This weekend I watched a biography of the mathematician John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame). As many of you probably know, in his early 20s Nash was on his way to becoming a world-historical mathematician, but then spent the next 30 years or so suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and circulating in and out of … Continue reading Nash Disequilibrium
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Top Five Glenn Gould Records That Aren’t Bach
Glenn Gould is best known as a Bach keyboard music specialist, and despite his protests to the contrary, that's clearly his oeuvre's biggest strength. Nonetheless, Gould did record a bunch of other things, and many of them have given me a lot of listening and re-listening pleasure. So here goes a Desert-Island-Top-5 type list. … Continue reading Top Five Glenn Gould Records That Aren’t Bach
On Nozick, On Williams
Bernard Williams and Robert Nozick are two philosophers I really enjoy reading. Seeing one directly address the other in print is strangely amusing, like finding out that two good friends you had met at different places and times in your life actually know each other (I had assumed, I suppose, that although Williams and Nozick … Continue reading On Nozick, On Williams
Six Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist
This week I turned right, past the second floor's brightly lit impressionism welcome room, into the middle-ages and renaissance European area. This is a period of art I know very little about, save for the crash course I got 15 years ago travelling through Italy with two art history enthusiasts. Back then, I was not … Continue reading Six Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist
Temkin on Inequality
The subject of this post--the first in a series on philosophical discussions of equality and inequality--is a fascinating essay ("Inequality") by the philosopher Larry Temkin. Here's Temkin in all his brainy glory: I had heard of Temkin before--I knew him by reputation as a very good ethical and political philosopher--but I had never read any … Continue reading Temkin on Inequality
Is Consistency Overrated?
Conventional wisdom--where I come from, at least--tells us that we should ferret out inconsistencies in our beliefs and eliminate these inconsistencies. That's a big part of what it means to be a reasonable person. So, to take just one particularly stark example, I should not complacently accept an epistemic situation in which I believe that P … Continue reading Is Consistency Overrated?
Deeper Into the Night
[This is part of a longer series – previous post ("Book IV") - next post ("Joyce, Vico and the Homeric Question")] [A page from The Sigla of Finnegans Wake by Roland McHugh.] I realized at some point today that somethings gone a bit wrong in my head when pages of text like this start to make sense. To take … Continue reading Deeper Into the Night
Epicurus on Death
Epicurus famously said: Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist. When I teach this gem in Introduction to Philosophy, I like to run the argument as follows: 1) If my death is bad for me, it is either … Continue reading Epicurus on Death
The Rings of Saturn and the Harmony of the Spheres
“And there, in the middle of the light, they saw stretching from the heavens the ends of its bonds—for this light is what binds the heavens, like the cables underneath a trireme, thus holding the entire revolving thing together. From those ends hangs the spindle of Necessity, by means of which all the revolving things … Continue reading The Rings of Saturn and the Harmony of the Spheres
You down with OPP!?!?
Hoping some of you remember Naughty by Nature....in any case, 'OPP' here stands for Original Positions Podcast, an idea I'd like to introduce and (partially) pitch in this post. Basically, the idea is that regular OP-ers convene in a spectacular live podcasting event once a month or once every two months to have a two-hour long … Continue reading You down with OPP!?!?
Original Positions 