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More Specifically: Blog Carnivals (83) This Web-Site (48)

January 1, 2015

Blog Year 2014

It's 2015 already, and as the new year starts it appears to have been more than 2 months since I posted anything here. I did a lot of 'serious' writing in 2014, and this is probably part of the reason why I've done less blog writing - only 29 posts, and most of those in the first three months of the year. (This covers the tail-end of my blogging about The Puzzle of Existence, and also the lull between submission and defense of my dissertation.) Despite the light blogging, traffic is up significantly from last year with nearly 590,000 visits...
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May 12, 2014

February 10, 2014

Philosophers' Carnival 160

Welcome to the 160th Philosophers' Carnival! The Philosophers' Carnival is a monthly roundup of online philosophy. Here, in no particular order, are some excellent philosophical blog posts which have appeared in the last month: Continue reading "Philosophers' Carnival 160"

January 3, 2014

Blog Year 2013 in Review

The year 2013 saw about 425,000 visits from nearly 140,000 distinct users. This is by far the most activity I have seen in the 10 years (!) I have been writing on this blog. (I failed to mark the tenth anniversary of my first post, but this happened on March 1 of this year.) This increase came despite my writing only 33 posts this year, up from 30 in 2012, but way down from the 50+ posts I wrote in most previous years. This means that I received nearly 13,000 visits per post, compared to my previous record of 4,200!...
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October 3, 2013

Update on Comments

After an extremely slow and unhelpful exchange with my web host's technical support, in which I was told that it was "not possible" to install the Image::Magick Perl module on this server (not possible? really?), I've decided to try doing without CAPTCHA for a while by setting my spam filter to be more aggressive. If your comment gets rejected and/or doesn't appear within a few hours, please email me and let me know so I can keep fiddling with the settings...
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September 21, 2013

Comments Temporarily Disabled

I've just upgraded my blog software and CAPTCHA is presently not working. This is resulting in such an awful deluge of spam that I have temporarily disabled comments altogether. Hopefully, I will get the problem fixed within a few days and be able to turn comments back on....
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September 4, 2013

Philosophical Portraiture

It turns out that one of my USC philosophy colleagues is an accomplished painter! Check out Renee Bollinger's portraits of famous philosophers in the style of famous painters on the Huffington Post here.
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March 9, 2013

Philosophers' Carnival 149

Welcome to Philosophers' Carnival 149! The Philosophers' Carnival is a monthly showcase of the best philosophical blog posts. First up is Derk Pereboom's "The Free Will Debate and the Limits of Philosophical Method" at Flickers of Freedom. Glenn Carruthers explains delusions of alien control and their relevance to the theory of agency at Philosophy of Brains. Speaking of mind and action, I should note an important event in 'virtual philosophy' in the past month: the Fifth Online Consciousness Conference. Also in philosophy of mind, we have Richard Brown's discussion of phenomenal concepts at Philosophy Sucks! Our final philosophy of mind...
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January 2, 2013

Blog Year 2012 in Review

It is now, believe it or not, 2013, and time for my annual review of this blog's activity. Posting has been quite light here for the last few months. The reason is that I spent the fall semester teaching at Pepperdine. I actually thought, going into it, that this would lead to more blogging, since I would be going back through important texts and thinking about how to present them to students and so forth. But it turned out quite to the contrary, probably because of some combination of spending all of my very limited spare time trying to get...
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February 15, 2012

Dropping My Tagline

For several years, this blog has been labeled with the tagline "The Evangelical libertarian philosopher." For some time now, I've been dissatisfied with this label, both as a description of my views and as a description of what this blog is about. I've hesitated to drop it primarily because I think that blogs of non-famous people, such as myself, should have some kind of descriptive name or tagline rather than just the author's name, and I couldn't think of another short, catchy, descriptive phrase that would nicely fill that bit of screen space. (I toyed with: "Berkeley's metaphysics, Nozick's politics,...
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January 18, 2012

The Mod Squad

Lewis Powell has announced the formation of The Mod Squad, a group blog devoted to the history of modern philosophy. My first post over there, King's Theory of Election has just gone live. In the future, I will cross-post everything here as I have been doing with my Prosblogion posts, but for now I will just encourage readers to check things out over there.
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January 6, 2012

Blog Year 2011 in Review

Welcome to 2012! This is my annual review of this blog's activity. The year 2011 saw over 184,000 visits from more than 60,000 distinct users. This is a very significant increase from 2010. I have been very busy in my academic work this year, with the result that there were only 51 posts this year, down from 80 in 2010 and 79 in 2009. This makes for a whopping 3,617 average visits per post! My previous high for this statistic was 2008's 2,623; 2009 and 2010 were both under 2,000. Most Popular Posts March 22, 2009: Kant's Argument for Monogamy....
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September 23, 2011

Philosophers' Carnival 131

I'm a little late posting the link, but Philosophers' Carnival 131 is now up at Minds and Brains with a link to my post on Berkeley, Commonsense, and Surprising Discoveries.
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June 6, 2011

Philosophers' Carnival 126

Welcome to the 126th Philosophers' Carnival! The Philosophers' Carnival is a regular round-up of blog posts related to the academic discipline of philosophy. Our first exhibit is David Fryman's, Is God Necessary for Morality? at The Bennett Commentary. David argues that most disputes on this question are purely verbal - that religious morality is a fundamentally different notion from secular morality, and the former, of course, relies on God, while the latter does not. Next in line, Katja Grace wonders whether running computer simulations of yourself can make you more likely to win the lottery at Meteuphoric. Luke Meuhlhauser...
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May 20, 2011

PDFs From Early English Books Online

Early English Books Online (EEBO) has a truly impressive collection of early modern texts. Basically everything imaginable is there. It's a subscription service, but every university I've been at has had a campus-wide subscription. Unfortunately, when you go to view a text, they just give you an HTML page with a JPEG image of one page at a time. This makes it almost unusable. I just discovered today that it is possible to download PDFs of entire books, or selected chapters, from EEBO. I'm not sure how long this feature has been around. Anyway, here is what you have to...
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Topic(s): The Web
Posted by Kenny at 1:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 4, 2011

Philosophers' Carnival 123

Philosophers' Carnival 123 is now up at Faith in Philosophy with a philosophy of religion focus, and a link to my post on reactive attitudes.
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March 14, 2011

Philosophers' Carnival 122

The 122nd Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Icthus77, with a link to my post on bad footnotes. Also of interest this time is Michael Billy's post, "Is 'piracy' theft?". I am in broad agreement with Billy on this one, though I don't have time to lay out my thoughts in detail right now, but let me simply say that the distinction between piracy properly so-called, theft properly so-called, and copyright infringement is, to my mind, a very important one because it is my view that property is a natural right, whereas copyright and patent are only statutory rights. This...
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February 21, 2011

Philosophers' Carnival 121

The latest Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Enigmania, with a link to my post on the rationality of acting arbitrarily. (By the way, there is some good discussion on the Prosblogion version of that post as well.)
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January 10, 2011

January 1, 2011

Blog Year 2010 in Review

Welcome to 2011! As I have done in past years, I will provide a review of this blog's 2010 activity. The year 2010 saw over 141,000 visits from nearly 44,000 distinct users. This is a significant increase over last year, probably due to my joining The Prosblogion in September. There were 80 posts in 2010, holding roughly constant from the 79 in 2009. That makes an average of nearly 1770 visits per post, a significant increase from 2009, but still well behind 2008's 2623 visits per post. Most Popular Posts March 15, 2010: Philosophers' Carnival 105. November 13, 2005: Translation...
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December 14, 2010

November 22, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival 117

The 117th Philosophers' Carnival is is now up at a blog with the fantastic name The Consternation of Philosophy, with a link to the Prosblogion version of my post post on omnipotence.
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October 12, 2010

September 27, 2010

Joining the Prosblogion

I am pleased to announce that I have been invited to join The Prosblogion, the premier philosophy of religion blog! As the invite seems to have resulted largely from my series on Sobel's Logic and Theism, I suppose that, in addition to thanking the Prosblogion folks for inviting me, I should thank Jonathan for challenging me to engage seriously with an atheist writer on my blog, and Brandon for suggesting Logic and Theism as the text of choice. From now on, any serious, contentful posts on philosophy of religion (including the remainder of the Sobel series) will appear both here...
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September 20, 2010

August 31, 2010

August 23, 2010

3quarksdaily Philosophy Prize

The blog 3quarksdaily has opened nominations for their second annual philosophy prize, to be judged by Akeel Bigrami. Head on over and nominate your favorite philosophy blog post of the year. (Especially if your favorite post was one of mine!) After nominations, there will be a round of online voting, followed by a round of voting by 3QD contributors, and then Professor Bigrami will make a final selection.
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August 9, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival 112

The 112th Philosophers' Carnival is now up at A Concentrated Tincture, with a link to my post on The Lockean Proviso and Federally Managed Lands. Also in the carnival is Paul Gowder's interesting treatment of, as he calls it, "The Difference Between Faith and Fallibilism". I've left a lengthy comment there which may be of interest to some readers of this blog. This is supposed to be the first installment in a series of at least three posts; I am looking forward to reading the rest of what Paul has to say on this subject.
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August 4, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival 111

I've just returned from a long vacation. During my absence Philosophers' Carnival 111 was posted at Parableman, with a link to my post on authority and authoritativeness. I expect to resume regular blogging now.
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April 26, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival 107

The 107th Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Philosophy of Brains, with a link to my post, "Morality as a System of Assertoric Imperatives". Also of interest is Gary Williams' "The Myth of Sensory Immediacy - Why Berkeley Was Wrong", which argues that modern understanding of the neuro-psychology of perception disproves the sense data theory and thus deprives Berkeley of his starting point.
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April 6, 2010

March 15, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival 105

Welcome to the 105th Philosophers' Carnival! The Philosophers' Carnival collects some of the best philosophy blog posts all in one place. Here they are: Metaphysics Aaron defends an account of the ontology of fiction which avoids commitment to possible worlds at the expense of introducing truth-value gaps, at the Florida Student Philosophy Blog. Philosophy of Mind Avery Archer of The Space of Reasons criticizes motivational rationalism. Gualtiero Piccinini provides a critical review of Gallistel and King's Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience at Brains. Epistemology Martin Cooke considers a version of the two envelope paradox...
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March 11, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival Call for Submissions

I will be hosting the 105th Philosophers' Carnival this coming Monday, March 15. Posts in all areas of academic philosophy are welcome. Submissions should be made by Saturday, midnight.
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February 1, 2010

Philosophers' Carnival 103

The 103rd Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Philosophy, etc. with a link to my post on seeing the world through teleology-colored glasses. Also of interest in the new philosophers' carnival is Chris Hallquist's discussion of reformed epistemology and moral realism. In the course of his discussion, Chris gives a narrative of the history of early modern philosophy which is similar to my Berkeley-centric narrative (despite not mentioning Berkeley): Descartes sets up an impossible program, Hume shows that either Cartesian or classical empiricist assumptions lead inevitably to skepticism, and this motivates a 'Reidian' program...
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January 1, 2010

Blog Year 2009 in Review

It is now (shockingly) 2010! As such, it is time to write my annual "year in review" post. The year 2009 on this blog saw about 124,000 visits from over 41,000 distinct users. This continues the trend of an annual drop in traffic. Last year, it was suggested that this might be due to less frequent posting. In response, I have tried this year to make at least one post per calendar week. The number of posts in 2009 was 79. This compares to 69 in 2008. That's about 1570 visits per post; a significant drop from past figures. Allow...
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November 10, 2009

October 19, 2009

Philosopher's Carnival 98

Welcome to the 98th Philosopher's Carnival! The Philosopher's Carnival is a roundup of the best philosophy blog posts of the last three weeks or so. As host, I have selected the submissions (and a couple of non-submissions) which, in my opinion, will be of most interest to academic philosophers. There is necessarily some subjectivity here, so I apologize to anyone who feels he or she was unfairly excluded. Metaphysics Steve Esser presents Notes on C.B.Martin's The Mind in Nature posted at Guide to Reality. This post summarizes Martin's work across a wide variety of metaphysical and especially ontological topics. Aaron...
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September 30, 2009

Philosophers' Carnival 97

The latest Philosophers' Carnival is up at Camels With Hammers with a link to my list of philosophical science-fiction stories. I will be hosting the next philosophers' carnival on Monday, October 19, so be sure to submit a post by the deadline, Saturday the 17th!
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July 28, 2009

July 8, 2009

United Breaks Guitars (and Telescopes)

Apparently United Airlines was responsible for recklessly destroying a very expensive guitar belonging to a band called Sons of Maxwell. After determining that it was not possible to reason with United's bureaucracy, the band decided to retaliate by producing a series of music videos about their experience. The first video is here. Lauren and I had a very similar experience with a telescope on our honeymoon. As it turns out, in order for United to investigate whether they might possibly be responsible for damage to a piece of luggage (a process which, we were told, takes about a year) you...
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Topic(s): The Web
Posted by Kenny at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 7, 2009

Philosophers' Carnival 93

Philosophers' Carnival 93 is now up at Philosophy, etc. with a link to my recently posted Aristotle paper.
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May 27, 2009

May 6, 2009

Announcing: The Extended Cognition Blog

A fellow UCI graduate student, Kris Rhodes, has announced the launch of The Extended Cognition Blog (ex-cog for short). Ex-cog will be devoted to the exploration of the extended mind hypothesis. Anyone interested in philosophy of mind should hop on over and check it out.
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May 4, 2009

April 8, 2009

Christian Carnival CCLXXI

My post Apologetics: The Good and the Bad has been included in the latest Christian Carnival at Fathom Deep. I haven't been participating in the Christian Carnival recently, but when I wrote this post it occurred to me that it might be of interest to that carnival's readers.
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March 29, 2009

I Exist!

Berkeley famously said that "to be is to be perceived." Quine's maxim was "to be is to be the value of a variable." We, however, know the truth: to be is to be a search result in Philosophers' Index...
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March 23, 2009

Philosophers' Carnival 88

Welcome to the 88th Philosophers' Carnival! The Philosophers' Carnival is a regular round-up of some of the best philosophy blog posts on the web. Each carnival receives a great many submissions, and it is therefore necessary for hosts to be selective. The posts that have been selected represent, in my very subjective opinion, the best of the submissions (in no particular order)...
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March 3, 2009

Philosophers' Carnival 87

Philosophers' Carnival 87 is now up at There Is Some Truth in That with a link to my "The Problem of Sex in Kant's Ethics". The 88th carnival will be held here at blog.kennypearce.net on Monday, March 23. The submission deadline will be Saturday, March 21.
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January 5, 2009

Blog Year 2008 in Review

The year 2008 on this blog saw over 181,000 visits from nearly 55,000 distinct users. This is the third year in review post I have done, and each time I have seen a drop in my statistics. Last year, I attributed it to less regular carnival submissions and the fact that I hosted a Philosophers' Carnival in 2006, but not in 2007. However, I hosted two carnivals in 2008, and my stats continue to drop. It has been suggested that over the past two years...
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December 29, 2008

Philosophers' Carnival 84

The 84th Philosophers' Carnival is up - in verse! I have my own stanza...
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December 22, 2008

MovableType Upgrade

I have just upgraded to MovableType version 4. Please report any problems you experience. This should allow me to fix ongoing difficulties with comments and trackbacks. In particular, I should be able to turn off all of my spam filtering stuff and rely on CAPTCHA. I haven't played with the settings yet, so if nothing has broken it will be pretty much the same as before, but a number of improvements will hopefully be coming in the near future. Update (3:05 PM): I am aware that comments are currently not working. All commenters receive a message that says the comment...
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December 13, 2008

Philosophers' Carnival 83

I apologize for being late on this (as usual), but Philosophers' Carnival 83 is now up at The Uncredible Hallq with a link to my post, What Is Composition? Chris, the carnival host, laments the fact that, unlike Michael Drake, I do not have a part 2. I do, however, hope to continue my discussion of composition (or perhaps post my paper) eventually, so stay tuned!...
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November 20, 2008

October 23, 2008

Philosophers' Carnival 80

Sorry to be a little late on this, but Philosophers' Carnival 80 is up at the Principia Comica blog with a link to my post on Minimalist Ontology and Familiar Object Talk.
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October 6, 2008

September 8, 2008

Philosophers' Carnival LXXVII

Welcome to Philosophers' Carnival LXXVII at blog.kennypearce.net! The Philosophers' Carnival is a fortnightly roundup of the best blog posts related to academic philosophy. Following the procedure I used for Carnival XXXI, I will divide the posts according to the three major traditional divisions of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory. (Actually in Carnival XXXI I used "ethics" rather than "value theory", but "value theory" is a broader term.) In order to accommodate a variety of posts, I have construed each category rather broadly...
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September 4, 2008

Elsewhere on the Web

I'd like to draw all of your attention to a couple of sites. The first is Houyhnhnm Land (no, I don't have any idea how to pronounce 'Houyhnhnm' or what it means), a resource for the study of early modern thought created by Brandon Watson (of Siris fame). I have just finished my first post to the Houyhnhnm Land guest blog, "Berkeley and Ordinary Objects". In the future, I plan to cross-post everything, but for now I am going to tell all of you to click on over there and explore the site. Secondly, Logical Space, the brain child of Lewis Powell...
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September 3, 2008

Call for Submissions: Philosophers' Carnival LXXVII

Philosophers' Carnival LXXVII will be hosted here at blog.kennypearce.net this Monday, September 8. Submissions on any subject related to academic philosophy are welcome. The best posts will be selected for inclusions (I will probably pick between 10 and 20 posts). Posts can be submitted online here.
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April 14, 2008

Philosophers' Carnival 67: Idealism

Welcome to the 67th Philosophers' Carnival, on the theme of idealism! A large number of submissions were received, so among those that were not idealism-themed, I have selected only a few of my favorites. My apologies to those that were not included. Also, for those of you who find the color scheme distasteful (or a cause of headaches), let me point you to the top right of the page, where a link reading "view with boring colors" will magically turn this page to black on white (please let me know if it doesn't work in your browser). And now, without further ado...
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April 2, 2008

Philosophers' Carnival 66

I'm a couple days late with this (my apologies), but Philosophers' Carnival 66 is now up at The Uncredible Hallq with a link to my post, Berkeley: Phenomenalist or Platonist? The 67th Carnival will be held right here, so stay tuned!
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March 27, 2008

The Philosophers' Carnival Returns to blog.kennypearce.net

The 66th Philosophers' Carnival is coming up this Monday at The Uncredible Hallq. The Philosophers' Carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of blog posts on subjects related to academic philosophy including, but not limited to, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, "continental" philosophy and the history of philosophy. Submissions are due online every other Saturday for inclusion in the carnival the following Monday. Following the Uncredible Carnival 66 this Monday, Philosophers' Carnival 67 will take place here at blog.kennypearce.net on Monday, April 14 (submissions due by Saturday April 12). Some of you may recall that I had previously hosted Philosophers' Carnival 31. The 67th carnival will be focused on the theme of "idealism"...
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March 18, 2008

January 22, 2008

January 14, 2008

Christian Carnival CCVI

This link is a little late in coming (my apologies), but Jeremy has included my post on hyper-Reformation theology in Christian Carnival CCVI (that's 206 to you barbarians) at Parableman.
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January 3, 2008

Blog Year 2007 In Review

The year 2007 on this blog saw over 214,000 visits from over 72,000 distinct users. This is down just slightly from 2006, a trend that I attribute to less regular blogging, and especially less regular carnival submissions, and also to not hosting the philosophers' carnival, which led to a big surge of hits in 2006. Here are the top ten most popular posts...
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December 3, 2007

November 4, 2007

Patristic Carnival V

Patristic Carnival V is up at The God Fearin' Forum, with a link to my post on "Dionysius". It is a truly ecumenical venture, and I recommend that you all check it out. Notable posts include: A collection of quotes on the Eucharist at The Byzantine Anglo-Catholic...
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October 26, 2007

"The Semantics of Sense Perception in Berkeley"

My paper "The Semantics of Sense Perception in Berkeley" is now available on my writings page. An earlier version of this paper served as my undergraduate honors thesis, and a somewhat reduced version of it has been accepted for publication by Religious Studies. I haven't heard anything about what issue it will appear in. This paper discusses Berkeley's theory that our sense perceptions (especially visual perceptions) form a language by which God communicates with us, and asks how we are to interpret this language. In particular, it argues...
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July 26, 2007

Tagged! 8 Things You Never Wanted to Know About Me

I've been tagged by The God Fearin' Fiddler. I've seen these things go around before, but I've never actually been tagged myself, so I suppose I'd better play along. Here are the rules:
The rules are simple�Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

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Topic(s): The Web
Posted by Kenny at 12:03 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

June 28, 2007

Introducing Guest-Blogger Lauren!

So, now that I've started blogging regularly again (at least for the last three days or so), I'm leaving town and going to be away from the computer for about five days. However, there is good news! This, I think, will be an excellent opportunity to hand over the reins to my lovely fiance, Lauren. (I expect she will continue to blog occasionally after I come back, but I figured this was a good time to start.) Lauren is entering her senior year at Penn, majoring in physics, math, and philosophy. She's been instructed to stick roughly to the general subject areas ordinarily discussed on this blog...
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June 25, 2007

Detecting Java WebStart on Internet Explorer

So, I haven't posted very much recently, not for any particularly important reason, but simply because I've been doing other things with my free time. The next few days I have very little to do, however (I'm on vacation back in Washington state), and so I'm hoping to get a few things posted that I've been meaning to post. The first of these is a little off the usual topic of this blog, but I think it will be of interest if not to my usual readers, at least to those who find it on google. At work last week,...
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April 24, 2007

March 12, 2007

February 21, 2007

New Philosophers' Carnival Up!

The latest Philosophers' Carnival is now up at This is the Name of This Blog (don't you just love analytic philosophy humor?) with a link to my two posts on the nature of love.
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February 17, 2007

blog.kennypearce.net: Now With Boring Colors!

As of right now, users of this blog have access to a new feature: boring colors! Seriously, though, I was trying to print something off this blog so that it was readable on a white background and realized this was a non-trivial task. This combined with the fact that people have often complained about my site being difficult to read has motivated me to finally create a feature to view the site with a more normal stylesheet. Clicking "View With Boring Colors" on the top right of any page should cause the page to appear in black on white. Reloading...
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February 15, 2007

January 8, 2007

January 3, 2007

Blog Year 2006 in Review

The year 2006 on this blog saw over 265,000 visits from nearly 95,000 unique users. Here are the top ten most popular posts (note: there is some margin of error here, as a configuration change part way through the year caused some posts to be accessible at two URLs, screwing up the statistics): May 30, 2006: More Comment Spam Reconfiguration. People must be finding this on search engines thinking it will help them eliminate spam from their own blogs (although none of the top ten searches get you here, so everyone must be searching with a different phrase). Kinda sad...
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November 7, 2006

Philosophers' Carnival 38

I'm extremely swamped right now (in the second round of midterms, and in tech week for Othello) and don't have time to post anything substantive, or keep up on what's going on on the other blogs I ordinarily read, for which I apologize. I do however, want to point all of your attention to Philosophers' Carnival 38 which is up at The Splintered Mind with a link to my post on Moore's "two hands" argument for the existence of the physical world.
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August 23, 2006

July 24, 2006

July 19, 2006

July 4, 2006

June 13, 2006

Poll: Is My Color Scheme Too Hard to Read?

I like my color scheme. It looks like an old computer terminal, which I think is kind of neat. I can read it fine, myself. However, since I posted the the Philosophers' Carnival here yesterday, I've had two different people (Clark at Mormon Metaphysics in his post linking to the carnival, and play_jurist, commenting on the carnival itself) comment that the text is too difficult to read. So, what I want to know is, how many people think the blog in its current format is hard to read? If a lot of people do, I'd like to get a feel...
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June 12, 2006

Philosophers' Carnival XXXI!

Greetings one and all, and welcome to blog.kennypearce.net and the 31st Philosophers' Carnival! The Philosophers' Carnival is an every-few-weekly compilation of philosophy posts from blogs all over the web. The next Philosophers' Carnival is scheduled for July 3rd, and is still in need of a host! If you would like to host Philosophers' Carnival XXXII, visit the hosting guidelines then contact Richard Chappell of Philosophy, etc. to volunteer. Today's Philosophers' Carnival contains a truly fantastic collection of deep and insightful posts which will be divided into the three traditional sub-divisions of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology (including logic/dialectic), and ethics (including political...
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June 7, 2006

Christian Carnival CXXV at Random Acts of Verbiage

Christian Carnival CXXV is now up at Random Acts of Verbiage with a link to my post on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth....
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June 5, 2006

Philosophers' Carnival #31 Reminder

Just a reminder: Philosophers' Carnival #31 will be hosted right here at blog.kennypearce.net on Monday, June 12, one week from today! Any philosophy-related blog post is eligible for inclusion, so get those submissions in! The submission deadline is midnight, US Eastern time, next Sunday night....
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May 30, 2006

More Comment Spam Configuration

So I've discovered that by increasing my comment spam filter's aggressiveness by .1 I can eliminate nearly all spam (I was getting a whole bunch of spam which the filter scored at exactly 0 and referred to me for moderation, and it was clogging my email box like mad). The downside is that certain non-spam messages will also get junked, and MovableType will direct the user to a page that says the comment was 'held for moderation' rather than junked. When I get a chance (probably next week) I'll work on getting a more accurate message up there. For now...
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May 26, 2006

Christian Carnival For May 24 (Finally) Up!

After prolonged technical difficulties, Christian Carnival 24 is up at Musings on Music with a link to my post on icons. Because the technical difficulties are continuing, there is a second version of the carnival at Wittenberg Gate. Enjoy!...
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May 22, 2006

Philosphers' Carnival 30 at anniemiz!

Philosophers' Carnival 30 is now up at anniemiz with a link to my post on why the NSA data mining peration is bad. The next Philosophers' Carnival will be hosted right here at blog.kennypearce.net on June 12, so stay tuned! To submit an entry, go to the Philosophers' Carnival home page....
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Comment Problem Fixed?

I think comments may not have been working the past week or so (that is, I think a lot of them were giving the 'held for moderation' message, and then getting junked). I hope I have fixed this now. If you had something to say within the last week here, please either post again, or email me and I'll try to dig it out of the spam box. Sorry!...
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May 11, 2006

Christian Carnival CXXI

Christian Carnival CXXI is now up at Something Epic with a link to my post, Opheilema in Matthew 6:12....
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May 7, 2006

More Comment Spam Recongifuration

I've added to my blog configuration a list of words used in offensive comment spam (especially those that link to porn sites). I realize, however, that the relevant words (which I will not list here, as I will probably add more later as the need arises) have legitimate uses (which is why I'm moderating rather than junking them). So, if you write a comment that contains, for instance, the word 'nude,' you will receive a message that says "Your comment has been received and held for approval by the blog owner." I'll get an email with your comment and approve...
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May 4, 2006

Christian Carnival CXX

Christian Carnival CXX is up at Daddypundit with a link to my recent post on the Trinity. Check it out....
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April 10, 2006

Comment Spam Filter

So, a comment that I wrote myself was recently rejected by my spam filter. This seems to have occurred because it contained an excessive number of links. I don't want to turn the filter aggressiveness down because a lot of spam already gets through, so if you post a comment (or a trackback) and it doesn't appear on the page within a few minutes (it's normally pretty much instantaneous), please email me at kenny@kennypearce.net so I can retrieve it from the junk bin. Thanks!...
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April 6, 2006

Christian Carnival

The latest Christian Carnival is now up at In The Outer with a link to my post on Biblical inerrancy. As always, there is a lot of interesting content. Highly reccomended....
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March 23, 2006

Christian Carnival

The latest Christian Carnival is up at All Kinds of Time..." with a link to my post "Tradition as the 'Platonic Form' of Christian Faith and Practice in Orthodoxy"....
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March 20, 2006

Philosophers' Carnival 31 Coming to blog.kennypearce.net!

It's official! Philosophers' Carnival 31 will be hosted right here at blog.kennypearce.net on June 5, 2006. The philosophers' carnival occurs about every three weeks and showcases philosophy posts from many different blogs, in order to help small blogs gain exposure and help facilitate blog discussions about philosophy. The next carnival will be on April 3 at The University of Nowhere. You can submit your entries here....
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March 14, 2006

Philosopher's Carnival 27

Philosopher's Carnival 27 is up at Heaven Tree with a link to my post on Rights, Obligations, and Abortion. Check it out....
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February 21, 2006

Philosophers' Carnival 26

Philosophers' Carnival 26 is up at Hesperus/Phosphorus with a link to my post on libertarianism and corporations....
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February 17, 2006

January 31, 2006

Uncredible Double Carnival

Both the Philosopher's Carnival and the GOD or NOT Carnival are up at The Uncredible Hallq. I didn't get a submission in for this month's GOD or NOT, on the theme of "Definition of God," but the philosopher's carnival contains a link to my recent post on persons as events....
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January 19, 2006

Christian Carnival CV

Christian Carnival CV is up at Dunmoose the Ageless with a link to my post on musterion....
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January 11, 2006

Christian Carnival 104

Christian Carnival 104 is up at Random Responses with a link to my post on the Holman Christian Standard Bible....
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January 10, 2006

Philosophers' Carnival XXIV

Philosophers' Carnival XXIV is up at Rad Geek People's Dailywith a link to my post Let's Make Creation Science Not Suck. Rad Geek does a wonderful job summarizing all of the very interesting entries in the carnival. Check it out....
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January 4, 2006

Christian Carnival CIII

Christian Carnival CIII is up at Misere Mei with a link to my post, "Are Linguistic Facts Theologically Significant". As always, the Christian Carnival has many interesting entries....
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December 15, 2005

Accuracy of Wikipedia vs. Brittanica

From Nature magazine via slashdot: a survey by experts of articles on 42 science related topics (e.g. "Cambrian Explosion," "lymphocyte," "neural network," "quark," etc. Complete list here) found that the Wikipedia articles contained an average 4 errors per article, whereas Encyclopedia Brittanica contained on average 3. Each encyclopedia contained four instances of "serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts" in the 42 articles surveyed. The rest were minor factual errors. Interestingly, the article with the most errors seems to have been the same for both Wikipedia and Brittanica: that on Dmitry Mendeleev, where Wikipedia contained 19 errors, and Brittanica...
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Topic(s): Science , The Web
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November 23, 2005

Carnivals Galore!

Within the last 24 hours, Philosopher's Carnival XXII has gone up at For Those of You At Home, and Christian Carnival ICVII has gone up at Thought Renewal. The Philosopher's Carnival links to my recent post on judicial activism, and the Christian Carnival is linking to "Ivy League Elitist ... Porn?". At the Philosopher's Carnival (though not at the Christian Carnival), it is customary for the host to comment on each of the posts. Ian Olasov ends his very kind remarks on my post with the line "Now all we need to do is force our elected officials to speak...
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November 21, 2005

Funny Story...

I was checking my blog status on technorati and found a link to my post on Transliteration vs. Translation from a site in a language I couldn't even identify! It looked Germanic to me (but what do I know), so I tried to plug it into the Google translator for German to English and it didn't work. According to the author's blogger profile, he is a theology student in Sweden, so I guess the blog must be in Swedish. How fun! Only I can't read it, and I can't find a web-site with automated translation from Swedish. Amazing how the...
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October 31, 2005

Philosopher's Carnival XXI

Philosopher's Carnival XXI is up at Prior Knowledge with a link to my recent post on Leibniz and miracles (yes, that's the same post the Christian Carnival linked to last week - I haven't had time to write much recently). The Philosopher's Carnival is a "fortnightly" compilation of recent posts on philosophy blogs....
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October 20, 2005

Christian Carnival XCII at Theology and Biblical Studies

So I just discovered this "Blog Carnival" thing and think its a fantastic idea. For those of you who don't know, it works like this: each period (the Christian Carnival is weekly, the Philosopher's Carnival is fortnightly) one blog hosts, and people from all different blogs submit entries on some theme or topic, which are then compiled into summaries with links. Christian Carnival XCII is now up at World of Sven's Theology and Biblical Studies, and has graciously accepted my late entry, this post on Leibniz's discussion of efficient and final causes, and its application to Christian thought on science...
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September 20, 2004

Censorship and Internet Porn

Ed Felten is blogging today on obscenity laws and the possibility of regulating online pornography, and in particular access to it by children. This is a difficult issue for me, as I often find myself, in the ordinary course of living my life, watching television, using the Internet, accidentally exposed to content I find offensive, despite making an active attempt to avoid it. However, as a libertarian, I generally oppose government censorship, and don't trust the government (or myself) to distinguish pornography from art correctly 100% of the time, and I wouldn't want any true art permanently destroyed because of anti-pornography legislation. I also wouldn't want such legislation to result in the government monitoring the communications of private citizens, or artists of any variety having to clear their work with the government before publishing. I do, however, have some idea as to how to reconcile these issues to one another.
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September 3, 2004

How to Use Wikipedia Properly

Ed Felten is blogging today about questions on the quality of content on the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. According to Felten's quick survey of topics on which he is an expert (Princeton University, Princeton Township, himself, virtual memory, and the Microsoft antitrust case), one in six Wikipedia articles contains serious errors, whereas the other five are extremely detailed and accurate. First,concerning accuracy: I used to work on Wikipedia. It has been a few years, and none of my work is clearly evident any longer, but I worked on articles such as Fundamentalist Christianity, Byzantine text-type (of the New Testament), and...
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Topic(s): The Web
Posted by Kenny at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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