Oh my god... I love this piece! It's Don Skoog's wonderfully rhythmic Attendance to Ritual, performed by my legendary little brother, Scott Chappell:
See also his solo performance, Memories of the Seashore (I think the section from 2:40 to 3:20 is especially cool).
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Marimba Masterpieces
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
'Misfit' is a relative term
Some commenters here complain about how "Social misfits are really rife in philosophy." It can certainly be discomforting when the people around you do not share your social norms and expectations. But isn't it a bit quick to just assume that it's their fault (and so call them 'jerks', 'boors' and so forth)? Lack of fit is a symmetrical relation, after all. Consider the following complaint:
How many times as a female professor have I gone out to dinner parties with visiting speakers where there were several philosopher’s wives present (my other colleagues mostly being males), where the entire dinner table conversation was devoted to philosophical issues that excluded them? As a woman, I or perhaps simply as someone socialized to be more polite and empathetic, I face the choice then: should I try to join in with “the guys” and prove my mettle, thus ignoring half the people present at the table, or should I attempt to be more congenial and polite and talk to the women?
Now, from my perspective, the whole point of a bunch of philosophers going out to dinner with a visiting speaker is to discuss philosophy. That's what they're there for. To complain that "the entire dinner table conversation was devoted to philosophical issues" seems as bizarre to me as complaining that the entire seminar was dedicated to philosophy when some of the students might rather have discussed the local sports team. The problem does not necessarily lie with the topic of conversation; it could just be that the sports fans are in the wrong place.
More generally, it's nice to accommodate people and make them feel comfortable. But given that the lack of fit between 'nerds' and 'normals' is symmetrical, it's not clear why the norms of the latter group should always take precedence. I mean, there's no surer way to make me uncomfortable than to put me in a situation where one is expected to engage in small talk. That's just a fact about me and how I relate to others. Many people (outside of academia) seem to be just the opposite: uncomfortable with serious discussion, comfortable with small talk. That's a fact about them and how they relate to others. Each of these two personality types may find it difficult to relate to the other. Objectively speaking, that's the end of the story. But in practice the extroverts are socially dominant, so they lay fault on the nerds and introverts for failing to conform to their preferred (arbitrary) norms. What they don't seem to realize is that they are equally failing to conform to our preferred norms.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Why Coffee Shops?
Assuming that expressions of cultural incomprehension fall under the 'et cetera' component of this blog's purview, let me ask: why do people like to meet in commercial places (coffee shops, bars, etc.)? It seems to me like a double cost: firstly, the environment is intrinsically less pleasant than elsewhere (cf. a comfy private lounge, or stroll through the park), and then - to add insult to injury - one is expected to waste money on consumables whether one really wants them or not.
Maybe the idea is that most people really like the consumables. That'd be fine, I'd happily endure a cramped and noisy coffee shop for the sake of a caffeine-craving friend. My worry is just that there seems to be a social norm that people should meet in such places, and so a group of people might end up meeting there merely due to the norm and not because anyone actually prefers this location over non-commercial alternatives. "Meeting for coffee" is the expected behaviour. I'd rather invite people for a stroll in the park, but they might think that weird. Depending on my mood, that may or may not bother me, but it seems like the sort of thing that would deter many people from socializing in a way that they'd actually enjoy more. (Whether there really are "many people" who share my idiosyncratic tastes here is, of course, another question!)
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Eight Random Personal Facts
Jean Kazez says I'm supposed to list eight random facts about myself, and then tag eight random people to repeat the process. Here goes:
1) I feel inappropriately proud of having only vacuumed my dorm room once last year.
2) I rarely get sick, except on Good Friday. (Sympathy pains?)
3) I was kind of hoping to avoid this meme, but - like many things, I find - it's not so bad once you start.
4) I have four brothers. (Mum gets a lot of sympathy.)
5) We got what we thought was a female cat, but it turned out to be male too. We decided "Murphy" was a fitting name. I'm gonna miss that furball.
6) I played the oboe for a while in high school. It was a short while.
7) I'm beginning to think that eight facts is a bit much to ask, really.
8) My first computer was an Apple IIe, with no hard drive. I would amuse my 8-year-old friends by running the program:
10 PRINT "Enter name 1";: INPUT name1$We were easily amused.
20 PRINT "Enter name 2";: INPUT name2$
30 RANDOMIZE TIMER
40 x = INT(RND(1)*100) + 1
50 PRINT name1$;" loves ";name2$;" ";x;"%"
60 END
I'll tag: Jared, Isa, Chris, Blar, Clark, Brian, Macht, and Kyle.
(But feel free to disregard if you wish.)
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
At my brother's insistence (he wants to beat me at geography games), I've finally signed up for this "Facebook" thing that's taking over the interweb. It even sports a "David Lewis Appreciation Society". Any other Facebook recommendations?
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Achiever's Guilt
There's a nice quote from Marianne Williamson:
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Last year, an undergraduate friend of mine received an scholarship to Princeton University. Oddly, he seemed almost embarrassed by it. (In fact, it was a mutual friend who informed me of his success.) I was bemused by his reaction at the time, but now find echoes of it in myself. (Sometimes, when talking to a random person who asks where in America I'm going, I answer with an evasive 'New Jersey'. Silly, eh?)
On reflection, I think this kind of misguided modesty is not a good thing. In the case of my friend, I was happy for him and wanted to share this. But you can't celebrate with someone who refuses to acknowledge that something good has happened! So that's unfortunate. And I've been a little slow to internalize this lesson in my own case, I think.
Rather than pointlessly beating myself down, I should probably just relax and let myself feel grateful for my good fortune. So, on that note, a couple of photos of the beautiful campus from my March visit:
Just three weeks till I move in! Quite exciting, really... I imagine the Graduate College will be full of students - from all sorts of disciplines - who are intelligent and academically motivated. And dammit, that's a good thing!
Monday, July 16, 2007
Philosophers' Carnival #50
The 50th Philosophers' Carnival is here.
A nice milestone -- we've come a long way since August 2004! There were a few fits and starts early on, but thanks to the support of early participants (e.g. Brandon and Chris) - and promotion on Brian Leiter's blog - the carnival eventually grew in momentum. So I'm pleased that it looks set to remain a valued fixture of the online philosophical community for some time to come.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Friday, March 09, 2007
Research Interests
Some philosophical projects or topics I'd like to pursue further someday...
[N.B. The list is of course non-exhaustive. And I expect I'll develop all sorts of new interests and ideas in my early years of grad school. But here's what immediately springs to mind...]
1) Rational normativity, especially as it relates to:
(a) the foundations of normativity
(b) indirect utilitarianism and the rationality of rule-following
(c) constructing (synthetic?) a priori truth
2) a priori justification more generally
3) Ethical holism more generally, e.g. developing an institutional conception of rights.
4) Deliberative Democracy: in particular, developing the theory from the foundational value of civic respect.
5) Metaphysical holism, especially as it relates to:
(a) ontological deflationism: the fundamental existent is the entire actual world. All other "things" are in some sense derivative, perhaps abstracting from the whole world in various ways.
(b) philosophy of science, or how we understand the links between various "levels of explanation" (cf. microphysical vs. common-sense causal explanations). In particular, by taking the whole as being more fundamentally real than its parts, physical particles may again be seen more as 'abstractions' than as genuinely fundamental 'building blocks'.
6) Units of ethical consideration: what entities most fundamentally matter (or are subject to harms and benefits) -- worlds, communities, persons, or their momentary time-slices?
7) Corporate agents - dues and responsibilities (e.g. cross-generational reparations). Liberal individualism vs. communitarianism.
8) Philosophy of information/media, especially as it relates to:
(a) metaphysics, e.g. what is information? Is it created or discovered?
(b) ethics, e.g. intellectual property issues.
9) Philosophy of law, insofar as it relates to indirect utilitarian or "rule-following" considerations, abstraction and universalizability.
Hmm, perhaps I should look for a dissertation topic at the intersection of value theory and metaphysics? And the various "holisms" are curious -- quite a change in my philosophical dispositions from a couple of years ago!
Friday, March 02, 2007
Choices
Wow, I'm feeling incredibly spoilt. I've received offers from Princeton, NYU, Rutgers, Michigan Ann Arbor, UNC Chapel Hill, and Arizona. [Update: Harvard too.]
(For completeness: I was turned down by Stanford, haven't heard from waitlisted at Yale, and Harvard won't decide till next week.)
So. Which grad school should I pick? Bearing in mind that my main interests are in ethics and political philosophy, but with side interests in metaphysics and, well, pretty much everything...
All of these schools have pretty great faculty [PGR top 15] and placement records, so I assume none can be ruled out on those grounds. I guess it then comes down to more subtle differences: which offer a more collegial atmosphere, a friendly student environment, quality teaching and supervisor support, etc.? In short, where would be the most enjoyable and rewarding place for me to study over the next five years?
Or is there a big difference between the top 5 and, say, UNC or Arizona? Is the prestige of an Ivy especially valuable? (Might it, for example, help my efforts outside of academia, if I wanted to become a public intellectual or influence policy-makers, etc.? Or would the first-hand experience of public philosophy offered by UNC actually be more valuable? Do the more prestigous private universities offer anything comparable?)
(I also note Leiter's assessment that NYU could become "the top department by a wide margin", if all five of its recent faculty offers are accepted. One has been already.)
I'll hopefully get a better feel for it all when I visit each campus later this month. But in the meantime, any comments/advice welcome. Sensitive information may instead be emailed to me at r.chappell@gmail.com -- at a time when all the schools are putting on their best appearances, it would be helpful to hear of any negative experiences too, in addition to the good. Thanks in advance!
Saturday, February 17, 2007
America Beckons
I've received an offer from Chapel Hill, which by all accounts sounds like a wonderful place to go to grad school. I'm still waiting to hear from the other places to which I applied. Exciting times...
Update: NYU and Princeton make it 3/3 so far...
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Introduction
Hi, welcome to Philosophy, et cetera. Here you'll find discussion of analytic philosophy, logic, ethics, politics, religion, and other items of intellectual interest.
If this is your first visit, have a browse through my favourite posts. My 'Web of Beliefs' gives a broad outline of my various philosophical views, and links to more specific posts on central topics. You can find my latest posts on the main page, but since I mostly tackle timeless questions (and sometimes even time itself), you might do just as well to browse through my archives -- simply select a topical "label" or category of interest from the list at the bottom of the page. See also my old categories for posts from my first year of blogging.
If you think it sounds interesting but would like a second opinion, you can click here to read some nice things that other people have said about me.
Comments Policy:
Some of the best features of this blog are the civil tone and respectful disagreements commonly hashed out in the comment threads below each post. Feel free to join in!
Note that I reserve the right to moderate or delete comments which I judge to detract from this civil atmosphere. (Fortunately I've rarely had need to exercise this right.) Free speech means that you may create your own blog and post to it whatever you like. (Note that I may also elect to delete lengthy tangential comments, and invite the commenter to instead repost the comment on their own blog. You can email me for a copy of your deleted comment.)
About me:
This blog is more about the thoughts themselves than the person behind them. But I'll tell you this much: my name is Richard Chappell, and I was born in New Zealand in 1985. The years passed, and in 2005 I completed my BA in philosophy at the University of Canterbury. In 2006, I moved to Canberra to do my honours year at the ANU, where I thoroughly enjoyed my study of modality and possible worlds under the supervision of Dave Chalmers. As of 2007, I'm working towards a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University. My dream is to become an academic philosopher, make some progress in understanding the world, and help others to do likewise. Other wishy-washy values are mentioned here.
Aside from this blog, I also organize the world-famous Philosophers' Carnival. They say it's a small world. But you should definitely check it out.
About you:
Regular commenters are invited to introduce themselves in the comments to this post, and link to their own blog if they have one. (I figure it might be nice for newcomers to get at least a vague idea of who they're arguing with!)
Sunday, April 16, 2006
An Ethics for Living
To be frank, my utilitarian theoretical views barely impact upon my practical life. This may be just as well, according to indirect utilitarianism, but it leaves open the practical question of how to live. I'm not even much inclined to adopt utilitarianism here at the 'critical' level, and ask what practical attitudes I should have in order to maximize utility. Such issues seem more relevant at the institutional level, as a political or social philosophy. But in first-personal reflection? Impartialist consequentialism doesn't even get a look in.
Some people would see this as a hefty objection, holding that philosophy must always speak to the activity of living. I don't agree with that, since I find inquiry into even purely abstract questions to be rewarding in its own right. Besides, the utilitarianism does inform my political views, etc. Still, it's not the complete story, and so we should want to at least occasionally engage more directly with philosophy for living. (Is this what folk mean when they speak of "philosophy of life"?)
I don't know if there's much by way of principle that can be said here. I mostly tend to just do what I want, or what seems reasonable (they tend to coincide, since I want to be reasonable). Barring such situational 'particularism', I guess the two views that most attract me here are existentialism and virtue ethics. To pull out the cliches: I want to live an authentic life, true to my "self" and my ideals, making choices and seeing them through. I want a life of integrity and honesty, that respects others as best I can, and does more help than harm. I want to flourish as a human being; to pursue excellence, truth, beauty, and knowledge; to know and love others ("the greatest thing you'll ever learn..."); and to make a difference to the world, however minor it may seem in the grand scheme of things.
Last Friday I turned 21, and a friend asked whether it made me feel especially reflective about my life. Perhaps it's having a belated effect. (I realize such reflections risk sounding indulgently facile. So please stop reading if you find all this excessively painful!) In any case, as I related to her, it seems to me that what's really important is living a life whose story you can endorse. (This should come as no surprise to those who've read my old posts on theories of wellbeing. I used to discuss it in terms of 'global preferences', but I think the "story" metaphor is more illuminating.)
Life has a kind of narrative structure to it, I think. There are highs and lows, friendships and betrayals, new chapters, new beginnings, challenges to overcome, etc. Great significance can be found in the smallest details, but insignificant things get swept away. The overall structure is more important than the individual events it comprises. We want the story of our lives to be interesting, original, worthwhile, and something we can be proud of.
(The most remarkable thing is the asymmetry of regret -- at least for me, it seems always to attach to inaction rather than action; missed opportunities rather than bungled mistakes. If you screw up, that's life. If you're paralyzed by fear, that's nothing at all.)
A final thought: I've always thought that personal ethics is much more about character than actions. The fundamental question of an ethics for life is not what to do, but who to be.
So, those are my musings for the moment. I hand over the question to the collective wisdom of the internets: how to live?
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Introverts
I think the greatest (non-academic) article ever published is Jonathan Rauch's Caring for your introvert. An excerpt:Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.
Classic. Anyway, I bring this up again because The Atlantic have just published a new interview with Rauch on the same topic. I was especially interested by the discussion of "small talk", i.e. content-free speech for the sake of socializing rather than actually saying anything worthwhile. (He notes earlier in the interview, "so little of what most people say is actually worth hearing.") I've always found that difficult. Anyway, over to Rauch:Yeah, I marvel at Michael who can always somehow turn the conversation right over effortlessly and keep it going even when what he says is not necessarily profound or interesting. What he comes up with is perfectly tuned to the sense and flow of the conversation. But it's not words that are particularly intended to convey ideas or mean things. It's words that socialize — that simply continue the conversation. It's chit-chat. I have no gift for that. I have to think about what to say next, and sometimes I can't think fast enough and end up saying something stupid. Or sometimes I just come up dry and the conversation kind of ends for while until I can think of another topic. This is why it's work for me. It takes positive cognition on my part. I think that's probably a core introvert characteristic that you and I have in common and which can probably be distinguished from shyness per se — that small talk takes conscious effort and is very hard work. There's nothing small about small talk if you're an introvert. But we're good at big talk.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Goodbye, New Zealand
I leave for Australia early tomorrow morning. Blogging may be limited over the next couple of weeks while I settle in. We'll see. Wish me luck! :-)
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Coming up, after the break
Yesterday was my last day of work with the City Council (till next summer, at least). It was a pretty cool job, actually, but it'll be nice to have a break nonetheless! Next, on 11 Feb, I fly over to Australia, to study at ANU for the year -- with none other than Dave Chalmers as my honours supervisor! I'm planning to do my honours sub-thesis on something related to modal two-dimensionalism, and possibly (er...) epistemic possibility. Should be fun :-)
Sunday, December 25, 2005
What Next?
With my third year now completed, I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I was going to spend another year getting a double degree, but now I think I'll go straight into honours instead. (The main advantage being saving a year's time in getting into more advanced philosophy. Though as an added bonus, because I've done more than one degree's worth of courses already, I'll be able to discard those three courses where I only got an 'A', thus yielding a perfect GPA for my bachelor's degree.)
The big questions are 'where?', and 'doing what?'. My main goal for now is getting a good grounding in philosophy that will allow me to gain entrance to a top American university (or Oxford or ANU) for graduate study in 2007. Well, that and doing challenging and enjoyable philosophy, of course; but I expect they should go together.
As far as topics go, I'd most want to do some metaphysics and philosophy of mind, then some philosophy of science (especially as I haven't done any yet), and I feel vaguely obligated to get some history of philosophy under my belt at some stage too.
I'm not too sure how the honours thesis works (particularly, how much choice of topic the students have, or how much it is constrained by one's choice of supervisor), but some interesting topics that spring to mind include:
- Modality
- Philosophy of mind, esp. intentionality, subjectivity.
- Micro-macro relationships: reductionism, supervenience, emergence.
- Indirect reasons (the common thread between such diverse issues as: indirect utilitarianism, caring about reliability/knowledge rather than just truth, generalizations, etc.)
- Philosophical logic, e.g. problems involving indexicality, and/or philosophy of probability, esp. the principle of indifference, Bertrand's paradoxes, etc.
- Metaphilosophy, esp. the role of "intuitions" in philosophy.
- Political philosophy of collaboration: open source, creative commons, wikipedia, etc.
It would probably be best if I could get into one of the better Australian universities -- particularly ANU if I'd get to work with philosophers in the RSSS (e.g. Chalmers, Hajek, etc.). But it might be difficult to organize at this late date. In particular, I'd need significant financial assistance, and probably accommodation at a "Halls of Residence" (to make the transition to a new country a little less stressful). So I need to look into whether those are still open possibilities. [Update: looks like accommodation is probably available, but too expensive for me to afford. Honours scholarship applications were due back in October.]
Or I can stay at Canterbury for another year. Some of the offered honours courses do sound quite interesting. In the first semester I would likely do PHIL 453 Cognitive Science and two more out of: PHIL 431 History of Philosophy (Kant), PHIL 433 Moral Philosophy (Punishment), and MATH 441 Computability Theory. In the second semester I would do PHIL 463 Contemporary Philosophy (non-existence), plus choices from PHIL 439 Formal Logic, PHIL 458 Philosophy of Mathematics, and HAPS 401 Philosophy of Science.
Actually, Otago might be worth looking at too. They're a pretty small department, but look well suited to what I'm looking for. There I could do philosophy of science with Alan Musgrave (PHIL 308), metaphysics of modality with Josh Parsons (PHIL 459), would hopefully get one of the above as supervisor for my honours thesis, and have my other course(s) be the interesting-sounding ones on advanced ethics and/or advanced metaphysics. So much metaphysics! It would be wonderful.
Otago's main disadvantage is the lack of any philosophy of mind (for history of philosophy I could sit in on Charles Pigden's 300-level course). Plus financial concerns, as my current scholarship probably won't follow me around the country. But I guess that's what student loans are for.
Any advice is welcome, though obviously I can't promise to give great weight to random blog comments!
Sunday, December 18, 2005
2005@Canterbury.ac.nz
Time to review the year's courses. They were overall much better than last year's, I'm happy to say. Long may this trend continue ;)
First Semester:
PSYC 208: Cognition - A bit dry, but I'd say the content was important enough to make it a worthwhile course nonetheless. (And I like how they acknowledged my coming top of the class. Philosophy courses never do that. Perhaps they're trying to be "egalitarian" instead, I don't know.)
PHIL 236: Ethics - An outstanding course, highly recommended. Carolyn's a wonderful lecturer, and the content (meta-ethics) is intrinsically fascinating. [Highlights: "Why Be Moral?" essay, and learning about Hare's two-level utilitarianism.]
PHIL 317: Contemporary Political Philosophy - This was a great course too, with very wide-ranging and important content. Pity I only got an 'A' though, that was unreasonably harsh marking, IMO, I thought I did better than that. Ah well. [Highlights: all the basic income stuff, and smashing libertarians into itsy bitsy little pieces.]
Second Semester:
PHIL 238: Cognition - Average. Some interesting content, though the lectures weren't especially engaging. Suffered from being a 200-level course, I would have liked some more advanced content. Having said that, I found some of it quite difficult to get a firm grip on (by my standards, I mean; I don't imagine it would have any discernible impact on graded assessment). As a result, I put an insane amount of work into my first essay, though it fortunately paid off, with the lecturer giving extraordinarily high praise and a 100% grade in consequence. To be honest, I still thought my grasp of the topic was a tad slippery even after all that research. Philosophy of biology is weird.
PHIL 305: Philosophical Logic - Wonderful course! Paradoxes make for fascinating content, the student seminars were fun and engaging, and Doug Campbell's lectures on 'induction machines' were clear, original, and extremely interesting.
PHIL 471: Aspects of Rationality (honours paper taken as a 300-level special topic) - Very challenging. Elicited what is probably my best technical work to date. It was neat to have John Broome as guest lecturer for half the course. Some of the content was a little on the dry side, and I would have liked to see a greater focus on foundational questions in normativity, rather than assuming from the start that there are normatively-binding objective 'reasons'. But such is the state of the field these days. Highlights were my two essays: Reasons for Belief, and - especially - Ought we to be rational?
MATH 243: Analysis - Not so good. Classes were spent scribbling down theorems and proofs at breakneck speed. I don't know what they expect us to learn from that. In my opinion, there are two ways maths ought to be taught:
(1) Conceptually. For example, when you introduce a proof of something called the "completeness of the real numbers", stop and explain what this means, and what its broader significance to mathematics is. Think of it as philosophy of maths, the goal being to improve students' understanding of mathematics. This is especially appropriate for topics as foundational as those covered in this course (limits, sequences, series, functions, etc.), which was essentially about the foundations of calculus.
(2) Methodologically. Teach students how to do maths. Use plenty of examples, show us helpful techniques and heuristics for tackling problems and constructing proofs.
A mix of the two would be ideal. But whatever you do, do not opt for the (3) cramming in as much content as you can approach. It is utterly worthless. Students will hate every minute of it, remember just enough to fool the examiners, and then promptly forget it all. At least, that's what I did.
Also, assessment was very imbalanced. I got practically full marks for all the assignments, but couldn't even finish the exam. It asked far too much for just two hours. I was very happy to get an 'A' in the end; after that exam, I was expecting worse for once! Anyway, if anyone from Canterbury is reading this, I don't recommend taking this course for interest (though you'll probably need it if you plan to major in maths).
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Wishful Thinking Alert
Ian Olasov suggests that we all 'fess up to the list of philosophical claims that we "want to be true whether or not they are." He further explains:
I write as an exercise of honesty and to put myself (and my peers) on alert for irrational convictions I may harbor or areas of thought in which I might irrationally relax my skepticism.
So, here's my list...
I want the world to be understandable:
- to me: I want amazing complexities to be explicable in terms of amazing simplicities. (Hence my attraction to metaphysical naturalism and all forms of reductionism.)
- to others: I want there to be rational pressure towards convergence in the beliefs of all sufficiently informed and rational agents. If two people disagree, I want this to be traceable to an intellectual flaw (in either knowledge or rationality) on the part of one or other party.
I want all "revealed" holy-book or tradition-based (or otherwise backward-looking) religions to be fundamentally in error, and demonstrably so. I don't care about deism though. And I would be delighted if the sort of religious picture explored here turned out to be true.
I want it to be possible to really improve the world; for left-wing political ideals (like an unconditional basic income) to be practical and successful; for egoistic and parochial doctrines to be refuted.
I want artificial intelligence to be a real possibility.
I want philosophical progress to be possible -- and actual.
Friday, December 10, 2004
Wishing Well
Editorial note: I recently came across the new Poetry Carnival, which reminded me of an old poem I wrote several years ago - back in high school, in fact - which I thought I might type up here. It mostly just has nostalgic value, and is a bit melodramatic in places (as adolescent thoughts are wont to be), but the structure is kinda fun...
Wishing Well
I came across a dried up well
a chasm; deep and dark as hell
Where fires burned, yet no light fell,
and there it was I saw her.
"Come," she said, "to me, my dear,
These depths hide nothing you need fear.
Those flames - they are not really there,"
The fool I was believed her.
I took a step towards the well,
but then I somehow tripped and fell
right into the depths of hell,
and there it was I saw her.
"Take," she said, "my hand, my dear,
I will bring you safely there.
With me to hold, you need not fear,"
The fool I was believed her.
But then it was that she let go
And I, consumed by fire and woe,
wished that I could only know
why she had betrayed me.
I fell into an endless sea
and screamed - Though she'd forsaken me,
still I hoped she'd hear my plea
and save me one last time.
As darkness fell I saw her go
and knew then that I'd never know
whether she felt e'en the slightest woe,
or why she had betrayed me.
Yet her eyes twinkled out from beneath the sea,
it seemed that she had heard my plea
and come - perhaps to laugh at me,
or save me one last time?
I couldn't believe that she was there
And though at first I couldn't hear,
Her voice was music to my ears
Until I stopped and listened.
The chilling sea sapped all my heat,
The sky above did freely weep,
I fell into her eyes so deep
though the water blurred my vision.
"I didn't say a thing back there
those words came from within your ears
hearing only what you wanted to hear..."
Until I stopped and listened.
The flames above let off no heat,
The water below was only waist deep,
So I walked away, and did not weep
For at last I saw all clearly.
I came across a dried up well
a chasm; deep and dark as hell
Where fires burned, yet no light fell,
and there it was I saw her.
"Come," she said, "to me, my dear,
These depths hide nothing you need fear.
Those flames - they are not really there,"
The fool I was believed her.
I took a step towards the well,
but then I somehow tripped and fell
right into the depths of hell,
and there it was I saw her.
"Take," she said, "my hand, my dear,
I will bring you safely there.
With me to hold, you need not fear,"
The fool I was believed her.
But then it was that she let go
And I, consumed by fire and woe,
wished that I could only know
why she had betrayed me.
I fell into an endless sea
and screamed - Though she'd forsaken me,
still I hoped she'd hear my plea
and save me one last time.
As darkness fell I saw her go
and knew then that I'd never know
whether she felt e'en the slightest woe,
or why she had betrayed me.
Yet her eyes twinkled out from beneath the sea,
it seemed that she had heard my plea
and come - perhaps to laugh at me,
or save me one last time?
I couldn't believe that she was there
And though at first I couldn't hear,
Her voice was music to my ears
Until I stopped and listened.
The chilling sea sapped all my heat,
The sky above did freely weep,
I fell into her eyes so deep
though the water blurred my vision.
"I didn't say a thing back there
those words came from within your ears
hearing only what you wanted to hear..."
Until I stopped and listened.
The flames above let off no heat,
The water below was only waist deep,
So I walked away, and did not weep
For at last I saw all clearly.
