It is important to consider and give a response. I need to take some time to make it more than an emotional reaction. I am presently fixing a hole where the rain gets in.

I hear you, friend of mine.

Women. losing rights by changes in law. The U.S. is suddenly the new Tehran.

If you look back on the comments, there is much litigation of the past but very little hope for a future. He could be making fun of trump or serving him.

That is why he is still around.

Edit to add: Too speculative and ad hominem.

Nice. I resemble that remark.

From here he makes a radical statement that only plays out through the rest of the book. “I can give you no agent who thinks.” (p.6) This seems speculative at this point (and needlessly provocative), and I take it to mean so far that if there is no casual scientific mechanism, then it is the (“external”) judgment of thought that matters, not its agent (though this belies responsibility). — Antony Nickles

I think the key point is that giving to us an 'agent who thinks' is standing on the outside trying to look in:

We are most strongly tempted to think that here are things hidden, something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into. And yet nothing of the sort is the case. — Blue Book, page 6

Science does try to uncover what is hidden but Wittgenstein sees his enterprise differently. The problem of describing the agent while being that agent is prominent in the Tractatus:

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?
You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye.
And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. — Tractatus, 5.633

In the Blue Book, Wittgenstein abandons the explanatory éclat of Tractatus but there is a bridge between the two. He goes from saying this:

There is no a priori order of things.
Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality coordinated with it.
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way.
What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it. — Tractatus, 5.64

to talking about the "craving for generality" The fifth example he gives is:

Our craving for generality has another main source: our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization.
Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive'. (Think of such questions as "Are there sense data?" and ask: What method is there of determining this? Introspection?) — Blue Book, page 18

This is all in aid of my saying Wittgenstein is inverting the perspective of Kant and Hume in how he talks about what is immediately given as 'internal' versus 'external'. Their versions of solipsism do not lead to sentences like: "The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality coordinated with it."

What I liked about Selzer is that she refused to speculate how her method would work in other States. Her groove was "try it and see what you find."

Quite nerve racking honestly... — Manuel

It reminds me of that time in High School when I was an unwarned participant of a game of chicken on a street out West as a passenger in a rusty Impala...

He then flat out claims that what gives life to a sign is not us, but a system of signs. — Antony Nickles

People using signs are alive. They give life to the signs through their use. Wittgenstein recognizes that a process must be happening organically that makes thinking, speaking, and listening possible but sees his work as something entirely different from investigating that:

We may find that such a mind-model would have to be very complicated and intricate in order to explain the observed mental activities; and on this ground we might call the mind a queer kind of medium. But this aspect of the mind does not interest us. The problems which it may set are psychological problems, and the method of their solution is that of natural science.

Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us. And when we are worried about the nature of thinking, the puzzlement which we wrongly interpret to be one about the nature of a medium is a puzzlement caused by the mystifying use of our language. This kind of mistake recurs again and again in philosophy; e.g. when we are puzzled about the nature of time, when time seems to us a queer thing. We are most strongly tempted to think that here are things hidden, something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into. And yet nothing of the sort is the case. It is not new facts about time which we want to know. All the facts that concern us lie open before us. But it is the use of the substantive "time" which mystifies us. If we look into the grammar of that word, we shall feel that it is no less astounding that man should have conceived of a deity of time than it would be to conceive of a deity of negation or disjunction — Blue Book, page 6

That is a bold statement that separates his interests from the skepticism of Hume considered by Kant. Perhaps those different agendas cannot be completely separated as Wittgenstein put forth. It would be a mistake, however, to ignore his efforts to do just that.

So, a guy asks you to imagine having sex with a porn star. But he becomes appalled that you thought he was thinking of ejaculating upon her.

But wait!

He meant to say that the porn star would not be so saucy if she had gone to Vietnam.

It is odd that the Trump campaign went to New Mexico. They have many ethnic divides but nothing a flyby gringo could capitalize upon. The place is nothing like Arizona or Texas.

And there is the gnashing of their teeth and the lamentations of their women to hope for.

A thread of humiliation weaves the bromance into a single hair shirt.

The support for Trump extends far beyond the man himself—it's that people want to see a peevish, arrogant, and nakedly contemptuous pseudo-aristocracy punished for its abuses, and re-electing the Orange Man is clearly THE most effective way to do it. — Chisholm

That's the Bannon message in a nutshell. The joke will be on those people when their fortunes decline further through the expansion of monied interests at their expense. I wonder if the pain inflicted upon some of their neighbors will be a sufficient return on their investment.

The Libertarians of past generations have given way to billionaires swapping spit with a group who promises authoritative solutions to political problems. As Carlson said at a recent rally, Daddy is coming home to spank the bad little girl.

Just wanted to acknowledge the congressional element of your observation. A group who has voted reliably is suddenly in play.

The Tiki torch crowd will shake their burning sticks no matter what is said. The thing about saying this in NYC is the long history of the people from Puerta Rico in the city. What I have learned from working with many of them is that they are closely networked with their relatives here in the States and back on the Island. I also learned that many are conservative in their views. Here is a guy who puts those elements into focus:

Agreed. There is a strong conservative interest in those groups who vote for their perceived interests even if it aligns them with people they otherwise do not like. They can tear down a tent as quickly make one.

Having one of the speakers of the MSG rally held last night joke that Puerto Rico is garbage is going to piss off people on both sides of the political divide. The campaign seems to have forgotten where the hell they were.

I don't want to make light of the peril of another Trump administration. I am only saying that the most dangerous parts go well beyond a particular person and their intentions.

I take a less apocalyptic view. I survived Covid when Trump was talking about quack cures and the power of bleach. One has to only listen to him speak for ten minutes now to learn that he is less than the ignorant person he was back then.

So, it would really suck if he were elected. It is the people around him who would use that for their advantage that is the more present danger. He is the El Cid riding the horse into battle after passing away.

Your take of his persona is odd for me to hear.

I have been working in construction for almost 40 years in NYC. He has long been the client you do not want to have. He makes deals to burn them. I worked for outfits that made similar deals with similar people. I never got paid fully from them. Pour Champaigne on me twice, shame on me.

Of course it is a business. They serve their market just as the Washington Times serves theirs. If it was a matter of only the marketplace, the paper would not suffer for declining to endorse. If we are to believe the narrative, Bezos does not want to be on the enemy list if Trump wins. That too, can be a financial decision but a different calculation than maximizing profit.

Another big news organization in chaos from big money pulling for Trump:

I am not sure how to talk about these different experiences in a modern context.

In the Republic, the most repeated ratio is the individual soul being the measure of what happens in a City.

Socrates becomes a voice in the City like his internal voice works on himself.

The 'moral panic' language can be found on Fox, Washington Times, Breitbart, and Red State.

The sources for the 1/6 action at the Capitol being engineered by the deep state is less available. Like his master, Nos for a two cannot be fact checked.

According to Kelly, Trump did not believe him when he pointed out that some of Hitler's generals tried to kill him. I am sure you are right about the image of success.

Trump's real problem is that the Constitution limits the role of the military in our society.

The bleakest work of Russian literature I've read is probably Life and Fate by Grossman. Or maybe it's harrowing, rather than bleak, since it's fundamentally optimistic and non-nihilistic. Anyway, it's great. — Jamal

I get why you say it is non-nihilistic but it changed the shape of my nightmares forever.

John Kelly reports on Trump's approval of Hitler in some respects. The pooper scoopers who follow his every move will probably not pick that one up.

There are many elements to your thesis that require different kinds of responses. I will stick to one question for now:

The principle of sufficient reason was developed by Leibniz a hundred years or more after Spinoza. Which part of Spinoza's argument in his Ethics demonstrates the use of this principle?

There are the accounts of Socrates' daimon giving him warnings. In Phaedo, the voice said he should set poetry to music. Plato shows him as withdrawn from others before going to the party in Symposium. Plato keeps pointing to these personal experiences but does not turn them into a single story. They seem to vary as much as the different myths that are used throughout his works.

That is a contrast to Xenophon who does speak of 'conversations' with a divine agent in his Apology.

As for introducing ‘new divinities,’ how could I be guilty of that merely in asserting that a god’s voice is made manifest to me indicating what I should do? Surely those who take their omens from the cries of birds and the utterances of humans form their judgments on ‘voices.’ Will any one dispute either that thunder utters its ‘voice’ or that it is an omen of the greatest moment? Does not the very priestess who sits on the tripod at Pytho divulge the god’s will through a ‘voice’? But more than that, in regard to the god’s foreknowledge of the future and his forewarning of it to whomever he wishes, these are the same terms, I assert, that all people use and credit. The only difference between them and me is that whereas they call the sources of their forewarning ‘birds,’ ‘utterances,’ ‘chance meetings,’ ‘prophets,’ I call mine a ‘divine’ thing, and I think that in using such a term I am speaking with greater truth and piety than those who ascribe the gods’ power to birds. That I do not lie against the god I have this further proof: I have revealed to many of my friends the counsels which the god has given me, and in no instance has the event shown that I was mistaken.” — Xenophon, Apology, 12, translated by Marchant and Todd

No court reporters at the time so verification of who is closer to what was said is not possible.

I am curious about your age and level of education. What might help one person could be meaningless to another.

Bleak House by Dickens.
A return to fiction after a long hiatus.

Is this a daimonic determination of destiny. A web being spun. — Amity

The role of the daimon is not as clearly set out as the powers that make a life a certain length. The most terrible idea of the spinning thread is that much is determined at birth.

Socrates is presented as receiving instruction from his daimon at particular times. Those moments are not presented as unavoidable fate. It sounds more like thinking for oneself.

My focus remains on where Plato has taken us in Book 10 after showing the poets in a new light. To that end, I am trying to get a better handle on the version of Er that Plato tells. Getting a clear view of the three daughters is difficult because there are other stories than those given by Hesiod who names them with different parents than spoken of in Er. I will keep looking around.

It does seem safe to say that the connection between 'spinning a thread' and mortality was well established in Homer. One example:

Nor shall he meanwhile suffer any evil or harm, until he sets foot upon his own land; but thereafter he shall suffer whatever fate and the dread spinners spun with their thread for him at his birth, when his mother bore him. — Homer, Odessey, Book 7, 193, translated by A. T. Murray

The plural spinners are κλῶθές in Greek. That matches the name of Clotho, the middle sister, in the Er story.

The discussion of Homer translations is interesting. But I need to stay focused on the architecture of mortality and a surprise plumbing malfunction.

It is not clear to me that the relationship is severed at death. Where does it say this in Book 10? — Amity

I will try to put forward a more nuanced response in the coming week. For now, I will make two observations.

In Homer, fate is the timing of a mortal's death. It has a role in the fortunes of the gods but not the absolute closure experienced by mortal life. I think the original idea is important to absorb before looking at how the work got broken up into parts.

In the story of Er, the diamon is chosen/assigned before birth. Its job is to make sure the individual life follows the pattern selected/assigned. If a former human decides to become a hippopotamus, the pattern will differ along with the constraints needed for that life to endure (as long as that life lasts). A different diamon will need to be brought on board to cover the action.

So, what to make of Er in light of these differences is the question for me. I think that likening the three sisters to spinners of thread is to look at mortality as a production. The experiences of the soul are seen through a "mechanism" of life coming into being. The souls may be immortal but the work of each daimon is complete when Atropos cuts the thread. — Paine

I want to take this observation into a new direction. If the relationship between a soul and its daimon is over at the end of each life, that underlines a register of personal experience that does not survive death. This aspect makes the Er story differ from the other mythos Plato puts forward. This makes me wonder if Book 10 is a focus of Aristotle's criticism of Plato's view of nature.

In De Anima, Aristotle rejects the notion that souls can be inserted into just any body. That countervails against the arbitrary power of the Fates in the Er story. It also touches on the mention of the Pythagoreans at the beginning of Book 10, who Aristotle specifically rejects because of their version of metempsychosis.

On the other hand, Aristotle concurs with the Er view of personal mortality when the means of memory are strictly tied to the time when the form of life becomes joined with a particular batch of matter.

Continuing upon the theme of Book 10 as a kind of peace treaty with the poets after struggling against them in the earlier books, Aristophanes shows how common was the idea of visiting the land of the dead as a literary device:

Dionysus and Xanthias: Welcome Charon!

Charon: Who’s for release from cares and troubles? Who’s for the Plain of Oblivion? For Ocnus’ Twinings? The Land of the Cerberians? The buzzards? Taenarum?

Dionysus: Me.

Charon: Hurry aboard.

Dionysus: Where are you headed?

Charon: To the buzzards!

Dionysus: Really?

Charon: Sure, just for you. Now get aboard! — Aristophanes, Frogs, 189, translated by Jeffrey Henderson

What makes the destination 'just for Dionysus' is because he wants to follow the route used by Heracles. The passed over option of "Plain of Oblivion" is the same Greek phrase used by Plato, suggesting he is working with an established story line and combining them with others.

Why would the plain of Lethe be given primacy? — Amity

In regard to our discussion of the meaning of the two different words, I was not arguing for primacy for either term. I was only arguing for a difference. We will have to agree to disagree that there can only be one meaning: per you saying: "I see only one river and one meaning or understanding, given the context."

Why do you use the word 'insistence'? — Amity

My beef with the translators is that a quality of the stream is overlooked in the interest of giving it only one function. The reference to Virgil is to a scene where the river only has the job of wiping the hard drive of mortals:

The souls that throng the flood
Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow’d:
In Lethe’s lake they long oblivion taste,
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past. — Virgil, Aeneid

This view of processing the dead gives the water a role similar to references to the river Styx, a location firmly outside the realm of life. In the context of the story of Er, however, the stream is known in our lives by its effects. In the world of Hesiod, that makes Lethe a relative of Strife, Hardship, Starvation, Pains, Battles, Wars, Murders, Manslaughters, Disputes, Anarchy, Ruin, and Oaths.

We should not forget that in the Phaedrus there is the plain of Aletheia or truth. (248b) — Fooloso4

The mythos of the charioteer does speak of our soul's life beyond this mortal coil but provides a connection to it as well:

“The reason for the great eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that the nutriment appropriate to the best part of soul lies on the meadow 248C there, and the nature of the wing which lifts the soul upwards is nourished by this. And the ordinance of necessity is as follows: any soul that has become a companion to a god and has sight of any of the truths is safe until the next revolution, and if the soul can do this continually, it is always preserved from harm. But whenever it does not see, because it cannot keep up, and is filled with forgetfulness and vice and weighed down through some mischance and sheds its wings on account of the heaviness and falls to the ground, the law decrees that the soul be not implanted 248D in any beastly nature at its first birth. — Phaedrus, 248b, translated by Horan

This story varies sharply from the allotment of Fates depicted in the story of Er. The "plain of Aletheia" is set over against "forgetfulness and vice." This narrative is closer to the one given in Phaedo than Er:

“And if after we have acquired it we have not forgotten it every time, we must always be born with the knowledge and live with the knowledge throughout our lives. For that is what knowing is, the retention of knowledge, without loss, once it has been acquired. For we do refer to forgetting as the loss of knowledge, do we not, Simmias?” 75E

“Entirely so, Socrates, of course,” he replied.

“On the other hand, I presume that if we acquired knowledge before birth and lost it in the process of birth, but later on, by using the senses in this regard, we re-acquired the knowledge we previously possessed, then what we call learning would be a re-acquisition of our own knowledge. And wouldn’t we be right to call this recollection?” — Phaedo, 75d, translated by Horan

So, what to make of Er in light of these differences is the question for me. I think that likening the three sisters to spinners of thread is to look at mortality as a production. The experiences of the soul are seen through a "mechanism" of life coming into being. The souls may be immortal but the work of each daimon is complete when Atropos cuts the thread.

Baier's need to control the message is the message.

However, I'm not clear if there are 2 different Greek words. Or if it is one Greek word with different meanings. — Amity

It is two different Greek words. I meant to say that with my first comment on the passage and now realize that I did not introduce enough background to make that clear. The wiki is correct when it says: "Also known as the Amelēs potamos (river of unmindfulness)"

The name of a river. — Amity

I wonder if this aspect is why the two separate meanings got collapsed into one (by some). The reference to the "plain of Lethe" is not given primacy over the "river of carelessness" in the text. The different meanings are related to their effects. Looking at how the mythology is developed; the mapping of the underworld follows the story of the origins of the quality being described.

I wonder if the insistence of the river with a name comes from poets such as Virgil where the role of Lethe is located in the afterlife (and pre-life) and has no role amongst the living.