A Rat

Torkel Franzén

torkel@sm.luth.se

What I do at Luleĺ University of Technology

I teach programming courses (mostly using Java and Prolog) and also spend a lot of time in front of the computer.

Philosophical stuff and logic matters

Provability and Truth, my PhD thesis (in philosophy), is available from university libraries in many parts of the world. This is not because of any tremendous demand for it, but only because it appeared (in 1987) in a series that many such libraries subscribe to: Acta universitatis stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in Philosophy 9, ISBN 91-22-01158-7. More simply, it is available here:

Instead of reading the whole thing, you may be content to ponder the motto of this little book, from John Wisdom's Metaphysics and Verification:
The metaphysically-minded person feels that the actual world is made up solely of positive, specific, determinate, concrete, contingent, individual, sensory facts, and that the appearance of a penumbra of fictional, negative, general, indeterminate, abstract, necessary, super-individual, physical facts is somehow only an appearance due to a lack of penetration upon our part.

Net comments

Men judge things according to the disposition of their minds, and had rather imagine things than understand them.
Spinoza, Ethics, Appendix to Book I.

Bill Brown och Richmal Crompton pĺ svenska

Arne Lönnbecks klassiska översättningar av Billböckerna kommenteras.

Scribble, scribble

Pictures

The old barbarian