And besides, what some people consider boring, can turn out to be something you love. I love designing/creating databases, it seems boring as heck to some people, but to me its actually fun. So let the guy find something he might get paid well for AND enjoy doing.
Exactly. Working bliss is when you're paid to do what you would do anyway if unemployed.
I think we need to stress this point more to undergrads. Once you've made it past your second year, forget about all this literature and polisci crap and go learn something cool.
Unless, of course, you find literature or Poli Sci cool. In that case, it's time to start thinking about grad school. Here's a hint, though: unless you're a bright enough prospect that you get a funded free ride with stipend through grad school, you will not earn any money with your PhD or MA.
It's certainly possible to earn high-five/low-six figures in the humanities or social sciences (except for the truly esoteric, unfunded stuff, like Phoenician Studies), but you have to be brilliant in your field, and that means considerably more than "I know a lot about [insert field of interest here.]
Obviously it did interest you because you bothered to read the comments for it.
Not necessarily. Perhaps he or she's a compulsive reader like myself who, having no interest in auto racing and no faith in the efficacy of this form of advertising, is still willing to read the comments for each article to see if anything personally interesting is raised.
Hell, I'm only reading this article because I won't get any work for another 45 minutes, and I figure that advertising discussions on/. are more likely to provide entertainment than the morning's paper. It would never have occurred to me to advertise Linux by plastering Tux onto the front of a race car, and I'm not surprised that this project didn't reach its fiscal goal: I'm sure I'm not the only Linux enthusiast nerd to think, "Why, exactly, does this cost a quarter of a million dollars?"
They didn't hire a shill. They just hired someone who used to work for the RIAA.
Except that people often use "shill" a a convenient pejorative for PR flacks, regardless of whose misinformation they're pumping. I agree with your point in general, though...too many people on this thread seem to confuse this news with a RIAA takeover of the Democratic Party.
"This represents a potential shear with the left-wing blogosphere."
"Shear?" How about "point that will be grumbled about for an entire day, then swiftly forgotten unless this shill commits some egregious fuckup." Given the ready availability of news for the left blogosphere to discuss, this'll hardly register, epsecially since people generally assume that political conventions are as full of shit as PR flacks. It's not like the Democrats did something as contemptuous as, say, appointing a former oil lobbyist to be Secretary of the Interior.
I hadn't noticed the use of old imagery on Pass Christian; thanks for the point-out. Hopefully all this imagery is replaced by 2007 pictures at some point in the near future - the Katrina and FEMA stuff is already cached.
Really? I'm running an older version of Google Earth (4.0.2413), and I still have the post-Katrina images over Biloxi, although New Orleans has the pre-Katrina imagery. I didn't think the version affected the images you download: the Burlington, VT images on mine have changed once since I installed this build, without any action on my part. It looks like the Biloxi image is actually newer, as most homes are still covered with blue tarp and the casino that washed ashore has been removed.
Fund a study of these things as a driving distraction. If they're equally as or more distracting than cell phones, you should be able to lobby a bunch of key, high-income municipalities into instituting an eventual ban on operating touchscreens while driving. Voila, the engineers of taste rediscover analog charm.
OK, maybe it's not that simple. It's still possible.
It's nice to have somewhere to spread my great expertise! After all, I'm a tenured professor of computer science at a private university, and have a PhD in videogameology and a degree in IP law.
"... it is a marketers dream for targeted advertising."
Yeah. Because the ability to have people send you more unwanted advertising is a feature everyone looks for when buying a new phone.
It will be, once companies start trading this inconvenience for free high-quality phones and dramatically lower rates. I won't want one, but if people already put up with paying ridiculous prices for ad-bearing cable TV, I'm sure this service concept will raise few eyebrows.
Does this mean that, in an unfamiliar town, I can just type "pizza," hit "I Feel Lucky," and be connected with the most popular pizza joint in town based on call volume?
Really, I'm not being entirely sarcastic here. I wind up in strange places, and this feature would be more helpful than calling 411. Now, how to implement...
The way I remember it, the guy in the book was not even a sinner, just an endlessly miserable dude who is unreasonably sensitive and protest to pretty much everything, from the way people behave to 1+1=2, but embraces his toothache as the "proof" of his existence (Nietzsche was fond of Dostoevsky, and also wrote about his pain that is always with him and he counts on that faithful friend to be there like his pet, or something similar).
Although the word doesn't seem to apply today, such a person (filled with hatred for himself and others, contempt for claims of goodness, and rationalizations of his bad behavior) would definitely be considered "steeped in sin" or some such by the prevailing Christian sentiment of his time. I came to this story initially after reading Kierkegaard; his Sickness unto Death is an existential presentation of this conception of sin.
I'm not very familiar with Rorty, so I should read some of his stuff. I found some logical positivists that I read somewhat repulsive in their over-eagerness to destroy metaphysics, kind of too aggressive due to the lack of argumentation.
Rorty is an interesting case in Anglophone philosophy: he derides both logical positivism and metaphysics, and is probably the American philosopher associated most closely with the concept of truth as social construction. He cites Heidegger, Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Derrida as profound and influential. Rorty's reading of Derrida is one of which the author might not approve (and this is according to Rorty and critics of Rorty; I'm not versed enough in Derrida's work to come to any such conclusion on my own), but since when is that author the final arbiter of interpretation? With your obvious interest in deconstructionism, I would definitely recommend Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity: a more thorough understanding of Heidegger and Derrida would definitely allow the reader to take more away from the book than I have from my relatively narrow, Wittgensteinian analytic perspective. Rorty's criticisms of analytic philosophy in CIS certainly demand consideration by any thinker enmeshed in that tradition's idiom.
"With the 'cogito', however, I can't find a way to argue, because by arguing, I would be proving my own existance."
You can argue with cogito very well: read "Notes from Underground by Dostoyevskii". You can try it too.
The quote you replied to is not from my post, but the gp. I've spent a fair amount of time arguing against Cartesian skepticism: indeed, its concerns were my first introduction to philosophical interest, and used to keep me awake at night.
"The cogito sure does 'make sense,' though, and this is because experience suggests it."
But what if experience lies? You know, I'm talking about Descartes meditations.
I have read Meditations: you seem, in multiple posts, to mistakenly interpret my disagreement with Cartesianism as an ignorance of its claims. Of course, something being suggested and "making sense" from our perspective is not an indicator of truth. The problem with Cartesian skepticism ("What if all my sense perceptions are the result of a demon's manipulation," to use Descartes' imagery) is that it demands a criterion of absolutely certain knowledge. It's understandable that a mathematician such as Descartes would think in such terms; unfortunately, no such criterion for reality can be expressed in language, and the question itself a product of misunderstanding the relation between language and the world.
Hence the recommendation of reading Wittgenstein (and Hume, Kant [good luck], and also most of twentieth century philosophy) to understand the reasons why few take Descartes' concerns seriously as anything other than a matter of interest in the history of philosophy. Cartesian skepticism is the Platonic idealism (with its Ideas and Forms) of its time: notable not as a statement about "the true nature of reality" or any such inexpressible concept, but for the implications discovered and contended by those who followed.
Said Goedel[...]In a sufficiently complex system of axioms (that can be very simple) there are theorems that are true but do not have a proof. Neither relative nor absolute, whatever those might mean.
At the same time, there are those which are both true and can be proven such. Gödel made an interesting point about the limitations of trying to set up any system of axioms as completely self-justifying, but I'm not sure how that affects the claim to truth of all theorems.
You meant metaphysically-inclined Descartes, right?
No, I meant mathematically-inclined, although both are true. Descartes' most lasting contributions are in mathematics, and he considered himself a mathematician more than a philosopher from my understanding of his life and work.
I didn't know that you can prove things by a "ready example" of Buddhism, especially considering that none of the above mentioned dudes were Buddhists.
My point is that you can't prove anything by referring to Buddhist phenomenology, in the same way that you can't prove any phenomenological reports, subject as they are to the limitations of language. I used Buddhism as a one-word substitute for the perspective on conscious experience that opposes Cartesianism. To elaborate: "I exist [supposing the existence of a knower outside of existence]" possesses no more justification in language than an opposing concept such as "There is no I that exists, there is just existence [supposing this knower to be an illusory effect of this existence's nature]." Descartes' attempt to infer a self from the known only makes a statement about the usage of "exist," while Buddhist assertions of non-self only make a statement about the usage of "self." If the cogito were unassailably true, it would be in opposition to the strong conception of anatta, but the truth of either statement cannot be meaningfully asserted because language cannot claim to "represent" reality in the way Descartes imagined.
By the way:
I'll spell it for you since you probably don't even know what you wrote (which by the way proves that you do not exist according to Descartes)
I'm the first to admit that my understanding of precise mathematical terminology is lacking. It's a far cry to assume that I'm not familiar with the philosophy of mathematics, and basing that assumption on something with applicability as narrow as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is like asserting that quantum physics shows all reality is the product of conscious observation (shades of Cartesian idealism): it overreaches. Besides, I would hardly consider anything "proven" by Descartes: the whole point is that his phenomenology is unprovable. Cartesianism is interesting for the influential issues it raised, but hardly says anything profound about the intervening centuries of philosophical thought (most of which is, indeed, commentary on Cartesian idealism or Humean empiricism.)
Descartes I must notice that it is exactly him who proposed that the mathematical reasoning should be the starting point of all physical sciences...
He was definitely one helluva computer expert, like when he says that addition is to be preferred to multiplication as being the simpler operation to perform.
Descartes seems like Russell to me: possessing a penetrating and diverse intellect that enables his legacy to continue shining in mathematics (with its more solid criteria of truth), even as his philosophical conclusions are largely viewed as intelligent and interesting mistakes. I wonder if Russell's mathematical thought will be as sustained, 400 years hence?
You can argue with cogito very well: read "Notes from Underground by Dostoyevskii".
I should re-read that one. My only memory of that work revolves around its cutting first-person exposition of sin's nature and workings (to use an older vocabulary.)
You should read Derrida. You can try to read it too, although I can't guarantee you anything.
I didn't take anything away from Derrida that wasn't already clear from Wittgenstein or Rorty, and found some of Derrida's writing so convoluted as to be discouraging. Still, many whose ideas I've come to respect cite Derrida's influence, so I'll assume it's a matter of my Anglophone provincialism interfering with my comprehension of his writing. (This is likely the reason for my failure to grasp Heidegger, although everyone seems to think he's quite opaque.)
I must say, it's nice to have a philosophy chat on/. It's a topic often unfairly denigrated by those grounded in the physical sciences, just as such science is often unfairly denigrated by the philosophically inclined.
In essence nothing is provable. Which isn't to say that such recapitulations are useless.
Exactly! Even though the recapitulations of mathematics do not say anything about the universe (outside of language), they allow us to do amazing things in that universe by ordering our perceptions.
Descartes himself all but acknowledges that the cogito is pretty useless... right where he says:
"If it is ever found that the speed of light is anything other than infinite then it may be said that I know nothing in matters of philosophy".
I think thats just about a done deal nowadays, no?
Descartes understood, almost 400 years ago, that his explanation of the universe and phenomena required an omniscient knower (to sustain phenomena in the absence of human consciousness.) This quote shows keen awareness of a problem with that limitation, a problem that he never could have known would one day be a premise of science. I'm not familiar with the specific quotation, but Descartes' Meditations makes for fascinating reading after all this time, even with most of his conclusions refuted, because of his earnestness and honesty.
Descartes would ask - how do you know the rules of logic are correct (obviously, I mean in the physical, not logical sense)?
A lot of people have tried to answer that, and the best answer seems to be that you can't. Language is a convention that attempts to engage the world; it doesn't describe it in any way that is obliges reality to conform, because the "rules" of language are contained within that language's use. Logic is an axiomatic way of approaching language, and its truths only have certainty within the system's axioms. It endures because it generally seems to work better than competing systems, as far as helping us accomplish empirical goals.
With the "cogito", however, I can't find a way to argue, because by arguing, I would be proving my own existance.
Not exactly: you would only be proving (in the sense of certainty) the existence of existence. It's the kind of subtle bastard of a distinction that kept 19th century philosophers awake into the morning. The point of more recent philosophical thought is that you can't doubt the experience of existence, but there's always a way to attack its certainty in language, because language does not conform to experience in a way that gives its propositions inherent certainty outside of the appropriate rules of grammar.
If you're interested in these philosophical issues, I would recommend Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. People slate it as difficult, but it seems to me that many of these people are looking too hard for an epistomological system (a theory of knowledge) in the book, although none is either asserted or contained therein. Indeed, the author generally avoids technical language, yet managed to become perhaps the most influential 20th-century philosopher.
"At least one self-consciousness exists". Would it fit better?
Nothing really would, for the same reason: the grammar of "existence" precludes any such formulation from conveying any information about what it is that exists.
This used to give people skeptical fits, until philosophers in the latter half of the 20th century, for the most part, were persuaded that some concepts are just beyond the capacity of language to express. There's no reason to doubt the experience that "I exist," it just appears impossibly difficult to defend this empirical proposition with language.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless, of course, you find literature or Poli Sci cool. In that case, it's time to start thinking about grad school. Here's a hint, though: unless you're a bright enough prospect that you get a funded free ride with stipend through grad school, you will not earn any money with your PhD or MA.
It's certainly possible to earn high-five/low-six figures in the humanities or social sciences (except for the truly esoteric, unfunded stuff, like Phoenician Studies), but you have to be brilliant in your field, and that means considerably more than "I know a lot about [insert field of interest here.]
Be sure to check for overheating hardware as well.
Not necessarily. Perhaps he or she's a compulsive reader like myself who, having no interest in auto racing and no faith in the efficacy of this form of advertising, is still willing to read the comments for each article to see if anything personally interesting is raised.
Hell, I'm only reading this article because I won't get any work for another 45 minutes, and I figure that advertising discussions on /. are more likely to provide entertainment than the morning's paper. It would never have occurred to me to advertise Linux by plastering Tux onto the front of a race car, and I'm not surprised that this project didn't reach its fiscal goal: I'm sure I'm not the only Linux enthusiast nerd to think, "Why, exactly, does this cost a quarter of a million dollars?"
Yeah, but his views on the whole "states' rights" issue render him currently unelectable as one.
I hadn't noticed the use of old imagery on Pass Christian; thanks for the point-out. Hopefully all this imagery is replaced by 2007 pictures at some point in the near future - the Katrina and FEMA stuff is already cached.
Really? I'm running an older version of Google Earth (4.0.2413), and I still have the post-Katrina images over Biloxi, although New Orleans has the pre-Katrina imagery. I didn't think the version affected the images you download: the Burlington, VT images on mine have changed once since I installed this build, without any action on my part. It looks like the Biloxi image is actually newer, as most homes are still covered with blue tarp and the casino that washed ashore has been removed.
Fund a study of these things as a driving distraction. If they're equally as or more distracting than cell phones, you should be able to lobby a bunch of key, high-income municipalities into instituting an eventual ban on operating touchscreens while driving. Voila, the engineers of taste rediscover analog charm.
OK, maybe it's not that simple. It's still possible.
It's nice to have somewhere to spread my great expertise! After all, I'm a tenured professor of computer science at a private university, and have a PhD in videogameology and a degree in IP law.
-Essjay
Ha! Well played.
Does this mean that, in an unfamiliar town, I can just type "pizza," hit "I Feel Lucky," and be connected with the most popular pizza joint in town based on call volume?
Really, I'm not being entirely sarcastic here. I wind up in strange places, and this feature would be more helpful than calling 411. Now, how to implement...
I have read Meditations: you seem, in multiple posts, to mistakenly interpret my disagreement with Cartesianism as an ignorance of its claims. Of course, something being suggested and "making sense" from our perspective is not an indicator of truth. The problem with Cartesian skepticism ("What if all my sense perceptions are the result of a demon's manipulation," to use Descartes' imagery) is that it demands a criterion of absolutely certain knowledge. It's understandable that a mathematician such as Descartes would think in such terms; unfortunately, no such criterion for reality can be expressed in language, and the question itself a product of misunderstanding the relation between language and the world.
Hence the recommendation of reading Wittgenstein (and Hume, Kant [good luck], and also most of twentieth century philosophy) to understand the reasons why few take Descartes' concerns seriously as anything other than a matter of interest in the history of philosophy. Cartesian skepticism is the Platonic idealism (with its Ideas and Forms) of its time: notable not as a statement about "the true nature of reality" or any such inexpressible concept, but for the implications discovered and contended by those who followed.
My point is that you can't prove anything by referring to Buddhist phenomenology, in the same way that you can't prove any phenomenological reports, subject as they are to the limitations of language. I used Buddhism as a one-word substitute for the perspective on conscious experience that opposes Cartesianism. To elaborate: "I exist [supposing the existence of a knower outside of existence]" possesses no more justification in language than an opposing concept such as "There is no I that exists, there is just existence [supposing this knower to be an illusory effect of this existence's nature]." Descartes' attempt to infer a self from the known only makes a statement about the usage of "exist," while Buddhist assertions of non-self only make a statement about the usage of "self." If the cogito were unassailably true, it would be in opposition to the strong conception of anatta, but the truth of either statement cannot be meaningfully asserted because language cannot claim to "represent" reality in the way Descartes imagined.
By the way:
I'm the first to admit that my understanding of precise mathematical terminology is lacking. It's a far cry to assume that I'm not familiar with the philosophy of mathematics, and basing that assumption on something with applicability as narrow as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is like asserting that quantum physics shows all reality is the product of conscious observation (shades of Cartesian idealism): it overreaches. Besides, I would hardly consider anything "proven" by Descartes: the whole point is that his phenomenology is unprovable. Cartesianism is interesting for the influential issues it raised, but hardly says anything profound about the intervening centuries of philosophical thought (most of which is, indeed, commentary on Cartesian idealism or Humean empiricism.)Descartes seems like Russell to me: possessing a penetrating and diverse intellect that enables his legacy to continue shining in mathematics (with its more solid criteria of truth), even as his philosophical conclusions are largely viewed as intelligent and interesting mistakes. I wonder if Russell's mathematical thought will be as sustained, 400 years hence?
I didn't take anything away from Derrida that wasn't already clear from Wittgenstein or Rorty, and found some of Derrida's writing so convoluted as to be discouraging. Still, many whose ideas I've come to respect cite Derrida's influence, so I'll assume it's a matter of my Anglophone provincialism interfering with my comprehension of his writing. (This is likely the reason for my failure to grasp Heidegger, although everyone seems to think he's quite opaque.)
I must say, it's nice to have a philosophy chat on /. It's a topic often unfairly denigrated by those grounded in the physical sciences, just as such science is often unfairly denigrated by the philosophically inclined.
A lot of people have tried to answer that, and the best answer seems to be that you can't. Language is a convention that attempts to engage the world; it doesn't describe it in any way that is obliges reality to conform, because the "rules" of language are contained within that language's use. Logic is an axiomatic way of approaching language, and its truths only have certainty within the system's axioms. It endures because it generally seems to work better than competing systems, as far as helping us accomplish empirical goals.
Not exactly: you would only be proving (in the sense of certainty) the existence of existence. It's the kind of subtle bastard of a distinction that kept 19th century philosophers awake into the morning. The point of more recent philosophical thought is that you can't doubt the experience of existence, but there's always a way to attack its certainty in language, because language does not conform to experience in a way that gives its propositions inherent certainty outside of the appropriate rules of grammar.
If you're interested in these philosophical issues, I would recommend Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. People slate it as difficult, but it seems to me that many of these people are looking too hard for an epistomological system (a theory of knowledge) in the book, although none is either asserted or contained therein. Indeed, the author generally avoids technical language, yet managed to become perhaps the most influential 20th-century philosopher.
Nothing really would, for the same reason: the grammar of "existence" precludes any such formulation from conveying any information about what it is that exists.
This used to give people skeptical fits, until philosophers in the latter half of the 20th century, for the most part, were persuaded that some concepts are just beyond the capacity of language to express. There's no reason to doubt the experience that "I exist," it just appears impossibly difficult to defend this empirical proposition with language.