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Ok, bear with me, this does get magic related.

In my philosophy class we are currently doing theory of knowledge stuff. An integral part of this is looking at objections to the traditional account of what knowledge is ( justified true beliefs), and examples which challenge this. Fellow students have come up with their own examples, usually very similar to one another, but I've come up with one which uses a deck of cards and an Erdnase colour change (along with a couple of other sneaky moves). Now I get to do my course work and baffle my fellow students at the same time. What fun!

Has anyone else found that their love of magic has successfuly made it into 'real life'?

Sorry if anyone finds this boring, I'm just quite excited to have vaguely justified the practice I've put in.

That's very cool. I'd love to hear how this turns out. I think it's a very powerful example of how one can challenge, and in some ways, shatter the concept of truth and reality.

Excellent idea.

Ditto really. I havn't found a practical application yet, ( Removed)

Doing 'Gospel Magic' I get to demonstrate a variety of Biblical concepts using the illusions and tricks. Some of these are quite complex whilst others reinforce or confirm stuff.

In addition, I also teach post-modernity and a vareity of levers from introduction throught to post-grad and use magic to demonstrate absolute and relative knowledge, narrative, deconstruction and other stuff - takes Baudrillard and others and makes their work understandable, often with one trick equating to about fifteen minutes of lecture. The upside is that they remember the trick and the concept whereas with the written lecture stuff this is not always the case.

HTH,

Vic

ps. have added this as edit - I should point out that day job is full-time dog-collar in Church of England

Nice Thread

I'm continuously trying to integrate magic into real life - mainly from a philosophical point of view. It fascinates me how easily that which we take for reality is just our perception. Magic illustrates that nicely - as well as wakes us up to more possibilities.
I'm busy putting together a talk along these lines - obviously using magic to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

Immanual Kant's Theory of Knowledge, that mind is just passive wax, it basically states, that the mind already has an imprint of what has gone on before, and so we are conditioned into our everyday lives.. Kant says we should remove the rose-coloured spectacles of reason.

To take this in a magic sense, everyone has seen someone shuffle a pack of cards, so if you false-shuffle a pack of cards, then the mind will jump to the conclusion that the cards have been suffled, same with many false cuts, that fool the eye - fool the mind.
With regard to colour changes, it's the hand that waves over the deck, proves an impossibilty, something that is outside of human reason, or human experience.

Oh yeh - and i think God has got to come into philosophy somewhere...

Jing wrote:Immanual Kant's Theory of Knowledge, that mind is just passive wax, it basically states, that the mind already has an imprint of what has gone on before, and so we are conditioned into our everyday lives.. Kant says we should remove the rose-coloured spectacles of reason.

To take this in a magic sense, everyone has seen someone shuffle a pack of cards, so if you false-shuffle a pack of cards, then the mind will jump to the conclusion that the cards have been suffled, same with many false cuts, that fool the eye - fool the mind.
With regard to colour changes, it's the hand that waves over the deck, proves an impossibilty, something that is outside of human reason, or human experience.

Oh yeh - and i think God has got to come into philosophy somewhere...

Nice post If we could all do the impossible, then what would be the point in doing it?? I think there is a practical application for magic, and that is entertaining people. If we didn't entertain, then what would be the point in magic?

Well magic is like an optical (sometimes audible) illusion, and like many optical illusions upon looking at it agian you realise the truth (i.e. dont repeat a trick). At first the senses are fooled and hense, shown to be unreliable. But isn't it with these same senses that we can eventually come to the truth? Thankfully for magic our spectators don't get to watch it over and over again to figure it out...

Yeh, but if you add a varation to the trick, then they get fooled again.

Magic is lieing to your spectator, telling them something which has happened which actually hasn't, fooling them and tricking them into believing that what they saw the magician actually did.

If you think about it, it is quite unfair on the spectators because all you are doing is lieing most of the time.

But you sure get a heck of a lot of fun out of it