Luctor et Emergo

Category: Sharp Stick

  • Philosophy or Religion

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    Tony Dalmyn
    in ,

    My review of Edward Craig’s Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction summarized his loose description of philosophy, which talked about understanding mystery. At the risk of embellishing his carefully elliptical description of the venture, he was talking about the great mystery of self-aware minds, awake in ape-like bodies, living among similiar beings with similiar physical and…

  • Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction

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    Tony Dalmyn
    in

    Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction (ISBN 0-19-285421-6)by Edward Craig, is one of the Oxford University Press’s excellent Very Short Introductions. A few years ago I started to read Simon Blackburn’s Think. I was thrown off by a few of the later chapters and never finished it. I have gone back into reading philosophy by way…

  • Rating the Great Thinkers

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    From the news – a story in the (London) Times online about the BBC poll to find the greatest philosopher of all time. Marx has surged to the top of the list. He was the BBC’s Great Thinker of the Millenium in 1999. The old Left has not lost its will to live after all.…

  • Whose Bullshit

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    Harry Frankfurt’s little book On Bullshit seems to have been selling briskly. I have seen it listed as a bestseller on some of the lists in any given week. Bullshit is becoming a fertile tool for fashionable social criticism, although it seems to be falling back into its old usage of an epithet. People are…

  • Six Great Ideas

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    Once again, a note about a philosophy primer by Mortimer J. Adler. He wrote Six Great Ideas in 1981. He divides the ideas into two groups. Truth, goodness and beauty are ideas we judge by, and liberty, equality and justice are ideas that we act on. His discussion of each idea is broken down into…

  • Seances, Carlos Castaneda etc

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    Following the links from an essay, featured at AL Daily, published in the San Franciso Journal called “Leaving the Left“, I reached the web site of Keith Thompson, a writer in California. His site includes some of his freelance articles and essays including his interview of the writer and fakir Carlos Castaneda, and a magazine…

  • Mediums get Small grant

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    A quick peek at the news from New Zealand – spiritualists get a civic grant to fund a counselling service.

  • Novel Perspectives???

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    Yesterday, I posted a link to The Onion’s satire about fictionology. today, a perfect example of an intelligent person who chooses a value system that lets her choose fiction over fact because it helps her to feels better about herself. Check out this essay by Martha Montello, Novel Perspectives on Bioethics at the Chronicles of…

  • For a laugh

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    Tony Dalmyn
    in

    Since this is from The Onion, I guess it’s satire. It’s an unfortunately believable story about cults and postmodern ideas about making up the religion you want. It’s called “Scientology losing Ground to New Fictionology.”

  • Holy Comets

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    Tony Dalmyn
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    A Russian astrologer is suing NASA because a space mission, Deep Impact, is going to fire an explosive impactor into the Tempel-1 Comet. It’s against her religion. The story from SciAm Perspectives, the Web log of the editors of Scientific American, and from MosNews an English language Russian News service.