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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

I was once going to illustrate a children’s book based on Plato’s apology. Here are some of the illustrations I did for that.

Socrates bothering some eternal being in the afterlife

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Reposted by Joel A. Van Fossen

Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Discourse surrounding “AI” these days often feels like a guy showing you his shovel and you say, “that’s a nice shovel” and he says “I am going to perform surgery on my mother with this shovel” and you say “Oh God please don’t that is not what a shovel is for.”

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🫛🪻🦥 @shalhebetyah.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

Rawlsian heterosexual who dates both genders because their own gender is hidden behind the veil of ignorance.

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Reposted by Joel A. Van Fossen

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

My statement on Donald Trump's threat to deport me and his praise for Eric Adams, who the President "helped out" of legal accountability.

The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.

His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation.

That Trump included praise for Eric Adams in his authoritarian threats is unsurprising, but highlights the urgency of bringing an end to this Mayor’s time in City Hall. At the very moment when MAGA Republicans are attempting to destroy the social safety net, kick millions of New Yorkers off of healthcare and enrich their billionaire donors at the expense of working families, it is a scandal that Eric Adams echoes this President’s division, distraction and hate.

Voters will resoundingly reject it in November.

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Check out my article on love and practical wisdom in @psyche.co

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

RIP Robert Paul Wolff Besides his books and blog, there’s an excellent series of his lectures on Kant, Marx, and Freud that were posted on YouTube several years ago. Definitely worth watching. youtu.be/35cr_whPC88?...

youtu.be

Marx, Robert Paul Wolff Lecture 1

YouTube video by Alex Campbell

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Very happy to see this review. It’s an excellent book by an excellent philosopher (and person)!

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Michael Cholbi @thatwhichischolbi.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

really honored to have reviewed Paul Katsafanas' The Philosophy of Devotion for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. It's truly one of the most intriguing books in ethics in recent years ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/phil...

ndpr.nd.edu

Philosophy of Devotion: The Longing for Invulnerable Ideals

Human beings have a wide range of commitments, but we assign some of our commitments a privileged practical, axiological, and epistemic status. The succ...

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Mt Fuji saying hello on the way to the station this morning. It’s nice to see a snowy top once again. This year was the longest snowless peak on record.

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

If you’re a philosopher and you’re ever coming through Tokyo, you should hit up tfap. We have a great group of regular attendees. #philsky (On a totally unrelated note, I’m presenting there this Friday.) tf-ap.com

tf-ap.com

TFAP | Tokyo Forum For Analytic Philosophy

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

From a local Facebook group, coupled with relevant statistics showing relation between vaccination and infection and death in UK.

Two young boys looking serious and anxious waiting for diphtheria immunisation in 1941.

Chart showing virtual disappearance of diphtheria after vaccination starting 1940.

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I have a new article out on love. It’s about why we should love people for their valuable qualities and why the importance of grace is often over-estimated. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Finite love

It seems like a problem to say that love can be merited – its value is located in its transcendence of comparative judgments. However, we commonly make judgments about who is and is not worth lovin...

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Reposted by Joel A. Van Fossen

Richard Pettigrew @wiglet1981.bsky.social · 25/11/2023

Except that we invented emojis, didn’t we? So maybe it’s a wash?

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 25/05/2024

old enough to remember the breathless litigation over whether or not it was credible that the IDF may have possibly bombed 1 (one) hospital

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𝙰𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚑 𝙰𝚋𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚑 @abizadeh.bsky.social · 22/05/2024

We pulled the trigger: The editors of 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺 & 𝘗𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘈𝘧𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴 have informed Wiley that we are resigning en masse. We will be starting a new diamond open-access journal with @openlibhums.bsky.social, the same publisher that is now publishing 𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘺. #philsky #PolTheory #polisky

dailynous.com

Editors at Philosophy & Public Affairs Resign; Will Launch New OA Journal

The executive, associate, and advisory editors and all of the editorial board members of one of the most influential journals in moral and political philosophy, Philosophy & Public Affairs, have resig...

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 03/05/2024

“There is no “banality of evil,” and Hannah Arendt, who wrote about it in her Eichmann book, knew the enemy of mankind only from hearsay, saw him only through the glass cage.” Jean Amery At The Mind’s Limits

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Lauren Eriks Cline @lerikscline.bsky.social · 22/03/2024

Two weeks ago, I found out my position at St. Norbert College had been eliminated due to budget cuts: one of 21 faculty positions (13 in the humanities) eliminated at the college so far this year. I was under tenure review, and now I'm not. I have until May, and then my contract will be done.

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 12/03/2024

This news is very unfortunate. I received my BA in philosophy from SNC. A “liberal arts” education without adequate support for the humanities is shameful and goes against the very mission that SNC touts. I’m very disappointed.

leiterreports.typepad.com

Another college "balancing the budget" on the back of the humanities

St. Norbert College in Wisconsin--a Catholic liberal arts college no less--is firing all its assistant professors in the humanities (except in theology!), including both assistant professors of philos...

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Reposted by Joel A. Van Fossen

joanne mcneil @jomc.bsky.social · 23/02/2024

Just landed on a Wikipedia page with information that was obviously incorrect and followed the citation link which directed me to ChatGPT generated news garbage. Wikipedia has long been almost impossibly resilient, but LLMs are really reallllly going to strain this resource

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Andreas Vrahimis @avrahimis.bsky.social · 21/02/2024

"What did come as a surprise to me was Raz’s choice of subject matter and the quality of his images. Black-and-white film, varying depths of light and shadow, and intricate details in the natural environment characterise his work." www.strandmagazine.co.uk/single-post/...

strandmagazine.co.uk

Joseph Raz: Philosopher and Photographer

Joseph Raz (1939–2022) was an eminent legal, moral and political philosopher, best known for his seminal work on normativity and reasons for action. In 2011, he joined King’s College London’s Dickson ...

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 10/12/2023

Had such a gorgeous walk after lunch on Friday.

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

An interesting contrast teaching in the US vs Japan: students in both tend toward subjectivism in ethics. But in general very strong objectivist aesthetic intuitions here vs US (very limited sample size—these are just the classes I’ve taught)

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 24/11/2023

One of the coolest projects I was assigned in grad school was during a grad seminar on Spinoza’s Ethics. We had to deduce an original proposition and proof in Spinoza’s geometric style. It was much harder than I thought but really really interesting.

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

There’s a lot of great work on well-being, but there really needs to be more work on rational and ethical egoism. It’s such a prominent view historically, and it’s often thrown out along with psychological egoism.

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Federica Rocky Bocchi @federicabocchi.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

Thanks to Charles Pence and Max Bautista Perpinyà for organizing a workshop on Integrating the History and Philosophy of Biodiversity at the Brussels' Natural Science Museum, last week. I had a great time presenting my work in progress on a "theory of evidence" for evidence-based conservation!

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Joel A. Van Fossen @joelvanfossen.bsky.social · 31/10/2023

Halloween night and trick-or-treating in Yokohama’s Chinatown.

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