What, Why & How do we Know ?
Demonstrated today in Silicon Valley by Canadian company D:Wave Systems. Thanks to Magnus Berg over on MoQ.Discuss for the link. I’ve been following Quantum Computing, not so much for the interest in processing power and super-computing applications, exciting though they may be, but because of the increasing importance of Quantum Information as a fundamental level … Continue reading “First Commercial Quantum Computer”
I’ve blogged before “Too much to read, too little time” noting references picked-up during the reading I do manage to achieve – a reading list growing faster than the pace of possible reading. Not uncommon apparently – here a 1989 paper from David Lavery – “How to Gut a Book“. Here quoting Thomas Wolfe’s, Eugene Gant The … Continue reading “Book Anxiety”
I posted about Wayne Booth previously , crossing paths with Pirsig and McKeon in Rhetoric at Chicago, and then again when he died last year. Came across this excellent Wayne Booth article today, via Wilf Berendsen on Friends of Wisdom. Interestingly Wilf was picking up on the cross-discipline university approach mentioned by John Spencer at Liverpool Uni … Continue reading “Rhetoric 1, 2 & 3”
Instead of reading David Morey’s novel (which I had with me on our trip to the Gulf Coast over the Thanksgiving holiday) I finished Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and got about half-way through “Philosophical Investigations”. The latter so far just seems to continue casting doubt on the science (logic) of natural language, and of course logic … Continue reading “Wittgenstein Disappointment”
Just a snippet to store away, since I’m not really up on Hume yet. Hume’s metaethics … his emotivist stance on the nature of moral judgment and … the assertion of rationality as part of that process is only an ad hoc attempt to somehow “independently” justify the moral conclusions we’ve already reached. A recurring theme, but the … Continue reading “Post Rationalisation”
Latest BBC “In Our Time” is an excellent discussion on Muslim philosopher generally known as Averroes. Worth listening to in it’s entirety. (Ibn Rushd on Wikipedia) Points of interest for me … Etymology – I have a thing about spotting B’s and V’s but it’s so clear here. The patronymic family naming prefix “son of” or … Continue reading “Averroes (Ibn Rushd)”
Terry Bristol, Director of ISEPP (University of Oregon) introduced the concept of reality as Engineering into the Friends of Wisdom environment, which caught my imagination, because I’m an engineer and came to this space through engineering. (Notice, Linus Pauling and Bob Ulanowizc connections BTW.) And, having been inflicted by Pirsigian Metaphysics of Quality before noticing … Continue reading “Engineering at the Dawn of Time ?”
It’s about time I finished off my Randian piece from earlier. I’ve finished reading “Atlas Shrugged” a few days ago. Actually I gave up about 300 pages from the end (of 1000), after Galt’s speech to his “troops” in their secret Utopian Atlantis, and could only bring myself to skim the rest including his speech to his … Continue reading “Rand’s Evolutionary Psychology”