Just Published My Short Story “The Exile”

https://www.amazon.com/Exile-Stephen-C-Pedersen/dp/1709217456/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=stephen+pedersen+exile&qid=1577841971&sr=8-2 You can get the paperback on Amazon for $5.99, the Kindle for $.99 This is a short, poignant allegory which begins in the ancient city of Babylon. The protagonist is a man who wrestles with darkness, but who ceaselessly strives towards the light. However, after forty circling centuries have passed, the polymath leaves everything …

A Dialogue on Nietzsche’s Depth Psychology

It was September. This week Café metaphysics was to be held at the bar Soren and I use frequent. Sad memories lingered as I walk up the hill to its doors. Daedalus recalled The last time the entire group met there in our discussion on depth psychology in Greek tragedy. Daedalus then looked up in …

Mind By Richard Wilbur

Mind in its purest play is like some bat That beats about in caverns all alone, Contriving by a kind of senseless wit Not to conclude against a wall of stone. It has no need to falter or explore; Darkly it knows what obstacles are there, And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar …

How the Greeks Invented Philosophy

“How did Greece become the first civilization to have the means to examine themselves?” asked Soren. “Where they lived had a huge impact on the invention of philosophy. They had to trade with foreign people, with armies much larger than themselves, with gods that gave a different logos. They were continually shown their way of …

Know Thyself

Alone in his flat, flashes of memories flooded his cave of creativity. He closes his eyes and imagined what it must be like to be an atom or quark with some sort of fundamental consciousness as it travels through space and time. Lost in the thought of passing particles crashing and colliding, then thoughts of …

Beauty Is All the Power We Should Wield in the World.

Don’t you see that is how people must be shaken out of their dogmas? We’re like fish in water, never knowing what water is like, that it is wet. Something must force one out of the water, kicking and screaming, until that being finds what water is like, what they are like, and what the …

Immanuel Kant: The Critique of Pure Reason (Rough Draft)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who was born and lived in Königsberg, Prussia. He grew up in a Lutheran Protestant household that focused on the literal interpretation of the Bible. This religious upbringing is taught through the lens of humility and devotion. He enrolled into the University of Königsberg at the age of …

The Brick Wall Effect

When we're young of age we begin to take in information from our parents without question. It's the principle of credulity we cling to as a child. We believe everything. As we get older, with the bricks of knowledge we've already laid to construct a foundation, we strengthen our beliefs with friendly facts. The wall …

Pan Psychism’s Fitness

What kind of fabric is reality woven from? I remember my youth reading a physics book by Brian Greene who popularized string theory with its many and varied dimensions, and the super-cooled higgs field that was the precondition for the big bang. My early mind was shaped by science. However, once I made contact with …

All Too Human

What it means to be human is to have a set of limitations and potentialities and somewhere therein our short life is rooted. As an infant, we can darken the entire world by simply closing our eyes. With this great power we understand our free will, and as we grow older, we impress on the …

Psychology and its Artistic Counterparts.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last. -JOHN RUSKIN The History of Venice, …

The Philosophical Toolbox

There is no public or absolute perspective by which to study reality and our place there within. The freshmen philosopher, still trying to get his sea legs, will enounter countless philosophical methods, each with their own set of conclusions. Instead of the false belief that all of them are inferior to one single method, consider …

The Problems of AI Consciousness

In 1996 a chess program named Deep Blue was set against Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. Garry won 4-2. However, the next year Deep Blue was mightily upgraded and Garry lost. The question I want to pose to you is this: did Deep Blue ever actually play a game of chess? I mean, did …

Mary, Quite Contrary: Consciousness Unexplained

What is the ultimate nature of reality? In Philosophy of mind, there are many positions regarding what has real being. On a commonsense level, dualism seems to be the reality. Thoughts, beliefs, and qualia really do seem to be different from tables, apples, and automobiles; therefore, according to dualists, there are two types of stuff …

Beauty Beyond a Percipient

When G.E. Moore, in his Principia Ethica, argues for the existence of Beauty he gives us a pragmatic conclusion for its existence. He writes: If it be once admitted that the beautiful world in itself is better than the ugly, then it follows, that however many beings may enjoy it, and however much better their …