Total Eclipse

In a recent blog post, Warren Ellis posits that humanity should start Bending Mars to its will. Cheap/fast terraforming means taking the planet and fucking it up the ass until it feels like home to us.

I was arguing with an acquaintance on matters tangential to political philosophy. He was arguing from a rather extreme, radical political position, while I was arguing towards a more moderate, and in my opinion more realistic position. At one point in the debate, I had the urge to just yell at him “But don’t you [...]

Reading Thomas Nagel’s seminal “What is it like to be a bat?” There is a mantra I find myself repeating: THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY. Some food for thought, emphasis mine. [There's a paper here, waiting to be written, about the relation of a presupposed subjective character of experience, the myth of the given, [...]

The paradigmatic example of a sentence a physicalist holds true is “Pain is the firing of C Fibers.” This is an identity claim; It’s not that an action potential in C-Fibers causes pain, but rather that if we come to know the true nature of pain, it simply is firing of C-Fibers. Even most Functionalist [...]

Today in Metaphysics Lab I had an argument with the tutor against conceivability arguments. It is a common form of argument and phrasing in general in the field of metaphysics to speak of “possible worlds”. This may seem as intuitive as “is it conceivable that there is a logically possible world where I did not [...]

The following is a translation of a paper I wrote for my Techno-Utopia & Cyberculture course from 2 semesters ago. Enjoy: The issue of Personal Identity is a complex subject, which raises many difficult questions. What is a Person? That which thinks the thoughts I have? Is it identical to my body? Is it my [...]

Check out this interesting question on Yedda Is there a god? Is there a god? And if so, who or what is god? Topics: people, philosophy, religion, hope, god, belief, humanity Asked by eGrant on September 01, 2006 View the entire discussion on Yedda

Our Obligation to Future Generations, by Wilfred Beckerman (c) Wilfred Beckerman, I hope he doesn’t mind me reposting it here. I found it fascinating. The growing concern during the last three decades with the impact of economic growth on the environment has led to a widespread belief that we are failing to respect the constraints [...]

Cory Doctorow has recently posted a couple of interesting posts having to deal with ‘fanfiction’ on the best blog on all of the internets, BoingBoing. There is a notion of “original” work compared with “derivative” work, and the legal differences between these supposed separate states of affair. Creators hold intellectual property rights to their works [...]

Have you ever felt something best expressed in music? That words are like shadow-things, falling just off your true mean, but music, as in, like a metaphor, somehow manages to “show” what you mean? A kind of close approximation sense, but still more real than any words could ever refer to. I’m working on a [...]