Snaarsissism nixed? Check out the Elegant Snaarsiverse!

I have recreated this blog on WordPress and titled it "Elegant Snaarsiverse." If you like this blog, please check out the new version at http://snaars.wordpress.com/ and let me know what you think.

It's time for some sort of change, whether I end up staying with wordpress or not. Snaarsissism is a good running joke, but it's not truly what the blog is about.

When I come to any dramatic realizations in relation to what this blog is about, I'll let you know, dear reader.

Two years in review - personal update

So much to write, so little time...

The snaars wife: I don't often write about her, but snaars fans should know that she is central and indispensable to the phenomenon.

Seriously, Michelle has borne the brunt of the family's troubles of the last two years or so. We are healing from the disaster that ensued after our move north, and Michelle has had to do the most. In an unfamiliar house, far from anyplace we had ever called home, we found she was pregnant with our third child. Rejected by the family she had so long wanted to be reunited with, we faced another move and the premature burden of being on our own before I had stable employment.

Regular visits with my parents kept us sane. We made the 2.5 hour trip at least once a month (usually twice) for a long time. My parents also loaned us a LOT of money. I think they felt partially responsible, because before the move their encouragement allayed any doubts we had felt.

Michelle had it worse than I did in a lot of ways, coming to grips with the reality of the dynamics of her family (past and present), and doing the bulk of the parenting work: getting the kids into school, enduring a third pregnancy and a difficult home labor and birth, then taking care of an infant on top of everything else - all in a place where we had very little money, or support from anyone.

During the first months in the apartment and throughout the pregnancy I suffered from panic attacks. I went to work every day knowing I wasn't making enough money. I came home wanting to do something else to make money and feeling helpless. Michelle and I both felt tired, but we couldn't sleep.

Despite all this, Michelle continued to volunteer many hours per week to the Childbirth and Postpartum Professionals Association, as their public relations coordinator and director of state representatives. I think she had clung to the position as something over which she could have some control during a time when everything else seemed out of control.

Meanwhile, because of our obligations as parents to our first two lovely daughters, we couldn't slow down or focus on our own needs as much as we should have done.

I have had five jobs in the past two years, with bouts of unemployment in-between. This last job has been going very well. I have had steady employment for five months now, and although our expenses still outweigh our income, the discrepancy is minimal; we've been making stead progress and I expect the trend to continue. Soon, we will be restoring our savings. I expect we'll be buying a house within six months or a year.

I have been working with some wonderful people. They have been impressed with me and my work. I did not get this job through the staffing agency, but through an aquaintance I made while working for the agency. Within a week of getting the job, I was offered another job at a different company. Not only was I able to negotiate better benefits from my employer because of it - I actually managed to go back to the company that had given me the second offer, and I set up a complementary schedule with them, so that I was able to work both jobs.

The second job has since evaporated, but it was good for the several months it lasted. I am on good terms with the owner of the business.

After working with my current employer for three months, they gave me a considerable raise. And today - just this morning - they brought me into a meeting to discuss sending me back to school to take accounting and/or IT courses. They advised me that the combination of accounting and IT has considerable earning potential. They are willing to reimburse me 100% for tuition and expenses.

The only requirement is that I make at least a B in whatever courses I want to take. (I didn't feel it necessary to bring to their attention that I aced almost all my courses at UL - I think they know I'm capable.)

Sometimes it's good to be the snaars!

Simcha turns six this week! She wants a Care Bear more than anything. (I'm just glad she's over the Bratz doll obsession of the last few months!)

I'll write more about the kids soon - I know that's what all the real snaars fans ache for - but for now, it's past my bedtime.

12 reasons to reject the dangerous homosexual agenda

courtesy of the GSA:

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.
10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.

See also: Do you think you may be straight? (Oh my god - as if being an atheist wasn't enough - am I straight, too?)

TCPS, proud member since 2004

Cone Friend

One day while jogging down the street,
I stopped to rest my weary feet,
Beneath a tree I saw a sight,
That filled my heart with joy and light,
A cone! A beautiful cone stood tall,
Waiting for me to call,
And lead him to our little home,
And stay with us and never roam,
Our hearts have been happy, our spirits always soar,
Ever since that little angel came through our door.

The preceding poem was found on "The Snarson's" family home page. Is the similarity of name mere coincidence? Or could it be yet another glimpse into the divine and infinitely labarynthian plan of the snaars?

Extended Mind Thesis

I touched on the idea of the extended mind over a year ago, when I wrote "love, pizza, grief, and personal identity. At the time, I had not heard the idea named, and did not know that the extended mind thesis is a well-developed and hot topic in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. I find it fascinating:

From Wikipedia:

The Extended Mind refers to an emerging concept within the philosophy of mind that addresses the question as to the division point between the mind and the environment by promoting the view of active externalism. This view proposes that some objects in the external environment are utilized by the mind in such a way that the objects can be seen as extensions of the mind itself. Specifically, the mind is seen to encompass every level of the cognitive process, which will often include the use of environmental aids.

The primary body of work in the field is The Extended Mind, by Andy Clark and David Chalmers. In this paper, Clark and Chalmers present the idea of active externalism, (similar to semantic or "content" externalism,) in which objects within the environment function as a part of the mind. They argue that it is arbitrary to say that the mind is contained only within the boundaries of the skull. The separation between the mind, the body, and the environment is seen as an unprincipled distinction. Because external objects play a significant role in aiding cognitive processes, the mind and the environment act as a "coupled system.” This coupled system can be seen as a complete cognitive system of its own. In this manner, the mind is extended into the external world. The main criterion that Clark and Chalmers outline for approaching the use of external environmental objects utilized during cognitive tasks as a part of an extended cognitive system is that the external objects must function with the same purpose as the internal processes.

In The Extended Mind, a thought experiment is presented to further illustrate the environment's role in connection to the mind. The fictional characters Otto and Inga are both travelling to a museum simultaneously. Otto has Alzheimer’s Disease, and has written all of his instructions down on in a notebook to serve the function of his memory. Inga is able to recall the internal instructions within her memory. In a traditional sense, Inga can be thought to have had a belief as to the location of the museum before consulting her memory. In the same manner, Otto can be said to have held a belief of the location of the museum before consulting his notebook. The argument is that the only difference existing in these two cases is that Inga's memory is being internally processed by the brain, while Otto's memory is being served by the notebook. In other words, Otto's mind has been extended to include the notebook as the source of his memory.

From "Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis" abstract

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory “goes beyond the individual” but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea.

I should note for any interested readers that in philosophy, the words "internalism" and "externalism" can mean different things depending on the subject matter. For instance, when discussing theories of knowledge, internalism and externalism refer to different kinds of theories regarding epistemic justification (e.g., reliable process v. coherence or mental states).

In this instance, externalism refers to the idea that a part of the mind or memory is located outside of the brain. I am quite at ease with this notion, and I feel that it is almost certainly true, although there are quite a lot of details to be worked out.

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Questions (idle, amateurish ones all):

Is the extended mind idea plausible? Is the idea compatible with other well-supported theories of how the mind works?

If the extended mind exists, is it the case that it makes real - that is, enables the existence of - group minds, analogous to individual minds that actually think and react to stimuli? Or, is the extended mind merely an ability of the individual mind to store, retrieve, and/or process information externally, using the environment?

Does this inform theories of group consciousness and group memory? I am sceptical of both, but it seems to me that if extended consciousness is demonstrated, then perhaps it could be a mechanism for the functioning of some kind of group consciousness or shared memory.

How does this impact our notions of community, morality and personal moral responsibility?

Since I had not heard of the extended mind when I first started writing about it, is it the case that I absorbed the idea from some sort of group consciousness, made possible by the extended mind?

Related topics: innatism/nativism, memetics.

Monty Python's philosopher's drinking song

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [some versions have 'Schopenhauer and Hegel']

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away--
Half a crate of whisky every day.

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,

And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'

Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.

Epitaph

I think I'd like the following to be read at my funeral (not that I'm expecting it anytime soon):

What delightful hosts they are--Love and Laughter!
Lingeringly I turn away at this late hour, yet glad
They have not withheld from me their high hospitality.
So at the door I pause to press their hands just once more
And say, "So fine a time! Thank you both . . . and goodbye."
- Anonymous

Presidential Candidate Selector results

These are my ideal candidates, according to The Presidential Candidate Selector.

1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%)
2. Barack Obama (83%)
3. Dennis Kucinich (81%)
4. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (73%)
5. Joseph Biden (72%)
6. Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (72%)
7. Christopher Dodd (70%)
8. Hillary Clinton (70%)
9. John Edwards (69%)
10. Al Gore (not announced) (67%)