Where I asserted that abstractions result in language’s limitations, my brother argued that language’s limitations cause its abstractions.
Predicting the Future of Science Fiction
If we don’t have a vision for the future, the future might never arrive.
Generosity of Perspective
Generosity, and its application to our interactions and the way we view the world, is not a revolutionary concept, nor is it a complex one, but that does not make it less potentially powerful.
Pondering Utopia: A Fool’s Errand?
Utopias litter the mythological landscape. They crater the philosophical expanse, and they mar the psychological maps. Fiction’s forest is dotted with utopias like delicate, diseased orchids that never quite work.
How We Know
The study of how we know is known as epistemology, and its extensive philosophical tradition offers three main schools of thought that each have innumerable permutations presented by every philosopher who has ever philosophized: skepticism, rationalism, and empiricism.
Normative and descriptive Judgements
This is not a referendum on whether normative decision-making is superior or inferior to descriptive decision-making.
“Advanced” Civilization
How do we define “advancement” of a civilization? Their technical ability? Their scientific understanding? Their cultural complexity? Their living standards? Their economic vitality? Their individual rights and freedoms? Their average capacity for individual fulfillment? Their life expectancies?
Fictional (Un)Just War Theory
A fantasy story I was reading recently which featured an alternative world setting and so forth, happened to mention war crimes. It presented this as natural and expected, except that the world-building did not support it.
Post Post-Scarcity
The answer to our human ills does not lie with limitless energy or a post-scarcity society. If anywhere, it lies within us.
What is Time?
It is first necessary to establish what, precisely, is being asked by that question, since most casual answers are actually responding to the perceived question ‘how is time measured,’ and not to the actual question ‘what is time’.
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