To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy. —Bertrand Russell, Philosophy for Laymen

Posted Tue 07 Jan 2014 13:05:00 UTC Tags:

Eastern and Western Conceptions of Oneness, Virtue, and Human Happiness | City University of Hong Kong

A number of East Asian thinkers, as well as some in the West, argue that in various ways the self is inextricably intertwined with or part of the rest of the world. While such views often are described in terms of a “loss” of self or autonomy, they are more accurately and helpfully understood as arguments for or ways to achieve a more expansive conception of the self, a self that is seen as intimately connected with other people, creatures, and things. In contemporary analytic philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, this general issue is more commonly discussed in terms of the “boundaries of the self”. The implications for such a view are quite remarkable and directly and profoundly concern accounts of the self that are found in ethics, religion, psychology and political theory. The more expansive view of the self that is part of the oneness hypothesis challenges widespread and uncritically accepted views about the strong, some would say, hyper-individualism that characterizes many contemporary Western views, but it also has direct and profound implications for how we conceive of and might seek to develop care for the people, creatures, and things of the world.

Posted Thu 09 Jan 2014 06:26:00 UTC Tags:
Posted Thu 09 Jan 2014 06:29:00 UTC Tags:

… [I]t’s impossible for an intelligent person to avoid having “a philosophy” in the broad sense – some system of beliefs about the most basic or ultimate matters, at least to the extent that those impinge on important choices in life. Since your philosophy is obviously important, at least to that extent, you should want a good one rather than a bad one. For most of us, studying philosophy will significantly improve the philosophy with which we begin. So the choice is not between “doing philosophy” and “not doing philosophy”, but only between doing philosophy consciously, reflectively, and well (or better) and doing it unconsciously, unreflectively, and badly (or not as well). —Ambrose at the Philosophers’ Cocoon

Posted Thu 09 Jan 2014 06:32:00 UTC Tags:

Ayn Rand, Ted Kaczynski, Weininger, Dietzgen, Lenin, Stalin, Mao … The best defence I know for professional philosophy, with all of its faults, is amateurs. —Michael Rosen commenting here

Posted Thu 09 Jan 2014 07:44:00 UTC Tags:

There is an entirely separate but serious worry about the fact that almost all psychological science is based on the study of a WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich, developed) sample of college students, the most anomalous population in the history of the earth.

Posted Fri 10 Jan 2014 02:38:00 UTC Tags:

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Posted Sat 25 Jan 2014 05:01:00 UTC Tags:

I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content. —Robert E. Howard

Posted Thu 30 Jan 2014 03:58:00 UTC Tags:

I’ve just completed the first two and a half of four and a half weeks of winter vacation classes that I have to teach. The final two commence in two weeks time, after the pupils are back at school for a strange two weeks in the middle of their winter holiday. Normally, I prepare for about nine lessons per week, each of which I teach at least twice with a Korean co-teacher. The preparation is shared between us. However, during the holiday I have to teach twenty-two different classes per week, preparing them all, alone, in the same amount of time I normally have to prepare nine.

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Posted Thu 30 Jan 2014 13:47:00 UTC Tags:

I feel highly motivated to study Korean at the moment because it is something that I can get quick returns on when I deploy some new grammar or vocabulary the very next day. I’m at one of the exhilirating stages of learning something where that is possible. Really I’m going to be useless for a very long time because my vocabulary is so small, but I can fool myself into thinking I’m making serious progress by learning new grammar, which I much prefer.

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Posted Thu 30 Jan 2014 14:14:00 UTC Tags: