Philosophy and Literature Blog

     The 'Explanatory Gap' was a term coined by Levine in the '80s.  It refers to the seeming inability of physical concepts to account for subjectivity.  I have commented on a number of books by folks who seem not to understand this gap or at least seem not to fully appreciate it.  This expression situates the old mind/body and other minds problem in a more modern philosophical idiom( sorry this sounds so pretentious, but philosophy does that sometimes.  Interesting, the basic problems are in some sense always the same but re-expressed.).  Basically, the concepts and inference rules of the natural sciences are not sufficient currently to account for subjectivity.  The view that experience is somehow the result of purely physical processes is called 'physicalism'.  While I ultimately have a strong feeling that all mental phenomena are dependent upon physical phenomena, this has not been proven philosophically.  The evidences of the neurosciences provide, to me, anyw

     The Omega Point is the ultimate supreme consciousness toward which the universe was being drawn.  There is a great wikipedia article on the Omega Point, by the way.  It is certainly a comforting thought that one is part of a larger, infinite whole, Dad used to tell he was a panentheist:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism .  I hope that Dad was indeed taking great comfort in his philosophy/theology during the final days of his arduous illness.      It's not fair that I get to have comments on this philosophy after his passing, but I think Dad would want me to continue thinking about it both privately and publicly, so here goes...  I completely reject this entire philosophy.  I see nothing in the Universe to suggets it tends toward anything grand.  It all seems to me to be, in the words of Bertrand Russell(please excuse any sexism and/or stereotyping of Victorian governesses), "Full of spots and jumps, without continuity, without coherence or any of the other prope

     During his final illness, Dad found solace in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, a renegade Jesuit whose teachings were denounced by the Church(typical of the folks Dad admired).  When I went to see him in  2012, he asked me for my thoughts about the evolution of consciousness and life.  I gave him what I considered to be a textbook Darwinian answer to the effect that it's all random with no goal or point whatsoever, that development is determined locally by pressure of environment on the available genetic pools etc, etc....  Dad had clearly determined otherwise.  Evolution was, and is, in what I take to be his view, a developmental process that has more in common with the enlargement and expression of a universal Mind one finds in Hegel than the ad hoc adaptations I see in standard Darwinism.  He explicitly mentioned Teilhard de Chardin to me at the time.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin      Related ideas such as rapidly accelerating rates of te

     The only thing I can figure from the string of stupidity coming out of the Romney campaign, beginning with the flop of a convention, is that he doesn't actually want to be President of the United States.  Neither do I, but there have to be easier ways to go about not being President.      I also agree that in his heart of hearts Romney is a people-pleasing moderate.  I agree with those who see him as ambitious but with no idea what he's about.  He and Ryan made an obvious, and failed, attempt to capitalize on the middle east riots -- but perhaps Romney's heart wasn't really in it.  The only way I can see Romney now failing in his bid to not be President is if Obama does something abysmally stupid in one of the debates. 

Another thing I did that may or may not be attributable to father was a play I wrote in 9th grade.  Evidently this was in response to an assignment of some kind.   I decided to write a play called 'Odysseus and the Malaka Monster'. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=malaka Three or four of us put this play on in front of the class ending in the refrain 'Malaka here, Malaka there, Malaka, Malaka, everywhere.'  As we did this we repeatedly made an obscene gesture to the class which fortunately the teacher had not seen before.

I've had some time to think about the things I can trace back to my Dad as his illness has progressed.  Things about me, who I am, that I think are most clearly coming from him.  Those of you who know me well know a few things about me: I'm obsessed with philosophy, I have a sense of humor and a willingness to say things that step WAY over the line.  I also love Mozart -- love is probably too mild a word here.  Philosophy -------------- This is going to sound trite and stupid, but my intellectual life has been absolutely dominated by a drive to know the truth.  It drove me to study philosophy, physics, mathematics, literature etc... There is no doubt that this drive ultimately comes from my Dad.  While Dad and I have been different in how we express this, it comes from the same bent of mind.  I'll never know whether it's simply genetic, part of my brain fires the same way as his, or whether it was something I acquired from my time with him, but it is definitely the

      Well, lately I've been reading a lot of history.  I guess it happened when I was learning about Chinese culture and religion.  I found that my understanding of China from the 19th century to today helped me understand everything else going on in the world a bit better.  So I decided to go back and look at WW2.  I've done a lot of reading about the causes of WW2, including much of a biography of Hitler.  At the same time I got a huge book on world history.  It's like I'm trying to get some picture of history in my mind I can carry around all at once.  It's like I'm trying to have a clearer sense of who and what I am by looking more thoroughly at where I am in history.  It's a kind of culmination of my education.     On the other hand world history is disjointed enough that this desire of mine for this kind of integration is bound to be unfulfilled.  And furthermore, if I succeed what will I gain?  I'm hoping I won't feel so much like I'm f

     Yes, I caught Eastwood's appearance at the convention, about which much has been said, but it was less interesting to me than Mr. Rubio's speech that followed.  Marco Rubio is an impressive public speaker.  I see that he is bucking to be a leader in the republican party, and he certainly has the talent. I don't know what his ambitions are, perhaps the presidency, but he has the chops to do it.  That said, I also found Rubio's speech almost entirely devoid of content. Of course,  knowing how to spend time in front of a crowd and say nothing for 15 minutes or so is also an essential political skill.     The one place he actually said something got on my nerves. He said that belief in God is the most important American value of them all.  Well, Mr. Rubio, no it isn't.  Remarks like this actually scare me a little bit.  He may believe this, or he may think it made a good soundbite.  In any case at least some of his audience holds this position -- and that bothers