Category Archives: Uncategorized

Truth: an initial stab at the thing

Posted on August 30, 2017 by

On campus we are having a series of discussions under the title of “facticity.” No, it’s not a headlong plunge into German idealism and the impossible task of capturing the brute “thatness” of what experience coughs up. Instead, it is … Continue reading →

Posted in Historical episodes, Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

The Shed

Posted on July 12, 2017 by

About five years ago, we hired a great guy named Joe Smart to build a philosopher’s shed for me. (More about that story here.) I’m really glad to have this separate place for reading, thinking, and writing – as nutty … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

My Life as an NPC

Posted on May 26, 2017 by

Another Stacks of Books essay to add to the library. This one makes good on a promise I’ve been making for sometime, which was to reflect philosophically on playing Skyrim. (Now those hundreds of hours can count as research!). I’m … Continue reading →

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The ban on navel contemplation

Posted on March 24, 2017 by

I have been busy re-reading Sloterdijk’s Spheres trilogy, working up to a longer reflection on it, but in the meanwhile thought I’d offer up this passages from Bubbles (Spheres I): The navel is located on the human’s front like a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Maybe the universe doesn’t exist

Posted on December 20, 2016 by

It is not clear to me that the universe exists. I’m not saying, of course, that there aren’t a lot of things in existence – my dog, this laptop, Saturn’s rings, and so on. And with any actual list of … Continue reading →

Posted in Metaphysical musings, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

The Problem of Disenchantment

Posted on November 19, 2016 by

[Reading Egil Asprem, The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric Discourse, 1900-1939. Brill, 2014.] Egil Asprem’s fascinating and learned work is centered around seeing disenchantment – or the growing propensity to see nature as empty of magical and divine … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Historical episodes, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Victorian anthropology

Posted on November 14, 2016 by

[Reading George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (Free Press, 1987)] Stocking’s book is most centrally about how 19th-century upper-class British males managed to combine their sense of superiority with an emerging awareness of Darwinian evolution. Many loose threads needed to be woven … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Historical episodes, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff, Uncategorized | 1 Comment