It Is Written

  The question, “where do we go after death?” may be the most significant question ever posed in human history. It fits under the same umbrella as “what is the meaning of life,” “is there an afterlife,” among others, questions which I categorically deem as the meat of the dish of philosophical inquiry. Unfortunately, in the four years of formal philosophical training I received for my degree in philosophy, the question was never broached, as I had thought it would be when I began the degree (though, I still do not regret my choosing philosophy as my major). So, reader, you’ll be forced to accept my unadulterated attempt to tackle the question (unless, of course, you choose to reject it by not reading the rest of this piece). The short answer: You already know what it’s like. Do you remember back in 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg? Unless you’re 182 years old, in which case I applaud you for your sustained health, then you may answer “no, I wasn’t born yet.” Well, that is the feeling...

  Every rule in aviation is written with blood. Behind every regulation, some sensical, some pesky and oftentimes frustrating to follow, a life was lost as a direct result of flight. Flight training has evolved greatly since the Wright Brothers made their first flight near the turn of the 20th century; 80 years ago, you could simply purchase an airplane from a manufacturer (provided you had the funds), and legally operate it without any formal flight training. Today, the stipulations of flying an aircraft are much steeper, requiring a certain amount of logged flight hours with a proficient and certified instructor performing different tasks for the different degrees of licensing, each license awarded with the passing of a checkride. For many, the checkride is the first time they have been evaluated one on one. Failure rates are not astronomical, about 30% for people taking their private pilot checkride (the very first license a pilot can receive), but the failure rates are consiste...

In this essay, I will argue that the Kantian time presented as an a priori form of intuition is not compromised, but rather strengthened by Einstein’s theory of relativity. First, I’ll contextualize Kant’s writing in the Critique of Pure Reason with Newtonian absolute time. Here, I’ll mainly reference Robert DiSalle’s Understanding Space-Time to explain Newtonian absolutism. Then, I’ll explicate in detail the Kantian form of time as outlined in the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the Critique . Next, I’ll describe Einsteinian relativity and its associated observer-dependance. Following this, I will meditate on the interplay between relativity and the Kantian form of time, suggesting that relativity is an empirical development that both presupposes and reinforces the Kantian transcendental temporal ideality. In this last section I will reference both Thomas Ryckman’s The Reign of Relativity: Philosophy in Physics 1915-1925 and Michael Friedman’s Kant and the Exact Sciences , in...