January 24th, 2005 by aaronharnly
David Chalmers has started a blog (via Matthew Yglesias al Alina Stefanescu al Forking Paths). If you’re unfamiliar with him, Chalmers is one of two or three people responsible for wresting control of the discussion about consciousness from the epiphenomenalists. I’ve seen him talk a few times and he’s quite engaging, so the blog will be worth following.
Apparently these days he’s working on something called “two-dimensional modal logic”, which according to this book description that Chalmers links to, is part of a movement that
[wishes to] revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and conceptualism in the foundations of modality. … In the last twenty-five years, this attack on the anti-descriptivist revolution has coalesced around a technical development called two-dimensional modal logic that seeks to reinterpret the Kripkean categories of the necessary aposteriori and the contingent apriori in ways that drain them of their far-reaching philosophical significance.
Well. Glad that’s clear. Perhaps when chapter two is finished our philosopher friend can explain?
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January 21st, 2005 by aaronharnly
The brilliant, if eccentric and self-congratulatory Vladimir Vapnik has been trumpeting a major shift in the scientific method, and perhaps our epistemological stance, over the past few years. Whether or not Vapnik gets his revolution, at the very I least I’ll wager you will see “transductive inference” gain increasing attention as his ideas trickle out from statistical learning theory to other intellectual fields. So what’s it all about?
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January 8th, 2005 by aaronharnly
Since the tsunami has everyone in a theodicic frame of mind, and perhaps because I’m reading this book, I have maltheism on the mind today. It’s a possibility one oughtn’t discount out of hand: God exists, and is evil.
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December 5th, 2004 by aaronharnly
So there are many wellsprings of thought or feeling out of which vegetarianism might grow. I am an extremely approximate vegetarian myself (holding a tummy of “ma Foy”-inspired lentils, spinach, bacon, and egg as I write). A rough survey of the field of Vegetarian Commandments might include:
- Thou shalt not cause pain and suffering to sentient beings <-- my rationale
- Thou shalt eat healthily
- Thou shalt avoid meats and produce made with nasty synthetic hormones, pesticides, and fertilizer
- Thou shalt protect thy Earth; i.e. prevent destruction of Western grazelands or Amazon rainforest for cattle <-- my rationale in high school
- Thou shalt indirectly feed the hungry, by minimizing thy impact on world resources (i.e. eat vegetables because of the extraordinary inefficiency of meat production, as measured by raw materials per calorie afforded)
- Thou shalt hold wacky deep-green beliefs
These different inspirations yield different guidelines about what one should or should not eat, of course. For example, the question of fish: could go either way from my “sentient being” perspective, depending upon one’s beliefs about fish consciousness; desirable from the health perspective; probably not okay under a “deep green” philosophy; and either great or horrible, depending on the specific fish, from an environmental perspective.
I was thinking tonight about another possible wellspring, and what choices it would coerce:
- Thou shalt eat only the foods freely given by a living being, without taking its life
This diet would consists of milk & dairy products, honey, nuts, berries, fruits, and anything else that is “freely given” by the host with the intent that it be eaten.
For all I know there’s a sect of people in California that do eat this way. Fruitarians come kinda close, but I think more in the surface behavior than in the motivation.
I’m uncertain whether one could subsist on this diet. I suppose the human body puts up with all kinds of horrific treatment. But life without greens or grains or legumes could be tough. I’m certainly not proposing it, for myself or anyone else. But it’s an interesting concept, and it does have a pleasing simplicity and comprehensibility.
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