Some things sometimes

I'm a big fan of free will, and as it seems my blogging isn't happening much right now, I'm not forcing anything...but here's one from the more personal echelons of my head. I try to speak specifically, but I know things can be misunderstood, so I'll clarify if needed. Just try to look up any unknown terms yourself please =)

I think of rationalist epistemology as a sort of black hole. I don't mean this in any negative sense: it is simply an inescapable knowledge of the unknowable nature of all in our existence. Once you 'know' that you can't, you 'know' that you can't escape. The single quotation marks above point to the fun result of this: believing something despite 'knowing' you can't know is still possible. Of course, this raises the question of how you know that you believe it. The only escape from the inescapable is paradox: to be both within and without the black hole. When one is aware of this paradox and maintaining it regardless, that is something amazing--especially the particular paradox of belief without 'evidence' (or what approximations of it we have). Perhaps the belief with the most evidence is that we ourselves exist at all: Cogito Ergo Sum. After all, if we didn't exist, how could we be reasoning about it? Anything beyond that is a bit harder though: welcome to solipsism.

Unfortunately, believing something without understanding the paradox of doing so is nothing long of ordinary. It allows for and easily leads to epistemologically unsustainable paradoxes in our beliefs (ha). If you ever feel like a sighted person wandering among the "sheeple" (check XKCD for that one, heh), it may be that they hold such blind beliefs, unknowing of their lack of inability to know. Or they might just be lost in thought and/or observing the sheeple, like you. For those who've demonstrated their epistemology to be underdeveloped, I hope we can find ways to assist in their leaps.

End of Days

Well, this semester rather, but I felt a bit dramatic. It's certainly been a surprising one. Among many other coincidences, somehow I ended up taking four extremely interesting courses this semester, three of which were also exceedingly fun, and pretty inspiring and motivational. My theater prof, Stephen Drover, had a brilliant and fun approach to teaching, and really helped me think about theater on a new level. And my developmental psychology profs, Jeremy Frimer and Lawrence Walker, introduced me to a new and exciting framework for thinking about humanity. So many of my feelings about people and their nature have been given voice, a scientific context, and a view of the passion that others have for the same topics. Whether because he is from a closer generation, younger, or something else, Jeremy's lectures connected with me in particular. His teaching style was dynamic, obviously interested, motivated, effective, informative, personal highly relevant, and well paced. In short, it was a joy to learn under his guidance, and I think he has become a bit of a role model for me.

So that's my little blast of enthusiasm out there. I'm just about to fall asleep, as I stayed up late to pound out my last paper. Until next time.. *yawn*

Ends and Beginnings

I am now a retired summoner. In other words, I recently uninstalled the last video game I played on a regular basis, due to the sheer volume of other things I want to do (which I've not spent enough time and energy on at this time). Books, movies, snowboarding, activities, work, socialising, and--most importantly--exploration. I want to explore more of the important things in life, and by that I mean such topics as covered in the links from the last post.

Funny thing, actually: today in my DevPsyc lecture we watched a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (SKR) (one of the speakers from the links in my last post). Not only was it inspiring, but the coincidence struck a chord with me, and I noticed that SKR has a book out called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Top of my to-read list, now! So thank you, Jeremy Frimer, for yet another awesome lecture, which connected to me especially personally this time.

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life" - Confucius