I’ve chosen this title deliberately – with a sense of great irony. Perhaps you’ve been lured here in the hope of finding tips to help you in your quest to become an A-list blogger. You saw the title and couldn’t resist. You want the tips and tricks that will send the masses to your blog. Well – don’t worry. I really will give you the secret to writing fantastic copy, but perhaps not in a way you expect. If I’m successful, you’ll know as much as anyone needs to know about writing good copy – but you’ll not want to use it. The essence of the secret itself will make you want to throw it away – and hopefully make you yearn for something deeper, something more profound.
The philosopher Wittgenstein is famous for offering a ladder of thought to his readers that he hoped they would climb and then throw away. This is a somewhat more modest attempt at the same.
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For those interested in the Liar Paradox and would like to read an interesting solution, my thesis supervisor Nick Smith has written a paper.? It can be read here .
? Section 2 can be skipped by those with no formal training in logic and semantics.? The rest of the paper is quite readable – although if anyone wants any help or explanation, I am happy to provide it in the comments section of this post.? Ask away!
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For a bit of fun I decided to try out the new Lord of the Rings Online game yesterday – since they were giving away beta licenses for free.? It’s one of those massive multiplayer games in the vein of World of Warcraft – I wanted to see what it’s all about.? What struck me was how incredibly banal the game is.? And yet – reports are starting to pile up of people becoming totally addicted.? What astonished me was how? compelling these games have become despite the fact the overall abysmal quality of the gaming experience (this latter claim I realise I’ll need to justify at least to some extent).? If the entertainment experience is as poor as I claim – what could then explain the compulsive behaviour?? Could deep seated psychological drives be the source?? And could their satisfaction by these means be leading to a? massive retardation in the creative and emotional? abilities of an entire generation?? And what is an even scarier thought – could these sorts of virtual environments one day be used as new forms of political control?
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Stephen Neale in his book “Facing Facts??? presents a proof that he claims: (a) ‘demonstrates conclusively that any supposedly non-truth-functional operation must satisfy an exacting logical condition in order to avoid collapsing into a truth-function, and that (b) any theory of facts, states of affairs, situations, or propositions must satisfy a corresponding condition if such entities are not to collapse into a unity.’ This proof, based on remarks by Kurt Gödel, is also claimed by Neale to be more compelling in strength than both the argument as it was originally presented by Gödel, and proofs originating with
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For those who are keen to know more about the sorites paradox – here is an essay I wrote about the fuzzy view of vagueness, which attempts to solve the problem. Be warned – it’s long and long winded.
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Paradoxes cause confusion at the roots of all our thinking. A paradox arises when we start with premises we believe to be obviously true, proceed by a process of reasoning that we also think incontrovertible, and end up with something we believe to be obviously false. Sometimes such thought experiments don’t end up in a full paradox – but puzzle the mind nonetheless.
We ponder over such problems because of a worry that they give us reason to doubt our most trusted source of knowledge – reason itself. At the very least – they are a fun way to baffle ourselves and confuse others at parties.
Here are five great puzzles/paradoxes to tickle the mind:
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Choice and interest theories of rights both seek to clarify our intuitions and use of the term ‘rights’, by offering differing clarifications of its meaning. In so doing, both theories favour certain aspects of the intuitive picture, while neglecting others. This essay will provide an exposition of both theories, outlining the major points of disagreement and argument. It will argue that the discourse does not resolve itself either way. Both theories fail to clearly satisfy certain fundamental aspects of our intuitive understanding of the nature of rights. I will conclude with the suggestion that a revisionist methodology should not be necessarily determinative for theories of rights.
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In the middle of last December I was sitting around killing time in the various ways that I usually do, when an email from my girlfriend Kate popped into my inbox. She was in Vietnam on a holiday and was due to return in a couple of days. The email read:
babe, my travel plans may change a little. today i had a fit and passed out, which was extremely alarming. the hotel got me a great doctor, french-trained with superb english. he says i have a respitory tract infection which, combined with weakened immune from travel, has impaired blood flow to my brain. i’m allowed to travel provided i have no further incidents tonight. i have a bastard of a headache, have bitten the inside of my mouth to shreds, and have an aching back from acupuncture, but feeling generally much better.
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Adam Curtis does not shy away from controversial subject matters in his documentaries, nor does he hold back from taking a particular point of view, eschewing the idea of a neutral narrator. In his 2002, 4 part documentary series ‘The Century of the Self’ he explores the influence of public relations techniques developed by Edward Bernay’s in the 1920′s (which, in turn were influenced by his uncle Sigmund Freud) – in particular, their relationship to the evolving conception of the individual self in the twentieth century. This changing notion of self is juxtaposed continuously with the nature of the democratic political system in western capitalist societies and expresses the essential thesis that Bernay’s techniques led to the evolution of a concept of individual self which has exposed modern democracies to the irrational forces driving the modern individual person – and hence has endangered modern democracy itself.
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Peter Goldsworthy is one of the big names of the Australian Literary Scene, however, it’s difficult for someone not subscribed to the major magazines to find any comment about his latest book – Three Dog Night. I just could not find any reviews at all through a search on google (as opposed to ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’). So it makes me wonder whether this is a book that has really hit the ground, or if it remains up in the more elite circles. I can’t say I know, not having any insider knowledge of the Australian literary scene – it’s just a hunch. But one thing is for sure, being the chair of the Australian Literature Council and a mate of Les Murray (among many other premium tickets to the scene), a book by Peter Goldsworthy is not something the elite in Australian literary circles are going to ignore.
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