Eric - ProfilesArchive

About Me

Paradoxically, the question has become the answer. The question: What should I do with my life? My life has become the asking of this question. I suppose I will have to begin life anew when (if) I find something worth believing in.

My Interests

Philosophy, Breakdancing, Trampolining/Gymnastics, Games of all sorts, People and their interactions

I'd like to meet:

People, in all their complexity, confusion, and wonder.

Music:

Rap/Hip-hop, Swing, Funk, Jazz, Soul, Classical, Musicals

Movies:

Amelie, Waking Life, Memento, Shakespeare in Love, Adaptation, Detours, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Pulp Fiction, Chasing Amy, Cirque de Soleil stuff, Fist of Legend, Fight Club, Usual Suspects, Good Will Hunting

Books:

Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera), Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card), A Song of Fire and Ice series (George R. R. Martin), East West, Satanic Verses (Rushdie), The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho), short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Old Man of the Sea (Hemmingway), Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)And then there's the philosophy: Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, Frege, Russell, Carnap, Dennett, Fodor, Rawls, Nietzche, Camus, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Grice, Hume, Dawkins, Gould, Mill, and the list goes on... A lot of smart people with interesting things to say.

My Blog

Dancing and nihilism

Thank you dancing for keeping me sane and making me feel alive. One of the greatest discoveries of my life was real dancing--not acrobatics, not tricks, not sets of moves strung together, but listeni...
Posted by Eric on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Personal identity

I wrote a bunch on personal identity here: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=cartesian_theatre The more I think about it, the less coherent this very intuitive concept seems. I just finished re...
Posted by Eric on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Meaning in surplus

What does it mean to have a suplus? To have more than what one needs. But "need" is both an absolute and a relative term. "Need" is not always used in the absolute--"I need to wash my hands now." ...
Posted by Eric on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Grad schools

I'm trying to narrow down what grad schools to apply to. If anyone has advice, let me know! One of my profs recommended the 3 pronged attack whereby (1) I apply for good programs in Canada, (2) appl...
Posted by Eric on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

At the bottom of things.

Children often like to play the "why?" game in which they enervate adults by responding to every statement with the question "why?" Eventually the answers must run out. Even if all human in all of h...
Posted by Eric on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST