fragments of consciousness

Philosophy teams

Some frivolity for the new year. Some of you may know about the fish philosophers and the bird philosophers:

Fish philosophers: Adrian Haddock, Kelly Roe, Nathan Salmon, Scott Sturgeon, J.D. Trout, Jennifer Whiting. (Borderline case: Ellery Eells.) Captain: Bill Fish.

Bird philosophers: Tim Crane, Antony Eagle, Alicia Finch, Mike Martin, Chris Peacocke, Rob Sparrow. (Borderline cases: Gabe and Susanna Seagull.) Captain: Alexander Bird.

There are also:

Occupation philosophers: Lynne Baker, Alex Barber, Bill Brewer, John Gardner, Cliff Hooker, Jeff King, Ray Monk, Graham Priest, Sydney Shoemaker, Peter Singer, Ken Taylor. (Captain: Steve Jobs?)

Body-part philosophers: Justin D'Arms, Philippa Foot, Michael Hand, R.M. Hare, H.L.A. Hart, Cathy Legg, Louis Loeb.

Colour philosophers: Max Black, Jessica Brown, Ian Gold, T.H. Green, Thomas Pink, Wolfgang Schwarz, Anita Silvers, Ming Tan, Roger White. (Captain: Hue Price?)

Then there are the autological philosophers: Jack Smart, Kit Fine, Stephen White. And the heterological philosophers: Max Black, Steven Gross, Alva Noe. (I leave aside hard cases such as Crispin Wright and Joe Heterological.) And the philosophers whose name are sentences: Lynda Burns, Immanuel Kant, Benson Mates, Adam Pautz, John Shook, Jeff Speaks.

More philosophers for these categories, and more categories?

Should Old Aquinas Be Forgot?

I received the following question from Jerry Reedy at Macalester College:

Have you ever heard the song "Should old Aquinas be forgot in the days of Wittgenstein?  I heard Anthony Kenny sing a few lines at Oxford, but I didn't write the words down.  I'd love to find it.  The fourth line is "Willard Van Orman Quine".

A Google search turns up a few references but few lyrics.  The closest thing, turned up by Google Book Search, is a reference by Alvin Plantinga in The Nature of Necessity, giving one more line: "Hesperus and Phosphorus are entities distinct".

Anyone know more?

Joni Mitchell meets the Zombies

Alan White has posted a new addition to his philosophy songs page: "Two Sides Now", an adaptation of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" to address the zombie argument.  He says it was inspired by my paper on the 2-D argument against materialism.  Here's the lyrics and the music.  It joins such classics as "Readin' Kripke" (music), "Solipsism's Painless" (music),  and "Make a Talk on the Ryle Side" (music), as well as tributes to Bill Lycan and Brian Weatherson.

ALso on the zombie front, Victor Caston pointed out the Onion's news item on Pittsburgh's unreadiness for a major zombie attack.

Zombie horoscope

Jason Decker pointed out the following horoscope at The Onion.  I am, in fact, an Aries.  Now I'm worried!

Update: Check out the zombie simulator (and the original and another version), as well as the online Zombie Survival Guide.

Postmodernist?

I took the "What is Your World View?" quiz and discovered to my surprise that I'm a postmodernist.  Who knew that believing in context-dependence and the importance of analyzing language entails postmodernism?  OK, maybe it didn't help that I voted for interpretation being an intrinsic feature of the universe (what else would it be?), though I did put in a vote for truth.

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist: 69%.  Cultural Creative: 63%.  Existentialist: 56%.  Modernist: 44%.  Materialist: 38% (!).  Idealist: 38%.  Romanticist: 31%.  Fundamentalist: 25%.

Phil in words of one syll

Denis Robinson of the University of Auckland has embarked on the monumental project of translating the key ideas of philosophy into words of one syllable.  This project was pioneered in George Boolos's 1994 paper in Mind, "Godel's Theorem translated into words of one syllable", the upshot of which was "If math is not a lot of bunk, then no claim of the form 'X can't be proved' can be proved".  Denis has now extended the project to one-syllable formulations of many of the key questions of philosophy, including some key questions in ethics, the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and metaphysics.  There are a lot still to go, though!  So your contributions to this project are welcome.  Denis's contribution follows.

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If each word was a word of just one sound, what could we do, when we did our work, and how would that fact bind us?

Not that "a word of just one sound" quite gets the thing one tries to say here - but no way I can find to try to say it is as good as this one, but this one.

Brain in a vat

You can now order your very own brain in a vat.  Just having one in your office will turn you into a skeptic!  Thanks to Chris Grau for the tip.