Om Vents Graciously

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...

Mick Jenkins, a lyricist born in Alabama and raised in Chicago, has captivated listeners with a special talent for spitting wisdom in funky ways. His debut album, the Water (2014), was a risky undertaking - he has committed from the start to a brand of rap that doesn't instantly appease one sonically, but the lyrics are filled with tongue-in-cheek bits that unexpectedly weave together to keep you chuckling throughout the track - all the while telling you the story of the Black experience with zero filters. Since then, his poetry has only refined, with his seventh album, the Patience (2023), showing a new level of confidence in his delivery. Finally, we have a Jenkins that believes in the strength of his  rhetoric, and also in you, the listener, to listen closely, and to chuckle right along with him. The first track, Michelin Star, busts out the doors with his signature flow - staccato, enunciated, and intense.  "These n** facts be opinion based // But not in ya face...   ...

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 ...

"Voices on A Train" Waiting at the station, the train to take me home finally arrived. It seemed different than every other time - The colors were a bit faded, The sounds were a bit muffled; Maybe I was just tired. An older woman sat in front of me Looking out the window with a tense curiosity That was all too familiar. A little girl sat with her father across from me And reminded me of how I used to annoy my Dad: "Are we there yet?" It had only been a few years,  But I could only faintly remember him. Both of us used to be different people. Happier, maybe. More  naïve for sure . I was finally going to meet him and Mom that night. For a moment, the train was all that existed And I, a lonely traveller finding my way back. Perhaps my soulmate was sitting somewhere in that train, Waiting to make conversation with me out of boredom. Perhaps my past was in the seat right behind me, Waiting to tap my shoulder and look me in the eyes. Perhaps Redemption was roaming the cab...

This will be the final article in our series of articles reviewing the almighty nudge. I genuinely hope you guys have been following the comprehensive explanations and flow of discussion through Part I , Part II , and Part III ! Here, I will take a look at Saghai’s [7] “corrected” definition for a nudge, and Mongin and Cozic’s [15] three extrapolations of nudges from T&S original definition. In doing this, I aim to conclude with a discussion about the impact of nudges in the social philosophy landscape.  Based on the defense that Saghai puts forth regarding the permissibility of nudges, his aim is to ensure that nudges are easily resistible and do not go beyond employing what he calls “shallow cognitive processes” – methods which primarily consume very few resources and abstain from engaging in full-blown deliberation. Based on this, he comes up with an ‘amended nudge’:  “Nudge: A nudges B when A makes it more likely that B will φ, primarily by triggering B's shallow cogni...