Feb
2
Consciousness, Freedom, and Morality: Jupiter Tonans
As a freshman at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, I was lucky to discover Professor Robert Anderson, a die-hard Platonist and author of one of the most radical interpretations of Plato’s Theaetetus ever written. The first challenging paper I had to write in college was for Anderson’s Intro to Philosophy class: an analysis of various sections of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
I spent ages thinking about how to approach the subject, and then I wrote my paper in a shot the night before it was due, staying up all night to finish it. At the time, I was very much under the influence of Gödel, Escher, Bach, and my paper “Consciousness, Freedom, and Morality: Jupiter Tonans,” which was published in The Washington College Review in 1994, owes a debt of gratitude to Hofstadter’s work.
Read “Jupiter Tonans” now!
