My motivation to express and communicate my thoughts on these things is curtailed on one side by an awareness of the immensity of my ignorance, and on the other side by my fear that I have no right to promote such substantial claims given my absent credentials.
What follows is successful if it convinces the following: I have a unique perspective, which forms an expertise on the basis of its idiosyncrasy (and not on the basis of expertise in any particular domain or school of thought or practice).
In the first, I am a unique personality. Everyone is a unique personality, but just so.
In the second are my various ventures among the library bookshelves, including philosophical, biological, linguistic, historical, fictional, psychological, and religious. I elaborate:
I have an armchair[1] philosopher’s familiarity with the Western canon, having perused many of the canonical names between Thales (the “first”) and the early twentieth century. This gives me an appreciation for: those individual schools of thoughts; relativity of philosophical beliefs; the historicity of philosophy; the variegation of philosophical concerns and conduct.
I have a university graduate’s familiarity with the generalities of biology, with a bias for its molecular signalling and developmental principles. This gives me an appreciation for the complexity of biological systems, including the methods of their conceptualization and study.
I have a sporadic interest in linguistics, beginning with Plato’s Forms, that led me to Sapir and Whorf, and later to Chomsky, Pinker, and later to the Piraha language as an epitome of language differentials. This gives me an appreciation for the role of language
[1]At a younger age I read Einstein’s An Introduction to Special and General Relativity. Frustrated by my inability to understand the latter, I investigated further, learning about the Vienna circle, and thus the significance of Wittgenstein in schools of thoughts within those great minds. Deciding that if I understood what formed the basis for their disagreements would enlighten me as to how Einstein thought, I attempted to read a book on Wittgenstein. Failing to make it through the book’s introduction, which mentioned Descartes, eventually led me to plan a study[I] of what philosophy’s led to Descartes and thence to Wittgenstein. Thus I started with Plato’s Republic, later backtracking to learn of the Pre-Socratics, through the Socratics (incl. Plato and his schools, Aristotle, the Stoics, and some of the lesser knowns), I picked at the Latins, fast-forwarded through the darkness of the Dark Ages, was disappointed by Scholastics, picked at the Muslim renaissance, marvelled at the impact of the Lacoon, collecting Machiavelli along the way, began the age of reason (with Descartes again), was reinvigorated by Spinoza, accumulated a useful medley that funnelled into Kant, pursued and judged his successors, leap-frogging until I reached Bentano and Husserl, falling into Nietzsche, and finally only reading enough Wittgenstein to know that I agreed in the most part. It is ironic that I never made a full study of Wittgenstein’s words since they inspired me to write what I thought about the nature of reality. The conclusions, which are not the subject of these writings, were (to state obtusely) that reality is perceived by a sort of metaphorical idealism.
[I] See Shai’s “Philosophy Readings Through Time” where he lists the philosophy books he has read.