Practicing Thinking

A coworker of mine and I were talking about philosophy and he asked me, “How do we avoid errors in our thinking so that we know whether our ideas are true?” I did not have an answer for him at first. After pondering for a while I realized that refining one’s thinking is a discipline that requires dedicated practice and constant vigilance, not simply a mental trick or thought that will verify whether another concept is true beyond all doubt.

Pluralism in Starcraft II

Blizzard Entertainment released their latest expansion to their science fiction real-time strategy game Starcraft II about a month ago. I played through the story campaign since I am a big fan of science fiction and Blizzard’s games. I knew it would be entertaining, and the ending was a bit corny, but surprisingly the story was also thought provoking.

Blog Update: Eye Candy

Finding new ways to increase readership of my blog is one of my ongoing projects. At first I did not think much about including images. After all, images do not add to the content of the topics I tend to post about. However, I noticed that when browsing other people’s posts I tended to be much more attracted to the posts with a featured image.

Free Will Part 2

After finding that disregarding the causes behind my motives would not leave me free in my post Free Will Part 1, I had to think of a new way to define free will that was not inherently contradictory. Trying to think of a better concept of freedom made me remember my own experiences around free will to see if that would yield any insight.

Free Will Part 1

In a previous post about determinism I established that even if the universe in general is not deterministic and predictable, for all intents and purposes I am. All of my thoughts, feelings, and deeds have causes. I can tell that if time turned back on any choice I made and I was in exactly the same circumstances with my knowledge, thoughts, emotions, and surroundings, I would make exactly the same choice again for better or worse.

Arriving at the realization that I am governed by cause and effect made me wonder if being deterministic meant I do not have free will.

Tarot Reading Explained

The tarot is a set of 78 cards used by various people for meditation, insight, and divining the future. Receiving a tarot reading from my father was an established birthday ritual when I was growing up, and I first picked up an interest in learning how to read the tarot when I was in high school. 

Identity Death

A variety of ideas about myself have served as the basis of my self-worth in the course of my life. My success academically, variety of hobbies, awesomeness at computer games, intelligence, skill at listening, helpfulness of what I have to say, and the approval of others have been more or less important to my self esteem. All of the skills or qualities I have mentioned are ultimately fleeting.

Caring for People Who Cannot Give Back

I feel meaning and significance in the work I do feeding, clothing, and generally helping elderly people who can no longer fulfill those basic tasks for themselves. Not long after I started working at the nursing home, I started to wonder why taking care of these people mattered so much to me, and at first I did not have a good answer. Thinking about my beliefs and emotions was similar to the process I went through thinking about morality.

Blog Update and Social Fears

Today I updated my blog in several ways. I changed the blog name and web address to more accurately reflect the direction of its content, and instead of remaining anonymous behind the nickname “dabbler” I decided to use my real, full name. Finally, I created or updated accounts on different social media so that my posts will automatically appear on those sites. This post will be the first that is automatically shared to other social media sites.

Changing the domain name was easy enough, and having my real name attached to what I write only caused a twinge of nervousness. However broadcasting updates for my blog across social media with my name attached to them is terrifying for me.

Perception and Reality

A philosophical idea that I find fun to play with is that what we perceive is not what actually happens in reality. For example, when I hear music being played, I perceive a beautiful chord or a groovy beat. What is physically happening is that the air is vibrating in waves that align harmoniously and have a rhythmical pattern.