Disclaimer: I should be finishing my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis book, yet I am here writing about death and dying. Why? Because I was watching an interview with Neil Schon by Rick Beato. I should have been working on my book then, too. It seems I can write about death more easily than finish a book about the failure of language.

This meme is not what I mean by language insufficiency, but it does capture the complications of language. Image: Two Four Two Three I found this image accompanying an article critical of AI – Claude.ai in particular. But this isn't a Claude problem. It's a language problem. I might argue that this could have been conveyed verbally, and one could resolve this easily by spelling out the preferred interpretation.

This is the proof copy of The Illusion of Light. I reviewed it, approved it, and signalled 'good to go'. This is being printed and distributed through KDP. I’ve used them before. They’ve been reliable. Until now. My approval triggered a workflow. I know workflows. I used to design them. I also know how dumb they can be. KDP’s process flagged an error: the text on the spine…

“In this debased and wretched world, full  of destitution and want, for the first time  I thought that a beam of sunshine had shone  upon my life—but alas, this was not a beam  of sunshine, it was a flicker of light...”  — The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat This Philosophics.blog is my primary social media outlet, but I have another presence for my fiction fare – …

Deux livres, une même lumière.L’Illusion de la lumière paraît désormais en français, rejoignant son édition originale, The Illusion of Light. Photo : épreuves de validation – éditions anglaise et f…

Deux livres, une même lumière.L’Illusion de la lumière paraît désormais en français, rejoignant son édition originale, The Illusion of Light. Photo : épreuves de validation – éditions anglaise et française. Pourquoi cette double parution ? Parce que ce livre appartient autant à la tradition française qu’à la langue anglaise. Ses sources – Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Barthes, Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty – m’ont appris à penser autrement : à défaire la clarté pour retrouver la nuance.

If philosophy were a game, Wittgenstein rewrote the rulebook. Then he tore it up halfway through and told us the game was the thing itself. “Don’t ask for the meaning; ask for the use.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein Language Game, the third card in my Critical Theory parody set, isn’t just homage; it’s confession. Wittgenstein is among my top five philosophers, and this card embodies why.

Instrumentalism is a Modern™ disease. Humanity has an old and tedious habit: to define its worth by exclusion. Every time a new kind of intelligence appears on the horizon, humans redraw the border…

For many of my posts – most, these days – I use NotebookLM to generate an audio summary in the form of a podcast: a dialogue between two virtual hosts. Some listeners have complained, but I stand by the practice. First, some people prefer to listen rather than read. They might be driving, cleaning, or simply allergic to text. I see no moral failing in that.

This Magic: The Gathering parody trading card was the first in my Critical Theory series. It's an important card for me. As with sex and gender, creating a taxonomic or ontological dichotomy poses categorical challenges. Despite the insufficiency of language, it's still all I have to attempt to classify the world. In the case of articulating the perception of reality, we can choose between idealism and realism.

I just received two proof copies in the post this afternoon. Propensity I created a “Book Club Edition” of Propensity, a Ridley Park book of fiction primarily for the European market – …

I just received two proof copies in the post this afternoon. Propensity I created a "Book Club Edition" of Propensity, a Ridley Park book of fiction primarily for the European market – specifically in the UK – though it's available elsewhere. I altered the cover art. As an author, I also wanted to compare KDP and IngramSpark as printers and distributors.

When drawn, this card alters perception itself. It reminds the player that truth is not something one finds under a rock but something one polishes into shape. Each metaphor becomes a spell; each keyword a crutch thrown aside. Those who wield the Constructivist Lens see not “facts,” but fictions so useful they forgot to call them that. Reality wobbles politely to accommodate belief.

Learn about Autonomy, the creature with a rational individual, its attacking mechanism, and its relationship to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophics. Explore the intersection of Magic and philosophy, ...

Autonomy attacks each turn if able.Whenever Autonomy becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it. This is from the POMO series of mock Magic: The Gathering trading card images. Don't read too much into them. I decided I could share images on Instagram and reshare them here. This is the result.

It’s almost endearing, really how the intellectuals of mid-century Europe mistook the trembling of their own cage for the dawn chorus of freedom. Reading Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society today feels like being handed a telegram from Modernism’s last bright morning, written in the earnest conviction that history had finally grown up. The war was over, the worker was unionised, the child was unspanked, and the libido – good heavens – was finally allowed to breathe.

I finished Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism, which I mentioned the other day. Unfortunately, my initial optimism was premature. Everything I enjoyed was front-loaded: the first fo…

I finished Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism, which I mentioned the other day. Unfortunately, my initial optimism was premature. Everything I enjoyed was front-loaded: the first four chapters set up a promising critique of mechanistic rationality and the collapse of shared meaning. Then the book turned into a long, therapeutic sermon. I should have stopped at Chapter 4 and saved myself the sunk-cost regret.

Every translation is a negotiation between fidelity and clarity. In the case of The Illusion of Light, some word choices are specifically English and either have no typical translation or don't translate directly. Some examples are as follows: Agency: In French, agence means agency, but not the sort of bodily autonomy as it does in English. Autonomie carries too much metaphysical connotation – though to be fair, so does the English version.