmeaningmoralsNeuroexistentialismneuroscienceowen flanaganphilosophical psychologyPhilosophy of mindpurposes ...
meta pro sci trad Man Without Qualities -

Moosbrugger: madness and modernism : George Ikkos has a short piece in The British Journal of Psychiatry 212: 1: 56. George IkkosMan Without Qualitiesmodernityphilosophical literaturepsychiatryRobert Musil ...
pro Man Without Qualities -


Happy Birthday, Omar Khayyám!
meta pro trad Ordinary Philosophy -


Happy Birthday, Bertrand Russell!
pro Ordinary Philosophy -

David: [Revised entry by Christian Wildberg on May 18, 2018. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] ’David’ is named in certain manuscripts of three works of philosophy as their author: a set of introductory lectures on philosophy...
pro trad Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -

Neo-Kantianism: [New Entry by Jeremy Heis on May 18, 2018.] Neo-Kantianism was the dominant philosophical movement in Germany from roughly 1870 until the First World War. This movement drew inspiration from a diverse cast of philosophers - p...
meta trad Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -


Experimental Philosophy and the Replication Crisis
meta Daily Nous -


Freaky Audio Illusions In The News
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Mini-Heap
pro trad Daily Nous -

APA Member Interview: Luis Favela: Luis (“Louie”) H. Favela is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Central Florida. He earned graduate degrees in Philosophy ... Read more......
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Naturalizing Logico-Mathematical Knowledge: Approaches from Philosophy, Psychology and Cognitive Science: 2018.05.16 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Sorin Bangu (ed.), Naturalizing Logico-Mathematical Knowledge: Appr... Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews -


Westworld
meta trad Language Goes on Holiday -

Being Ecological Is Me Curating Yoko Ono: If you’ve gotten a copy you’ll see something interesting somewhere in the middle there. It was so awesome she agreed to this.Look at the top of the doorway: ...
meta pro sci trad Ecology Without Nature -

CFA – The Question of Non/violence in Contemporary Social Movements (MANCEPT Workshops): Call for Abstracts. MANCEPT Workshops, Manchester, September 10-12th 2018. Abstracts by June 8th 2018 (up to 400 words, send to vincent.millou (at) scien ...
pro trad Public Reason -

Is it Time to Regulate the Sale of Sugar to Minors?: In “Tackling Obesity and Disease: The Culprit Is Sugar; the Response is Legal Regulation,” published in the Hastings Center Report, Lawrence O. Gostin describes four coordinated interventio ... Hastings Bioethics -

Avi Appel: Unrestricted Wellbeing Subjectivism is Compatible with Self-Sacrifice: A theory of wellbeing contributes to explaining whether this or that state of affairs is a benefit or harm to a particular subject. A natural starting point fro ...
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Recent Media on the Ethics of Sex Tech
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Plato’s reading suggestions, episode 131: Here it is, our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend: The rhetorical structure behind just about any kind of writing. The role of luck in determining pretty much everything. Don’t ...
trad Footnotes to Plato -

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