It has been a while...

I think I'll restart this blog, but it's time to change the focus. It will not strictly concern itself with philosophy (as it was in the early days) nor a travel log (as it served while in Chile). Afterdoxy will turn to general writing of any subject matter; in short, it is going to be more of a blog than ever before. Here is an old post of mine on Facebook. An oldie but a goodie. Enjoi...

This is a paraphrase of David Hume's Natural Religion excerpt on axiomatic religion, which I will assume none of you will read and if you do you will blithely ignore its content because it disturbs you. But why would I post this? Simply because I know you care about religion because it is important, and I think these things are important to consider. It is only blissful stupidity to ignore it. I want you to have an opinion and an apology because I have always thought your opinion was important.

The Fundamental Axioms of Religion:


1. These Axioms are True. This is the Prime Axiom of the axiom sets of all religions, and of course always a handy one to have if you wish to be able to derive the truth of your beliefs (oxymoron city) from your principle axioms.


2. God exists, is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibeneficient.


3. God has kindly revealed by various prophetic means this set of Axioms, which are axiomatically True (see Axiom 1), Complete (omniscient), Mandatory (omnipotent), and Good (omnibeneficient).


4. All other (possibly competing) sets of Axioms are False, except maybe ones that are later revealed by God, presuming that we don't have as an Axiom the following Axiom:


5. These Axioms are Complete. (Seal of the Prophets, "Closed Canon", the Warning of Revelations, et cetera; Mohamed should have had a talk with Thomas Jefferson, see below.)


6. Anyone who fails to accept these Axioms as Their Axioms in their deepest heart of hearts is a Bad Person, and this will be known by the omniscient God, who will then omnipotently cast you into an eternity of Eternal Torment out of the goodness of His (emphasis intentional on masculine anthropomorphism) omnibeneficient heart at some unspecified point after your miserable death.


7. Now, let's get down to important things, like tithing the priesthood, how to pray and where, and just how infallible the priesthood really is when conveying divinely inspired interpretations of these Axioms to the less Holy...

There is a marble quarry about twenty minutes north of here. About fifty years ago the island was strip-mined, which has left a massive pit where a large hill once sat. The pit is filled about fifteen feet deep or even more with water, and the rocks are sharply, steeply cut, making ridiculous, double flip dives a breeze.

There are a lot of quarries around here like the one I went to today. Some have stagnant water that have become disgusting mosquito mating grounds. Others look okay but swallowing the water will get you Hepatitis. Nearly all of the quarries have the gigantic mining trucks, cranes, cars and barrels in the middle of these pools, yet the water is so deep they are barely visible. New England miners discovered it was cheaper to simply leave the equipment in the pit when the waters came rather than haul it out.

One pit is exceptional in that it lacks any of that. Half a century ago, a miner decided to get the equipment out of the pit before it flooded fully and opened a junk yard about 300 meters away. The junkyard is still owned and operated to this day, now by the man's grandson - a man in his late twenties who enjoys smoking a small bowl of marijuana on the cliffs and admiring the sunsets.

Ugh, whenever I'm writing an article I ALWAYS GET INTERRUPTED! Okay, I gotta go. DANG IT!!!

From The Economist

Rather disturbing if you think about it.

Feel free to comment on this...

Is Aquinan scholarship dualist or strangely materialist? Alvin Plantinga, now 30 years famous at Notre Dame University, asks the question,

...there is also the important but obscure view of Thomas Aquinas and his followers. Is this a form of dualism? The question is vexed. According to Aquinas, a human person is a material substance with an immaterial part, the soul. Aquinas says, of this immaterial part, that it itself is a substance. Furthermore the soul, this immaterial part, has the property of possibly thinking (believing, desiring, hoping, deciding, etc.), and after death, does think. But Aquinas also says that the soul is the form of the body. A form, however, at least as far as I can see is or is like a property; and a property, presumably, can't think. If the soul is a form, therefore, how can it be capable of thinking?

~Alvin Plantinga's article Materialism and Christianity in Persons: Human and Divine, 2007

Very telling video from Regent University

Quotables with Jerry Fodor, Heraclitus

Two years ago, in an interview conducted by Anglican-priest-turned-agnostic Mark Vernon, Rutgers philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor had this to say,

I rather doubt that life has a meaning. If I thought perhaps it did, and I wanted to find out what its meaning is, I don't imagine I'd ask someone whose credentials consist of a Ph. d. in philosophy.

Frenchman Pierre Hadot recently published a new translation of Heraclitus' aphorism which I believe bears consideration; the Greeks always had the most poetic philosophies,

What is born tends to disappear.

Questions in the Imperative, or A Recent Return to Borges

I was about a year back and twenty miles north of Boston when I realized my final paper for a class needed some extra citations and I took to the college's library in order to add a few sources. After an hour I found myself off track, merely flipping through books for pleasure rather than task. It was during this idleness that I discovered a particularly interesting book titled The Heretical Imperative. The book itself would be difficult to find even by reference; in the library's basement, fallen behind a small stack of fictions. I would not have cared to open the book had I not remembered that a professor of mine then abroad in Italy had once before given me an excerpt of it.

The Heretical Imperative was written by a certain Peter L. Berger, and most printings range around 200 pages in length. The particular book I held in my hands happened to be the tool of a sleight of tongue. Beside the front flap is a brief note,

Gift of Mary Frances Nagley
Dec. 16, 1979
on the occasion of the
Ordination to the Priesthood
of
Mary Jane Nestler

The sense of humor of this Mary Nagley intrigued me, and I copied her dedication onto a piece of paper and read the rest of the book that day. The theme of the book, if I understood Berger correctly, was this: As our culture increasingly becomes more and more scientific, more cutting, more splicing, a belief in God will continue to become less normative and more arabesque - fanciful but ridiculous. Any belief in God (or any rejection of modernity), therefore, is heretical; a definition of heresy as any choice away from the standard. In other words, heresy is the only route left.

I rather enjoyed the book. The prose was tight and connected, and Berger drew upon a wealth of sources from many cultures, languages, and histories. Subsequent searches for Berger revealed him to be a sociologist from Boston University, still employed, living about thirty minutes south of me. Publisher records and third party informations on The Heretical Imperative are conflicting. A first edition copy from Doubleday can still be acquired at a reasonable price, and information from them says the earliest date of publication was 1980. But curiously, the dedicatory note by Ms Nagley was dated exactly 24 days prior to this. Other sources confirm Nagley's date, including an open letter I found written by Berger dated April 1980, to the journal Theology Today, which mentioned the book's publication year as 1979.

The two in the dedicatory note proved more difficult to track down. I found nothing about Mary Frances Nagley, the writer of the note, though a deeper investigation could prove more telling given more time and energy. Research on her friend, priestess Mary Jane Nestler, was turning dour as well until I uncovered a press release from the Episcopalian news archives dated August 5, 2003. The release addressed Nestler as Deputy Mary Jane Nestler and not as a priest, the title of deputy in certain circles - including Anglican - indicates the status of laity and not cleric. A strange twist indeed, if Deputy Nestler was once a priestess but now is not. The press release itself was uninteresting, Nestler and other deputies wrote to encourage priests to study foreign cultures and languages in an effort of cross-anthropological appeal. At this point I decided to end the search to learn more about the curious note; further investigation would be unnecessary and probably uninteresting. Even as I write this I yawn with anticipating a long and restful sleep.

Intention (not Intentionality)

Before this blog became the face of my venture into Chile, this was a philosophical blog. To a handful of people's delight (and to the overwhelming majority's boredom) this blog is returning to that purpose.

Anyways, here is my reading list for the rest of the summer.

The reading list for the rest of the Summer!:

Mind, by Searle 50% done (I think it's boring and that I wish Searle mentioned more cognitive studies)

The Veil of Isis: an Essay on the Idea of Nature, by Hadot 15% done (So far, second best book of the summer)

Memory, History, Forgiveness, by Ricoeur 1% done (I have rarely felt so stupid, except when reading Deleuze or Derrida)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Kundera 2%done (So far, this book is AWESOME.)

Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, by Kolakowski 90% done (It's a pretty-good treatment of philosophy's fundamental question(s). Read it for its summary of Parmenides.)

God and the Philosophers, edited by Norris 95% done (Great talk by 10 philosophers over the subject of God, religion and reality.)

The Best in Science and Nature Writing 2003, edited by Richard Dawkins 15% done

The Best in Science and Nature Writing 2004, edited by Stephen Pinker 100% done

One bus, one plane and two cars later...

For the last two days I have been residing blissfully in the United States. The weather is gorgeous: Santiago taught me that if there is at least warm weather, cloudy days aren't so bad. Even as soon as stepping into the Dallas airport on layover I have been scouring magazines, interrogating friends and devouring the Web to see what great music I have missed. In the span of two American, Summer months I have missed quite a bit.

Here are some of the goods. The boldface goes band then song title.

Wild Sweet Orange - Ten Dead Dogs



Mates of State - My Only Offer



Goldfrapp - Satin Chic



Cansei de Ser Sexy - Music is My Hot, Hot Sex

Chile as an island.

Granted, I haven't been here for very long. A whole life in a country can barely be enough to attest to its qualities, much less two months; although what I have experienced attests to the idea that Chile is an island. Though on a map its borders speak otherwise, Chile is quite removed from its neighbors.

Seperated by vast desert, enveloped by the Andes, and host to one of the most inhospitable sailing waters, Chile is an island alone.

The difference between houses and homes...

There are a number of different ways to spend a night in Chile.

The first two are Hotels and Hospedajes. The difference between an average hotel and an average hospedaje is negligible, though hotels might actually be very high quality (and high cost) but a hospedaje is always average.

Next is a Residencial. A residencial has the amount of rooms like a hotel, but the price of a hostel. You get your own room instead of sharing in a hostel, and even a TV, but the quality is generally the lowest of all of these here. A residencial's atomosphere is generally decided by the atitude of the owner.

Fourth is the Hostería. I have never been to a hostería, so, as Wittgenstein once put it, where our world ends there we must be silent. I cannot comment.

Fifth is the Hostel. Like a hostel anywhere else in the world, it is a large commune with a bunch of travelers from around the world. This is a prefered way to travel if you are going solo, with friends, or on a budget.

Things I miss about home:

1. Music. That means picking out the music I want to listen to. Besides, I bought a CD here of Los Bunkers (a great band, by the way, so check them out) and I have nothing to play it on!

2. More travel companions. Traveling solo means I have no one to enjoy this place with. Friends don't let friends travel alone.

Things I don't miss about home:

1. Liquor law.

2.

The second day of Copiapó

Yesterday I arrived by bus into Copiapó, a dusty, boring desert town built in the same layout as Santiago but without the people or the glitz to make it interesting. There is one dominant color here, brown, which starts from the coffee-colored dirt roads (they're actually paved, but have about an inch of dirt above them), to the brown buildings, to the peaks of giant mountains made of sand. Like many deserts, the days art hot but the nights are very cold.

To the east lies Salar de Maricunga (Salt Lake of Maricunga), a place I very badly wish to see but budget constraints are saying otherwise. I have $100 in US cash and $30,000 in pesos. I really want that $100 to be for emergencies, meaning the pesos are going to have to go towards my last meals and a busride back to Santiago.

To the west is Bahia Inglésa (English Bay), which I visted today. I took to the coastal town, more like a village - its population is probably around 300. The streets are quiet, maybe one othere tourist was there, and the people are leisurely seated on their doorsteps or can be heard inside their homes. The beach is fantastic - pearl white sand, warm, azure waters, fishing boats docked lazily, not another person in sight. Actually, it got kinda lonely, haha. And it was so remote that I had to ask a guy leaving his driveway to drop me off in Caldera to the north cause no taxi or bus would go out there to pick me up.

In Caldera there is a giant, wooden cathedral. Its large pillars, skyward steeple and tan walls were entirely of wood, except for its tin roof. Caldera is certainly more populated than Bahia Inglésa, but much less than Copiapó. At least in Caldera there was a bus service back to Copiapó, which was late by 2 hours. Other than the wooden cathedral, Caldera does not boast very much. My way back home I played Chess with some Frenchmen going to Santiago from Peru. They weren't very good, I beat all of them by the time I reached the terminal of Copiapó. And now here I am, in an internet terminal.

Alright, even though it's 7.45 I am tired. Goodnight.

La Serena, day 3

La Serena is a little boring, I won't lie. But I would love living here - it's quiet and beautiful and the weather is perfect year round. It's kind of like an American suburb had been plopped down and became its own city.

Today I awoke and planned on going to Valle de Elqui, but had last minute second thoughts and decided against it. Not because of money, but because of time and transportation. I worried that with the few hours I would have there, I wouldn't be able to see very much on foot. Perhaps if I had a car.

The reason my friends are staying in La Serena is that they are apartment shopping. That's right, they are moving to La Serena. So today I decided to go apartment shopping with them instead of Valle de Elqui. It was an interesting experience - and they found what I think is a nice place, and very affordable.

To close this post, I will give another update on Chilean slang (swearing this time):

Fome - Boring
Besadora - Asshole
Wea - Shit
Gringolandia - United States of America
Ropa vieja - lit. old cloths, it means leftovers
Dando Jugo - lit. giving juice, it means someone who talks a lot but says nothing
Me carga... - I hate...
Chatear - To chat
Poncear - To make out
Lancear - To steal
Carretear - To party, comes from the word for highway
Cacho (caxo) - I understand
Bacán - Cool
No caxo esa wea - I don't get this shit
Palolo(a) - Boyfriend, girlfriend
Bruja - Wife

Quick change of plans...

After a good talk with the family who runs the hostel, I am changing my plans. Here is the updated syllabus... Also, I have severly trimmed my plans because my friends, for various reasons, are staying in La Serena. I decided to stay here another day, venture to San Pedro solo. Fortunatley I have friends in San Pedro. Also, to keep dad's heart problems at bay, I have included the hostel phone numbers and addresses that I am staying at in case of emergency or what have you. I chose these two hostels as they are the highest rated in the areas.

Tomorrow (Monday): Visit Valle de Elqui (what I was supposed to go to today)
Tomorrow night: Overnight bus to San Pedro de Atacama
Tuesday: The city of San Pedro
Wednesday: Valle de la Luna, Salar de Atacama, Laguna Verde
Thursday: The geysers of El Tatia, as well as many other things.
Thursday night: Overnight back to Santiago where I return to the family

Monday: the hostel Maria's Casa
Las Rojas 18
La Serena, Chile

Phone: (56)(51) 229282
Website: www.hostalmariacasa.cl

Tuesday through Thursday: Sumaj Jallpa
Volcan el tatio 703
Licanabur, San Pedro de Atacam, Chile

Phone: (56) (55) 851416

Still in La Serena

I made plans to visit the pisco and wine vineyards in the Valle de Elqui today but the batteries in my alarm decided to die in the middle of the night and I missed the bus. Instead me and mis amigos took to caminando the streets of La Serena. In the Summer, supposedly the city is all hustle and bustle, but during Winter, especially on fomingo, the town is... serene? The town is, as described by one of my teachers, extremely boring. There are a few cool buildings, and I bought a bottle and food and picniced the sunset on the beach. That was fun too. I just returned from there.

Also, my English skills have dropped to disastrously low levels. I have to keep checking my grammar and vocabulary. For instance, today I wanted to say 'I don't care' in English. The way to say that in Spanish is 'No me importa', or in it's lengthier way, 'A mi no me importa'. When directly translated that means 'To me it is not important', which is exactly what I said.

I am planning out my busride now to Copiapo - a city not worth noting except is where I am staying to visit Bahia Inglesa. Here's to pleasant travels. Chau.

In La Serena...

Well, the bus I took took longer to arrive here than I expected. La Serena is wonderful - I can choose to wear a sweater at night! It feels so long since then. I also wished I hadn't packed my camera on the busride up because there were some crazy geographical sights.

Anyways, I have a choice for tomorrow - visit a tiny rainforest in the middle of the desert, visit the beach and hopefully see penguins, or go to Parque National Fray Jorge. We'll see what I choose when you read tomorrow's post.

Right now I am at a hostel owned by a very nice family. My room is a quaint double that I share with a guy from somewhere in South America.

Game Plan

Money: $470 (290 in the bank, 100 in US, 80 in Chilean pesos)
Start day: Saturday, 1 in the morning
End day: Saturday morning at the latest

Saturday: La Serena and Parque Nacional Fray Jorge
Sunday: Las Ramadas, Tongoy and a Pisco production plant that the travel book said was worth visiting and there are free walk-in tours
Monday: Bus to Copaipo
Tuesday: Visit Bahia Inglesa, supposedly the best Southamerican beach on the Pacific side.
Tuesday night: Bus to San Pedro de Atacama
Wednesday: San Pedro and Salar de Atacama and Valle de la Luna
Thursday at 4 AM: Visit El Tatio to see 100 geysers go off at once
Thursday midday: Catch a bus back home, should be back in Santiago by midday Friday. The Inostrozas said I could reside with them.

Another translated article...

Well, for lack of anything better, I will translate another article recently published. It's quite boring, actually. I don't know why I'm doing this other than for practice. Tomorrow I will post my game plan for visiting the northern half of Chile. The reason for the extensive delay is that I cannot decide on visiting La Serena in northern Chile or Mendoza in Argentina first.

Chile is a Leader in Informational Technologies, but...

...That's not saying much. In terms of information within society, Chile is the respected leader within the Latino American countries.

Just after Mexico, we are the nation that has most extensively incorporated essential technologies, such as the net, computer networks and cell phones. Mostly in businesses, academic establishments, health centers and State departments, to mention a few.

According to results obtained from the Societal Informations Indicator, or Indicador de la Sociedad de la Información (ISI), and backed up by DMR Consulting and the Postgraduate University for Business Administration of Navarra (IESE-CELA):

Between October and December of 2005, ISI gave an average of 4.86 points to the sum of all Latino American countries - the highest average obtained to date - with an annual growth rate of 2.6%.

Chile (6.28) and Mexico (5) scored as the only two countries with a grade Superior within Latin America.

ISI compared the statistics of Latin American countries with some of the best, those countries that recieved the rank of Optimum; like the US or northwestern European nations - those countries averaged 9.5. And ISI also compared themselves with countries marked Sub-Optimum, for example South Korea, Portugal and Greece, which recieved an average 6.77.

Even though our country continues to stay as the leader in the region, the gap between well developed countries of Europe or the US and semi-developed countries like Chile is far wider than the chasm between Chile and third-world countries,^ said DMR Counsulting representative, Juan Francisco Yáñez.

¨Analysis has permited us at ISI to conclude that there exists a infrastructural hole in basic technologies (TI), that is pertinent to sustain Chilean markets. In part, this is due to medium and small businesses unwilling to make the switch to the internet,¨ said Yàñez.

¨We don't do the first point and leave without finishing the second point (NOTE: This is hard to translate, basically he's saying that Chile can't be satisfied with large businness going digital). There is an arduous job to do. We need to penetrate the markets with newer technology,¨ continued Yáñez.

On Music

I decided to assemble a short list of music that seems to be conjured whenever I think of Chile. Call it a soundtrack to the country, if you will. The criteria for this list is two-fold. First, it has to be popular. Popular enough that you might hear it walking down the street. The more popular a song is the higher I'll place it. Second, I have to enjoy it. That part is important too.

Of course, with that sort of criteria you'd expect the mayoría of this list to be reggaeton. Firstly, cause reggaeton is the lingua franca of music down here, and secondly cause I happen to like it. So your expectations would be fulfilled - I'm not dando jugo when I say that.

1. Las Dalmatas - Fotogenica (Reggaeton)
Yeah, I happen to like this song a lot and Chile seems to as well. The Mexican group gets plenty of airplay down here.



2. Babasónicos - Pijamas (Indie)
If you hate reggaeton maybe you'll like Indie-Postrock: enter Babasónicos, the Argentinian rock group.



3. Los Bunkers - Y Volveré (Rock)

Los Bunkers is pretty darn good, but this song is only marginal at best. Well, it's best I could do in this short amount of time. Perhaps I'll edit this and put a better Los Bunkers song on.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pH4m0Hv9DXM

Sick... again

Ugh, I have the cold again and I know exactly how I got it. So a friend was over last week and we had some drinks. She had a cold and I knew about it. Only, I wasn't thinking when I poured her a re-fill and she said right after that she had to go home. So I poured the drink back in the bottle. Stupid, Patrick. About five days later I decided I wanted to warm up to some homework and took a glass of Irish Cream to the dry. And here I am, two days after that with the beginnings of a cold. Ugh.

Because there is little else to do, I am going to translate a recent article in El Mercurio, a Chilean paper.

Chile Top South American country to live in
by María de los Ángeles Naudon D.

Once again, we are the top ranked in the region. According to an recent ranking published in the magazine, 'The Economist', our country is the best place to live inside Latin America.

Just underneath us is Mexico, Argentina and the rest of the continent.

The magazien surveyed 111 nations, placing Ireland, Switzerland and Norway in the top three. Chile took 31st. Not bad.

The Best and the Worst

1. Ireland
2. Switzerland
3. Norway
4. Luxembourg
5. Sweden
6. Australia
7. Iceland
8. Italy
9. Denmark
10. Spain

13. United States

25. France

31. Chile

105. Russia

111. Zimbabwe