About

Coming here you seem to want to know more about me. I’m honored. I’m not going to tell you too much you sneaky dog, it’s the internet after all. But I’ll share a little to tittle your inquisitive mind. I’m an undergrad trying to finally finish his degrees in mathematics and philosophy. My primary research is in Bas van Fraassen’s claims about the knowability of unobservables and the relation that the Bell inequality relates to it through his paper Charybdis of Realism.

I’m in love with analytic philosophy, but I have a heart too. Nietzsche and Camus (Nietzsche light according to some) have always tugged at my heart strings and remind me that philosophy is not just Wittgenstein’s clarification of concepts, it’s also about trying to live and figure it all out; whatever it is, they never really say.

Mathematically, I’m torn more and more towards logic and metamathematics. I guess that’s the philosophy talking.

I’ve actually had to cut my mathematics career short. See, I’m also manic depressive (surprise!), and in the fall of 2010, it came to full blows and destroyed my ability to function with panic attacks, anxiety, and finally an inability to even walk into the math building on campus. So unfortunately that’s been put on hold but I supplement it by learning more about logic and metamathematics through the logic courses offered in our philosophy department.

My official diagnosis is that I have Bipolar I, with rapid cycling and psychosis (the paranoid kind). My diagnosis is still new so we’re still figuring out what all has screwed me up. It was diagnosed in January 2011 because it was so obvious to my psychiatrist that this wasn’t just depression and anxiety. I struggle with it every day. I’ve lost friends because I disappeared, I’ve strained my relationship with my parents, and I’ve even been evicted over it. While I had its symptoms for years without seeking help, I now can no longer cope without drugs, or dare to try.

I’m also an atheist, a pretty ardent one, but I don’t hate on believers. It would be hypocritical for me to even think the thought that they’re delusional since I have delusions all the time (wow, that sounds really mean towards believers). Reality is a fickle thing, I have a hard time at it, so does everyone else. Hence the whole philosophy thing. Plus, I believe that there are many highly intelligent believers out there, just look at Alvin Plantinga the philosopher. Ardent Christian, brilliant logician. Even Kurt Godel believed in God.

But enough self indulgence. What I hope to do with this blog is tickle your philosophical bones, bring up interesting factoids about the worlds around us, research (as best as an undergrad can do) recent developments in science, and bring understanding to mental illness by making my mind an open book. One day, you’ll probably know someone with bipolar, there’s millions of us lurking around you! So I hope that maybe if you see what they may see, you won’t be so scared and give them some empathy as well. I also hope that if you’re bipolar or depressed, or whatever, you’ll find a common soul to read. I hope to fill a void of I find in blogs about mental illness by supplementing my blog with diaries about medication so that others can see how one might interact with powerful antipsychotics.

So that’s all your prying eyes will get out of me. If you want to really learn more, you’ll just have to read more of my blog and my claims about life.

James