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Spinoza hits broadway!

You know, Spinoza — “perky and adorable, a brash but modest young fellow whose head is amusingly stuffed not with baseball statistics but with incisive conclusions about God, nature and the universe.” See the NYT review of a new play about Spinoza.

Career considerations

Considering a career in law or medicine? Here is a NYT article about the disappointments many people feel when they get into them. (Alumni, feel free to chime in about your own experiences.)

You might be a Philosophy major if ….

… you get impatient in your other classes when they seem to spend all their time on merely empirical details.

… you lose an hour trying to figure out why “used to” makes sense in the sentence “I used to do that, but don’t anymore.”

… you find yourself not reading your assigned philosophy texts because you’re too busy reading other philosophical works.

… you write Socratic dialogues on the nature of the substance found in a Taco Time burrito.

… you search YouTube for videos on Leibniz’s Monadology.

… you pause when asked “How’s it going?” because you’re not sure what “it” refers to.

(Any others?)

New videos

Hey kids! Check out the new video section, on the right, after the blogroll.

An argument against time

The other day in USU 1320 we examined an argument against the reality of time:

1. Time requires change. (As shown by another argument, which turns upon the inherent impossibility of distinguishing two lengths of changeless time.)
2. Change requires (a) a past state and (b) a future state.
3. Any past state does not now exist.
4. Any future state does not now exist.
5. Hence, there is no change now.
6. Hence, there is no time now.

And since this argument can be presented at each and every “now,” it would seem to follow that time is “at all times” nonexistent, i.e., time is unreal.

It’s a nifty argument, since it is so hard to see where anything goes wrong. (And yet it seems wrong, doesn’t it?)

By the way, I think a parallel argument can be given against the reality of space. It gets a little weird around premise 3, but follow along:

1. Space requires some sort of extended dimension (length, width, etc.).
2. Any extended dimension can be divided into an “over there (1)” and an “over there (2)”.
3. But “over there (1)” is not right here.
4. And “over there (2)” is not right here.
5. Hence, there is no extended dimension right here.
6. Hence, there is no space right here.

And since this argument can be presented at every possible spot, it would seem to follow that space is “at all spaces” nonexistent, i.e., space is unreal.