metaphysics
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What is “Reality”?
We often say that things are or are not real. But what does this really mean? Though a common conception upon which we all rely, “reality” proves rather slippery to describe. Join our Philosophical Happy Hour as we try to grasp it. What do we mean when we call something “real”? It sounds simple—almost embarrassingly…
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Seminar: Philosophy of Time, Part I
Fall 2026 | Philosophy of Time, Part I: From Antiquity to the Renaissance | Philosophy Seminar Time governs nearly everything human beings do: days are divided into hours, work into schedules, lives into years; clocks and calendars coordinate our activities today with extraordinary precision, allowing a kind of punctuality unprecedented. Yet the ease with which…
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Culture as a Technology
“Culture”. We hear the word all the time: the culture is in decline, we are losing our culture, we are fighting a culture war. But ask someone to define culture, and you will likely receive many different answers—answers which consist primarily in listing what kinds of thing belong to culture: language, art, movies, music, politics,…
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Technologizing Our Bodies
Commonly, we find the human body today treated as a possession, a something-other which is distinct from the self. This opposition of the “self” to the body may result in various forms of neglect or abuse of the latter. But it may also, in recognizing the importance of the body for life even as it…
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Technology’s Effects on Nature
Commonly, we presume an opposition between the “natural” and the “artificial”. Usually, we assume the “natural” to be everything untouched by human hands, whereas the “artificial” is that which we have ourselves brought into being. But this division not only ends up positing as irreconcilable the objects of our experience, it reinforces a false anthropological…
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On Our Need for Truth
A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the nature and definition of truth, and its necessity for our living good lives. Do we need truth to live good lives? Do all human beings? And if so—what is the truth? How do we know it? Who “has” it? Where do we find it? What do we really mean…
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Psychological Effects of Technology
That technology use has effects on our psychological well-being has become, by this point, well-known and widely recognized. But the concern is ordinarily limited to the distraction, anxiety, addiction, overstimulation, or other faults in control that appear downstream of specific technological devices or frameworks, such as smartphones, social media, or LLMs. These are real problems,…
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The Problem with Solving Technology
Everyone knows that technology troubles our lives in the twenty-first century. It distracts us, surveils us, accelerates us, isolates us, weakens our habits of attention, alters the demands and means of education, and increasingly mediates in our relations to both one another and to reality itself. The natural response is to ask: how do we…
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Retrospect: Resolving the Difficulties of Consciousness
A retrospective reflection on our Philosophical Happy Hour on Consciousness. Many of these themes will be discussed in depth at our upcoming conference in September. Learn more here. Our Philosophical Happy Hour conversation concerning “consciousness” (held 10 June 2026) and spanning more than two hours covered a great many particular topics: the distinction between “being…
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Retrospect: On the Question of Beauty
On 3 June 2026, we engaged in a nearly 2-hour conversation concerning beauty. A few highlights, conclusions, and elaborations: 1. Beauty is necessarily encountered first through the senses. It is also, in our experience as human, always connected somehow to a sensory experience, even if the object greatly exceeds what sense alone can provide. Mathematics,…