Objectively True

• Everyone you know that has watched a commercial for Bob’s NewWidget purchases Bob’s NewWidget and thinks that it is the greatest invention.
  • You are given the opportunity to watch the commercial.  Do you take it?
• Everyone you know that has taken a certain drug BNW purchases Bob’s NewWidget and thinks that it is the greatest invention.
  • You are given the opportunity to take the drug.  Do you take it?

Now we’ll change things slightly:

• Everyone you know who has read a certain book comes to believe that free market capitalism is the only viable economic system for the future of humanity.
  • Do you read the book?
• Everyone you know who has taken a certain drug FMC comes to believe that free market capitalism is the only viable economic system for humanity.
  • Do you take the drug?

and, finally…

• Everyone you know who has read a certain book comes to believe that God exists and has a personal relationship with them.
  • Do you read the book?
• Everyone who has taken drug BPG comes to believe that God exists and has a personal relationship with them.
  • Do you take the drug?

In all these cases, of course, we assume that there are no other side-effects of the drug/book/commercial.  Tease out what matters between these different scenarios, if anything in fact, distinguishes them.

So much for getting back into the habit of “blogging”.  So much, also, for the promises of new reviews, thoughts, comments, and readings.  I have not, of late, had quite the slew of time for which I had hoped, and that which I have been afforded was spent in ways previously unanticipated.  What I have accomplished thought, is some work on a new piece of “software”–a little mysql/php-based teaching application, inspired by the illustrious pauker, and based loosely on the same Leitner cardfile method, but more adapted to my needs as a student more readily prone to a Deweyian process of education than the tedium of memorization.

In other news, I have actually begun my reviews of the Dead Science album and Appiah’s book, but both are incomplete.  My venture into Simon Critchley’s Infinitely Demanding has also begun, but I may set it aside now that I have acquired a few new postanalytical philosophy works.  Critchley was not uninformative.  Though the first 20 pages or so of his work it seemed to me held nothing particularly cogent except that which was a mere reformulation of Levinas, it seemed to simply be an attempt to come to terms in order to make a clearer point later in the work, and I will be eager to later resume my reading of Infinitely Demanding.  However, I have an alluring idea for a sustained study of postanalytic philosophy.  If this study bears any fruit, I will describe it later.