tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48193394653142860122024-02-20T10:28:52.497-08:00der Augenblickder Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-86099099021141830032012-09-26T09:50:00.003-07:002012-09-26T09:50:47.363-07:00Infinity and AtomismNow this is interesting: one of the ancient arguments for the existence of indivisibles (e.g., "atoms") is that infinite divisibility implies an actual infinity. Suppose you can infinitely divide both a mustard seed and a mountain. So they are both composed of the same number (an infinity) of parts. Therefore, they are both the same size. Or, by the same reasoning, a part der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-79530303581618537832012-02-25T11:24:00.003-08:002012-02-25T11:31:11.223-08:00Reason and AnxietyMy understanding of the Spinoza Controversy of the late-18th century has changed over time. I first read about it years ago, first in Frederick Beiser's The Fate of Reason, and then in Paul Franks' All or Nothing. I initially thought of it solely in terms of the quid juris of reason itself. Do the concepts of reason represent reality? What's the place of reason in the der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-46051386835937385062012-02-25T08:49:00.004-08:002012-02-25T14:17:07.057-08:00Recursion and The Principle of Sufficient ReasonThe principle of sufficient reason (PSR): For every fact F, there must be an explanation why F is the case.
The reason the PSR caused so much trouble in 17th and 18th century philosophy is because it's a recursive function. It's always possible to run the PSR function on the output of the PSR function. This results in an infinite regress. Even if we trace der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-72480554355996965072012-02-11T18:57:00.000-08:002012-02-11T19:01:42.704-08:00Notes of Holderlin's fragment 'Being Judgment Possibility'This fragment deals with the distinction between being and identity and why an ontology cannot follow from the fact the self-consciousness.
Being -, expresses the combination of subject and object.The concept "being" must encompass all manners of existences. Conscious states are subjective, first-person, non-extended entities. Physical objects are objective, third-person, der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-49550571060241163032012-02-11T08:27:00.000-08:002012-02-11T08:40:15.287-08:00Being/Having vs. Being/Doing
I'm reading Stephen Batchelor's first book, Alone With Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism. I was curious to see if the book he wrote on the subject was as good as the book I have not written on the subject. I would say the approach is different, and his book is a lot less boring than the book I would write.
Being vs. Having
The first distinction Batchelor draws for understanding der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-56645204900845478452012-01-22T13:11:00.000-08:002012-01-22T13:27:24.652-08:00Things, properties, and personal identityPersonal identity is one of my favorite philosophical subjects to think about. It's been a mystery to me literally as long as I can remember. I remember being a kid and creeping myself out by wondering things like, "How do I exist?" and "Why am I me rather than someone else?" "If you replaced all my memories with other memories, would anything of me remain?"
Philosopher Julian Baggini der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-49529207091394762952011-05-28T07:44:00.000-07:002011-05-28T07:44:59.008-07:00Moral philosophy, part 2I wanted to spend time on the presuppositions of Kant's philosophy in the last post because like much in Kant's philosophy they seem like they're open to easy attack. They're not. I wanted to draw a close connection between the presuppositions of Kant's moral philosophy and modernity generally, specifically modern technology and modern science. Kant and the rest of us assume a radical fact/der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-16079781386559410782011-03-27T10:00:00.000-07:002011-03-27T10:00:49.425-07:00Moral philosophyKant noticed a paradox in all other theories of morality: so long as morality is based upon the idea that there was some object or material concept worth striving for by virtue of its intrinsic goodness—be it happiness, perfection, a moral feeling, the will of God, the 10 commandments, or the good life for man—then morality is impossible. Kant's claim was radical. These weren't justder Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-78891186354427711092011-03-20T14:05:00.000-07:002011-03-20T14:05:36.990-07:00TranscendenceExcerpt from something I wrote a couple years ago that I want to reproduce here...
The reason I asked what your concept of God entails (other than to entertain myself while at work) is that my reaction to the use of this concept is often one of puzzlement and confusion. When it's used to refer to the omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely good, anthropomorphic entity that created the universe that der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-36475160053246457792011-02-03T16:00:00.000-08:002011-02-03T16:00:09.062-08:00Alan TuringThe really interesting thing Alan Turing did was to turn the machine itself into a kind of input. What the machine deals with and the machine itself aren't different in kind. This is the idea that both program and input are held in the same memory space—an essential feature of the von Neumann architecture that describes nearly every computer in existence today.
But the engineering featder Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-176632097271454272011-01-31T07:56:00.000-08:002011-01-31T07:56:45.762-08:00purposeI think each person has in them an impulse toward the light and an impulse toward the dark. I don't mean good and evil necessarily, but I suppose that's part of it. By "light" I mean "clear" and by "dark" I mean "confused".
If you're clear about who you really are—what you value, what truly has meaning to you, and what your life is about—then that very act of self-consciousness der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-86797556662440367952011-01-22T11:09:00.000-08:002011-01-22T11:09:49.883-08:00Some Principles of ActionUnderstand intelligence and its role in the world from a cosmological perspective. Because only when you understand it from a cosmological perspective will you be motivated to act, even when there are setbacks and things seem bleak. I would say this is the most important part. If you have trouble with philosophy, then embrace an appropriate religion, one that emphasizes compassion toward all der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-19478343204415404622011-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:002011-01-12T06:54:24.120-08:00Dialectics for beginners (or not)While I was running today (yes, I'm insane enough to run in this weather), I was thinking about how I might explain dialectics to someone who knows nothing about it. It's actually not that difficult. Most of what follows is from Scott Meikle's Essentialism in the Thought of Karl Marx, though a lot of it comes from things I've read here and there.
Dialectics is a theory about (a) what exists der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-90137337620656706782011-01-10T18:27:00.000-08:002011-01-11T12:33:55.972-08:00Surrogates (2009)Unfortunately one of the problems with knowing about the law of accelerating returns is that you can see how unimaginative most science fiction plots are. Case in point: I watched Surrogates tonight starring Bruce Willis. It's about a future in which people can interact with the world via remote controlled robots while they stay at home.
Now, a typical inner (or outer, irate) monologue of der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-21720678027215928392011-01-10T09:29:00.001-08:002011-01-10T09:29:55.829-08:00exoplanetsA year ago I predicted we'd find 116 exoplanets by NYE 2010. We ended up finding 106.
My prediction for this year is 160.der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-14130657481696918362011-01-05T08:36:00.000-08:002011-01-20T11:24:50.929-08:00youOn the ride into work today I was thinking about some of the Great MysteriesTM. Things like, "Why does anything exist?" or "What the hell is up with quantum mechanics?"
I've always been partial to the mysteries surrounding consciousness and personal identity. Yes, things like quantum entanglement are weird and interesting, but for me they don't pack the same punch I feel when I think about der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-39459455707754325432011-01-03T13:14:00.000-08:002011-01-03T13:14:13.140-08:00patterns and readiness-to-handBasic human coping skills like driving a car or playing ball seem based on the ability to recognize and respond to patterns, not solving equations or doing calculations. The general know-how involved here is based upon directly perceiving possibilities and acting on them, not knowing (implicitly or explicitly) that some set of facts holds.
I have to expand on this later, but I wonder if there'sder Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-50125712579345685672010-12-28T15:07:00.000-08:002010-12-28T15:07:51.777-08:00Memento moriI don't understand people when they say they're okay with death.
"When my time is up, it's up."
Oh really? I'll believe that when you're facing death and saying it.
I'm not saying there aren't good reasons to want death (or, if you're a Spinozist, at least good prima facie reasons). If you're hopelessly trapped or in unceasing agony, I could see preferring death to life.
What I doubt der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-20236874470467698132010-12-19T17:41:00.000-08:002010-12-19T17:42:41.612-08:00The future of sexIt's old news, but SETI is on the lookout for artificial intelligence."If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you," he told BBC News.
"But within a few hundred years of inventing radio - at least if we're any example - you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-3849322288562312982010-12-18T12:44:00.000-08:002010-12-18T12:44:43.296-08:00Mad MenI started watching Mad Men. It's a delightful and entertaining show and very well written. It's inspired me to start drinking Old Fashioneds and to wear pocket squares. It's not inspiring me to smoke. Nothing has inspired me to smoke since I quit four and a half years ago.
It's also one of the most interesting shows I've ever watched. It depicts an America arguably at the zenith of its der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-76694922493839913042010-12-18T10:41:00.000-08:002010-12-18T10:55:19.140-08:00The mind as a courtship ornamentRight now I'm reading The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey Miller. The author's thesis is that the human mind evolved for the purpose of courtship. The reason we're able to tell jokes, build monuments, compose sonatas, and follow fashion is the same reason peacocks are able to grow such magnificent tails and beetles have such elaborate markings on der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-8263432322020708352010-12-17T16:57:00.000-08:002010-12-18T09:36:45.495-08:00Sexual RevolutionWhen you think about it, the idea of a sexual revolution is bizarre. Most animal species are distinguished by their sexual displays: courting behaviors, feathers, facial hair, markings on carapace, etc. There are plenty of species which would be indistinguishable except on a molecular level were it not for their sexual displays. In the world of biological evolution, a sexual revolution usuallyder Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-11968751555671106552010-12-04T11:22:00.000-08:002010-12-04T14:50:50.524-08:00The singularity is not in our pastI think this person is absolutely right about the significance of the industrial revolution but also misses the point about the technological singularity.
There can be no doubt that the industrial revolution represented a profound break in human history. Adding to what Mr. Shalizi states in his post, we can also include massive movements of population, unprecedented increases in worker der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-80540088861090866732010-12-02T15:37:00.000-08:002010-12-02T15:47:03.621-08:00New discovery is not "alien"The announcement today from NASA that they had discovered a form of life that uses arsenic rather than phosphorus has many implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. Scientists don't have to limit their search to areas that only have carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur now. It's at least as important as the discovery of archaea in the 1970s.
But I think theder Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819339465314286012.post-30406969307418857012010-10-27T15:38:00.000-07:002010-10-27T15:38:19.571-07:00story of the worldIn some respects I'm an optimist about history, and in some respects I'm a pessimist.
I'm an optimist insofar as I think Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns is probably right, at least in its fundamental intuitions. By that I mean that the sort of technological change most people think will take centuries to realize will in fact take decades. Will a non-biological intelligence pass the der Augenblickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09655346448815758586noreply@blogger.com0