The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s Unreadable Entries

It may seem a little unproductive to have a go at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. After all, it presents itself as a free service to academic philosophers. It is. Yet all I can say is that after having studied philosophy for over two decades, I still hardly understand the SEP entries I’ve read. This can be best summed up by saying that most entries graphically display extreme and gratuitous academese. This essay is an attempt to make sense of that (admittedly personal) “cognitive deficit”.

Adjunct professor Nikhil Sonnad (in a piece called ‘This free online encyclopedia has achieved what Wikipedia can only dream of’) states that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is a “truthful” and “trusted” alternative to the “trashy internet”.

In more detail:

“The story of how the SEP is run, and how it came to be, shows that it is possible to create a less trashy internet — or at least a less trashy corner of it. A place where actual knowledge is sorted into a neat, separate pile instead of being thrown into the landfill. Where the world can go to learn everything that we know to…