Official Website for Amitabha Palmer
Training Guide for Dogs Suppose you want a treat but your human is frantically trying to get his work done thus not paying attention to your usual manipulations. (Oh, did you think this was a guide for how to train dogs? No, no, no, silly human. It’s a training guide for dogs to train their […]
Read More Training Guide for DogsIntroduction and Two Theories of EmotionYou’ll often hear the term ‘repressed emotion’ bandied about in the self-help industrial complex. In this alt-world, if you have a mental or physical illness, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s caused by a repressed emotion (usually from your childhood). The concept is often used as the cause and […]
Read More Repressed Emotions: What Are They Supposed to Be? Part 1IntroductionCan you write something about guns in the US of A without pissing off a large portion of your audience? Not likely. But let me try to propose a policy that has elements that both sides might endorse (excluding the most extreme ends of the spectrum).A little auto-biographyAs a Canadian born to pacifist parents, the […]
Read More Gun Control Policy in Public SpacesIntroductionExistentialism can be summarized in one phrase, “existence precedes essence.” But what does this mean? Pre-existentialism, philosophical systems presumed Man had an essence. To understand what that means consider a chair. Chairs don’t just randomly pop into existence…no sir! Before they are created someone or something has to have a concept of what a chair […]
Read More Doing What Feels Right and Sartre’s ExistentialismPreamble: I’ve been working on this paper for longer than I care to admit but I have to turn it in at some point. I’ve written about 4 or 5 different versions of it all with different solutions or non-solutions to the puzzle I present. Anyhow, a few notes: (A) For some reason the footnotes […]
Read More Cilantro, Moral Truth, and JustificationOk, I can’t take it any more. I’m supposed to be working on a paper but the recent flood of articles regarding Planned Parenthood and abortions are making me loco–but not for the reasons you might think. I’m not going argue for a position regarding abortion but I just want to point a few things […]
Read More Abortion, Animal Rights, and Moral ConsistencyI apologize in advance for the somewhat scattered nature of this post. I’m trying to work through some ideas. What I’m trying to figure out is whether certain cost problems in the US health care system can be solved using free market approaches or whether solutions require government intervention. The nature of the problems I’m looking […]
Read More Solving US Health Care Cost Problems: Free Market vs Government Policy. Part 1IntroductionBefore reading this, I suggest reading my post from yesterday since most of what I talk about here relates to it (and I end up retracting most of what I said).‘The arrogance of ignorance’ is one of my favorite phrases. I’m not sure of its origins but I heard it first from Dr. Steven Novella. […]
Read More Day 3: Psychological Jade and The Arrogance of IgnorancePsychiatric InpatientMany years ago in my early 20s I read a short story that stuck with me for its nightmarish realism. I can’t remember the title or the author, although I think it was G.G. Marquez. I do know it was a Latin American author (if you know the story I’m talking about let me […]
Read More Day 2: Naiveté, Falsificationism, and the CounterfactualFor the next month-ish I’m observing rounds in a Cleveland-area hospital. More on how I got here later, for now here are some of my first impressionsWaitingFrom my notebook while I was waiting for the MICU (Medical Intensive Care Unit) rounds to start.7:30amPeople look tired but are friendly with each other. A janitor sees me […]
Read More Day 1: First Impressions
Wrestling with Philosophy 