What an enjoyable afternoon and evening hanging out on ICC, The Internet Chess Club watching the US Championship. Igor Ivanov (a friend) was playing Yuri Lapshun. Quite a battle, and during the game I was chatting with my son Chris. "Wanna hear a great quotation" he says. "Sure" I reply. We start lots of conversations this way. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." Kant "Cinn and I have been annoyed because philosophy of mind seems really still to be stuck on the same old problems of the empiricists vs the rationalists" he continues. (Cinn his partner also studying philosphy/cognitive science at Sheffield.) "Remind me in a nutshell the difference between the rationalists and empericists" I say. Empiricists think we get all our knowledge from experience, rationalists think we get it all from reason. This distinction between empiricist and rationalist is really crude of course. They each think we get some knowledge from both. Kant really did make some philosophical progress, if only to give the standard dualisms there dying breath, unfortunately people don't seem to realize that. In modern philosophy there is still talk of "representations" and there "contents" but this distinction is illusory, "thoughts without content are empty" Kant wasn't pointing out some special class of thoughts, the empty ones. Empty thoughts are not thoughts at all if representations are nothing without there contents, then why is there a distinction between representation and content. So there you have it damnit, fuck representations. This idea is in John McDowell's book Mind and World Interesting stuff I think I'll post it on my blog. "You should quote me on that blog page. I hate dualisms!" - Christopher Jenson. Well Igor won his game finished with 5.5 out 9 a decent score and it looks like GM Nick de Fermian and GM Larry Christiansen will tie for first. Well, I think I'll read for awhile and then call it a day.