Steve_Bamlett_blog

Describe your life in an alternate universe. Human beings get horribly stuck in the notion of binary options when they think of themselves, yet the great thought experiments concerning the identity of things all have a clear message: Schrodinger’s cat is not either alive nor dead but on a continuum of potential states of being … More If there were alternative universes in which to live and describe your life, they would be, and indeed are, MULTIPLE.

What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it? This is a question you just have to undermine since its presumption is that there is a common starting point for people who answer it, but that is far from the truth, even if we take the fact the cost of … More Use value, exchange value and the sale of social appearances

Describe one habit that brings you joy. A habit, when it isn’t an item of clothing, is usually an action or sequence of actions that is repeated subconsciously because it has been overlearned. Repeated and without variation such sequences are thought to be stored in the cerebellum and are easily accessible without much consciousness that … More Are joy and the habitual really compatible?

What are you curious about? At the beginning of Chapter 2 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we read: ‘”Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot to speak good English); …..’. We forget, at our peril, that, whatever his commitment to nonsense and queer adventures, the eminent … More Curiouser and curiouser! Being Alice in search of inverted worlds in lieu of Wonderland

Write about a random act of kindness you’ve done for someone. A hug, a smile, a giving up Flesh finding its kind in random touch Not seen, not even felt perhaps Except in that touching when Flesh answers in the same kind. And ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ flowers Aloft above its lonely fragile stems of … More Almost flesh, not kind … Akin in ‘we’.

How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you? Seeing is an important word in our culture and so it was in Ancient Attica too. In Euripides play, The Phoenician Women, about the collapse of Thebes as it is subject to civil war by Oedipus’ warlike sons, it is associated with people who … More Why is seeing so important anyway? The dominance of the eye. The hegemony of vision. 

Was today typical? There is a distinction in the philosophy of mind between type and token identity. Whereas it was once thought there must be events in the brain the brain that are exactly the same, if expressed in different media, as an event in the mind, like a thought, modern identity theory claims that … More My token day? Why no day need be the same as another.