Posts

On Truth

Image
This is the articulation of what it is for a statement (propositionally structured content) to be true within the framework of the D-Lewisian possible world semantics. A viable theory of truth must entail the T-Schema: “ P ” is true ↔ P . Here is the formalism of language. Formalism : Language is a function from sentences to meanings, i.e., a set of ordered pairs of sentences and meanings. L : language s : sentence L ( s ): the meaning of s L : {( s 1 , L ( s 1 )), ( s 2 , L ( s 2 )), …} W : possible world w : fact, state of affairs The meaning of a set of sentences is a possible world that serves as a specific model for the interpretation of the set. As Wittgenstein remarks, a world is a totality of all facts, or states of affairs. A theory is a function L that pairs one set of sentences with some model in a particular way. As such, a theory is a relation between two structures (sentences and world); although the relation can be surjective, I will focus on bijective relations for s
Post a Comment
Read more

On Love and Angst

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—come afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus === Every philosophical inquiry is born of some angst which stems from one’s confusion in facing a certain inconsistency of the world (whether it be the world of numbers, particles, matters, people, or spirits). If one is so bothered by the inconsistency to the point that he takes it to be his vocational duty to resolve the tension, philosophy is his calling. So, what is my angst? What form of inconsistency am I bothered with? Here is the origin of my Wertherian angst: 남자는 그가 사랑하는 이가 그를 무심하게 바라볼 때 , 시인이 되고 철학자가 된다 . [1] My psychotherapist once noted to me that I seem to tend to idealize romance in hop
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gospel of John the Baptist

I see no God. I only see what I mean by ‘God’. My words never rigidly referred to anything. You may say that my perceptions are contaminated with human concepts. But such a view implies that there is the world out there my perception comes short of. Here is the better way of putting it. My perceptions were never contaminated; the idea of contamination is a blither. We simply have two names for the same thing, ‘perception’ and ‘expectation’. The separation of these two names arises only when one wants to enforce his perception on others. What one is after is not truth, not the ground of certainty, but validations, or submissions. O, beautiful Phosphorus, the morning star! You devised the language of semantics to hide your selfish motives, to blind (enlighten) my eyes. You tricked me into believing that the utterance of the word, ‘reference’, has a logical function. You gaslit me with the possibility of knowledge, of morality, and of the meaning of it all. You s
Post a Comment
Read more

On Humor and the Purpose of Comedy: Why We Laugh at It

Comedy is not as universal as tragedy is. It is not necessary for one to find humorous what another finds so. The taste of humor varies not just from one culture to another, but really from one individual to another. The same could of course be said of tragedy. But there are at least two reasons why humor is the more urgent topic. First, the discrepancy in humor (for different cultural, social, political, or religious backgrounds) is by and large much wider than that in sadness. It is harder to explain to someone from a different culture why something is comical than why it is tragic. Second, it is rather difficult to offend anyone by over-dramatizing anything. Often, if one does not know the social cue, pretending to be empathetic is the safe way to go. In contrast, one slightly offbeat joke is enough to offend everyone in the room and thereby instantly relegate the joker to the outcast status. Comedy is where the problem of diversity, tolerance, and understanding takes its starkest f
Post a Comment
Read more

On the Problem of Evil: Why Passionate Atheism Doesn't Make Sense

Here is the famous Epicurean formulation of the problem of evil. P1:          God exists. P2:          God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. P2a:        An omnipotent being has the power to prevent evil. P2b:        An omniscient being knows that evil exists. P2c:        An omnibenevolent would want to prevent evil. P3:          Evil exists. These propositions are inconsistent. That is, at least one of these propositions must be false: either God does not exist, evil does not exist, or God is not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent. More on P2. Given that evil exists, if God is omnipotent, he either does not know that evil exists (not omniscient) or does not want to prevent evil (not omnibenevolent); if God is omniscient, he either has no power to prevent evil (not omnipotent) or does not want to prevent evil (not omnibenevolent); if God is omnibenevolent, he either has no power to prevent evil (not omnipotent) or does not know that evil exists (omniscient). However,
Post a Comment
Read more

Rationality, Instinct, and Intuition

When it comes to the means to survival, the dichotomy between rationality and instinct presents itself as the matter of all-or-nothing. That is, the idea is that rationality is deemed to be either best fit for self-preservation or a poor substitute for instinct which is, blessed by evolution, most optimal for promoting prosperity. However, the terms themselves are vague in their everyday usage, causing equivocations and conflations. (Even Kant, within whose tradition I locate my arguments, was vulnerable to this fallacy.) I believe that, once the terms are clarified, rationality would turn out to be much more reliable than instinct. Yet, this is due to the employment of rationality’s protégé, viz., intuition. Here are the provisional definitions for ‘rationality’ and ‘instinct’. Rationality: the capacity to impose and follow rules Instinct: the capacity to respond to stimuli (without involving rule-imposing/following) If you define instinct broadly merely as the capacity to res
Post a Comment
Read more