Notes from the Wired
This is a website where I write articles on various topics that interest me, carving out a bit of cyberspace for myself.
You shouldn't believe anything I talk about — I use words entirely recreationally.
Most Recent
Jul. 23
Selected Writings from Saint Augustine
This summary and critic was created in the context of the seminar “Introduction to Saint Augustine,” which I attended at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. It is not a summary of a single work, but rather a summary of selected chapters from various works by him, such as The City of God or Confession.
Background Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a Christian bishop in North Africa, one of the most influential thinkers of late antiquity. His major work, The City of God, was written in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome (410), when Rome was captured for the first time in centuries during the migrations of various peoples.
Jul. 22
Philosophical Ramblings #16: On Philosophical Methods
I have some reservations about the overuse of strict logical arguments in philosophy, especially the common structure of “premise, premise, conclusion.” This approach works extremely well in mathematics, where the objects of reasoning are precisely defined and where symbols have fixed meanings. However, natural language does not work in this way.
Words do not have perfectly fixed definitions that exist independently of their use. Rather, we learn the meaning of words by participating in a linguistic community: by observing how words are used in different situations and by developing a network of associations connected to them. A word is therefore not like a mathematical symbol with a single precise meaning, but more like a cloud of related meanings, associations, and intuitions.
Jul. 22
Philosophical Ramblings #15: Idealism and the Fragmented Mind
One major argument in favour of idealism concerns epistemology: all knowledge of the external world is mediated through our senses, which we know from experience can be mistaken. On the other hand, our knowledge of our own mind appears to be direct and immediate. Our mind therefore seems to occupy a privileged epistemological position. Based on this assumption, thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Bernardo Kastrup, and Philip Goff develop their respective versions of idealism.
