"The largest lava tubes on Earth are maximum [about] 40 meters [130 feet] of width and height," said study co-author Riccardo Pozzobon, a geoscientist at the University of Padova, Italy. "So like a very large motorway tunnel."
That's certainly big enough space for some people to fit inside. But on Mars collapsed lava tubes tend to be about 80 times larger than Earth's, with diameters of 130 to 1,300 feet (40 to 400 m). Lunar lava tubes seem to be still larger, the researchers found, with collapse sites 300 to 700 times the size of Earth's. Lunar lava tubes likely range from 1,600 to 3,000 feet (500 to 900 m).
A lava tube on the moon, Pozzobon told Live Science, could easily contain a small city within its walls.
Yes, I know, my love of science is fueled by my love of science-fiction. I just like the idea of giant caves on the Moon and Mars with cities inside them. Sue me.
I just got a book I've been wanting ever since I heard about it: From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown. I'm delighted to see how many of these stories I haven't read before. Fredric Brown is one of my favorites, he wrote flash fiction before it was called that. He was science-fiction's O. Henry. I've read two stories so far: "The New One," which has the same general idea as one of his other stories, "Murder in Ten Easy Lessons"; and "The Angelic Angleworm," which was delightfully weird. So, sorry, I'm going to be busy for the rest of the day reading.
Henry Kyburg was a philosopher who developed a theory of probability called statistical (or epistemological or sometimes just Kyburgian) probability, in contrast with Bayesian probability and logical probability. He's famous for coming up with the Lottery Paradox. Say there's a raffle with one million tickets, so one of the tickets between 1 and 1,000,000 will be picked. Since ticket 1 only has a one in a million chance of being selected, rationality requires us to believe that ticket 1 won't win. What is the probability that ticket 2 will win? Well, the same, one in a million. So rationality requires us to believe that ticket 2 won't win either. In fact, since every individual ticket only has a one in a million chance of winning, we should believe that every individual ticket will lose. But of course, we also know that one of those tickets will win. So rationality requires us to believe that ticket 1 will lose, ticket 2 will lose, etc. all the way up to ticket 1,000,000, but also that one of those tickets will win. This is a contradiction, there is no possible world where all the beliefs are true, yet it is irrational to deny any of them.
Kyburg was pointing out that there are three rational principles that lead to contradiction, and so we must reject one of them. First, if a proposition is probably true, it is rational to accept it. Second, if rationality requires us to accept proposition X and rationality also requires us to accept proposition Y, then rationality requires us to believe X and Y. Third, it is not rational to accept an inconsistent proposition. The Lottery Paradox shows that the second principle would mean we should accept that each ticket will lose and that one of them will win. This contradicts the third principle. To avoid this, we need to reject one of the three principles. Kyburg advocated rejecting the second: just because it is rational to believe ticket 1 will lose, ticket 2 will lose, etc., it doesn't mean it's rational to believe every ticket between 1 and 1,000,000 will lose. Many logicians, however, argue that we should reject the first principle: we shouldn't believe that ticket 1 will lose, we should believe it is very improbable that ticket 1 will win, but it might. Another possibility is to just throw up your hands and accept that an ideal form of rationality would still be imperfect and could entail contradictions. This is a rejection of the third principle. But accepting all three is not an option.
I'm inclined to reject the first premise -- or rephrase it so that instead of saying rationality requires us to believe a low probability entails falsehood, we say rationality requires us to believe a low probability entails ... wait for it ... a low probability. But regardless, the Lottery Paradox shows that logic, rationality, and probability are not as simple as they may appear.
Descartes was a 17th century philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Once, in his early 20s, he went into a small cabin to stay warm. When he came out the next day he had invented analytic geometry. It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished.
He wanted to explore the nature of knowledge, so he came up with several methods allowing him to hypothetically doubt even the most obvious truths, such as that other people exist, that the physical world exists, that he has a body, etc. Again, this was all hypothetical. People often mistake him as actually calling these things into question, but Descartes explicitly says you'd have to be a lunatic to seriously doubt them. He was engaged in an exercise to see if there was some belief he could not doubt in a logical sense.
To this end he came up with the Evil Demon. That's how English speakers refer to it. In French it's mauvais génie which can mean evil genie or genius.
The evil demon has the power to manipulate your thoughts so that falsehoods seems obviously true. Descartes used this to ask whether he could doubt that 2 + 3 = 5. It's logically possible that such a demon exists (that is, it's not a logical contradiction) so it's logically possible for Descartes's belief that 2 + 3 = 5 to be one of those beliefs that seem so blatant and obvious because the evil demon is messing with his mind to make it seem so. Ex hypothesi, 2 + 3 does not equal 5, it's just the evil demon's machinations that make it appear so. With this scenario, Descartes realized he could doubt that 2 + 3 = 5.
At this point, Descartes is (theoretically) denying the existence of other people, his body, the physical world, and even the obvious truths of basic mathematics and logic. There doesn't seem to be anything he can't doubt. But this is where he reaches what is called the cogito: he's doubting, so he can't doubt that he's doubting. But doubting is not an event, it is an action, and so it requires an actor, a subject that is doing the doubting. Since doubting is a form of thinking, Descartes concludes "I think therefore I am" (Latin: cogito ergo sum). I can't doubt my own existence, because in order to do so, I have to surreptitiously affirm my existence. I am the one who doubts my own existence. So it is impossible to doubt one's own existence. On a practical level, he can't really doubt that 2 + 3 = 5 either, but there is a logically possible scenario that allows him to do so. There is no such scenario where he can doubt his own existence: in every possible world where he tries to doubt his existence, he exists.
From this foundation, Descartes tries to reestablish his beliefs about everything else, but on a much surer footing. He goes from his own existence to God to the physical world and other people, etc. It is at this point that many philosophers reject his arguments -- not that they necessarily deny these things are real, but that Descartes can't really prove them. And of course, there have been plenty of philosophers who have argued that one can deny one's own existence, such as David Hume and Peter Unger. Nevertheless, Descartes's evil demon argument has been one of the most influential ideas in philosophical history.
I really dislike the charge of whataboutism, partially because there's already a fallacy addressing the issue with a glorious Latin name: tu quoque ("you too"). The idea is that you justify an action by saying other people do it too -- perhaps even the person accusing you -- and it's a fallacy because pointing to other people who have committed the same action doesn't say anything about whether said action was appropriate or not. So what if someone else did it too? So what if the person accusing you has done it too? Couldn't the action still be inappropriate? Granted it's insanely frustrating when someone who swears like a sailor gives you grief for calling someone a poophead, but that doesn't mean it was OK to call them a poophead.
The problem is how whataboutism is being used today in political discourse. One side says J is doing something bad. The other side says H did the same thing. Pretty straightforwardly fallacious, no? Well . . . no. In most cases, the second side is not defending the action or behavior -- they're not even really addressing it's rightness or wrongness. What they're doing is accusing the first side of hypocrisy: "Your guy, H, did the same thing and you didn't object to it. Therefore, you are selectively applying your moral outrage." And that's a completely valid point to make. It might be true, it might not; perhaps the two cases are not similar enough to make the case. Or maybe the first side did object to it, or never heard about their guy doing the same thing. The point is that tu quoque/whataboutism only becomes a fallacy when you use the "your guy did it too" objection to say that the action is acceptable. But if you're just countering with "If you were really offended by this, you would have been just as offended when your guy did it -- but you weren't," you're not addressing the rightness or wrongness of the action but the moral consistency of the accuser. So yes, the tu quoque approach can be fallacious, but it can also be perfectly justified. There are plenty of valid tu quoque arguments.
At this point another fallacy raises its ugly head: ad hominem ("to the person"). Here, one argues that a person's claim is false because the person is bad in some way, like they're untrustworthy or they have ulterior motives, etc. But of course untrustworthy people with ulterior motives can say true things; we're still not addressing the alleged truth of the claim. So using the tu quoque/whataboutism fallacy to accuse someone of hypocrisy is supposedly an ad hominem: it's arguing against the person instead of the claim.
But once again, this doesn't work, for pretty much the same reason. The second side isn't arguing against the person in order to say that the action in question was justified or appropriate. They're still just arguing that their interlocutors are hypocrites, and that can be a valid point. They're not addressing whether the action was unjustified, they're saying, "Whether it's unjustified or not, YOU don't believe it's unjustified because your guy did the same thing and you had no problem with it."
I'd like to stop here, but someone could still say that the second group is committing a fallacy of irrelevance, like ignoratio elenchi ("ignoring refutation"), which basically means they're ignoring the argument. Instead of addressing the actual subject -- whether the action was justified -- they're changing it to whether the person arguing that it wasn't justified is being hypocritical. But why would the first person to speak get to decide what the debate's about? Refusing to accept the conditions of an assertion is not the same thing as committing the ignoratio elenchi fallacy. It's perfectly appropriate (or it can be perfectly appropriate) to accuse one's interlocutor of hypocrisy. It's not really changing the subject -- both sides are still addressing the appropriateness of an action -- but one side changes the focus of the subject to whether the other person believes the action is inappropriate or not. How could rational conversation even be possible if we weren't free to change the focus like this?
Here's the bottom line: we already have names for informal fallacies, they're usually Latin and sound really cool, so don't go around making up other names for them that sound stupid.
The issue of determinism and free will have always been at the forefront in philosophy. We are inclined to define them as opposites: determinism means we have no free will and having free will means we are not determined. However, the majority view in contemporary philosophy is called compatibilism (or sometimes soft determinism) which tries to walk a middle path. If we define free will in the right way, then no conflict between it and determinism arises. So if we are free to do what we want, that's enough freedom and it's compatible with determinism. Whatever determines our actions also determines our desires so that our actions and desires match up -- or alternately, our actions are brought about by us in accordance with our desires, and our desires are determined by other forces. As Schopenhauer put it, "We are free to do as we will, but not to will as we will."
The motivation for compatibilism is to allow for moral praise and blame. If our actions are determined, it is difficult to see how we can be held responsible for them. Hard determinism accepts this and rejects moral responsibility. Libertarianism (NOT the political position) also accepts this and accepts moral responsibility. But if we are free to do what we want, then we can still say we are responsible for our actions, and so moral praise and blame is possible. Supposedly.
Peter Van Inwagen is one of the most important living philosophers. He earned his Ph.D. in 1969 and has began publishing on determinism and free will ever since. Eleven years into his academic career he converted to Christianity, which is interesting but unrelated to what I'm talking about. He also came up with the Consequence Argument which is essentially an argument against compatibilism. It argues that the free will of compatibilism does not allow for moral praise or blame, moral responsibility, and this takes away any motive for accepting compatibilism in the first place. We should either be hard determinists or libertarians.
The argument in a nutshell: if determinism is true, all of our actions are entirely produced by events in the remote past plus the laws of nature. But we have no control over events in the remote past or the laws of nature. Therefore, we have no control over our actions. If we have no control over our actions, we are not responsible for them, in which case praising us for our good acts and blaming us for our bad acts makes no sense.
Van Inwagen affirms free will, but also points out that it is a mystery. It has yet to be made into a coherent idea, despite the facts that we have an intuitive understanding of it and it has been something people have been discussing for as long as there's been people. Simply saying our actions are not determined is not enough, since we could hardly be held responsible for actions that just occurred spontaneously with no cause. Nicholas Rescher, another Christian philosopher and probably the most influential philosopher of science after C.S. Peirce and Karl Popper, published Free Will: An Extensive Bibliography, which is exactly what it says it is: over 300 pages of references. So I don't think the issue is going to be resolved anytime soon.
Antilogisms are a form of argument that take a syllogism and negate the conclusion. So whereas a syllogism might say:
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Its corresponding antilogism would be:
4. All men are mortal.
5. Socrates is a man.
6. Socrates is not mortal.
The interesting thing about this is that you can now accept any two premises, but not all three. You can accept that Socrates is a man and is not mortal if you deny that all men or mortal. Or you can accept that all men are mortal and Socrates is not mortal if you deny that Socrates is a man. So any two premises in a genuine antilogism can be made into a valid syllogism by negating the remaining premise.
There are a lot of interesting antilogisms and pseudo-antilogisms in philosophy. One of the most famous goes back to the ancient Greeks, and was re-emphasized by David Hume.
7. God is omnipotent (all powerful).
8. God is omnibenevolent (perfectly good and loving).
9. Evil exists.
This really captures the intuitive sense behind the problem of evil, which asks how a perfectly good and omnipotent God could allow evil to take place. Unfortunately, premise 9 is not the negation of the valid conclusion of a syllogism:
10. God is omnipotent.
11. God is omnibenevolent.
12. Therefore, there is at least one omnipotent, omnibenevolent being.
I think what the antilogism is trying to say is something like this:
13. God is omnipotent.
14. God is omnibenevolent.
15. An omnipotent and omnibenevolent being would not allow evil to take place.
16. Evil does take place.
17. Therefore, God is either not omnipotent, not omnibenevolent, or neither -- perhaps by not existing.
(You could also throw omniscience in there to emphasize that God must be aware of the evil that takes place.) The problem here is defending premise 15. The history of philosophy (and theology) is filled with attempts to explain how God could allow evil to take place, called theodicies, which is not to say that any of them are successful. But if we negate 15 we get:
18. An omnipotent and omnibenevolent being could allow evil to take place.
Premises 7, 8, 9, and 18 are a consistent set. So 7, 8, and 9 is not a true antilogism. Naturally, we all want a reason to accept premise 18 -- a common claim is that God only allows evil when he is able to bring about a counterbalancing good from it -- but it's not necessary in the structure of the argument. As long as 18 is logically possible then premises 7, 8, and 9 do not form an antilogism.
To see an antilogism in action, let's apply it to this scene from "Gandhi."
This presents us with the following antilogism:
19. Gandhi is a "colored attorney."
20. Gandhi is in South Africa.
21. "There are no colored attorneys in South Africa."
Granted, premise 20 is never actually stated, but I think we can infer it with confidence. Once again, we can accept any two premises but not all three. So Gandhi reverses premise 21 to form a genuine syllogism:
22. Gandhi is a "colored attorney."
23. Gandhi is in South Africa.
24. "There is at least one colored attorney in South Africa."
And the rest of the scene shows how dangerous logic can be.
The Chinese Room is a philosophical argument about the nature of mind that takes the form of a thought experiment. Imagine you're in a room with two slots. Tiles are slid in one with Chinese markings on them. You have a guidebook that tells you that if the tiles have such-and-such figures on them in such-and-such order, you are to take another tile that has other markings on it and slide it through the other slot. You eventually get very good at it, maybe you even memorize the guidebook. The question is: does your competence in operating the Chinese room mean that you understand Chinese? If you answer no, ask yourself what else it means to understand a language.
The answer most people would give is meaning. You know what symbols you should put through the output slot based on what the symbols that are put through the input slot are. But that doesn't correspond to knowing what the symbols actually mean.
John Searle, who first proposed the Chinese Room Argument, said it's the difference between semantics and syntax. Knowing what symbols should be made in response to other symbols is an issue of syntax, but semantics involves meaning, and that is left out of the equation.
Here's a great Kids in the Hall skit that accidentally makes this point.
Part of the reason this is absurd is that we could only take what he's saying as actual claims if he is actually asserting them. If he's just repeating sounds that, for him, have no meaning, we have no basis for accepting the meaning that the words have -- or the meaning they would have if spoken by someone who did understand them.
If the Chinese Room Argument is sound, there are some interesting consequences. One is that, if we believe that we do in fact understand meaning, that we are able to operate on a semantic level not just on a syntactic level, then our minds cannot be completely explained in mechanistic terms. Mechanism would only explain things on the syntactic level, and if we operate on a semantic level, then our minds transcend mere cause-and-effect mechanical processes.
Two, attempts to recreate minds on a mechanistic basis, i.e. artificial intelligence, will only ever operate on a syntactic level. It could be set up to respond in exactly the same way a mind operating on a semantic level does but it would be a sham. It would be an attempt to trigger our intuition that there is a mind behind the symbols that intends to communicate meaning (remember the movie Screamers?), but insofar as they are only functioning on a syntactic level, they are in the same situation as the non-Chinese speaker in the Chinese room.
Obviously, there's a lot more to be said about this: it's a live issue in philosophy with a lot of ink being spilled on both sides. It may be possible to generate an artificial intelligence that does operate on a semantic level. But how could we tell? It's output would be identical to one that only operates on a syntactic level. But then how do we know that other people -- friends, family, strangers -- are operating on a semantic level? This is the problem of other minds, which has also caused a lot of ink to be spilled.
Zeno was a pre-Socratic philosopher and a disciple of Parmenides. They both argued that the real world isn't at all like we experience it, and Zeno argued this by presenting a series of paradoxes alleging to show that the concept of (for example) plurality led to absurdities and so there must only be one thing that exists. Many of his arguments tried to show that motion was impossible, such as the Paradox of the Arrow and Achilles and the Tortoise. But my favorite one along these lines is his Dichotomy. Take someone who runs really fast like Atalanta, a figure from Greek mythology who was so fast she ended up as a hood ornament for the Studebaker.
So Atalanta decides to run forward, say 16 meters. But obviously, before she can run 16 meters, she has to run half that distance, 8 meters. But before she runs 8 meters, she has to run half of that, 4 meters. But before that she has to run 2 meters, 1 meter, 1/2 meter, etc. The upshot is that she can never run any distance. Even if we start by saying she tries to move a Planck length forward (about 10-35 meters), she first has to move half that distance, and half that, etc. So motion is impossible and since it seems that we and everything else moves, the world is an illusion. Roughly, the argument is:
1) Any finite distance can be divided infinitely.
2) An infinite cannot be traversed.
3) Therefore, no finite distance can be traversed.
Then along came Aristotle. He pointed out that we can use "infinite" in two different ways, as a potential amount or an actual amount. A potential infinite is an amount increasing towards infinity as a limit but never actually reaching it. That's what we symbolize with the sideways eight, ∞. At any given point, a potential infinite is a finite amount. An actual infinite, on the other hand, is not increasing towards infinity, it's achieved it. In contemporary set theory this is symbolized by aleph-null: ℵ0. And an actual infinite amount cannot be traversed.
Now, any finite distance can be potentially divisible infinitely. But you never actually reach an "infinitieth" of the distance. So Zeno's Dichotomy, and his other paradoxes of motion, are trading on moving back and forth between the two types of infinite. This wasn't dishonest on Zeno's part, no one had made this distinction before Aristotle. In light of this distinction, though, Zeno's argument becomes:
4) Any finite distance can be potentially infinitely divided. 5) An actual infinite cannot be traversed. 6) Therefore, no finite distance can be traversed.
And this is obviously fallacious. Specifically, it commits the fallacy of the undistributed middle, where the middle term (infinity in this case) has two different definitions.
In the 19th century, Georg Cantor developed set theory which really messes with everything about infinity. So any detailed discussion of this issue has to be filtered through set theory. Nevertheless, it's still pretty interesting, no?
Several months ago I started checking out imgur on a regular basis, and then I created an account. Pretty soon I wrote some posts about philosophy (and other things). But with the political situation right now it's just become a bunch of people throwing around their hatred left and right. I sometimes commented on this, but I found myself becoming tempted to troll. And then I had an epiphany: why the heck was I writing posts about philosophy on imgur when I have a blog? So I'll just start posting some of the things I posted over there, with alterations as I see fit. Maybe that'll kickstart things back up.
Update (30 July): I just realized there was a backlog of comments that I never saw. Like, going back a year and a half. So if you left one and were wondering why it hadn't been posted, it's because I'm a lazy spud, and they're now in place.
"It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity, because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood. One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." Adolf Hitler, 1933 The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of Christian Churchesby Carl E. Schcrake
Abortion has been in the news of late because New York state passed a bill allowing abortion at any time during a pregnancy, and Virginia tried to pass a similar one that some claimed even allowed it immediately after birth if the fetus was critical or terminal. Of course, at that point, it would no longer be called a fetus and it would no longer be called abortion.
It seems to me that both sides are not addressing the right issue here, as vain as that is to say. A lot of people say the question is whether the fetus (or zygote or blastocyst in the earlier stages) is alive. But this is a simple question with a simple answer: of course it's alive. It meets all the scientific conditions for life. For that matter, individual sperm cells are alive, although they are haploids rather than diploids. Nor is the question whether the fetus is human life. Every cell in a human being's body is human life, it's a living cell that forms a part of a human being.
What people are really asking is when does a human life begin? That is, when does a unique individual human being begin to exist? Most pro-choice folk say that it's sometime during the pregnancy (some say at birth or even later), pro-life folk say that it's at conception, when the haploid sperm cell unites with the haploid ovum and a living thing that is not identical to either the sperm or ovum -- nor for that matter is it genetically identical to the father or mother -- begins to exist. Of course, many people say we can't know for sure and embrace the pro-choice side (because it unreasonably restricts what the woman can do with her own body) or the pro-life side (because if it might be a human life, we have a moral obligation to protect it). For that matter, many people say we can't know and remain agnostic on the larger question.
The problem with asking when a human life begins is that is still a simple question with a simple answer: a human life begins at conception. That's not a matter of opinion or value judgment, it's a scientific, medical fact. And I think this is why pro-lifers want to end the discussion here, because they are on solid ground while the pro-choicers are not.
But, as you can probably tell, I don't think that is where the discussion should end, because I don't think that's what the real question is. The real question is a two-sided coin. The first side is when does human value begin, and the second side is when do human rights begin? Perhaps we could say the question is not when a human life begins, but when a human being begins. Of course, pro-lifers will say that human value and rights begin when the individual human life begins, and that's a defensible claim. For value to begin at some other point seems arbitrary: there should be a clear indication, a clear event, which can be identified as when a creature has intrinsic value and the right to life. However, there is an objection that can be made here that can't be made (or made as plausibly) when we're just asking when does a human life begin. The objection, or problem, is that it is strongly counter-intuitive to say that an undifferentiated group of cells is a human being in the full sense that it has human rights and human value. This is what (I think) pro-choicers are objecting to: we have a cluster of cells that are dividing and nothing else, and we're being told that it has just as much right to live as the woman in whose body it is dwelling.
One potential response to this is that the fetus is no longer an undifferentiated group of cells by the time the woman discovers she is pregnant. Organs have been formed, and some are even functioning. The fetus's heart begins to beat at about three weeks gestation. However, it's difficult to say that a beating heart is what bestows human value and rights.
By human value I do not mean utilitarian value, what something is capable of accomplishing. In fact, the concept of human value is one of the very few aspects of Christianity I appreciated when I first became a Christian: a severely mentally retarded person, who spends his life in a hospital bed, never contributes anything to society, is a burden on all those around him -- that person has just as much value, rights, is just as important and as absolutely irreplaceable as the most influential thinker, statesman, or artist who ever lived.
At any rate, as I say, while the fetus is definitely a human life, it is at least counter-intuitive to say that -- at least in the very early stages -- it is a human being equipped with human rights and human value. This doesn't constitute a reason to think it is not, it just means the pro-life side has to produce arguments to counter this counter-intuition. I'm sure they think they already have, and I'm not disputing that. I just want to clear the air on exactly what (I think) the issues really are.
It's June and this is my first post since January. It's weird because I have a backlog of posts that are 95% done, and I'd like to get them up and running. For now I'll just tell you a story: last Wednesday night I started having some severe abdominal pain. By 3 or 4 in the morning I'd finally had enough and went to the ER where they promptly did an ultrasound and an MR scan and then took out my gall bladder. It was my first time having surgery and I lost a freaking organ. Anyway, I'm doing OK, trying to take it easy, so I'll start finishing those posts for y'all.
Here's a joke I made up in the ER: Why was the liver so nice to the testicle? Because he wanted to make the ball gladder.
A close relative of mine died recently and I inherited her books. About half of them have made it onto my bookshelves, the other half I either haven't gone through yet or are in boxes in my garage. The following list is just the ones on the shelves, as well as books I got for Christmas.
Also, if you've left a comment over the last several months and it never got posted, I apologize. I've just posted all the outstanding comments and replied to a few.
SF short story collections
Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison, eds., Nebula Award Stories 2.
Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh, eds., Flying Saucers.
Lloyd Biggle, Jr., ed., Nebula Award Stories 7.
Ben Bova, ed., The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, volume 2B.
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles.
---, The Illustrated Man.
Avram Davidson, ed., The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, 12th series.
Richard Matheson, I Am Legend.
Judith Merril, ed., The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy, 3rd annual volume.
Robert P. Mills, ed., The Worlds of Science Fiction.
Hans Stefan Santesson, ed., The Fantastic Universe Omnibus.
Robert Silverberg, ed., New Dimensions III.
SF novels
Isaac Asimov, I, Robot.
Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney, Bored of the Rings.
David Brin, The Postman.
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow.
Philip José Farmer, Night of Light.
Alan Dean Foster, Phylogenesis.
Neil Gaiman, American Gods.
---, Anansi Boys.
Tom Godwin, Space Prison (alternate title: The Survivors).
James P. Hogan, Inherit the Stars.
Fred Hoyle, The Black Cloud.
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven.
Andre Norton, Key Out of Time.
Tim Powers, Expiration Date.
---, The Stress of Her Regard.
John Ringo, Citadel.
Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God.
Charles Sheffield, Aftermath.
Allen Steele, Spindrift.
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age.
---, Snow Crash.
Jules Verne, The Works of Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; Journey to the Center of the Earth; Around the World in 80 Days).
Heinlein Beyond This Horizon. Citizen of the Galaxy. Double Star. Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel. Orphans of the Sky. Podkayne of Mars. The Rolling Stones. Space Cadet. Starman Jones. 6 × H (novellas and short stories -- previously titled The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag).
...and there's lots more in the garage. Niven Ringworld. The Ringworld Engineers. N-Space (short stories, excerpts, and essays). Playgrounds of the Mind (same).
With Jerry Pournelle, Oath of Fealty.
Books that are actual literature and so I got for my wife
(Some of these are old, so I put the year these particular copies were published in parentheses)
Jane Austen, Emma.
---, Pride and Prejudice.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote of La Mancha.
Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1884).
---, Pickwick Papers (old, but no date on the title page).
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
George Eliot, Silas Mariner.
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera.
Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
Irving Howe, ed., The Portable Kipling.
F.J. Hudleston, Warriors in Undress (1926).
Washington Irving, The Crayon Papers (old, but no date on the title page).
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Rudyard Kipling, Kim.
Richmond Lattimore, trans., The Iliad of Homer.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve.
Grant Overton, ed. in chief, The World's One Hundred Best Short Stories, volume 1: Adventure (1927).
---, volume 2: Romance.
---, volume 3: Mystery.
---, volume 4: Love.
---, volume 5: Drama.
---, volume 6: Courage.
---, volume 7: Women.
---, volume 8: Men.
---, volume 9: Ghosts.
---, volume 10: Humor.
Guy Pocock, The Little Room (1926).
Sir Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel (1898).
---, Ivanhoe. Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Second Quarto, 1604: Reproduction of the Huntington Library Copy.
John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent.
---, The Moon is Down.
---, Travels with Charley: In Search of America.
---, America and Americans.
William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians (1884).
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde.
Nonfiction
John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Frederick Copleston, Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism.
Fred Dretske, Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes.
"Agent Intellect" is a philosophical term from the De Anima tradition. In giving my blog this title I am not trying to imply anything about its (or my) intellectual credentials. I am merely signaling my interest in, and occasional blogposts on, philosophy. The views expressed here are my own and should not be imputed to any past, present, or future employer or affiliation.
Deconstructionism? Well, now let me see… You know, I don’t have any idea what that means. I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it’s just a made-up word. An ostentatious word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. Deconstructionism? It’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and write your papers, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.
