Who is the person in your house who can see through walls?
I think of myself as not just a man; I’m a philosopher. There is something about philosophers who’ve made a career out of a sort of deconstruction and deconstructive reading that makes them seem more like someone who can “see through walls.” It’s kind of the idea that every experience we go through, we’re building up a mental map of the world and we’re trying to understand it as best we can. The problem with that kind of thinking is when you’re a philosopher you can’t make assumptions and you can’t make judgements—everything you see in your mind you’ll know about the world from that map you’ve built of it. The only thing you can make judgments about is your own experience, your own perception. What do you see in your experience? What are your assumptions? Does it seem fair? Does it seem obvious? Does it seem reasonable? It’s a weird question.
That’s why I call the question “the paradox of the paradoxical” and I wrote the book off as the problem of the “theory of the absurd.” So the question of it is how do we explain the paradox—why is that absurd? Is this the kind of paradox we expect out of this sort of process?
I’d love to be able to offer you a simple answer but I’m not even sure it could be simple. How do I explain this?
It’s hard to look at a series of observations and say what that says about the observations or the world.
I am interested in this paradox that’s about us. I’m not interested in this paradox that they’re saying, “No, you’re right, there’s no reason why you should think that it’s this way.” I’m not interested in our paradox and the paradox of the paradoxical. I don’t want them to stop talking about it. It is a paradox, so tell me what it is. What it means? What the point of this exercise is? I think that we should be engaged with this subject, but I’m not a theoretical philosopher; I don’t even think the way the subject should be approached.
Do you find yourself getting the sense that there’s something weird about the way the world works?
Not exactly. I think many things. I mean, I think when we’re young we are pretty intuitively willing to take risks and there’s an intuitive sense that you should be willing to look
magic tricks for sale, magic tricks login, magic tricks for kids with cards, easy magic tricks for kids to do at school, how to do magic tricks at home