Quote: "...pessimism..."

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"But if we are indeed in as bad a state as I take us to be, pessimism too will turn out to be one cultural luxury that we shall have to dispense with in order to survive these hard times."

- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

Pessimism can be a bit like a kid's blanky, especially when things are going bad. Something to hold on to. Everything can fall to pieces but at least you don't get disappointed and perhaps even some satisfaction from discovering that you where right.

Web Stuff: A Short Essay by Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan's essay "How I Trumped Rudolf Steiner and
Overcame the Tribulations of Illiteracy,
One Snickers Bar at a Time" can be found here.

Paradoxes: 1. Zeno's Famous Tortoise Chase

I find paradoxes really entertaining. They make me think in new ways about reasoning, the way I understand the world and the way we use language. What is a paradox? Well the old definition is that it is something 'beyond belief' or 'contrary belief'. It uses the same Greek root as 'orthodox' - meaning 'right belief'. Apparently it used to be applied more to things in the natural world that were just really weird. The platypus is an example of such a paradox. A duck-billed, egg laying, mammal that nursed its young was, for many Europeans, simply beyond belief (so it was named Ornithorhynchus paradoxus).

These days we just seem to accept that science and nature are weird and don't really make sense and so reserve 'paradoxes' for logical contradictions. You could say that a paradox is a true contradiction. Start with an obvious truth and then discover another obvious truth that seems to directly contradict the first - and you have a paradox. Here is an example:

Zeno's Paradox
Dan had a lot of fun with this problem here, and here. I remember there was even a facebook group dedicated to the 'nood turtle olympiad' implied by the paradox.

My plan for the next few months is to outline some of the more interesting paradoxes that have come up in philosophy over the years and think a bit about what they mean for our understanding of the world and the use and limits of reason and logic. Should be fun.

Web Stuff: Arts & Letters Daily

Arts & Letters Daily is a great little site that each day collects up just a couple of the best articles, book reviews, and opinion pieces from newspapers and journals right across the world wide web. Apart from the fact that the articles are usually really interesting they introduce you to papers and journals around the world that you might not have heard of otherwise.

There is usually a good variety of points of view displayed in the choices of articles. However, as I have only be looking for a month or so though so I would have to say that for me the jury is still out as to A&LD's bias or agenda. What I can say though is that if you like ideas and thinking about stuff you will usually find something to pique you interest.


http://www.aldaily.com/

Sights & Sounds: Welcome to the Welcome Wagon

What happens when a Presbyterian church planter and his wife start jamming with Sufjan Stevens? The Welcome Wagon happens, that's what. I am ordering their album Welcome to the Welcome Wagon so I can't say whether it is all as good as it sounds on the sample track available here but as Sufjan produced it and I am yet to find a bad review I am willing to give it a plug sight unseen. Give the sample track a whirl and tell me what you think.

A Bowl of Fruit

Why a bowl of fruit? Well you can put anything in it and it looks nice. It may have a whole assortment of tasty exotic things or it might just contain boring old pears. Hopefully there will be a few cherries. It will need topping up every couple of days. People are free to browse – any time – but sometimes it won’t get touched for ages. I hope you find something to your taste!

- JRS