Adding philosophical depth to anything and everything
Philosophy in the real world.
I am not at all religious, but I respect religion and religious people. Honestly, I find religion fascinating–what people believe and how their beliefs motivate their actions. That is part of what separates humans from animals. Humans are belief-motivated beings. […]
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One of the most notoriously misunderstood concepts in the history of philosophy is Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch. The word “Übermensch” is too often mistranslated into English as “superman” but the German “Über” means “over” not “super.” We need to be clear […]
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Kant’s Sixth Proof of God Immanuel Kant definitively demonstrated in his writings that no proof or disproof of the existence of god could be fashioned from pure reason. He conclusively and persuasively showed that all of the five standard rational […]
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A colleague recently suggested to me that Immanuel Kant’s categories of understanding could be described as algorithms that organize sense data. An algorithm, the someone said, is defined as “a procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number […]
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Beethoven and Philosophy Many people are not aware of the fact that Beethoven’s tremendous musical innovation was in part influenced by the incredible innovation occurring in German philosophy at that time. Beethoven knew several members of the German Idealist movement […]
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look fear in the face – Eleanor Roosevelt from You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life Eleanor Roosevelt is underappreciated as a person of wisdom. Her book, You Learn by Living is well worth reading. It […]
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During a lecture, the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Columbia University […]
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