Musings on Middleness
We occupy a position that is necessarily in the middle of things. I have chosen to refer to this notion as the concept of middleness. It is a […]
Philosophy
Journal Entry from July 25 2017
I’m motivated to write again, but I seem to be stuck at the outset. It feels like I have much to express, but I can’t seem to get my thoughts […]
On the Musk-Bostrom Simulation Argument
Elon Musk has recently gotten a lot of press for reiterating the famous Simulation Argument, first espoused by Oxford’s Nick Bostrom, which loosely speaking states that we are almost certainly living in […]
The Evolution of Perception
The following was a conversation between my friend and colleague Brian Odegaard and myself that was spurred by the recent interview of Don Hoffman, professor of cognitive science at University of […]
Musings on the Misuse of the Scientific Method
What follows is a slight reworking of a letter (or the modern electronic version of such) that I wrote to a friend who sought my advice on the standards by […]
The Social Fabric
With Bernie Sanders’ recent insurgent success on the presidential nomination campaign trail, preaching the Gospel of Bernie as TIME magazine’s Sam Frizell calls it, positioned as he is upon […]
The C Word
In academic circles, the word ‘consciousness’ used to be so frowned upon that professional researchers often didn’t even dare utter it, and would euphemise it instead calling it the ‘C-word’. […]
On the perils of communication
We are each an island unto ourselves. From across the farthest reaches of interpersonal space, we receive cryptic symbols inscribed upon a paper kept dry in a dirty bottle. Washing up […]
What Do You Value?
Not many people understand what value is. I want to try and dissect the question here as much as I can, and hopefully arrive at a lucid description of what […]
The World-Sheet
Worlds are folded into sheets imprinted with mirrored images outwardly projected. The center-point is a null void. We are like chicks encased in their pre-pubescent eggs, scratching their thoughts on a calcified […]
Shades of Green
These are both dark and bright times. I want to discuss how easy it is for the mind to latch onto insufficient information and oversimplify the world into a limiting […]
Journal Entry from February 5 2013
an interesting spot indeed to pitch one’s tent. a lofty perch of lonely sky-scouring foul-mouthed and inflamed sorcery. upon these very branches resides a fractal that splays its syntropic feathers […]
Natural and Unnatural, continued
The previous conversation regarding the referents of the concepts ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ notwithstanding, there remains an uncomfortable itch in my mind as regards the usage of these words. This relates to […]
Natural and Unnatural
I have been for some time now bothered by the usage of these words in common parlance: natural and unnatural. I wish to make clear here what these concepts are […]
Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can be an extremely debilitating condition for those who suffer from it. It comes in various degrees ranging from mere shyness to full-blown avoidance personality disorder. I want […]
all problems are in your own mind
All problems are in your own mind. We cannot escape the prison of our subjectivity, that which conditions the world. The error is to misattribute the colors our mind paints […]
Meditation Retreat Documentation 2011
This is intended to document the various experiences that I had during the most recent of the S. N. Goenka retreats that I have been on in order to maintain […]
Perceptual Load and Meditation
One of the most astonishing results of a 10-day meditation retreat such as the two that I have done in the past two years is the flourishing of perceptual clarity […]
Panpsychism and the Grand Scheme of Things
Panpsychism is the view that posits that all physical objects have mental states associated with them. This is an attempt to explain our consciousness without invoking specific soul-substances that inhere […]
Zombies
In a discussion of consciousness, the ‘zombie’ argument almost always comes up and is used as a thought experiment in order to demonstrate the impossibility of either one view or […]