Somebody used the following phrase to get to this blog: “my mind doesn’t like god but I do”
Go ahead and try to figure that one out.
Edit: I’m #2 on Google for this phrase; hopefully this post will get me to #1!
New Favorite Search Phrase
July 15, 2009 by jmsytsmaAnother Twitterer
July 13, 2009 by jmsytsmaAs everyone seems to be doing it, I’ve decided I had better start twittering. (I know that the act of posting on twitter is called tweeting, but what of the act of starting and maintaining a page on Twitter? I’m going with twittering.) As I have little of philosophical, or general, interest that I can convey in 140 characters or less, I am going another route: Rather than being useful or informative, I’m just going to post some sentences that I have read and liked for one reason or another; maybe because of the idea they express, maybe just because of how they sound or because they strike me as amusingly absurd when sundered from their context. As I read a lot and am easily amused, expect frequent updates.
Follow me at: http://twitter.com/SomeSentences
Blazing Sunshine and Nietzsche
July 10, 2009 by jmsytsmaI watched Blazing Saddles last night and had completely forgotten about the Nietzsche exchange:
Reverend Johnson: Order, order. Goddamnit, I said “order”.
Howard Johnson: Y’know, Nietzsche says: “Out of chaos comes order.”
Olson Johnson: Oh, blow it out your ass, Howard.
This might even be better than the Nietzsche “exchange” in Little Miss Sunshine:
Frank: Who is that? Nietzsche? So you stopped talking because of Friedrich Nietzsche? Far out.
You Better Be Right
July 6, 2009 by jmsytsmaI saw a bumper sticker outside the East Liberty public library today that read: “If you believe there is no God, you better be right.” This raised the thought that I usually have when Pascal’s wager comes up: How do you know what God cares about? Maybe there is a God, but She just doesn’t care whether I believe in Her or not. After all, wouldn’t you expect the creator of the universe to be fairly self-confident and not to sweat what some human thinks (or doesn’t think) about Her? Maybe She doesn’t care how people act, period. Perhaps God doesn’t really care what you do, with the sole exception of punishing people who are presumptuous about what She likes. Or, maybe she just doesn’t like people with bumper stickers. Or, bumpers. If you believe there is no God like that, you better be right. Maybe God just plays dice with the afterlife. Or, canasta. Perhaps there is a God, but no afterlife. Perhaps you get reincarnated. Maybe the quality of the parents that you are reincarnated to is inversely proportional to the credence you place in Pascal’s wager. Maybe it has to do with the number of grapes you ate during your life. Perhaps it is the number of figs that matters…. The point is: If you don’t know, you don’t know, and that means that you don’t know enough to set up a reasonable wager in the first place.
Speaking of Crass…
June 30, 2009 by jmsytsmaI never thought about it before, but I imagine that Steve Naive (aka Steve Mason), keyboardist for the Attractions (Elvis Costello’s band), took his name as a play off of Crass vocalist Steve Ignorant’s name (aka Steve Williams). Or perhaps vice-versa. Both bands were formed in 1977, so I’m not sure who had their name first.
Barrage of Contradictions
June 29, 2009 by jmsytsmaCrass drummer Penny Rimbaud gets Mingus from the Beetles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSqh0rP3bm0
“Off the Wall” just missed the cut…
June 26, 2009 by jmsytsmaA while ago my wife asked me what my five favorite albums of all time were. Apparently it is a Facebook thing; as I don’t do Facebook, I thought about it a few minutes and put this post together with my first, second, and third teams. And, then I didn’t post it. The death of the King of Pop got me thinking about this post again, though. I had given some serious thought to a third team selection for “Off the Wall,” but decided that if I didn’t have a spot for Prince, then I didn’t have a spot for Michael either.
Here are the selections I went with. (One album per artist and no greatest hits or compilations. Feel free to mock my musical taste, remind me of essentials I’m leaving out, and so on.)
Top 5 (for today)
1. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back
2. The Clash, London Calling
3. Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills
4. Digable Planets, Blowout Comb
5. Gillian Welch, Soul Journey
Alt from my Formative Years
6. Fugazi, 13 Songs
7. Pixies, Doolittle
8. Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
9. Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking
10. Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
Soul, Funk, and Other Stuff
11. Parliament, Mothership Connection
12. Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul
13. Otis Redding, Otis Blue
14. Van Morrison, Moondance
15. Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison
On What There Is… of Poetry
June 17, 2009 by jmsytsma(First words from half a column of Quine’s “On What There Is.”)
Is we things unlike less?
And when we shift the sets?
For other would be most counterfeit–
Of notion.
Pegasus;
Otherwise nonsense is.
Has, seen… but:
Elementary subtler.
Precept their theories–
Pegasus.
Misguided McX’s;
More to minds named by us.
Wyman has being… but:
When we say such saying–
Pegasus.
Not the saying–
“Pegasus.”
Not with that case are…
Entity being–
Unquestion.
By way–
One who is united,
Ruining despite espousal.
He is the exister,
Preserving illusion.
Of bloated universe,
Says our sense,
Pegasus.
Slides for SPP Talk
June 10, 2009 by jmsytsmaNew Study on the Folk Theory of Colors & Pains
June 8, 2009 by jmsytsmaI have posted a draft of the paper that I will be presenting at the 2009 SPP conference this weekend on the PhilSci Archive: Does heterophenomenology concede too much? (Comments both welcome and appreciated!) This draft includes a number of studies that I have posted on previously, but also an exciting new study based on a suggestion by David Chalmers during the Consciousness Online conference.
My goal was to test claims by Daniel Dennett that the concept of qualia is part of the folk theory of consciousness, reflecting their acceptance of Locke’s secondary quality view. I tested this for two paradigmatic types of qualia–colors and pains. Subjects were randomly given either a paragraph discussing colors or pains followed by four questions:
Color Questions: There is an old puzzle that many people are familiar with: “If a tree falls in the woods but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Philosophers have posed a similar question about vision: “If there is a ripe tomato on the table but no one is there to see it, is it still red?” Some philosophers have argued that tomatoes, for example, are not really colored; rather, they hold that the red is produced in your mind and is merely caused by the tomato. Other philosophers have disagreed, arguing that the red is really in the tomato and is simply seen by the mind.
1. Which of these two positions do you agree with more?
2. Do you think that there is still red in a ripe tomato even when there is no one there to see it?
3. Do you think that the red you see when you look at a ripe tomato is in your mind?
4. Do you think that the red you see when you look at a ripe tomato is in the tomato?
Pain Questions: There is an old puzzle that many people are familiar with: “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Philosophers have posed a similar question about pain: “If a person has badly injured her leg but isn’t paying attention to it, is there still a pain?” Some philosophers have argued that when you stub your toe, for example, the pain is not really located in the injured toe; rather, they hold that the pain is produced in your mind and is merely caused by the injured toe. Other philosophers have disagreed, arguing that the pain is really in the injured toe and is simply felt by the mind.
1. Which of these two positions do you agree with more?
2. Do you think that there is still pain in a badly injured leg even when the person is not aware of it?
3. Do you think that the pain you feel when you forcefully stub your toe is in your mind?
4. Do you think that the pain you feel when you forcefully stub your toe is in the toe?
The first question for each probe was on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 with the former position (”the red is produced in your mind and is merely caused by the tomato” / “the pain is produced in your mind and is merely caused by the injured toe”), at 4 with “not sure,” and at 7 with the latter position (”the red is really in the tomato and is simply seen by the mind” / “the pain is really in the injured toe and is simply felt by the mind”). The other three questions were answered on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 with “clearly no,” at 4 with “not sure,” and at 7 with “clearly yes.”
340 subjects completed the survey online at Philosophical Personality. 42 subjects were removed because they had taken the survey previously or because they were under 18 years of age; an additional 59 subjects were removed because they had training in philosophy or psychology. The remaining 239 subjects were 70.3% female, with an average age of 35.6 years, and ranging in age from 18 to 83 years old.
While high answers to question 3 and low answers to the other three questions follow the secondary quality view, the mean responses for the subjects for each probe showed the opposite pattern. As predicted, the mean responses for the first, second, and fourth questions were significantly above the neutral point of 4, while the mean responses for the third question were significantly below 4. What we find is that a majority of the subjects tested deny the secondary quality view for both colors and pains, holding that these qualities are qualities of objects outside the skull and denying that they are mental or mind-dependent.
While questions 2, 3, and 4 were answered on the same scale used in Study 1, question 1 was answered on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 with “the red is produced in your mind and is merely caused by the tomato,” at 4 with “not sure,” and at 7 with “the red is really in the tomato and is simply seen by the mind.”
