Reason and Emotions III: Thinking and Believing
Normally, we tend to think of beliefs as psychological states with dubious epistemic properties. Beliefs are conceptualized as unregulated conceptual…
Sacred Games
I just finished reading Vikram Chandra’s latest, Sacred Games. It took me all of four days, which for a nine…
What’s wrong with this picture?
The New York Times reports: “Antiwar demonstrators pushed Buddhist monks from the stage of a peace rally Thursday in Colombo,…
Reason and Emotions II
Lets continue this line of inquiry into the separation of reason and emotion. Intuitively speaking, whats the difference between rational…
Reflections on Emotion and Reason, part I
I was reading a transcript of Arindam Chakrabarti’s excellent lecture on the phenomenology of fun and boredom, in which he…
Back in Business
Many things have changed since the last time I posted — I moved back to the old country (India, and given how…
Websurfing as a meditative practice
Yeah, I know, I am being a bit tongue in cheek. At least I didn’t descend into talking about watching…
A Map of my Mind, Part 1: Fifteen Books
Sooner or later, one gets the feeling that introspection does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. Answers to questions like “Who…
Three ways to Model Beliefs
Starting this week, I am going to start writing blog entries that outline my research ideas, both for people to…
Being and Ontology
First, a provisional definition of ontology, gleaned from the Oxford English dictionary and the website “ontology a resource guide”. Not…