The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered. Fnord. Read more →
Tag: philosophy
Eddington and the meta-paradigm
Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: (1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long. (2) All sea-creatures… Read more →
Memento mori
I had one of those shocking epiphanies today. I realized, seriously, completely, viscerally, that I am going to die someday. There was no hair-raising event, no near death experience, nothing dramatic. Just a realization that hit me during a very long drive, when I had some time to think about what it meant. Harlan Ellison is partly to blame. Obviously… Read more →
There’s not a lot of pop music with this inspiration
That’s the video for the World Party song Is It Like Today?. The reason it’s here: it’s explicitly inspired by, and intended to be a precis of, Bertrand Russell‘s History of Western Philosophy. Lyrics after the jump: Read more →
Constant Subtle Reinforcement
A while back my wife passed me a PDF copy of an academic paper entitled “Polite, well-dressed and on time: secondary school conduct codes and the production of docile citizens” by Brock University researcher Rebecca Raby. The citation shows the paper as having originally been published in The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology; Feb 2005. Rather than link you… Read more →
Seriously, who would simulate me?
From time to time I run across something that just shocks me, not because of the thing itself, but because the thing is so completely something I should have known about and yet have somehow missed. How does a philosophy argument about things that interest me greatly go on for years without my hearing about it? Today’s example of this… Read more →
A Guide To Grown-up Thinking
I read a lot of magazines–oddly more offline than on. I think this is because my online reading tends to be wide-ranging, shallow, and driven by references from other sources–there are few “online magazines” that I find myself reading “cover to cover”, as it were. Interesting magazines tend to be composed of pieces that are longer, more indepth, and thus… Read more →
The moral is…
Bertrand Russell Essays
For your edification tonight, I present three essays by old Bertie, in audio form. A couple of hours of listening that might expand your mind. (It’s not him doing the reading–his voice, which I may share with you later–was not nearly as appealing as this reader’s.) The essays are: What I Believe: This is the big one–Russell outlines what he… Read more →
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî
Years ago I read through Philip José Farmer‘s Riverworld books. Those of you who have read them will recall that Richard BurtonWikipedia entry (along with lots of other historical personages) played a pretty big role in the series. One of the indirect results of my doing that reading was that I was driven to find a copy of Burton‘s “Kasîdah“,… Read more →
