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May 20, 2004
Another Undergrad Blog
Richard Chappell, an undergrad whose blog I linked to earlier, asked me what other undergrad blogs I know of. Well, now I know of one more here. The blog is by Shieva Kleinschmidt, a WWU enfant terribile, whose wisdom is shown by her support of stuff ontology (we've correspondend about this a little bit-and she still has to read my paper!). Good to see her blogging... UPDATE: Also check out Will Davies' (@ Bristol) blog Badgerous, another undergrad blog, which has some good content (including a link to a good SJ Gould article which apparently makes hash of DD, and a good post on C. Wright. and skepticism, or, should I say, scepticism) .
Posted by MarkSteen at May 20, 2004 11:51 AM
Comments
Hi Mark, thanks for the link! Though I don't know how to break this to you, especially after you've been so nice (I'm going with the kinder disambiguation of 'enfant terribile') - but I'm not a stuff theorist. I write about stuff, enjoy talking about stuff, and am all for more attention being paid to stuff ontology, but I don't actually posit stuff. But then, as you pointed out, I have yet to read your paper - maybe it'll convince me!
Posted by: Shieva at May 20, 2004 6:52 PM
STTUUUUFFFFF! (actually, according to what a lot of stuff ontologists hold, I'm not really a stuff ontologist either (ie., don't hold that there are concrete non-individuals or that stuff is irreducible to or not identical w/things). I've just got simples and fusions thereof, with processes playing the object role. But, my diss. is on a survey of stuff theory, so, I'm in the same camp as you in this regard. One problem that I work on quite a bit is just saying what it is that makes one a stuff ontologist. The term's been thrown around quite a bit w/no caution in usage employed. By some standards, such as, Sidelle in places, even supposedly paradigmatic stuff ontologists like Jubien aren't even stuff ontologists. well, more on this later...)
Posted by: marksteen at May 20, 2004 8:51 PM
According to some standards, a stuff ontology is when you have undifferentiable matter and nothing else. Some of the pre-Socratics may have held such a view, but I don't know of any contemporary analytic philosophers who would. You have some sort of way of distinguishing between parts and what we refer to as things, even with the views that call themselves stuff ontologies, but all of those work in a notion of what a thing is and will explain count terms. A real stuff ontology, according to this view, is the eschewing of any such count terms as illegitimate, since there are no things. Even Spinoza wouldn't be a stuff ontologist, since he has one thing. I believe van Inwagen says this sort of thing, and I know Ted Sider thinks this.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce at May 21, 2004 9:44 AM
As regards Richard Chappell's request for undergraduate blogs, I have a blog at http://badgerous.blogspot.com that is by no means exclusively dedicated to philosophy, but often has a few undergrad-esque musings up there. Enjoy!
Posted by: Will Davies at May 22, 2004 4:17 PM
I visited the blog, Will, and liked it. Thanks for the link to the SJ Gould article, that was a good dressing down. Look for a mention here later...
Posted by: marksteen at May 22, 2004 11:59 PM
Many thanks, Mark: always nice to have a bit more traffic headin' my way!
Posted by: Will Davies at May 25, 2004 1:31 PM