Epistemology My Absent Career 10: Contra Quality 1 Jan 20231 Jan 2023 So, taking this extreme parsimony approach leads me to sharply distinguish between things that are and things we think there are. A good many of our most favoured ideas are projective. Qualia are the primary example for me (because I first learned of them as an undergraduate). For those who… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 9: Quale before me 30 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 I should pause for a minute before launching into the episode that finally scuttled my academic ambitions (of earning money), I should explain my absolute lack of interest in qualia, souls, spirits, ethereal minds, and moral realities. When I lost my faith, it wasn’t just an intellectual decision. It never… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 8: A second chance 22 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 So, at this point I am now 50 or so, doing my postdoc at UQ with Paul Griffiths, and living with my family just pre-separation (the divorce came a few years later). Two things happened. The first is that I started to gain confidence, Now, this may shock those who… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 7: Whately and an epiphany 21 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 My time at Queensland initially was among the best of my life, although I did miss my kids a lot. I moved up for a year before the family arrived (pre-divorce), and lived in a really nice part of Brisbane (it would be churlish to say, the only really nice… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 6: Blogging or blagging? 15 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 Another result of my meanderings on the interwebs was my blogging career, the tail end of which you are now reading. P. Z. Myers, whose name I routinely misspelled for about ten years until I ran out of alternatives, was active in the talk.origins group. He was early into science… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 5: Two Davids 9 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 Sometime around 1994, I was finishing my computing diploma and got access to a unix terminal. Typing various commands assigned to us, I mistyped something and instead typed rn and what came up was the mother of all chat boards, which I later found out was called USENET, but which… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 4: Gary and Neil 8 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 At the end of my masters I went back to earning a living, and got a new job at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (or as we called it, WEHI), which is just across the road from the University of Melbourne. This would have been around… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 3: Education and the failure of explanations 7 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 One of the things that causes Aspies problems is that you have no independent idea of your own abilities. In my case, Neither my parents, nor my teachers, nor my friends, confirmed to me any intelligence on my part, and while I had the sneaking suspicion that were the aliens… Continue Reading
Education My Absent Career 2: From theolog to undergrad 6 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 Since my mother worked, I would stop at the local library on my way home. I had until she got home about an hour and a half later. So I would read books in an hour and a half, since the ones I liked were adult books and I was… Continue Reading
Philosophy My Absent Career 1: The end of an error 6 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 So this month ends my likely last teaching contract. For the past two decades I have been sporadically teaching, first at Melbourne, then Queensland, then Sydney, Bond [the less said about that the better], UNSW and back to Melbourne. But I never got a permanent position, and age, I think,… Continue Reading