Showing results by narrator "J.-M Kuczynski" in All Categories

Original psychological observations.

This short work clearly states what a formal language is and it thereby answers questions of fundamental importance about language in general. It is established that the concept of a perfectly formal language is incoherent but that the concept of a relatively formal language is coherent.

As cozy as their house had seemed, there was a cold secret beneath the house. At the bottom of the basement stairs and beyond a small pond-like sized puddle was where evil lived. It was the only part of the house that was always cold and damp no matter the time of day or time of year. Structurally speaking, it was part of the house but there were two, perhaps three steps that separated home from hell.

An analysis of Gibbon's five signs of civilizational decay.

It is made clear what knowledge is and how we acquire it. It is also explained how we can have knowledge of the future, the past, the possible, the imperceptible, and the non-existent. The Gettier problem is solved, and it is proved that we have a prior knowledge, as well as knowledge of non-trivial but purely analytic truths.

The psychological function of the concept of God is to provide "external" reinforcement for one's conscience.

A dialogue is presented in which key philosophical terms are succinctly defined.

Governments inevitably get big, and a viable conception of government must tell us how a government should be when it gets big. Libertarianism doesn't tell us this, which is why the libertarian movement goes nowhere.

It is generally thought that the psychopath has no superego. This is not so. The psychopath's superego functions only intermittently. By contrast, the non-psychopath's superego exerts a steady pressure on his psyche. The psychopath's superego, though existent, is, as it were, external to the ego over which it has jurisdiction, whereas the non-psychopath's superego is not so neatly separated from the corresponding ego. But the psychopath's superego is quite as existent as the non-psychopath's.

Geekdom is not only not a sign of intelligence, but is a sign of its absence.

Democrats bureaucratize. Republicans don't. Therefore, you should vote Republican.

When an idea occurs to you, it means that an entire constellation of ideas, of which that one idea is merely the conscious representative, is active in your mind. If you write that idea down the moment it occurs to you, each of the links in the corresponding idea-constellation will occur to you as you are writing, the resulting being a significant piece of writing.

The argument for God's existence is here clearly stated and definitively refuted. The so-called "ontological argument" for the existence of God was first put forth explicitly by St. Anselm. There are different versions of this argument. We'll consider three, starting with Anselm's own.

A compendium of some of Kuczynski's more readable work on philosophy, scientific methodology, and the theory of knowledge.

It is explained what it is for a statement to be logically true and it is thereby explained what it is for a statement to be formally true. It is also explained how logical truth differs from formal truth. Further, it is explained what a system of logic is. Finally, the nature of entailment is explained and, in particular, it is explained how formal entailment differs from analytic entailment.

A fast-paced dialogue in which key philosophical terms are defined and the corresponding concepts are briefly explained.

A dialogue about Gregory Mankiw's 10 principles of economics.

What we call "neurosis" is psychosis about specific facts, but not about the logical instruments used to judge relations between facts. What we call "psychosis" is psychosis about both facts and the aforementioned logical instruments.

A dialogue about how to react to hurtful but true things that people say to you.

A fictitious dialogue in which an answer is given to the question: Why is psychosis so common in the USA?