I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my fiancee, two dogs, a cat and a hedgehog. I am a computer programmer, technical writer and part-time graduate student in the Ph.D. programme at York University in the Philosophy Department. My interests include artificial intelligence, quantum physics, philosophy (especially metaphysics), magic, cryonics, freemasonry, science fiction and computers. My favorite philosopher is Parmenides of Elea. My favorite novels include "Memories" by Mike McQuay and "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. My favorite movie is "Contact". My favorite fruit is the banana, and as for animals, I am partial to monotremes, wolves, bonobos and pygmy marmosets. Politically, I am a classical liberal and strong defender of freedom (especially freedom of speech and sexual freedoms). Religiously, I am a transhumanist Unitarian. Philosophically, I am what you might call a transcendental mechanist. While my philosophy is difficult to pin down with a simplistic label (read my essays if you want the details), it is, above all else, rationalist, anti-materialist and unapologetically metaphysical.
I graduated with the class
of '82 from Antigonish East High
School, and went on to get a B.Sc. (Hons.) in mathematics and computer
science from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.
I received an M.Sc. degree in computing
science from the University of Alberta in
Edmonton in 1990 and then worked for NTT Systems,
Inc. in Toronto for six years at the Defence and Civil Institute of
Environmental Medicine (Dept. of National Defence),
now Defence Research and Development
Canada - Toronto, I have continued to work periodically on contract
for NTT at DRDC Toronto over the years. Five of my years at NTT were working
for Dr. Martin Taylor, with whom I studied chaos
in neural networks and the simulation of perceptual
control networks. I obtained
the course-equivalent to a B.A. in philosophy from the University
of Toronto in 1995-97. I am currently a part-time graduate student in
the Philosophy
Department at York University, I
am working on the interpretation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and on
the relationship between rationalist/idealist metaphysics and the interpretation
of quantum mechanics. For details, see my philosophy essays on my Home
Page or my resumé.
I welcome all correspondence. If you'd like to chat, drop me a line: randall@elea.org