1.  Introduction, by Z The assumption that the universe, aka the cosmos, aka nature, aka the world, is purely and exclusively physical and essentially mechanical, is one of the great unexamined presuppositions of modern, Baconian/Cartesian, Newtonian, and post-Newtonian science and philosophy, especially including deterministic interpretations of relativity physics, quantum mechanics, and Darwinian evolutionary biology. But … [continue reading]

BY OTTO PAANS[1] 1. Introduction In the first installment in this series on the nature and varieties of philosophical bullshit, I dealt with the topic of incoherent philosophical bullshit. In this second installment, I deal with professional philosophical bullshit. There are multiple ways of dealing with this topic. One way would be to collect samples … [continue reading]

New York Times, 20 June 2016 1. Introduction by Z I urge you to read this extremely interesting interview with Henry Geroux carefully, but also to compare and contrast it with APP’s third and first anarcho-philosophical dialogues, “Memory and the Political Philosophy of Cognition” and “What (the Hell) is Enlightenment?” Apart from our appeal to … [continue reading]

L_E:  Greetings to SK, Z, OP, and Y! For this anarcho-philosophical dialogue, I’d like us to think and talk about the nature of memory. I’ve been concerned with the question of whether the past exists and/or is real, and whether our memories of past events are reliable at all. Some studies have suggested that memory … [continue reading]

1. “What’s Wrong With Contemporary Philosophy?,” by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons, and Barry Smith  In Topoi  (2006) 25:63–67  I: Philosophy in Three Parts Philosophy in the West now divides into three parts—Analytic Philosophy (AP), Continental Philosophy (CP), and History of Philosophy (HP). Analytic Philosophy, although it comes in many varieties, has four striking properties. First, … [continue reading]

OP:  I hope you all feel ready for a new discussion! My question is: What type of philosophical theories should real philosophy produce? This has been on my mind since the discussion on APP that followed “The Pre-Structured Professional.” In that discussion, the participants agreed that some or even many current philosophical theories don’t do … [continue reading]

1. Introduction, by Z Simone Weil was a French philosopher, religious mystic, and radical political activist. She died of tuberculosis in 1943 at the age of 34. Her Lectures on Philosophy is a 1978 translation of the transcript of a set of lectures Weil presented in French in 1933-34. In his Introduction to the translation, … [continue reading]

1. Introduction, by Z In part 2 of Proposed Roads to Freedom, Russell discusses many concrete social and political issues, and proposes a number of concrete solutions, in line with his favored doctrine, Guild Socialism–a federalist development of Kropotkin-style social anarchism. And in the last chapter, “The World As It Could Be Made,” he quite … [continue reading]

The one intelligible theory of the universe is … objective idealism [which acknowledges] the physical law as derived and special, the psychical alone as primordial … [and] matter [as] effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. (C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.245, 1891) The attempt to understand nature remains one of the basic objectives of Western … [continue reading]