Category: random idiocy

The 3 Rs of Publishing Philosophy

So you want to publish philosophy? Follow the three Rs! 1. Rhetoric No matter how good your results are or how technically sophisticated your argumentation, if it is done in an obscure way, your paper will not be published. There are at least two, but more usually three or more people that will read your paper when it is sent to a journal. First is the head editor and/or section editor. If they can’t make […]

public philosophy stories 2: Hitting Nirvana

A few weeks ago I was at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, at Grand Army Plaza. Like many such institutions, it is littered with lecterns holding massive dictionaries. There was one next to a help desk open to a random page. As I walk up, the staff member looks at me expectantly, but I randomly drop my finger down on the dictionary. I look down at where my finger landed, blink in […]

public philosophy stories, issue 1: Free Muffin

You only have so many skills when you’re 20. I was a few years past that when this happened, but didn’t look it. The cashier at the Brooklyn coffee shop was 20, though, and was caught in a spot of trouble. Some guy in his late 40s took issue with her SNITCH tattoo — Harry Potter, not gangster. He was over-educated and enjoying himself denigrating the book series. She couldn’t abandon her post, less her […]

You think this has nothing to do with you.

Philosophy is disparaged often enough, and by people who ought to know better.  As of late, every time this happens I think of this scene — but with the text (something like) below….. Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your desk and you select, I don’t know, some statistical mathematical model, for instance, because you’re trying to show the world that you take science seriously […]

Reflections on Frankenstorm

drugs I don’t normally see cops smoke on duty, but lots of cops were smoking last week. Beer was being sold for up to $30 a six pack.  Not good beer either. I overheard a barista at Verb Cafe in Williamsburg say that Tuesday had been their best day ever.  They did twice their sales of a busy Saturday and closed early because they ran out of everything.  He also said he saw a lot […]

The Carnival is Dead. Long Live The Carnival.

I have almost no philosophical associations at this point. I have been out of school for years and my philosophical interests have little impact on how I feel about philosophies and philosophers on which I don’t work. One of the things I have tried to live by is that I don’t know where the next interesting thought will come from. Of course, if I have experience with individuals or philosophies then I can make determinations […]

Wittgenstein and Sun Tzu (on throwing the ladder away)

Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus #6.54 My Propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them — as steps — to climb beyond them.  (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must overcome these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter XI #38 At the critical […]

Job

Dear readers, I’ve decided to try to get myself paid for my efforts.  If you know of people or programs (graduate or otherwise) that would want someone like me, please let me know. What I want to do is write up my theories about the causal structure in evolution;  it will get done regardless, but it will get done faster and better if I have help.  So I am looking for a place that does […]