Bloomfield

2010-08-25T00:50:00.003-04:00

I may have this site running again soon. I just moved up to Pixburg with Rachel, I don't have a job, and she starts grad school next week; so, I'm going to have some time on my hands. Hopefully I'll be able to find something productive/lucrative to do with some of that time as well. In other good news, I bought a brand new desk and chair, all my books are out of boxes for the first time in months, and my libraries are the Carnegie Library and the Univ. of Pixburg Library. Give me a few days and I should have something nice to post and I promise it will have nothing to do with semantic theories of truth and paradox.

Almost

2010-04-27T18:53:00.001-04:00

A New Beginning

2010-02-20T22:48:00.000-05:00

Okay I promise to have this site up and running soon.

Genesis

2009-03-28T12:36:00.000-04:00

I've named this blog after the text I used to write my undergraduate thesis for philosophy, The Concept of Anxiety by Vigilius Haufniensis. Well, I chose the URL that way. The name of the blog comes from a comment I made to a professor from another department, when he asked my my area of study in philosophy. At the time, I was knee deep in two thesis papers on Anxiety and Despair, for Philosophy and Religion respectively. Both papers were on Kierkegaard and how his works corresponded with Heidegger(philosophy) and Dostoevsky(religion). So, I looked at him and said, "I'm studying existential emotions." And now, with all of that said, I guess I should start this blog off with some philosophy. I have a few goals in life, one of them is to be a writer. My earnest hope is this blog will be the first step towards that goal.

This blog is a shoot off from my old blog, which has been my blog for many years. I'm not switching one for the other; instead this blog is going to become the outlet for all things academic. My previous blog will be there for my friends and family, who wants to keep tabs on my life and hear my opinions on things not related to Philosophy, Theology, and Literature. The reason behind splitting my previous blog up is a simple one, I've found it's easier to get people to read your blog, if you're focused on one category. Now that I have shown my interest in Kierkegaard, I will begin with a post on Logic. This is a series I started over at my previous/personal blog about the Liar's Paradox.

To begin with, I don't intend to make arguments on why I have chosen a semantic theory of truth or a bi-valent system based on declarative sentences. Therefore, please do not burden yourself with destructive arguments against my solution having to do with the surrounding conditions. If I can get this solution to make sense within these conditions, then I'll expand to defending Tarski and Kripke. The Liar's Paradox is a simple paradox, but I'll explain it anyhow - if only to make my post seem broader. The paradox is a single declarative sentence.

This sentence is false.

At only four words, one might consider ignoring its existence altogether. However, where's the fun in doing that? We can look at the sentence and instantly see the problem is the revolving truth value. In a semantic theory of truth, we take the meaning of the words in a declarative sentence to indicate a relation to reality (or whathaveyou). If the sentence is an honest depiction of reality, then it is true. If the sentence is not an honest depiction of reality, then the sentence is false. Logical analysis is scientific, that is to say, it has an ordered mechanism of testing for validity, which is constantly repeated to check the results. The first step is to take the concept of the sentence and apply a truth value, either true or false. The reason we do not hold the sentence up next to reality to look for sameness, and thus validity, is answered by pointing towards less simple sentences. The method works in the same fashion no matter the sentence, so if we take: "If I am unemployed, then my undergraduate major must have been useless." We can see that holding this sentence up against reality is not easily done, so first we posit a truth value. Unfortunately for all of you people majoring in useless majors, I will not be finishing an analysis of that sentence. Instead, we will posit the value of true onto the Liar's Paradox. If we take the Liar's Paradox to be true, then we must observe the content of the sentence as corresponding to reality. Therefore, the sentence is false, which switches the previously posited of the truth value to false. Now the posited truth value is false, making the value of the sentence not false. This circular movement is the paradox.

That's enough for this post, next time I'll talk about the Tarski's semantic theory of truth and Kripke's solution to the Liar's Paradox. Followed by my own solution of the Liar's Paradox, which I call the meta/imperative theory.

πάθος

Bloomfield

Almost

A New Beginning

Genesis