The statement, “Either something happened or something didn’t happen,” is immune to skepticism. If a skeptic tries to doubt it, then something has happened, making the statement true. If no one doubts it and nothing happened, then the statement is again true. Therefore you may have absolute certainty that something has or has not happened. Moreover, this statement has it’s uses: I can imagine mothers all over the country trying to impress upon their teenagers […]
Author: nogre
A note on epistemology
Justified true belief does not yield knowledge, and everyone should know this by now. Beyond Gettier’s argument, is this tack I heard given by Jaakko Hintikka: You may believe something, fine, and have whatever justifications you wish. But how do you know the thing is true? The point he was making was that far beyond the issue of problems in having the right sort of justifications is the problem of having truth as well. Whenever […]
Links, lanks, lunks
Animal of the Month: Black Grouse Get the Flash Player to see this player. Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson chooses his top 10 bird songs via plump plum – some other of plump’s goodness: Nabokov on Lolita (part 2) [6m], Frank Zappa on Crossfire [21m] Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nothin to Fuck With[3m]… at Chess [4m]: Apparently RZA is also a chess champion besides being one of the best rappers. Google News: ahh if only […]
Video Game Design 3: Golf Practice
The Wii has a lot of potential as a golf simulator/ practice program. With the introduction of the Wii balance board the opportunity for using weight distribution has become a real factor, and, though I know nearly nothing about golf, balance and weight distribution during a club swing has to be critical. Now using the balance board to monitor weight distribution is somewhat obvious. However, very accurate motion sensing from the controller would also be […]
Monty Hall Update
I wrote out an example playing of the Monty Hall Problem in Independence Friendly Logic as a game of incomplete information and appended it to my post here. I also left an extended comment on Dependence Logic vs. Independence Friendly Logic about some of the tribulations encountered as a non-academic trying to get my grubby little hands on obscure logic papers.
Demise, the Fallen and Annihilation
In Being and Time Heidegger makes a distinction between death and demise: death is the ending of Da-sein, or Being, and demise is physical perishing. I think this is a good distinction and since I break up ontology into 3 sorts of things – commitments, objects & descriptions – I will have three ways to die: Fallen: the perishing of all commitments of a living person. Demise: the perishing of physical attributes of a living […]
What is philosophy?
The question of what philosophy is always made me squirm. People would ask me what I do, I’d tell them, and then they would ask me what it exactly was that I do. But now I have a answer. A while back I heard a quote attributed to Russell that went roughly: Philosophy starts out with propositions that everyone would accept as true, and then ends up with propositions that no one would accept as […]
linkeridoodah, linkeriday
I found my animal of the month, so it’s time to post some links! Animal of the Month: Tamandua (30s) The Killing Machine: “Partly inspired by Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and partly by the American system of capital punishment as well as the current political situation, the piece is an ironic approach to killing and torture machines. A moving megaphone speaker encircles an electric dental chair. The chair is covered in pink fun […]
Dependence Logic vs. Independence Friendly Logic
I picked up Dependence Logic: A New Approach to Independence Friendly Logic by Jouko Väänänen. I figure I’ll write up a review when I am finished with the book, but there is one chief difference between Dependence Logic and Independence Friendly Logic that needs to be mentioned. On pages 44-47 when describing the difference between Dependence Logic and Independence Friendly Logic Väänänen says, The backslashed quantifier, ∃xn{xi0,…,xim-1}φ, introduced in ref. [20], with the intuitive meaning: […]
Links, to appease the Gods of Blogs
I offer this links post as a sacrifice to the… oh I have no idea why I do this. Animal of the Month – Elephant (8:28): lies i’ve told my 3 year old recently, by raul gutierrez, as emphasized by swissmiss: Trees talk to each other at night. All fish are named either Lorna or Jack. Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose. Tiny bears live in drain […]