The Subheader Lies

How does this make you feel?

2011-12-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Quantum Levitation

2011-10-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Coolest thing I've seen in a while:

Mega-tsunami coming from the Canary Islands?

2011-10-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

A volcanic eruption has begun in the Canary Islands off of western Africa. This is of special concern because it has the potential to lead to a mega-tsunami. In a nutshell, the fear is this: rising magma superheats the groundwater that occupies vertical crevices throughout the volcano, thereby causing the water to expand with great force, thereby causing a large chunk (potentially hundreds of cubic kilometers) of the volcano's rim to fracture and slide off into the ocean; the resulting mega-tsunami would cross the Atlantic in about 8 hours before pummeling the Americas with a surge of water hundreds of feet high.

The likelihood of whether the current eruption will trigger a large fracture and resulting mega-tsunami is not yet known. Hopefully nothing calamitous happens.

Here's a 2-part documentary on the possibility of the Canary Islands causing mega-tsunamis. If you only have time to watch half, watch part 2.

***

Update: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10/15/spewing-volcano-forces-spain-to-close-island-port/?test=latestnews

The Great Townes Van Zandt

2011-08-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

Beauty embodied in song:

"If I Needed You"

"Pancho and Lefty"

"Nothin"

"Dead Flowers" (originally written/performed by the Rolling Stones)

Vampires versus The American Dream

2011-05-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Humans are, at a minimum, 5-dimensional beings

2011-05-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

It can be jolting when you discover other people who share your views, especially when those views are exceedingly odd.

The ontological view of Reality that I developed as a philosophy undergrad, which I later attempted to roughly sketch for memory's sake here on this blog, syncs up nicely with the view of a fellow named Rob Bryanton.

I was originally introduced to Brynton's work a few years ago by a friend who thought there was a lot of similarity between our views. Brynton sketches out his views in a series of animated vlog posts, starting with the 2-part introduction I have embedded below. I was startled then, and after now going back and re-watching Brynton's videos a few years later, I am again stricken by how weird it still seems to have someone else articulate ontological views so similar to my own. (Regardless of whether these views are right, the videos are pure gold in their ability to convey the ideas in question in an understandable manner.)

My own personal view is that humans are very active in 5 dimensions: our conscious mind 'moves' through the 3 physical spatial dimensions of length, width, and depth, the time dimension, and the 'possibility space' dimension, i.e. the set of all possible paths branching off from any given 4-dimensional point at which we find ourselves (a 4-dimensional point is a point in space time designated by 3 spatial coordinates and 1 time coordinate). I think that the same way we have eyes to help us perceive and navigate through physical space, our imaginations can be thought of as sense organs that allow us to perceive and navigate through 'possibility space'.

I strongly suspect that a being's powers to sense and navigate through possibility space (i.e. the 5th dimension) are proportional to its g factor and willpower: as g increases, minds become better able to sense alternate possibilities, and as w increases, minds become better able to control which possibilities they actually travel through. So equation-wise, I would postulate that one's mobility in the 5th dimension is proportional to the product of g (for g-factor) and w (for willpower), or m=c(g*w).

Imagination lets you see; concentrated willpower lets you steer.

We can all do this to varying degrees.

Charlie on Winning

2011-03-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

Mumford and Sons

2010-06-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

Where does Tim Tebow find the time to front an English folk band?

Estimating the Volume of the GOM Oil Leak

2010-05-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

The Exxon Valdez spilled just under 11 million gallons (~250,000 barrels) of light crude. How much has leaked from the Deepwater Horizon's well since it ruptured?

If the outside experts are right, then the current leak has already released twice the volume released by the Valdez. Unfortunately there are also a number of additional factors that make this worse than the Valdez spill.

1) The Valdez impacted a remote, sparsely populated area of minimal economic significance. The Gulf leak is in pretty much the worst possible location for such an event, given the profound economic importance of the area.

2) The gulf well is leaking a heavy oil that is a nightmare to clean up compared to the light sweet crude leaked by the Valdez

3) The gulf well is a leaking a tremendous amount of natural gas. The reserves that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling into were estimated to hold 3-10 thousand times more gas than oil. It is this gas that caused the 'dome' attempt to fail, as methand hydrates rapidly crystallized inside of it.

4) The Valdez held a relatively small amount of oil. The situation in the Gulf of Mexico, on the other hand, involves a leaking well that could eventually release 5, 50, or even 500 times as much oil as the Valdez if we don't seal it off.

Also, note that the 210,000 gal/day figure cited in the calculator is the long outdated 5,000 barrels/day estimate from a couple of weeks ago (1 barrel = 42 US gallons). Officials from NOAA and BP have both been publicly presented with the findings of the outside scientists who are claiming 25,000 barrels/day, and did not contest those estimates. Furthermore, BP just testified behind closed doors in the Senate that the current flow could be 60,000 barrels/day. BP pegs the worst-case flow from an unrestricted gusher at 163,000 barrels/day, a scenario becoming more likely by the day as the Blow Out Preventer and piping continue to be relentlessly eroded by the oil/gas/sand mixture blasting out of the well.

Symphony of Science

2010-02-28T21:01:00.000-08:00

Symphony of Science is an amazing project that takes actual footage of some of our great scientists and sets their words to music (electronically massaged so as to be in key and on beat). The result is mesmerizing: poetic, profound, and beautiful.

"We Are All Connected"

"A Glorious Dawn"

A Dualist Solution to the Mind-Body problem that allows for Libertarian-style free will

2009-08-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

This isn't a defense, nor is it a claim of how the world really is. This is merely a brief sketch of a way the world might actually be that would allow for a satisfying solution to the traditional mind/body problem and would explain how libertarian-style free will could clear its primary hurdle. But that's a big enough deal, seeing as how there just aren't any other such proposals out there that explain phenomenal consciousness while also giving an account of how this phenomenal consciousness could have any sort of non-overdetermined causal efficacy; well, that aren't of the "because God says so" sort, anyway.

Despite the fact that most contemporary philosophers are physicalists, the situation is grim: not only does physicalism imply epiphenomenalism for phenomenal consciousness, it can't even give a non ad-hoc explanation for what phenomenal consciousness is or how it arises; thus the excessive hand-waving and desperate appeal to "complexity" as something that is claimed to magically create the one and only emergent property TYPE in existence, phenomenal consciousness. Nothing else that's colloquially called an emergent property, such as emergent group behavior, is a new type of property like phenomenal consciousness would have to be; group behavior is still just matter in motion, and motion is hardly an emergent property type. Phenomenal consciousness emerging from mere matter in motion, however, would represent a new type of emergent property. It does no good to appeal to something like slipperiness, either, because if you're talking about the physics of it, it's still directly reducible to the same types of properties found on the smaller scales, and if you're talking about the phenomenal feel of it, you've already invoked phenomenal consciousness.

It's relevant to point out that one of the primary reasons so many philosophers are physicalists is that the alternative seems even worse, since nobody's ever been able to paint a reasonable dualist or idealist scenario that gets past the mind/body problem. So let's see if we can change that.

Finally, I should note that these are essentially the thoughts of an undergrad. I intended to pursue these notions at a top-flight grad school, simultaneously developing and ruthlessly vetting them to see if they really could provide a solution to the mind/body problem. But after starting the PhD program at the University of Texas, I felt overwhelmingly compelled to leave grad school and work on my philanthropic goals first, so I'll just park a little summary here until I can return to it.

**************************************

Let’s say Reality is composed of pixels a Planck length on each side that have both mental (M) and physical (P) properties (I mean mental in the phenomenal sense, not the psychological sense; see The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers for a lucid explanation of the distinction). The P properties 'drive the bus' and govern the interaction of the pixel's properties according to the laws of physics, while the M properties are just along for the ride. This will require a small number of brute facts of the world accounting for the consistent joining of particular M and P properties in pixels when those pixels are in a small number of various states.

Think of pixels on a TV: an object 'moves' due to the transfer of physical properties across pixels without the pixels themselves moving. Similarly, think of Reality as being composed of pixels, so that what's really occurring in our world is a change in the distribution of P and M properties across the pixels, with these movements being governed by the P properties in accordance with physical law. Perhaps there are a small number of possible states for each pixel (similar to how physicists talk of a small number of possible states for the basic building blocks of matter, and how all the complexity we see on the macro-level arises from various combinations of a relatively small number of basic building blocks that have been combined and arranged in a stupendous variety of ways).

Let's grant that the physical is causally closed (meaning if an event has a cause, then it has a physical cause), just as all experimentation indicates. And just for good measure, let's go ahead and be draconian and say that no M property can possibly interact with any P property (and vice versa).

Now let’s bring in substance dualism and say I (like you) am really a spirit. Spirits are purely mental and can't sense P properties at all, only M properties. Spirits are somehow 'tuned in' to a particular set of M properties in Reality...the set corresponding to the M properties conjoined to all the P properties that compose your physical body.

Let’s say there is not one World that moves through time, but that there are a near infinite (or maybe infinite) number of 'World-states' that are eternally frozen and unchanging. So what seems like one changing World is actually you as a spirit passing through a series of successive non-changing World-states that are slightly different, which generates an effect similar to that of seeing a movie on film.

[It's interesting to note that physicists insist that the only way for everything in the universe to be in agreement over what occurs in a given universe-wide time-slice is for absolutely nothing to be moving relative to anything else in the universe; in other words, a frozen World-state. See the bottom of pg. 134 in the paperback version of Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos for a clear explanation of this. Note that this is not simply the effect of delays in information that can only travel at the speed of light; this is a much deeper and weirder issue.]

There are rules governing how we may jump from one World-state to the next. The possible jumps allowed from one's current position are determined by our particular set of physical laws (in conjunction with the arrangement of physical properties in each World-state). Physical laws are the rules of the game, and not only are some jumps allowed and some not, but the options have various likelihoods.

The likelihood of jumping from your current World-state to a World-state where you experience X is based on the proportion of possible jumps where X occurs, and is randomized within that. If 30% of your possible jumps can result in you landing on a World-state where you experience X, then we say (and can experimentally verify) that there is a 30% chance of X. [Imagine the set of all possible paths. One’s odds of experiencing X correspond to the percent of possible paths from your current position that yield X.]

But how can a Spirit know what's in store at those jumping destinations if the destinations are determined by P properties while a Spirit can only sense M properties? Well, let's say that imagination is literally the ability to 'look down the paths' at the M properties attached to the P properties in those upcoming World-states. So one can use one's imagination to scout the paths a bit and see what's needed to make it down various paths.

Let's say these M properties are the source of a spirit's phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness might literally be the experiencing of these M properties as our spirits move along from World-state to World-state. In fact, these M properties may literally be little bits of phenomenal consciousness, and spirits may just be entities with a sensory ability that allows them to experience these little bits.

[Or maybe this Reality is a video game that we're actually plugged into on a higher level of Reality, and perhaps all the M properties we encounter are replicated in our higher level brains to simulate the experience. And maybe on that higher level there isn't an issue with the mind/body problem: maybe experiments on that level clearly show that their physical isn't causally closed and that M properties are allowed to influence P properties. But I digress.]

The rich complexity of one's phenomenal experience would then correspond to the rich complexity of M properties along for the ride with the rich complexity of P properties in one's brain.

The basic Mind/Body question is this: How could an immaterial spirit composed solely of M properties have a non-redundant causal impact on a physical body, given that the physical domain is causally closed (i.e. if an event has a cause at all, then it has a physical cause)?

I would begin by re-stating the question in a way that tries to get behind its impetus: How could an immaterial spirit causally influence its own phenomenal experience in a way that would appropriately coincide with the phenomenal experiences of relevant others?

For example, how could my purely mental spirit cause it to happen that I experience myself shaking hands with David Chalmers, and for my phenomenal experience to appropriately coincide with the phenomenal experiences of Chalmers and the other people in the room (who would have the phenomenal experience of seeing me do so, and even feeling me do so in Chalmers’ case)?

And furthermore, how could I as a spirit have any non-redundant role to play, given that there is a perfectly complete, causally closed physical story that can fully explain all of the motions of my body without appeal to a causally efficacious spirit??

The answer is straightforward with my proposal: I as a spirit controlled my path through the World-states so that my experiences went the way I wanted them to go.

To make this stark, let's say there were 5 of us spirits tuned in to what I naively thought of as "my" body when I experienced entering Chalmers’ classroom (if crowds make you squeamish, this is the wrong ontology for you!). Say all 5 of us pursued different paths: #1 applauded Chalmers, #2 mooned him, #3 offered him a Foster's, and #4 called him a zombie.

Note that all 5 of us would have complete physical stories that could explain how we did what we did, and the physical would appear to be causally closed from each individual perspective. There would seemingly be no need to postulate any influence from a causally efficacious spirit, yet here we are – from our God’s eye view we see that 5 different spirits had 5 different outcomes, with the difference in outcome determined by the causal effect of the individual spirits choosing their own paths through World-states! [So we were all tuned in to the same World-state when we entered the classroom, but we quickly diverged and ended up tuned in to very different World-States.]

See, we don't need a spirit to interact with the physical world in order for the spirit to get the phenomenal experiences that it desires and in a way appropriately consistent with the phenomenal experiences of others. There's another way to get what we're really after.

And this other way is not only consistent with the very quantum randomness and multi-verse theory (with at least 10^500 universes) that state of the art physics is telling us is likely the case, it requires it. My proposed solution can’t work if there’s just one world/universe and it’s deterministic (although an alternate formulation of my strategy, one using a bazillion different deterministic worlds, would be fine; that is, it could be the case that every possible path through the World-states is actually a full-on physically deterministic world passing through time (as our world is normally conceived to pass through time) and spirits jump from deterministic World to deterministic World).

BTW, one weird consequence is that everybody (literally every body, e.g. the litany of other "James bodies" I jump among) is really a zombie, so I’m really a spirit jumping among a near infinite number of my zombie bodies, none of which experience phenomenal consciousness themselves (they're just matter, just like rocks and trees and stars).

BTW2, another strategic option, and perhaps the best, is to say that physicist Hugh Everett was correct with his postulation that new universes are created and branch off at every possible physical junction, to which I would offer that spirits have some control over which branch they choose to follow. This actually makes the jumping process easiest.

BTW3, a basic rule of the game seems to be that we can only manipulate our own bodies; that is, if I want my car to start, I have to do so by jumping through World-states (or through Worlds) in a way that results in my body turning the key, or asking someone to turn the key, etc. I can’t intentionally jump to a World where the car has miraculously started: it's not possible to directly aim for a particular result of an event outside one's own body. This is an important point: every jump between World-states (let’s say there are a trillion jumps per second) is randomized while conforming to its associated probabilities unless you assert influence on that jump (this influence would almost always be weak, like deflecting the course of an asteroid by asserting a weak force over millions of miles. This weakness comes from not having control over each jump, but rather over every 1,000th jump or so (sticking with the earlier 'trillion jumps a second' figure).

BTW4, in this proposal we never see the physical world, just the phenomenal world. The physical is probably forever beyond us, like with Kant's notion of the noumenal world. So why do I postulate the physical at all? Because it provides the objective grounding that allows my subjective phenomenal experiences to be relevantly consistent with those of everyone else. (Hmm...maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe in this view we could actually eliminate the physical entirely since the phenomenal M properties already have an objective nature. In such a scenario, there would be a number of laws governing the interactions of M properties, taking the place of the corresponding way that a physicalist normally thinks of the laws governing the interaction of P properties. That seems simpler; we've now reduced the number of such laws to the same number needed for physicalism. Oh boy, I think I might have just become an Idealist on you here. When I began, I was thinking that the pixels in our phenomenal world needed some sort of corresponding pixel-in-itself in the noumenal world. Now I'm not so sure I have any need for postulating a noumenal world at all. Do others agree? Regardless, let me go ahead and finish up as if that thought hadn't occurred.)

BTW5, this solution would perhaps indicate that great athletes like Michael Jordan have the ability to control more jumps per second (say, influencing every 600th jump). Greater frequency of influence would result in better reaction times and a perceived 'slowing down' of the game for him relative to the perceptions of the lesser players.

Two final points: one, we can only skew the randomness involved with our own body, and two, the ability to control even those jumps is variable and far from perfect. I think that’s what concentration is: it’s employing a force that aims your jumping. Concentrate harder and you aim better (and possibly also increase your frequency of influence). Concentrate hard over a large number of repetitions, and over time you steer yourself into situations with different probabilities for the same actions as before.

[Consider the shooting of free throws in basketball: after a million serious practice shots, the World-state paths (or World, on that formulation) would have higher probabilities of made shots among the destinations for successive jumps. What happens is that you’ve moved yourself to a place where, say, 80% of your possible jumping destinations involve made shots.]

So the summary is this: classic Interactive Dualism may indeed be impossible given that M and P properties can't cross-interact, the physical is causally closed, and a spirit has only M properties, but what we were really trying to get at behind the concept of Interactive Dualism IS possible. And the alternative not only solves the Mind/Body problem, it also shows how Libertarian-style free will is possible. (Well, it gets libertarian-style free will over the mind/body hurdle, anyway; getting past Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument would be dicier.)

This has obviously been extremely quick and informal, but the folks who are keenly aware of their strong need for such a solution should be able to catch the drift and start doing their own thinking about this avenue of solution.

Philosophical Movies

2009-01-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I scoured the Internet looking for all of the recommendations I could find for philosophical movies. The complete list of what I found is posted below (but with a few newbies added to the top). Note that these movies aren't necessarily focused on philosophy, but they each raise philosophical issues to various degrees. Feel free to post your own additions.

District 9
Pan's Labyrinth
The American Astronaut
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Brazil
Mindwalk
Lost Highway
Amelie
The Seventh Seal
Equilibrium
The City of Lost Children
The Sea That Thinks
Human Nature
I Heart/Love Huckabees
Badlands
Days of Heaven
Barton Fink
Alice In Wonderland
Logan’s Run
Billy Jack
Cool Hand Luke
Open Your Eyes (aka Abre Los Ojos)
Les Miserables
Sophie’s Choice
Gosford Park
La Jetee (12 Monkeys is based largely on this groundbreaking film)
Dead Man Walking
Mr. Death
Dancer in the Dark
1984
We the Living
Fahrenheit 451
Equilibrium
Persona
The Man With Two Brains
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Who is Julia?
Wild Strawberries
Stealing Heaven
The Meaning of Life
Ghost World
The Trial
Videodrome
Last Year at Marienbad (or is it One Day at Mariebad?)
Hour of the Wolf
Being There
Sleeper
O Lucky Man
On the Beach
SLC Punk!
Deliverance
Confession
Inherit the Wind
Dogville
Failsafe
Hilary and Jackie
Rashomon
Love and Death
Crimes and Misdemeanors
The Addiction
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead** (described as 'best movie ever' type)
Twelve Angry Men
Proof
Swimming With Sharks
Quiz Show
Hurly Burly
The Godfather series
Reconstruction
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Handmaid’s Tale
Iron Monkey
Dark Star
Jacob the Liar
Extreme Measures
In the Name of the Father
Burn!
The Thin Blue Line
The Others
Blow-Up
Cruel Intentions
Henry and June
Chocolat
The Cube
The Fountainhead
Amistad
Schindler’s List
The Vanishing
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
The Emperor’s New Groove
The Last Temptation of Christ
Winter Light
Midnight Cowboy
Zelig
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Zorba the Greek
Intersection
A Man and a Woman

Any film by Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Alain Resnais, Cronenberg, Kurusawa

My Dinner With Andre
Waking Life
Bliss
Dr. Strangelove
Matrix series
ExistenZ
Pi
A Clockwork Orange
Memento
Mulholland Drive
Being John Malkovich
Dark City
Animal Farm
What Dreams May Come
Charly (adaptation of Flowers for Algernon)
K-Pax
Apocalypse Now
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Requiem for a Dream
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Usual Suspects
Groundhog Day
American Psycho
Hollow Man
Dead Poets Society
The Bourne Identity
Leaving Las Vegas
Seven
Life of Brian
Minority Report
Vanilla Sky
Bruce Almighty
Twelve Monkeys
The Lord of the Flies
Bladerunner
Bicentennial Man
The Fisher King
The Survivors
The Thirteenth Floor
The Truman Show
The 6th Day
Total Recall
Gattica
Donnie Darko
Antz
The Time Machine
Terminator series
Time Cop
Back to the Future
Austin Powers 2
Demolition Man

Acoustic Guitar Virtuosos

2009-01-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

I went to the Manhattan Arts Center last Friday to see a cozy show by Beppe Gambetta. Beppe is a flatpicker from Genova, Italy, who in addition to his solo touring, is also a member of Men of Steel (along with Don Ross, Dan Crary, and Tony McManus).

Beppe's final song of the show was an audience request: Church Street Blues. It doesn't show off his technical mastery as much as many of his other songs do, but I think it does justice to his ability to breathe beauty and genius into a simple little song. Here's a YouTube video of his version:

And while I'm at it, let me go ahead and expand this post to include a number of representative videos of my favorite acoustic guitar virtuosos.

Here's a fellow from Topeka named Andy McKee (since he's a localish guy, I'll splurge and share 3 videos):

"Drifting"

"Common Ground"

"Rylynn"

This next fellow is Don Ross. He's the only person to ever win the world fingerpicking championship twice. Here are 2 of my favorites:

"Afraid to Dance"

"Midnight March"

Speaking of Don Ross, here's a fellow named Antoine Dufour covering one of Ross's songs ("Dracula and Friends"):

Now meet Erik Mongrain. He plays the guitar as if it were a cross between a keyboard and a set of bongos. This is his song "Airtap":

Here's Tommy Emmanuel gettin' after it with "The Hunt":

Next is Leo Kottke, master of the 12-string. My current favorite song is a simple little folk song called "Tiny Island." You can listen to it here:

Most of his songs are instrumental, though, like this:

Finally, let me end with Mark Goffeney, the most inspirational armless guitar player around.

What Does Softball-Size Hail Look Like?

2008-06-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

For a reference point on what softball-size hail looks like, take a look at the hail scene from the movie The Day After Tomorrow:

Manhattan Hail Storm 6-2-2008

2008-06-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of the hail damage from the nasty storm that rolled through Manhattan this morning dropping SOFTBALL-size hail.

These first pics are from TecPark just west of the airport:

This is the hood of a late-model Mustang. Hail had literally ripped into the hood (fiberglass?) in 4 different places. The thing was a convertible, and its top was shredded as well.

It's a bit scary to consider the force of the hailstone that caused that large dent back by the taillight:

Quite a few cars had their side mirrors dangling like the one below:

The rest of the pics are of vehicles that some unfortunate souls had left in the long-term parking lot at the airport. The hail here seems to have been somewhat smaller (baseball-size?) and more sparse:

Seriously, how mean does a hailstone have to be to knock off a hubcap??

It would have been a bad day to be a bird in the area.

Interestingly, the used car lot about a mile east of the airport had only spotty damage (perhaps every other car had an impact crater on its windshield), and I didn't see any obvious damage on the cars at Briggs West by the Clarion Hotel a couple more miles east. The Manhattan community is lucky that the worst part of the storm tracked south of the city. Can you imagine the scene if it had plowed right over town?

Zombies among us

2008-05-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I'll type my name into a search engine to see what comes up. Today I had the treat of stumbling across an old story about a philosophical discussion I led on zombies. The great part about it was the look of utter mental anguish on my friend Chris's face as I waxed poetic about our philosophical non-conscious twins. Anyway, here's the story, which you can find here in the archives of the K-State Collegian:

Local reporter stumped by zombies

Zombies invade local philosophy club

By: Jonas Hogg

Issue date: 9/26/06 Section: News

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Media Credit: Steven Doll
Christopher French, senior in philosophy, talks with James Sperman, graduate student in philosophy, during a K-State Philosophy Club meeting Monday evening in the K-State Student Union.

I already know I'm out-classed. Before the meeting even begins, I'm presented with a handout that looks roughly Greek to me.

My fellow attendees have launched into a discussion about the contents, leaving me even further behind in the conversation.

"You can be a physicalist and think that not everything is causally closed," Christopher French, senior in philosophy, said about one of the handout's points.

Huh?

The source of my confusion is the K-State Philosophy Club's weekly meeting.

Philosophy clubbers have only had an official home for about two years, although the club has existed in various forms for several years. The mind-twisting meetings have covered issues from social and moral philosophy to feminism, environmental ethics and explanations of science.

But today's topic of discussion presents a special interest to the participants.

"A zombie would not feel self-conscious, but they would act as if they were," James Sperman, graduate student in philosophy, said.

But which zombies, exactly, does the group care about?

Is it the Hollywood, drooling monster zombie or the "Caribbean" zombie of Voodoo legend? Neither.

"Imagine your exact duplicate down to the atomic level and beyond, but that is not conscious," Sperman said.

Thankfully, I'm not the only one needing clarification.

Zach Starr, senior in horticulture, and San Conner, junior in music education, work out the details with Sarah Lawver, club president and senior in philosophy.

The clarification comes out. A twin that was not conscious but still acts the same is a zombie. I'm beginning to understand… I hope.

"You can't imagine experiencing nothing. All you can do is imagine not imagining anything," Sperman said.

I'm beginning to imagine a headache.

Discussion varied throughout the meeting, from thought processes to how to justify existence, but all revolved around the same general topic - zombies - and even though the concepts were challenging, the group always stopped to clarify.

Lawver said one of the goals is to make the club accessible to everyone, including non-philosophy majors.

"If you come to a meeting, and you're new, and you don't look like you know what's going on, we'll help you out," she said.

The group meets 7-9 p.m. Monday nights in Union 208; confused reporters are optional.