Last week I gave a paper at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting in New Orleans. It was on Nietzsche’ view of pessimism, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk a bit about the philosophical conceptions of optimism and pessimism. Both optimism and pessimism are generally understood as involving an evaluation … Continue reading The Good, The Bad, and Schopenhauer
Making Sense of Our Lives
In an essay in the Sunday New York Times entitled, “Does Everything Happen For a Reason?” Konika Banerjeee and Paul Bloom (a Yale graduate student and professor, both in Psychology) discuss studies showing that most people tend to find meaning and purpose in the events in their lives. One might think that this is tied … Continue reading Making Sense of Our Lives
Discussion of “When Science Gets Stupid”
A blogger by the name of Janet Kwasniak took issue with my piece on consciousness, “When Science Gets Stupid,” which was a reaction to an essay in the New York Times, “Are We Really Conscious?” by Michael Graziano. Kwasniak claims that I apparently didn’t understand Graziano’s piece, since I defined consciousness as awareness. Though she … Continue reading Discussion of “When Science Gets Stupid”
Narratives and Our Ways of Knowing Part II: The Middle Ages
I posted this several months ago. It’s the second in a series that I still mean to complete. So stay tuned.
The question of knowledge is a very old problem, going back to the ancients. What we can know about the world, and how we know it, is a huge puzzle. Now, we all love to tell stories, to tell people about things that have happened to us—or even stuff that happened to others, if it makes for a good tale. More than that, story-telling seems to be hardwired in us. We have a deep need to construct narratives to make sense out of the world and our lives. So not only do we try to convey what we think we know through our stories, but those stories also reflect the issues and problems regarding our ways of knowing.
I’m going to write a series of posts concerning the history of story-telling and our problems concerning the ways of knowing. I’ll move from Plato to Medieval Christianity, then to Descartes and…
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When Science Gets Stupid
In the Weekend Review section of yesterday's New York Times there appeared an essay called, "Are We Really Conscious?" with the tag line: "It sure seems like it. But brain science suggests we're not." First, what do we mean by consciousness or being conscious? A good synonym is "awareness": to be conscious is to be … Continue reading When Science Gets Stupid
Narratives and Our Ways of Knowing Part I: Plato’s Dialogues
I posted this several months ago. It’s the first in a series that I still mean to complete. So stay tuned.
Narratives and Our Ways of Knowing Part I: Plato’s Dialogues
The question of knowledge is a very old problem, going back to the ancients. What we can know about the world, and how we know it, is a huge puzzle. Now, we all love to tell stories, to tell people about things that have happened to us—or even stuff that happened to others, if it makes for a good tale. More than that, story-telling seems to be hardwired in us. We have a deep need to construct narratives to make sense out of the world and our lives. So not only do we try to convey what we think we know through our stories, but those stories also reflect the issues and problems regarding our ways of knowing.
I’m going to write a series of posts concerning the history of story-telling and our problems concerning the ways of knowing. I’ll…
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Mark T. Conard 