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Steven Hales (Bloomsburg) calls to my attention that September is "Metaphysical Awareness Month." Professor Hales has pledged to "remain essentially self-identical all month long." What are your plans?
No perduring. I've decided to swear off allowing parts of me to exist in the past and in the future. For the entire month, all of me will exist here and now, wherever here and now happens to be in September spacetime.
Pace Professor Hales, I'll continue being no one.
Has September been rigidly designated "Metaphysical Awareness Month"?
I think I'll read Rorty…
I intend to have no essence at all, but merely to be a typical member of my species.
I plan to celebrate by painting myself red and green all over at the same time for the duration.
Maybe hand out fliers to young empiricists– so they may not be lead astray. Save Metaphysics!
I'm going to read Ayer's 'Elimination of Metaphysics' as a work of poetry.
This month, Alyson Hannigan and I are going to be a thing.
(I'm both aware of and sympathetic to unrestricted mereological composition.)
Like Dr Johnson, my first idea was to be wholly present at every instant in the next month. Instead, I'll focus on trying to have a proper part of me at each subregion of the regions of space I'll occupy.
I intend to be in the act of becoming, being maintained as a contingent being.
I'm planning on selling all of my test tubes, microscopes, magnifying glasses, scales, rulers, and various other messy empirical equipment, and then using the money to buy myself a cozy armchair (preferably leather).
In a rather different vein, I was thinking of perhaps freeing my will.
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
I don't believe in months, so cannot participate.
I intend to be not quite myself.
I plan to sit on a shelf next to Aristotle's Physics for the duration.
I'd been planning to exist in all possible worlds but because of the economic down-turn I've had to cut back and rather will exist in all _near by_ possible worlds.
Well, look it's metaphysical awareness month, not *metaphysics* awareness month. And since no one can be metaphysically aware of a month or anything for that matter (and no confusing double talk from the property dualists, please), I suggest we all go back to our regular, old feeble forms of awareness.
Q: Why is there a metaphysical awareness month, rather than nothing?
I swear I will be necessarily but not essentially a member of my singleton.
I'm divided.
I intend to celebrate by eating a big bowl of atomless gunk.
i am planning to drive long hours on the highway, dozing off occasionally, and see if metaphysical awareness is really necessary.
Also, I'm going to use that new version of Downy fabrice softener: "Turtles all the way Downy".
ZING!
I intend to build a big bonfire, find as many volumes of divinity or school metaphysics as I can, and consign them to the flames.
When I run over libraries, during metaphysical awareness month, what havoc must I make? If I take in my hand any volume; by David Hume, for instance; I will ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?' No. I will commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing of Socrates and Deleuze.
I'll be a vague object.
Wear a mask to avoid being contaminated.
Move our department to the floor just above the Physics department, of course.
I've resolved to stop being so selfish, and to start sharing the place I occupy with as many arbitrary undetatched parts as are interested.
I won't be celebrating it myself, but my employers have just marked the occasion by altering my timetable to ensure that I don't have to occupy two non-contiguous locations at the same time every week. Bravo!
I'm afraid all these activities are two years too late. The link is to the 'special months' of 2006.
I planning on climbing into a hole, if there is such a thing, and thinking about tomorrow's sea-battle, in both the A-series and B-series.
I'll be celebrating as a collective agent, and so will I.
Willing the eternal recurrence of each moment of September.
I will lambaste the last man until we become one. Well, that's if I can take my eyes off of the dancing figures on the wall.
I'll be just some guy.
I'm going to preempt some causes. Lots of them.
I will consciously walk past the Physics depaetment on my way in each morning.
I will give a toupee to the current king of France.
I will also start an activities club that consists of all students at the university that are not members of a club.
I will also imitate a zombie–acting exactly like I would if I were a being indiscernible to myself but lacking conscious experience.
Finally, honoring Foucault, I will kill every self I come across.
Iain, who complained that metaphysical awareness month took place in 2006, is clearly a presentist. I celebrate all existing times, whether past, present or future.
Alternatively, might not we handle Iain's note that the link refers to a Prior special month by saying:
It is now two years since it was the case that I am celebrating Metaphysical Awareness month…by falling out of a punt, say?
Begin a new monadic existence
I'll be keeping it real.
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