No, Wittgenstein Didn’t Think You Can’t Define Games
One of my pet peeves in game studies is the claim that Wittgenstein thought you can’t define games.
philosophy
Papers that Changed My Mind
I recently came upon a philosophy paper that seemed to tackle a problem I didn’t know existed and had a convincing argument for identifying and perhaps fixin...
The Age of Bullshit
“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit”, Harry Frankfurt wrote in On Bullshit (1986).
On Eugene Goostman, The Turing Test and The Chinese Room
A computer program called Eugene Goostman has recently been said to have passed the Turing test for the first time. But what does this mean? Are we about to ...
Computers Run on Metaphors
Computers are built to run on metaphoric relations taken from earlier forms of technology and human experience not related to computers. An obvious example i...
Google is Building an Ontology
Since the spring of 2012, Google has started to move from search of particular combinations of letters to searching things. This move from string-based searc...
Neural Correlates of Meaning-Making
In humanities research related to psychology there tends to be a tendency to look for answer from neurological research. Things like consciousness, language ...
SMBC, Frame Semantics and Political Speech
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had comic a while back about political speech. The idea was that, if you replace everything except nouns with nonsensical w...
Methodological contemplations
While I wholeheartedly think that science is mostly methodically uniform, there are two things that seem to differentiate the social sciences (or humanities)...
Defining games
I held a presentation on games in the National Seminar for Philosophy Students (Filosofian opiskelijoiden kansallinen seminaari, FOKS in Finnish) last saturd...
Using role-play as a research tool
A while ago I attended a philosophy seminar where the last presentation was about using science fiction as a tool for research. For researchers interested in...
Your Eminence
According to Mike’s Philosophical Definitions Page an Eminence is a “famous living academic whose work is relevant but sloppy. I’d like to elaborate more on ...
Horror & Philosophy
Two of archetypical creatures found in horror movies, zombies and vampires, have also found their way into philosophy. To eat the delicious, undoubtedly larg...
Master’s Thesis
I’ve been trying to come up with a topic for my master’s thesis for some time now. In March, I have to have some idea what I’m going to research. I suggested...
Thesis
I’ve been writing my bachelor’s thesis since spring and it is nearly complete. It should, since I have to present it next month. I started with the vague ide...