John and Sally

Home Page

John and Sally like to find the truth about things and they meet down the pub and talk. They sometimes come to quite alarming conclusions through their clear and honest discussions. Author: John Carter. Website started 15-nov-2004. Email carter.john@itsligo.ie

• Loyalty - in which they conclude loyalty is more often a bad thing than a good thing
• Progress and Progressives - in which they move from a simple definition of progress as 'obtaining what you want' to 'obtaining what is good for you', and then observe that what is progress for one mightn't be progress for another - progress and change
• Subjectivity and Objectivity - in which they start off, perhaps unwisely, from a criticism of journalism
• Truth and Honesty - in which Truth is considered useful but perhaps a misconception, and Honesty of comparitively little value. The notion of 'facts' is also hesitatingly approached. John theorizes: "(Facts) have never existed and ... the notion arose through a misunderstanding of perception"
• Responsibility - in which it is questioned whether, given the determinist view, which John and Sally share, that all human actions have causes, the human is indeed responsible for his actions, and thus whether he 'deserves' punishment or reward; guilt, responsibility, punishment, upbringing / experience, culture, genetics

• Creation - where did all this stuff come from?
• Duty
• Identity - in which they question whether identity is nothing more that a collection of attribute values, and consequently whether two identical objects can have different identities.
• Numbers - in which John and Sally question what a number actually is, where numbers are, how many number sixes there are etc.
• True, Right and Good - a discussion mainly on the multifarious meanings of 'right'; right and true; accuracy, correctness; hypotheses, theories, facts and opinions
• Truth and Eternity - is what's true eternal?, Platonism, counter-example, is what's eternal true?
• Meaning - how can something 'mean' something else?
• Implication - what it means logically - how it's misunderstood - often as association - infer and imply
• The 'isms - Platonism, idealism, vitalism, solipsism, pragmatism, empiricism, realism, positivism, materialism, existentialism
• Idealism and Idealism - how Idealism became idealism. The two meanings of the word and how one meaning might have evolved into the other
• Theory and Practice - relationship, supposed contrast
• Evolution and reproduction - a description of the meaning of the theory of evolution and what 'natural' means in human terms
• Struggle - and conflict - inevitable? progressive? - peace?
• Nature, competition, aggression, co-operation, reproduction, survival
• War and Peace - whether war is bad and if so how to stop it along with what its causes are
• Economy - a critique of capitalism - the Software Tower of Babel - owners profits and workers jobs - inefficiencies and crimes
• Productivity
• Facts - what is a fact? - related to their Truth and Honesty discussion
• Principles - what is a principle? Morality and Science
• Identity - Are you the same person you were ten years ago? Do you have the same identity? Do identical objects have the same identity? What does it mean to 'have' a property? When you cut a table in half, where did the original identity go? Where did the two new identities come from?
• Equality - What does a=b mean? equality and identity and difference; equal rights; related to Numbers, to Identity, to True, Right and Good, and to Economy
• Humanity - what distinguishes man from other animals? Engineering, science, technology; includes a flip dismissal of religion
• Modern man - engineering, science, technology, religion, art - how man became modern; closely related to Humanity
• Patriotism - what it means and its implications - related to Loyalty
• Creeds and Institutions - how groups form around sets of beliefs - related to Truth and Honesty
• Rent-a-mob vs The Professionals
• Amateur and Professional - professionals, professions, professionalism
• Manual Labour and Office Work - brain & hands vs. brain and mouth; meaning of "good with his hands"; manual vs. intellectual; Cantonese expression: "good for the listening".
• Postmodernism - an attempt at definition and a critique of what they think it means and implies in the arena of philosophy and culture
• Leadership - what leaders are for and what they do; relationship between leaders and followers; hierarchies, networks and other possibilities; teams; should one man control another?; compulsion, duty and meaning of 'should'.
• Art - the purposes of Art, what Art is, relationship to technology, engineering and science
• Certainty and Knowledge - knowing 'for certain', certainty, proof; people write without certainty - examples - cranks, philosophers ...
• Goodness and Badness - what good is, being good, morality, liking; a thing in itself is neither good nor bad, unlike other properties such as colour or weight or pitch, the property of goodness has to be ascribed by humans - related to Progress and Progressives, True Right and Good, Subjectivity and Objectivity
• Classism - including the curiously muddled ideas of class in UK and US. How to be in three classes at once.
• Racism
• Sexism
• Ageism
• Prejudice and preference
• Ideas - thoughts, where they come from, how they come into being, how a new idea comes into being, how they're represented and stored, existence apart from thinker, movement of ideas, copies of ideas, popular media philosopher's notion of the brain (brain cells) 'generating' ideas - associated problem of causality thus confused; causality and determinism
• Brain Hardware, Brain Software - ideas in the brain, how ideas develop, how new ideas arise, modes of thinking, modes of learning, modes of belief, modes of observation / ways of seeing; culture and ideology, truth etc.
• Freedom - choice, freewill, determinism, vitalism
• Left and Right - in politics - by what twists and turns of logic can some Americans call corporate capitalism 'left wing'?
• Indivdualism, Classism and Socialism - is this the true political trichotomy?
• The physicists' notion of 'work' may be subjective, so is his notion of 'energy'?
• Love, Peace.
• Analysis versus change. Materialism and Dialectical Materialism. Physics, chemistry and engineering.