Cultures: Conflict-Analysis-Dialogue: Proceedings of the 29th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria 2006 (Publicatins of the ... Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, New Series)
Igor : Premature Souperhero (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
day 01 → your favourite song day 02 → your favourite movie day 03 → your favourite television program day 04 → your favourite book day 05 → your favourite quote " What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence " - Ludwig Wittgenstein I learnt this for A-level philosophy and to be honest I think everyone should live by this quote. If we did, people would listen...
Life, the Universe & Everything. (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
To say I'm a philosophical person would be an understatement. But I don't normally read much philosophy. Apparently, Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. It's amazing how ignorant we can be. So I'm cheating by reading the wikipedia breakdown of the contents . It's a start, isn't it? But it highlights the...
Structural Homeopathy (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Introduction to the Structure of Language - General Semantics and Homeopathy. Definitions Structural Theorists regard language as a network of systematic relationships between semantic units. The basic semantic unit is a lexeme - which is the main dictionary definitions of each word. These lexemes naturally belong to a semantic field, which is an array of words having a similar meaning. The lexemes...
Think Tonk (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
If it works for Wittgenstein and Oliver Sacks , why not? I have this friend who eats cheerios every morning for breakfast, alternates tuna/pbj for every lunch, and finishes that off with veggie tacos every night for dinner. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Eat some oranges to stave of scurvy, sure, but I can't think of a reason for this guy not to stick with this and use the brain for something...
Rupert's Read (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy Jay L. Garfield, Tom J.F. Tillemans and Mario D'Amato OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ISBN13: 9780195381566 ISBN10: 0195381564 Paperback , 200 pages Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Chris Mortensen, Zen and the Unsayable Chapter 2: Rupert Read, Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism: One Practice, No Dogma Chapter 3: Jan Westerhoff, The No-Thesis View:...
Evolving Thoughts (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
I was talking to a friend, Damian Cox, yesterday, and we were discussing how many of the ideas of, say, a Wittgenstein had been a rediscovery or reformulation of what had been commonly held over a century before. Damian made the comment that philosophy is a process of forgetting what we previously had worked out, [...]
The Best American Poetry (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
The protagonist in David Markson’s staggeringly brilliant novel, “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” believes she is the last person on Earth. Fortunately for us, that gives her plenty of time to ruminate on art and philosophy. She spends much of it rattling around...
Stop the ACLU (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Philosophy is a rather vague term used to cover a lot of loose thinking. I belong to the tradition called Anglo-Saxon empiricism, though some of the most notable exponents of Anglo-Saxon empiricism were not Anglo-Saxon. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance, was an Austrian Jew. Anglo-Saxon empiricists restrict their task to something quite akin [...]
A Pelt, a shrub, a soil sample (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
In honour of HTMLGIANT celebrating "Ariana Reines Week " I thought I'd post the following. It didn't make the final cut of an essay ("Recent Developments in American Poetry" - and I had to loose 2000 words) to be published in February's Poetry NZ, replying to Lee Posna decrying the amount of so-called bad poetry being published in the States. Thusly: […] Ariana Reines enacts...
ex-apologist (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
David Macarthur (University of Sydney) reviews the book for NDPR. Here's the link. Like me, Macarthur holds to a "liberal" conception of naturalism. The following passage from MacArthur's review captures my sentiments about more conservative forms of naturalism: "Ritchie's strategy of taking up a position within the landscape of current scientific naturalism, however, leads to a blindspot...
The Gazetteer (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
ADealWithWhoExactly? CrossRoadsOrLackeyVille Well whaddy'a know - Vancouver's worst mayor of all time is back in action. With yet another 'project'. And once again it is backed by a secretive money man that will not reveal himself, this time from 'out of province'. The grizzled Doug Ward , who can say more between the lines of a single piece than an entire passel of lesser inkstained-wretches can say...
The Pangrammaticon (Free subscription) | 10/25/2009
A thought-provoking remark of Heidegger's at Enowning : ...this thinking is, compared to metaphysical thinking, much simpler than philosophy, but precisely because of its simplicity it is much more difficult to carry out. And it calls for new care with language, not the invention of new terms, as I once thought... Reading it, I thought of the difference between the early Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein....
Power Line (Free subscription) | 10/24/2009
John Hinderaker went on to major in philosophy as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, but I believe it was Hugh Hefner who awakened John's interest in philosophy. Before Wittgenstein, there was Hef. In "Perjury penumbra," John spoke for both of us when he wrote: For those who don't remember, Hefner's "Playboy Philosophy" was a monthly staple of the magazine for what seemed like three...
The Rehearsal Studio (Free subscription) | 10/17/2009
I continue to be amused by the fact that one of my best sources for criticizing the positivist dreams of a "semantic knowledge layer" on the World Wide Web has been Google, particularly as personified by Director of Search Peter Norvig. Thus far I have concentrated on the question of whether such a "semantic knowledge layer" can " offer a substantive improvement over the kind...
Bubblegum Aesthetics (Free subscription) | 10/11/2009
The only way to do philosophy is to so everything twice. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
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