Introduction

I guess the first thing you may well be asking yourself is who is Ogre Sophist and why should I care that he has started writing a blog.

As for who I am, my real identity is not important. What is important is the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings that I bring to this blog. Why this is important is that it gives you insight into where my posts are coming from, what preconceived notions I have, and the underlying assumptions upon which many of my future posts will be based. All too often such considerations are left out of discussions of important topics and can lead to impasses and needless arguments. So, essentially, in letting you know certain things ahead of time, I hope to forestall needless questions.

My background is generally in philosophy, economics and law. Philosophically, I tend towards relativism, at least in my metaphysics. What I mean by that is that I believe that there are no a priori facts, just observations and categorizations that we have adopted as being more reliable than alternate definitions. Similarly, I believe that a great deal of our metaphysics is dictated by language, as it is a convenient prepackaged tool for organizing thoughts and the world around us. But as these are products of fallible human intellect, they are not beyond reproach. The result is countless philosophy 101 thought problems that focus on the shortcomings of our language, metaphysics and metaethics.

Economically, I am a free market supporter. I think that, while the free market has many problems, it still allocates resources more efficiently than a statist, socialist or communist ideology. This is not to say the efficiency is fairness, a common misconception. By efficient I mean the most likely allocation of resources to yield the greatest growth in resources in the future. Also, I do not operate under the assumption of perfect information that underlies so much of basic economic analysis. This is part of the reason why real markets do not always resemble model economic markets. So I am a free marketer, but not a blind one.

Politically I lean libertarian. By lean I mean I do not support the idea that there is no role for a centralized government, more that I think that this role should be limited in scope and power with as little intrusion into people's lives and economic activity as necessary to meet its basic political goals. How is this different from Republican? Because I don't care about social engineering. I don't think government should be interfering in human choices about how to live their lives. The debate over marriage, abortion and consensual sexual interactions should be beyond the scope of government power. These will likely be the focus of future posts, so I will stop this discussion here.

Lastly, why you should care I have a Blog. First off, you probably shouldn't. The point of the blog is to allow me to vent to the aether my thoughts and feelings about certain subjects. My hope is that you will find my discussion enlightening and that it helps you organize your own thoughts on the subjects I hope to be discussing in the future. These subjects will range from the philosophic, the economic, the legal and the political.

Enjoy, or not. And if you have made it this far through my introductory post, thanks for reading.