Know Thyself

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One of the first things that I did when I was accepted to study maths and philosophy was to go to the library and look in the philosophy section. Although I liked the idea of studying philosophy I didn't really have much idea of what was involved. I thought that there was something about lots of dead Greek guys that I had heard of, and possibly something to do with being able to remember lots of sayings and things like that, but other than thinking of myself as quite a thoughtful sort of person I didn't know anything else.

I got a few books out - An Introduction To Philosophy was very helpful, a big heavy tome on Wittgenstein was not - and had a look at them, and felt for a bit that while philosophy was an interesting subject and worthy of study perhaps I would be better off doing something else with my maths degree after all. Then I received a book called "Porcupines" by Graham Higgins, which described itself as "a philosophical anthology," presenting some of the key pieces of writing of great philosophers. There was very little explanation of who these people were, just their names and the dates of when they lived. Every right hand page would contain a short passage or sentence that was attributed to them, and the left hand page would try to place it in context with some of their other writing - but never with any analysis, this was all left to the reader.

It was reading through "Porcupines" that convinced me that studying philosophy was worthwhile, and although my passion in academic study is now focused on mathematics I am still convinced that philosophy and thinking about the deep questions of life is an incredibly important thing.

(it was in this period that I read the book which I think gave me my real love of reading fiction as well, "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder, but that's a story for another time)

Although I have found many interesting things to think about since, there were three statements that I read in "Porcupines" which have stayed with me ever since, and to end this short post which feels more like biography than commentary I'm going to sign off by quoting them.

"If we actually possessed one grain of knowledge there would be no holding us back."
- Michel De Montaigne (1533-1592)

"I do not know what I am:
I am not what I know."
- Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Stroking One's Beard

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I don't know why, but whenever I tell people that my first degree was a Bachelor of Arts in Maths and Philosophy it surprises them. Since I first made my decision on the UCAS form over eight years ago I've grown accustomed to people saying, "Oh," tilting their head slightly to one side and continuing, "That's an interesting combination."

My reason for studying something other than just maths was because despite taking maths and further maths at A Level and enjoying them immensely I had an idea in my head that three years of nothing but maths would be incredibly boring. It had always been the plan for me to study in Liverpool, but at first I was actually set on studying maths with theology and religious studies at another university in Liverpool - until my head of sixth form persuaded me to look elsewhere and find a course with a better academic reputation.

Since cost was such a great concern in going to university the only real option I had was going to the University of Liverpool, and it was lucky that a friend of the family heard about the course in maths and philosophy. Over the course of three years I realised that while I enjoyed studying philosophy a lot I had been wrong to think that three years of maths would be boring, and so I ended up on the path that I'm on now, shifting after my first degree to a masters in mathematical sciences.

I never forgot what studying philosophy taught me, to try to think clearly, to try and understand things from different angles and different points of view. Although it very much became a second subject for me during my degree I still enjoyed the various courses that I attended, and some of the things that I learned on them have stayed with me ever since, as have the memories of some spectacularly bad courses that I attended.

Anyway, this slice of biography was just a roundabout way of saying that over the next few days (while I'm away) I'll just be presenting a few odd things that I thought about in my studies, and maybe the odd snippet from my old essays (isn't this digital age wonderful?), as well as a few words on the Feminist Philosophies course that I took, which for a semester became my academic nemesis.

What's In A Name?

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What is a "cognitive blindspot" you might ask? There's no Wikipedia entry on it, and that surprised me I have to admit. If you search in Google for the exact phrase (like here) then we are now the top result for that, which is kind of nice (until you notice that there are only 38 hits in total), but if you just search more generally it does come up more (we're still in the top ten though, which is pretty good for over 100,000 hits).

I first came across the term when I was studying Philosophy of Mind as an undergraduate, and my professor explained it as something that is beyond your comprehension in some sense. Say that there is an object that exists inside the collective cognitive blindspot, for argument's sake let it be a big pink cube that just hovers in the sky above London. Because it is in a cognitive blindspot you cannot perceive it with any of your senses, and to all intents and purposes for you it does not exist even though in objective reality it does.

(one similar idea that I think draws a nice parallel is the concept in Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex of someone having their eyes hacked; in this case they are aware that their is someone there but they cannot see them - the person is not invisible but the information of their location is removed from the viewer's optic nerve or brain)

So why did we choose this name for our blog? In the end, after some deliberation it seemed like the best thing we could come up with. We tried so many different names, but they were all taken. At first we just wanted a name that was going to be relatively easy to remember, and the name of the band that we were briefly in during high school ("Nocturnal Emission") seemed like a good enough name but it was already taken.

Then we decided to go along some kind of pop culture route, and for a time we tried several variations all involving Chewbacca, but nothing seemed to stick. Finally I remembered this concept that my philosophy professor had mentioned and had really made an impression on me. There are many things that people choose to ignore, an abundance of selective cognitive blindspots, and I think that we all have a duty to try and highlight those things that others are missing or choosing to deny.

And sometimes we just need to talk about rubbish as well, which is this blog's other function. I'll probably start doing that in my next post.