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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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  • Second Plenary Speaker – Human Formation in the Digital Age

    From 16-17 September 2026, in St. Louis Missouri, the Lyceum Institute is hosting our first in-person event, Human Formation in the Digital Age: a conference asking how we must respond to our changed and rapidly changing technological environments in seeking to retrieve and foster a genuine formation of the human person. Here we announce our…

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  • First Plenary Speaker – Human Formation in the Digital Age

    From 16-17 September 2026, in St. Louis Missouri, the Lyceum Institute is hosting our first in-person event, Human Formation in the Digital Age: a conference asking how we must respond to our changed and rapidly changing technological environments in seeking to retrieve and foster a genuine formation of the human person. Here we announce our…

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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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  • Felicitates de Quodlibet, III.4

    A Philosophical Happy Hour on… whatever! The fourth installment in our Felictates de Quodlibet series for 2026, in which we talk about whatever we want, so long as it is interesting, and for as long as we are interested. Or, to put this otherwise: do you have a philosophical question—any question whatsoever—you want seriously to…

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  • Retrospect: Retrieving Dialectic in a “Rhetorical” Age

    Recapitulating our Philosophical Happy Hour on the history, nature, meaning, and importance of dialectic. A few key insights derived from our Happy Hour: First, outside rare situations, Aristotelian dialectic has become almost impossible in the US (and many other countries as well).  This near-impossibility has rendered many persons not only unfamiliar with the practice, but…

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  • On Dialectic: Its History and Importance

    A Philosophical Happy Hour discussing the history, nature, meaning, and importance of dialectic—including its relation to logic, demonstration, and rhetoric. Old words of long and widespread use often suffer many interpretations: idea, object, concept, form.  One word which has suffered greatly is “dialectic”.  The word’s Greek etymology indicates “speaking across”, that is, a conversational speaking. …

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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,…

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  • On the Difficulties of Consciousness

    A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the apparent problems of consciousness, with particular focus on human beings and the signs by which our experience is known. A retrospective reflection on this Happy Hour can be found here: Resolving the Difficulties of Consciousness. Imagine yourself in the grip of a powerful passion: say, anger or lust, perhaps…

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