Author: JJ Sylvia IV

J.J. Sylvia IV attended Mississippi State University where he received B.A. degrees in philosophy and communications. He later received a philosophy M.A. from the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Unknowable by Gregory Chaitin

Gregory Chaitin’s The Unknowable is billed as the companion volume to his Limits of Mathematics, though it also, in many ways stands on its own. In this work, Chaitin sets out to explain the way that his work follows from Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Turing’s Halting Problem. The story begins with the mathematician David Hilbert… Continue reading The Unknowable by Gregory Chaitin

My Exam Reading Lists for Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

Being a full-time Ph.D. student and dad has limited the amount of blogging I’ve been able to do recently. This spring, I finished my two years of class work in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Program, and am now moving into taking exams in the fall and then writing the dissertation. This summer I put… Continue reading My Exam Reading Lists for Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media

A Deleuzian Metaphysics

I’m currently reading Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, and am trying to work out how to understand the metaphysics that is discussed in it. I’ll try to share a working sketch of where I’m at, drawing heavily on Plato and Nietzsche. First, Plato’s theory of Ideal Forms. If you’re looking for a more in-depth explanation… Continue reading A Deleuzian Metaphysics

Economics of Attention Ch3: What’s Next for Text

  Back to chapter 2. The third chapter of Economics of Attention is where things start to get really interesting, at least for my interests. Lanham traces the evolution of text in an attempt to understand how it’s been used to convey meaning in ways that are beyond the actual meaning of the words. These… Continue reading Economics of Attention Ch3: What’s Next for Text