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"The Tree is My Hat" also has Lovecraftian undertones, if I recall correctly.…
21 Jun 2007, 22:13
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I wouldn't feel overly bad about it; a while back on this list I referenced an Ars Magica supplement in a discussion on the Kabbalah and Severian... Iozz -- plush Cthulhu owner a…
11 Jun 2007, 21:07
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Sonic Youth, Radiohead, the Pixies, Eels, the Clash, Queens of the Stone Age. That's probably a very odd list of things to be listening to while reading Wolfe, but oh well... -…
20 Apr 2007, 20:30
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Ah. Oops. Normally I'm more careful. Will do better. Iorwerth…
28 Aug 2006, 19:19
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I'm a little late to the party, but the passages quoted below could be why I kept reading process theology into the BotNS when I first read it. I think there's some evidence tha…
25 Aug 2006, 19:35
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True, but bear in mind that at least one other Catholic author has used the comparison between a linear (and progressive) spirtitual history and a cyclical secular one: Walter M …
24 Jul 2006, 16:53
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Hrrm. I assume that if one treats the mailing list as a set of secondary sources, and then implements the no-editing template idea, then one could just cite the relevant post, s…
04 Jul 2006, 13:46
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Ditto.…
04 May 2006, 09:57
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Ouch... Canonical quantum gravity is just the term for what Stephen Hawking does (i.e. take GR and second quantise it); it isn't hugely successful... I'll have to think about th…
27 Apr 2006, 09:12
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Well, Bell's inequality is a property (as far as I know; I'm a computational field theorist turned condensed matter theorist who needs to bone up on his foundations) of non-relat…
26 Apr 2006, 10:51
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More or less what I intended to say; thanks! I'm largely riffing off Pierre Duheim, who seemed to have some fairly sensible things to say on the subject. I'll also note (in or…
25 Apr 2006, 09:10
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Quick addendum: A lot depends on the value assigned to 'law of nature', as well. I suspect Whiteheadean Process Theists of having a view that's similar to a 'contigent regulari…
14 Apr 2006, 21:00
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Depends on what value one assigns 'miracle', I guess. (But as a wicked Anglican, and hence neither truely Catholic nor Protestant, I _would_ say that. :) ) Siding with Wittgens…
14 Apr 2006, 20:44
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Oh, I know :). I specialise in quantum field theory. I think that I didn't quite say what I wanted to say there. This might be more close to the intent (or perhaps not). The …
14 Apr 2006, 20:33
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Of course, assuming physics 'as we know it' to be true is a bit of a risk; relativity being patchy is probably at least as likely as not.…
07 Apr 2006, 13:49
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It _sounds_ like some elements of Kierkeguaard, but it may not have been original to him. -Iorwerth…
04 Apr 2006, 11:18
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It's been close to a year since I last read it (and I think I need to do so again) so take the following with a pinch of salt... I did get the impression that he may have been th…
30 Jun 2005, 09:10
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I'll have to keep an eye out for those; I've only read 'Coelestis', which is similar in theme to 5HoC - namely, how colonialism messes up both the colonists and the natives. In …
17 May 2005, 03:42
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I think it may be a panentheistic set up (God permeates and transcends nature - hence the Increate refers to God active in Creation, the Pancreator refers to God transcending nat…
08 Apr 2005, 03:15
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Particularly if Wolfe intends (in some ways) to provide a critical analysis of (from a Christian perspective) of both the adequacies and inadequacies of an Old Testament approach…
06 Apr 2005, 04:29
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Ok, referring to my general reference for all thing Jewish and mystical[1], we have 4 universes each corresponding to an aspect of the creative act (the book isn't very detailed …
05 Apr 2005, 03:03
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Actually, it was more the attempt to use a 'pseudo-Kantian' categorical principle in order to enact oppressive laws on an ethnic minority, i.e. the travelling comminity [1]. But…
04 Apr 2005, 07:50
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It's one of my favorite answers too, and might even be what Kierkegaard thought [1]! Not sure if it really helps with Severian, though. Iorwerth [1] Or, it's at least as good …
22 Mar 2005, 10:05
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Regarding TDK, I think the British sf magazine SFX had a feature on it in which Miller was of the opinion that most of Gotham's villans were as they were due to the presence of B…
22 Mar 2005, 08:56
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*Puts on G. E. Moore mask* 'And why is maximising that in the majority of the population good?' Iorwerth (who really should be getting some work done instead of discussing ethic…
21 Mar 2005, 06:39
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Hmm... This is reminiscent of Kierkegaard's [1] problem of Abraham in 'Fear and Trembling'. The problem being: 1) Abraham is credited with being moral and the father of the fa…
21 Mar 2005, 06:34
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There's an example from a book of ethical dillemas [1] on how following Kant's categorical imperative regarding honesty made a female correspondant of his (and probably by extens…
21 Mar 2005, 06:13
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Well - yes and no. It does seem very hard - to me, at least - to talk about 'good' and 'bad' without at least at some point talking about what's good and bad for a particular or…
21 Feb 2005, 05:00
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Hmm. If my choice is between eating a cheese sandwich or being eaten by a crocodile, the chances are that I'll choose the former, however, in order to confirm that for sure aft…
18 Feb 2005, 09:03
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Yeah, I did a check right now and it does - the compilation is even going for £20; I'm feeling a little silly. In my defense, the previous check was done when it was late and I …
17 Feb 2005, 09:18
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I just remembered - my great disappointment with the film of 'The Minority Report' was that it replaced a philosophical teaser of this kind with a bog standard Hollywood conspira…
17 Feb 2005, 07:50
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I'm afraid that's why I haven't read it yet; at present, I think only 'A Case of Conscience' is actually in print in the UK; I did look quickly on Amazon a few weeks ago and fou…
17 Feb 2005, 07:30
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I'm going to backtrack a bit on this discussion; I've been a a bit out the loop due to a horrible flu/cough thing that had me running a high fever until yesterday... Only in the…
16 Feb 2005, 07:33
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Aristotle appears to have started his ethics along similar lines, but his definition of happiness winds up pretty different from the common-or-garden definition. And he'd agree …
16 Feb 2005, 06:21
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Bizarre historical aside: Many of Newton's contempories objected to his theory of gravitation because, to them, it smacked of the last answer in that list. Which wasn't really …
09 Feb 2005, 07:31
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Pretty good. Here's a possible counterexample (original to a Calvinist cognitive scientist by the name of Donald Mackie - or Mackay; I forget which - via John Barrow's nice litt…
09 Feb 2005, 07:23
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Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But how does the Lothar/Loki fit into that? Maybe as an expression of the One's (more Neoplatonic than Platonic here; oh well) more playful (t…
09 Feb 2005, 06:49
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Just finished reading 'The Wizard Knight', and while it's no 'Peace' or BotNS I think I'm rather fond of it. It struck me as intriguing how the Overcyn appeared while Able was we…
08 Feb 2005, 04:45
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I think it may be a bit more two way than that - in some ways, largly because there's a lot of contingency and flexibility in the way someone's belief structure can be constructe…
08 Feb 2005, 04:40
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Curses. My memory is as bad as ever. I'm sure I have seen it called that somewhere. But you're probably right. It is an argument I've seen attributed to Hume, though. Iorwer…
07 Feb 2005, 05:30
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Oops. My bad. I misconstrued you. I thought you were arguing that environment _alone_ rather than 'environment plus internal state' were determining factors for behaviour. An…
07 Feb 2005, 05:22
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Oh God, the justification of dubious politics by attatching the word 'scientific' to it. The same happened with Darwinism - Herbet Spencer and the 'scientific' Social Darwinists…
04 Feb 2005, 06:58
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It sounds like version of Hume's fork (either my actions are determined [by the laws of physics, or in this case, the environment] or not; if they aren't, they are random, which …
04 Feb 2005, 06:28
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Ok, I'll bite. What's the axiomatic structure, and does it support: a) Self-reference b) classical or non-classical logic ? (You might find that the system is Godel incomplete..…
04 Feb 2005, 06:11
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Yeah. Of course, with most stuff like this, you have to be careful with how you proceed; evolutionary psychology got a very bad name when it started up due to the flagrant crass…
04 Feb 2005, 06:02
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Ah, but the Copenhagen interpretation isn't metaphysical - not in its original form. All it involves is acceptance of the fact that QM provides a description of the probabilitie…
04 Feb 2005, 05:39
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Which was a worthy and probably necessary thing to do, given the excesses of their predecessors. One does get the impression that the pendulum _did_ swing too far the other way,…
03 Feb 2005, 10:12
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Iorwerth…
03 Feb 2005, 04:39
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Hmm, I think (going by conversations with a psychologist flatmate) that [1] is historically prior to [2]... That may be because one gets so used to a stance taken for the sake of…
03 Feb 2005, 04:29
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Ok, forgive the ignorance of a physicist... I was under the impression that Searle's argument was intended to attack strong AI, in particular the idea that algorithms alone are s…
31 Jan 2005, 04:50
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