Tag Archives: Immanuel Kant
Alas (and also alack), with all that’s been going on lately, my Artistic Muse has temporarily fled (she’s almost as prone to suddenly vanishing as her sister, Lady Luck). As such, I’m not feeling much inspiration towards posting right now.
But my Nine Year Blog Anniversary is nearly here, and I’m determined to publish post #1000 to celebrate it. Pulling that off requires three posts between now and then (not to mention figuring out what to write for post #1000).
So today I thought I’d take care of a bunch of random notes.
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13 Comments | tags: D.C. Fontana, Edward R. Murrow, Immanuel Kant, Kurt Gödel, lutefisk | posted in Brain Bubble
Last time I started talking about entropy and a puzzle it presents in cosmology. To understand the puzzle we have to understand entropy, which is a crucial part of our view of physics. In fact, we consider entropy to be a (statistical) law about the behavior of reality. That law says: Entropy always increases.
There are some nuances to this, though. For example we can decrease entropy in a system by expending energy. But expending that energy increases the entropy in some other system. Overall, entropy does always increase.
This time we’ll see how Roger Penrose, in his 2010 book Cycles of Time, addresses the puzzle entropy creates in cosmology.
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26 Comments | tags: black hole, cosmology, entropy, galaxy, Immanuel Kant, laws of thermodynamics, Roger Penrose, thermodynamics, universe | posted in Physics
So very, very disappointing.
The headlines of articles I have no desire or intent to read proclaim that Lori Loughlin believes she did what any mother would have done for her child. I’m not all agog over actors, and barely recognized her name, but my impression of her persona involved a lot more of a moral center.
Recently, regarding our cultural calculus, I wrote, “Our greatest peril lies in disconnecting ourselves from truth,” because, “Life is hard enough these days without turning truth into a commodity.” Our social equation depends on us representing ourselves honestly, on not cheating.
Civilization demands that we play the game of life fairly.
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2 Comments | tags: cheaters, Felicity Huffman, honesty, Immanuel Kant, liars, Lori Loughlin, truth | posted in Society
Foam: Lots of little bubbles. In this case, a dump of various news items that caught my eye but which didn’t — for whatever reason — fit into the previous bubbles. (Or which I just forgot to include.)
Truth be told, I’m actually getting a little bored with these bubble posts of news items. But I’d accumulated so many of them by the time I got the idea that it’s taken some effort to flush the queue. And it has been nice that other writers, and other events, have been making my points for me.
And now I’m down to the foam at the bottom of the glass…
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Leave a comment | tags: carbon, Comedy Central, consciousness, Facebook, Gawker, human consciousness, human mind, Immanuel Kant, Joan Didion, John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Nick Ut, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, Samantha Bee, The Daily Show, The Nightly Show, Trevor Noah | posted in Brain Bubble, Society
It’s been ages since I posted any Brain Bubbles! That’s not for lack of my brain bubbling so much as various other “real world” (ha!) sharp pin bubble-popping things intruding. I thought it was high time I returned to effervescence!
There are some older bubbles queued up — they’ll surface eventually — but I was recently struck by a couple of brain bubbles recently (to the point of serious bemusement in one case and serious amusement in other).
Not feeling like a long post, so instead you get a pair of tiny bubbles!
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26 Comments | tags: Categorical Imperative, Immanuel Kant, movie violence, TV violence, violence, violence in movies | posted in Brain Bubble
It was never the plan for this blog, but I’ve found myself several times writing about morals (for example: here, here, and very recently here). In those posts I touched on what morality means and how we might define it. I make no claim to breaking new ground or having anything particularly insightful to say — just my 1/50th of a buck based on my own observations, thoughts, and experiences.
The last week or so a set of three thought threads wound through the loom of my mind and seemed to form an interesting fabric. They have to do with the nature of morals, the usefulness of reason, and our modern sense of otherness.
Today I’m going to try to make something out of that fabric.
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53 Comments | tags: alien contact, David Brin, Dogma of Otherness, dolphins, Ernest Hemingway, Immanuel Kant, intelligence, is and ought, mathematics, morality, morals, Otherness, rational thought, reason, Rebecca Goldstein, Rodin, Steven Pinker, The Thinker | posted in Philosophy, Sunday Sermons
As one ventures ’round the ‘web, a topic that arises time and again is the endless debate — or perhaps war might be a better term — between the poles of theism and atheism. I’ve determined, at least as far as my participation elsewhere, to recuse myself from that war. I’ve served my time on both sides, and I’ve pretty much heard it all, said it all, bought many tee-shirts and a couple of souvenir coffee mugs.
So this isn’t about the war itself, but about a topic that frequently arises as part of that debate: the idea of morality and/or ethics. A sub-question is whether those are different things, but the main question is how we define morality and how we ground that definition.
Here’s my stab at defining the difference along with some ideas about morality.
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55 Comments | tags: absolute morality, agnostic, atheism, consciousness, equality, ethics, Immanuel Kant, intrinsic meaning, moral philosophy, morality, morals, morals and ethics, relative morality, social mores, teleology, The Golden Rule, theism | posted in Religion
This may be the first actual Brain Bubble I’ve ever posted! The original intent was to provide a mechanism for sudden (short) thoughts I wanted to record or put out there. But the BB posts quickly turned into mini collections of thought bubbles.
But today I started trying to get into Immanuel Kant (again), and that naturally led to a bit of Wiki Walking.
It was when I got to the article about the subject-object problem that a sudden brain bubble burst!
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2 Comments | tags: brain mind problem, David Chalmers, Immanuel Kant, subject-object problem, Theory of Consciousness | posted in Brain Bubble, Philosophy, Science
It’s a crisp, cool, sunny Sunday, and the Twins just beat the Tigers 10-4 in the first game of what will be a double-header today. (The second game is to make up from being rained out Friday evening.) I’m not pinning high hopes of their winning both games, but they have won both games of the two double-headers played so far this year. It would be lovely if they did win tonight.
On the other hand, that would put the Tigers one more game away from taking the White Sox, and—as do all Twins fans—I hate those pale hose. On the other other hand, even if the Sox do take the pennant, they’ll likely get creamed by the Rangers or Yankees.
(I’m still holding hope the Orioles will take the Yankees. Anyone who’s not an actual Yankee fan hates those pin-stripe guys. “Best baseball team money can buy,” is not a compliment!)
But on this lovely Sunday, it’s awards, not baseball, that I want to write about.
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13 Comments | tags: blog, blogging, candy corn, fall, Immanuel Kant, Minnesota Twins, Newhart, One Lovely Blog Award, rattlesnake tastes like chicken, Wonderful Team Member Readership Award | posted in Life
Logos con carne 