DE Weekly: Frank Jackson, Physicalism, & Mary’s Room
Last week, I wrote about Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “What Is It Like to Be A Bat?”. I emphasized how one of the conclusions of the essay is that we cannot fully understand everything if we use only a physicalist, materialist lens; some things require a deeper understanding of mind and consciousness.
Today, I’m going to introduce you to a thought experiment that reinforces this notion. It was invented by Australian philosopher Frank Jackson and is called “Mary’s Room.” It is one of the strongest challenges to reductionist physicalism and an interesting foray into the philosophy of mind.
DE Weekly: Nagel, the Mind-Body Problem, & What Is It Like to Be A Bat?
Earlier this year, I wrote about American philosopher Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd,” a work exploring the absurdity of life so central in Existentialism, arguing that we should take a “backward step” from our own perceptions to view the irony in our human condition.
I mentioned then that, although that essay is definitely interesting, I believe Nagel’s most interesting ideas have to do with consciousness and subjective experience.
DE Weekly: Existential Metaphysics, Phenomenology, & Acts of Consciousness
Last week, I wrote about existential aesthetics, or what it is that makes something existential in nature––art, novels, movies, songs, and everything in between. I would like to continue the conversation about existential aesthetics in this newsletter, specifically the metaphysics that define it, and art as an expression of human freedom.
At its core, existential aesthetics means to mirror certain aspects of human experience and existence. We are thrown into the world with no inherent or apparent meaning, forced to be the authors of our own lives. How do we do it?
DE Weekly: Monism, Dualism, & Phenomenological Ontology
Like any philosophy, Existentialism boasts a wide array of philosophical thought, owing to the varying worldviews of its most prolific authors; Albert Camus is not the same as Jean-Paul Sartre is not the same as Martin Heidegger is not the same as Søren Kierkegaard. However, there are consistent through points that can be traced in the writings of all of the above.
That being said, we might ask ourselves: is there a common ontology that underpins the whole of existential thought (or at least much of it)?
DE Weekly: Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, & Being-in-the-World
One could raise a valid critique that the most glaring weakness of existentialism is that it is too abstract; it could be said that it deals too much in theory, is too complicated, and not grounded enough to be useful in everyday life. However, not every existentialist thought the same way. Some even challenged that same abstractness, including one Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty was a twentieth-century French philosopher who is often grouped with his contemporaries––especially Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whom he studied alongside at the École Normale Supérieure––as an existentialist. Being strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger helps bolster this notion.
DE Weekly: Zeno’s Paradox, Husserl, & Epoché
As much as it owes to the millennia of philosophy that came before it, existentialism is a revolutionary philosophy in that it sought to view the world and existence in a different way than past philosophers had done. The concept that “existence precedes essence” is a pretty good example of how the existentialists aimed to turn Aristotelian metaphysics on its head.
The existentialists weren’t all contrarians, though, nor did they set themselves miles apart from every philosophical conclusion of the past. This holds true for pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea.
DE Weekly: Merleau-Ponty, Behavior, & Sedimentation
In existentialism, as in any philosophy, there are established truths which are endorsed by most of its influential thinkers. The absurdity of life, the acceptance of death, and the ability to make our own meaning are some examples of this. Sedimentation is another.
Along the same vein as facticity, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, sedimentation is a concept that represents another force in our lives that influences the way we live and interact with the world around us.
DE Weekly: Phenomenology, Experience, & Seinfeld
Each week over the past few months, I’ve written about the “big questions” posed by the existentialists. These questions concern our existence, the essence of what makes us human, why our lives have meaning, and why these questions cause us a great deal of anxiety.
But, downstream of all these questions is what I consider “the big one”: How do we live each and every day in accordance with living a life of meaning?