dig it.

Debt

2008-10-20T01:36:00.003-04:00

This is a question i have been pondering on and off. Let me know your opinion.

How much does an individual owe to that which he/she owes his/her existance?

How far does the chain extend? (Mother, Father, Family, State, Economic System, Earth etc.)

My personal feeling is that there are somethings that I owe/am responcible more than others dispite the equally important role they/it played in the formation of my existance. More details in the oncoming discussion...

Intense

2008-07-04T15:43:00.000-04:00

2008-05-10T17:22:00.001-04:00

This is why no one cares.

2008-05-10T14:14:00.003-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/world/asia/10CHINA.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=china+labor&st=nyt&oref=slogin

in the shitstorm of stupid questions and responses one is subjected to after announcing their college major is philosophy, the exceedingly annoying subject of eastern philosophy comes up - it is often asked why it isnt studied or whether im interested in it or what i think. when philosophers are done bikering, what ends up coming out of it all is a resultant theory of ethics for those who actually want their bickering to mean something. china is why no one gives a shit about eastern philosophy; its moronic, just look what's come of it...

Damn

2008-05-09T20:09:00.000-04:00

Claymation + Trotsky = Amazing

2008-05-08T03:20:00.000-04:00

Simple Interest

2008-04-29T15:40:00.002-04:00

i was watching law and order and an interesting question came to mind. one that can be argued from 1's and 0's all the way to general right and wrong.

Artificial intelligence, i though - it would solve many questions about environmental causes for behavior; sexual abused children becoming abusers...but upon sucessful creation of ai (which is likely impossible) must we treat the "thing" we create that lives and thinks ethically? could we recreate the experiment in order to conduct tests like the molested/molester test? or is it just as wrong? (hint: this gets at your criteria for human dignity - compare it to cloaning humans for the same experiments)

Hip Hop Blog Dude Calls out TI

2008-04-24T14:01:00.000-04:00

http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=20898 :

"But again, I digress. My issue is not so much why it is that T.I. is free to walk the streets - it’s that he plans to use his court-ordered community service to give lectures to today’s youth, what with their fragile, egg-shell minds. This strikes me as a bad idea for a few reasons.
First of all, the guy’s a fucking idiot, and I’m not sure if I’d want someone that dumb talking to my kids. The shit might rub off on them.
I mean, look at the shit he got busted for in the first place. What kind of dumbass, let alone a dumbass with multiple felony convictions on his record, agrees over the phone - to some bodyguard he’s only known for a brief period of time - to accept a cache of weapons in exchange for money, in a parking lot outside the motherfucking BET Awards? That just shows a lack of critical thinking."

Rarely So Affected

2008-04-23T18:15:00.002-04:00

When I ordered "I Am Legend" earlier today, I thought I'd signed up for another ill 2 hours of Will Smith kicking some serious ass. Instead I experienced the saddest moment I've ever seen in a film (though that really only concerns to dog lovers), and a good ending - by which I mean not a happy ending. The movie is by all means sincerely depressing. The scene where he has to kill his dog - his only living companion - literally hurts to watch. Maybe Will Smith can only play one roll, but he plays it damn convincingly. The plot has holes in places, and of course it's far fetched, but it eminates a surprisingly strong notion of genuine human heroism. As an averagely raised American child, I am subject to the same lack of belief that anyone can truly change anything for mankind - and not that it would even necessarily have a greater meaning, but more that we are essentially futile in all of our actions. Unfortunately the American ethical mantra gives itself to this - if everyone is entirely autonomous and does not infringe on anyone else's rights, where can anyone really be effective to another? Not anywhere significant, because we all want to be independent; so this leads to that and we're all up in arms about politics and whatnot, and its the necessary state of affairs given our governmental system - which, albeit the possibility [probability] of biased and shaky leadership, is the most philosophically sound governing system there will ever be.

I Am Legend managed to change my tone slightly. The movie culminates with the Legend sacrificing himself in order to protect the cure he found for the virus, in the form of throwing himself at a group of zombies with a grenade in his hand. Instantly I thought of what we really consider a hero - a particular Navy SEAL named Michael Monsoor, who just a few weeks ago was awarded the purple heart posthumously for throwing himself onto a grenade in order to save two of his brothers in arms. Unfortunately that's all he did. He also probably made his platoon buddies feel really guilty about it for the rest of their lives as well as the memory of being splattered with their brother's entrails. But still the same act is of such miniscule consequence compared to the that of our fictional counterpart's. What does it take to have a genuinely transcendent figure that rises above the rest and conquors and unites? Wherefore do we find that long lost sense of "Legend" that has always been the honor of the greatest people in history to strive for? Do we no longer hold the acheivements of Achilles and Heracles and Aeneas as something to be honored? Just because we're such avid scientists and we think we've got everything down just fine does that mean there is no more room left for awe of the world and those who are brave enough to face the futility and strive for greatness anyway?

Anyway besides all this ranting the point is that Colossal figures drive us. I couldn't care less about a political triumph over the economy, or anything of the sort, but at the same time i know our government is exactly what humanity needs to be exactly what each person wants themselves to be. So our minds and our rights are protected, and our 'souls' denied the wonder they crave - i wonder if suppressed minds and skewed rights might bring brighter souls; the intellectual goal, after all, will never be acheived...

stray dogs

2008-04-19T14:16:00.004-04:00

"Forget the anarchist part of it. I'm through with the movement long since. I saw men didn't want to be saved from themselves, for that would mean they'd have to give up greed, and they'll never pay that price for liberty. So I said to the world, God bless all here, and may the nest man win and die of gluttony! And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death dance."

i like the quote, it's well written, but i feel the need to add a disclaimer, and that i think it's crap, it's just well said crap. it's from the iceman cometh, eugene o'neill.

In the spirit of posting videos...

2008-04-18T00:41:00.002-04:00

http://wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/dems-a18.shtml

Apparently this debate was straight up poorly run.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote an open letter to the ABC pair, declaring, “you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes.” He added, “asking Obama whether he thought Rev. Wright ‘loved America’ and then suggesting that Obama himself is somehow a hater of the American flag, or worse, were flat-out repulsive.”

Purina: "Oh, yea, we've also stopped aging in children"

2008-04-16T23:46:00.001-04:00

This Just In: Toyota Succesfully Defies Fundamental Rule of Logic

2008-04-16T09:53:00.002-04:00

Green Freaks Ecstatic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6yDNfHaoYA

can't imbed that motherfucker. isn't asking if a car company - that makes cars only for money, and for nothing else, cars that pollute no matter how green you paint them - can grow with the environment the exact same thing as asking whether something can be something and not something at the very same time and in the same respect? and isn't that the cardinal rule of logic- quite possibly one of the things that helps our minds to make sense of the world we live in?

Everything is Dubitable

2008-04-08T13:09:00.003-04:00

There are two very important things on my mind. One; the want to set more firmly, via writing, my position on my own ethical outlook - im more comfortable with things when ive versed myself in every aspect and consequence of their reason. And two; doubt...

Doubt is annoying. Very much so. My concern is not doubt itself, which I actually hold to be the only indubitable thing there is (that is, that we, as humans, will always doubt), but what we must do to live a sane life in the shadow of doubt. There's a reason they say that all philosophy is, foremost, still struggling with descartes, and furthermore, socrates - because there's no way to get around what they said, and there's infinite ways we can try, but only so many very smart people every generation who can give those tries their 15 minutes of fame. Descartes, in a more modern way (so i shall use him instead of sox), says that there is nothing which we cannot doubt, besides, of course, the self. Actually, you can doubt the self in time using the same method of skepticism employed by Descartes (that is, the only self you can believe that you are indeed, is the self at any individual moment; your feeling of having existed may have been put there), but it's sort of useless, so we wont bother.

The point is, that its in our nature to doubt, and its very strongly in mine. Reason leads to doubt, which leads to clever ways to get around doubt, which also results in clever ways to manipulate other things, which ends in lovely things like laptop computers and the internet. But for those who are stuck in doubt (all of us), we are always, sooner or later, going to doubt everything we do and have done and the worth of anything and everything. It is for the reason of doubt that i can no longer continue to lead as intellectual a life as i had previously aspired to; it is my nature to doubt, and the life of academia leads to doubts which are too overwhelming for my own mental health.

But I must live, and doubt overwhelms all that I do. And when I doubt, I revert to the instinct of bodily comforts. I know my goal requires me to wake up early, but when I wake I find some half asleep reason to doubt what I know to be a better life for me than just keeping my body comfortable. The greatest comfort I can know is that which comes after hard work and overwhelming loads of work, etc. I've been to the place where i read and eat and sleep and wonder, and I can't do it, it drives me insane.

So we all, not only me, must in some respects delude ourselves in order to reach what we want in a sane fashion, because the non-deluded life is the life of doubting everything there is to doubt. So the question is: how do we dispell the doubt? What is the best way to trick the mind into believing that the goal we've set is the right goal? How do i keep my mind from reverting back to it's instinctual state? Is it a matter of habit? Do we simply need to keep stubornly believing our own shit until it becomes 'second nature'?

no one cares. but wow, look at that fretboard...

2008-04-05T00:33:00.001-04:00

I am a very special person that understands in a very special way

2008-03-31T16:58:00.001-04:00

http://audio.skeyelab.com/howtospeakhip/

responsibility

2008-03-31T00:55:00.002-04:00

i have a choice to go two roads. one road i live a somewhat miserable and insane life in which i am constantly haunted by the uncertainty of every aspect of life and other nagging narcisistic issues. on the other path i endure great sacrifice in order to protect the rights of others to do anything they damn well please - and most of the time what they please is drinking, getting cancer, and being generally stupid and inconsiderate, but only to the point of being annoying, and not to the point where the law has any useful bearing on it. so which life does a person like me have the responsibility to? i have the resources to live a fairly comfortable existence and take advantage of the gifts of autonomy our forefathers and law personell have bestowed upon me, but i have the awareness such that i understand a certain responsibility to my fellow people. which life does the aware man rightly lead?

Hugh Laurie in Street Kings

2008-03-30T15:34:00.002-04:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dcXz-XjNbkM

maybe youve seen him in house. that doesnt make this nearly as funny. hugh laurie is hilarious. the interviewer is a moron. he mentions black adder, which happens to be comic genious as well, but hugh laurie is clearly at his best in jeeves and wooster; a british film adaptation of the pg wodehouse stories. watching jeeves and wooster makes you sad for what television humor is today, and for hugh laurie wasting his talents on movies like this. i mean, really? using violence like a composer?

More Unnecessary Frivolity in the Capital

2008-03-30T15:30:00.003-04:00

thats a nice fuckin stadium though. nats braves. baseball opening night tonight. "woot. woot." as they say.

We Major

2008-03-26T15:14:00.000-04:00

GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!!!

2008-03-25T22:09:00.002-04:00

Got Breaks?

2008-03-25T03:16:00.000-04:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/357589215cf5e2/

http://www.zshare.net/download/35283572a91ca4/

534 Words

2008-03-23T00:37:00.000-04:00

Existentialist thinkers have often been referred to as the anti-classical philosophers. Tired of not being able to apply the lessons of the Greeks into present tangible life, they saw it more important to live a life putting existence before consciousness. Such beliefs, it is obvious, come in clear conflict with Platonic thoughts, especially those on education.
In Plato’s most famous dialogue, The Republic, he presents an interesting theory on education through the voice of his mentor Socrates. He states, “Because a free man ought not to learn anything under duress. Compulsory physical exercise does no harm to the body, but compulsory learning never sticks in the mind…’ ‘Then don’t use compulsion…but let your children’s lessons take the form of play.’” (The Republic, 537a). Here we see that Plato was clear on the shortcomings of a traditional compulsory education. He knew for a fact that forced learning breeds apathy and disinterest. But rather than attack the root of these problems (the compulsory part) his response addresses merely the symptom. If compulsory education doesn’t “stick” then all we need to do is make it appear that it wasn’t education. By making it game-like, children will be tricked into learning and the system will hopefully succeed.
While existentialists would too reject compulsory top-down education, their answer to this would be far from tricking students into learning. Robert Brumbaugh describes existentialist educational theory as being concerned with “individual authenticity”. Such an ‘authenticity’ is found through self-realization, free from conformity. It would appear that to the existentialist education would embrace imagination and a very hands-on experience. The idea wouldn’t be to trick students in learning what some “enlightened” person thinks they should know, but provide them with the opportunities to find out what they want to.
Considering the differences between existentialist and Platonic educational approaches, it is of no surprise that Platonic theory offers little support for existentialist theory. When attempting to classify different educational approaches by assigning them to different rungs on the Platonic dividing line, Robert Baumbaugh assigns existentialism to the lowest rung (imagination). Surely, from a Platonic perspective this classification is justified. For ‘imagination’ is a mere distraction form pure reason and a pursuit of the good.
From the existentialist perspective, imagination and experience is simply the only being man can know. It is silly to spend life pursuing intangibilities, especially when one must be tricked into taking such a path. No amount of thought or reflection will be able to get man close to the good or the truth. It is much more worthwhile to accept the life given, and explore that which is personally intriguing.
From my perspective, what is most distressing about Platonic philosophy is the circumvention of the true problem with compulsory education never sticking. Instead of taking a more existentialist path in solving the problem, Plato simply figures that misleading children to the good is more important. Is not the majesty of the pursuit of the good defamed when one must be mislead in order to have a chance of reaching it? Surely, from an existentialist perspective, if the good was really to have a bearing on one’s life that pursuit would be embarked upon without an education rooted in deception.

yay capitalism

2008-03-17T02:19:00.001-04:00

Anomie

2008-03-13T19:47:00.001-04:00

This is an interesting concept.

R.I.P. (Retire In Peace)

2008-03-04T15:41:00.002-05:00

God damn it...

2008-03-04T15:04:00.002-05:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0444950920080304?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960403.html

The Lost Puppy Song

2008-03-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

Through the best of times,
Through the worst of times,
Through Nixon and through Bush,
Do you remember '36?
We went our seperate ways.
You fought for Stalin.
I fought for freedom.
You believe in authority.
I believe in myself.
I'm a molotov cocktail.
You're Dom Perignon.
Baby, what's that confused look in your eyes?
What I'm trying to say is that
I burn down buildings
While you sit on a shelf inside of them.
You call the cops
On the looters and piethrowers.
They call it class war,
I call it co-conspirators.

'Cause baby, I'm an anarchist,
You're a spineless liberal.
We marched together for the eight-hour day
And held hands in the streets of Seattle,
But when it came time to throw bricks
Through that Starbucks window,
You left me all alone.

You watched in awe at the red,
White, and blue on the fourth of july.
While those fireworks were exploding,
I was burning that fucker
And stringing my black flag high,
Eating the peanuts
That the parties have tossed you
In the back seat of your father's new Ford.
You believe in the ballot,
Believe in reform.
You have faith in the elephant and jackass,
And to you, solidarity's a four-letter word.
We're all hypocrites,
But you're a patriot.
You thought I was only joking
When I screamed "Kill Whitey!"
At the top of my lungs
At the cops in their cars
And the men in their suits.
No, I won't take your hand
And marry the State.

'Cause baby, I'm an anarchist,
You're a spineless liberal.
We marched together for the eight-hour day
And held hands in the streets of Seattle,
But when it came time to throw bricks
Through that Starbucks window,
You left me all alone.

p.s. does anarchy even exist?

This just in: McCain not born in United States

2008-02-28T01:32:00.001-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/politics/28mccain.html?hp

2008-02-27T16:39:00.000-05:00

http://chronicle.com/news/article/3974/online-gun-dealer-sold-to-both-niu-and-va-tech-killers

The R

2008-02-24T19:17:00.000-05:00

http://www.zshare.net/audio/80595373960bce/

new rakim, not outstanding.

2008-02-21T00:40:00.004-05:00

hot damn!

2008-02-21T00:06:00.000-05:00

bomb kills 100 people watching a dog fight

2008-02-19T15:37:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7250193.stm

"Black Like Sambo"

2008-02-18T23:19:00.004-05:00

http://sharebee.com/00a8cadd

Young Dro clears things up for his listeners, as if clarification was necessary...

best thing smoking cd art + that line = me not really wanting to listen to Young Dro anymore...

We got what you need

2008-02-18T19:35:00.003-05:00

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/hea/578616273.html

I mean, this is begging for a kid to work there, steal weed and sell it on the side...

it's like that

2008-02-16T00:33:00.000-05:00

Fried Chicken Raps

2008-02-15T14:38:00.001-05:00

http://content.onsmash.com/misc/152

What's sad is that its probably the black people working for KFC pushing this....

oi

2008-02-15T13:04:00.002-05:00

it doesnt happen to us. no. congratulations NIU, you were arrogant enough to assume that it could never happen to you. You charge people tens of thousands of dollars a year, this is very simple: dont build new sports facilities, dont build new buildings, dont fund useless research surveys. with all the excess funds that a college makes annually, they could easily spring for a security guard at every building they own, as well as a beefed up campus patrol. not to mention that this could generate more jobs (doesnt take much to be a security guard); and stimulate the economy even - i mean imagine the jobs, government funded training programs for security guards; now thats economic stimulus:

dont give everyone who pays taxes $1200, put that money into free security guard certification courses, and then mandate a security guard at every door of every university building. double whamy; safety and money sounds good to me.

We won't get fooled again!

2008-02-13T14:03:00.002-05:00

so ive been fooled. really sort of obviously and embarassingly. see, it occured to me during the portion of the congressional steroids hearing; they didn't make a big deal of it. three of the congressmen/women doing the questioning (while i was watching) began their statements with an expression of their dismay in wasting time and money, the most entertaining of which was Virginia Foxx, a republican from North Carolina. Along with a few actually expressing their dismay (I'm sure more felt it), all of them were in and out, undoubtedly doing other congressly business. Every time the cameras were on the whole room, most of the seats were empty which were meant to be filled with congresspeople. The short of it is that congress really didn't care, but they were forced under the falsetto's of single self-rigteous governors, and the same duty of the government to especially regulate businesses that trade people like slaves and that do in truth have a lot of benefits and exceptions in corporate law. So I was sucked in by only watching sports television, it isn't a big deal. Most of america doesn't care, they know the trouble's in wrestling, but also acknowledge the bad influence on high-schoolers. So I shouldn't have been so pissed. Sportscenter just has nothing better to talk about so they glorify this hearing which any rational person sees no merit in whatsoever. So I'm ashamed I even fell for it, of course espn is going to trick me into thinking people actually care and its a huge deal; congress had to deal with these corporations, and they inevitably get caught up in the cameras. "I stink!"

Oh. My. God.

2008-02-12T22:44:00.002-05:00

So depressing that you have to laugh. Thank you hip-hop culture....No wait, all these kids just needed to survive, they doing what they gotta do in the hood. If you're so poor that you need to resort to murder MOVE OUT OF THE BAY AREA. It is one of the most expensive places to live in the world; go live in the desert, go live in kansas, arizona, idaho, or montana, nice and cheap there.

A map of homicides in oakland during 2007 and 2008. There were 7 people killed this weekend:

http://www.sfgate.com/maps/oaklandhomicides/

2008-02-11T21:17:00.000-05:00

i have to do a history paper. its open ended, but i dont know about anything i dont know about enough to want to learn about it....

ideas....

2008-02-09T23:44:00.000-05:00

i just learned somethihng. black history month was originally the week that had both frederick douglas' and abraham lincoln's birthdays in it. it grew to a month. i never knew why it was february...

2008-02-09T16:14:00.001-05:00

pedro martinez

2008-02-08T14:51:00.000-05:00

sports again. apparently pedro martinez, the mets pitcher, was at a cock fight in the dominican republic. i guess thats whatever in itself if everyone just knew it was bad and moved on. but both pedro and mike greenberg, from mike and mike in the morning, are taking the cultural card.

its culturally accepted to fly planes into buildings of countries whose ideals you disagree with in certain places. and drive cars into buildings daily. and kill children and give children machine guns and have them kill other people. oh yea, and slavery. maybe pedro martinez should be enslaved in some foreign country, hey pedro, its culture there. i hate that word. culture is more of an excuse than anything at this point.

sad

2008-02-08T04:43:00.001-05:00

A capella song i forgot to play for you...

2008-02-07T23:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/73043595b1c27d/

GM Onstar

2008-02-07T19:50:00.000-05:00

i see ther commercials for this and pay it little mind, but really, gm's making people look bad. there are few amenities in modern cars that are necessary, it seems like this one is really a good use of technology for saving lives...why arent more car companies doing this? is it because GM is greedy and they want money rather than safety for all people who drive? ill investigate...

The Tragedy of a Formalist Mindset

2008-02-06T19:40:00.001-05:00

Among many other worries a somewhat privileged and educated young person ponders, I am partial at the moment to the extent to which a formalist mindset should indoctrinate the mind of a person in America, and to what extent utilitarianism should play into this persons social and political considerations.

Short Definitions that work with what I wonder:

Formalism: A social/political position which takes the stance of 'if i want to do it, you have to be allowed to do it as well, all as long as no human rights are being violated' The Constitution of the U.S.A. is a strictly formalist document. "All Men Are Created Equal."

Utilitarianism: The most good for the largest amount of people over the longest period of time. The application of American law is utilitarian.

The problem is that formalism is a doctrine which preaches that one has no right to interfere with another's life unless that person in violating another person's human dignity. (human dignity is the right to autonomy, free will and decision, land, etc.)

So the question is: at what point does a formalist, such as any American, get involved with politics, if they are hardpressed to find themselves as morally allowed, in a sense, to interfere with anyone else's lives?

Well, that's simple, any laws that are being changed or reorganized must be doing so in order to further enforce the formalist way, so that people will not be violated and have freer lives.

The problem comes with things like the recent propositions 94-97. the main question of a formalist being with his concern for his fellow men. He cannot prevent them from gambling, thus he would love to foil the indian tribes to take advantage of his mentally weaker brothers-in-humanity; but he has no right to either prevent the indians from doing bussiness in itself, or the brothers from doing whatever the hell they want.

does the question become protecting them from themselves? how does the formalist work his way around these issues? how can we prevent sales of guns, alcohol, the legality of casino's, and all such things which we KNOW are detrimental to the people who participate (both the psychological states of the sellers and buyers)?

Football, Baseball, and Congress

2008-02-06T14:53:00.000-05:00

Arlen Specter (Say you're from Pennsylvania or they wont talk to you): 1-202-224-4254
House Committee...Reform...Oversight: 1-202-225-5051

Jared Raymond Lorenzen

2008-02-05T01:52:00.001-05:00

The left-handed Lorenzen was well-known at Kentucky for his size, tipping the scales at 322 lb at one point in his career.[citation needed] He has since slimmed down to around 285 lb.[1] Because of his size he has a collection of colorful nicknames, including "Quarter(got)back",[2] "Hefty Lefty",[3] "The Pillsbury Throwboy",[4] "The Abominable Throwman", [5] "J.Load",[6] "Round Mound of Touchdown",[6]"BBQ (Big Beautiful Quarterback)"[7] "Battleship Lorenzen", [8] Butterball[9]

wikipedia is great.

engine, engine, number nine

2008-01-31T18:37:00.000-05:00

I was just emailing my brother a passage that I find to be the modern, and probably largely ignored, basis for a philosophic concept of numbers. It's from Descartes' Meditations (he probably states it more solidly in the Principles of Philosophy):

"I perceive that I now exist and recall that I have previously existed for some time. And I have various thoughts and know how many of them there are. It is in doing these things that I acquire the ideas of duration and number, which I can apply to other things." (Meditation III, 45)

This is one of the more exciting moments in philosophy, and I just realized that people may not know just how huge this sentence is. Arguably Descartes may not even have noticed; he may have been concentrating on something else that would result from his saying this, or ever more, he may just have taken this for granted that everyone understands this - proof of how genius he was.

But have you ever been in a class and had the question asked to you: "what are numbers?" I have, and at that point I was equally clueless as to the answer, and it just struck me that almost everyone I've ever met probably hasn't had a clue either.

Well, Descartes did. Kant finished, but this is really the first place I've seen this concept so concretely asserted.

When most student think about this, it is a logical (or just good enough) conclusion to come to that there are many things that exist and when presented with a finite quantity of them we are able to distinguish each and every one separately in some sort of cognition that enables us to give the correct meaning to the symbols "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc." Of course, I am being generous; the most common problem people have when defining numbers, when asked "are numbers just out there?" is that they try to fit the symbol "3" into a basket filled with 3 apples. Once you get over the symbols, then the real fun begins.

As I mentioned Descartes has the answer, and though he took giant steps in philosophy, he couldn't make the jump from where intellectual history was to the Doctrine of Transcendental Idealism. But Kant had the history, the education...well, the mind at least, with which to accomplish that task:

So what are they saying? From whence come numbers? From a Succession of Thoughts. Kant's answer is that you have two a priori sense, and inner and an outer. The outer is that of spaciality, the inner of time. These two senses, in my analysis, must cooperate in order to for a coherent grounds for "the possibility of experience."

What? I'm not going to explain the Transcendental Aesthetic right now. We'll keep it to numbers:

So the inner sense of time is a priori, we have it 'hard wired' into us and we need it to experience anything (along with the outer sense). So in our mind we have these a priori cognitions prior to any experience, our minds must for a template, shall we say, on which experience becomes a possibility.

That being said, time is a sense which precedes experience, this is important enough that I say it so many times because it will get the objectivists to shut up. So before we can have experience, sayeth Kant, we develop a sense of time. And what comes of this sense of time? Exactly what Descartes says.

The concept of number in your mind is due to your undergoing a succession of conscious thoughts, which you experience in a rational order.

So you derive numbers, to which you later ascribe symbols. You experience infinitesimally small moments - the smallest increment of time in which you can process the smallest increment of a thought - you experience these moments successively, one after the next, and you grow an idea of number because you can recall that are processing each thought and the past thoughts.

It took us a while to think up making symbols and our base ten system, etc, so avoid the fallacy that one person in one life could think up the whole system of symbolized numbers, this cognition I've attempted to describe simply gives you the basis, along with the outer sense, to form the judgment that there are many objects, many different things, however many are in your field of sensibility (sight, hearing, feeling, etc), that are being represented to you. There are seven pads of paper on the table, I know this because I have experienced an a priori succession of thoughts which enables me to judge that there are these differing objects being represented to me in space and time.

Consider this theoretical. A person who has both the senses of inner and outer, spaciality and temporality, but has of yet not experienced any sensible stimulus. If this person were to somehow be shown a picture in their abyss of consciousness, then they would see a single object presented in time. They would never have had the empirical experience to distinguish that this object is meant to represent other things within it. The person would not see the table and chairs and guitar, they would just see a colorful rectangle, some strange form of stimulus which she has never been privy to before, and which represents only one thing to her mind.

I doubt I have explained this well enough. Note that I have used experience in terms of experiencing a sucession of thoughts which I also dubbed a priori; experience, as in the a priori a posteriori distinction, is empirical experience, sensible experience: we must experience these a priori elements of exstence to make empirical experience possible. The word experience doesn't have any adequate synonyms that I can think of.

what is philosophy

2008-01-28T18:23:00.000-05:00

a dauting question. i think it best starts from how it arises. in all people who i have ever experienced as being interested in philosophy i have noticed that it comes from dissatisfaction. when youre unhappy with the way your life is going you look for ways and reasons by which to make things right. then you find philosophy. it gets complicated here because we see that it does arise out of despondence about ones life, but when we discover philosophy it turns into a different beast. i operate under the presupposition that philosophy is the most base study of being a human being, yet when i look at the things which i study daily, they are far more concerned with the unsolvable mysteries of metaphysics and epistemology. is tryin to understand the way of being of a human being unphilosophic, or do many philosophers have it wrong. its just become too small of a scope. somehow the study turned into schools of thought and this and that. humanity was sucked from it because the entire history and influence of philosophy was sort of built around objectivists which i think misconstrues the nature of the study. certainly they have an argument but it narrows the nature of the study down too far. i think it better studied within the scope of understanding what it is and what the nature is of our being. all studies evolved from philosophy, general interest in the basis of how we operate and inquirys into life in itself.

so really im not going to lay claim that what i believe within it is correct, but rather that it is an extremely expansive study which needs no definition, just people who are interested in any area or inquiry into life. rather what i think its important to say is that philosophy rises out of being disengaged with life. philosophy arose as a study in a society that gave its citizens the leisure with which these people could use to sit and think and get bored enough with life and manipulate their thoughts such that it created the ideas that first formed philosophy. it arises out of being out of yourself; man as a hunter-gatherer had no philosophy because they had no time for language or thoughts that frivolous; they were involved in staying alive. once we cease to live within our experiences and have the time to take the proverbial step back, then we come to these questions.

so i suppose the question arises: can philosophy logically be a study of life if in order to participate it we must stop living as fully as we could be? are we really taking a step back when we think we are, or are we just being as subjective to our own view of the utility of the world?

Props 94-97

2008-01-27T19:12:00.000-05:00

http://igs.berkeley.edu/library/hot_topics/2008/Prop%2094-97.html

if you dont know, that site will tell you. i dont have time to read all of it, but there are two minds to have about this:

1. Social Darwinism, etc. First of all, the less powerful tribes must be less powerful for a reason, the big ones know how to handle their bidness. Also, people are going to gamble, and we should at least be getting revenues for gambling-addict programs, and for other things (although the other uses for revenues in the state of california consist of park improvements so that pissy locals dont step in dog shit). So thats for it.

2. Against it is really just the opposite, i dont want more opportunities for my fellow people to ruin themselves with gambling, and moreover for the greedy tribes to be taking advatage of the weaknesses of these people to the thrill of gambling to advance their own good(since when do native americans just want to be rich? fuck them if they try to play the heritage card. if the want to play heritage i better be seeing loin cloths and teepees or else they aint getting shit from me because theyre tryina play me for a fool)

overall i have to go with position one because it is a more american position. that is, it is a formalist position. in two aspects: one, they should be allowed to do what they want (and the government will impose tariffs when they think necessary and good for the state), and two: people will gamble and people will be greedy, and despite my steadfast belief that these things are detremental to those peoples humanity, i cannot possibly find it within my rights to prevent them from participating in consentual activity; the N.A's are just making the casino's, it is the gamblers sole choice to do so and i have no right to prevent either of them from parrticipating in their respective activities. so i suppose i would vote yes, but not actively, just in principle.

now this last thing i find remiiscent of an argument for guns. unfortunately it is quite analagous. i cannot prevent someone from selling guns because they are simply selling something, and a person who will buy one has every right to buy a weapon buying something is not a violation ofanyone else's human dignity. but lo and behold people are killed by weapons, people are injured by the cooperation of two seemingly harmless acts:

this is wehre it is analagous; making a building with machines that take your money isnt a violation of anyones rights, nor is putting your money into a machine freely, but the addiction that results is certainly harmful to the individual who participates (not to mention the skewed justifications that must take place in the greedy NA's head).

such are gun purchases, fine in their own respects, but the cooperation of these eforts can often end in murder, which 1 ends a life, 2 destroys the life, if not the morality and mental stability of the murderer, and 3 plays a heavy psychological role in the complicit gun shop attendant.

unfortunately our system of governing does not account for these unforseen outcomes of any given seemingly legal activity. can we? surely i could tell you if someones selling guns, someone else is bying them, and something will be killed by it sooner or later, thats not hard to deduce. what about casinos? people get addicted to gambling and ruin their own lives. we can see this. the problem is legal action. from where can we draw the necessary means to clear our lives of such obviously detremental (to society and the individual) practices?

iTunes U

2008-01-26T13:01:00.000-05:00

the nature of creativity, irving singer. in MIT linguistics & philosophy section (just like MIT to put them together)...

2008-01-24T21:10:00.000-05:00

Considering our conversation on creativity, I was checking the itunes u shit for the new semster, and theres a lecture/event that stuck out. go to the itunes store and search "david lynch creativity"

2008-01-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

im doing work, but i dont want to forget this. hollywoods getting close to this, but you know what might be a cool film, or story, something about primarily a haunting spirit, we always just get scared of them but it might be able to work the scariness in with telling the story from the creppy little kids pov...

abduction 2

2008-01-24T02:52:00.001-05:00

Abduction

2008-01-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/682172631ba8d0/

2008-01-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

theres a problem. ill call it individuality versus creativity.

at first they seem inextricable from one another. they seem to come hand in hand.

the problem is that i have becomed opposed to the idea of individuality. but not creativity. let me explain. it is because so much strife comes of individuality. the entirety of american youth is built on the idea of individuality. i cant find it in me that individuality is possible in a culture; language, art, music, all of culture define the wayt people think and act. a person from russia is independant from a person in ethiopia, but not from another in russia. essentially, individuality is impossible to express between poeples who use the same word for individual. the world is more universal in some respects now, as well. clothes; pants, shirts, skirts,etc. for someone to dress individually, they would have to dress in something they made that is not wnything like what other people wear.

now; individuality isnt exaxtly impossible. it's like an idea which extends beyond the possibilities of our representations of the world: like perfection, perfection can certainly be seen at times in things, but not in full, as in a common concept of God being the perfection.

so, i dont reject that individuality is possible in some sort of useful degree, but the way we see things as absolutes, it is not.

so where does creativity come in? the dilemma comes in with my struggle with philosophy being so void of humanity. but i dont think it is, it just seems to be so removed from it because people think its more important to worry about the ideas and forget about the people. this presupposes some sort of objective and non-esoteric quality of thought, which i doubt.

the thought came to me when i was readin about nietzsche and his struggle to break away from everything and be himself as an individual. it seems that kant underwent a similar struggle, though he did so much more reservedly and systematically in tune with his philosophy, whereas nietzsche let his humanity play a large part in shaping his philosophy.

so creativity. it is certainly a more feasibly possible to be creative than individual. but if we are not individuals, if we arent seeking self-autonomy, then what is creativity for? entertainment? for the sake of taking a stand on our beings?

2008-01-20T00:40:00.001-05:00

2008-01-20T00:37:00.001-05:00

2008-01-20T00:34:00.001-05:00

Discuss:

2008-01-19T14:50:00.000-05:00

I was readin' up on my boy Nietzsche, when it was stated that he identified his break with Richard Wagner (some german dude) in his philosophy as a big moment in his life. So, I've never read or heard of a prominent philosopher who so embraced humanity that he wrote of his philosophical thoughts in context of his own life. I don't believe that Nietzsche does this either, but this particular description sparked this tohught:

Would a philosopher who defines whatever philosophical endeavors he participates in (imagine they are prominent and relevant), in some sort of biographical-ish work, be taken seriously?

Initially i would say i take a liking to the idea. Philosophy seems so very removed from what it is to be human; we cannot be objective, so how is it that we continue to try and talk about life outside of the context of life?

This is Why I Don't Care Anymore

2008-01-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

the world wrestling e_____ in cooperation with comcast, is holding an essay contest about contributions to the community, which will send two winners to "wrestlemania."

Now A Cartesian

2008-01-18T23:54:00.000-05:00

This is written on an excerpt from the first Meditation. If you don't have it get it.

1. Central Point: In this passage Descartes aims to establish the grounds for what will eventually be called the Transcendental nature of human perception. What is important to note in his efforts is that he seamlessly incorporates his foundationalism as an unspoken rule for thought; he assumes it with his language and does not open it to question by attempting to justify it. What Descartes tries to do in this passage is instill doubt in the reader about how reliable the senses are as a source of truth and knowledge.

2. Reasons: Descartes uses the simple and often ignored instances of sensible deception to expose the unreliable nature of the senses as sources for truth. He cites the sun as an example; it always appears to us to be much smaller than it indeed is; as with other things that are distant. It is quite often that a situation arises when ‘knowledge’ gathered via the senses is exposed as false. Thus, says Descartes, we cannot trust anything fully which has deceived us once. He does slightly delve into the distinction between sensible deductions and mathematical investigations as empirical and a priori (he doesn’t use this term), respectively, but he end’s up not dealing with it completely correctly, and it isn’t directly pertinent to the immediate concern of the passage. The main reasoning he employs is basically as such: I) To gain real knowledge I must break down every thing I’ve ever known and start from scratch; the most base thing(s) I can know, and build from there myself. This is a subtle and easy to miss explication of his strict foundationalism. II) It is more timely to break down the whole of my own knowledge from the foundations, rather than each belief at a time; thus I will begin with the mechanism from which I derive a majority, if not all, of my beliefs: my sensibility. Simple enough. If you need to start from the beginning start from the beginning, sensibility is where we derive most of our knowledge. But not all, right Rene? III) It is clearly true that I am deceived by my senses (the sun example, et al), thus my senses are not reliable sources of truths or knowledge. This is a very important leap, one I quite disagree with, but one that seems to make sense under his conditions. IV) Then what can we believe is true, what that I know do I have clear and distinct reason to believe that I do indeed know? Sensible things can be called into doubt, but what about geometry and other mathematical operations; these things seem harder to doubt. With this Descartes starts down a long and complicated road, with many forks, two particularly prominent ones. One of which breaks off into a very important conception of number stemming from the a priori intuition of time as a succession of thought, and the other of which breaks off into what Kant will eventually establish in his Transcendental doctrines. But that’s way off topic, and I don’t fully understand Kant (surprise!), so I’ll try to leave him out now. (It’s just hard to talk about Descartes in retrospect without thinking of how much better Kant did pretty much everything Descartes tried.

3. Discussion: I have two problems with Descartes argument. One is the Continental in me that wants to ask ‘what the hell is the point in you doubting the sensible world, you even admit that you’re going to be living in it anyway whether you make some monumental discovery or not, think about something less pedantic!’ Really that objection is a hard one to follow up on, which is why many people write continental philosophy off, but being as I am still new to most of this, I have a hopeful view of it all, and I see more humanity, in a broad sense, in the continental philosophers. Descartes and Kant (and I do enjoy them) make me want to sit and think about time and space and numbers and crap; Heidegger makes me want to experience life in a more full sense; and though if I enjoy both the difference may not appear much, but I see more realization of the full scope of humanity in the continentals, which leads me to keep them relevant in my mind and get pissed at Descartes sometimes for even bringing this all up. That was a waste of time and space [zing]. My real objection is thus: Descartes contradicts himself. To simplify this we will read A as “it is true that my sensibility is not trustworthy” (Not Trustworthy will mean ‘not a reliable source of knowledge’) and B as “it is true that I can be deceived by my sensibility.” And we will remember that the crux of Descartes’ doubts about the reliability of sensibility as a source of knowledge can be summarized as “A on the condition that B.” Considering these things, my objection is thus:

(I) If A on the condition that B and (II) on that condition that B I determine that A,
then (III) I can no longer trust that B, because I have determined that A.

His argument is circular and contradictory. I put it in the best logical form I could. He essentially contends that his senses are not trustworthy because he knows that they have deceived him, but by the very assertion that the senses are untrustworthy (as sources of knowledge) he contradicts himself because he destroys the qualification that he made: the senses cannot both be an untrustworthy source of all knowledge and thus written off, but at the same time be used as a trustworthy source of knowledge to observe themselves… to know that an empirical piece of knowledge is false, one must consult another contradicting piece of knowledge: how does Descartes know that he has been deceived when he sees the Eiffel Tower (humor me; it’s French, at least.) from a mile away and it seems to him the size of his pinky finger? Because he has been close to it and seen that it is indeed large

Grimace!!!

2008-01-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

Zeno

2008-01-17T23:46:00.000-05:00

We've all heard of Zeno's paradox. It's a sophism that plays on mathematics. Achilles is running to catch a tortoise, his path is describe by a straight line. Before he gets to the turtle he must travel half the distance to the turtle, and then from there he must travel half of that distance, ad infinitum. Aside from the obvious fact that we can catch up to things in the useful world in which we live, this problem, to the best of my knowledge remains unsolved. I propose that it can be solved through the study of science as the mind. The question arose when i was in calculus thismorning and the graph of the sine of pie divided by x yeilded an infinite oscilation between x=1 through -1. this presents the same problem, the function aproaches 0, but never gets to zero, it just keeps oscillating.

clearly to our useful lives we can touch and manipulate things. To this i am imagining that there is a discrepancy with how our minds operate; we have the capacity to observe, etc, but this capacity leads us awry; there is a reason that we see this paradox as being unsolvable, but it is clearly not useful. this is somewhat of a cartesian thing: it is not that our faculties of reason are wrong, but rather that they outstretch our other faculties of experiencing life, making it so that a thorough enogh concept of mathematics with over shoot what the actual concept of mathematics that we operate on is.

Aristotle Very Much The Man In Form

2008-01-15T02:27:00.000-05:00

props the Shunick.

Farve needeth not eyes

2008-01-12T23:01:00.000-05:00

http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d805ecedf

Conan

2008-01-03T01:14:00.000-05:00

Im watching the new Conan tonight. Its the first in a while because of the writers strike (which is still happening). Despite returning to the air, which could be considered scabby from a solidarity point of view, i think hes doing an interesting job. how you ask? by doing a kinda shitty show. without writters hes doing a lot of random stuff like spinning his wedding ring and drinking water. hes even got bob saget as his guest to make bad jokes (to point out that if there were writers the jokes would be better). i wonder if he'll keep it up.

Homeless

2008-01-01T23:57:00.000-05:00

This is a more serious meditation on my homeless idea. Clearly I don't have the funds, nor likely will I ever, to start such a large-scale project. I am still of two heads on the issue of homeless people, but this idea intends to side step those problems, but there are many logistical issues which I would appreciate input on.

So seeing the unaccomplishable nature of setting up an entire housing thing with legal crap which I don't feel like going into because it is useless, I was thinking rather about talking to my school about setting up some sort of free resource center for educating mainly the homeless population of San Francisco towards getting GED's. Logically the next step after GED is City College, which costs money. Here I would have to have an intricate knowledge of the city government and ways to work out some sort of way to get funding for this program such that the homeless in question could be paid through city college. There are so many problems, though: they still dont have food or money, no houses, and largely no motivation to participate in such a program.

Ideally, and I will talk to someone more knowledgeable about this sort of thing, I would like to have some system of law set up such that if a man was caught loitering too many times (something more specific, though) then they would be arrested or forced into the program. I don't know because there's problems with the law.

But that's all pipe dreaming, what I'd like to do, because my goal is to be a teacher of some sort, is involve myself in educating people. Another point in my favor is that we are arguably in or nearing a recession and educating people and providing more jobs out of the garbage floating through our streets (I use this imagery from the standpoint of the government in itself); making something, more domestic jobs, and maybe even a larger market for apartment renting, or even house buying, depending on what sort of little domino effect it could have.

There are many homeless people in San Francisco, but it's simple to concede that most of them are likely crazy or unwilling to participate in such a program. This is why legal involvement would be necessary to effect any participation.

So my current state of the idea is a room which is supplied with the appropriate text books, a few computers, and one or two people who are qualified or willing and knowledgeable about all that is needed to pass a GED exam.

Clearly the problem is that no one is going to fund an empty room, pay for books, not to mention the people (though feasibly the people could be volunteers), in hope that maybe some homeless people would show some initiative.

So give me new perspective, is my idea entirely off, is there a better way of going about such an initiative?...

Guaranteed to Make You Grin

2008-01-01T02:50:00.000-05:00

I been looking for this forever.

On Science as a Study of the Mind

2008-01-01T00:59:00.000-05:00

Late last night I stumbled upon the History Channel series 'The Universe,' which was just embarking on a discussion of Einstein's relativity. I know little about Einstein and his relativities, but my interest was piqued.

Over the past few days I've been pondering the inabilities of science to be objective, sighting various reasons, the most prominent of which is the inability of language (which is borne of experience only of the world in which we participate) to describe anything except that world itself, which is subject to prejudice and experience.

I've also just read a paper by a professor of my brother's, Hubert Dreyfus, on the possibilities and arguments surrounding science from a Heideggerian point of view. I am not convinced on this point yet, and I must read again.

The important point here is not this, though. It is not important for my proposition that we understand the possibilities of science in itself, rather i propose another way of looking at science.

I have yet to determine whether I need to adopt a stance from which to argue, I would have it that it is one void of needing this, thereby avoiding the delve into all the possibilities of science.

The proposition is as such: I will attempt to convince my audience of the value of negative-space evaluation of science, as one may view a painting in terms of it's negative space. By this I mean that I will propose that science is a study which (though feasibly looked at the way it is) is also useful in that it coaxes out of us the calculated way that we experience the world; if we are uncertain about if it can be objective, at least we can see that it is a very useful tool in examining our own nature-of-experience.

I will utilize Immanuel Kant's ideas of the a priori "inner" sense of time, and a posteriori "outer" sense of space, in contrast with Einstein's interwoven fabric of space-time continuum. Kant's idea presents an inner and outer essenced world that we experience, which forms the fabric of experience, while remaining removed from the Heideggerian being-in-world (which i will equate Einstein's 'fabric' with) for whatever personally preffered reasons he had, i would say this is just his fault of his time that he did not see what his theories created.

Believe You Me

2007-12-30T20:34:00.000-05:00

while thinking about the obscure qualifications often discussed in conjunction with the concept of what belief is, i stumbled upon a uniting factor for my dismissal of traditional metaphysical and epistemological thought. it is a natural objection to have about the way the skeptical philosopher doubts the world to say "it makes sense, but i will still continue my quite possibly - in many different ways - meaningless existence as it is." (I feel that this last point may work well into my thoughts on the duality of being and meaning). My short thought, which i may expand on later or at another time, is that on the idea of belief it is often taken that it is involuntary, that belief happens to us. Such is the belief of the world which we experience, which should have a certain amount of pull over what we shall consider right in philosophy, as we are all compelled to believe in the world. As a last comment to the analytic philosopher, I would offer the question: How does one find it in himself to forgo the possibility of meaninglessness in light of the practicality of living as they always have, but still question the external world to such an extent, thereby creating many, if not all, the metaphysical and epistemological problems we continue to banter on about?

don't tell your philosophy professor you're into existentialism

2007-12-28T01:28:00.000-05:00

first, the law of excluded middle. the cognitive functions of the mind, popularly now known as logic, which cause us to think in the nature which we do, lead aristotle to deduce this law, that something is either p or not p. someone who had a preconceived notion of what they wanted to prove came along and decided that this could be applied to the value of a statement of truth or falsity. the most prevalent analytic theory of truth would be basically that something is true if it corresponds to something in the 'real world'. of course this problem is grossly overlooked and people are lead to believe that a statement, p, can actually be true or false (but not neither or both at the same time). my logical capacities do not allow that i disagree with the excluded middle, but i do disagree that it can at all be applied to truth theories.

the application of LEM to truth theories is really sort of silly. in essence, for an analytic philosopher, this is saying that any statement can be true or it can be false, but not either or both. what they skip here is the step of asking whether a statement can indeed be either, rather they jump right in and say its one or the other but not both, it seems to be obvious but it is indeed not. upon closer examination, this leap that they take is unwarranted. they fail, or perhaps ignore because of the gaping problem that it poses, to reckognize that it must first be asked whether a statement can be said to be true or false. if indeed we see the world through an impassible gorge of sensibility, by which we form our concepts of time and space and ultimately language and philosophy, then the statements which we make using this language are built from a lousy representation in our minds of a world out there. on this token alone, we may call into doubt that we will ever be able to really judge something's truth value.

it seems that it becomes circular. the belief that causes the study of epistemology is that the world is separate and thus that we must form a theory by which we can understand what we understand and put things in the category of known or not known to get our shit straight. so we say, okay statements are true or not true, but never both or neither; but by this very statement which must apply to the base of epistemology, we can look and see that its first tenet breaks down it's entire potential and makes it circular; becasue the world is separate, we will never be able to judge the "truth value" of any statement by this standard.

so plato sort of saw this and he said alright, well we have to come to a practical view about this because we cant actually see the 'forms' as he called the external world. so he said, alright we need to justify this shit right here, we need to have good reason, and we need to believe, and then if it's true we know it. well, i guess he realized that wed never actually get to his idea of true, so we all sort of take it as if we're justified and we believe its good enough.

not only does plato err in that he remains of the mind that it is at all a way which we can define knowledge and truth by saying truth is external and separated, thus making the rest circular and moot by its very first tenet, but also the attempt to make epistemology practical makes it laughable. it is an intrinsically impractical study, there is simply no way to see past our impassible barrier, and thus we cannot ever know if anything is true or false, we are just left with something that sounds good if we could pass the impassible. but wait, if we could pass the impassible, my dear plato, then why would we even need a theory of truth or knowledge?

this is a fairly intuitive objection, but not my whole story. what i more want to get to is the futile nature of applying the values of truth or falsity in this manner. as we have seen, it is plain silly to try to practicalize classical epistemology as plato did, we cannot pass, it is an impractical study by nature. but it is driven to it's impracticality by a flaw in it's first tenets. the thing is that we think through this whole thing that truth is a value which can be applied to something outside of ourselves, this cannot be, as i have shown; my statements have absolutely no correspondence to that world out there, especially when i have learned my language and all that i know by which i form my statements, through an impassible, and therefore inherently impaired vission of that world. furthermore, if i utter a statement, it is simply an idea which i hold, it has no necessary correspondence to the world out there. when i think that i have a book next to me, and form the beleif 'there is a book on the bed', i may indeed be on a bed, and there indeed may be what is the substance of a book in that world out there next to me on the bed where i lay, but my utterance of the proposition 'there is a book on the bed' holds no necessary connection to that external world. im having a hard time grasping the thought, it is elusive, im trying to get it under my thumb and examine it.

i suppose what im trying to get at is the lack of any connection of an idea in my mind and anything in a world which is out there. when i say something is true, it is not that i can possibly know anything from out there, but only what is in my mind, which proves all of epistemology useless because i am subject only to what is in my mind, and am not privy to the world outside.

Tips Up Hoes Down (Thats like a triple entendre, maybe)

2007-12-28T00:50:00.000-05:00

New random idea. Cut out leaflets the size of dollar bills, with a quote or name on it like the ducks, and whenever you give a tip hide it between the bills. I left a duck with a tip once, but im running low on ducks so it is what it is. Im also thinking that chalk grafitti in the middle of streets is a cool idea.

Book It

2007-12-26T19:16:00.000-05:00

philosophy is an attempt at the language of being, language is the communication of meanings.

>>>philosophy has long been an attempt at the most objective study we can find about everything we can think of, what it is at most is the language of what i call (for now) being, that is, our state whereby we step back and take the view of our lives and see how absurd they are, philosophy can only try to describe things as if we lived in that state, and moreover if that state was one in which we could judge the universe objectively; language in itself is the communication between what i call meanings (for now), that is, the serious nature with which we treat life and the meaning that we build from the day we are born - language comes out of this, it comes out of the predisposed meaning we have, it comes from the subjectivity of speech, but lo, it gives us that ability to express that we do step back, to communicate what hitherto may have been perceived to be an esoteric absurdity in whatever the first creatures with this ability in our line of evolution were. this is a quote (from me, by the way) that ostensively deals with the impossibility of sciences and analytic philosophies to be objective, as well as demonstrating a nuance ive yet to work out in my own philosophy about the duality of meaning and being and how they communicate and are necessarily interwoven.

2007-12-26T02:12:00.000-05:00

a more recent picture does the hilarity more justice, he's growing a fro. gred oden is disco mean bob. i like the poses though.

step out, show me whatchu all about

2007-12-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

another idea. i sit and i work on my thoughts about epistemology, and as is my nature, i stop every once in a while and think, i dont really agree with any of the customs or methods around this. part of what im seeing as what i want to work on is the connection between analytic and continental philosophy, and i think i may have just hit something hard in the ground. see, when i sit there thinking and then realize there are other more socially acceptable 'goods' that i could be doing for people, i remind myself of my shallow agreement with the existentialists, in as much as i know them. the idea had been circling in my head and i think that i heard perry talking about heidegger who was real close, though i think he was too opposed to analytic philosophy, to this idea. we all know the philosophical absurdity of life, if we do not know it by that name; we step back from our serious and involved lives and reflect, and cannot find and conclusion or meaning, and then we go back bout our business. in that we all go back to our business i think that this necessitates all our existentialism we cannot escape it, the existentialitst and their predecessors did the job of describing what it is that we do there, there is any exception. what i heard perry saying about heidegger was that in terms of science, we hold it as a system ...(bla not important to explain)...but that it is esentially as subjective as anything else, but further more, i think that, though i havent read him yet, he maybe didnt go deep enough in that - by their constant attempts, which they undoubtedly know are subject to question, at obective truths, they are simply defining their lives and themselves as such; we are all existentialists at heart, we all give what can only ever be known as arbitrary meaning to our lives, whether it is search for objective truth through a subjective mind or playing guitar. so i propose that by virtue of the fact that we can all agree that we are able to take the step back, unsucessfuly reflect, and continue to take ourselves seriously, this is the way of the mind. we are so open to the world and so attached to in mentally from birth that we cannot come to any terms by stepping back, we wont get anywhere by living detached from our lives (so to speak), so we just naturally crawl back into our caves and live, and this is the only way for us to be, there is no other way, each way of being is as arbitrary as the next.

i think what i want to get out of this is a good distinction between the two. at what points does my "world" my existentialist nature, come to bear on how i act (maybe when i need to deal with a daunting problem, i remember that it is simply the definition that i give to my life which makes my situation so grave and that in truth i live my life the way i do and this is a result of the meaning which i willfuly give myslef) so maybe i dont freak out, and myself, my meaning while im in my cave, while im involved in the world around me instead of looking at it from afar (this world includes my own meaning, which i can step back and look at). this brings up a point of what parts of my mind are my meaning and which my being; i can step back and look at my vigor in typing my philosophical thoughts, which is a part of my meaning, but i am still being. this way i can see my meaning from outside, but cannot escape that i am still being. i suppose thats the two differences that i need to differentiate. meaning and being.

in this light, among other things, there is a differentiation between meaning and being, philosophically that is. i wouldnt divide any schools up, but i think theres a study of being, and a study while meaning. the study of being i would say is an existential study, one that studies the nature of our being, that is, our nature to step back, find no conclusive evidence of an 'all-inclusive meaning' such as god or something else holistic. i think the state of stepping back could be connected to what the idea of a priori had been trying to get at. philosophy nearly as a whole, though, is a volition, it is capricious, it is a study of something while being that thing, the nature of being we know to be uncertain in itself because we can all reflect and remain uncertain about any holistic meaning. we are certainly not interested in any sort of ontology here, but rather how we are being, because i already am and i cant imagine knowing the entire story of how i came to be would do me any good.

i suppose this also touches on a certain kind of skeptical duality, that is, that my mind is a step back, as well as an intertwined part of my body and my world. it just can never escape my world. i think skepticism is also a naturalor rather, a part of our being (as opposed to meaning). we are skeptics by the nature of our urge to step back and find that meaning, and also by our nature to attach ourselves so sereiously to our meaning which we find in our worlds. skepticism is our beings philosophic nature, it is our tendency to question and look for meaning, but with our dogmatic tendencies to want everything to be uniform, people like descartes took skepticism too far, he failed to realize that it is a temporary part of our being, and that it does not disclose anything further anfter our inability to discover any holistic meaning or somthing that we take part in. i think a posteriori is something that we add meaning to our lives from being and meaning. since we cannot find anything objective from a subjective and uncertain existence, our a posteriori findings are simply additions to our meanings, what we experience and deduce add and augment our lives inside of our meaning. that we can step outside and discover things like our lack of ability to decisivly discover any holistic or constant meaning, we can take that, as \a philosopher does, and apply it to our meaning, my meaning is the analysis of meaning and being and life, and thus my being influences heavily on my meaning, so kant was right when he said that there are synthetic a priori discoveries, but where he put his categories of sythetic, analytic, a priori, and a posteriori, were slightly misguided. i think that they apply more easily ad readily to the states of our being. that is that most directly synthetic and a posteriori states are states in our meaning when we are involved in our world, and a priori and analytic states are states of our being and our step back nature.

what many analytic philosophers have missed is the experience thing. not only can we discover synthetically from an a priori state, but our a priori state, is a state of expereince, and thus a priori is not before experience, but rather a state of before meaning is applied; a significatio.

thats my beggining thesis on everything.

new shits

2007-12-21T01:50:00.000-05:00

okay first i think its probably good for my own purposes to review the justified true belief theory in proper form:

i know p (p being any given proposition) if and only if:

i. i believe p

ii. p is true

iii. i am justified in believing p

seems okay. my problem with this is only that it assumes that the world is impassibly separated from the mind, which is not an assumption im comfortable with making. it is displayed in western philosophy as the skeptical default, but im convinced that it should hold such a position. it is quite possible that we are so separated, but i am far more inclined to believe that my mind is more connected to what i experience, and as a matter of practicality it is a more useful assumption to make that the world is readily available to my mind, rather than it being disconnected, which has no practical use for me in my everyday life.

now, gettier. his problem is characterized by this example, which meets the requirements of JTB, but doesnt qualify as knowledge:

i go to a friends house and solicit his home phone number. a few months later i call this number, the same friend answers, and upon my asking him of he's home, he tells me that he is. from this, i form the belief '____ is home.' unbeknownst to me, my friend had moved in the time since id spoken to him, but it would seem that (i) i believe that he is home, (ii) he is in fact home, and (iii) i have good reason to believe that he is home, i am justified to believe this. but i dont know that he is home, because i have the home that i visited when i solicited his phone number in my mind, not his home.

i have two problems with the gettier examples. the first one seems to be the one that he is trying to get at, rather than it being a problem with his objections; the JTB does not make any sort of practical sense, it doesnt account for temporality, things change too much. this raises the question of justification; what is it for a belief to be justified? my second problem is that this whole thing is a little overly concerned with language. my idea of home is vague, and because it is a vague idea, the objection works, my idea of 'home' is not that particular home, that idea would be 'that house which i visited when i got this phone number i am calling,' rather it is the idea of a comfortable and often used dwelling of an individual or family, which would make my belief knowledge. but, now, does knowledge account for this vagueness of concept of home? i think not, if there is an impassibly separated world from my mind, it would be common to accept that this world simply is, it is free of function predicates; thus it seems to me that any statement about 'home' cannot be true in any sense of that world beyond the understanding of the human mind because the world, if it is so far and different, does not have room for home, it is a function and a tool, if not, then we must be specific with factual words which pertain to what may actually be in that world, such as: "that house which i visited when i solicited this phone number.

i think that comfortably dispels that the word home can be used, and dispels that sophism that gettier used to try and analytically break down JTB. the next problem, though, is that theory, which i dont buy. so say we revert only to using the non-functino words, if there are any. specific to certain things, at least. i think we still cannot escape that we are human beings and perceive and judge through the human mind, we cannot make a statement about a house even, because in the "real world" that house is simply an arbitrarily sized spot in space and time, it is not a house, nor something that could be discerned from anything else if not for my minds ability to discern such things and make them uselful to me through their functions and relations to me.

it seems that i must change my original idea. i had it in my mind to stick to skeptical views somewhat but i cannot. i find myself being lured towards the little i know about heidegger and ready to hand and at hand and etc, which im not sure quite what he means yet.

so i originally wanted to say no, no we need to take temporality specifically into account , but that was before i cleared up my problems with gettiers sophism, and also with justified true belief being impossible given the nature of the skeptics {world} and the nature of the human minds understanding, where do i go with this? do i stick with it. i was gonna say that we need to take into account that someone may have moved, things change in time, and relative to the subject in question we must judge what level of justificaiton is needed. its dawned upon me that maybe i can apply jtb to our minds concepts. in this case the given phone call example does present the same problem at face value, but now it comes into play that i may in fact not have been justified in believing that my friend was home because i did not take into account that he may have mooved. because the concepts are vague, i suppose that we can allow the standards of justification to be so as well. all i need to do, because it had been a while since we last spoke, is ask, 'in the same place as i last visited you at on 44th and rivera?' if we look at more rarely changing things, on the same time scale, if i go and see a mountain and in a few months recall that there is a mountain next to a lake at tahoe, i am still justified in believing this beaue mountains rarely move. conversely, if i call my friend and ask do you still have a boyfriend, after having seen her boyfreind a week ago with her, she may answer yes, and i may form the belief that she has the boyfirend i met, but i am clearly not justified, she might just be quick in and out or couldve been having an affair of sorts and decided to go to this other man, but the point is, i was not justified. thus we must take this into account temporally, we must consider the likelihood of these things we are judging to change.

still the story does not seem to end here. what of finding out if something is true? is it true if i perceive it to be? if i see my friend after out phone conversation and she is with the man i thought she was still dating, but who she was not actually dating anymore, in my mind do i know that this is her boyfriend? i suppose not. i need greater justification, but with the unclear standards for justification i cannot be sure ill ever get to the bottom of what is. but here comes again my taking that the world is separeate. if it is separete than it can easily deceive me, but if it is not separate can i be deceived? if it is as open to me as i think it may be where inlies the possibility for it to deceieve me?

i think i leave this here and think about that question and read up more thoroughly on epistemology...

2007-12-20T19:09:00.000-05:00

another essay idea. im busy, so for now: temporality and the threory of justified true belief. im not a huge fan of the world as an external entity, which is really pressupposed for plato, but the gettier objections to it i think try to point out that it is not a practical theory because that world outside us would change, rather than the world that is 'open' and is where we are, is something we can know and judge only in the ways it lets us. i am not justified in calling a friend whos home i visited a few months ago and havent talked to since, and taking his word for it when i call his home number and he says hes home, he could well have moved in the months since weve spoken, but if i see mount vesuvius, and months later, i think about it, and make the statement 'mount vesuvius is beautiful' i would be jutified because mountains dont move nearly as often as people do. this is subject to the world at hand (thats a heideggerian expression which i may be using in the wrong context), that is, the world as it is disclosed to me, the world that is relevant to me, that i see and i know and i experience in; i know that real estate is a sketchy thing now and the housing market is crazy, so people are moving like crazy because they couldnt afford their mortgages, but a few hundred years ago, people stayed relatively put, nuclear familys lived mostly in the same spot, if they had phones, it wouldve been markedly more justified asking the same question because people move less. i think ill go to town on this idea a little later...

skepticism and descartes

2007-12-19T19:47:00.000-05:00

hume and descartes were the two major skeptics we studied. blablabla. the major claim of the skeptics is that we cannot be sure of the external world and any knowledge. the two went about this different ways, hume the more honestly skeptical in that he ended his life in doubt of even his own beliefs and did not attempt to justify this and that through god. im not advocating that being a cold skeptic is the way to go, but if youre gonna be skeptical go for it, descartes was far too effected by pretences, in the meditations he was too ready to turn to god once he had broken down his whole shit.

the skeptics objective is to break down everything to the most base axioms that we can then build off it into a solid theory of everything. the skeptics idea of the being is a thikning thing, a substance that is conscious of the self. the other idea of skepticism is building this theory is to break down all counter possibilities of theories.

yea thats some random skepticism crap

God Arguments and Such

2007-12-19T18:30:00.000-05:00

Cosmological, from thomas aquinas. the cosmological argument rests on the concept of causality. for every event there is a cause. the chain of cause and event cannot go on forever because we are here now, so there must be a beggining cause. that first cause must be god. oh so many problems. the most obvious one is that the first premise, that everything is caused, contradicts the conclusion, that there is an uncaused cause, god. another problem is what is called the fallacy of composition, or composition fallacy, which means that aquinas tries to apply what is true for part to the whole, that is, everything that is, that is, every event has a cause in our part, but in the universe, or rather the entirety of the universe may not follow that rule of cause and effect, therefore the argument does not prove anything. hume turned to his fork of knowledge on this issue, which i wont explain now, which said that things are either known throuh relation of ideas (bachelors are unmarried) or matters of fact (it is raining). he said that causailty could not be known through either of these facets, and thus that the cosmological argument holds no ground. for now, all i will mention of immanuel kant is that he refutes hume refutation of the cosmological argument. in kants view of spatiotemporal experience causailty is a necessary for the instance of experience in the human mind, we learn a priori the concepts of space and time and then organize causality in our minds; it is true and we must know it for experience of anything. he comes more into play later.

Teleological. its a posteriori, which means after or with experience, and it relies on empirical observations. this argument is most famously characterized in william paleys watchmaker argument. the argument pretty much says that the if you found a watch on the beach you'd be inclined to believe there mustve been an artificer because of the complexity of the design in the watch, thus, as humans and other life-forms are more complex than a watch, we must too be designed. i like to call creationists who believe in intelligent design overwhelmists, they ignore the 'atoms perspective' idea, which is that from our perspective cells and shit look overwhelmingly complex, so they must be desined, but from an atoms point of view, it is all the same, just atoms and such - overwhelmists deny that our concept of complexity is subjective. the most effective refutation of design i think is evolution, in that they both in a word transcend the common philosophic problems of knowledge and the external world and accept the sensible world as a reliable source of knowledge for argument, thus rather than being overwhelmed like paley, darwin explained it all and thats that, i think this really puts it to sleep on an empirical front. philosophically there are a few objections as well. an intuitive response to this is that, since paley thought that his argument necessitates the christian god, david hume simply says, uh no not really just because something is designed doesnt mean it was the god you have in your mind, and humans are too different from a manmade thing to make that assertion that we must be designed at all in our likeness to the comlexity of those things. the latter plays a little bit on the denial of our subjective mind. the last philosophical knock on the teleological argument is that it rests of the cosmological argument, in that it says that a complex thing needs an artificer, or something to cause it, rather than it just appearing.

the ontological argument. ive been through this so many times it gives me a headache. saint anselms version goes like this: i have the idea of a perfect thing, because i have this idea that posseses all perfections it must exist because it is the perfection, it is what everything else draws its part of perfection from, and it is greater to exist in reality that in thought thus it must exist. descartes version is this: god is perfect, god posseses all perfections, actually being is greater than just being in thought, thus god must exist.

the final death of this string of proofs for the existence of god is kant. he hates it like i hate it. well probably not. he said that existence is not a property. when i say that my computer is white it adds to the idea of it, but when i say this computer exists you still have a similarly uncertain picture in your head as when i simply say i have a computer, so arguing about god existing or not is irrelevant and inconsequential.

Facticity and the Evolution of Human Consciouness

2007-12-18T02:08:00.000-05:00

this is my idea for an open philosophy essay contest at my school. i don't want to do something to wide, and this seems like a manageable topic for a few pages. i wana brain storm and see whats up.

im not a big fan of the concern of how we came to be, that is, how i am physically here; it really is of very little consequence to me how i came to be, and darwin answered that question a century and a half ago. i want to develop this into the concern with how i came to be, that is, how it is that i am in the nature that i am. this largely concerns my consciousness, or my self-reflective ability, which i believe to be closely connected, or the same as my being "conscious" in the human sense. this does concern physical anthropology, or the study of human evolution. i will need to do some more research on neandertals, as they are the last discrete figure, as fossil evidence posits, before modern homo sapiens develops.

im a little puzzled about how exactly im going to formulate an argument, so im not sure how im gonna work this, but it intrigues me. my point about facticity is that we seek to define neandertals in terms of their facticity, our third person perspective on their cognitions, which is not how someones being is determined. the question surrounding neandertals is whether they are human in cognition and consciousness. i take people to be human, and i do so through my perception of their factual properties, yet this is not what makes them human beings. they are by virtue of their own projects and relation to the world, not by my designation and normative recognization of them as human. thus if i view far less detailed evidence than i have of actual humans, to determine if something is human, what will be my result? i cannot define whether a neandertal is human or not by its anotomical remains and the resources and tools it utilized, i just have an extraordinarily vague idea of it's facticity, and the norms governing neandertal life, and still as little clue as i can have of any other thing of it's own being.

another thing i may want to work in is what sartre called "existential psychoanalysis." a project is the unreflective activities we involve ourselves in during our lives which give our lives meaning. sartre posited that by reconstructing choices in an individuals behavioral patterns one can discover the 'fundamental project' or basic choice of oneself that gives an individual shape to one's life. this coudl be used to shape a vague concept of neandertal project.

another idea that could arrise from existential psychoanalysis is maybe trying to define the fundamental project that arises out of being human, as opposed to being a hominid, or any other animal, but this may be more of an undertaking for a book.

so shout me out some structural suggestions or ideas that you see, and if you dont understand some terms either ask me, which would help me to learn to explain them better which ill need to be able to do, or spend a few solid days reading about them on the SEoP...

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

2007-12-17T02:56:00.000-05:00

Facticity includes all those properties that third-person investigation can establish about me: natural properties such as weight, height, and skin color; social facts such as race, class, and nationality; psychological properties such as my web of belief, desires, and character traits; historical facts such as my past actions, my family background, and my broader historical milieu; and so on.[6] I am not originally aware of my facticity in this third-person way; rather, it is manifest in my moods as a kind of burden, the weight of "having to be." However, I can adopt a third-person or objectifying stance toward my own being, and then these aspects of my facticity may appear precisely as that which defines or determines who I am. From an existential point of view, however, this would be an error — not because these aspects of my being are not real or factual, but because the kind of being that I am cannot be defined in factual, or third-person, terms.[7] These elements of facticity cannot be said to belong to me in the way that the color of an apple belongs to the apple, for as belonging to me, as "determining" me, they have always already been interpreted by me. Though third-person observation can identify skin color, class, or ethnicity, the minute it seeks to identify them as mine it must contend with the distinctive character of the existence I possess. There is no sense in which facticity is both mine and merely a matter of fact, since my existence — the kind of being I am — is also defined by the stance I take toward my facticity. This is what existential philosophers call "transcendence."

Cash Rules Everything Around Me...

2007-12-17T00:44:00.000-05:00

Now, from the older generation's perspective, what are we teaching the numerous youths who cannot think enough for themselves, who are not introspective enough to realize that they are manipulative and that they quit when the going gets tough? College football players are quitting in droves as it is after their senior season, and hey, selling coke pays more than some crappy job they'll get with their bachelor of arts, doesn't it? Or maybe they should go into the business they're victims of and work themselves into a tightknit group of men and then run away for money. I know every self-respecting individual know that these men are selfish and full of cowardice. Do we want this kind of person in the public eye and having such heavy influences on our children's lives?

Knicks 94, Nets 86; 49ers 20, Bengals 13

2007-12-15T23:04:00.000-05:00

It's the apocalypse, my friends. jets win tomorrow, and then we all die...

Justified True Belief

2007-12-15T17:10:00.000-05:00

bores me. justified true belief is the most famous epistemological theory. its plato's. epistemology is the study of knowledge, or rather what we can know. it says this:

i know P if and only if:

I believe P
P is true
I have good reason to believe P

its really a self explanatory thing. it rests on the central epistemological assumption that the word is impassibly separated from the mind, this is a main point of contention between the analytic and continental schools of philosophy...which is irrelevant

anyway so some guy comes along a few years ago ad he's like no no. he comes up with some examples which point out some errors in the theory. essentially, there are cases where the requirements are met in plato's theory, but you still dont seem to know. say i come to your house and solicit your home phone number one day. in a few months i call you on that number, and ask if youre home, and you say yes, youve called me on my home phone number. in this situation i now believe that you are home, and i have good reason to believe that youre home. little do i know, you've moved. but you are actually home, and all of the requirements are met, but i still do not know, because the object of my idea of home is different than your actual home.

so yea thats it jtb is tedious

Runnin' It up

2007-12-14T20:02:00.000-05:00

Decision Theory

decision theory starts with a story. youre going to a party. either chicken or beef will be served. you have to bring a bottle of wine, red or white. i have no idea which one goes better with which, but its not al that important we'll go with that red goes with chicken and the converse. so if you bring red, and chicken is served everyone is ecstatic, if you bring red and beef is served everyone is sorta bummed. if you bring white and chicken is served everyone is happy, and if you bring white and beef is served everyone is really bummed. what do you choose? red.

the idea is that you clearly choose very good/sorta bad over goo/very bad.

yes, quite intuitive. now...

Pascal's Wager

Pascal sayeth: if you believe in God, and God exists, you're good, if you believe in God and God doesn't exist, you waste your sundays. if you don't believe in God, and he exists, you are really screwed, if you don't believe in God and he doesn't exist, you got to live a life of sex, drugs, etc.

so:

i. you believe, and god exists: you go to heaven, eternal bliss, supreme excellentness
ii.you believe, and god does not exist: you waste your sundays, you lived a pious life for nothing, but you did live it believing in something and sticking to it, so it's not that bad
iii. you don't believe, and god exists; you're fucked, you're going to hell and you're gonna be miserable forever
iv. you don't believe, and god doesnt exist: you got to live a life of bodily pleasures, which really proves not to be that great in the end...

so, you have to believe in god, and you lower your chances of being really miserable, and raise your chances of being supremely happy

but we must consider something. belief. belief is an emotional state. one cannot force belief, one can go through life and say and ppray and go to chruch and still not feel that belief. what oes pascal mean by believe? does god know? does god need us to feel it for us to go to heaven? this wager rests on shaky terms, and cannot be taken too seriously.

Ethics, Now

2007-12-14T18:15:00.000-05:00

this is a large category to be explaining in a post, and i dont know if i need to go into so much depth, because they are very simple concepts...

Rule Utilitarianism.

I will begin by assuming that everyone knows that the overall utilitarian mantra is "the greatest good for the most people in the long run." Simple enough. Now, there are two major schools of utilitarianism, each with it's practical issues. Rule utilitarianism is the sect which believes that every action should be judged under a set of rules, and that either an action falls within the rules, or is in violation of them. If an action falls clearly in violation or in compliance with the rules it is said to be a paradigm case, and can be easily judged and punished as the rules dictate. However if the case is not clear, it is called a vague case and it would have to be litigated and then be judged, but under the rules, not individually. So the gist of rule utilitarianism is that there is a hypothetical set of rules which have been determined to yield the best results for the most people over the longest period of time than any other set of rules, and that every action will be judged under those rules strictly, with no individual exceptions.

Act Utilitarianism.

Certain problems arise with Rule Utilitarianism, let me tell you a story, a real story:

There is a cop, and throughout this whole thing he does everything legally and by the book. There is a rapist on the loose, who just committed another rape. The officer saw the sketch, and recognized the man from a traffic encounter earlier in the week, and went about the proper way to get his address from the license plate number he recalled. He went to the address, and in the same car he saw evidence from this latest rape. The officer legally got warrants for the house and the car, and found "trophys" from 3 prior rapes that had never been solved, amounting to 4 rapes. As it happens, the case, in the American legal system, would combine only to one rape, and the man at most would be out of prison in seven years, and likely would rape again with greater knowledge of how to cover his tracks.

Now, with the rule utilitarians, though it makes everyone sick, the legal proceedings would go through, and the man would be free in 7 years and very likely rape again. Knowing this man's track record, and knowing the consequences of applying rule utilitarian principles to his case, the Act Utilitarians have a suggestion.

An act utilitarian would say that in this case, the officer should certainly have the discretion to kill the rapist, because he's raped many times, and will almost definitely rape multiple more times. Act utilitarians idea is that every act should be judged individually according to what is best for the most people in the long run. This seems like a good idea as well, but it, of course, has its downfalls.

Take voting for example. Educating oneself on every candidate in an election is a timely endeavor, and yields a relatively small result, seeing as you only have one vote. Now, if you donated the same amount of time to habitat for humanity, or some other charity, you would be accomplishing a much larger and noticeable thing for more people than your one vote would do. But take a step back, and though there would certainly be a lot of houses built had we all worked for habitat for humanity instead of caring about the presidential election, we would get an awful president, and likely have equally bad effects from this. Sort of like the effects we've had from our collective ignorance during the last two elections, except we all didn't build houses for the homeless and poor, we just sat with our fingers in our butts, i guess.

chuch

Might Even Be Cooler Than iTunes U

2007-12-14T02:18:00.000-05:00

www.freerice.com

Came across this link on some random anarchist blog. You answer multiple choice vocab questions, and for every one you get right, the advertisers on the site donate 20 grains of rice through a UN food program. Pretty cool stuff, i just facilitated the donation of 520 grains.

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Update: Its addicting.

Three Theories of Truth

2007-12-13T22:24:00.000-05:00

The Correspondence Theory of Truth is perhaps the most plausible theory of truth within these three theories. It states that a statement is true if and only if it corresponds to a fact in the real world. This is a seemingly intuitive theory; the statement "i have socks on" is only true if i in fact do have socks on in the "real world." sounds logical. There are a few problems with the correspondence theory, but none that entirely refute it. a major problem with the theory is that it does not account for fictional truths. Peter Parker, the fictional character is Spiderman in the comic book, but there is no Peter Parker nor a Spiderman in the "real world"; yet the statement "Peter Parker is Spiderman", as we understand it, seems to be true.

The Coherence Theory of Truth turns on the word 'coherence.' The theory states that a statement is true if it coheres with some set of beliefs. By cohere, we mean here, that it is consistent, or not inconsistent, with that certain set of beliefs; it's important to understand, before we go any further, that this is to say that it does not contradict, that it coheres to the 'rules' of a certain set of beliefs. The problem with this theory is that it boils down to relativism. What set of beliefs do these truths adhere to? Certainly if there was more than one set of beliefs we would have the same problem as we had for individual relativism: that there would be no false belief, and thus contradicting true beliefs. And if there was one set of beliefs to adhere to, we don't yet know it and this is a useless statement because if we were to know it we would not be asking what truth is. Another problem is that every set of beliefs will rest on another set of beliefs, the argument becomes circular.

The Pragmatic Theory of Truth states simply that a statement is true if it works. What this means is that a statement is true if it yields a preferable result. For who you ask? You, or someone, it doesn't really say. The very trivial point is that it is another relativistic theory, and thus useless...

Individual Relativism

2007-12-13T22:05:00.001-05:00

this is my way of studying for my philosophy finals. im just gonna write shit on the topics i get too, for whatever class im studying for. if you read, let me know if its clear or if it needs clarification at any point. theyre pretty elementary things for the most part, so imagine you know nothing, i have a bad habit of presupposing terms and things that i easily understand...

Individual Relativism is a theory of truth characterized by the statement "if one believes something it is true" (or, less formally, "if you believe it it's true). The practical result of individual relativism leads to two relatively obvious absurdities, and then one nail-in-the-coffin objection. The first fairly obvious absurdity that results from individual relativism is that, if everyone's beliefs are all true, then there could be no false belief, that is, everyone's beliefs are true they are always right, they cannot be false. Secondly, if there can be no false belief, and no one can be wrong in their beliefs, there will necessarily be conflicting beliefs; if Shaq believes he was fouled, and Antwan Jameson believes that he did not foul Shaq, if individual relativism is true, they are both right, but how can that be (hint: it can't). The final problem with individual relativism is that if someone were to believe that the theory itself was false it would necessarily be true by virtue of the fact that it is true. Realistically, if it were true, i don't believe it is, so it isn't true. It's garbage.

Individual Relativism

2007-12-13T22:05:00.000-05:00

Neat-O

2007-12-12T20:08:00.001-05:00

two germans and a scott

2007-12-12T15:14:00.000-05:00

were gonna do some philosophy. i want to get the ideas sorted out and then discuss my intuitions about it and get to what my real concerns with it are. conversation is important in getting ideas out and worked out.

the names i will mention are somewhat arbitrary, and based on their relevance in my mind to the issue. if any other ideas strongly relate, feel free to mention them, i use names because the people behind them had systems of thought beyond my depth of understanding of their words on certain subjects...

ethics is the subject to a certain extent, but i suppose an appropriate label would be 'how we go bout our business.'

in an attempt to make everyone miserably unhappy with everything, david hume decided to take on the task of morality. what he has to say is that in the western tradition, we all like to break things down into axioms and littler and littler things. in physical sciences and philosophy alike. it end up, sayeth hume, that no matter how small we break down these axioms, they are still based on assumptions. we dont need to question this particular part of this, suffice it to say that hume was a smart guy, and has justification for this claim beyond what we need for now. the end of what hume says is that we cant be sure of anything because all our arguments are circular, hes annoyingly skeptical, even to me...

next comes this dude herbert feigl. he sort of says that humes right but wrong as well. feigl has three qualifications of the ways in which we can argue, validation, vindication, and (i dont think he uses this term persay, the third category is less defined) effectiveness.

validation. validation is the legality of something. the question of validation is whether something can be done within a certain system. given our broad scope i want to consider, i will use general social interaction. but first, to make the concept clear, consider playing a game of chess, if i try to move my king seven spaces horizontally and jump your castle, you will say 'no thats not allowed,' my move is not valid within the rules of chess. so step back, to say, shaking hands. in general sociality, shaking hands is a quite accepted concept, it is within the 'rules' of western sociality. but if i met a woman and immediatly began to kiss her neck, this would absolutely not be acceptable. it is not validated within the social rules.

vindication. vindication is another step back. vindication is the question of whether the system itself makes sense. is chess the best way to stimulate whatever kind of mental activity it does? would a three-dimensional board heighten the experience, a pyramid? kings that can jump and roam? would neck-kissing perhaps be a better way to greet new aquaintances? is the system legitimate, does it move us towards our goal of this or that or the other thing? in a broad look, vindication is asking whether our way of doing is the best way of doing, in so many words.

effectiveness. is the move a good move? is it the best way to bring about the results i wish to bring about? if an argument is valid, that is, if it is allowed, then i must consider whether it is a good thing to do.

the way this relates to hume is that feigl attempts to show that in certain cases, like validative cases, we are working with all the relevant information that we need, and that nothing further is needed and no smaller or more specific or more certain axioms are needed. vindication is more where humes position remains strong. it would seem that any vindication which we offer for anything is arbitrary and subjective.

now it gets to where i know a lot less.

ive been listening to these lectures from a professor of my brother's named hubert dreyfus, who is one of the foremost heidegger scholars in the english speaking world. in a particular lecture, he mentioned artificial intelligence. a problem with a.i. is that it largely has tried to define things in terms of millions of descriptions and inter relations, but came upon the frame issue, which is something to the effect of that a computer cant judge usefulness, and doesnt know, by virtue of a bunch of descriptions, what is going to happen when one thing in the world changes. he used to teach at MIT, and he tells a story about how one of his colleagues (who he was in a school-politic war with about this new a.i. prgram) that wrote a program that is meant to read stories, and when it encounters a man who falls into a lake and drowns, it interprets it that gravity drowns as well. anyway. this whole problem is that artificial intelligence cannot be mimiced, the actions of the human mind cannot be duplicated by feeding smaller and smaller and interwoven details about the environtment and such.

so my question now sparks in my mind. why is it that in the western tradition we seek to break things down into such small axioms, when this is clearly, as a.i. failings have discovered, not the way the mind itself works? heidegger himself does come in, but hes very complicated, and i know to little about him to mention him a lot. he has a lot right about how the mind works, though, apparently. theres stuff about phenomenology that i dont yet know and things to that effect, but i want to get the ideas straightened out and discussed before i travel to much further, and while i research this. theres stuff in heidegger about the use of things as tools at hand and a whole bunch of crap, i get overwhelmed thinking about it; he sees the mind as very intertwined, opened to, and attached to the world, the world being where the mind is... so help to get my mind right....

shut up

2007-12-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

i was watching during this. apparently theres a controversy about fried chicken. how stupid are people? theyre so readily searching for a fight theyre taking shots at arthur blank. arthur blank is willing to take vick back if he cleans up. that was the leg all the people who were supporting vick had to stand on. now everyones ready to forgive if he can clean his ass up, and they look for someone else to bother. i actually laughed when they played the clip on nfl live. if its worth being talked about, i think its worth saying that its funny; stereotypes like black people liking fried chicken are comically below adults, and especially a clearly not racist guy in arthr blank. i mean the guy is imbeded in atlanta in tons of different kinds of charities including inner city education; any racism that kind of man exudes is probably deserved. huh, such as dog fighting. dog fighting is stereotypical of stupid southern people. often stupid black southern people. if it was a racist comment, blank had every right in saying it because vick out himself in a position where he is reduced to an idiot, because he made idiotic decisions. when you kill dogs, you open yourself up to as many immature insults anyone can think of. with that said, blank is so above this, and expects the public to be as well, that he can say things like that without worrying about it. fried chicken racist jokes are for 7th graders. not affluent adults. he knows this. the idiots who are making a deal of this apparently didnt get what they needed to out of the rest of their school. maybe if we stop worrying about people who are doing more than we could ever dream of for our communities and their possibly racist comments, and do something ourselves, our kids who grow up to be nfl superstars will know better because they grew up in a better environtment.

and a last thing. given that blank is a generous philanthropist in the city of atlanta, mainy in the poor and inner city; who cares if he hates everyone besides himself because they dont look exactly like him. because theyre black or red or yellow or blonde or whatever. hes done so much more for society than the self righteous idiots who complain about his possible racism he can do whatever the hell he wants. if he is a racist, thats his own shit, he doesnt show it whatsoever in his actions.

2007-12-06T16:28:00.001-05:00

Die

2007-12-05T00:04:00.000-05:00

Die is a strange one. "You don't die enough to cry." i think die is really liberal. die could be the verb-form of beat or something. you arent miserable enough to cry. that statement is aimed at dean, whos really the epitome of the beat guy whos crazy and loves life. saying he does die enough to cry is yet another significant reference to how people werent interacting enough because he was making a judgement on emotions of another from external displays.