• Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2

    Taking that statement as a point of departure, how do you interpret the "good people on both sides remark"? Who are these two sides?

    Do you count yourself as one amongst them?
  • What are you listening to right now?
    A bluegrass band overtakes other genres:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2

    Where did Trump specifically condemn white supremacy? My cousins felt energized by their views not being condemned as what they were (are).
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2

    You celebrate the tough talk in some contexts and deny it means anything in others.

    My cousins who celebrated the violence did not waffle as you do. Following the remarks after the Charlottesville march, they made Trump into their image. The Proud Boys did a similar thing with the "stand down but stand by" remark.

    It seems that you, too, are a receiver of the "real" message and are sure Trump is speaking directly to you.

    Whoever that is.

    ↪GRWelsh

    And then there are the hours spent letting events play out and calling the trespassers heroes when he finally did. And then there are the promises to pardon them all when he gets back in office.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2

    I watched much more than a few soundbites.
    The man can do no wrong in your eyes.
    I can't tell what that vision means for you. You only present him through the lens of his opposition, real or imagined.
  • How to choose what to believe?
    in a world that is ever more dividing, — Hailey

    Compared to what? What little can be stitched together of our mutual past is a story of war followed by war.

    There have been some interesting interludes.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2

    Leaving to the side (for a moment) the 'manufacture of consent' aspect of your defense of Trump, I am curious what you find attractive in his words and actions.

    When he was campaigning for the 2016 election, I became very alarmed at the appeals to violence he expressed during his rallies. That is when the political divides that ran through my family sharpened into bitter conflict rather than us agreeing to disagree as we had before.

    A review of a small sample of similar rhetoric shows what further widened this family divide during Trump's presidency.

    Are these appeals to violence appealing for you?

    You have often expressed distinctly libertarian views. Are you on board with the significant portion of MAGA that seeks to restrict civil rights and educational choices?

    Are you a member of an armed and "well ordered" militia?
  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    ↪Banno

    So, is that to say that you recognize a formal statement in one language but cannot translate it into another?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Wayfarer

    Well, I was a ventriloquist, throwing my voice with that observation. I sincerely hope that certain groups do not get the upper hand restricting rights and access to equal treatment under the law.

    The puppet shows influences who it influences. But it is the survival of institutions that will determine how the next generation will live.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    My sincere hope is that in November 2024 this is resoundingly proven by the election results. — Wayfarer

    Which was the problem of the previous results not being accepted because one can do that if desired. The proof cannot be proven because the forces of evil are just that good.

    It is sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy but with an extra bit of puppet theater where the strings become more important than the movements on stage.

    The Art of the Deal:

  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    ↪SophistiCat

    Thank you.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪180 Proof

    That image certainly captures the arrested development. But the Dorian Gray avatar unveiled at the jailhouse is probably the one E.J. Carroll saw coming through the dressing room door.
  • Philosophical jargon: Supervenience
    ↪frank

    Do you have a link to the essay or a title that can be searched?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I wonder how long he practiced for that? — Echarmion

    Perhaps he is wearing a mask:

    oobeshimi.webp?height=720&v=1685173443

    Or if we follow Oscar Wilde, perhaps he has taken one off.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The photo is much better than the painted portrait purchased through a purported charity a while back.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪neomac

    There are many possibilities and schemes to consider.

    But as that Austrian psychologist once said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪neomac

    A feint as opposed to getting killed?
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    ↪frank

    Understood.
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    ↪frank

    I will let you go first.
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    Yes, I have read it. I was thinking you could represent the argument since it is at the bottom of your OP.
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    So, how to measure that against all the observations that games were played within rules that Wittgenstein described?
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    ↪frank

    Okay. How would you put that view in your own words?
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    To that end I'm collecting a flow chart of the different avenues. I'm not really looking for a deep dive on any particular one — frank
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    I don't know what to make of this place where you are collecting evidence for a particular purpose.
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    1. Pyrrhonism: that Witt believed that all philosophy is nonsense because it can't be about anything of this world. — frank

    This view is odd since the Tractatus keeps referring to "what is the case." The Philosophical Investigations did not abandon this idea but accepted that more consideration was needed than what he included in his initial assertion.

    Witt wanted to abandon philosophy because he knew that it's all nonsense, but he couldn't stop, so the PI is confusing because he was stuck in this struggle when he wrote it. — frank

    There is an effort there to move beyond certain problems, or at a minimum, to ask how we are stuck with particular articulations. But that approach is different from blowing them off as a class of accounts. And thus all the wondering about what distinguishes 'universals' from similarity. If the issue was not important, why draw so much attention to it?
  • Wittgenstein, falseness vs nonsense
    ↪frank

    I took the point of the observation to be that we can deliberately use what is not experienced (for the most part) to imagine a scene that is neither false nor meaningless.

    The sword cuts in two ways. Separating truth from falsehood belongs to some activities but not to others. There is something about this constraint that invites other ways of making sense.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    You continue to make that assumption, though at this point I cannot fathom why. You seem to think that when I use the term "first philosophy" I have a particular historical tradition in mind, despite my constant denials. — Leontiskos

    I did not intend to assert that. We are at cross purposes. I withdraw from the field.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    My thesis is that when first philosophy is abandoned as impossible philosophy has died. — Leontiskos

    It is not speaking in generalities to ask how the "impossible" came about. The matter of the 'history of ideas' I brought up previously was not to argue against any particular claim but to observe that the "abandonment" is typically presented during the advancement of a theory of what is important now. Your position is some version of an historical claim.

    But those arguments take so many forms and argue against others who have starkly different views of history that it seems reasonable to pause before signing the death certificate.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Leontiskos

    The attempt to understand first principles comes from looking at the world as caused, not by the Wily Nilly of converging mythological agents, but through the order we encounter in life. Presuming that some order was involved does not preclude how that is happening or how confident we could be in efforts to explain it. Whether through the indeterminacy expressed by Plato or the role of 'accidental' causes in Aristotle, the adequacy of any model of ruling principles invites what does not fit to the party.

    And yet here we are, centuries later, trying to figure out what distinguishes the 'normative' uses of language from the horizon created through scientific methods.

    What should we call such an enterprise?
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    Today there seems to be no "first philosophy," and therefore we have philosophies rather than philosophy. It's not clear to me that philosophy can prescind from metaphysics without either becoming irrelevant or else transforming itself into something else. — Leontiskos

    Thinking of a single philosophy that 'rules them all' (or something of that kind) is different from the plurality of attempts to arrange the world according to such a rubric. Asking what are "first principles" is not an argument that they exist. For Plato and Aristotle, the arguments against Protagoras and Heraclitus were not over whether events were caused and natural but whether our attempts to learn more about them was a waste of time and virtue.

    Aristotle's practice of reviewing the opinions of his predecessors shows him agreeing with others on some things and opposing them for other reasons. Establishing a point of departure is not a zero-sum game where there can only be one. Making claims opens one up to them.

    The 'scholastic philosophers', however much or less they were devoted to supporting particular theological visions, were also committed to letting arguments vie for the highest place as arguments.

    From that perspective, the 'end of metaphysics' theme is not a result of a natural death but is the result of arguments based upon what that tradition allowed to be considered.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It will be interesting to see if other states move forward with fake elector investigations. If the Georgia case leads to a conviction, the coordination amongst central actors will provide a body of evidence that will permit more effort to be put upon revealing local examples of pressure.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Judge Chutkan says:

    "The more a party makes “inflammatory” statements that could taint a jury pool, she said, “the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly” to ensure a fair trial."

    The carrot is also a stick.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Leontiskos

    I was thinking that the distinction between what Plato marked out as 'philosophical' versus purely 'disputational' went beyond particular theses or method such as Aristotle worked out. The dialectic is not presented as the best path from Alpha to Omega. It is presented as better than the alternatives,.

    Since the topic is whether an activity is relevant or not, the importance of history is put front and center.
    Heidegger is an important part of that discussion because his view of metaphysics is (to some large part) a story of philosophical thought. While very different from Hegel as an understanding of the human condition, the thesis is a claim that we are bounded by historical circumstances, and they can be identified.

    A dialectical response to this claim would question how history is to be understood as a given. Leo Strauss wrote interesting challenges to the idea we know where we are. Here is a bit from Natural Rights and History:

    The primeval notion of "custom" or "way" is split up into the notions of "nature", on the one hand, and "convention," on the other. The distinction between nature and convention, between physis and nomos, is therefore coeval with the discovery of nature.Nature would not have to be discovered if it were not hidden. Hence "nature" is necessarily understood in contradistinction to something else, namely , to that which hides nature in so far as it hides nature. There are scholars who refuse to take "nature" as a term of distinction, because they believe that everything which is , is natural. But they tacitly assume that man knows by nature that there is such a thing as nature or that "nature" is as unproblematic or as obvious as , say, "red — Strauss, Natural Rights and History, page 90
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The conspiracies noted in the indictment claim that efforts were made in many states, coordinated nationally by specific people. These are referred to in the indictment as co-conspirators. Those parts of the charge concern a deliberate effort to build alternative slates of electors outside the view of the legal process and have them being sprung upon the 1/6 proceedings through Pence claiming the right to do that and throwing the votes back to state legislators.

    To that point, the case does not depend upon the intent of the POTUS but to proving whether this planned activity was carried out as planned as evidenced by the words and actions of the operators.

    If the prosecution is able to convince a jury that these are the facts that have to be accepted, then the intent of POTUS is either seen as integral to those actions or an unfortunate misunderstanding of what was done in his name. In that context, what the accused truly believed is not sufficient proof by itself of his degree of involvement. That state of mind can only be presented as likely or unlikely given evidence of his words and actions in a plot to illegally overturn the election results.

    The indictment starts by noting that the accused has the right to lie to people. That obviously includes himself. The argument that he knew better is part of establishing to what degree he was involved in the scheme, not a question of whether the scheme was put into action.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Leontiskos

    With your interest in the text, I would like to add that Socrates seems to be admitting here that his speech has not always been purely philosophical. The use of legendary stories often cut in different directions depending upon how 'contentious' the environment Socrates finds himself in. In Meno, for instance, Socrates is provocative to both Meno and Antyus. The story of anamnesis is presented immediately after Socrates insults Meno:

    Socrates: I know what you mean. Do you realize that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not know what he is to look for.

    Meno: Well, do you think it is a good argument?

    Socrates: No.

    Meno: Can you explain how it fails?

    Socrates: I can. I have heard from men and women who understand the truths of religion....     — Plato, Meno, 81, translated by W.K.C. Guthrie

    This is followed quickly by quoting a Pindar poem regarding the immortality of the soul.

    This response is germane to the topic of the OP. As a matter of rhetoric, is Socrates giving a trick answer to a trick question? It seems clear that he is doing that to some extent, but it is not clear at which point he departs from it as an idea or sees it in other ways. At the same time, his response is not the sort of inquiry demonstrated in the Philebus. We are given a map of 'philosophical' discussion said to have originated from the gods. This passage displays the tension Plato often presents between what is given to us through our ancestors and what can be revealed through inquiry.

    Fast forward to Heidegger and his report that metaphysics is dead. Does this mean the tension brought into view by Plato has been overcome?
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Pantagruel

    Anamnesis, as it relates to forms, is a metaphor for learning but Plato uses others that do not treat objects of knowledge as something we possess already. Consider the use of myth in the following where men learn for the first time:

    Socrates: It is a method quite easy to indicate, but very far from easy to employ. It is indeed the instrument through which every discovery ever made in the sphere of the arts and sciences has been brought to light. Let me describe it for your consideration.

    Protarchus: Please do.

    Socrates: There is a gift of the gods---so at least it seems evident to me---which they let fall from their abode, and it was through Prometheus, or one like him, that it reached mankind, together with a fire exceeding bright. The men of old, who were better than ourselves and dwelt nearer the gods, passed on this gift in the form of a saying. All things, so it ran, that are ever said to be consist of a one and a many, and have in their nature a conjunction of limit and unlimitedness. This then being the ordering of things we ought, they said, whatever it be that we are dealing with, to assume a single form and search for it, for we shall find it there contained; then, if we have laid hold of that, we must go on from one form to look for two, if the case admits of there being , otherwise for three or some other number of forms. And we must do. And we must do the same again with each of the 'ones' thus reached, until we come to see not merely that the one that we started with is a one and an unlimited many, but also just how many it is. But we are not to apply the character of unlimitedness to our plurality until we have discerned the total number of forms the thing in question has intermediate between its one and its unlimited number. It is only then, when we have done that, that we may let each one of all these intermediate forms pass away into the unlimited and cease bothering about them. There then, that is how the gods, as I told you, have committed to us the task of inquiry, of learning, and of teaching one another, but your clever modern man, while making his one----or his many, as the case may b----more quickly or more slowly than is proper, when has got his one proceeds to his unlimited number straightaway, allowing the intermediates to escape him, whereas it is the recognition of those intermediates that makes all the difference between a philosophical and a contentious discussion.     — Plato, Philebus, 16c, translated by R. Hackforth

    Socrates follows this immediately with an example of coming to understand music.

    This method is far from the 'Theory of the Forms' Cornford (and some Neo-Platonists) connect to the picture of Anamnesis.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪RogueAI

    I will try to do better tomorrow.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪RogueAI

    I figure this measure fits into the question of what figures for itself.

    And this question naturally leads into the purposes of rhetoric. When is an argument only for the purposes of convincing people that a particular condition exists or an attempt to think about conditions themselves?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪RogueAI

    Are you agreeing with some kind of judgement unavailable to the rest?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    As negatively I have portrayed his opinions, I think of the 'reasonable' as requiring more of all of us. It should be a register that belittles our efforts.
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