The Ivory Cabin

Cartisian Considerations

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:16:23 +0000

Rene Descartes lived at a time when science was beginning to become a powerful tool in humanities quest to gain knowledge and understanding about this world in and ourselves. However, a major challenge to science – which by definition is knowledge gained by observation – is a school of philosophy called skepticism which asserts that human things can know nothing at all. Descartes, being a philosopher scientist, wanted to show this way of thinking to be false so the discoveries of science could be placed upon a firm and lasting base for all future generations.

To do this Descartes crafted the tale of the Evil Genius, a being whose primary goal and deepest joy is to deceive all created things by the immeasurable power and knowledge it possesses. Having conceived of such a being Descartes then asks himself, “What – if anything – can I be sure of in aRead More

Are the Dreamers Sleeping?

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:05:21 +0000

Life is filled with a great many mysteries and riddles. However, we cannot seriously begin to address any of these while we are still confused about whether we are dreaming or waking at any given moment.

While most people see no need to address this question because the answer is already ‘obvious to everyone’, ‘obvious to everyone’ fails on three major levels as a path to truth. First of all in the world which we all designate as ‘waking’, there have been numerous instances where most people in a society believed something to be true when in fact it was false. This highlights a problem I call, “lack of contrast”.

Whenever one is immersed in any state of mind, or convicted of the truth of a claim, if their experience provides no contrasting or contradictory stimulus then they can think something is true simply due to a lack of contrast.Read More

Outline For Final Speaking Presentation

admin — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:59:12 +0000

Purpose:

This speech will recount in an entertaining way the experience of our group as we unified to overcome time constraints, economic limits, and personal aversions to public discourse in order to raise awareness about human/earth relations on EKU’s campus.

Introduction:

It is one thing to talk about raising public awareness about recycling, but it is very different to make your plan happen. This is especially true when one has to find a good time for four people with different schedules to meet and make it happen , nevertheless we managed and the results was pleasantly surprising.

Central Idea:

Though each of us were looking forward to the breaks from school and preparing for our finals, we pulled together to make one last creative and memorable exhibition of the communication skills we had acquired throughout the semester.

Preview:

When we all had finally taken our seat at our group tableRead More

A Defence of Musical Preference

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:12:14 +0000

There are people who think that music consumes will and corrupts clarity. They seem to be of the persuasion that merely listening to anything hard, fast, and not wrote between 1678 AD/CE and 1854 AD/CE dooms one to be a will less witless pawn of some cosmic evil.

I could not possibly dissent more.

To begin with, if you are basing your life philosophy off of an artistic expression which opens only the smallest window into human experience and reality then you have a preexisting problem you need to address.

Beyond this however, as Rumi pointed out, music can be of four combinations:

1. Good lyrics/Good sound

2. Bad lyrics/Bad sound

3. Bad lyrics/Good sound

4. Good lyrics/ Bad sound

Thus, when someone shares a song with you there is no reason to assume that they are giving you a treatise on their world view. They could like it forRead More

Does God Send Disasters?

admin — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:44:52 +0000

Yesterday word got round to me that one of my uncles said Hurricane Irene was bearing down on New York City because they had passed a law permitting same sex marriages. This affected me so deeply that I just had to write something pertaining to it, not only because it smacks of deep misunderstanding but because I know that my well-intending family member is not the lone propagator of such opinions. Therefore, without any further ado let’s dive into the analysis.

Evidential Basis

My first question is what type of evidence do those who make such an assertion have? Do they have videos of a giant hand churning the Atlantic Ocean, satellite images of celestial beings affecting jet streams, or perhaps some Doppler recordings of a huge energetically dense anomaly appearing just before the hurricane was born?

The answer to all of these questions is of course no. The onlyRead More