Spengler

Not that anyone who reads this blog cares, but "Spengler," who writes for Asia Times, has revealed his identity.

Personhood and the Twilight Zone

This is an interesting discussion about the philosophy of personhood from a (classic) Twilight Zone episode, with comments skirting into Battlestar Galactica. :)

Ancient and Modern

"The Confucian says: ' The superior man must be ancient in mode of speech and in dress before he can be magnanimous.' We answer him: The so-called ancient speech and dress were all modern once. When the ancients first used that speech and wore that dress they would not be superior men (according to the Confucians' criteria)."

- Mozi, "Against Confucianism"

More on free will

The Maverick Philosopher, who I read occasionally, has some interesting posts on free will:

A whole chain of entries

Chess allegories

I'll have to read more of these arguments. As usual, I might have to change some of my views...

Free Will?

If you follow the Dilbert Blog at all, you'll know that Scott Adams has consistently denied the concept of free will. Here's the latest blog entry where he claims it's a superstition. See, this is where Carl Sagan's famous, and *very* subjective, statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" really shows its problems. To me, the claim that there is no free will is the extraordinary claim. (I will explain this later) However, to Scott Adams, obviously the claim that there is free will is the extraordinary claim.

Now see, I don't follow the strong form of free will as believed by, say libertarians, where an agent can always make a rational choice, any time, any where. (which would be an extraordinary claim indeed!) While I am a realist and believe that the number of choices can be constrained by prior conditions, I still do believe that there are choices to be made. To show me that free will doesn't exist will involve showing proof that no choices can be made, anywhere, any time, over the entire course of the universe. I believe that is the extraordinary claim. :)

The Logic Museum

I put in a new link to the right for the Logic Museum. This is an interesting website that has the online versions of a number of philosophical works that concern logic from ancient times to the time of Russell. It's currently fairly small, but is constantly growing.

Greatest Philosopher?

Holy crap! In a BBC poll on "the greatest philospher," Karl Marx actually got first place. Aristotle and Socrates each only got less than 5% of the votes. This is rather... disturbing.

Nietzsche Family Circus

This is a bizarre site that randomly combines a Family Circus cartoon with a Friedrich Nietzsche quote. Sometimes the combination seems to make a lot of sense...

Wow... This is interesting...

In yesterday's Scott Adams blog, in the "A philosophical question" post, he seems to be saying something under that silly allegory of his: Basically, "Muslims are irrational and violent." Hmm... interesting.

The Glass Bead Game

The book "the Glass Bead Game" sounds really interesting to me now, after I read this review. I've always found Hesse to be unnecessarily mystical, but from this review, I could be wrong. Definitely a good addition to my "to read" list.