Merry Christmas 2023

December 18, 2023 / chr1 / Leave a comment

As posted: (it’s a long one): ‘Postmodern Religion And The Faith Of Social Justice‘

Let’s say you use mathematics and/or engineer systems, in pursuit of new knowledge and truth.

Come worship at the Human Pagoda!

Are you an artist, captivated by the beauty of this world?

We have an ecopodment for you.

At the cutting-edge Institute of Global Citizens (IGC), we draft rules for tomorrow’s leaders.

As a thought-leader, your contributions will feed into a Council of Purely Democratic Representation, uniting our fractured world and restoring Nature’s purity.

Swim in the warm bath of the (S)elf. Float in the bowl of Romantic Nature.

Freedom is next at Peace Pavilion West.

As posted, someone called me a Postmodern Conservative a while back, and I’d just like to say that there are many identities juxtaposed at the intersectionality of bodies in space. Dominant narratives, meta-narratives, and counter-narratives serve to liber…

Merry Christmas!

R.I.P.

From Partially Examined Life-‘John Searle Interview Of Perception: Part One’

December 2, 2021 / chr1 / Leave a comment

From Partially Examined Life: ‘John Searle Interview of Perception: Part One‘

Direct, naive realism requires some explanation of consciousness and a theory of perception:

‘We interview John about Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception (2015). What is perception? Searle says that it’s not a matter of seeing a representation, which is then somehow related to things in the real world. We see the actual objects, with no mediation. But then how can there be illusions?
Well, we see things under an aspect: a presentation of the thing. And that presentation presents itself as caused by just that thing that the perception is of. If these “conditions of satisfaction” (i.e., that the perception is actually caused by that thing) are not met, then we have a case of illusion: we thought we were perceiving that thing, but we really weren’t. Simple! Right? Searle lays out his theory for us and amusingly dismisses much of the history of philosophy.’

Related On This Site: Via A Reader-‘John Searle On The Philosophy Of Language’

From The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy: Charles Sanders Peirce

Some Sunday Quotations: (On) Kant, Locke, and Pierce

Via Youtube: (1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge

Clive James At The Prospect On Joseph Conrad-Some Links

September 28, 2015September 22, 2017 / chr1 / Leave a comment

James revisits many quite original, quite accomplished works.

Of note to this blogger:

‘They are, in fact, idealists: and idealism is a cast of mind that Conrad questions even more than he questions radicalism. The logical end of radicalism, in his view, is terrorism; but idealism is the mental aberration that allows terrorism to be brought about. Conrad’s originality was to see that a new tyranny could be generated by people who thought that their rebellion against the old tyranny was rational. Thus his writings seem prescient about what was to happen in the Soviet Union. He didn’t predict the Nazi tyranny because he had underestimated the power of the irrational to organise itself into a state. But then, nobody predicted that except its perpetrators; and anyway, mere prediction was not his business. His business was the psychological analysis made possible by an acute historical awareness. Under Western Eyes is valuable not because it came true but because it rang true even at the time, only now we can better hear the deep, sad note.’

Clive James’ site here.

Michael Dirda on ‘Clive James Last Readings’ review: A Critic’s Final Homage To Literature, Life:’

‘In 30 brief essays James goes on to tell us — in his most digressive, conversational manner — about the books he’s discovered or returned to quite probably for the last time.’

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Not entirely unrelated:

John Gray begins a discussion of his book ‘The Silence Of Animals‘ with a quote from Conrad: