Determining Determinism

Most people are familiar with cause and effect. My throwing a stone over a lake, the cause, has the effect of it skipping over the water. Even if I failed to make the stone skip, that failure would also have causes. Perhaps I did not give the stone enough spin, or threw it at an angle that was unsuited for skipping. Cause and effect are everywhere in the natural world, and philosophers have translated that into the concept of determinism.

Speculations about Death

Working in a nursing home allows me to see death up close and personal. So far two people have passed away who I was involved in caring for, and I occasionally wonder whether we exist as more than corpses after we die. “Life after death” is a phrase that never sat right with me, as I can tell the person is both no longer alive and that their body decays. That they somehow receive a new one and become alive in a physical reality we cannot detect by physical means has never seemed likely to me.

Why Palm Trees Glow at Night

Storytime.

When I was little I lived in various places in San Diego, where there are plenty of palm trees. These particular palm trees were extremely tall, but because they were at the bottom of a hill, and I lived at the top, I could clearly see their heads from my bed. Usually I could only see them during the daytime, but one night they started glowing.

What is Morality?

The nature of good and morality is a perennial question for philosophers, and recently I realized that while I use the term good all the time, if someone asked me what I meant by that I would not be able to give them an answer that satisfied me. In this post I am interested in describing the results of my investigation into what I think of as good or moral, rather than trying to defend it as the one true concept of morality.

Communication, Listening, and Empathy

After composing my post on empathetic thinking, I wanted to say more about my experiences with empathy in general. I was first introduced to intentionally practicing empathy through workshops on nonviolent communication, a communication technique developed by Marshall Rosenberg. There are many different aspects to nonviolent communication, but one that has always been especially significant to me is creating an understanding based on human observations, feelings, needs, and requests.

Empathetic Thinking

Improving my thinking is one of my personal goals, and one of the ways I strive to accomplish this is to consciously practice thinking in an empathetic way. What I mean by empathetic thinking is thinking that adopts multiple perspectives or viewpoints on an issue, similar to how empathy in feeling allows for a greater understanding of others through placing oneself in their position. This allows me to find the value and limitations of any perspective on a question, including my own, without becoming stuck or attached to it.

A Brief Biography

I was born in San Diego, California, though I currently live in Rockland County, New York. My parents have been divorced for as long as I can remember, which was stressful when I was growing up. When I was nine, my father moved to the east coast, and I joined him a year later. I was failing academically at the time and he wanted to have me with him to foster my education. His efforts helped me tremendously, though I did miss my family back home. While I have visited my family in California I never moved back to the west coast.

Mistakes and Progress

Today I am starting a blog for the first time. I want to leave a note to myself and my readers for when I am a better writer and thinker.