Philosophy Matters is moving to a new web host! If you’re seeing this post, you’re seeing our new and improved host!
A Ph.D in Progress: By the Numbers
Today I start my written preliminary exams to start the process of moving from a Ph.D student to a Ph.D candidate. What has that process looked like so far? 5: The number of semesters I’ve been enrolled as a Ph.D student. 26,065: The number assigned pages of reading I’ve completed. I didn’t keep track of… Continue reading A Ph.D in Progress: By the Numbers
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
Teaching Portfolio
When Teaching Works
Teaching Philosophy
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 Ch 5-8
Chapter 5 In Chapter 5, Lanham attempts to highlight the two different ways of seeing once again, through an at or through form of attention. Focusing in one way tends to mean we don’t focus in the other way. For example, Lanham gives the research who specializes in a topic, and can even teach that topic well, but struggles to put… Continue reading Economics of Attention Ch 5-8
Economics of Attention Ch4: An Alphabet that Thinks
Back to Chapter 3. I know you’re wondering about the image. I’ll get there! In this chapter, Lanham explains that ebooks have almost entirely attempted to simply reproduce print books. This is so much the case, that often the ebooks you find for sale are just PDF copies of the original book. Why would… Continue reading Economics of Attention Ch4: An Alphabet that Thinks