D.G. Philosophy

The French philosopher Michel Foucault was a well known scholar who made an effort to hide reporters, journalists, and others  from the truth of his upbringing and his family. He was secretive. However, although there are scholars who prefer not to discuss other aspects of their (personal) lives, many simply are ordinary professionals doing a job. I am one who is not completely opposed to discussing aspects of my own life. That said, I shall discuss one story that one of my former professors told me. My mathematics professor shared that he used to have ambitions of becoming a violinist (* note I think of Albert Einstein who stated that he would have been a violinist if he were not a physicist). My professor had a well-known violin teacher where he grew up, in South Africa. My professor said that he was not particularly talented as a violinist and did not excel as a pupil of music. My professor recalled a story which his teacher told him “I have played (a certain piece) hundreds of ...

What Bothers A Philosopher of Maths? Throughout the time span of (roughly) 9 years I have been in contact with dozens of scholars. The culture of the world of pure academics of the Ivy League towers has a notorious reputation. Not long ago (as of a few months ago) I came upon a comment of a YouTube comment on a video on mathematics (forgive me for I am unable to remember the first video that I came upon) by Sylvain Poirier. I was very impressed that I had found a like minded scholar so I decided to contact him. I would like to refer all of my readers to his website / http://settheory.net . I do think that there are many scholars (and students) whom would find settheory.net to be helpful (useful and interesting). I ask the question can mathematics brake or be broken? I would like to write about one particular paragraph from one specific article online “A Beginner’s Guide to Forcing” by Timothy Chow. One sentence in a particular paragraph stood o...

      On Competence In the past I have heard one proclaim that modern society is based off of some hierarchy of competence. The proposed idea seems straightforward and quite intuitive. In this post, I would like to contest the conjecture. Albeit I think that, perhaps there may be some validity to the proposition. I would like to make the proclamation that I am not opposed to the idea and think that competence mixed with ‘healthy’ competition is a positive thing. When anyone is given an equal opportunity to display his/her competence then a society shall be worthwhile and have something of value to a finite planet.   I would like to state that as foolish as theism is I deem so called ‘scholars’ such as Jordan Peterson as apart of (what has been coined) the “Intellectual Dark Web” in a new movement that has been spreading. One point (of many) that is brought up by this ‘friend’ that the Nazis were so successful due to the swift and eff...

        A Response to Tom Bartlett’s “Has Consciousness Lost Its Mind?” On June 6, 2018 Thomas Bartlett wrote an article for The Chronicle cleverly and ironically titled “Has Consciousness Lost Its Mind?” the expanded title is a bit more extensive (and does not really roll off the tongue) “ What would Noam Chomsky, Deepak Chopra, a very friendly robot, plus a bevy of scientists, mystics, and wannabe scholars do at a fancy resort in Arizona? Perhaps real harm to the field of consciousness studies, for one thing. ” The article is an attempt to showcase the absurd, circus-like show of a conference that pretends to be serious. The Conference held in Tucson, Arizona biannually, The Science of Consciousness is spreading misinformation thanks to a bunch of ammatuer scholars, many of whom have their own theories for contending theories for some all encompassing ‘theory of everything’. These amateurs are deluded that they shall, one ...

In honor of my birthday, June 18 I am going to dedicate the next few (short) essays to individuals whom I consider “friends”. I am unable to define ‘friend’ as the term is far too ambiguous. There might be a bit of hostility associated with one or more of the posts. I shall refrain from stating the name of any individual whom this particular essay is in response to.      To Individuals Who Think They Are Clever As a child and throughout my adolescence, teenage years, and young adult life I was underestimated, regularly. I was not defined (e.g. perceived) by many family members and the few friends that I thought I had as being one who is confident and so hence was not respected (or seen as having any value). Low confidence, mixed with high levels of anxiety confounded feelings of angst, low self esteem, and hesitation to venture out. Living in the United States and being raised in a (Reagan) conservative household I have had the extreme mis...