What, Why & How do we Know ?
“The structure of reality demands a rethinking of the reality of the self.” Still not managed to get myself a copy of Rebecca Goldstein’s essay on “Literary Spinoza” that forms the Coda to The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza by Michael Della Rocca. [It’s very expensive to buy, even in Kindle form, there are precious few … Continue reading “Spinoza, Melville and Identity Politics”
I mentioned noting that one of Rebecca Goldstein’s earlier works was Incompleteness – the Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Since Gödel is an existing interest of mine, and Goldstein’s writing has never let me down yet, it was a no-brainer to obtain a copy. (I’ve since also obtained a copy of her fiction The Mind-Body Problem – … Continue reading “Comprehensively paradoxical Gödel – Rebecca Goldstein”
Continuing through Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex and finding it sooooo good. In fact I’m loving it. Despite two previous mentions [here][and here], I failed to mention that Larry Krauss is set up as the archetypal scientistic philosophy-(and theology)-jeerer. So, so true, and given the order of events last week – the culmination (so … Continue reading “Friday I’m In Love @platobooktour @lkrauss1 #bhagoldstein”
Saw and met Rebecca Goldstein doing the @platobooktour to promote her Plato at the Googleplex – why philosphy won’t go away on Monday at Nunn Hall, London. A bit like her 36 Arguments it’s a fictional creation as a vehicle for bringing long-standing (but still very relevant) philosophical questions and ideas into topical mainstream debates. I’ve not … Continue reading “Rebecca Goldstein, modern day Plato @platobooktour @bhahumanists @andrewcopson #bhagoldstein”
I naively branded causation (even just time as the basis of correlation) as “weird” when I first started this philosophical quest over 20 years ago. Paging Bishop Berkeley anyone? And of course the more we unpick layers of determinism and emergence, upward and downward causation, the weirder it gets. Some things never change. Time and … Continue reading “Causation and Existence”
Trying to catch-up on some day-job priorities with a bit of peace and quiet over the weekend I find some very old tennis > elbow > foot word-association running riot as some dialogue starts-up on the back of those of us reading Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things – in “Channel McGilchrist”. In this very … Continue reading “Senses Working Overtime”
Busy, Busy, Busy. Mentioned strange times regarding work-load and productivity a few posts ago; my pipeline stuffed with unread bookmarks and unresolved references, and a to-do-list with at least seven dimensions of priorities to juggle, personally and professionally. Not exactly “treading water”, but difficult to discern progress going anywhere. Ironic that the immediately previous Wittgensteinian … Continue reading “A remarkable book. It changes everything.”
[Posting a draft from 2017] As a rule of thumb, any headline phrased like that kinda question was almost certainly created by an editor as click-bait and invariably demands the obvious answer “No”. So despite being Tweeted by @AnitaLeirfall – generally a reliable source 😉 – I didn’t actually read it beyond a skim of the … Continue reading “Is Matter Conscious? No it isn’t, but …”