If you want to be uncontroversial in Philosophy today one thing you can do is oppose is the mind-body distinction. Being a dualist is even less respectable than an idealist. So, if idealism is out, the mind is prima fascia out and we are stuck with the body. Since science has emerged as the Cadillac [...]
Archive for February, 2008
What has the mind-body distinction done for us lately?
Posted in Being, Body Phenomenology, Philosophy, Pragmatics, writing on February 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Translatability of models, and translation as such
Posted in Philosophy, writing on February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In Philosophy, one encounters more differences in style than differences in content. The advantage of this is that one comes across many ways of expressing similar thoughts. One thought I often try to express is that truth should be understood as revealing, and always bound up with falsity, concealing. Forced to justify my claim against [...]
FM Radio
Posted in Art, Music, Technology on February 20, 2008 | 2 Comments »
When I woke up today, at about 2 pm, I put on CBC radio 2 – notably on a radio and not as a streaming feed from the internet. The significance of this is it was not compromised by system performance, or by the need to shut down or restart. The upshot is there has [...]
Moral Universalizability and Climate Change: a Restatement
Posted in Capitalism, Philosophy, beginning, global warming on February 19, 2008 | 15 Comments »
Premise 1: It appears on the face of it, to everyday thinking, that the right thing to do concerning climate change is to reduce one’s own emissions as much as possible, or at least as much as is convenient, and to lobby the state to change laws concerning carbon and energy, and to encourage friends [...]
In a wild upset – Tristan throws his weight behind the Olympics!
Posted in Capitalism, Ethics, Pragmatics, Technology, global warming on February 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I have after hearing Geoff Berner’s new song – from the same man who brought you “Maginot Line”, now we have the official 2010 Olympics theme song!
Go here to hear it – or download for free!
The Library
Posted in Art, Body Phenomenology, Philosophy, Things, writing on February 18, 2008 | 4 Comments »
We think of library as a civic or institutional space, it is essentially public. However, we also have our personal libraries. We stay in our rooms, peruse our own shelves. It is common at least in the way the upper class is portrayed in the 19th century for a library to be a room in [...]
Picasa
Posted in Art, Photography, Picturesque, Things on February 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve spent a bit of time recently organizing and uploading my better photos from iphoto to the internet, using the handy Google inbuilt software which allows within program uploading to Picasa. Here are some of the galleries:
Winter Scenes
Trip to Germany
Saturna Island 2002
Pictures of People in the world
How ecologically friendly is a 14 year old 8 passenger SUV?
Posted in Ethics, Technology, global warming on February 16, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The question recently came up on a friends blog: what would be the least Carbon intensive method of getting from Ottawa to Vancouver. These numbers are for a single 4800km trip, per person.
Jet: 6000kg
Train:1000kg
Bus: 1500kg
Car:
Well, Car I can actually calculate. It’s quite easy – for every 432 liters of fuel burnt, that’s 1000kg. And since [...]
On Tea
Posted in Things, coffee, writing on February 15, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I have begun this year to drink a lot more tea. In the past I was a bit snobbish about tea – I only wished to drink loose leaf tea and only from the best stores. This does not translate well when you live by yourself and your only kitchen is a mile high stack [...]
An argument concerning the morality of climate change
Posted in Ethics, Technology, global warming on February 15, 2008 | 23 Comments »
Some people have decided that the science shows us that humanity can produce a maximum of 750kg per year each of carbon dioxyde, and that therefore it is morally dubious to to think that one has a right to produce more than that unless one has an argument as to why one has the right [...]
