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What does it mean to ‘change the past’ and is it possible?

 

“I want to change the past,” Tina insisted. “What good’s a time-machine if it can’t even change the past?” The flickering lights on the head of Tina’s robot servant, Chipton, turned red in response. “Your request is irrational. The past is the set of events preceding the present. One cannot change a set while retaining its identity; it would be a different set. Your request is tantamount to a desire for an event to have happened and not happened at the same time.” Tina frowned and shook her head. “Oh, you and your cold, mechanical words! That’s most certainly not what I mean by ‘changing the past.’ I just want to live in a world where something else happened in 1921 – with a different set from ours if you will – what’s so irrational about that?”

φ

 

I shall disambiguate between three meanings of Continue Reading..

15.01.2011 Essays, Philosophy 6 Comments

O’Reilly deserves no charity

…but maybe we should give him some. Now, Bill O’Reilly gives us no reason to be charitable toward his claims. He is loud-mouthed, arrogant, frequently bigoted, annoyingly interruptive, and never charitable toward his interviewees himself.  Such behaviour hardly engenders good will in people to treat him differently. This, I suspect, is the reason for the massive amounts of ridicule heaped onto him after his tide-argument for God in his interview with David Silverman:

Most notable of such ridicule is Colbert describing his position as ‘there must be a God because I don’t know how things work’ and then bringing physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in to explain the tides.

As amusing and justified the ridicule of O’Reilly admittedly is, I doubt the man is truly so ignorant of basic scientific explanations as he’s made out. I just think he’s really bad at getting across whatever his argument happens to be. So when O’Reilly says:

Sun comes up, sun goes down. Tide comes in, tide goes out; never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.

A more charitable interpretation, than a profession of ignorance of the motions of celestial bodies, is Continue Reading..

11.01.2011 Atheism, Philosophy 1 Comment

Exotic Qualia, Functionalism & Martian Zombies

Can functionalism ever escape Exotic Qualia objections?

I shall formulate a meta-argument encompassing all Exotic Qualia problems and argue that while Lewis and Horgan might successfully escape certain guises of the problem neither eradicates it completely. I then suggest the only promising defence of functionalism therefore is a Chalmers-approach.

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I take functionalism as the position that mental states are states that play a specific causal role in regards to their causes and effects, to other mental states, and to the behaviour of the individual.

Continue Reading..

05.12.2010 Essays, Philosophy No Comments

The Real Atheist Nightmare

I have discovered the original worst nightmare of atheists. Before such a great mind as Chuck Missler shattered our fragile atheist delusions with a jar of peanut butter

…even before the magnificent intellect of Ray Comfort demonstrated the error of our heathen ways with a banana

…before then – from the depths of time preceding even Paley’s watch – the revered Lactantius, Christian author and advisor to the first Christain Emperor of Rome, provided us with incontrovertible, logically unassailable proof of God’s existence. Behold the true atheist’s worst nightmare; the nose!

But let us return to the works of God. [...] And the nose, arising from the confines of [the summits of the eyebrows], and stretched out, as it were, with an equal ridge, at once serves to separate and to protect the two eyes. Below also, a not unbecoming swelling of the cheeks, gently rising after the similitude of hills, makes the eyes safer on every side; and it has been provided by the great Artificer, that if there shall happen to be a more violent blow, it may be repelled by the projecting parts. But the upper part of the nose as far as the middle has been made solid; but the lower part has been made with a softened cartilage annexed to it, that it may be pliant to the use of the fingers. – On the Workmanship of God

So there you have it. How could God possibly not exist if we’re able to pick our noses? I’m going straight to church. I am sorry, God, for being ungrateful for the snot you gave us.

 

20.11.2010 Atheism, Humour 2 Comments

Presentism, Penguins & The Le Poidevin-Russell Prong

Can the presentist escape the Last Thursdayism objection against truthmaking?

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ThursdayI shall argue the Last Thursdayism objection against presentist truthmaking is inescapable; since it is a consequence of a sole existing privileged present – intrinsic to all presentisms – and not of any particular presentist truthmaker theory. I shall consider how the truthmaker theories of Rhoda and Cameron fare against the objection – the former because of its unique relevance to the objection; the latter because it is the most sophisticated presentist truthmaker theory.

♦

Presentism is the position that only the present exists. An easy way to understand this is Continue Reading..

06.11.2010 Essays, Philosophy No Comments

‘Fallacy of Division’ or ‘Why You Shouldn’t Date Philosophers’

Late night conversation between the girlfriend and me just before I drifted off to sleep.

Me (mumbling a complaint): Everything is horrible…

Girlfriend: So you think I’m horrible then?

Me (mumbling some more): ‘course not.

Girlfriend: You must do. I’m part of everything.

Me: ’tis an emergent property of everything to be horrible, not to be found in any of its constituent parts. You wouldn’t expect any one car-part to be a vehicle either.

My sincerest sympathy goes out to girlfriends of philosophers everywhere. We can’t be easy to live with.

08.10.2010 Humour, Philosophy 2 Comments

Atheists Don’t Have No Songs: A Freethinker’s Mix

Freethinker's Mix Cover

Cover by A Tribe Called Meuw

I know there already have been many lists of atheist songs; I know because in trying to find songs for my own selection I read quite a few of them. However, I wanted to make something different than a comprehensive list.

I wanted to not only to choose my favourites but also arrange them in some sort of meaningful order that tells a story – at least to my own satisfaction. In short, I wanted to select a mix that can be burned onto a CD and I have endeavoured to keep it under that magical 79 minute mark.

It should also be noted that I know full well that not all of these artists are, in fact, atheists. Some are, some are not, and some I honestly have no idea about. Rather I chose songs based on whether they expressed something an atheist or freethinker would be likely to relate to – though, of course, your mileage may vary. More on odd choices after the track list.

Continue Reading..

14.09.2010 Atheism, Entertainment, Humour, Music 10 Comments

Faroese Controversy – Yet Again

Once again my country made the international headlines for something negative. The prime minister of Iceland, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, is visiting the Faroe Islands and naturally brought her wife Jónína Leósdóttir along. Our own prime minister, Kaj Leo Johannesen, invited all of the Faroese party leaders to an official banquet to welcome the Icelandic prime minister and her wife to our country.

Jenis av Rana – who has been the subject of my rants before – refused, as the only party leader, as one out of three party leaders, one of which had a prior engagement and one who followed av Rana’s lead like a good doggy, to attend the banquet on the grounds that he is an incurable bigot. If you ask me the reaction should have been ‘good riddance’ (really now, if the hateful, bigoted extremists aren’t shunning you, you’re doing something wrong) but any Icelander who was hurt on behalf of Iceland has my complete understanding and full sympathy.

This might not even have been such a big deal if Mr. av Rana had simply Continue Reading..

08.09.2010 Atheism, Politics 7 Comments

Lyrics Schmyrics: Spaced Out & Rapped Up


I’m 28 lightyears old!

.

.

Sure, Mr. Ladies Love and I’m about 14 x 109 years tall – give or take a few litres. Then again I can hardly hold that against you when your contribution to the Monstars Anthem was immediately preceded by a verse in which Method Man claims to be “Insane like a runaway train.”

It’s still an awesome song though…

01.09.2010 Humour, Music 2 Comments

My Website Was…?

I dislike the word ‘hacked’ because to me it refers to something very specific, which is not at all what people usually talk about when they use the word. In any case I don’t know exactly what happened. Somehow my index file – ‘the file in charge of the front page’ if you want it in non-geek – acquired some junk-codes that rerouted my website to something I would rather not have it associated with.

Mind you, I have nothing against the female body except, of course, a huge boner (give me a rim-shot, please!) but everything in its proper context, right? I’m sure some of you will be sorry to hear this, but I intend to keep my website non-porn. Hopefully it will not happen again and I am changing all the passwords I can think of as of writing this.

If any of you visited my site while this was happening I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Or if you were feeling horny at the time I’m happy to have inadvertently provided you with a much needed service.

Kind regards,

Uncle Sketch

13.07.2010 Updates No Comments

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