Saturday, December 27, 2008

A Brief Reflection on Barstool Philosophy

A discussion with a friend of mine at McMaster Philosophy a while ago resulted in the second crossed-finger 'Back Vampire!' gesture and accompanying hissing noise that I've received for my philosophical ideas. All in jest, of course. There's no real hatred happening, at least not for my philosophical views. The first one I got during my MA thesis research when my friend saw I was reading Neurophilosophy, which she utterly despised.

The second one was in a bar in Hamilton, when we were talking a little colloquial philosophy, and I mentioned that I didn't believe in an immaterial soul. And my friend, she gave me the cross and hiss. From what I remember, her case was "You can't just believe that we're just machines reacting to stimuli, can you?!"

The big difference between dualists and me is that a dualist thinks that you need a whole hell of a lot of equipment to do all the crazy cool stuff humans do. I think all the crazy cool stuff humans do can be done by a very trim, svelte, efficient rig. The human gear is simple, but with practically unlimited potential for action. I think mine actually sounds a lot more cool and poetic than the dualist model. After all, a game of Go is just a bunch of discs on a board, but the complexity of what can be done is immense.

Now I must drink and dance to rock music.

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