On the Tension in Doing Philosophy

I have the practical wisdom to see that writing in a Continental style requires a close examination of the text, and the "argument" is interwoven with the attempt to come to grips with the text before me.

To come back, to return to the style of my literary love is hard. When you read my statement of research, I say that I look at Continental philosophers as those that offer insights into typical meta-ethical problems. I take from them like a robber in the night an insight, put it into a proposition to be argued for as it relates to my philosophizing as a description of the world. In this way, my robbery of a text transgresses against the careful details of figurative expression, symbolism, metaphor and historical horizon of these texts. Two opposite poles are at tension in my philosophizing: (1) where philosophy is systematically argued description of ahistorical problems and (2) that philosophy is a description of our lived-experience, our facticity, our situatedness in the context of our very historicity. If philosophy, according to many Continental authors, cannot be lived in concrete experience, then all the fancy moves of a deductive logically preserving language bear no fruit. They have no intellectual purchase.

In a way, my style borrows from an example known to many, Korsgaard. Korsgaard's Kant is not the historically and textually centered Kant. Far from it, her eoKantianism in ethics is like what I saw myself doing when I applied. Korsgaard borrows from the historical Kant for a descriptive project outside the aim of historically situating Kant. This is just the tension of the historian of philosophy qua philosopher AND the problem-solver qua philosopher. For myself, I wanted to use phenomenology, but in so doing, appropriation is like a heresy, a heresy where the aim transgresses the text to the point that I'm worse than Derrida. At least, Derrida tries to read the author against himself (whatever that means specifically); I'm, as I said, a robber. Borrowing with only the smallest intent to return!

This is not to say that learning these texts is outside my intention. In fact, just the opposite---I want to learn the movement of these texts. Any philosopher may know that outside philosophy departments, these texts of Continental philosophy inspire thousands. There is a dimension to which they have reached that analytics envy, and rightly so. Their ideas are infectious, bound to the very marrow of human experience in ways that scientiphiles loathe. It's just that I wanted to craft a philosophy that achieves two levels of adequacy. I call these two conditions of adequacy of any philosophical theory, influenced by my love of philosophy as an intertwining of the Continental and the Analytic perspectives. Consider the following two conditions of adequacy:

A) Phenomenologically a theory must make sense of our lived-experience, and no attempt can be made to subordinate the phenomenology to a naturalistic ontology.

B) Weak Naturalism sees all events, I claim, in terms of explanations (but not all events require causal explanation) and where it is appropriate elements of our human experience might have to look to the sciences for compatibility as long as A) is maintained as well.

In doing philosophy, I come up against the challenge of writing it well. In my discussions in the teaching seminar, I have begun to dig deep on the analytic perspective that philosophy is about conceptual clarity: clarity in writing reflects the level of clarity in one's thinking, as long as the equation between thought in the head and spoken language can be maintained. I feel this, I really do. However, I also see the merit in saying the goal of teaching philosophy is about the questions that stir one to take it, to awaken in students the philosophical core of their own inquiry. Perhaps, this is true only insofar as students are willing to work, yet the method of many Continentals seems rather to disturb the ground of students, to make them uncomfortable and shock them out of their absorption of the world. This again, I think, speaks to the difference in which Continentals write. Continentals write within the text many layers, many layers of subtle meaning -- shifting from clarity to the ambiguity -- , often exploiting the very ambiguity in their own language. For example, Luce Irigray exploits the French:

There is not, there will not be the moment of wonder of the wedding, an ecstasy that remains in-stant. ("Sexual Difference" in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p 14).

Here's the clincher: The hyphenation of the normal word "instant" plays upon the notion of standing within oneself, its root meaning. Such a standing within oneself emphasizes the contrast with ecstasy, which is standing outside the self. The playing off these senses is crucial to the overall point she is making. Explaining it would take away from what I am doing here, but the point holds as far as writing in Continental philosophy holds. The root meanings of these words are approached as a medium in which understanding of sexual difference occurs. As such, the metaphors, figurative expressions and symbolism of our language invoke atypical manners of expressing how charged or loaded language is. Such conventions are appropriate to use and illustrate, especially for an author that sees her native French language as sexed.

The example of Irigaray brings up another salient point, one which I think is lost on the complaint as old as Heidegger and Carnap: the charge of obscurantism. This charge equally is a hyperbolic of two things. First, the fact is, we are reading Continental philosophers in translation and translating ourselves the distance of those authors and the text itself. In so doing, we keep to the same verbosity of our tradition not out of disrespect for clarity, but keeping the horizon in which these authors are writing in either the French of the German. Since so much hinges on that contextual understanding, we keep the history of their discourse in mind as a background in order to engage the very act of the translated/translating text.

Such historic motivations fall on deaf ears. My analytic gut tells me to logically preserve the meaning and seek out the problem they are addressing. There must be some abstraction, some sense to which Foucault or Heidegger are writing. A successful implementation of philosophy would find that problem, dissolve it of its ambiguity and place it in its very clarity for all to see. However, in doing that, I do violence to Continental philosophy wherein my biases for clarity prevent accessibility in the very way I ought to proceed. If the essence of language is logic, then I can see myself very much in this tradition seeing all philosophy as only the current set of problems for all to see and solve by rigor, consistency and dialectic exchange of arguments.

Likewise, the inverse is equally true. My Continental gut tells me to not logically preserve meaning. Yet, I do violence against the Continental side--that's what motivated this initial explanation of what I mean by the "tension in doing philosophy." I do violence in the very way that one of the introductions to Heidegger's Kant Book. It is the violence of interpretation which robs the context of the Continental philosopher. Violence in this case is robbing the text, paying no heed to the with-textness illustrated by the Latin root of "context." I merely seek to describe some audacious claim, inspired as if a muse had instructed my stealing away from history and context. A grave robber of ideas?

However, philosophy is not only about the historical situation in which I find myself but also describing the world in my encounter with it. On this, I feel I will always be in tension. So I ask the larger world, can the tension between both conceptions of philosophy I offer as well as the two levels of adequacy of any philosophical theory hold? Can they even commingle? And what does that say about my reflections in writing and teaching philosophy at large?

Love at First Sight

So, I'm visiting Carbondale, IL and I have met several of the graduate students. I can already feel a sense of community that previous graduate school experience did not afford. They're friendly, helpful and above all motivated. In one day, I have had social outings and experienced a level of personal contact far surpassing a month of the old school. Now, I am not one for "knocking" what came before. For those that may come here from there, this is, perhaps, a shortcoming.

My blog will be slowing down, and many of whom frequent my blog may be upset. I will be posting primarily on Derrida and Husserl in the next few upcoming months, as that is the seminar I will be invested in. I'm still unsure of my second seminar. In that time, I want to get some good solid Continental essay on Husserl out there for the 2010 meeting of the Husserl Circle, and SPEP for 2010.

Meditation on Steven's Thirteen Blackbirds

Of the several explored so far, I love this poem. But my tastes are peculiar some might say. Let me start by explaining my starting methodology.

In phenomenology, we look at how experiences avail themselves without presupposing anything about the phenomena under reflection. In this way, aspects of the world come into view, but never the world as whole. Instead, experience is likened to a field (as in Merleau-Ponty), with each field availing itself in our reflective attention to the implicit structures that we commonly taken for granted. In acts of perception, objects of perception are never revealed with all sides showing. There is always some profile of the object kept from us. When approaching a table, I only see the top when looking directly down on it. If I walk around it, only two legs are showing while the other two are concealed from my vantage point.

In the same way, poetry can be an exercise to let phenomena avail themselves, and this is what, I feel, Stevens achieves. He is a phenomenologist about blackbirds, letting various experiences of the blackbird reveal themselves in our experience. Each stanza is fragmented, only unified by the fact that the poet is paying attention to the various experiences of blackbirds either perceptually or symbolically.

In I, we open to a still vista of snowy mountains. If you've skied, say Vermont, you will know that winter is silent, and cold. The stillness of snow lies in its blanket whiteness across the horizon of my vision at the top of the mountain. Stark contrasting colors stand out, brought into relief by the blanket whitenss of snow. If a blackbird gazed at me in this still whiteness, I would feel it, too, was “the only moving thing.”

In IV, I perplexed, and for good reason. How is that men and women are united by poets? Usually, love is the answer. In this case, a man and women are first united. Then, the blackbird is united with them. In this case, perhaps, men and women are one in aspects of love, but are further unified in the existential realization that human lives are finite, experiencing their own mortality in the symbolism of the unity with the blackbird.

In VI, moods are disclosed in moments where moods have cognitive content, at least in Heidegger. They have a primordial relationship to experience as they tend to fill out and “color” my experience in general. Jagged wild icicles carve up my field of vision in the window, and eery shadows move crossing my visual field “to and fro.”

In XII, we see a river moving, and the blackbird is said to be flying. Objects are given only in relation to a nexus of other objects, or so say the phenomenologists. My leaning on the bed with the computer is for blogging which presupposes the keyboard to share my thoughts. In this experience, I my blogging, the computer screen and the keyboard all give rise to sharing my thoughts. In the same way, when the river moves, it appears to move in relation to those that can see it, as a blackbird flying above it. Yet, viewing the river moving must be actively viewed from the top of it. As such, when the river moves, so too does the flier perceiving it.

Just some thoughts.

Father's Day

As secular holidays go, one of my favorites is Father's Day. Although I am almost 30 (in six days), I do not have any children yet. My Father and I took a ride up into Tionesta, PA, and sat reading. There were sharp divisions between us. I pulled out a book on Husserlian phenomenology, and my father had a book by Conservative media pundit, Mark Levin. As we hiked down to the lake, he said as I politely put his book into my messenger bag, "Won't that contaminate your books?" I laughed, and said "You'd better carry this chair. Your book is weighing down my intelligence." We jibed at our respective differences not forgetting the bond we've always had.

When I think about it, I get a lot from my father. He's incredibly political, as I am. He always taught me the value of voting, and being part of one's community. I chose to study political science in addition to philosophy because of the instilled love of the political. When I found my own voice, as people often do in philosophy, I soon realized I disagreed sharply with him on many issues. For one, I do not ground religion and morality together as Baptists do, nor do I revere tradition in the same way. However, I like older stuff. I like Aristotle, and jibe back that I am even more conservative than him!

In the end, Father's Day is a lovely gesture. Without my father, I could never be where I am going. My father has always been an inspiration. When he said goodbye to me after we had moved in all my dorm stuff my freshman year, he hugged me, and said, "Make good choices." That's all he said. I have always loved how fathers and sons keep it simple.

APA Adventures

Well, I'm no longer a stranger to the way of the current APA. I'm missing out on some morning sessions to recuperate myself. It takes about 2 hours from Burnaby by transit to get to the downtown location, the Westin Bayshore Hotel.

Here are some humorous observations.

My wife commented that there were three categories of philosophical dress. I thought these were really entertaining.

1. The Disheveled Unorganized Grad -- this PhD student simply hasn't gotten elements of his personal life together. This student has his personal affairs in order, and is organized in their philosophical work--but that's all they have organized. Their manner of dress includes just rolling out of bed and putting on what is available. No fashion sense. Hair is unkempt, but fashionably appropriate when one recalls the outlandish hair of Wittgenstein, or the side portrait of Nietzsche.

My wife also has labelled 1. "The YOU category" when talking to me.

2. The Eccentric -- As is hard to do philosophically, the defense of a middle position between two extremes is difficult to defend, but not this time. Being eccentric amounts to having some manner of either hair, dress or last night, someone's glasses were tubular plastic in perfect round circulars, as if someone had wrapped think insulation wire around the frame. Said person was really nice, and smart as hell. It was just one oddity about said person. The eccentricity is usually just one personal aspect that signifies said person.

3. The Prep -- this PhD student comes from money. The leisure afforded to philosophical pursuit is strengthened by coming from money and not to mention shoes that cost your rent for a month. Eeegads. To boot, if these students are near defending their thesis they can be slightly stand-offish from the more under-developed budding PhD students that surround them.

Now, I am not saying these are all the categories that could possibly exist. In fact, there could be many more. However, these three categories best explain the maturation of these individuals into -- shall we dare say -- faculty. From the men I saw, this means that wherever we fit into 1, 2, or 3, our blazer will reflect where we come from. As PhDs move into something called jobs (a foreign word at this point in time even to myself) the manner of their dress improves in quality, but the assemblage of it will still fit 1, 2 or 3 (usually exemplified by the sports coat). I assume that this works for female faculty, but I know next to nothing of the stylish habits and manners of dress to render a plausible opinion without offending.

I should also comment that there are several types of responders. These come from faculty who bemusingly barrage PhD students into submission. The hope is that they survive long enough to learn that it is appropriate for them to train "the next stock" of upcoming PhD when they are "landed". This behavior has its roots in Socratic gadflyness for sure.

1. I loved your presentation...
2. I loved your presentation, but...
3. I wonder if you would consider (insert non-sequitur theoretical approach exemplified by the Professor asking)
4. zzzzzzzZZZZ (The long-winded, opinionated interlocutor that finds it suitable to ask his/her question, taking the entire question period to explain their point. The upshot of this is usually this person specialized in the area has something significant to say.)
5. I disagree
6. I disagree wholly (This approach can be mildly presented in tone or come at you like an F-22 Raptor fulfilling its sortie. In this exchange, the whole point of someone's project and/or dissertation is shot to hell. PhD students can come back, or choose to humble themselves.)
7. I'm confused on this one point of your argument. (Essentially the clarification question, this is the most hoped for question. As it is expository, the PhD student can have some reprieve from the other manner of questions. However, allowing a follow-up from this same person generates a 5 or 6 usually)

Well, that's all I have to share. I've gotten a few ideas to address from some of the sessions. I'll be more active after the conference for sure.

The Last Class

I have reached a sense of ending, to put it strangely. I was saddened today--I taught my last tutorial at Simon Fraser. My students couldn't comprehend the sad face, and nostalgia that accompanies the backward glance of life, the sense where you move onward in life from something comfortable to something new and foreign. Before them, they have the whole world and were more interested if I knew anything about the impending doom of their final.

I went back into the classroom after they had departed. I remembered my first class, and those undergraduates that have soared. During my time here, I even got a few students to major in philosophy.

My mind soars with possibility about the future, not the past. I am directed and comported towards mastering phenomenology, learning the the things that Carbondale can teach me, and what I can offer my peers at Carbondale. Already, I am reminded of the congeniality of my fellow Americans and the smalltown Pennsylvania life I left behind when I came to Canada nearly three years ago. I have talked over email to a great deal of the graduate students at Carbondale, my future peers. My wife and I were curious about the town, the life there and most importantly where we were going to move. While any of this still hasn't been decided, within just two short days, my box was populated by eight strangers nice enough to give me the low-down on the best parts of town and where the party centers were. I agree it is best to pursue one's PhD not amidst the swarms of undergraduate partying that plague American universities.

The Climate of Philosophy: Images and How They Speak to Us!

I'm reminded of the comments Heidegger makes about Van Gogh's Peasant Shoes. Heidegger regards the shoes as coming into being from concealment, the truth of their being is shown. The true practical nature of the shoes is rendered weathered, worn and worldly in Van Gogh's canvas.

Thus, art work has a revelatory power set truth in motion. Since I have moved to some brief flirtations with Italian futurism, the deep love of Friedrich's work, and I am now harkening back to the day where after leaving my undergraduate days, I went to the Cleveland Museum Of Art and witnessed Anselm Kiefer's Lot's Wife.



At the time, I was reading lots of Arendt, and thinking about the problem of evil. I immediately thought of the train tracks that went into Oblivion, like the famous tracks that are pictured into Auschwitz . This image struck me with the sense of abandonment evoked by the empty railroad tracks. A friend looking onward used the phrase "post-apocalyptic." There is some sense of abandonment, isolation or void left by this work. The landscape is ripped asunder.

This post has no real philosophical purpose. These are just the images that strike me. Some philospohical things may be said. Sartre seems fairly misanthropic suffering through WWII, and Adorno has even said that no poetry, no beauty is possibly articulated after Auschwitz. The climate of philosophy is entrenched in a modern dreariness, and one can understand why some thinkers offer an emancipatory component in their thinking.

In addition, I'm wondering if our contemporary culture of void -- the Heideggerian groundlessness left in Heidegger's wake -- bespeaks the silence we all suffer. God is dead. Science is uncertain, and the analytic optimism through scientism is left wanting in me (and many other Continentals, I imagine). Even Husserl in the Krisis, says "The dream is over [of founding phenomenology, I suspect]". The dream and confidence we should have in the world and our philosophical ability is surpasssed by the limit of our own cruelty in the past century.

Of course, maybe these images can be taken as signifying avenues for reasons to be moral. While we can be skeptical of ourselves and the claims we make about morality, we should be prompted for the ever-growing demand that morality imposes on us. Through these images, at least for me, the abandonment, the desolation and the very landscape speak volumes about how we should treat ourselves and this Earth.

Romantic German Painters: My Favorite

I've always loved Caspar Friedrich's work, and a recent visit to Blackburn's homepage reminded me of the Wanderer in a Sea Fog. Below is a painting that reminds me of the walks my wife and I take at night. She is a philosophical muse, but the man and woman contemplating the moon stand in for all those times she lets my philosophical soul run rampant.

Interview on CBC's Hour

Scott Westerson is from Portland, and used to own a contracting business building gardening structures. Suddenly, he quit his job, and became a citizen embedded journalist with both American and Canadian forces in Afghanistan. Initially, he spent a year filming a documentary that will be coming out entitled At War.

Some footage is detailed on the show's blog.

For those Americans back home, George Stroumboulopoulos is a wonderful interviewer, and I wish I knew about him prior to moving to Canada.

When I listened to the interview, I couldn't help but be a philosopher. The interview got me thinking. An embedded journalist is "in the thick of things." By going to the war zone, the journalist attempts to bypass both distance and bureaucracy. These are in direct opposition to learning the truth. We cannot feel for our American or Canadian soldiers if we don't know what they go through. The attraction of the embedded journalist is to make us feel by providing us, as did Scott Westerson, with a "raw" depiction of what our soldiers experience. Somehow, the rawness of embedded journalism is more real, more -- shall we dare say it -- truthful. Is it more truthful though?

I have nothing to offer except some curious skepticism if such embedded journalism does "get to the heart of the matter" in a way that mainstream media does not. Certainly, it is different.

Secondly, consider another point Westerson makes about war. Westerson praises the solidarity he feels for the soldiers manifest in live combat exchange.

Just some thoughts...

What Is Philosophy?

This is the oldest and most common question I am asked: What is philosophy? I've quoted some short answers given by the staff and students at the University of Dundee (the only Scottish University where one can take up serious reflection on Continental philosophy without going to Essex or Warwick). I like them since each in turn encompasses some aspect of philosophy. Of course, if you want to contribute to this blog, then suggest in the spirit of these short tidbits what you think philosophy is:

What is Philosophy?

"A way of understanding what shapes our beliefs and actions"

"Clear and distinct reflection upon our cognitive practices"

"Openness to thinking about the familiar in unfamiliar ways"

"Learning to continually scrutinise beliefs"

"The creation of concepts"

"The incessant attempt to think how that which is could be otherwise"

"The destruction of worlds and the construction of better, new ones"

"Reversing the normal direction of thought"

"A critical practice responding to our present"

"A way of thinking; since thinking defines the nature of being human, philosophy is of fundamental importance"

For more information about the Dundee Philosophy department, click here.

Co-Sponsoring the APA in Vancouver

Simon Fraser University, the institution of my MA, is co-sponsoring the American Philosophical Association's Pacific Division Meeting in April with UBC. Here's the full announcement.

The APA in Canada, now that's rich!

Announcement.

Abstract/Papers available up until the conference. (Please don't cite or reference).

I'm really looking forward to UNM PhD student Tara Kennedy and her paper on Heidegger.

PhD Acceptance

I am really excited that I have been accepted into a top choice of my PhD applications. The program basically specializes in American and Continental thought with a dearth of analytic philosophy--how refreshing! Conversations with the graduate director have been encouraging, and I am ecstatic that this school told me on the very day I asked to marry my wife. While I am not one to be superstitious about unseen forces in the world, the universe has revealed itself in the rare sublime that undergirds, I'm sure, the sense the Romantic poets spoke about nature and humankind. Of course, this can just be all me. I'm really not sure.

I'm turning to an old problem, and found that several well-accomplished Husserl scholars, including David Smith and Dan Zahavi, have articles about Husserl and externalism. Smith's article is incredibly intriguing in his weakest claim. He proposes that a form of transcendental phenomenology is compatible with externalism. How unorthodox considering Husserl's commonly interpreted as a Neo-Cartesian internalist and anti-naturalist to say the least! In the same volume of Syntheses, I have yet to read the other contributions to the special volume, but I suspect that this will give me some insight into writing A Husserlian Response to Twin Earth. Moreover, I have questions about the strength of Husserl's alleged anti-naturalism, and so questions concerning how phenomenology ought to relate to the natural attitude intrigue me as of late.

If I am not too lazy, I'll try to produce something to throw around at conferences for my next upcoming year.

I am listening to Obama. I cannot help but once feel pride again for the nation I coincidentally fled in search of Minerva's owl. The sun is out in Vancouver. Above the clouds, I sit staring into New Westminster. I close my eyes to the piece John Williams composed on this occasion.

It's done. It's done.

Electricity in the Air

I'm in Vancouver, BC. I look out my window to the Southeast and I can see where Mt. Baker should be in Washington State. All day, I sang to myself, bursting into gleeful cheer. Two events of significance fill me with happiness: my native Pittsburgh's own football team, The Steelers, has made it to the Superbowl. Next, I am getting a new President in 2 hours and 12 minutes. It happens around noon, East coast time, and so I cannot sleep.

Partisan values cut all the way down in me. I cannot endorse a Republican platform. Never could and never will. It's just not in me to think that anything Republicans think is rational, let alone the morally right direction for my native country to take. I'm literally ecstatic with hope, and cautious optimism about America and its relation to the world at large.

It is a time to serve, a time to lead and a time to dream.

I feel the impulse of doing philosophy giving way to a more virtuous life, an active life opposed to the thinking one. A life devoted to bettering the others directly while making a living doing it. Sometimes, I wish this, and philosophy gives me solace in the quiet act of reflective withdrawal. Yet, there's just something about taking up an issue, and devoting one's life to staking out and protecting what one cares about. Philosophy is not an active life devoted to this pursuit, but in some ways it allows for one to achieve an integrity as one pursues the infinite task of truth. Unlike public service, philosophy is massively incomplete since its problems are always present, and never conclusively resolved. With public service, one can achieve one's goal, sometimes.

Obama offered a vision of Americans working together. He offered a more optimistic, yet realistic outlook on the failures of the Bush Presidency and the Neoconservative project. Deregulated free markets do not make a good economy. Science isn't an affront to the hope and faith of a nation--it is rather what we should have faith in to know the world reliably. Moreover, guns don't make people safer, the lack of guns makes people safer. Deceptive reasons for going to war are never good, despite the rhetoric of the Right. And empowered women with equal pay and control over their bodies is better than slavery, kitchen and aprons.

There's more. There's more in my heart than I could ever spill here.

New Years Resolutions

My wife visits some rather cool design blogs. While I am not in the least interested in design blogs, I have discovered almost all these blogs list New Years resolutions. As a philosopher, I think resolutions come rather close to an agent endorsing either what they value.

1. Spend more time with my wife. If anyone says anything about graduate school, it is rather time-consuming and fosters indirectly what Williams called "life-projects." I tend to think that Williams meant grad school there.

2. Start to seriously learn German.

3. Once again become an active citizen in my nation's politics. I'm a Democrat, and fairly partisan when it comes to issues. I will no longer apologize to the other half of my nation for thinking the Second Amendment is stupid, the flag is not the most sacred thing in the world, the bible is not literally true, and women should have the right to seek an abortion. Sorry Conservatives...I think Mary Anne Warren was on to something with her arguments about personhood.

4. I will read all of Being and Time.

Nietzsche Reading Group in Vancouver

For those that follow my blog close by...I'll be starting up a Nietzsche or Heidegger reading group. No one is thrilled at the stigma of reading Heidegger out in the open, but some of you are into the naturalist readings of Nietzsche through Brian Leiter. Many analytic philosophers have been looking to Nietzsche as a speculative naturalist. I'm thinking of focusing on this:

Nietzsche and Morality, ed. Brian Leiter

Applications Slow

It is a slow season. Working part-time and carrying 5 tutorials as a TA are taking a toll on me. In the city of Vancouver, I can do much apparently, but one of theme that pays the best for my time is TAing. It's a rewarding job that I enjoy very much.

On the up and up, I have had a good conversation with a Graduate Director at one of my top picks. Of course, this means little unless one gets in. However, I am confident that this school is likely to admit me if I get my application there first. I don't know if I can compete heavily for Fellowships, but an Assistantship, I think, is very possible given that I have been a TA at a serious university for about 3 years on a traditional academic semester calendar.

I've got two applications done, and I don't really want to do anymore. It takes up way too much time and you wind up being time consuming.

After having spent so much time in graduate school, I realize how deficient my life is. I just want to get back to the United States, or at least put us in Ontario where we are seriously just an 8 hour ride from our parents. This whole other side to North America isn't that special. The weather is nice given that it never reaches below freezing, but that also is coupled with the fact that it rains too much.

I know this blog is supposed to be my outlet for creative philosophical energies. But every once in a while, it is good to pause and bitch. It helps my day.

Upcoming ideas for projects:

1) A Sartrean contrast view to the typical desire-satisfaction model in Anglophone philosophy departments of agency.

2) Contrasting the views of realist phenomenology over the transcendental phenomenology. I still don't know where I stand in Husserl.

3) What is Husserl's theory of the imagination given it is the source of eidetic variation?

Google Analytics

For a while now, I have been tracking the astounding number of visits I get from people all over the world that come to my blog. I really do want interaction and if you are even not that versed in philosophy, offering up some thought-provoking comment is welcomed. Please introduce yourself. Respond to a post, and know that all thoughts are welcome in that very spirit that drove Socrates to chat it up with friends and strangers alike.

Best,

Vancouver Philosopher.

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A Favorite Davidson Passage

I like this passage by Donald Davidson:

"...however feeble or faulty our attempts to relate these various basic concepts to each other, these attempts fare better and teach us more, than our efforts to produce correct and revealing definitions of basic concepts...For the most part, the concepts philosophers single out for attention, like truth, knowledge, belief, action, cause, the good and the right, are the most elementary concepts we have, without which (I am inclined to say) we would have no concepts at all. Why then should we expect to be able to reduce these concepts definitionally to other concepts that are simpler?"

Donald Davidson, "The Structure and Content of Truth," Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990), p. 267.

Graduation

It has been a while, and I have nothing really philosophical to offer the silent audience of my blog. I will tell you, however, that I have great news. I am graduating. After two years of slugging away at my MA, I have one more milestone to add to my life. I defend my professional paper in a course-based MA this coming Friday, July 25th, 2008. One more to go?