Between the hazardous rocks of Scylla and Charybdis lies a passage to new vistas. — It is an idea I have had for awhile, but a recent lunch with an academic colleague brought home how much the idea is needed. “Academia is a factory” my colleague said, “we are forced to work on and publish on certain topics and churn out acceptable conclusions. …

I’m an intellectual, not an academic; let me explain. — I have a friend who teaches languages. She is very, very good at it; so good that the government contracts her to teach some of their people. She could have a job at any number of prestigious universities. …

All we have are beliefs so how we develop them is very important. — Peirce (not “Pierce” and pronounced “purs”)(1839–1914) developed the basic idea of pragmatism as a method for improving the accuracy of science in its search for truth. Peirce’s innovative philosophical method created a new school of philosophy. He was, first and foremost, a physical scientist, spending more than 30 years studying…

…but I’m really talking about the human perceptions of time. — Yes, time. Yesterday, my spouse reminded me that this year is one of those decade-defined anniversaries of my graduation from high school. It honestly had never crossed my mind. I was too busy living in the present. Humans do grant special significance to anniversaries ending with the zero digits. No…

I heard a celebrity spout a mistaken thought and had to respond. — Okay, that headline is unfair because “Buddhism” is not a discrete entity but has many forms. However, that is part of my point. Read on, please. I saw a video address using a Hollywood celebrity to promote a particular school of Buddhism. “I realized all my thoughts are illusions,” said…

Anger, hatred, violence, and abuse of women have a cause — I know what people are getting at when they call a man a “misogynist.” It’s not a bad term, all things considered, to describe men’s mistreatment of women, but it misses something important. I’m interested in treating causes not symptoms and that requires figuring out what’s going on beneath the…

A Philosophical History of the Question — Read Part 1: Ancient to Early Modern Philosophy Part 2: Kant to the Present Times Kant and the 19th Century The question of what is an individual took a significant turn with Immanuel Kant. Kant’s philosophical revolution is his realization that the mind contributes to experience. Kant’s schema explained how the mind contained categories of understanding that enabled sense data to be…