• A List of Intense Annoyances

    What bugs me is that it got its form as a past participle so that one could cogently refer to things "having an impact".
    But then it started getting used as an active verb. That has an Orwellian Newspeak feel of replacing better English.
  • A List of Intense Annoyances
    The use of "impact" as a verb.
  • A Wittgenstein Commentary
    The PI is opposed to Referentialism, whereby words refer to objects in the world. To be an object existing in the world in space and time it must have some kind of essence.RussellA

    The observation that a particular use governs the meaning of a word does not cancel the fact that language is referring to entities and events we encounter in the world. It is that particularity that gives us confidence that such is the case. We can distinguish between cases.

    To say: "And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer", is to observe that some naming is sufficient through simple pointing ala Augustine. By arguing that we do not learn language that way is not an argument that what we talk about is not actually in the world we live in.

    Saying objects "must have some kind of essence" is metaphysical supposition of the sort Kant said we could not confirm through experience. I don't think the discussion of meaning here is a part of that supposition.
  • A question for Christians

    I think Kierkegaard recasts the tension between faith and reason through looking at what changes our conditions in Philosophical Fragments. Obeying the command to love as laid out in his Works of Love was not a confirmation of a credo as much as it was a manual for change. Sort of a rebuttal to the The Enchiridion by Epictetus.
  • A Wittgenstein Commentary

    The either/or expressed by moving from "meaning as representation to a view which looks to use as the crux of the investigation", assumes that the challenge W is making to treating words as pointing to essences should be replaced by a competing explanation of essence. I think this interpolates an intention to make an ontological claim that is not Wittgenstein's concern.

    That we may misunderstand our relation to "essence" does not mean that we can fix that with another general approach. Working with 'family resemblances' comes from our limitations to provide what some words seem to give us. By that token, the approach does not give us that something through another means.
  • Crito: reading
    The chorus too must be regarded as one of the actors. It must be part of the whole and share in the action, not as in Euripides but as in Sophocles.Greek chorus - wiki

    This prompted me to check Oedipus the King (by Sophocles) and Aristotle gets this right. Oedipus acknowledges hearing the Chorus and converses with their Leader. This situation becomes pivotal to the drama because Oedipus insists that Tiresias speak in front of the assembly rather than take the option to hear from Tiresias privately.

    Whoopsie.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?

    I will get back to you on that. I have to reactivate some of my cells devoted to that method.
  • List of Definitions (An Exercise)

    Being: Whatever it is that everything is doing without qualification.

    Awareness: The activity that brings beings into presence

    Consciousness: Whatever conditions that make awareness possible

    Thinking: Talking with others and myself through making or following connections.

    Time: That one is very tricky. I don't have time to explain myself.

    Sensation: An integral component of perception

    Perception: Distinguishing things given through sensation. (I recognize this is straight up Aristotle)

    Mind: A way to talk about consciousness as an agent.

    Body: What every being is with qualifications.

    Good: The idea of the best as conceived against the reality of its absence.

    Happiness: When I feel good.

    Justice: Another very tricky one but am convinced of its importance for the Good to be.

    Truth: Not sure I can handle the truth.
    Mikie
  • Crito: reading

    Good observation!

    No hoi polloi. By that measure, the audience has less representation in the scenes.
  • A Wittgenstein Commentary
    PI 182 sounds more like the anti-realist linguist than the realist engineer.RussellA

    It is realist to the degree that W defers to the engineer as providing a clear example of the statement meaning something.
  • Crito: reading

    Thank you for your kind words. As you typically open up many more paths than I can follow, our "relative" wisdom will have to be placed side by side in the way described in Symposium:

    Then Agathon, who was reclining alone on the last couch, said, “Come here, Socrates, and recline beside me so that, through contact with you, I may enjoy 175D that piece of wisdom that came to you in the porch. Of course you found it and you have it, for you would not have come away without it.”

    Socrates then sat down and said, “It would be nice, Agathon, if wisdom were the sort of thing that flowed between us, from the fuller to the emptier once we were in contact with one another, just as water in cups flows through wool from the fuller to the emptier one. Yes, if wisdom 175E is like this too, then I greatly prize my position alongside you, for I believe I will be filled with a copious beautiful wisdom by your side. For my wisdom would be ordinary, even as questionable as a dream, while yours would be resplendent and would hold great promise, young as you are; and this shone forth mightily from you, just the other day, and was put on display before the eyes of more than thirty thousand Greeks.”

    “Socrates, you are being contemptuous!” said Agathon. “Yet in due course, you and I shall submit these matters to judgement on the issue of wisdom, resorting to Dionysus[10] as our judge. For the moment, you should turn your attention to your supper.”
    Symposium, 175c, translated by Horan

    I think Fooloso4's approach is a fruitful and rigorous way to compare texts in order to understand:
    Socrates' own music consists of arguments, but that will not do for the many who need to be charmed.Fooloso4

    Without addressing the question of how much Socrates enjoyed the arts of the "many" (or the arguments in the Sorgner essay), I will observe Socrates is a character in Plato's plays. They are obviously more than plays, consisting of fixed characters being expressed through actors on a stage. Nonetheless, they are also artistic compositions. I have long found it interesting that Aristotle referred to Socrates as a 'moralist', suggesting that all the philosophy that can be found in the character is of Plato's making. That statement itself could be an urban myth shared amongst metics.

    Continuing my suspension of how those dynamics relate to the arguments concerning the highest arts, I would like to make some observations about Socrates as a participant in audiences.

    I start with the above passage from Symposium given above. I can only presume that Socrates was one amongst the "thirty thousand Greeks" who attended.

    In the Index to my old collection of the Dialogues, there are over a hundred references to Homer, thirteen to Aeschylus, fourteen to Pindar, forty-seven to Hesiod, four to Sophocles, and I am sure I have left out others. There are the countless rituals and festivals Socrates takes part in. And there is the beginning of the Republic where Socrates makes an aesthetic judgement upon the procession he came to witness. The guy was no shut in nor likely to plug his ears when nearing the Sirens.

    This is a long way to say that Socrates is sometimes found playing a role that does not reflect his understanding and other times puts that into the mouths of other people. So he speaks in the voice of the Law to satisfy Crito when he just can't get it. (I agree with you that there is comic element at that moment). The wisdom Socrates reports receiving from Diotima sure sounds an awful lot like the arguments Socrates makes on his own account.

    I will mull over your other comments.
  • Crito: reading

    I am no expert, but the situation makes me think of Kafka:

    You are the problem. No scholar to be found far and wide. — Reflections, #19

    The only thing I say I know,” Socrates tells us in the Symposium, “is the art of love (ta erôtika) (177d8–9). Taken literally, it is an incredible claim.Amity

    I think that the claim has something to do with the story Socrates recounts in the passage I quoted above saying "Love is the son of Resource and Poverty." It is a view that encompasses all those who make, whether they practice philosophy, poetry, or making material goods through skilled arts.

    The dialogue is filled with claims this person or that is wise and the honored one denying it is true. Philosophy must attract lovers in that environment.

    I read Socrates taking up music during his confinement as one way to keep alive when deprived of his preferred 'medium.'
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics

    Oppenheimer aside, Rousseau's view of 'natural' man challenges your view of the boundary between natural and 'idealized' commonalities.
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics

    Since language must be a component of the 'natural' society you distinguish from the 'abstract', sharing a language must be natural to some degree. So, the question applies at least to the point where you would place language outside of what a community shares. The burden of explanation falls upon your theory.
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics
    Yes, it is obvious that Oppenheimer was referencing Rousseau's " The Social Contract." That is why I responded as I did.

    I read the State because you recommended it in that discussion.

    I do not think people are connected or related because they use the same language.NOS4A2

    How did the language come into existence?
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics
    I would argue that in order to do this, one must be nominalist. He must consider only the concrete, particular things involved, what they themselves tell of their lives and relations with each other, and let go of the pre-conceived, realist account of collectives.NOS4A2

    The dimensions of that concrete community are what I found problematic with your interpretation of a 'social contract' several months ago. Your man [url=http://Oppenheimer]Oppenheimer[/url] misrepresents Rousseau's view of the origin of civic society when he says:

    The community, to use Toennies' term, changed into a "society." "Contract" seemed to be the only bond that held men together--the contract based on the purely rationalistic' relation of service for service the do ut des, the "Contraf Social" of Rousseau. — Oppenheimer

    What Rousseau actually said:

    The first man who, after enclosing a piece of land, got the idea of saying This is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society.Rousseau

    This view moves the beginning of "abstraction" to a period considerably antecedent to the one you propose.
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics
    I relate to the grocer when I go to the market, for example. This is what I meant by "history", I think, the culmination of our interactions with one another. That is the extent of our relationship.NOS4A2

    There is the language you use to interact. Where does that fit into your theory?
  • A Wittgenstein Commentary
    From the IEP article on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein has been described as a Linguistic Idealist, where language is the ultimate reality and as an Anti-Realist, someone who cannot get outside their own language in order to compare what is in their language with what is in the world.RussellA

    That is precisely incorrect. Consider the following:

    182. The grammar of "to fit", "to be able", and "to understand". (Exercises: (i) When is a cylinder C said to fit into a hollow cylinder H? Only while C is stuck into H? (2) Sometimes we say that C ceased to fit into H at such-and-such a time. What criteria are used in such a case for its having happened at that time? (3) What does one regard as criteria for a body's having changed its weight at a particular time if it was not actually on the balance at that time? (4) Yesterday I knew the poem by heart; today I no longer know it. In what kind of case does it make sense to ask: "When did I stop knowing it?" (5) Someone asks
    me "Can you lift this weight?" I answer "Yes". Now he says "Do it!"—and I can't. In what kind of circumstances would it count as a justification to say "When I answered 'yes' I could do it, only now I can't"?
    The criteria which we accept for 'fitting', 'being able to', 'understanding', are much more complicated than might appear at first sight. That is, the game with these words, their employment in the linguistic intercourse that is carried on by their means, is more involved—the role of these words in our language other—than we are tempted to think.
    (This role is what we need to understand in order to resolve philosophical paradoxes. And hence definitions usually fail to resolve them; and so, a fortiori does the assertion that a word is 'indefinable'.)
    — Philosophical Investigations

    I can understand Augustine's position that we can discover the correct sequence of words by observing the world, and finding a correspondence between the words and objects in the world.RussellA

    To which Wittgenstein's first comment upon was:

    Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word. If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair",
    "bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself. Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.——It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.——"But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?"——Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere. But what is the meaning of the word "five"?—No such thing was in question here, only how the word "five" is used.
    — PI 1

    The Wiki article can be discarded at the get go.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    One central feature of the Civil War was that the South understood it would have to immediately replace the functions of government after leaving the Union. When MAGA speaks of dissolving the Union, they sound like they will be able to somehow go on as before. National institutions, Federal Courts, Medicaid, National funding for education, health, social security, disaster relief, and the rest will somehow continue without a thought given to the matter.

    The complacency is what frightens me.
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics

    You call for an individualist autonomy that would dismantle the State, as such.

    You defend Trump as a victim of the Deep State.

    A Trump administration will not give you the first condition. On the contrary, it will give certain groups more power to exert control over legislation and executive prerogative.

    So, how do you harmonize the two projects?
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics

    How are those two intentions connected in your mind?

    I have asked this question a number of times and you have ignored it.
  • Sartre's Interpretation of the Cartesian Cogito

    I think that Sartre tries to address your point by the following distinction:

    We may therefore formulate our thesis: transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity. It determines its existence at each instant, without our being able to conceive anything before it. Thus each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihiio. Not a new arrangement, but a new existence. There is something distressing for each of us, to catch in the act this tireless creation existence of which we are not the creators. At this level man has the impression of ceaselessly escaping from himself, of overflowing himself, of being surprised by riches which are always unexpected. And once more it is an unconscious from which he demands an account of this surpassing of the me by consciousness. Indeed, the me can do nothing to this spontaneity, for will is an object which constitutes itself for and by this spontaneity. The will directs itself upon states, upon emotions, or upon things, but it never turns back upon consciousness. — Transcendence of the Ego, Sartre, Conclusions, translated by Kirkpatrick and Williams

    This matter of creation at each instance plays a prominent role in Descartes' Meditations as the activity of God. But in this passage, it is presented as an unsurpassable limit of experience.
  • The Problem of Universals, Abstract Objects, and Generalizations in Politics
    One can be confident that when someone speaks of “common ownership” or “public control” of this or that, the political subject in his mind is invariably some kind of association or group, maybe society writ large, but in every case an idea without any particular referent.NOS4A2

    By this measure, do you object to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court whereby corporations came to have the same rights as individual persons?
  • Crito: reading

    The review of the Divine Sign book review is very interesting. It strikes me that the question of the daimonion is a looking glass for different approaches to Plato as a whole.

    One example of that in the review is:

    Thus when Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith refute Gregory Vlastos's reductionist reading of the divine sign -- the voice as a rational hunch -- they are helping to bring a suppressed side of Socrates back into the picture. Socrates' experience was genuinely religious -- which as Brickhouse and Smith also point out does not make it irrational. — Book review

    This expresses a problem I have with Vlastos' method in general, where analysis can make all matters into either/or conditions. Wrestling with either/or conditions in reference to the divine has also been a large component of the discussions in your OPs on Plato. In reading Crito, how to understand 'intuition' is a question when you observed:

    His daemon, however, does not provide any reasons when warning him against doing something.Fooloso4
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    He didn't say it to particular people in real time but just a general statement as policy. I mentioned examples of the lack.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    And in the case of 1/6, he expressed his love for them once he got around to telling them to go home.

    Then there are the regular predictions that violence will break out if the trials continue.

    The message for peace and lawful behavior is having trouble breaking through.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    That general denunciation you linked to does not cancel all the times he avoided calling out specific people. The "good people on all sides" statement at Charlottsville did not mention the neo-Nazis , the "stand back but "stand by" message to the Proud Boys at the debate, the hours of silence on 1/6, etcetera.

    You approved of the violent rhetoric at rallies as justified by the circumstances. I am sure you can justify anything you like.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Back in 2015 and 2016, a number of posters on Red State and sites of the Bannon variety boasted of using their participation on "liberal" sites to hone their rhetoric in other places. That chatter shut down when they realized anybody could fake whatever screen being thrown up to participate in the discussion. Ancient history, almost.

    TPF could be a resource for that sort of thing. Questioning what is 'politization' may impoverish the efforts.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The decision to deny Meadow's move to be heard in a Federal Court is made on the prerogatives of the State Court.

    The Hatch Act finally appears from the shadows.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    I agree.
    I am also interested in how the agents in play in these scenarios are connected or not to politics as the means of creating law and policy as means to ends. The persecution of Trump as a self-sufficient universe unrelated to the issues confronting us.
  • Crito: reading

    The following picture drawn by Socrates captures some of the tension symbolized through gender roles:

    203B ‘The story is somewhat lengthy but I will tell you nevertheless,’ she replied. ‘When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a feast, and among them was Resource, the son of Cunning. Once they had dined, Poverty arrived, begging as she usually did at such festivities, and she hung about the doorways. Resource was drunk on nectar – indeed there was no wine in those days – so he went out into the garden of Zeus, was overcome with heaviness and fell asleep. Now Poverty, because she herself was devoid of resource, contriving to have a child by Resource, lies down 203C beside him, thus conceiving Love. That is why Love is also a follower and attendant of Aphrodite. Begotten at her birthday festivities, he is a lover by nature, drawn to beauty because Aphrodite is beautiful.

    ‘Now, since Love is the son of Resource and Poverty, he finds himself in the following circumstances. Firstly, he is always poor and far from being delicate and beautiful as so many people believe; rather he is hard, squalid, 203D barefoot and homeless, always sleeping on the ground without covers, lying in the open air in doorways or on the streets, possessed of his mother’s nature, dwelling ever alongside lack. Then again, because of his father, he has designs upon anything beautiful and good; he is courageous, energetic and intense, a formidable hunter, always devising some schemes. He desires understanding and is resourceful in obtaining it. He is a life-long lover of wisdom,[45] a clever enchanter, sorcerer, and sophist, by nature neither immortal 203E nor mortal. Rather, on the self-same day he thrives and is alive at one moment whenever he is well-resourced, but the next moment he is dying; yet he comes back to life again because of his father’s nature. Whatever resources he obtains are constantly slipping away, and so he is neither devoid of resources nor wealthy, and what is more he is midway between wisdom and ignorance.
    Symposium, 203b, translated by Horan

    This view puts Socrates turning down the wealth of Crito as a resource into a certain light. It does not fix the kind of poverty that has befallen Socrates.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    Germany: Well, that’s not the case sir. There are things that you guys are entitled to get. And there’s things that under the law, we are not allowed to give out.

    Trump: Well, you have to. Well, under the law you’re not allowed to give faulty election results, OK? You’re not allowed to do that. And that’s what you done. This is a faulty election result. And honestly, this should go very fast. You should meet tomorrow because you have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam. And because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected. Really respected, if this thing could be straightened out before the election. You have a big election coming up on Tuesday.
    Phone Call
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    Your comment about "Trump supporters" prompts me to ask you again why you support the man.

    What has he done or will do for you and what do you care about?
  • Crito: reading
    But the challenge is even more acute for an ideology that aims to destroy the existing social order without any plan for an alternative, which I think fairly describes the average leftist perspective.frank

    Who do you include in this description?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    I think the interference with State processes and officials by agents outside of the State helps establish intent since other possible reasons are difficult to imagine. Like Meadows happening to be in town to visit the recount efforts. Or local election officials being defamed by Powell and Giuliani.

    The situation would be very different in a system not shaped so profoundly by federalism.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    It sounds like you are treating John Durham's last efforts as Special Counsel as conclusive proof of a plot to smear the Trump campaign. Years of investigation did point to some unprofessional behavior but not prove or strongly suggest the sort of organized plot as advertised at its inception.

    Your language of:
    conspiracy theory that Russia stole an electionNOS4A2
    does not fit with the conspiracies you promote because Russia did try to influence the election result. This was acknowledged by the Republicans at the time. The question of the Mueller probe was whether the Trump team was coordinating their efforts with Russia to that end.
    Mueller concluded he could not prove that happened but could not rule it out because of the obstructions his investigation encountered. At his last congressional hearing, Durham admitted ignorance of many aspects of that case. It was not a good look for your team. Whoever that is.

    The problem of proving organized behavior Is one of the interesting aspects of the Georgia charges. Having the indictment be a RICO offense puts all of these questions of 'organized' behavior as the matter needed to be proved.

    If the RICO angle is a fabrication, presented in a court of law, your desire to defend Trump should have its best chance here, where the coordination of agents is the case, as such.
  • Crito: reading

    The surrounding of a city seems to be bound up with what it is. The in between places are the premise of many wars. Outside the boundaries, as it is often described, is either a material claim or an existential struggle as Hegel described.
  • Currently Reading
    Essays upon Actions and Events by Donald Davidson. The collection with Quine rebuttals in the appendices.

    The work is early in comparison to later discussions found in academia. I am finding it very helpful because it presents his distinctions as they occurred to him.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I don't know whether he is a rapist or not. But surely your past and present presidents were capable of other terrible things if not worse than rape.Hailey

    True, that. But the terms of defending a crime are not equal to whether one has kept faith with a sworn promise.

    For instance, I take the vow of matrimony very seriously and view those who are adulterous as less trustworthy after finding out about it. This, of course, does not mean that such behavior is equal to betraying the promises to fulfill and protect the Constitution. The matter of public promises and personal trust do become entangled when self-interest is measured against serving a commonwealth.

    The question of corruption is usually framed in terms of how much self-interest overtakes the purpose of serving as a public official or the interests of an enterprise. The Tyrant, in the Platonic Dialogues, is the one who uses the appearance of providing justice as a glove to hide their true end to further themselves above all others.

    McConnel did not have the courage to face this problem as provided by the Constitution for this very purpose. I remember my grandfather complaining about the judicial system being blamed for the results of other institutions failing to do their jobs.
  • A question for Christians

    The Catholic and Orthodox churches. Having an Emperor crawl for forgiveness in order to rule.
    The Crusades.
    The elimination of 'heresies' wiping out entire communities.
    The agreements to have states be designated as having their religion be determined by what the rulers believed.
    That sort of thing.