August 2010
Six Reasons to Study Philosophy
Philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom and truth, may with reason be expected that those who have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a greater calm and serenity of mind, a greater clearness and evidence of knowledge, and be less disturbed with doubts and difficulties than other men.
George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)
The...
WatchSummarizing the Whitney Trek
Hiking Mt. Whitney 2010
Few pleasures equal the feat of climbing a mountain. There’s something intoxicating about it: the cold air, lack of oxygen, that formidable view looking up, the redolent smell of pines, cracked lips, and dusty bottoms; those endless libraries of switchbacks, the gravity of your pack, the occasional hallucination, and that mysterious solitude that envelopes you in a strange yet comforting...
Inception: The Dream Is Real
When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
Descartes (Meditations on First Philosophy, 1647)
You can’t be certain, though the question I presume in any case is irrelevant. Does discovering you’re a victim of cosmic fraud (i.e. the matrix) disqualify your...
nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what...
danielholter:
texturism:
…nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know....
