Category: Philosophy

Several science fiction authors have been writing about an idea called the singularity. The theory is that technology is being developed at an accelerating pace, one which will lead humanity to a point which will be incomprehensible to people living today. And, since the pace of technological development accelerates exponentially, this will happen much sooner…

I started a new job in January, and it has clearly had a significant effect on the frequency of my blog postings. I’ll see how it goes over time. Seeing Charles Taylor in the news has made me think about names. Taylor is a fairly common name, and Charles Taylor, who is the descendant, on…

I’m not sure I have anything new to say on the topic of abortion, but I’ll take a stab at clarifying my thoughts. I’ve been working on this little essay for about a month, off and on; it’s a complicated issue. Abortion is an interesting point of contention in the U.S. because both sides generally…

The Edge has an interesting, and long, collection of mini-essays on the topic What is your dangerous idea? At that link you can find the answer to that question as written by a hundred or so different people. The answers range from false and insipid to truly interesting. I’m not sure that any of them…

In the first part of Roger Penrose’s book The Road to Reality (which I have not yet finished) Penrose argues that mathematics has an objective reality. It’s not entirely clear to me what he means by this, but I suspect that he is wrong. He points out that everybody who studies math comes to the…