Monthly Archives: January 2008

Manga portrait

Published January 30, 2008
A portrait of yours truly, Michael, drawn by my good friend David Smith (below), owner of Watermelon Studios. He’s an aspiring Manga artist currently in his final year of University studying animation and also an ardent musician.
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Japan Year Abroad Report 2007

Published January 27, 2008
Akita International University (AIU) is small, rural place, hidden away in the Tohoku region in Northern Japan. With a mere 600 or so students and only a few bus journeys a day to the main city, it has a certain feeling of isolation, but nurtures an atmosphere similar to one you might find at home.
Posted in Japan, Journal | 7 Comments

First Kiss Jdrama

Published January 23, 2008
Watching Jdramas is a great way to brush up on Japanese listening skills, and even cultural knowledge. Recommended is the Japanese drama (Jdrama) ‘First Kiss’ that aired last year over the summer. Hilarious and romantic, if slightly corny at times.
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Wittgenstein’s Fly bottle

Published January 21, 2008
“What is your aim in Philosophy?” “To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (Philosophical Investigations) – Wittgenstein Wittgenstein thought that the pursuit of philosophy in its traditional sense is pointless. Philosophers who scoured far and wide for a structured logical form applicable to everything were deluded and wasting their time, much like […]
Posted in Philosophy | 8 Comments

Responses to Skepticism

Published January 17, 2008
Here I consider a couple of other responses to skepticism interesting in their own right. Both Externalist and Internalist responses also try to refute skepticism too.
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Internalist views

Published January 17, 2008
Internalist views could be said to lead to considering normativity as an issue in Epistemology. That is, what it is we ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to believe in various situations such as defining justification or knowledge. For example, whether we should deny situations like the Evil Demon one below, simply because we have to grant ourselves […]
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Externalist views

Published January 17, 2008
We have our basic Justified True Belief (JTB) account of knowledge. Subject (S) knows something (p) iff: (P1) p is true (P2) S believes that p (P3) S is justified in believing that p.
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Externalism vs Internalism

Published January 17, 2008
Tricky, tricky. What a mess of a debate this is. I’ll give it my best shot to clarify. First of all, we need to be aware of the distinctions between Externalism about Knowledge (KE) and Internalism about Knowledge (KI). And also, the difference between Externalism about Justification (JE) and Internalism about Justification (JI).
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