Some of you may have guessed from previous posts that I have a background in Philosophy. I believe that we can learn a lot from the deepest thinkers of the last few thousand years, and that current philosophical thought is advancing the knowledge and experience of the human race as much as anything else. I have recently been delving my nose into some of the latest books of philosophical thought written by the most eminent minds of our generation, with no fear of even the longest, most complicated words and sentences. Much of what I read was thought provoking, erudite and quite, quite brilliant, though some of the arguments and logical reasoning on display showed some room for improvement. Here are my findings.
On the Epistemological Qualities of Hegellian Dialectical Thought in the Twentieth Century by Professor Rutger Blenschneitz is a rubbish book because it has a brown cover. Brown covers are rubbish. I hate brown. Plus this book smells like asparagus. Professor Blenschneitz is a terrible writer because he has a silly name.
I enjoyed Cognitive Ethology and Quantum Philosophy: A Radical Comparative Approach by Sir Thomas Miller. This was because the book had some pictures of dogs in it. Dogs are great, aren’t they? They run around loads and they bite my sister. And then when they get wet they shake themselves dry and the wetness goes all over everywhere and everyone gets wet and starts crying. A wonderful book by a preeminent thinker.
Further Investigations into the Inter-Totality of Essence by Gottfried van Dyke went like this: “Dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur symbolism.” And then it went like this: “Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah meaning.” And then it went like this: “Dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur dur I smell, signed Gottfried van Poop.”
Professor Jayne Maddox is my favourite philosopher ever. I’ve got all her books, even the really rare ones that nobody else has. Her latest masterpiece, Godel’s Proof of the Incompleteness of Formal Systems and its Implications on the Progress of Science, is amazing, because it has a picture of her on the back cover. I can move the book around and her eyes follow me around. It’s like we’re dancing, Jayne Maddox and I. We’re dancing! Together! And in love!
This is the best book ever.
Finally, The Philosophy of Hannah Montana is an excellent introduction to the world of philosophical thought as told through the popular Disney Channel series. Existentialism, Leibniz’s Monadology, Plato’s Republic, Hume’s problem of induction and Descartes’ famed Cogito argument are all brilliantly explained in terms of Miley Cyrus and chums. Particularly strong is the section on the Philosophy of Language, with special mention being given to Tarski’s T-Scheme, metalanguages and the implication of the existence of paradoxes on formalised language. My only problems with this book are that it doesn’t have any pictures of dogs in it, and Professor Jayne Maddox isn’t on the cover.
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Friday, 4 July 2008
Restaurant Review: The Best of All Possible Meals
The Best of All Possible Meals is the latest themed restaurant to hit the World dining scene, garnering huge swathes of column inches in the weekend broadsheets. With an interior designed by up and coming architectural collective ‘Pörn’ and a menu full of creations by top chef GastroKeith, The Best of All Possible Meals has the gimmick of being the first philosophically-themed restaurant in the world. I went along to see if I could find the meaning of life lurking somewhere in my soup.
The décor of the establishment is superb, with busts and portraits of popular philosophers lining the walls. Whether you’re into Stoicism or Contemporary Post-Structuralism, you’re sure to find all of your favourites somewhere in the dining room. My waiter for the day, who introduced himself as Immanuel, showed my partner and I to our seats at a Wittgensteinian Truth Table, and asked if we would like our menus in rational or empirical form. I chose the former option while my partner opted for the latter, and for anyone thinking of eating at the restaurant I can only recommend that you also go for the empirical menu. My choice of a rationalist menu meant that it was assumed that I had an innate knowledge of its contents, meaning that I didn’t receive one. Luckily I was able to share my partner’s.
The décor of the establishment is superb, with busts and portraits of popular philosophers lining the walls. Whether you’re into Stoicism or Contemporary Post-Structuralism, you’re sure to find all of your favourites somewhere in the dining room. My waiter for the day, who introduced himself as Immanuel, showed my partner and I to our seats at a Wittgensteinian Truth Table, and asked if we would like our menus in rational or empirical form. I chose the former option while my partner opted for the latter, and for anyone thinking of eating at the restaurant I can only recommend that you also go for the empirical menu. My choice of a rationalist menu meant that it was assumed that I had an innate knowledge of its contents, meaning that I didn’t receive one. Luckily I was able to share my partner’s.
Our Waiter for the day, Immanuel
Incidentally, for those who don’t wish to be sat at one of the Truth Tables, there are private rooms available on request. These ‘Sartre Rooms’ are especially for those who think that “Hell is other people”.
While there are several set menus to choose from, there are also many things of interest on the A la Descartes menu, and it was from here where the two of us ate. For our appetizers, I decided to have the Leibnizian monad salad, while my partner went for Nietzsche’s Uberminestrone Soup. The salad was good, though there definitely wasn’t enough of it. Conversely, while plentiful, the Nietzschian soup was a little hard to swallow.
I had heard good things about the Platonic Chicken, and so ordered that as my entrée. It was absolutely superb: moist, tasty, done to perfection and with an exquisite selection of vegetables. I can say without fear of exaggeration that this is the best chicken I have had in my life. It was, as far as I can see, the ideal form of chicken, the chicken to which all other chickens must aspire. I now know that I will never eat another chicken so long as I live, as nothing will ever live up to Platonic Chicken here at The Best of All Possible Meals.
My partner, on the other hand, was not so lucky in her choice of entrée. She went for a Hume-inspired dish consisting of duck with mashed potatoes and green beans. She enjoyed the side dishes, but wasn’t overly keen on the meat itself. She called it ‘Hume’s Problem of In-duck-tive Seasoning’. I tasted some for myself and she was right; it was far too salty.
For dessert, I treated myself to an Ontological Banana Split. I don’t see how I couldn’t; its very existence on the menu meant that I had no other option but to conclude it delicious. My partner decided to go for the Gödel Cheese Plate, but we couldn’t get our heads around it. For some reason it contained every single cheese in existence, but by doing so, proved that no cheese plate would ever contain a set of all cheeses. It felt wrong to eat any of it, and so it was returned to the kitchens untouched.
We finished our meals with a couple of cocktails, and while I enjoyed my Locke on the Rocks, here I must again make a warning to the potential BoAPM customer. The Socrates Sling, a drink that contains a mysterious ‘secret ingredient’, prompted my partner to feel quite ill, and a while after our meal had ended, she succumbed to her sickness. The inquest suggested she had suffered from hemlock poisoning. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend anyone try that particular drink themselves.
All in all, The Best of All Possible Meals is a fairly decent establishment, with some poor dishes made up for by the wonderful Platonic Chicken. I would have liked to have finished this review with a conclusion, but this is philosophy, and it would only be proved wrong in a matter of months.
For more Philosophically-inspired cuisine, please look out for the forthcoming restaurant by John Searle, The Chinese Food Argument.
Monday, 31 March 2008
The Latest Magazines Reviewed!
The April issue of The British Philosophical Journal is about to hit the newsagents, and it’s as full of all your favourite philosophers as previous issues. The cover features prominent American philosopher John Searle, who talks inside about his favourite Girls Aloud songs, his tips for the upcoming European Cup finals and the best places to eat in his home town of Denver. Also included in the publication is a pull-out-and-keep guide to ontological proofs of the existence of God, the fourth in the series of Classic Interviews (in which Bertrand Russell tells us, over a game of pool, why he is not a Christmas card-sender), and a poster of Daniel Dennett. There is also a competition, the winner of which will be flown to Los Angeles, where they will get backstage passes to a talk on homuncular functionalism by William Lycan.
Also out next week is the latest issue of Teen Pop! magazine, a new publication aimed at teenagers who like pop music. In this issue, Rihanna discusses her views on Kantian ethics, while Leona Lewis talks to Russell Brand about her forthcoming biography of nineteeth century German painter Adrian Ludwig Richter. Also in this issue, win a chance to shoot the Westlife member of your choice in the knee, and Will Self compares the work of Mariah Carey to the written ouvre of Andrea Dworkin.
Blank Cassette Collector Monthly has a new format this month, moving to a Berliner size and having a guest editor for every issue. With Salman Rushdie at the helm of this issue, articles include Memorex in 1992: The Golden Year, The Blank CD: Why it is Shit, and How to Stop Your Children From Recording Things on Your Blank Cassettes. Also, Part 2 of Nick Hornby’s opinion piece The Other Side: Why it’s Good to Put Music on Your Blank Cassettes, with a counterpoint article by Grundy Macintosh, chairman of the Blank Cassette Collector Club.
Fans of the monthly serial Build a Chair will be pleased to find that the next issue comes with a cushion for the chair that they have very nearly finished building over the last 36 months. The final issue will be released in June, coming with a free pot of paint.
Finally, on a sad note, Casual Racist Magazine will no longer be in print after this month’s edition, but to celebrate three hate-filled years the publication will come with a free Bernard Manning joke book.
Also out next week is the latest issue of Teen Pop! magazine, a new publication aimed at teenagers who like pop music. In this issue, Rihanna discusses her views on Kantian ethics, while Leona Lewis talks to Russell Brand about her forthcoming biography of nineteeth century German painter Adrian Ludwig Richter. Also in this issue, win a chance to shoot the Westlife member of your choice in the knee, and Will Self compares the work of Mariah Carey to the written ouvre of Andrea Dworkin.
Blank Cassette Collector Monthly has a new format this month, moving to a Berliner size and having a guest editor for every issue. With Salman Rushdie at the helm of this issue, articles include Memorex in 1992: The Golden Year, The Blank CD: Why it is Shit, and How to Stop Your Children From Recording Things on Your Blank Cassettes. Also, Part 2 of Nick Hornby’s opinion piece The Other Side: Why it’s Good to Put Music on Your Blank Cassettes, with a counterpoint article by Grundy Macintosh, chairman of the Blank Cassette Collector Club.
Fans of the monthly serial Build a Chair will be pleased to find that the next issue comes with a cushion for the chair that they have very nearly finished building over the last 36 months. The final issue will be released in June, coming with a free pot of paint.
Finally, on a sad note, Casual Racist Magazine will no longer be in print after this month’s edition, but to celebrate three hate-filled years the publication will come with a free Bernard Manning joke book.
Sunday, 26 August 2007
Special In-Depth Review: The Cheeky Manifesto
As an apology for the lack of reviews of late, I have now written a rather long and in-depth review of The Cheeky Manifesto by The Cheeky Girls. I hope you all enjoy it.
When The Cheeky Girls released their first single, The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum), many people dismissed it as throwaway manufactured pop. Moreover, the fact that two identical twin sisters were singing a song written by their mother imploring the listener to fondle their rear end, made it seem all the more sinister.
Yet, at the same time, postmodernist disassociationist writers saw the Cheeky Song for what it really was: a richly layered philosophical treatise, written in the only language that the modern Westerner understands, pop music. Now the Cheeky Girls have put their political thoughts onto paper, and the results are stark, clear, and brilliant.
The most important part of the Cheeky Girls’ philosophy is that of identity. They remove any semblance of solipsism or existential doubt by the forceful definition of what they believe to be the limits of their physicality. ‘We are the Cheeky Girls/You are the Cheeky Boys’ they say, drawing a line in the sand between what constitutes ‘themselves’ and ‘the other’. Delving deeper, their language indicates a belief in a plurality of matter; ‘You are the Cheeky Boys’ [emphasis mine] shows that the Cheeky Girls consider all that lies without themselves to be more than a single substance. By saying this so early in their writing they distance themselves – the writers – from their readers, while at the same time making us aware that we are all as one, all cheeky.
The next part of the Cheeky Manifesto is pure genius. To quote: ‘We are the Cheeky Girls/You are the Cheeky Boys’. It is nothing more than the previous line repeated, but contains no mere repetition of meaning, but so much more! By phrasing their previous thoughts in exactly the same way but at a later time, they prove that their views persist through the fourth dimension! The truth of the separation of Cheeky Girls (them) and Cheeky Boys (us) continues through time; it is not a mere momentary thing!
Having proved the persistence of their beliefs through time, the Cheeky Girls get into the meat and potatoes of their philosophy. Again, to quote: ‘Come and smile/Don’t be shy/Touch my bum/This is life’. How much wisdom of the world is contained in this four line stanza! How many philosophers would have given their lives just to utter such profound a truth in so few words! Such breathless veracity!
It is best to take the lines one by one, such is the depth of meaning contained within. Firstly, ‘Come and smile’, deceptively simple in its message of hope. But, this being a Cheeky Girls writing, there is far more than meets the eye. The ‘smile’, as the Cheeky Girls mean it, has layers of meaning that peel away like an onion. Firstly, there is the meaning inherent in the smile, happiness and contentment. Next, consider its physical shape. A downward gradient, evening out and then rising, symmetrically beautiful and mathematically useful. The ‘smile’ for the Cheeky Girls represents mathematical purity; the arc, the arch, the bridge, the valley, the mountain, the parabolic certainty of circadian rhythms…all are welcomed and thrust upon our consciousness by this word. Finally, the smile sits on one’s face, like a harlot. The Cheeky Girls are asking us to consider and appreciate the purity of mathematical form, but not to trust it, as we would in the case of a harlot sitting on our face.
This brings us to the next line. ‘Don’t be shy’. To be shy is to be somewhat afraid in the face of new things. What new things can we possibly be facing? The truth. The Cheeky Girls are showing us the Truth, and they want us to be brave, to stand eye to eye with it and stare it down, like two metaphysical boxers about to exchange epistemological blows in the ring of knowledge. For only then will we overcome our ignorance in the face of certainty.
Next, the line ‘Touch my bum’. For the uneducated layman – and there are many – this is nothing more than a vulgar invitation to caress the Cheeky Girls’ posteriors. But for those acquainted with the history of philosophical thought, the line harkens back to centuries’ worth of profound thinking. The Cheeky Girls’ bums have both the mathematical attractiveness of a smile (indeed, isn’t a bum two smiles?), and also a huge amount of symbolism.
For example, the Cheeky Girls’ bums, resembling peaches as they do, can be seen as the fruit from the tree of knowledge. By tasting this fruit (by ‘touching the bum’) we can learn truth. Moreover, the fruit provided by the Cheeky Girls comes in pairs (pairs of pairs!), which is more than can be said for the mythical pomegranate of Genesis. The truth of the Cheeky Girls’ bums (an a posteriori truth, as Kant would have referred to it) is both mathematically true as well as corresponding to Tarski’s T-Scheme of Truth.
And this brings us to the final line in the Cheeky Girls’ Cheeky Manifesto: ‘This is Life’. And what is this, this ‘this’ that is life? The truth. The truth of the mathematical beauty inherent in a smile, the truth facing you when you jettison your shyness, and the truth of the Cheeky arses. These truths, and all truths like them, they are life.
And there you have it: The Cheeky Manifesto, the Cheeky Girls’ Cheeky Song in philosophical tract form, has solved the meaning of life. It took a pair of politician-seducing Transylvanian twins in hotpants to do it, but at last the meaning of life has been found.
God help us all.
When The Cheeky Girls released their first single, The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum), many people dismissed it as throwaway manufactured pop. Moreover, the fact that two identical twin sisters were singing a song written by their mother imploring the listener to fondle their rear end, made it seem all the more sinister.
Yet, at the same time, postmodernist disassociationist writers saw the Cheeky Song for what it really was: a richly layered philosophical treatise, written in the only language that the modern Westerner understands, pop music. Now the Cheeky Girls have put their political thoughts onto paper, and the results are stark, clear, and brilliant.
The most important part of the Cheeky Girls’ philosophy is that of identity. They remove any semblance of solipsism or existential doubt by the forceful definition of what they believe to be the limits of their physicality. ‘We are the Cheeky Girls/You are the Cheeky Boys’ they say, drawing a line in the sand between what constitutes ‘themselves’ and ‘the other’. Delving deeper, their language indicates a belief in a plurality of matter; ‘You are the Cheeky Boys’ [emphasis mine] shows that the Cheeky Girls consider all that lies without themselves to be more than a single substance. By saying this so early in their writing they distance themselves – the writers – from their readers, while at the same time making us aware that we are all as one, all cheeky.
The next part of the Cheeky Manifesto is pure genius. To quote: ‘We are the Cheeky Girls/You are the Cheeky Boys’. It is nothing more than the previous line repeated, but contains no mere repetition of meaning, but so much more! By phrasing their previous thoughts in exactly the same way but at a later time, they prove that their views persist through the fourth dimension! The truth of the separation of Cheeky Girls (them) and Cheeky Boys (us) continues through time; it is not a mere momentary thing!
Having proved the persistence of their beliefs through time, the Cheeky Girls get into the meat and potatoes of their philosophy. Again, to quote: ‘Come and smile/Don’t be shy/Touch my bum/This is life’. How much wisdom of the world is contained in this four line stanza! How many philosophers would have given their lives just to utter such profound a truth in so few words! Such breathless veracity!
It is best to take the lines one by one, such is the depth of meaning contained within. Firstly, ‘Come and smile’, deceptively simple in its message of hope. But, this being a Cheeky Girls writing, there is far more than meets the eye. The ‘smile’, as the Cheeky Girls mean it, has layers of meaning that peel away like an onion. Firstly, there is the meaning inherent in the smile, happiness and contentment. Next, consider its physical shape. A downward gradient, evening out and then rising, symmetrically beautiful and mathematically useful. The ‘smile’ for the Cheeky Girls represents mathematical purity; the arc, the arch, the bridge, the valley, the mountain, the parabolic certainty of circadian rhythms…all are welcomed and thrust upon our consciousness by this word. Finally, the smile sits on one’s face, like a harlot. The Cheeky Girls are asking us to consider and appreciate the purity of mathematical form, but not to trust it, as we would in the case of a harlot sitting on our face.
This brings us to the next line. ‘Don’t be shy’. To be shy is to be somewhat afraid in the face of new things. What new things can we possibly be facing? The truth. The Cheeky Girls are showing us the Truth, and they want us to be brave, to stand eye to eye with it and stare it down, like two metaphysical boxers about to exchange epistemological blows in the ring of knowledge. For only then will we overcome our ignorance in the face of certainty.
Next, the line ‘Touch my bum’. For the uneducated layman – and there are many – this is nothing more than a vulgar invitation to caress the Cheeky Girls’ posteriors. But for those acquainted with the history of philosophical thought, the line harkens back to centuries’ worth of profound thinking. The Cheeky Girls’ bums have both the mathematical attractiveness of a smile (indeed, isn’t a bum two smiles?), and also a huge amount of symbolism.
For example, the Cheeky Girls’ bums, resembling peaches as they do, can be seen as the fruit from the tree of knowledge. By tasting this fruit (by ‘touching the bum’) we can learn truth. Moreover, the fruit provided by the Cheeky Girls comes in pairs (pairs of pairs!), which is more than can be said for the mythical pomegranate of Genesis. The truth of the Cheeky Girls’ bums (an a posteriori truth, as Kant would have referred to it) is both mathematically true as well as corresponding to Tarski’s T-Scheme of Truth.
And this brings us to the final line in the Cheeky Girls’ Cheeky Manifesto: ‘This is Life’. And what is this, this ‘this’ that is life? The truth. The truth of the mathematical beauty inherent in a smile, the truth facing you when you jettison your shyness, and the truth of the Cheeky arses. These truths, and all truths like them, they are life.
And there you have it: The Cheeky Manifesto, the Cheeky Girls’ Cheeky Song in philosophical tract form, has solved the meaning of life. It took a pair of politician-seducing Transylvanian twins in hotpants to do it, but at last the meaning of life has been found.
God help us all.
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