Funniest mindless movie of the last few years. McLovin is the best, and the other guys grew on me. 
In his job he needs to undervalue the suffering of others in order to make more money. Then there’s the smell, the ass and the eye. The degree of objectification of desire is in direct proportion to the self-debasement of the indulger. By degrading the other, he nullifies himself. The very indifference to the overjealous ones, the suppressed recalcitrant losers of the world, is what causes their victims to exist. Great disturbing movie.
A lost science fiction PBS movie with Taoist undertones is a real find, right? A guy discovers his dreams change reality—when he wakes up he finds himself in a world where the content of his dreams have actually happened. He of course gets scared after a couple of nightmares, seeks relief in drugs, and then, because of them, is lead to a psychiatrist. 
Here's for all the sissy Apple lovers out there... This is the ultimate design for my old Duron, which faithfully downloaded well over one terabyte (mostly movies, 1300+) always on 24/7/365 over the last four years. It also runs Apache and is a file and printer server, as well as a router for my home network (with four, also damn old and beautiful computers). Sometimes I dust it off with a vacuum cleaner.
I really enjoyed 
I have read the article on 
In imdb a user commented: "Annoying little transition into some sort of regurgitated independent film values finds this shallow project from Brad Silberling offering little and providing less in this embarrassingly exploitive work." I agree, yet it is still watchable — even more so if you understand how clichê is the fabricated spontaneity in it. It is as if independent movie has aquired its own hollywood-like formulaicism. So it kind of becomes an interestingly consumated aesthetic portrail of so many cult-status fabricated stylishness examples we see around. Many people liked 
2006.05.18 • 21:31 • 6 com
Is there possibility of a subject-independent particular?1 In order to answer this question, first we should determine that if we are dealing with what is separate from an observer, we already are trespassing some metaphysical matters. Since I don't believe metaphysics is possible in any sense, for me to talk about these matters is just a thought experiment.
So lets suppose reality (independent from the observer) not only is possible2, but is the case. In this situation, we have an Aristotelian world, with objects and their features. Let's suppose one of those features is colour, and the colour of the particular object we are dealing with is yellow.
Philosophers are still fond of such positions, since they not only are in agreement with our common-sense "this shirt is red"3 but they are in agreement with the structure of our language. There is a big trend in philosophy these days — ironically excentrical in itself — that produces a metaphysics based entirely in common-sense and language structures! Of course, since all over history people have tried to be original, nothing more original than being common. So the color dispute is today much less inclined to those crazy scientists and much more inclined to my aristotelian grandmother. But I sense this is just aesthetics, because physics is so cheesy these days — nobody would want to talk about quantum interconectedness and metaphysics, it is almost the same as talking about piramids or the shroud of Turin.
Well, enough of Schoppenhaurean rantings, back to some argument.
So we have this independent yellow thing outside our possibilities of perception. We maybe have the light of the sun (or some standardized source) and that particular quality stands there, unexamined and unexaminable. So why do we call this "yellow"?
Does the frequency matches that of our observation? Even if we could not measure it, it could certainly be the case that it matches — but is this enough to call it "yellow"?. Maybe the language of God has left the word "yellow" for a configuration of things, but in this case he would be a kind of observer also (even creation would entail some private kind of yellowness). In Japan and China, blue and green are different shades of blue, and although for us brown/red and yellow/orange seem different colors, for Russians there are different words for light or dark blue. Shades or colours?
It seems that some animals such as tropical fishes, have 5 colour receptors in their eyes, humans have 3. We see a range a frequency that was stabilished by evolution, so basically we see colours that were important for survival. So if we don't have a hard circunstance-observer dependent colour, how could we decide names for our colours represent properties of things?
What sense is to talk about "yellow" with an extraterrestrial that had a different sun and atmosphere, and perhaps a completely different frequency-range of vision? We could say to this fellow that we believe some object has by itself some specific thing that ordinarily we can see, but he can't. Then we would say that we could never see this property of the thing itself ourselves, but we believe it is a possibility! "It may have some property you can't understand and I can't see, that's all I'm saying, believe me". Of course, possibilities abound: since I don't know what lies in the borders of space, it may as well be a giant turtle. I can't prove this is impossible, but "borders of space" are a little queer, and so all metaphysics.
If we come to private language and modern so-called "externality", put some qualia in the mix and loose all metaphysical assumptions, then it starts to make sense to talk beyond ideas such as realism and idealism, which are basically only some 18th century novelties (or much older in the case of realism). Of course, nobody knows for sure what those things imply to philosophers, since the idea of the impossibility of a private language seems to make impossible any of the common constructions of philosophers. How can we talk about underlying structures or transcendental concepts if there is no priviledged point-of-view that can tell others about how things really are? Rules of communication such as the required to estabilish what means "colour"4 and what a particular colour is are not defined by relation to discrete and separate entities such as "phenomena", "understanding" or "thing-in-itself". This rules form a game in which participants engage, and have nothing to do with explanations or telling how things truly are.
As Wittgenstein puts it:
To even talk about the possibility of "red" outside these games is to make a Monty Python sketch out of philosophy. Well, that's what most philosophy turns to be anyway.
So lets suppose reality (independent from the observer) not only is possible2, but is the case. In this situation, we have an Aristotelian world, with objects and their features. Let's suppose one of those features is colour, and the colour of the particular object we are dealing with is yellow.
Philosophers are still fond of such positions, since they not only are in agreement with our common-sense "this shirt is red"3 but they are in agreement with the structure of our language. There is a big trend in philosophy these days — ironically excentrical in itself — that produces a metaphysics based entirely in common-sense and language structures! Of course, since all over history people have tried to be original, nothing more original than being common. So the color dispute is today much less inclined to those crazy scientists and much more inclined to my aristotelian grandmother. But I sense this is just aesthetics, because physics is so cheesy these days — nobody would want to talk about quantum interconectedness and metaphysics, it is almost the same as talking about piramids or the shroud of Turin.
Well, enough of Schoppenhaurean rantings, back to some argument.
So we have this independent yellow thing outside our possibilities of perception. We maybe have the light of the sun (or some standardized source) and that particular quality stands there, unexamined and unexaminable. So why do we call this "yellow"?
Does the frequency matches that of our observation? Even if we could not measure it, it could certainly be the case that it matches — but is this enough to call it "yellow"?. Maybe the language of God has left the word "yellow" for a configuration of things, but in this case he would be a kind of observer also (even creation would entail some private kind of yellowness). In Japan and China, blue and green are different shades of blue, and although for us brown/red and yellow/orange seem different colors, for Russians there are different words for light or dark blue. Shades or colours?
It seems that some animals such as tropical fishes, have 5 colour receptors in their eyes, humans have 3. We see a range a frequency that was stabilished by evolution, so basically we see colours that were important for survival. So if we don't have a hard circunstance-observer dependent colour, how could we decide names for our colours represent properties of things?
What sense is to talk about "yellow" with an extraterrestrial that had a different sun and atmosphere, and perhaps a completely different frequency-range of vision? We could say to this fellow that we believe some object has by itself some specific thing that ordinarily we can see, but he can't. Then we would say that we could never see this property of the thing itself ourselves, but we believe it is a possibility! "It may have some property you can't understand and I can't see, that's all I'm saying, believe me". Of course, possibilities abound: since I don't know what lies in the borders of space, it may as well be a giant turtle. I can't prove this is impossible, but "borders of space" are a little queer, and so all metaphysics.
If we come to private language and modern so-called "externality", put some qualia in the mix and loose all metaphysical assumptions, then it starts to make sense to talk beyond ideas such as realism and idealism, which are basically only some 18th century novelties (or much older in the case of realism). Of course, nobody knows for sure what those things imply to philosophers, since the idea of the impossibility of a private language seems to make impossible any of the common constructions of philosophers. How can we talk about underlying structures or transcendental concepts if there is no priviledged point-of-view that can tell others about how things really are? Rules of communication such as the required to estabilish what means "colour"4 and what a particular colour is are not defined by relation to discrete and separate entities such as "phenomena", "understanding" or "thing-in-itself". This rules form a game in which participants engage, and have nothing to do with explanations or telling how things truly are.
As Wittgenstein puts it:
Philosophical Investigations §272“The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible - though unverifiable - that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another.”Wittgenstein
To even talk about the possibility of "red" outside these games is to make a Monty Python sketch out of philosophy. Well, that's what most philosophy turns to be anyway.
Shares tags with: Ludic • Scientific Spiritualism (realism, idealism); Philosophy and Buddhism (qualia, Wittgenstein); Flux Philosophy (metaphysics); Irrelevancies • What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (reality); Film Geek • Licking Holes (Monty Python); Mouse in the Mountain • Wittgenstein's Mistake? • Infinity and Validity (Wittgenstein);
1. ^ By "particular" we mean actually anything, since to qualify the thing-in-itself even as a thing — transcendental that it may be — is to create a separate, particular in some sense.
2. ^ I think I could concede its possibility, but not its knowledge. If I were to hold a strict Prasangika Madhyamika argument, I wouldn't even deny the existence of some kind of essence of phenomena, since a purely transcendental discourse is impossible, and contradiction would necessarily entail if I were to hold any metaphysical position.
3. ^ And not "I proclaim this shirt red because photons of a determined frequency excite electrons of determined molecules that release other photons that reach my retina, and I learned to call such impressions that fall within this range frequency 'red'".
4. ^ And which lies at the center of this argument, since if colour is defined as a subject-dependent feature — as it seems to work well with observation — it is necessary to postulate a different nature for "colour by itself". But where is the right to call this "colour"?
The issue here is a peculiar one, it comes from a discussion I had with a kantian professor. The problem is to be able to prove, with basis on logic alone, that colour cannot exist independently. My teacher assumes it is impossible, or at least has not been done yet.
I think our scientific theories are coerent enough, and I believe the Embodied Mind may have some ideas about the cognitive part, but the problem here is metaphysics. If it is allowed, then any property that is at least logical can be ascribed to any independent structure. So the problem is the definition of "colour".
Have you read Wilfrid Sellars? Maybe in his work you'll find an answer for you kantian teacher.
It's impossible to define "colour" without relating to the subject that perceives it. It's like asking "what's the colour of an atom?"!!! It's co-emergency all the way up, all the way down: when colour emerges, a subject and an object are already in the scene.
So I believe Nagarjuna doesn't hold any metaphysical view, although some would call "emptiness" an ontology, that would be a contradiction under the prasangika style, although svatantrika and lower schools seem to advocate emptiness as metaphysics. I believe Nagarjuna doesn't hold any underlying nature ("meta-physics" or "super-natural"), and so maybe if Varela is really using "metaphysics" to describe Nagarjuna's discourse, maybe he is using some lower sense of emptiness or using the word itself loosely.
I believe epistemologically is easy to end the debate, the problem is to have to discuss it within the boundaries of nonsense (metaphysics).
About the discussion, my professor already said many (he talked about four) Kant commenters hold his position was space doesn't really exist in itself (hard idealism), although of course we only have access to space as phenomena. My professor helds (with another commenters) a different view of the "neglected alternative", where Kant held that there was space in things-in-themselves (although we only have access to space as phenomema, of course). He agreed with me that if the former commenters' position was true, then colour wouldn't possible exist in things-in-themselves (in kantian philosophy).
Of course, everybody agrees that Kant holds that a thing-in-itself is necessary, which goes against emptiness anyway.
It would be a nice book for you to read...
Kant is awesome only because he gave birth to post-kantian views about reality! ;-)