Excerpt from Zhuangzi

—"Zhuangzi was accompanying a funeral when he passed by Huizi's grave. 


Turning to his attendants, he said, 'There was once a plasterer who, if he got a speck of mud on the tip of his nose no thicker than a fly's wing, would get his friend Carpenter Shi to slice it off for him.

Carpenter Shi, whirling his hatchet with a noise like the wind, would accept the assignment and proceed to slice, removing every bit of mud without injury to the nose, while the plasterer just stood there completely unperturbed.

Lord Yuan of Song, hearing of this feat, summoned Carpenter Shi and said, 'Could you try performing it for me?' But Carpenter Shi replied, 'It's true that I was once able to slice like that—but the material I worked on has been dead these many years.'

Since you have died, Master Hui, I have had no material to work on. There's no one I can talk to any more.'"

[The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, translated by Burton Watson, Section 24]

Notes from October 26, 2009

—Nicholas Rescher's list of possible reasons as to why philosophy doesn't (seem) to make any progress:

(1) methodological differences lead to different results
(2) psychological differences among thinkers
(3) structural problems
      (a) originality is awarded
      (b) obscurity is awarded
(4) cultural differences among thinkers
(5) philosophy is a pseudo-discipline. Its questions aren't sensible or legitimate

Notes from March 24, 2010

"White on White," Kasimir Malevich, 1918

—Notes on "On the Possibility of Philosophical Knowledge," George Bealer

What are Intuitions?

(a) An intuition is an intellectual "seeming," not a sensory or introspective "seeming."

(b) Philosophical intuitions are a priori intuitions, not physical intuitions.

(c) They are not beliefs. I can have an intuition that something is right (a mathematical proof, for example) and simultaneously believe it is wrong. Also, belief is highly plastic; intuitions aren't.

(d) Not all intuitions are linguistic intuitions, i.e. intuitions about words and their applications.

(e) Not all intuitions are analytic, i.e. arriving from the combination of logic and the definition of terms.

(f) Intuitions can be mistaken. Locally, a single intuition can be wrong. Holistically, a person's systematization can be wrong.

Notes from September 29, 2010

—(4) Bees hate the taste of quinine.

Notes from May 21, 2010

—Panofsky on the medieval worldview: "the gratuitous clarification of function through form."

Notes from August 18, 2014

—A homeless woman dragging herself forward with a walker. A shabby dachshund slinks along behind her, as if embarrassed to be seen with her. 

Pliny on the tribe of Psylli

"There is a...tribe in Africa called the Psylli after King Psyllus, whose tomb is in the region of Greater Syrtes, as Agatharchides records. They produce in their bodies a poison deadly to snakes, and its odour puts snakes to sleep. Their custom was to expose children at birth to extremely fierce snakes and to use these snakes to test the faithfulness of their wives since snakes do not flee people born of adulterous blood."

[Natural History, Pliny the Elder, Book 7, section 14; translated by John F. Healy]