Gilbert Ryle ... New URL Coming

Not much to report today. I had Philosophy of the Mind last night and I'd give a report on what I learned except I'm not sure I could even explain it to myself, let alone anyone else. We were reacting to Gilbert Ryle, who makes the argument that one of the critical problems when discussing the "mind-body problem" comes from the language we use to discuss it.

It gets a lot deeper than this, but one thing I can expound on is that the language we use to describe the mind cannot be the same language that we use to describe the body, or events we observe the body in. If the mind is non-spatial and non-physical, as it is proposed by most substance dualists like Descartes, then to use phrases like "My mind is inside me" is logically invalid, since that which has no spatial qualities cannot be positioned inside anything. There's also a temptation on the part of dualists to describe the mind using processes similar to the body, just in a more mystical way. Again, these descriptions are logically invalid, borrowing metaphors to speak about something that must be entirely unmetaphorical. That's as far as I'll go for now.

One thing I do want to announce is a bought a new domain name last night: 86Madness.com. Right now, there's nothing there, so I didn't even hyperlink the URL. But when you dial in listentobrian.com after this weekend, that's where you'll be directed. Where does the name come from? There's a story to it (having to do with the pic above) and I'll have a full retelling when I migrate the blog. Until then, updates will appear here as usual.

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11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations

Thanks to Neatorama for trying to publish the 11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations.

Some of them are pretty good, except he's missing Sartre's "Man is condemned to be free." That's still my personal fave.

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Dude Reads Like a Lady

I took the day off from work today to get a head start on some school work. I'm trying to nail down topics for my papers in both Ethics and Philosophy of Mind.

When it comes to the latter, one of my primary interests is in the intersection of Mind and Computers, and one person has been key in those discussions: Hilary Putnam. As I started reading Putnam, I became curious if the philosopher was still alive so I Wikipedia'd the name and found out who I thought was a woman (because of the name) was actually a man (pictured above) and yes he is still very much alive.

It's sad (that he's a man) only because I thought I was finally going to get a feminist take on the philosophy of mind. Paging through the primary text for the course, which is an anthology, there is not a single female in it (at least as far as I can tell from the names).

This is typical in the entire field of philosophy but I feel, from looking around at the population in my classes both at WCU and Temple, that there are going to be many more women coming into the field, which I can say will only improve it.

Later tonight, I'm going to meet the former Director of Clandestine Operations for the C.I.A, Tyler Drumheller. He recently published a book "On the Brink," exposing White House manipulation of intelligence. He's giving a talk on campus this evening. I'll try to take pics and discuss tomorrow morning.

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