Philosophy & Ethics

Bertrand Russell was frequently abused as a child by his parents and elders with the titling piece of snark to this blog entry. While not a particular Russell fan (though he was a spectacularly clear writer) I find myself of late returning to the above snottily dismissive piece of dogmatic anti-intelligence with singluar antipathy towards those who ennuciate it of late. You see, questions of mind and matter have been weighing heavily on my these last few months. I have a front row seat to my father's delamination due to dementia, possibly early onset alzheimers. His sister, my aunt, is…

Individualism is the political philosophy or ideology that emphasizes independence and self-reliance. Individualists advance the idea of realizing one's goals and desires, while opposing most external interference upon those objectives, by society, or any outside agency. Collectivism is a term used to describe any perspective that stresses human interdependence and the importance of a collective or group, rather than the importance of separate individuals. In this view, the emphasis is on community and society, and priority is given to group goals over individual goals. How do such seemingly…

On the Big Ideas Blog there is a post about the different types of reasoning, Analytic vs. Synthetic, and their relevance to the existence or non-existence of God.  But, my favorite passage was one concerning we mathematicians: The requirement of reasonableness might be illustrated as follows. Imagine Tom, John and Jane live in a country run entirely by mathematicians. Their whole culture is built on analytic thinking — only water-tight logical proofs are considered to have any real force. Well, then it would hardly matter how careless Tom had been in disguising the murder, since any…

"Non ho mai chiesto di occuparmi di mafia. Ci sono entrato per caso. E poi ci sono rimasto per un problema morale. La gente mi moriva attorno" (I never asked to work on mafia. I got to do it by chance. And then I continued because of a moral issue. People around me kept dying.) Paolo Borsellino (Italian Judge, killed by mafia in 1992)

The main stream media (“MSM”)[1] frequently treat us to dramatic stories of “scientific controversies” supposedly playing themselves out before our eyes. However, while such stories might make for exciting reading, they are seldom especially informative as regards to scientific inquiry itself. The reasons for this are not hard to find: any reasoned inquiry requires patience, discipline, depth and commitment, none of which readily express themselves in 15 second sound bytes or breathless “he said/she said” paragraphs that rush ahead of the facts in the name of “balance.” Real scientific…

Allow me, if you will, to stray from my usual posts about computers, Internet technology, and mathematics. In the mid-1980s I saw a musical on Broadway called The Tap Dance Kid. I enjoyed it a lot — I liked the story, the characters, the songs, and the dancing. It’s not a very well known musical, it got a poor review in the New York Times (Frank Rich liked it much less than I), and it ran for less than two years. It’s the story of an African-American family, centered around a pre-teen called Willie. Much of it is the standard sort of story: Willie wants to do one thing with his life, but…

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #3 The Voynich manuscript, Beinebecke Library's MS 408 is a handwritten parchment codex of about 240 pages measuring 225 x 160 mm.   The manuscript is in an unreadable script.  Most of its pages are illustrated.  For nearly 100 years, not one person or group has managed to decode even a single word of it. In The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #1  I discussed some of the background of Ethel and Wilfrid Voynich.  In The Voynich Manuscript : Dating An Enigma  I discussed some ideas which might help to date the…

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #2 It is nearly 100 years since the Voynich manuscript arrived in America.  In that time, not one person or group has managed to decode even a single word of it. I suggest that decryption of any document requires as much prior knowledge as possible about the physical document, its origin and purpose.  For that reason, I am compiling a background to the Voynich manuscript before any discussion of possible encryption schemes. The Voynich manuscript is named after the man who first showed it in America, the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich. …

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #1 There are many unsolved mysteries in this world.  A web search for 'greatest mysteries', 'unsolved mysteries', 'world's greatest mysteries' and similar search terms leads to many sites dealing mostly with the strange and the paranormal.  It is all too easy to claim that science has yet to explain x, y and z, and many sites make such claims.  Before science can explain a mystery it must be explainable at least in principle.  The Voynich manuscript seems to be explainable, at least in principle.  It is just a matter of…

(This is the first in what I anticipate to be a series of three essays on moral inquiry. The second will be a survey of some traditional themes and their contemporary applications, and the third will focus on the “center” around which such inquiries ought to be oriented.) Statements of moral/ethical[1] evaluations are often confronted in turn by the varyingly self-righteous demand, “Who are we to judge?” Anyone who has taught classes in ethics (and I've done so both in traditional “brick and mortar” settings as well as online) will encounter that phrase repeatedly. It is an only slightly more…