Connecting the Dots in South Minneapolis: Floyd, Good, Pretti, and More

 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/chescaleigh

If you're not familiar with Minneapolis, you may not realize how close these three events are geographically, namely, the murders of George Floyd in 2020, Renee Good on Jan. 7, and Alex Pretti just yesterday (Jan. 24).

My Grandma lived at 31st and Chicago when I was a kid (seven blocks from the corner where Floyd took his last breath). My Grandma's church is around the corner from where Good was murdered in her car, and I have family members who regularly buy donuts at the store Pretti was gunned down in front of. I visit Minneapolis at least once or twice a year.

MLK Day 2026: Hierarchical Chaos or Equitable Community?

 

MLK Day Parade and March, Chattanooga, TN (Jan. 19, 2026)

Since last year’s MLK Day post was called “Where Do We Go From Here?” I thought I’d continue alluding to King’s 1967 book by calling this one “Chaos or Community?” 

Random Thoughts, Part 27: Trump 2.0, Sci-Fi AI vs. Real AI, Black Cats, Satanic Panic, Musical Time-Slippage, Conceptual Constructions of Politics, Sinners, etc.

 

My random thoughts continue, now with 27 parts with 801 total thoughts! With the second Trump administration driving us full-bore into making America less great several times every single goddamn day, I've had a lot of politics on my mind lately. And there are continuing issues about AI. I worry my random thoughts are not so random these days. But randomness doesn't rule out clusters of similar ideas. And you'll still find a few other things in there about my dental habits, listening to Nirvana, the Satanic Panic, the film Sinners, cats, and more. And of course, there are memes! Enjoy!

MLK Day 2025: We Do We Go From Here?

 

MLK Day Parade, Chattanooga, TN, Jan. 20, 2025

Today the United States simultaneously observes two things: 1. A holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2. The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second, non-consecutive term as US President. This coincidence offers as succinct a summary of where my country is morally and politically as anything I could imagine: many of my fellow Americans both claim to admire Martin Luther King, Jr. and voted for Donald Trump. 

How did we get here? And drawing on the title of King’ s most challenging book, where do we go from here?

MLK Day Parade Photos 2025

The Chattanooga MLK Day Parade wraps up with the Howard High School Marching Band near the mural at the corner of MLK Blvd. and Peeples St. (Jan. 20, 2025)

 

It's a chilly afternoon here in Chattanooga, TN, and I went down to watch our local MLK Day Parade. It's in the low 20's Fahrenheit (around -5 Celsius), which is considerably colder than usual for this part of the world, so the turnout was lower than usual. In the past, I've participated in the parade with my local chapter of United Campus Workers, but we didn't get organized in time this year. Since MLK Day is my favorite holiday and there's a weirdness this year as it coincides with a Presidential Inauguration, I figured I'd just go down by myself.

I took some pictures! And here they are, along with a bit of commentary. I will have a lot more commentary on the day and the state of US politics in another post, coming soon.

It has often amused me that we have a King and King intersection along the parade route.

Lookout Mountain (mentioned in the "I Have a Dream" speech from the parking lot of the church that did not hire King as pastor in the mid-1950's. Don't worry, he went down to Montgomery and down in history afterwards.

The Bessie Smith Center (the parade goes right by it)

The parade begins!

A good MLK quote for the parade

Another mural on the parade route

Obligatory selfie (I only break out the warm hat and scarf a couple days around these parts, but today was one of those days)

I also took a video of the Howard High School Marching Band's performance, but apparently Blogger is not cooperating with video uploads today. Oh, well.

So there you have it! Happy MLK Day!

Conference Panel: Building a Network of Scholars in Indian Philosophy: The Indian Philosophy Blog and Beyond

One of my favorite New York landmarks: The Empire State Building

Happy New Year!

After a nice, but all-too-short winter break, I'm hitting the ground running this week with a start to my spring semester as well as travel to the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Conference in New York City! I'll be chairing a panel called "Building a Network of Scholars in Indian Philosophy: The Indian Philosophy Blog and Beyond" on Thurs. Jan. 9. I've been part of The Indian Philosophy Blog since 2015, so this will be a nice time to celebrate the blog as well as a chance to meet some fellow scholars and think about the present and future of our little sub-discipline.

Pandemic Journal Reboot: The Rumors of COVID's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

 

My recent positive COVID test

During 2020-2022 I was posting a lot of my Pandemic Journal here on the blog. I got up to Part 25 in 2022. I didn't stop writing in that journal, and I even occasionally posted an entry on a specific topic, like this one on the Fourth Pandemiversary.

I guess just as most of the world lost interest in COVID, I lost interest in posting all of my entries here on the blog. I've also been journaling a lot less in the last year or two, often only once every couple of months.

I had a good reason, however, to start the Pandemic Journal again in earnest when I tested positive for COVID in late June! So, as both an exercise in self-indulgence and a public service announcement to get a COVID test if you have symptoms, here is a ... "sequel" doesn't sound right, so let's call it a "reboot" of my Pandemic Journal. And there are still memes, of course!

Connooga 2024!

 

Me at Connooga in 2017, which was apparently as blurry as the pre-pandemic years now feel.

After taking a few years off for the pandemic, I returned to Connooga last year (or at least for Saturday in a somewhat diminished capacity). This year Connooga is this weekend: Feb. 23-25! 

For Connooga 2024 I might try Friday and Saturday, and maybe Sunday, although duty requires I be elsewhere later that evening... for the early premiere of Dune, Part 2! (I'll be sure to share some preliminary nonspoilery thoughts of this movie I've been eagerly anticipating for three years.)

This year I won't be on a bunch of Connooga panels as I have been in the past. Unfortunately, the panel track I was part of (Deep Thought) was discontinued. Maybe next year I'll try to get on a few panels just to see how it goes.

Israel/Palestine: A Dialogue with Myself

Me: I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s happening in Israel/Palestine, but I’m not sure what to say. I haven’t been saying much about it. 

Me 2: But who are you to say anything? You’re not Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian? Why should anyone care what you think? 

Me: I don’t know, honestly. Obviously, I relate to this issue differently and less personally than people more directly affected by it, or by the recent rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia here in the US. I guess maybe writing this is a way to figure out what I think? Maybe it could help others? Or they could tell me where I’m wrong? 

New Article: “Pramāṇavāda and the Crisis of Skepticism in the Modern Public Sphere” by Amy Donahue (Cross-posted from the Indian Philosophy Blog)

Depiction of a debate between Maṇḍana Miśra and Śaṅkara with judge Ubhaya Bhāratī

 

I haven't cross-posted anything from the Indian Philosophy Blog in a long time, so here you go! This is about a great article from my colleague Dr. Amy Donahue. There's also some information about an upcoming conference panel where she and I will be presenting with Dr. Arindam Chakrabarti. Check it out! 

PS: You can find the original post on the Indian Philosophy Blog here.

Readers of the Indian Philosophy Blog may be interested to learn about a new article in the latest issue of the Journal of World Philosophies: “Pramāṇavāda and the Crisis of Skepticism in the Modern Public Sphere” by Amy Donahue (Kennesaw State University). The journal is open-access, and you can download the article here.

Here’s the abstract:

There is widespread and warranted skepticism about the usefulness of inclusive and epistemically rigorous public debate in societies that are modeled on the Habermasian public sphere, and this skepticism challenges the democratic form of government worldwide. To address structural weaknesses of Habermasian public spheres, such as susceptibility to mass manipulation through “ready-to-think” messages and tendencies to privilege and subordinate perspectives arbitrarily, interdisciplinary scholars should attend to traditions of knowledge and public debate that are not rooted in western colonial/modern genealogies, such as the Sanskritic traditions of pramāṇavāda and vāda. Attention to vāda, pramāṇavāda, and other traditions like them can inspire new forms of social discussion, media, and digital humanities, which, in turn, can help to place trust in democracy on foundations that are more stable than mere (anxious) optimism.

I enjoyed reading the article, and I found it extremely thought-provoking. I hope readers of this blog will check it out. Also, be sure to look for the forthcoming online debate platform that Donahue mentions on p. 5! Maybe we’ll make an announcement on the blog when it’s ready. Or reach out to Dr. Donahue if you’re interested in collaborating.

Here are a few of my questions for further discussion:

1. Since pramāṇavāda was an elite discourse in historical South Asian societies and it requires some educational training (as Donahue notes on p. 4 and p. 5), can it do the work Donahue asks it to do?
2. Are jalpa and vitaṇḍā so bad? While most Naiyāyikas have denigrated them as illegitimate as Donahue notes (p. 6), a few have distinguished “tricky” and “honest” forms of vitaṇḍā (Matilal 1998, 3). And then there’s Śrī Harṣa’s debate at the beginning of the Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya with a Naiyāyika opponent about whether one must accept the means of knowledge (pramāṇas) in order to enter into a debate about the pramāṇas (he mentions that one understands the discourse of the Madhyamakas and Cārvākas, perhaps thinking of Nāgārjuna and Jayarāśi; I will have more to say about the Cārvākas in an upcoming conference presentation—see information below). Matilal has also argued that vitaṇḍā can make sense as resulting in a “commitmentless denial” similar to an “illocutionary negation” (Matilal 1998, 50-56). In terms of a modern public sphere, could vitaṇḍā be a useful tactic for, say, pointing out the inherent contradictions of various harmful dogmatisms? Or maybe the deepest benefit of the vāda-jalpa-vitaṇḍā framework is a bit of self-awareness about which form of debate one is using?
3. Is vāda necessarily more prone to discrediting false beliefs than a Habermasian public sphere or the type of marketplace of ideas in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty? (p. 11) My point is most definitely not that we have nothing to learn from Indian logic and debate. Far from it! But I wonder how effective vāda can be. After all, you don’t find much philosophical agreement in the classical Indian tradition, which is precisely why I find it so interesting!
4. Is the archive (p. 12) essentially part of vāda, or is it a cultural artifact of the Indian and Tibetan tradition of commentaries? Was there something similar in Hellenistic, Roman, Islamic, and Byzantine traditions, which were also heavily commentarial?

My questions here are meant to be taken in the spirit of vāda to keep the conversation going. I hope others will read Donahue’s thought-provoking article and join this worthwhile conversation.

Also, if you will be attending the upcoming Central APA Conference in Denver, Colorado, USA on Feb. 22, 2023, you will have the chance to discuss these and other issues in person! 

Wed. Feb. 22, 2023, 1-4pm

2022 Invited Symposium: Vāda: Indian Logic and Public Debate 

Chair: Jarrod Brown (Berea College)

Speakers: 

Amy Donahue (Kennesaw State University) “Vāda Project: A Non-Centric Method for Countering Disinformation”

Arindam Chakrabarti (University of Hawai’i at Manoa) “Does the Question Arise? Questioning the Meaning of Questions and the Definability of Doubt”

Ethan Mills (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)  “Cārvāka Skepticism about Inference: Historical and Contemporary Examples” 

(More information about the conference here, including a draft program that includes several other panels on Indian philosophy.)

Works Cited

Donahue, Amy. 2022. “Pramāṇavāda and the Crisis of Skepticism in the Public Sphere.” Journal of World Philosophies 7 (Winter 2022): 1-14.

Matilal, Bimal Krishna.  1998.  The Character of Logic in India.  Edited by Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari.  Albany: SUNY Press.

"Unfrozen Eons Drown the Future": My New Short Story on The Weird Tales Podcast!

My short story "Unfrozen Eons Drown the Future" is now live on The Weird Tales Podcast! You can listen to it on most podcast services. Check out the details here.

Upcoming Talk and Recent Indian Philosophy Blog Posts

 

I'm on sabbatical this semester, which means I'm spending more time on the research side of my job. Here are a few professional happenings on that front.

• I will be giving an online talk tomorrow for Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, India (details above; the talk is online, so I will be in my home office). The talk is called "Classical Indian Skepticism: Lessons for the 21st Century," and it will be on a lot of the topics I discussed in the conclusion of my book Three Pillars of Skepticism in Classical India: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Harṣa.
• I recently published a few blog posts over at the Indian Philosophy Blog praising recent work by Sonam Kachru and questioning some of my own previous interpretations of the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu.
• "Vasubandhu's Twenty Verses and Comparative Philosophy, Part One"
• "Vasubandhu's Twenty Verses and Comparative Philosophy, Part Two"

I have a few other things coming up in the new few months, including in-person conferences in Denver and San Francisco. The San Francisco conference will include the inaugural panel of the new Science Fiction and Philosophy Society!

I had to promise my university I would produce a book proposal for a new book project during my sabbatical (likely focusing on Vasubandhu and Ratnakīrti), so I may have details on that in a few months. Stay tuned!

The Cosmic Grind: Gateway by Frederick Pohl

Frederick Pohl's Gateway is a weirder book than I was expecting. I may change my mind after I think some more about what it was saying and what it was lampooning, so let's call this review a draft (technically a third draft).

But before I get into it, a quick news item! I will be discussing Gateway and other classic 20th century science fiction at Chattacon 48 (Jan. 13-15, 2023) here in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I will be a panelist! Maybe I will see you there to carry on the discussion in person!

Vote for Democrats, Please: A Conventional Plea for the 2022 US Midterm Election

Note: A version of this was originally a social media post, but I figured it was worth sharing here, too. Take care, and VOTE if you can!

In 2016, I burnt out on arguing about politics online, so this is not an invitation to argue. But we do have an election tomorrow here in the US, and especially understanding the bubble I live in and that most Americans reading this will do the right thing, I'd like to ask everyone who is eligible to vote to VOTE if you haven't already. Do it as a personal favor to me. 

I'm an Associate Editor at Escape Pod!

I have a new job! Don't worry, I'm still doing my philosophy job full time. But I have a new side gig as an Associate Editor (aka, "slush reader") at Escape Pod!

Looking for Hope on the 5th of July

Yesterday was US Independence Day. I have complicated feelings about this holiday, as I have complicated feelings about the country it celebrates. 

I’ve never really been big on conventional displays of patriotism. It all feels so jingoistic and bombastic. And there’s something a bit gauche about pretending a patch of dirt is special because I happen to live on it. 

But this doesn’t mean I don’t love my country in some sense. I love the people here, because I love humanity and part of humanity lives here, the part that most influences me and which I can influence most. 

"My Favorite Posts" Page Updated

 

Sometime in 2015 or 2016 I started a "My Favorite Posts" page here on the blog. And every few months ever since I've thought, "I should update that one of these days." And then I never did. Until the last few weeks, anyway.

So check out my newly updated "My Favorite Posts" page!

Pandemic Journal, Part 23: Yet Another Pandemic Semester, Also: Dune

 

My increasingly exhausting pandemic journal continues with Part 23 (see the most recent entry here). We had a really bad surge in the late summer and early fall with record hospitalizations and I've had yet another exhausting pandemic semester, all while many people seem to be pretending the pandemic is over. And now things are getting better, but we have the omicron variant and the winter holidays... so it's not looking great. 

But on the other hand, Villeneuve's Dune was finally released in October, ushering in a new era of Dune memes for your enjoyment. Thus, this entry will consist, not quite entirely, but mostly of Dune memes. Thanks to the dedicated members of the Dune Sietchposting Facebook group for most of these, and to various friends and other online denizens for the rest.

What would Gene Roddenberry think about William Shatner’s Blue Origin flight?

 

Today William Shatner took a trip on a Blue Origin rocket, and I had some thoughts about it and wrote some of them down in my pandemic journal as I was procrastinating doing the stuff I was supposed to be doing this morning. To be more honest than you're supposed to be at the beginning of a post like this, I have to admit I'm not sure what Gene Roddenberry would think about today's events. I never met him while he was alive, and I'm not as familiar with his biography as I'd like to be, but he did create Star Trek as an unabashed post-scarcity socialist utopia, so that's in the background of my thoughts. This question seemed to me like a catchy way to think about space travel, Star Trek, the Overview Effect, where we are as a global society, and where we're going. So here you have it...

Some Thoughts on the Chauvin Verdict

 

Now that it’s been a few days, here are some thoughts on the Chauvin verdict (he was the former Minneapolis police officer who was recently found guilty of murdering George Floyd in May 2020).