Posts Tagged metaphysics

Russell’s Atomistic Metaphysics

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in PEL's Notes on June 10, 2011

atom antSome information about Russell’s atomism was discussed in in our Wittgenstein’s Tractatus podcast.

For a bit more information, here’s his essay “The Ultimate Constituents of Matter,” pointed out to us (dismissively) by frequent blog discussion contributor Burl and mentioned on our recent episode.

I leave it to you all to explore this essay as you like, but let me give you a taste, which aligns well with what what we’ve seen previously of Russell, i.e. that perception grasps (by definition, it seems) something non-mental, that he believes in sense data, and (stressed more in our Wittgenstein discussion) he gives those sense data a primary place in the ontology:
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Information Theory and Metaphysics

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Web Detritus on March 10, 2011


Courtesy of listener Matt Gantner, here’s a Scientific American article on “Why Information Can’t Be the Basis of Reality.”

The author, John Horgan, criticizes information theorists like James Gleick who posit that information is somehow the basic structure of the universe (which seems to be a modern variation on Anaxagoras’s idea that mind, or Nous, is the fundamental component). Horgan argues that information requires someone to be informed, i.e. requires consciousness, which is obviously not in any ordinary sense present at the sub-atomic level. This is similar to Searle’s “Chinese Room” argument against the idea that “mind” can be understood as symbol manipulation (discussed here).

What do you think? Is Horgan missing something?

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Episode 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness”

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on October 10, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:44:17 — 95.5MB)

Primarily discussing “Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas” and “Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas,” by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna.

Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are “no” and “no… well… not that we can talk about.”

Mark and Seth (Wes was sick) are joined by guest Erik Douglas to discuss metaphysics, causality, the possibility of remaking your perceptual habits, why someone who believes that all is empty might still want to act ethically, and how to deny a claim without affirming its equally dubious opposite.

Look at this document for our primary texts plus a couple of others that we mention; we also skimmed Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. Secondary sources are discussed here.

End song: “Nothing in this World” by by Mark Lint and the Simulacra, recorded partly in 2000 and partly just now.

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Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on August 24, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:36:01 — 88.0MB)

Discussing Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2.

We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or “modes” of the big God mind).

Also, if you’re not going to sell out and go for a university position in philosophy, should you instead grind lenses in your attic without adequate ventilation? (Hint: no) Plus, the Amsterdam of yesterday, whose heady aroma drove people to write like Euclid, property dualism rears its ugly head, and Mel Gibson as Rousseau!

Read a free version online or purchase the book.

One place to read the earlier Spinoza book I refer to, A Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being (1660), is here. The Karen Armstrong book I keep referring to is The Case for God,and at the end Wes recommends Matthew Stewart’s The Courtier and the Heretic. Seth also brings up Giles Deluze’s Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.
The dumbed down, non-geometric presentation of the Ethics that I talk about is here.

End song: “Spiritual Insect,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

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Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on May 14, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:31 — 115.0MB)

Reading Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which is sort of a post-publication Cliff’s Notes to his Critique of Pure Reason.

Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience?

Kant says that yes, we can, to a limited extent, but that everyone before him did it wrong, because they didn’t understand how our minds interact with the world to create experience. He insists that once you read his book, you’ll never be satisfied with such “twaddle” again!

LEARN about the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason! THINK about whether geometric truths are justified by our intuition of space (maybe) and arithmetic is grounded in our intuition of time (probably not). DOUBT whether we actually impose causality on our experience as Kant says! MARVEL at our guest participant, Azzurra Crispino, as she augments the number of speakers on this episode to a PERFECTLY SQUARE number! GAWK as your world is turned up-flicking-side down by Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” (a term we neither use nor explain in this episode)!

Read the book online or buy it.

End song: “Subjectivity” from the 1994 album “Happy Songs Will Bring You Down” by The MayTricks.

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Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on January 3, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:58:56 — 0.0KB)

Reading Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy” (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey.

What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) right that we need to reject “metaphysical realism” based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges over the uncertainty principle, relativity, wave/particle duality, Pre-Socratic metaphysics, why Kant is wrong about space, and lots of very weird things.

Read the text online or purchase it.

Plus, we spend far too much time talking about an article by Thomas Nagel about intelligent design; you can read that here. And the blog post by Brian Leiter that got us talking about it is here.

End song: “Neutrino of Love,” written and sung by Dylan Casey, with backing and production by Mark back in 1997 or so (remixed and cleaned up just now). A different version appears on his Neutrino Sessions album.

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Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on August 19, 2009

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:27:08 — 79.8MB)

Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mr. W. wrote that the world is made up of facts (as opposed to things) and that these facts can be analyzed into atomic facts, but then refused to give even one example to help us understand what the hell he’s talking about, and so Wes and Mark argue about it per usual while Seth corrects our German pronunciation. The first 3/4 of this episode was recorded off-site from our regular equipment, making the audio quality relatively sucky. Enjoy!

Read the text online or buy the book.

For a clearer explanation of fact-based ontology, see this short introduction by Bertrand Russell to his lectures on logical atomism.

End song: “Facts for a Moment (What You Are to Me),” recorded in 1992 and released on the Mark Linsenmayer album Spanish Armada, Songs of Love and Related Neuroses.

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