Thinking about Thinking
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Ideas Matter II
I embrace the idea that we humans never know the truth in any direct way, and that all we have is provisional "interpretations". But some interpretations are better than others because there is a Good that those interpretations bear a closer or more distant relationship to. I know that this is not how moderns think,
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Thoughts on “Lost” and “The Divine Comedy”
And so if we’re at all awake, we have this sense of living now at a threshold moment, and the story being told here on Lost projects for us what the stakes are using a technique that interweaves themes from both science and religion, logos and mythos. But at the heart of our story, as…
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Libertarian Takedown
Tristero at Hullabaloo: . . . to the extent that libertarians hold up the individual as primary and fail to recognize that individuals simply cannot physically exist without a social/cultural/environmental context, libertarianism is worthless. To the extent that libertarianism does recognize the complex dialectic between the individual and her/his social and physical environment, libertarianism is
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Quote of the Day: Ta-Nehisi Coates
I have, after many conversations and arguments, concluded that some aspects of understanding are about information. But others are about will–people understand what they want to understand, what they believe is in their interest to understand. (Source) In my experience, with some very rare exceptions, the only people who are persuadable are people who have
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Moby Dick Syndrome
I don't like what the Clintons stand for. I couldn't bring myself to vote for Bill in his second term, but I did feel that he was unfairly treated by the Republicans and the press in the runup to his impeachment, which was bad political farce from beginning to end. That's when it first became
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The Myth of Objective Consciousness III
In the two previous posts with this title, I was leaning on Theodore Roszak to make a fundamental point about the arbitrariness and the severe limitations of modern consciousness we take for granted as "objective" when it is in touch with the truth. That’s only true in the world of things and bodies, and while
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The Myth of Objective Consciousness II
I have nothing against science per se. My problem is rather with scientism, which takes a limited tool for learning about the mechanics of the material world as the ground for developing a comprehensive worldview. Scientism is not science. It is, rather, "a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and
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The Myth of Objective Consciousness i
Are we using the word "mythology" illegitimately in applying it to objectivity as a state of consciousness? I think not. For the myth at its deepest level is that collectively created thing which crystallizes the great, central values of a culture. It is, so to speak, the intercommunications system of culture. If the culture of
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Controlling the Narrative: Economics
"The field is getting much more empirical," he tells me matter-of-factly. (Christopher Hayes quoting economist Jesse Shapiro in "Hip Heterodoxy") You mean economics wasn’t empirical before? Would never have guessed. Haye’s article is worth a read, and the discussion of it at TPM Cafe is worth some time as well. It’s worth it to get