Question of The Day
Is empty room Euclidean?
- my favourite wizard-physicist Kwes (I think I only know one) says this thesis would be acceptable for him. That made my day&kept me thinking. 
A Thursday
- For those of you keen on learning R2D2’s language
- Ever Wanted to know when Babies start teething? Ask Jeeves.
- Another reason to love Monty. Philosopher’s Football.
- The horse raced to the barn fell. Got ya!
Update
In reply to people’s questioning about what I am up to at the moment, here a little snapshot…
… Figuring out the dynamics of corruption during Roman Imperialism, for that essay which I am dragging along with me since months now.
… Working with sound on an interesting idea I have for a poem on communication, been inspired by this page.
… Working on another idea, this time visual with advertisement, inspiration for that came from this ad which I saw at a train station.
… Looking at ideas how to live with books on numerous web pages and in books (as ironic as this is). Yes, I have run into a little space problem again after the last (epic) book shopping trip to get the books I intend to read during and for the next term.
… And of course I spend my time hoping to be back in Australia soon, after having returned to autumnal Germany three…*cough*…days ago. 
… Last but not least I am trying to transfer this blog to an iWeb-page, which is proving itself more difficult than I thought it would be. Don’t hope for it before 2010.
Zombies
You might not have thought about this before, but there is some intrinsical important philosophical aspect about….
ZOMBIES!
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tells us about them:
Zombies are exactly like us in all physical respects but have no conscious experiences: by definition there is ‘nothing it is like’ to be a zombie.
The argument in favour of them works a bit like this:
(1) We can imagine zombies.
(2) What one can imagine is possible.
(3) Thus zombies are possible.
Wikipedia has another different additional fact about so called “philosophical zombies” (also called p-zombie or p-zed, I will stick with the latter!). There are different types of p-zeds:
behavioural p-zeds = behaviour identical, without conscious experience
neurological p-zeds = physically identical to a human, without conscious experience
soulless p-zeds = obviously without a so-called soul, whatever that is supposed to mean
But wait, Dennett has a solution: maybe Zombies think(z). And they have a conciousness(z) and and and…
I kindly refer you to the P-Zed Killer…
Orphism
“To be or not to be that is the question…”
“Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint, denn alles was entsteht, ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht.”
So as most of you know, at the moment I am in the process of designing an essay about what became out of the mental in post-modernism. And as you probably know aswell, I am a specialist in getting lost in the details of the details…
Anyway, where did I get stuck this time? Orphism obviously. Why? Because of an interesting thesis, which seemed appealing at a first glance. I’ll try to reconstruct it. A couple of milleniums ago, a hylozoistic world-understanding was prevalent. Thus dead was unnatural and to be questioned, because the whole world was in some way in possession of a soul. Then suddenly, with the rise of science and the modern era, when the dualism was introduced, the material became self-evident, and the life was, what had to be questioned.
the first dualistic answer in the author’s opinion was “Soma-Sema.” The body – a grave.
That was enough of a trigger to make me read the orphic hymns…Any questions why I never finish my essays?
Here some impressions..
Consum’d by thee all forms that hourly die,
By thee restor’d, their former place supply;
The world immense in everlasting chains,
Strong and ineffable thy pow’r contains
Father of vast eternity, divine,
O mighty Saturn, various speech is thine:
(Saturn)
Not youth itself thy clemency can gain,
Vig’rous and strong, by thee untimely slain.
In thee, the end of nature’s works is known,
In thee, all judgment is absolv’d alone:
No suppliant arts thy dreadful rage controul,
No vows revoke the purpose of thy soul;
O blessed pow’r regard my ardent pray’r,
And human life to age abundant spare.
(Death)
Earth’s friendly limit, fountain of the pole,
Whose waves wide spreading and circumfluent roll.
Approach benevolent, with placid mind,
And be for ever to thy mystics kind.
(Ocean)
Philosophical Lexicon
Thank you Dan Dennett and fellows for THIS.
Here my absolute favourites:
- heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring thick layers of substance. “It’s buried so deep, we’ll have to use a heidegger.” Also useful for burying one’s own past.
- husserl, v. To surround a single phenomenon with darkness to create the illusion of seeing it more clearly afterwards; if it fails, one probably has to use a Heidegger (q.v.)
- immanuel, n. (from im-, not, +manual, guide or rulebook) A set of instructions that kant (q.v.) be done
- kripkography, n. The opposite of cryptography: the art of translating a meaningless message (about e.g. de re necessity) into expressions that an uninitiated observer would take to be straightforwardly meaningful (e.g., “Look, it’s not hard. All he’s saying is that since the term is a rigid designator, it refers to the same thing in all possible worlds.”). “He used to claim he just couldn’t understand essentialism, but now, thanks to kripkography, he just sits there nodding and smiling.”
- nozick, n. (from nostrum + physick) Political snake oil, a patent medecine, esp. a carthartic or purgative. “Waste not logick, not yet strong physick, on the Leviathan; serve it nozick, and stand back.” – Hobbes
For Confidants
How can you say I love you to someone you love?
The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.
I regret, that it takes a life to learn how to live.
Songs are as sad as the listener.
I’m sorry I don’t talk.
XKCD
…Yes, I secretly love this online comic
and of course…an undeniable truth, proven by empirical data.
Friday
- What goes on in this bird’s head?
- I’ve tracked down scientific progress! Check it out (for a moment of thought).
- A Political Compass, not narrowed down to left-, right-wing orientation
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- And I am experiencing the first thunderstorm of the year at the moment..καλων…
