Aesthetic Materialism

Officially, I do not believe in anything like astrology, I Ching, palm reading, etc., etc..   But secretly, sometimes, I inwardly notice to myself - though I almost never say it out loud - that it often feels like we are living in a Charles Dickens novel, where every character's name has some kind of meaningful significance. Yes, I confess that occasionally I find myself subconsciously or semi-consciously dabbling in the ancient art of onomancy - the supernatural reading of people's names.  I can't help it!  I know it's not real.  I tell myself that it's a joke, that it's all in my imagination, that it's a matter of interpretation, that it's all due to apophenia - the human mind's tendency to see patterns in information that aren't actually there.  But... I mean... We live in a world that is an endless delicious buffet for us closet onomancers. Consider:  Newton - the discoverer of gravity - is called "new ton".  The physicis...

Can atheists justify using reason?  It depends what you mean by "justify."  It seems like a pretty good idea to use reason.  Indeed, it seems like the best course of action.  In the same way that wandering out randomly into traffic seems like a bad idea.  If you want to live, and to avoid horrible pain, and to make love, and to appreciate art, and to do everything else you enjoy doing - indeed, if you want anything at all - and you do - then reason seems like the best way of going about fulfilling that desire that we can think of.  Obviously.  What else is there? But people like Platinga mean something different by "justify".  This "seems like" business isn't good enough for them.  They want certainty.   To them, I guess, we can't know for certain that wandering out into traffic is a bad idea.  Okay.  To theists like Platinga, I have to respond: can I justify reason in such a way that it is absolutely grounded in unshakabl...

I consider the "Realists" to be even more my enemy than the neoconservatives. The problem with "Realism", in a nutshell, is that they aren't realists.  They may use the word "realist," they may even think that they are realists (although I wonder...), but they're not realists.  They're die hard, delusional, ideological fanatics.  They're idealists who are so completely in the grips of a dogmatic ideology that it doesn't feel like ideology anymore.  It just feels like reality.  And anyone who questions this absolute reality is a heretic.  And they have the institutional backing to enforce this.

I want to make it clear before we go any further that stupid is not a synonym for false.  Not at all.  There are plenty of ideas that are stupid, but true.  There are also plenty of ideas that are smart, but false. It's also worth acknowledging that what is a stupid idea for a human might not be stupid for a non-human, such as an A.I..  It may even be the case that what is stupid for one human may not be stupid for another.  This is not to say that stupidity is purely subjective and it's up to you what's smart for you and what's stupid for you - it is, at least to a very large degree, an objective fact which kinds of ideas will be more effective for you to use and which will be less effective.  But this ordinal ranking may vary from one person to another.  It's like blood type: yes, blood type varies from person to person, yet it is nonetheless a knowable, observable fact.  Just as there are blood that compatible and incompatible with you, that wo...

Some people say there are two distinct things: sex and gender.  I disagree.  I think one can and should make finer linguistic distinctions, delineating 6 levels of identity: 1. Genotypic sex 2. Phenotypic sex 3. Culturally assigned gender 4. Internally felt gender identity 5. Gender expression 6. Essential gender Just because I distinguish these meanings linguistically does not mean that I consider all of them equally empirically real.  Of these, in my own opinion, I would say I believe in the first 5 of these, but not in the sixth.  To me, the sixth is a kind of fiction, or myth.  Again, though, that is merely my own opinion.  If someone else feels strongly that the sixth level is real, I think that's perfectly fine, and indeed I celebrate and encourage their exposition of their own conception of reality as they see it.  I'm not using the words "myth" and "fiction" as pejoratives here - if people want to use their creativity to explore the possibiliti...

How can one avoid descending into conspiracy theory?  The key is avoiding moralism - the illusion that individuals are responsible for oppression and thus that the problems can be fixed when evil people in decision-making positions are replaced with good people. Once one understands that it is the structures themselves - and the economic dynamics which determine those structures - that must be replaced, rather than the people who happen to occupy them, one can fully integrate this into one's analysis. That is what is fundamentally necessary to transform conspiracy theory into radicalism. Conspiracy theory is a form of scapegoating.  The problem with conspiracy theory is that it leads to inaction and passive acceptance of control and oppression.  It does this in two ways: first, in making the enemy seem so huge and powerful that nothing can be done to stop them.  There is a quote I've seen attributed to Umberto Eco and to Karl Popper - I'm not sure who said it ...