Americans Should Be Able to Sell Stuff Without a Permit The normal mindset among U.S. officials is that prior permission should be required to sell legal goods to a willing buyer. Kids selling lemonade on the street are shut down. A Missouri man has been fined $90,000 for selling rabbits (he made about $200). In [...]

Language is fine; people are the problem It is neither rational nor moral to suggest that words have some—let me risk lifting a word from Dr. Hart’s field—ousia or Platonic essence. Words mean only what people choose them to mean. That is precisely why nice no longer means “lewd.” Transpire came to mean something in [...]

Postmodernism is dead I have some good news—kick back, relax, enjoy the rest of the summer, stop worrying about where your life is and isn’t heading. What news? Well, on 24th September, we can officially and definitively declare that postmodernism is dead. Finished. History. A difficult period in human thought over and done with. How [...]

Taking a quick break from studying to do this reflects how much I don’t care about time management. I know it’s a crappy photoshop job: I’m no photoshop guru, and that it only took 15 minutes doesn’t help either.

One of my favorites. Learned about this the first day of a course on Lonergan, oddly enough (or not, really, as much of Lonergan says is counterintuitive and made a nice lead-in). This video is a very eloquent explanation of the problem. Easily half of my classmates refused to believe it. I was skeptical at [...]

I’m not big on conspiracy theories. Some are more entertaining than others, sure. And some are right in pointing out that something isn’t right in re whatever it is they’re theorizing conspiracies about. And I have one of my own. I’m really concerned that I haven’t heard much really about this: Artificial Leaf Could Be [...]

The term “nonsense” is one of the most baffling words in our vocabulary. It has a negative quality only, like death. Nobody can explain nonsense: it can only be demonstrated. To add, moreover, that sense and nonsense are interchangeable is only to labor the point. Nonsense belongs to other worlds, other dimensions, and the gesture [...]

The Picture Theory of Meaning, Part Deux Propositions picture states of affairs. If the given states of affairs are true it is a fact, otherwise it is a possible fact. The expression of a proposition is mapped out in the same logical form as the fact (states of affairs) itself, but is a mapping of [...]

Names, like little points Propositions, point at things: Because they have sense. Between Logical Atomism and the Picture Theory of Language, there really seems to be a robust ontology developing in the Tractatus. 1.Facts are made up of States Of Affairs. 2.States of Affairs are made up of named objects and 1.Names refer to objects. [...]

The first portion of Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus (1-3.328), doesn’t seem to be as wildly confusing after a second reading. It lacks the more artful style of any other philosopher I’ve ever read, that much is certain. But what it lacks in artful (or dare I say playfulness of) prose, it makes up with in conciseness. These [...]