Monthly Archives: June 2008

Sellars on Kant

When Kant insists that we ought to act from a sense of duty he is not making the absurd mistakes which have often been attributed to him. He is simply repeating the point with which he opens the argument of the Fundamental Principles of Metaphysic of Morals, that the only unconditional good is a good [...]

30 June 2008, 21:05 Comments (4)

Montaigne: On Democritus and Heraclitus

Democritus et Heraclitus ont esté deux philosophes, desquels le premier trouvant vaine et ridicule l’humaine condition, ne sortoit en public, qu’avec un visage moqueur et riant : Heraclitus, ayant pitié et compassion de cette mesme condition nostre, en portoit le visage continuellement triste, et les yeux chargez de larmes. alter Ridebat quoties à limine moverat [...]

28 June 2008, 19:36 Comments (1)

Iannis Xenakis: Free Stochastic Music By Computer

21 June 2008, 14:48 Comments (2)

Category Mistake!

It seems to me that none of these interpretations [of quantum theory] is at all satisfactory, and in the gap left by the failure to ?nd a sensible way to understand quantum reality there has grown a pathological industry of pseudo-scienti?c gobbledegook. Claims that entanglement is consistent with telepathy, that parallel universes are scienti?c truths, [...]

11 June 2008, 10:41 Comments (0)

Speaking of Apt Covers…

Isn’t this the best cover for a philosophy book…ever? (This volume concerns the Tractatus only.) (Okay, maybe it would be better if everything in the painting was a word in the shape of the corresponding thing, like “TREE” in the shape of a tree, but this is still pretty good.)

10 June 2008, 10:17 Comments (0)

John Williams: Stoner

Whatever my reservations about the New York Review of Books, if it subsidizes reissues of things like this, I pardon its sins. Extra points for choosing such an apt cover painting to implicitly portray its hapless professor hero: And here is Stoner speaking: Stoner looked across the room, out of the window, trying to remember. [...]

7 June 2008, 22:34 Comments (5)