NOTE: These days this is not my main blog. My main blog is a (free) Substack. You can check it out here: https://philosophybear.substack.com/ I can’t explain, the state that I’m in, the state of my heart, he was my best friend. -Sufjan Stevens, Wasps of the Pallisades My Ph.D. is partly about the interpersonal comparison problem. … Continue reading A sketch of a layered solution to the interpersonal comparison problem
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A very brief argument for materialism about power
Materialism is roughly a view which places special emphasis on economic conditions- production, exchange, and consumption in the analysis of society. Materialism about power then is the view that social power has an absolutely central foundation in economic conditions. Through most of recorded human history, materialism about power would have been utterly humbug, a triviality not … Continue reading A very brief argument for materialism about power
Reminder: We’ve moved over to Substack now.
I'll keep updating this blog for now, but not forever. Come join us over at Substack:https://deponysum.substack.com/
Brief reflections 1
The difficulty with writing aphorisms is that you've got to find a rare enough insight not to be trivial, but self-evident enough that merely stating it is persuasive. Aphorisms are innately the most egotistical form for this reason. "I don't even have to give you substantial arguments to be worth reading". I apologise for that. … Continue reading Brief reflections 1
300 arguments- a commentary
I recently read Sarah Manguso's "300 arguments"- a series of 300 aphorisms by the author. A lot of the aphorisms were extremely good, some were things I'd expect any moderately intelligent highschooler to know, but that is always true of collections of aphorisms. The brilliance was exceeding and the time required was extremely modest, go … Continue reading 300 arguments- a commentary
How to do things to words: mapping a post-analytic philosophy of concepts and intuitions
Introduction I wrote my honours thesis on experimental philosophy, almost a decade ago. I then went on unsuccessfully attempt a PhD. My feeling at the time was a feeling common to many philosophy undergraduates, but usually eventually beaten out of them. It seemed to me that many debates in philosophy were really, at heart, semantic … Continue reading How to do things to words: mapping a post-analytic philosophy of concepts and intuitions
The questions that haunt me at 3 in the morning
I think that everyone has unanswered questions that bug them. Recently though, I've been making a point of jotting them down. I've begun to realize how many of these thoughts are reoccurring, and that these constellations of questions define my mental life almost as much as my beliefs. You may think that you know the … Continue reading The questions that haunt me at 3 in the morning
Movements are always a distorted lens on the ideas they embody
Please don’t hate me for this one. I don’t think I’m better than other people. I’m just laying out in blunt terms what others have tiptoed around. The problem I want to spell something out in this post that I think many people know, but which goes underarticulated because it’s kind of mean. I apologise … Continue reading Movements are always a distorted lens on the ideas they embody
Thinking about class, history and society
This is a trap! I've lured you here under false pretences. You see it's come to my attention that a lot of people who see themselves as socialist haven't read the Communist Manifesto. It's short, actually kind of fun, and in terms of bang for your buck in reading primary texts, probably has the greatest … Continue reading Thinking about class, history and society
The Arcadian Cantos: a poem without an author
Note on content: This work contains content of a violent and sexual nature though nothing terribly graphic. It also contains reproductions of hate material for the purposes of critique/parody. Introduction [Feel free to skip the intro and go straight to the poem, if you would like] GPT-3 is a powerful neural network that has been … Continue reading The Arcadian Cantos: a poem without an author
