Reminiscences of one who was there 12 Apr 2010 Early on, when I thought I would be an intellectual, a dilettante but still an intellectual, at the age of 17 or so, I read several books that I found at a second hand bookstore (my usual place of recreation). One was a little volume called Critique of Pure Tolerance, and one of the editors was Robert Paul Wolff. In part it led me to think of myself as philosophical, if not then a philosopher. Anyway, he is blogging his memoirs, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in philosophy reads them. Resumption of my Memoirs Memoir — Second Installment Memoirs Third Part Memoir Fourth Installment Memoir Fifth Installment Memoir Sixth Installment Memoir Seventh Installment Memoirs Eighth Installment Memoirs Ninth Installment History Philosophy
Philosophy More civil insolence 22 Jan 2010 My disclaimer/policy on comments here has occasioned a bit of discussion on the tubes. Isis reckons that those who say it is a bad thing to piss on the rug will do it anyway when things get heated. Golden Thoughts compares this to the Civil Rights movement, and that those… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Another historian criticises FAPP 26 Apr 2010 Bob Richards is a leading intellectual historian of Darwinian ideas, and here he takes Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini to task for their misunderstanding of the way that the theories of evolution have developed. One point that he makes is that every “objection” FAPP have raised was an objection in the nineteenth… Read More
Epistemology Tautology 5a: The issues 30 Aug 2009 So where are we? The tautology problem has laid open some deep concerns and confusions about evolution. In this post (5a) and the next (5b), which I will return to afterwards and add and amend (in other words it’s a work in progress), I aim to lay out what I… Read More
Sorry to disillusion you but you *are* an intellectual by any reasonable definition of the word. And that’s a good thing. You have achieved the goal you set when you were 17. You also have a motorcycle. Very impressive!
This does not disillusion me. It was only that at 17, I thought I’d be a dilettante, since my teachers had uniformly announced that I was actually rather stupid, before I was thrown out of school.
Shame Kant was not a biker. Can you imagine what his Critique Of Pure Motorcycle Maintenance would have been like?
Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. –in words from the definitive work on motorcycle maintenance.