Philosophy

January 8, 2025

Thoughtlets LVII. Thomas Hobbes & Antonio Damasio

Two barebones comparisons of quotes from Chapter II of Antonio Damasio’s Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain and Part I: Chapter 13 of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Note: On Damasio’s view emotion and feeling are separate entities, although emotion both underpins and is intricately related to feeling. Emotions are “collections of reflex responses, Continue reading

Philosophy, Social and Political Commentary, Thoughtlets

cognitive science, conservation, damasio, delectation, emotion, Hobbes, Law, morality, neuroscience, passions, Philosophy, rhetoric, war, well-being
August 31, 2024

Forest of Knowledge. Beatnik Philosophy.

Complementing an academic’s freedom to dissent is the maximal removal of impediments to her pursuit of hypotheses and matters of fact about the stuff that furnishes the universe and of the universe itself. This stuff undergirds the core investigations of philosophy: what exists (ontology); what, and how, can we know (epistemology); and how shall we Continue reading

Arts and Leisure, Catch-All, Philosophy, Social and Political Commentary

academia, academic freedom, academy, beatnik, disputation, dissent, epistemology, fact, fiction, forest, investigation, investigations, knowledge, ontology, Philosophy, poetry, political, prose, social
August 23, 2024

The Right(eous)ness of the Wronged: A Powerful Tool of Persuasion.

Righteous anger motivates personal crusades just as it does a march of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. *Herein, I use rhetor, orator speaker and writer interchangeably. Likewise for the words hearer, audience, judger, and reader. An overview of what Aristotle means by rhetoric and some of its features is helpful here. Aristotle defines rhetoric as, Continue reading

Philosophy, Political Rhetoric, Social and Political Commentary

anger, aristotle, campaign, emotion, ethos, God, good, harris, Hobbes, injustice, justice, karma, oratory, pathos, persuasion, Philosophy, political, politics, revenge, rhetoric, right, righteous, speaker, Trump
August 18, 2024

Thoughtlets. LVI. Philosophy Folded in My Right Hip Pocket

There’s a couple of lines of a passage in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations that’ve been bothering me, “Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready, too — ready to understand heaven and earth.” I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to lose one’s philosophical acumen after graduating if it’s Continue reading

Philosophy, Thoughtlets

acumen, arrogance, Carnap, degree, ego, habits, humility, Marcus Aurelius, meditations, Philosophy, practice, read, study
June 29, 2024

Dissoi Logoi (cf Aristotle), the Devil’s Advocate (Mill), and comments.

Way, way back in the day — a couple millennia ago — students receiving a classical education would have learned the necessity of Dissoi Logoi to constructing their arguments. That is, they’d throw themselves full throttle into an opposing or contradictory position to their own. And while Aristotle invented neither the method nor the term, Continue reading

Philosophy, Political Rhetoric, Social and Political Commentary

argument, aristotle, belief, cancel culture, controversy, covid, deplatform, devil's advocate, dissoi logoi, Mill, opinion, pandemic, Philosophy, rhetoric
June 28, 2024

Whenever two people “desire the same thing[s]” … compare Aristotle and Hobbes.

I present the following two quotes (Aristotle and Hobbes, respectively) for comparison, without analysis. Aristotle Book II, Chapter IV Friendship and Enmity, 1381b 15 And [we also feel friendly] towards those who are like ourselves in character and occupation, providing they do not get in the way or gain their living from the same source Continue reading

Philosophy, Political Rhetoric

aristotle, co-operation, competition, desire, Hobbes, negotiation, Philosophy, policy, political, rhetoric, war
June 15, 2024

Thoughtlets. LIV. “Your dog is a true philosopher.”

There are people who say Dog is God spelled backward. And that’s exactly what comes to mind every time my dogs lick cat vomit off the rug. It’s a behaviour akin to playing records backward to reveal Satanic messages. This way Doris Day, that way Linda Blair. Now don’t get me wrong. I love my Continue reading

Thoughtlets

ageing, companions, dog, dogs, God, guardian, heaven, love, pets, philosopher, Philosophy, Plato, Republic
June 15, 2024

Thoughtlets. LIII. Gossepistemology.

I’m suggesting a novel portmanteau, at least in as far as a cursory Google search tells me: Gossepistemology. Gossip + Epistemology. (*Google provides links to myriad articles on gossip & epistemology.) In Philosophy, epistemology is the branch concerned with the study of knowledge. A classical concern of epistemology is the distinction between opinion and knowledge Continue reading

Thoughtlets

belief, distinction, doxa, evidence, gossepistemology, gossip, knowledge, opinion, Philosophy, reliable, rhetoric, social, testimony
June 15, 2024

Thoughtlets. LII. Malthusian Trivia: Not an Enemy of Population Growth

About 10 years ago I spent what I call The Summer of Malthus. By which I mean that one of the tasks I was set to as a research assistant was to read Robert Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population, searching for what Malthus takes to be ‘vice’. I read a copy Continue reading

Thoughtlets

abstinence, AOUM, discipline and trial, economic, health, Malthus, misery, moral, Philosophy, political, poor, restraint, social, vice
June 11, 2023

Saturday Morning Pam-toons. “AS EVERYONE KNOWS …”

DON’T LET THE ARGUMENT TO THE HAND-WAVE WIN THE DAY Continue reading

Pam-Toons

argument, belief, cartoon, dismiss, eopistemology, fallacy, graphic, hand, hand-wave, justification, pencil, Philosophy, photo, political, politics, rhetoric, sketch, sloppy, warrant, wave