Category Archives: 3QD essays

The Cyborg of Practical Wisdom

Posted on December 21, 2015 by

The biggest struggle my fellow modern-day cyborgs and I face is to create a virtual reality that connects more wholesomely with the human part of our nature. The artificial reality we currently plug into is a Terry Gilliam nightmare. Too … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Machines / gadgets / technology / games, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff | Leave a comment

Hypatia of Alexandria: or, a primer on platonic love

Posted on November 23, 2015 by

Plato, as we know, told tales of an abstract realm beyond the senses, a realm beyond the dim and dark cave we call “the world.” It was a realm of forms, first glimpsed through the discipline of mathematics, and more … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Historical episodes | Leave a comment

Everything is meaningless – but that’s okay

Posted on October 26, 2015 by

What would it be for life to have a “meaning”? What does it mean when people say life is meaningful? I’m not sure, so let’s start with smaller, more obviously meaningful things. Better yet, let’s start with some meaningless things. When … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff | 7 Comments

“A Stranger to One’s Own Country”

Posted on September 28, 2015 by

Descartes was not a bookish man. There’s a well-known anecdote that reveals what he thought of libraries: One of his friends went to visit Descartes at Egmond. This gentleman asked him about physics books: which ones did he most value, … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Books, Historical episodes | Leave a comment

The Magical Dimensions of the Globe

Posted on August 31, 2015 by

There’s a particularly good episode of Doctor Who (“The Shakespeare Code”) wherein the Doctor and Martha visit Shakespeare and save the world from a conspiracy of witches. The witches’ plan is to take possession of Shakespeare and force him to write … Continue reading →

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Learning from Hume; or, Hume and Particle Physics

Posted on August 5, 2015 by

Philosophy students are typically taught the wrong lesson from the great Scottish skeptic David Hume. The standard story goes something like this. British empiricists like Locke and Berkeley wanted to connect everything we know to what we experience through the … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Historical episodes, Kant and/or Hume | 1 Comment

On appreciating systems

Posted on July 6, 2015 by

How wonderful it would be to be a systematic thinker! One marvels at the Aristotles, the Aquinases, the Descarteses, the Kants, and the Hegels and the Marxes (well, the Karl Marxes anyway), the Freuds – those who know how to … Continue reading →

Posted in 3QD essays, Kant and/or Hume | 2 Comments