Philosophical-jombie

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July 28, 2023

Look, who is smiling! "Hey, that's funny, why don't you come with us?" Let us attend the royal feast. "Oh! I can't smile, no…no… that plastic smile I can't" she replied. I have heard that Stoics, emphasizing self-control never laughs at all. Plato, the most influential critic of laughter, treated laughter as the malicious Guardians of the state that overrides rationality should avoid laughter. Plato was disturbed by the passages of the Iliad and the Odyssey where Mount Olympus was said to ring with the laughter of the gods. He protested that "if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered by laughter, must not accept it, much less if gods." And so I was distressed by my sister's above remark. Though she was a political science teacher and an avid watcher of political events on T.V. happening this was an eventual shock for me because I, myself, squeeze a laugh from any kind of incident, and that too with a thunderous wild roa

May 25, 2023

The Infinite is "in a sense both is and is not." I flung open the window and observed the conflict between the two boys from the adjacent apartments, which was nothing new. Their history, which I learned from my mother, reveals that their dads were rivals for a long time, and that their fathers were also rivals as well. Undoubtedly, their children may be rivals one day, I suppose so, and this will continue forever… I was wondering over the word, “forever… and rephrased it “infinite”. And I remember, I once attempted to explain infinity to some first-year pupils. I told them the following story: "I was about to eat a slice of cake when a friend stepped in, so I offered her half out of courtesy. Before I could eat my half, another friend came by, so I split it again. This happened again and again—gradually, my snack kept getting smaller. How much cake would I have at the end of this?" "None!" many of the students yelled. I wrote a sum on the board: ½ + ¼ +

March 09, 2023

Liar’s paradox Paradox is an interesting mechanism. The teacher asserts, "There is a mouse in this box. What I just said is false." The teacher continues, "But there is a mouse in the box." We were listening very attentively, but we were bemused to infer simply that it was false (since that is what the sentence said) or that it was true (since it spoke truly). There might be a mouse in the box, or there might not be a mouse in the box. Once the box is opened, we will be surprised either way, by a mouse or by no mouse. We were not so serious like Philitas, who was so worried over this kind of liar’s paradox that he died of insomnia, as reported by Athenaeus. The teacher was explaining with reference to the quantum superposition of Schrodinger’s cat, which is both dead and alive simultaneously. An ancient gravestone on the Greek island of Kos contained this poem, which might be about the difficulty of solving the paradox: O Stranger! Philetas of Kos am I, "It

March 09, 2023

Hey Pals, Certainly not me! “Keep away from your pen and note book and try to forget all that you have learned so far and be like a clean slate so that you may write fresh on everything you read and hear in this class," the teacher commanded as soon as he entered the classroom. Although this instruction caught us off guard, we eventually became used to recalling what he taught us without taking notes. After that initial experience, however, it became second nature to read and listen to everything with an open mind and without holding any preconceptions from earlier experiences. That is now my catchphrase! So to say, a journalist and a judge is expected to portray an event objectively, free of personal feelings. Imagine that one is a judge of Master Chef quiz show. There may be foods that one subjectively dislikes, but while evaluating dishes, one must set aside one's personal preferences and be objective about what one consumes, making judgements about factors like how it is p

November 03, 2022

In the Truthyard !! "I promise to tell the truth… the whole truth and nothing but the truth"— The witness, standing at the witness box, does not need to ask the judge which theory of truth. The ancient Greek understanding of truth as aletheia, a problematic word variously translated as "disclosure" or "un-concealedness" is very complicated, and has never been grasped straightforwardly as 'truth as such'. Since we are bombarded with myriad opposing facts and contradictory ideas in our circus-like world, the truth is, as if, lost somewhere in the dazzle and sparkle of fire-play. I told my child that there is a jar on the table, he went and found it there. That is the normal understanding of the truth. The Polish-American mathematician Alfred Tarski famously put that the proposition "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white in reality. The orthodox versions of truth insist that evidence is evidence, the reality

August 17, 2022

“Nothing”—you end up with something or everything “Hello….Hello…” “What are you doing?” “Nothing” …” “Come on …” “No, I cannot right now….”, “Why???” “I can’t!!! I am expecting some guest today…” There you are my, friends!! The word ‘nothing’ seems bizarre. Generally, it stands for the absence of something, the absence of a friend, money, action, a book etc. These expressions are part of our every-day-reality: "Who is entering? “No one." Who is this “no one”? Let us ask the question– whether one can construct a mental image of ‘no one’. For me, it is a fascist word that compels one to rule out the whole world from its domain. Simply put, the word conjures up the whole and eliminates the whole, like, John Keats exalts the beauty of ‘unheard’ melodies. This expansion of the unheard … spread like a spilt bottle of liquid. However, one is enchanted by the complete negation of the totality of Existence. Once one can get at Nothingness, tot