Om Vents Graciously

The following is a philosophical analysis in the pop-culture space; the second one I've done since the one on 'The Boys' I wrote last year. Check that one out on the blog if you like that show. Enjoy. I finally have some downtime where classes haven't gone haywire in my final semester yet, and I have just finished my first research project and paper submission (yay!), which leaves me with time to think about things with zero practical use, as I love to do. With that, let's get into a very interesting thought I had when I came across an Instagram reel about the show Bojack Horseman. Admittedly, I was properly late to the Bojack Horseman bandwagon -- I only saw it in 2019, one year before the show ended its six-year run on Netflix. However, it has easily become one of my favorite shows of all time: the heaviness of the themes, the natural writing, the juxtaposition of a world of anthropomorphic animals dealing with problems that are all too real -- it all just works ...

The following is an original short horror story I wrote back in 2018. I posted it in the r/horrorstories subreddit, and I was fortunate enough for an upcoming horror story channel to discover it! They even narrated it and posted it on their YouTube channel. You should check it out below! Here's the story if you prefer to read it instead. Enjoy!

The following is a philosophical analysis in the pop-culture space. I like the overall concept and I might write a couple more in the future. Enjoy!  Amazon Prime’s The Boys has become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon – it came out towards the end of a long-running global Marvel fever in 2019, and completely flipped their altruistic (admittedly well-worn) formula on its head. With the fourth season currently underway, we have had enough time to see the birth and evolution of arguably one of the most terrifying villain characters in recent television history: the Homelander. I do not want to focus on the technical aspec ts of writing a good villain, nor do I care much about the in-universe canon elements – believe me, there are experts on the Internet who could do a much better job writing about that than me. However, on trying to analyze Homelander’s psyche, I have come to realize a particularly interesting perspective to do exactly that, and it comes from classical German phil...

The following is an original short story written as an entry to the now-dead 'Holders' Series, a 2007 horror web-project consisting of publicly submitted short stories. Most stories are structured as detailed instructions to obtain all-powerful 'Objects'. The overall premise is this: In any city, in any country, there's a mental institution or halfway house you can try any of these in. There were 2538 of these Objects, but 2000 were lost. The remaining 538 must never come together. Ever. Enjoy!   ___________________________________________________________________________________   "The Holder of Psychedelia" In any country, in any city, go to any lonely alleyway, where no natural or city lights can penetrate the dark shadows. Walk in. After a while, you would be met with a large concrete wall; a dead end, where a hooded figure casually rests. It seems completely indifferent to the world, looking down at the ground, as smoke escapes its mouth. Go up to the...

Please read Part II (click!) and Part I (click!) first! This is going to be the final (and most exciting) article in the series, because it all comes together! Here, we will use the concepts of p-zombies and Searle's thought-experiment about conscious machines, and try to think about the philosophical interplay between them - what happens when we put a zombie inside the Chinese Room? I will then go on to defend the theory following this logic. Before that, we will explore another haunting idea - is the algorithm that this allegory is meant to represent actually a zombie in disguise all along?! 1. Algorithms Are Moral p-Zombies: We can now restate the Chinese Room in the context of the anti-physicalist arguments laid out earlier. If we can conceive of p-zombies, we can use the same arguments that refute physicalism to refute computationalism. Recall that understanding is a qualia, which is in the realm of semantics in Searle’s terminology, while an algorithm is only allowed syntac...

Welcome back! We are continuing directly from Part I (click here!) , so please read that first! This article will explain the basic idea of "philosophical zombies", and why it is interesting to introduce them into the world of Searle's ideas and his Chinese Room thought-experiment. Let's get into it! The decades of work that followed Searle involved discussions about everything, from solipsism and Boltzmann brains to symbolic logic and existentialism, when it came to the effort of quantifying intelligence. Meanwhile, well-established theories in the philosophy of science made strides in attempts to solve fundamental questions such as the mind-body problem. That problem and the surrounding debate between physicalism and dualism was reinstated in the concept of “philosophical zombies”, a hypothetical creation whose conceivability itself poses a threat to the idea of physicalism (aptly named the Conceivability Argument) and confirms the existence of nonphysical “qualia” ...

Hello, and welcome to a new philosophical exploration! This one is near and dear to my heart, because it discusses two of my favorite things, and I feel like this was one of the wildest ideas I had when taking my Epistemology class in undergrad! In this article, I will explain a thought-experiment which is one-half of putting forth my thesis: Searle's famous 'Chinese Room Experiment'. In the later articles in this series, I will explain the second half, which is something called "philosophical zombies" (I know, it sounds so cool!), and I will draw a very explosive inference using the two. But for now, let's dive into Searle's thought experiment.  1. Introduction: After the famous ‘Turing Test’ asked the question of whether intelligence can be achieved by a machine, Berkeley philosopher John Searle posited an argument that has now become the most discussed topic in the field’s history. Called the ‘Chinese Room Experiment’, it is meant to highlight a subtle ...