Turtles, Anyone?
On the Nature of Reality
It’s digital. And not fancy digital like your modern computers. Sort of like an old Atari game, where you only get one color, and life is defined by the spaces between. Only compressing it to a two dimensional screen loses so much. You’re not just looking at three dimensions, you’re looking at the angles between dimensions.
Somewhere, in a lower, unimportant corner of my consciousness I knew there existed a hospital bed. There was stuff going on there, a buncha doctor types working around it. I could understand it was important, in a theoretical sense, I just couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Never mind that it’s me down in that hospital bed; I was getting the straight dope on the nature of reality here.
(This is an old Precis I did on a paper by the philosopher Chris Daly on the metaphysical theory of tropes, it is interesting but confusing, and it should be noted that this is strictly about metaphysics not cultural tropes) Chris Daly claims that trope theorists deny the theory of universals claiming that all properties […]
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One needn’t be Christian to find food for thought in this brief lecture by Bishop Robert Barron. Might we even say there is something deeply conservative in this argument? Preview Open
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The Upside of Reality
I can’t wait to show my folks the virtual pictures!
Imagine that, years from now, Virtual Reality hardware and simulations have advanced to a point where giant, richly-detailed virtual worlds — each with seemingly limitless potential for experience and interaction — are possible. Imagine, for example, deciding to spend a few hours of your first day of vacation in such a simulated world. Then, finding it a genuinely thrilling experience, you return there on every subsequent day of that vacation.
By the title I mean the beginning of the universe, as referred to in Genesis 1:1. Since the dawn of modernity (at least?), it’s been a popular notion that in ancient simpler times creation myths survived unchallenged, while it is only recently through the advancement of science that we have an alternative approach to understanding the origin […]
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Member Post
Hello, all, here’s the first of a long series of podcasts on poetry. You know me. My Virgil here is Mr. Ashok Karra–here’s where he writes–& we are talking about a poem today. Next, soon, will come a discussion of the Pound piece, The study in aesthetics, which Midge was so gracious to send to me. […]
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Three Things Conservatives Believe
I take the following to be among the most important principles that inform and motivate conservatives. I am not giving an argument in hopes of persuading non-conservatives, just an explanation of some foundational principles.
I say “foundational” because a decent statement of conservatism might not actually contain any of them. These aren’t the principles that are conservatism, but principles that motivate conservatives. Sometimes one of them (especially one of the first two) is an unstated premise lurking behind a conservative argument that just doesn’t seem to reach non-conservatives.
An earlier essay on metaphysics seems to have generated as much confusion as clarity. Here’s a point-by-point summary of the earlier post along with a bit more background information the lack of which may have made things less clear the last time around. 1. Materialism is a thesis in the area of philosophy called “metaphysics,” the study of reality and […]
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Materialism, the thesis that all that is is matter, is bunk. Explaining consciousness is its most impossible, though not its only, challenge. What has some arrangement, however complex, of matter and energy have to with thought? Preview Open
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Plato’s Republic is occasionally–ok, constantly–mentioned as a book promoting communism. Don’t believe the hype. For a start, the account of the declining democracy in Book 8 of the Republic is a goldmine if you’re interested in criticism of leftist redistributionist politics; see here for more on that. (By the way, one of the laws Socrates recommends in Book 8 would have prevented the subprime loans […]
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