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

Humanities & Other Areas Threatened at Brighton

The administration of the University of Brighton earlier this month announced a plan to layoff over 100 faculty members and 30 support staff, focusing the cuts particularly on the humanities, in which “every single member of its teaching team has been selected for potential redundancy.” University of Brighton engaging in fraudulent online advertising. ¶ University spokespeople explained that the reasoning for the cuts has a “financial dimension” which they described in language devoid of agency, as if members of the university’s administration are not in the slightest bit responsible for what has happened. This has been paired with propagandistically positive language about the cuts, which are described as making “the most of opportunities” to “ensure our future sustainability and success”. ¶ Students have protested the cuts, and now faculty and their supporters are circulating an open letter. Here’s an excerpt: The number of planned cuts from within [the humanities] risks rendering its continuation impossible. Its closure, were it to...

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Recent Media · Podcasts & Lectures

Memories of Dubrovnik’s Global Citizen—Kathy Wilkes : This article as per the title freely available from this special issue of the Croatian Journal of Philosophy Vol. XXII, No. 66, 2022. Roger Scruton, in his England: an Elegy took her as hi ...
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Proofs for Relevant Consequence, with Star and Perp: Abstract: In this talk, I show how to incorporate insights from the model-theoretic semantics for negation (insights due to J. Michael Dunn, in his paper “Star and Perp: Two Treatments of N ...
meta sci Consequently.org -


Interview with the Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia: A few months ago, Anna Day, Eloise Hickey, Mark Rothery, and James Cafferky from the Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Australasia gave me an opportunity to ramble on about ...
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Generics: Inference & Accommodation: Generic claims, such as Birds fly, Men are violent, and Mosquitos carry Ross River Fever, seem pervasive across human thought and talk. We use generic claims to express our understanding of the world aroun ...
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A Brush with Fame: In my PY1012 Reasoning lecture this evening, I used a slide with a photo of Sally Haslanger and a short section from her book Resisting Reality to give an example of an argument to a universal generalisation. (I’ve be ...
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PY4601: Paradoxes: py4601: Paradoxes is an honours Philosophy module at the University of St Andrews. It’s coordinated by my colleague, Patrick Greenough, and I’m teaching a small slice at the end on the liar paradox. If you’d lik ...
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Here and There with Sankara and Bergson: Katha Upanisad: 2.i.10: What, indeed, is here is there; what is there is here likewise. He who sees as though there is difference here, goes from death to death. This is the deep meaning of sadhana. Y ...
meta trad Ombhurbhuva -


Majestic Tigers: New paper by CPNSS Research Fellow Rosalind Arden: Rosalind Arden, Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), and colleagues have now published their new paper ‘Majestic tigers: ...
meta pro LSE Philosophy -


Jacqueline Hamesse (1942-2023): I have just learned that Jacqueline Hamesse died on February 3 of this year. She was born in Belgium, studied there, and spent much of her career there, ultimately becoming professor at the Université catholiqu ...
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Language: Any time we take a token of language and apply it across situations — calling two different things “cat” — or two different actions “promises” — we are lucky if it works. It sometimes works ...
meta pro trad Eric Linus Kaplan -



Hazony and Gottfried on wokeism and Marxism
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Jet Black : BBC Obituary (The Stranglers were never punk).  stranglersdrumsJet Black ...
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PY1012: Reasoning: py1012: Reasoning introduces the essential concepts and techniques of critical reasoning, formal propositional logic, and basic predicate logic. Among the central questions are these: what distinguishes an argument from a m...
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Kicking off Semester 2 in St Salvator's Chapel: I grew up in Australia: my university training and my initial academic positions took place in the explicitly secular institution of the Australian university. So, it’s an uncanny experien...
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Come and See! (John 1:29-42): I normally don’t speak from notes, but I do know that if I get up in front of a group to speak, my natural duration is the lecture, and at 45 to 50 minutes, that just won’t do for a sermon at chapel. ...
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Erdős Number: 3: According to the AMS’s handy Mathematics Collaboration Distance calculator, my Erdős number is down to three, given the following path: Vedran Čačić, Pavel Pudlák, Greg Restall, Alasdair Urquhart, Albert Visser, “Decora...
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Wombat, Conditional, or Inference?: As my colleague and PY1012 Reasoning co-lecturer, Franz Berto knows, it’s never too early to introduce your students to wombats, or to the difference between a conditional and an inference. A slide fr...
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Logical Methods Publication Day
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Logical Methods: As the cover blurb says Logical Methods is an accessible introduction to philosophical logic, suitable for undergraduate courses and above. Rigorous yet accessible, Logical Methods introduces logical tools used in philosophy—...
sci Consequently.org -



From the Archive: Replaying Life's Tape – No Miracles Required
meta sci trad Extinct Blog -


What I’ve learned: On Monday I submitted grades, and this afternoon I reviewed my teaching evaluations. That closes the books on my 14th year as a college professor. I am currently 42 years old, so by my math, I have been doing this for rou ...
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Book Symposium: Dunin-Kozicka Commentary and Reply
meta sci trad value The Junkyard -



Book Symposium: Rucińska Commentary and Reply
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Book Symposium: Tooming Commentary and Reply
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Substance, teleology, and intentionality: There is an illuminating parallel between the traditional Aristotelian distinction between substances, artifacts, and aggregates, and the distinction John Searle draws between intrinsic intentionality ...
meta sci Edward Feser -



Book Symposium: Introduction from Piotr Kozak
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