a quale of quail

Yesterday, I had the quale (experience) of, whilst it was quiet and I was walking up my street, seeing two female (I think) quail on a rail (fence top) - it was quite exciting and quaint really. We used to get quail, including baby quail quite frequently wandering up and down our street, until all the neighbours got cats and the good old days switched over into the 21st Century.

I partly write this as I'm studying the philosophy of mind, a course in which I'd like to learn more about qualia (the plural of quale) and free will but won't, maybe because the course has a bit of a physicalist bias and maybe also because these topics can soon get horrendously complex. As a side note, I half-expected the course would turn me into a physicalist (presumably a Christian one - there are some VERY good philosophers in this category) and we'd read lots of stuff by Dennett and maybe I'd do really badly or have to pretend to be a Dennett fan, but it didn't turn out that way (or hasn't so far anyway). I actually got an A+ (93%) for a blatantly theistic essay promoting dualism (not because I felt particularly attached to it so much as just cos I saw a possible gap and wanted to be controversial and run for it) - not a particularly great essay by any account, I had thought. Sooo, that's a bonus. I also partly write this as I'm meant to be writing an essay and am trying to work out how to fit qualia into it, which reminded me of the quail, 'as you [they] do [would]', as they say.

This was just a ramble, but it might encourage me to post more frequently at this blog again. I've been genuinely busy recently, but much of the busyness was probably closely related to the act of being slouched in my chair absent-mindedly scrolling through facebook late at night rather than reviewing lectures on topics I don't really care about; so its value as an excuse is small, a bit like the non-existent baby quail in my street.