Pragmatism as philosophical tool design
by Dave Maier One problem plaguing contemporary anti-Cartesians (pragmatists, Wittgensteinians, hermeneutic philosophers, etc.) is that it can seem that we are competing against each other, trying to do better than everyone else what we all want to do: get past the dualisms and other infelicities of the modern picture while at the same time absorbing…
2020 in review, Silver Lining Edition, part 2
by Dave Maier Not long ago, a reader complained, politely but firmly, about your humble author’s regrettable tendency to post something called “Blah blah blah pt. 1” and then never get back to it for part two, in particular the post about history, wondering if possibly I thought no one would notice that I had…
Words on Pages
by Dave Maier If one enters the name “Ellen Page” into the search box at en.wikipedia.org, it redirects to an entry entitled “Elliot Page” (and informs you that it has done this). This is because on December 1, 2020, as the entry itself tells us in the section marked “Personal life,” that person, an accomplished and…
2020 in review, silver lining edition: ambient music!
Escaping The Prison Of (Philosophical) Modernity, Part 2: Meaning as Truth-Conditions in Taylor and Davidson
by Dave Maier Last time, in part 1, I distinguished two strategies for combating philosophical modernism of a certain dated kind: a pluralistic post-empiricism (the exact nature of which I left open for now), and a more narrowly focused post-phenomenological approach which regards the former (and/or its main components) as merely another form of the…
Escaping the prison of (philosophical) modernity, part 1: post-analytics and phenomenologists in dialogue
by Dave Maier By the beginning of the 20th century, it had become clear to an influential minority of philosophers that something was badly amiss with modern philosophy. (There had been gripes of innumerable sorts since the beginning of modernity in the 17th century; but our subject today is the present.) “Modern” here means something…
Cool summer ambience (or winter, for those down under)
by Dave Maier Perhaps imprudently, your humble blogger continues to toil in the philosophy mines for blogging material, even in this stressful time. And there will be such postage eventually, of that you can be sure! However, prudence enough remains to prevent him from posting half-baked nonsense; so in the interim, let us return once…
Jon Hassell Tribute, Part 2: Jon’s Influence
Jon Hassell tribute, part 1: Jon and his collaborators
Interpretation and truth, part 1: History
by Dave Maier The word “interpretivism” suggests to most people a particularly crazy sort of postmodern relativism cum skepticism. If our relations to reality are merely interpretive and perspectival (I will use these terms interchangeably as needed, the idea being that each interpreter has her own distinct perspective on a world not reducible to any single…
Music to stay well by
by Dave Maier I had planned to do another philosophy post this month, but I can hardly concentrate on such things about now and I bet you can’t either. Instead I’ve been hanging out on Bandcamp and blowing my savings supporting deserving artists and labels in this difficult time. What better time, in fact, to…
Nothing really
Don’t even think about operating heavy machinery while listening to this mix
by Dave Maier Another not-necessarily-the-best-of-the-year mix, but there do seem to be a number of 2019 releases. Warning: this one’s pretty drony, so don’t be driving or anything. Sequencers next time, I promise! (A few anyway.) 0:00 Anne Chris Bakker – Norge Svømmer (Reminiscences [Dronarivm]) 4:50 FRAME – Earth (The Journey [Glacial Movements]) 12:30 Strom…
A list of books of some sort or another
by Dave Maier Here we have either a) a holiday gift guide; b) just another ordinary book roundup; or c) a bunch of mini-reviews each of which just didn’t have the oomph to deserve its own post. Answer provided below! First up: Theodore M. Bernstein – Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer’s Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears, and Outmoded Rules of…
“Math Ethnic Studies” in Seattle
by Dave Maier The blog post screams: “If you think 2 + 2 always equals 4, you’re a racist oppressor.” It then proceeds to attribute this ghastly sentiment to the Seattle Public School district, on the basis of a preliminary document for a proposed curriculum in “Math Ethnic Studies.” Other critics of this pseudo-educational abomination are…
Potato in hand, I greet Crutbelg at the palace gate
by Dave Maier A while back, when I lived in Philly, my housemates and I got into a memorable discussion. It probably started off innocently enough, with someone wondering what it would be worth to you to lose a limb or something. But since I was involved, the conversation soon got weird, and soon we…
Another not the best ambient and space music of the year post
Two kinds of psychophysical reduction, part 2: physical
by Dave Maier Ted Chiang’s (very) short story “What’s Expected of Us” (collected in his recent Exhalation) tells of an unusual device called a Predictor: Its only features are a button and a big green LED. The light flashes if you press the button. Specifically, the light flashes one second before you press the button.…