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

Featured Article · Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession

¶ 2019.04.32 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews ¶ T.A. Cavanaugh, Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession, Oxford University Press, 2018, 177pp., $29.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780190673673. ¶ Reviewed by Marquis Berrey, University of Iowa T.A. Cavanaugh aims to recapture the two essential therapeutic aims at the heart of medical practice with the philosophical claim that both beneficence and iatrogenic harm are central to our experience of medical practice. His book about the Hippocratic Oath discusses a set of symbols and professional documents about healing that generate the prescriptive tradition of Western medicine "to help, or not to harm" (Hippocrates, Epidemics 1.11).[1] Cavanaugh's main interest in iatrogenic harm lies with the physician killing the patient. He collects historical and contemporary materials about physicians' involvement in euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and capital punishment (elective abortion receives only a passing glance) to argue that (74) "the desire to involve physicians in... ¶ Read More

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Recent Media · Podcasts & Lectures

Popol Vuh Reissue : Released today. Here is a good survey article from a few years back. Florian FrickemusicPopol VuhWerner Herzog ...
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Marcus Aurelius – the Unemotional Stoic?
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Time Is What We Are – Uncertain
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Michael Oakeshott on the History of Political Thought : What did Oakeshott mean by the “history of political thought”? This is the question Martyn Thompson addresses in his essay “Michael Oakeshott on the History of Political Thought.” He hig ...
meta trad value Man Without Qualities -

Motorcycles and the Meaning of Life : Check out Craig Bourne’s popular philosophy book — a couple of brief extracts below. Bike-wise, Moto Guzzi was my first love and with the release of the V7 III Carbon Dark (below), my pulse ha ...
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Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession: 2019.04.32 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews T.A. Cavanaugh, Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Pro ...
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Taxation: Philosophical Perspectives: 2019.04.31 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Martin O’Neill and Shepley Orr (eds.), Taxation: Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2018, 264pp., $55.00 (hbk), ...
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An Empirical Study of Bullshitters
meta Daily Nous -


Mini-Heap
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SAY IT AINT SO JOE: Sigh, so Joe Biden is in. His sole claim to the nomination is that only he can beat Trump. Is that true? I don’t know. Maybe anybody can beat Trump. Maybe nobody can beat Trump. Maybe Bernie can and Kamala can& ...
meta sci trad The Philosopher’s Stone -

Williamson's Metaphysical Modal Epistemology and Vacuism about Counterpossibles: Timothy Williamson has argued that our capacity for metaphysical modal judgement comes along with our capacity for counterfactual judgement. This passage gives a ...
meta sci Sprachlogik -

Cluckology 5: The New Turing Test.: APP Editors’ Note: If you’re using Windows, in order to make the cartoon image bigger and more readable, just hit “Ctrl +” twice or three times, whatever works best. If you’re using a Mac then it’s slightly ...
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AN EXPERIMENT IN PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY
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#58 - Neely on Augmented Reality, Ethics and Property Rights
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Is the Karmayogin a Moral Saint?: In his book Hindu Ethics: A Philosophical Study (1998), Roy Perrett defends what he calls “Hindu ethics” against a range of contemporary western objections. In the second chapter of the book, enti ...
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An Empirical Study of Bullshitters

“Bullshitters. Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives?” is the title of a new study conducted by John Jerrim (UCL), Phil Parker (Australian Catholic University), and Nikki Shure (UCL and IZA – Institute of Labor Economics). The authors begin by noting the well-known philosophical work on the concept of bullshit by Harry Frankfurt in On Bullshit and G.A. Cohen’s effort to go “Deeper into Bullshit“, and pointing out the absence of empirical work on the subject. Roy Lichtenstein, “Cow Triptych / Cow Going Abstract” Their study is the first to “compare participants across countries in terms of their proclivity to bullshit.” It has certain limitations, they admit (it was of 15-year-olds in several Anglophone countries, nonlongitudinal, and only in regards to a certain type of subject matter). It may nonetheless be of interest to philosophers, who often describe certain philosophical skills as tools for “bullsh... Read More ›

Daily Nous · Featured Blog

Mini-Heap
A new Mini-Heap… Are philosophers underestimating the epistemic usefulness of imagination? — Madeleine Hyde (Stockholm) provides some reasons to think so “I place a lot of good things under the heading ‘irration...Read More ›

David N. Mowry (1941-2019): “What does one say about the teacher who saved your life?” (guest post by Jack Weinstein)
David N. Mowry, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York (SUNY) Plattsburgh, has died.  Professor Mowry went to college at SUNY Oswego, and earned his MA and PhD in philosophy from Boston University in 1974. H...Read More ›

Pryor from NYU to UNC
Jim Pryor, currently professor of philosophy at New York University, will be taking up a professorship in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Professor Pryor, who works in epistemology, philos...Read More ›

DePaul Students Ask University to Censure Philosophy Professor for Writings on Palestinians
Jason D. Hill, professor of philosophy at DePaul University, recently wrote an article for The Federalist about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has prompted students at his university to launch a petition calling for his censure. T...Read More ›

An Experiment in Philosophy and Poetry (guest post by Aaron Meskin)
Imagine the following: you write an academic paper in philosophy, a poet then writes a poem about your paper, and then you respond to the poet.  That’s the intriguing idea that philosopher Aaron Meskin and poet Helen Mort have made real ...Read More ›

Mind Chunks
Mind Chunks by Pete Mandik Other Daily Nous Philosophy Comics / More Info About DN Comics Pete Mandik on Twitter The post Mind Chunks appeared first on Daily Nous. Read More ›

Has Ricky Gervais read Walker Percy? : Regarding suicide, in his very thoughtful review of After Life Philip Martin writes: I can’t be the only person who wonders if Gervais has read Walker Percy. after lifelost in the cosmosphilip mart ...
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Solti’s Parsifal : Below is Stephen Follows’ entry for Solti in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Solti, Sir Georg (1912–1997), conductor, was born György Stern in Vérmezö utca, in the Buda district of Budapest, on 21 October ...
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A Confederacy of Dunces: John Miller in discussion with Jessica Hooten Wilson : Listen here. I’m pleased to say that Jessica is part of the lineup for this forthcoming volume. This is the first public airing of the bespoke cover art. &# ...
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Gatemouth : The maestro — born on this day. I pretty much have all of his back catalogue going back to the 50s. bluegrassbluesCajunClarence "Gatemouth" Browncountryfiddlefunk zydekoguitarJazzLouisianaSwingtexas ...
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Berlin, Hayek, Arendt and Oakeshott in Chinese : My chum Chor-yung Cheung, the author of the Hayek title, has alerted me to this series. Roy Tseng, who I also know, is the author of the Oakeshott volume; the Berlin book is by YEH Hao, a stude ...
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Un Début dans la Vie Humaine: Michael Oakeshott on education : Still on an educational theme, Paul’s chapter coincidently comes soon after I’d attended a conference on Maria Montessori. As a Montessori kid myself, I now see the ma ...
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Nefarious Agents: Elliot Abrams
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Can We Reproduce The Woolly Mammoth?: by Monika Piotrowska Note: This essay is based on a paper given at the 2019 Eastern APA in New York City. Media reporters often announce ... Read more......
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Recognition: [Revised entry by Mattias Iser on April 25, 2019. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Recognition has both a normative and a psychological dimension. Arguably, if you recognize another person with regard to a certain feature, ...
meta trad value Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -

The analogy of being and the moving spotlight theory of time: On moving spotlight theories, eternalism is true: past, present and future things all exist. But the present is metaphysically special: you have not said all that is to be said abo...
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David N. Mowry (1941-2019): “What does one say about the teacher who saved your life?” (guest post by Jack Weinstein)
meta pro Daily Nous -

Metaepistemology: 2019.04.30 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Conor McHugh, Jonathan Way, and Daniel Whiting (eds.), Metaepistemology, Oxford University Press, 2018, 216pp., $65.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198805366. Revi...
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Pryor from NYU to UNC
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Women in Philosophy: The Limits of Consent in Sexual Ethics: by Ellie Anderson When it comes to sex, public discourse today revolves around consent. ‘Affirmative’ consent, ‘enthusiastic’ consent, and “Yes means yes!” movements abound. Consent...
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The absolutely right road
meta Language Goes on Holiday -

Doing Public Philosophy: As we announced April 23, Feminist Philosophers is shutting down. This is one of a series of posts by FP bloggers looking back on the blog and bidding it farewell. I joined Feminist Philosophers in July 2015, after ha ...
pro trad Feminist Philosophers -

Are There Different Ways of Thinking?: On the one hand, obviously.  On the other hand, not so fast. Take the first hand, that there are obviously different ways of thinking.   Look at how a Renaissance wizard thinks — everything is corr ...
meta trad Eric Linus Kaplan -

Team Captain: The captain in a sporting team is, quite clearly, a variation on the military captain, even if the name is not always the same – the quarterback being one clear variation. The parallels between these two conceits of captaincy ru ...
meta trad Only a Game -


An Exciting New Discovery: Anne Wollstonecraft, Botanist and Women’s Rights Writer
meta pro Feminist History of Philosophy -

Summary of Julian Baggini’s, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: Part 4 – Thought experiments in Ethics: My friend Ed Gibney has written on each and every one of the thought experiments in  Julian Baggini’s, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Ex ...
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The Emotional Mind : This post is written by Tom Cochrane, who is a British philosopher working at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. One of his main aims is to draw on facts about psychology to develop insights about the good life. ... Imperfect Cognitions -

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