Some find Tacitus’ Annals tedious. Some of it is. But his work keeps me riveted. I’m not so interested in history, per se. Rather I’m interested in identifying patterns of human behaviour, events that repeat over millennia, and asking why… Read More ›
Philosophy
Thoughtlets. XV. Theodicy revisited.
News media characteristically brings us one story after another about the kinds of things humans to do each other which are broadly characterized as “evil”. And these stories tend to generate accusations of “evil-doers” which are then dispatched with the… Read More ›
The Lesser Known Logical Fallacies.
If you’ve ever taken a logic and critical thinking course, you’ll have learned about logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are patterns of bad reasoning that occur so often they’re given their own special names. Ad hominem arguments are directed at the… Read More ›
Thoughlets. XLIV.
Do you ever wonder what future generations will look like? Look in a mirror. You are the future generations of those who lived before you. And do you ever wonder what future future generations will think of you and your… Read More ›
Saturday Morning Pam-toons. End of the Clapham Line. Guest artist Mackenzie Knight. (Repost Sept. 2020)
The Man on the Clapham Omnibus The ‘Man on the Clapham Omnibus’ is an hypothetical reasonable, ordinary person used in English law courts as a standard to judge the actions of real people in given situations — particularly to determine… Read More ›
Saturday Morning Pam-toons. Footnotes to Plato.
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. –A.N. Whitehead– Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Gifford Lectures 1927-28, New York: The Free Press, 1973. Internet Archive, accessed… Read More ›
Saturday Morning Pam-toons. So … what did you do?
So … what did you do? I broke the Law of the Excluded Middle.
Saturday Morning Pam-toons. And from this, an entire political theory.
Thomas Hobbes, A.P. Martinich and Brian Battiste, Eds, Leviathan, Broadview, 2011.Part I, Chapter XIII, 3. (p 122)
Saturday Morning Pam-toons. “The universities of the West, the lights that illumined the (so-called) Dark Ages.”(Hugh Graham)
It is for us as it was for the Irish Monks of the early medieval period, to carry the embers is to risk burning one’s hands. —Pam, 2021 *Pencil and pencil crayon drawing. For a quick overview of the contribution… Read More ›
An example of beautiful prose in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.
You’ve surely had that experience where you’ve set down your keys, or a phone number, or a bank card but can’t remember where. You turn your pockets inside out, rifle through the cushions on the sofa, search the crevices of… Read More ›
