While the title of this post might as well be a thesaurus entry, my purpose here is to investigate the differences between these concepts and how they operate in different contexts. Mathematical equality The reader is almost certainly very familiar with the equals sign or = used in math. Many of us first encounter it…
Author: Kenneth
Cat owner, educator, learner
Being nothing
I am what I am not. I am not what I am. Jean-Paul Sartre The concept horse is not a concept. Gottlob Frege What is the self? This is my interpretation. It is unique among things in the world in that it is a subject, while everything else consists of objects. The self is not…
I like nonsense the best
I have often said that my favorite way to sort objects is alphabetically by color name. For example, if your objects are colored red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, then you would put the blue one first, followed by green, then purple, red, and finally yellow. But why? Partly for humor. I think it’s funny…
Article share: ‘Bun in the oven’ is an ancient pregnancy metaphor. This historian says it has to go
October 31, 2023 NPR article by Selena Simmons-Duffin It’s a kind of cutesy little way of saying that someone is pregnant to say they have “a bun in the oven.” That metaphor is really old – it first appears in texts by Hippocrates about 2,000 years ago to describe the process of gestation. But if…
Stories in the history of written language (part 4)
In this part, we will look at some of the uses that writing and words have had over time, as well as some of the technology that has facilitated writing. Seals, stamps, and signatures Writing has long been used for more than literal communication and artistic calligraphy. From very early on, certain acts of writing…
“Humility and a willingness to be corrected”
This phrase comes from a video by Erica “Gutsick Gibbon” on YouTube. In the video, she describes how important it is for scholars especially to put what they think the know out there for criticism because it’s the only way to learn and get better. On my About the Author page, I have the following…
Who is Neuro-sama?
Neuro-sama (aka Neuro Sama or Neurosama) is a female-presenting AI vtuber (virtual YouTuber) created by Vedal987. In late December 2022, Neuro debuted on Twitch playing the rhythm game osu! and interacting with the live chat using text-to-speech and an anime girl avatar. The avatar was one that was included with the Live2D software used to…
Video share: Can Christianity Survive A Loss Of Community?
It seems awfully manmade. MindShift
Structural realism in the philosophy of science
One of the core issues in the philosophy of science is realism vs. antirealism. This concerns two things, the ontological status of entities referred to in scientific laws and what the aim of science is (or should be). Realism is the view that entities referred to in scientific laws genuinely exist to the extent that…
Words don’t have meanings
There is an argument I have heard. It goes like this: “Words have meanings.” The implication is that one cannot just use words to mean whatever they want, the words have defined meanings and these definitions are the only things those words can mean. I have seen this argument used a variety of contexts, from…
thoughts on mind 