Eric Berdene

@ConjectureInst Yes, epistemology is the most fundamental branch of one's life philosophy ... and philosophy in general.

Your epistemology is everything. When people talk about community activism, your epistemology has to precede that. How do you know what you ought to be an activist for? Getting a good epistemology is the most important thing one can ever do. ~Conjecture Institute Advisor @peterboghossian w/ Fellow @arjunkhemani

@NRO @RichLowry x.com/EricBerdene/st…

Why Are People So Obsessed With the Jews? | @RichLowry

@TheCriticMag @baylissbaghdad @93vintagejones We have a fifth column: x.com/EricBerdene/st…

Do we have politicians, or do we have actors? @baylissbaghdad and @93vintagejones discuss this question and more this week on The Critic Show. Follow the link below for the full episode: outpoststudios.net/p/why-the-left… And don’t forget to subscribe at outpoststudios.net

@angelaroosee x.com/EricBerdene/st…

💔Here's Some Food for Thought!! I believe Islamist and Marxist terror groups have joined together to try to take down the USA. China, Iran, and Russia working together toward our destruction. Who is a better example of this combination than Ilhan Omar and her Daughter? Ilhan is chair of the "Promoting Peace and Security Task Force," founded by commie Bernie Sanders. Also her daughter is a proud communist in bed with the Communist Regime of Cuba. And as the Omar are followers of Islam, they're in essence the perfect representation of the Islamist / Communist fusion trying to destroy our country from within. What do you think?

@Louise_m_perry The nature of progressivism: x.com/EricBerdene/st…

"Ms. West’s book brings the nature of progressivism into sharp focus. The ideology emerged in the 1960s as an explicit rejection of the ideas of the political mainstream. Progressivism is not for anything. Rather, it is against a whole lot of things—Judeo-Christianity, monogamous marriage, the nuclear family, capitalism, gender norms, racial stereotypes and more. Whatever the white American patriarch of the 1950s supported, progressivism opposes. It’s an exercise in patricide." My column for @WSJFreeEx, on why structuring your life around the rejection of some imagined political “other” is a terrible idea. wsj.com/opinion/free-e…

@AlexisWilkins The foreign-linked network: x.com/EricBerdene/st…

THREAD: (1/13) A foreign-linked influence network has been running coordinated operations against the Trump administration for 22 months. I know it's real because they ran one against me. I was targeted in something I knew was far from organic. This level of media is isolating, unwanted, and unwarranted. There was nobody to help, nobody to jump in and say, this is a false OP and help me. Well, I don’t believe in problems without solutions, so I’ve spent the last few months learning to build programs to utilize publicly available information to prove that this is way bigger than me. This is about creating chaos in the Republican Party. It's about the organized effort to lose Republicans the midterms and subvert President Trump's agenda, and I have the data for you to see 🧵

Please Put on your Mr. Spock cap for this one: Religions are philosophies that can be summarized as follows: - Epistemology: Faith. - Metaphysics: God created the universe and its laws. - Ethics: Moral laws as dictated by God. - Politics: This is different in different religions and range from non-existence of religious politics to, politics as dictated by the religion. - Aesthetics: Different religions have different views on what constitutes art or in some cases have rules on what forms of arts are permitted or forbidden. Since religions, and more generally philosophies, are fundamentally a collection of statements, religions have no objective existence and therefore no agency or will. Religions cannot do anything, good or bad. If there were no human beings, there would be no religions. Therefore, there are no bad religions. Only bad human beings.

Admiral James Lyons delivers a blunt warning on Islam and ideology. He rejects distinctions between “radical” and “moderate.” “Islam is a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion!”

@emilykschrader This is who we should be fighting: x.com/EricBerdene/st…

The West fails to comprehend the necessity of fighting evil because we have lived in relative stability and peace for generations. The Islamic republic of Iran today is the real life Handmaid’s Tale. If you aren’t fighting to destroy the regime, then you’re fighting for it. @Quillette with @PamelaParesky

@5thEchelon @emilysavesusa It's not exactly mental illness: x.com/EricBerdene/st…

“You cannot be a democrat or liberal and not be mentally ill.”- @emilysavesusa 🇺🇸

@nfergus Aren't "questions of identity, moral positioning, and self-actualization" prerequisites to "securing abundant energy, industrial production, and physical safety creates"? In other words, isn't a correct philosophy a prerequisite to success?

"A society that has secured abundant energy, industrial production, and physical safety creates the conditions in which political attention can migrate upward into questions of identity, moral positioning, and self-actualization." 1/6

@RubinReportShow @RubinReport The Democratic Party is not failing ... They are just serving their masters: x.com/EricBerdene/st…

🚨 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro ADMITS The Democrat Party Failed Americans @RubinReport: "Where are these people's BALLS 🤣... Josh, respectfully, you should just be a moderate Republican"

@PhilosophyOnX There is no "Universal Moral Code" (see: x.com/EricBerdene/st… for deductive proof) Therefore some think slavery is immoral and some don't ... and that's why slavery still exists ...

Do you believe slavery is ok?

@LSEPhilosophy I wouldn't worry about it just now. I caught Grok contradicting itself: x.com/PhilosophyOnX/…

🤔 Every few months, a viral post warns us that #AI will soon replace entire categories of workers. But should we trust these predictions? 👉 Kate Vredenburgh (#LSEPhilosophy) and Lauren Wong set out what we should be asking about how AI is changing work blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocial…

@BigBrainPhiloso Does Alex O'Connor have a definition for consciousness? ... Does anybody? If you know of one please DM me. Thanks.

Where is the triangle? Alex O'Connor thinks consciousness is the one thing materialism can't explain away and he has a deceptively simple argument for it. Close your eyes. Picture a triangle. You can see it. The shape, the angles, maybe even the colour. It's right there, vivid and undeniable. Now ask yourself: where is that triangle? According to Alex, this single question cuts to the heart of one of philosophy's oldest problems. A strict materialist, someone who believes everything in the universe reduces to physical matter has to say that triangle exists somewhere in the neurons of your brain. But if a neurosurgeon cracked open your skull right now, they wouldn't find a triangle anywhere inside. "If everything you experience is reducible to the material when I close my eyes and see a triangle, there really is a triangle there. I can see it. It's there. And I think well, where is that triangle? The materialist has to say it's reducible to just somewhere in your brain. But if I cut open your brain I'm not going to find a triangle inside of it." He anticipates the obvious pushback. When he raised this on YouTube, commenters pointed to computers as a counter-example: if you cut open a computer, you won't find the triangle it's displaying on screen either. But the hardware is still producing a real image on a real screen. Alex's response is that this analogy doesn't hold because the mind has no screen. There is no separate interface between the brain's processing and the experience of seeing. The brain is the computer and the screen. Which only deepens the mystery: somehow, purely physical processes are generating a first-person, subjective experience: colours, shapes and images that can't be located anywhere in physical space. "It's as if the computer itself somehow had a triangle in the computer's own first-person subjective experience. Like where is that triangle that you can picture in your head? Where the hell is it?" For Alex, consciousness isn't just another interesting puzzle in the philosophy of mind. It's the big objection to materialism. The thing that, once you sit with it, seems to demand that there is something more going on than matter arranged in clever ways. He points to something as ordinary as dreaming as a case in point. Every night you produce vivid images full scenes, faces, colours without any external input. An entire visual world conjured from nowhere. Where does it come from? Where does it go? "Even just when you have an average dream, it's fascinating to think what's going on there. You've got images in your head, you can close your eyes and you can picture things, you can see colours, you can see shapes in your head. Like where are those shapes?" The triangle thought experiment has a way of making this undeniable. It's not abstract. You can do it right now. And when you do, you run headfirst into the hard problem of consciousness: the gap between the physical description of the brain and the felt quality of experience that no amount of neuroscience has yet bridged. Whether you find Alex's argument convincing or not, the question it raises is genuine: how does purely physical matter give rise to the inner world we each inhabit a world of colours, shapes, memories, and dreams that exists nowhere except in the first person?

@UCLPhilosophy How about an appointment for "Foundational Philosophy?" Please see: x.com/EricBerdene/st… Section 2.3 for what I mean by Foundational Philosophy.

We're looking to make 5 permanent appointments: 2 in any area of philosophy 1 appointment - philosophy / computer science 1 appointment in political philosophy 1 appointment in engaged philosophy (related to health / public policy) More information: ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/se…

It depends on the definition of the word normal. Off the top of my head, one could define being normal as follows: "To be a normal human being, is to be similar to the great majority of human beings." As a crude example, if being a normal human being includes having two arms and two legs, then human beings with three arms and one leg are, by definition abnormal. Same applies to homosexuality. If the great majority of human beings are heterosexual then, by above definition, homosexual human beings are abnormal. If the day comes, that the majority of human beings are homosexual then, according to above definition, heterosexual human beings will be considered abnormal. Open to suggestions on the definition of normal ...

Homosexuality is not 'normal.' On the contrary, it is a challenge to the norm; therein rests its eternally revolutionary character.--Camille Paglia

There is no "Universal Moral Code" (see article: x.com/EricBerdene/st… for proof) Therefore "bodily obligations" are moral requirements to some and immoral obligation to others. Since, collectivism (the opposite of individualism) leads to tyranny (proof not presented here), we should stick with individualism in this matter too. If the individual is sovereign, then how far bodily autonomy goes, or where it stops, is up to each individual (who has come of age) to decide for themselves. Goes without saying, based on individualism, no body has the right to dictate their moral preferences onto others, and should live with the fact that there exist other people who may or may not share the individual moral code. This applies to bodily autonomy as well.

Philosophy Experiment: Whose Body Is It Anyway? Bodily autonomy in the toughest circumstances. Do obligations attach to your body without your consent? philosophyexperiments.com/whosebody