On Arthur Schopenhauer's The World As Will and Representation (1818), book 2. Sure, we know from our senses and science what the world looks like to creatures like us, but if you buy Kant's view that this "world as appearance" is a construct of our minds, what's the reality behind the appearance? Schopenhauer thinks that we can know this: The world is what he calls Continue Reading …
Search Results for: "the simulacra"
Ep. 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness”
On the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna: his “Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas” and “Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas,” (read them here), plus we skimmed The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are "no" and "no... well... not that we Continue Reading …
Episode 95: Gödel on Math
On Kurt Gödel's essays, “Some Basic Theorems on the Foundations of Mathematics and their Implications” (1951) and “The Modern Development of the Foundations of Mathematics in Light of Philosophy” (1961). Gödel is famous for some "incompleteness theorems" of direct interest only to those trying to axiomatize mathematics. What are the implications for the rest of philosophy? Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog: “Axiomatic”
Listen to "Axiomatic" by Mark Lint & the Simulacra (as well as the version by New People). For our Gödel episode, I thought it fitting to remix one of the last-to-be-completed tracks for the Mark Lint & the Simulacra album (mostly recorded in 2000 with folks in Austin, but still not done now due to my having moved on to other projects): "Axiomatic," even though this Continue Reading …
Episode 92: Henri Bergson on How to Do Metaphysics
On "An Introduction to Metaphysics" (1903) How does metaphysics differ from science? While Kant had dismissed metaphysics as groundless speculation about things beyond human knowledge, Bergson sees it as a matter of grasping things "from the inside." He calls this "intuition": the kind of understanding we have of our own inner lives. If you try to describe this with concepts Continue Reading …