Category Archives: Philosophy

The Buffered Identity

Philosopher Charles Taylor wrote in his 2007 book The Secular Age: A modern is feeling depressed, melancholy. He is told: it’s just your body chemistry, you’re hungry, or there is a hormone malfunctioning, or whatever. Straightaway, he feels relieved. He … Continue reading

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Principles For Understanding Reality

These are my rules for life. These are my principles for decoding reality. * Marginalized movements attract marginalized people. You can’t build anything great with losers. * We attract people like ourselves. If you want to figure out someone, look … Continue reading

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On Epistemic Black Holes. How Self-Sealing Belief Systems Develop and Evolve

Here are excerpts from a preprint of a 2023 philosophy paper: * Here’s a sample of some extremely implausible and unfounded beliefs that are endorsed by many apparently sane and rational people even in the age of modern science: the … Continue reading

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Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social

Here are some highlights from this 2021 book: * Tocqueville claimed that when he visited the US in the mid-nineteenth century most people did not genuinely believe in God or in Christian dogmas. However, as most people also believed that … Continue reading

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The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998)

Here are some excerpts from this book sociologist Randall Collins: * The long-term tendency of an active intellectual community is to raise the level of abstraction and reflexivity. * Individuals who participate in IRs [interaction rituals] are filled with emotional … Continue reading

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