I think he presents the hinge metaphor in the context of analysing a debate - elaborating the idea that the debate turns on a fixed point. I would assume that this only applies to the context of the debate, and that what was a hinge may become a bone of contention in another context. — Ludwig V

I'm being too poetic for the conversation. I'd take your or anyone elses reading over mine -- just some silly thoughts that came to mind.

How about you? — frank

Eh, it doesn't look good, though I doubt that's a surprise since you're asking me :D

I could say who I'd vote for, but since this is a place of truth it doesn't matter who I'd vote for: living in Missouri I already know who I'm voting for regardless of who I vote for.

As democracies do.

I interpret this to mean that bedrock assumptions are like the river bank. They change along with the river itself, but more slowly. — Joshs

That's how I understand them: "hinges" are almost too mechanical for foundations: and in a way hinges can only be placed upon structures build on foundations... hrm. The up-down metaphor

My experience has been that there is a small community of thinkers who grasp the most radical implications of Heidegger and Derrida, and a much larger group that misreads them as similar to writers like Kierkegaard, Sartre and Levinas. — Joshs

If ever you feel the inclination, I'd like to participate in a thread on these distinctions. I cannot claim that the ideas have been assimilated, and -- as a pluralist, always -- I think they ought to be.

I fear being part of:

a much larger group that misreads them as similar to writers like Kierkegaard, Sartre and Levinas. — Joshs

Because these are my guys :D -- tho it may be better for another thread?

I don't think either H or W are regurgitating, but that they've had an influence upon philosophical thinking to a point that anyone whose read philosophy knows these points, even if they are hard to articulate -- especially because they're enigmatic, rather than logically valid.

Not a bad thing, at all. I think the Witti Heidegger comparison holds pretty well, tho I prefer to say Derrida-Wittgenstein is the true duck-rabbit of western-philosophy :D

Wittgenstein's concept of "forms of life" in his later philosophy is infamously vague, despite doing a lot of heavy lifting.

On some views, the relevant "form of life," is something common to all humanity. It is something like "what we all share by virtue of being human and of living in the same world." Advocates of this perspective often pay a lot of attention to Wittgenstein's comments on pain. When it comes to pain, it seems to be our natural expressiveness, something we share with other mammals, that is the scaffolding on which language about pain is built.

However, there is an equally popular view where the "form of life" one belongs to varies by culture. The more "extreme" forms of this view also tend to posit that we cannot "translate between" forms of life. So, when Wittgenstein says "if a lion could talk, we could not understand him," or "we don't understand Chinese gestures any more than Chinese sentences," this is sometimes taken to mean that we cannot simply discover the differences between different forms of life and convert between them. Sometimes this comes out in almost essentialist terms, where a person from another culture is precluded from ever understanding another culture in its own terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The way I think of "form of life" is biological -- which includes the social.

So if a lion could talk then we'd understand the lion because they've decided to pick up the language game: it'd be strange but here they are talking to us. How could I deny the lion if they're saying something I understand?

So biologically we'll be inclined to speak in this or that way, but if another species somehow learns how to talk then I think we'd convert between them, but also we can't specify how "ahead of time" -- it would not be a priori.

His arguments are sufficiently enigmatic that none of them are logically valid as stated, they rely on unarticulated but perpetually unfolding and changing concepts. Honestly he's just like Heidegger. — fdrake

:D

Yeah.

I just brought up climate change because that's the issue that made me start thinking about abandoning democracy. — frank

Sure, and same, given that our current versions of democracy don't seem to be able to address this real problem that we all face.

Vance fits the form of a moral hero that Trump needs: it was a good pick for him, strategically. But the "why not, for real?" is the various connections the Republican party has: Republicans will be anti-labor, no matter the elegies written. Trump already proved this with his presidency.

Vance is growing on me. He's in favor of monarchy. Can you imagine? Think about how easy it would be to do something substantial about climate change if we had a king. Wall St's power could easily be broken. The US becomes hyper isolationist. Let China and Russia do whatever they want. Project 2025? I'm asking why not? For real. — frank

I'm pretty sure that a monarchy arising out of a Trump-Vance presidency-become-king would not result in addressing climate change, or addressing problems of class, or make the US hyper isolationist.

I was told to watch it by all sorts of people but never did. :grimace: — Leontiskos

I recommend it if you're in the mood for a comedy which dances across various philosophical distinctions in constructing a plot, as one does ;)

It's good! check it out!

Yep, and probably also because it is impossible to express all the nuance of certain things. In that case to even try is to show that you don't understand what you're dealing with. — Leontiskos

Yeh.

Though every once and again a bright idea pops up.

well the interesting thing about "the old book" is the presuppositions that are brought to it. I don't wish to reduce the value to those presuppositions, but when a text is approached as sacred or inspired it eo ipso comes to possess an unmatched power to express nuanced ideas, such as parables. — Leontiskos

Heh. I call it "the old book" because I'm not comfortable calling it the good book. But that is part of my presuppositions that I'm bringing to it.

I don't know if it's sacred or inspired, but I definitely see its poetic value -- which in my way of looking at the world is a very high place to put it, though my understanding might disappoint some interpreters.

But the parables are great touchstones I think just by virtue of how the book is treated. In some sense its poetic value is derived from how it's treated, to dovetail with your:

This is something like Kierkegaard's idea that the believer measures himself against the infinite, and for that he stands taller. — Leontiskos

This strikes me as a strawman, but perhaps we can let it stand as a warning. Perhaps you wish to warn, "You may not be doing this, but be sure that you do not do this." This is fine as far as it goes, and I have said similar things:

Truth be told, PDE is an unwieldy principle. There are cases (such as the hysterectomy) where it seems to obviously apply, but it has often been noted that in other cases the principle can be easily abused. Our topsy-turvy discussion in the other thread got at some of the nuance involved.
— Leontiskos

This is the sort of ambiguity that seems to always follow the PDE, namely cases which are hard to decide. So this is in line with the tradition of the PDE, and I think it is good to recognize such limitations.
— Leontiskos — Leontiskos

Yup. We agree there, and that's basically what I mean with the story. It's just an introduction to a thought with a funny conclusion, not an argument or anything of that sort.

A more current but exactly the same example is Chidi from The Good Place :D

Now a parable is able to do what a rational argument could never do, and parables certainly have their place in ethics. Yet as I see it, this parable of yours stands, but only on one foot. In the world of parables, it feels a bit flat and one-dimensional, perhaps because its roots go no further than satire; its target has no more depth than the determinist or monomaniac.

The better parable as I see it is not Buridan's Ass, but Balaam's Ass. At times wisdom will speak through the beast, from the source it is least expected, and it will cut through the rationalizing foolishness of the rider. Granted, there is no good reason why Balaam's Ass cannot speak through Buridan's Beast (and yet we have now left syllogistic).

Lastly, I will point out that lessons and parables and warnings have their place, but of all things they are least helped by repetition. To beat the drum of a parable or a warning again and again does no good, especially if it stands only on one foot. It will tire and collapse, and lose what efficacy it might have had. Confusing the parable for a philosophical example causes it to fall prey to this form of repetition. — Leontiskos

(You often give voice to a tongue that should not be foreign to philosophy but is nevertheless opaque to the analytic philosophy that dominates English-speaking forums like this one. Your style of pacifism is a potent example. I am not averse to speaking in this tongue, but only rarely would I expect it to bear fruit in a place like this. It's hard to speak about parables in a place like this.) — Leontiskos

Thanks that's very high praise :) -- It's all just me working out my own thoughts that I'm willing to share, though, and it's part of what I consider to be in fair trade: I like to read others' thoughts, and so share in kind.

Parables are hard anywhere I think. What makes them difficult is what also makes them attractive. I'm very much attracted to stories, though, because I think they set out nuances better thanwell even though the difficulty is that the nuances aren't specified and there's a certain amount of interpretation that has to go into them.

I agree they cannot be counter-examples or examples, so much as stories which set out an idea. Sometimes that idea can be as powerful as Balaam's Ass. I think that a stronger story than Burridan's, at least :D -- at least for thems who like the old book, which I do when I can use it as a touchstone.

Though maybe the distinction is between the sublime and the humorous? Chidi Anagonye, at least, is a lot of fun to watch, and there's something to him that we can relate to (unlike the ass, since we'd surely not die but make a choice)

I never thought to interpret Balaam's Ass like that, though, which adds an interesting layer: "Get out of your head, dork!" is the kind of message I imagine which unites these. (EDIT: Not that I'd know anything about that... ;) )

That's not how I understand virtue ethics. It's claim is more like that we ought be charitable, we ought be courageous, we ought be forgiving, and that's an end to it; there is no further step to duty, no "because". — Banno

I think this relevant due to

I think in Aristotle there is a "because", but it's based upon roles -- and the only roles he considers as truly eudemon are the politician and the philosopher. (and, in the end, notes how the philosopher is actually better lol)

The bit where I get hesitant is where he considers the slave as having a properly moral place within society, and that the master ought have slaves to direct them towards their good.


EDIT: At least with respect to virtue-ethics that focus upon character to a point where you can have what are almost two types of being among the same species due to one being the ones who say "bar bar bar bar" and the others being clearly virtuous.

I think that I'm getting along with the satire, though?

Basically rationality can't just be reduced to a set of deterministic rules. Though I'll admit I've not read the original text or anything -- it's certainly an example that's been "handed down" to me that I think through as an example that demonstrates how one cannot hold to just one principle or two principles or something along those lines. At one point we may find ourselves in contradiction and if all we do is hold to two contradictory principles we'll do nothing but compute them (if that is our true desire), and die.

Since we fall into contradiction, at least strictly logical determinism is false?

That might be (but actually isn't) an interesting game, but it is no longer chess. Allegedly, rugby was invented when some idiot was supposedly playing football and picked the ball up and ran with it. A few other things had to change before it became a game worth playing.

There is a card game called "52 card pick up", in which the dealer throws all the cards up in the air, and leaves their opponent to pick them up. It's faintly amusing. Once. — unenlightened

I'll admit that that's not my favorite game. And there are only so many times I can play it.

Though what becomes shit was at one point food

Derivative problem. If you are a platonist, you think math is discovered, if you are a nominalist or conceptualist, you think math is invented. — Lionino

Hrm. What's it derived from? "How does math work?" ?

heh. I certainly am murikan, and have no knowledge of the ass/arse distinction lol

Banno's thesis is that maths is invented, not discovered, just as games like chess are. Well then it is very easy to invent some rules for a game or some rules for a mathematics, and there are lots of them. But most are dull or unplayable. — unenlightened

This, though, is the stronger point.

If the King is in check then the other player can swipe away the peices, but this is rude (and so it goes with the other games; the dull and unplayable games seem to proliferate, and the interesting ones are the ones we ought go for)

I think math is probably like chess, but that chess was built upon mathematics: so the metaphor is good, but starts on the wrong side.

A better win might be if we could come up with a new form that was consistent and incomplete, but not isomorphic with arithmetic or something like that. I don't have a better set up that would encourage that, unfortunately. — unenlightened

Me either.

Though I think your insight here is worth preserving:

So the thread itself is badly set up as a game that doesn't have much interest or significance, because posters can, and nearly always do, take the nuclear option and pretend they have "won" — unenlightened

The nuclear option -- contradiction -- is something like the fruit on the tree in paradise?

no worries. I'm not ready to commit to a reading group until I finish my thread on Marx, anyways.

Random posts or convo is where I'm at with Sartre. I'm motivated, but I have other thoughts too :)

Yeah. I think that's true -- and his positivity is often missed because of his brutal honesty.

I mean, I'm like that too :D -- I'm attracted to Sartre for a reason, but I've come to see some limits to his thinking and I continue to think through that.

People can live decent, honorable lives and still be out of touch with what Chuang Tzu, one of the founders of Taoism, calls one's "Te," "virtue," "intrinsic virtuosities." — T Clark

I agree.

Going into a metaphilosophical tangeant:

Sartre follows the virtue of honesty to self and others -- to a fault if you have any other virtue on your list of worthwhile habits.

The waiter can live a decent, honorable life in bad faith. This goes a bit into what I was saying about Sartre earlier, at least with respect to B^N: he's describing a problem and giving a solution to it in the same book. I don't thinkit has anything to do with knowledge or ethics, (Well, it does, but it starts at "ontology" rather than the others is what I mean) though of course that's part of The Background given it's a work of philosophy or rather a work on ontology (or metaphysics -- I reread it a few times and I think I ought to have said "ontology" rather than "metaphysics" -- my head-cannon getting in the way of communicating clearly)

BUT:

Sartre is cruel with himself and thereby cruel to others as well, because it's justified and consistent I suppose.

I like his philosophy for being clear, but I really feel a certain cruelty to it. Hence Levinas, ethics, all that stuff.

And to read Flannel Jesus' posts is to realize that he did not intend the OP in any special sense. I see no evidence that he was specifically speaking about material implication. — Leontiskos

Yeah, looking at OP at least, I can see how there's ambiguity there: whether material implication, or some other meaning, was meant isn't specified in the OP and so whatever meaning was meant there's still ambiguity there (which may explain some of the divergence here that I'm surprised to find)

The part where "A" is used as a variable is what made me jump to propositional logic.

Your points about the difference between two versions of contradiction was interesting and I was thinking about it then got sidetracked in reading the back-and-forth.

Formal logic is parasitic on natural logic, and "logic" does not mean "formal logic," or some system of formal logic. — Leontiskos

Yeah, we agree there. I think @TonesInDeepFreeze does too, given the various caveats they gave in their posts about different forms of logic.

And again we come back to: as long as the people doing philosophy stipulate definitions they agree :D

This forum is populated by all kinds of people, yes. But I would ask you to remember that you're posting in the logic subforum, and "@TonesInDeepFreeze has responded with that in mind: and done so with precision and accuracy, so I'm grateful at least for their help.

"most people's general sense of seeing" -- I mean we all have places we come from and thoughts we start at, but if you walk into the chemistry department and start talking alchemy someone might correct you.

Then surely the sum of any two integers is 0, and we must accept that two rules can be combined and that all can be used more than once

Or we must never reference a previous rule to even your post, and the sum of any two integers is the sum as we understand it from the textbooks.

And, having said this, the first is the assertion, the second the negation, and now I'm wondering -- what's the negation of the negation?

Which antecedents?

I think it's a good story to highlight how we can get into a bind about decisions if all we do is follow some rules in the mode of obedience to them: sometimes the rules tell us to do both things which cannot be done. What is the rule to follow when we find ourselves in contradiction?

If we reject those rules then we won't die -- but it'll take an act of creativity and choice.

Burridan's Ass, at least as I mean to use the story, is meant to highlight how you have to make choices that don't appeal to rules (such as which rule to follow, or what rule to introduce to resolve tensions -- such as when you'll die by following a rule)

EDIT: Also, I ought say: I think it's a good story for highlighting a problem in rationality. That's the real conversation.

On the Ass:

I think it's a good story for introducing a problem to rationality.

The "ass" can be just any decision-maker at all. It's not particular to the animal.

The important bit is that the ass only holds to a few principles or rules in making decisions.

So as wiki points out: the ass dies because the ass holds one principle (eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, and follow the shortest path) that they starve to death. The "ass" is hungry and thirsty and the pile of hay is equidistant, with respect to the ass, as the pool of water.

Or, the example I think of first: if the ass follows the principle "Go to the closest pile of food with the most food" and both piles of hay are equitable, and the ass cannot introduce another principle (here the important bit is that the ass is an animal following a particular code of rationality which cannot be changed -- ie like an animal, in the traditional sense where humans and animals are distinct) then the ass will die while following a particular rendition of rationality.

The problem becomes: insofar that rationality is following rules, how do you introduce new rules? If there is a rule for rules, then it will fall to the same point Burridan's Ass is meant to bring up.

The idea is: Don't be an Ass.

But how to not starve while still being rational?

Yeh, later. And I'm interested, later, in corrections -- it was a thought I had held onto and felt like I ought share.

In some sense, and maybe this is the analytic side in me, I feel like Sartre is doing description more than "how to know" type stuff. After describing the fundamental ontology -- especially given that egos come after being-in-itself/being-for-itself -- we can some to ask how to know.

Or, in another philosophy you can do the opposite -- it's just I think Sartre is starting on the metaphysics side rather than the epistemology side.

The one bit I didn't say earlier is that Being and Nothingness is a work of ontology, but you're asking -- at least what I'd call -- a question about epistemology.

I'm aware enough about B^N that knowledge somehow connects the Being-for-itself to the Being-in-itself, and that it's a materialist philosophy.

But I'm cautious to put it in terms of epistemology because Sartre's work is much more in the vein of ontology as primary to epistemology, and "ontology" here is defined in the phenomenological tradition.

ahhh yup. You're right.

I'll add a link to your post here to the original post.

Eh, I'd say the formal logic is built upon natural language, but we can get by with specification of meaning -- and when the OP is in the Logic sub-forum it makes sense to default to trained logic, especially when it's using the language of "A", like a variable, so it's already abstract and not a natural language construction.

The obligation is disappointment, at that point I think. That is, there is a causal relationship between the obligation and feeling (presuming you wanted the marriage at least). Just because obligations cease to be doesn't mean they never were, right? Changing ones mind doesn't really work when it comes to the truth of a statement: What about obligations makes them different?

Seems to me that the social setting is more important than one's mind: so if you promise something, you're under an obligation because that's how we understand one another and that has causal properties.

Contradiction!

Proof:

The sum of any two integers is zero. — jgill

No two rules can be combined and none can be used more than once. — I like sushi

Rule 1: The sum of any two integers is 0. — Lionino

What does "simply a language issue" mean?

PM'ed my response, and just glad Sartre is coming around as a point of thought on the forums.

I read page 27, tho I'm not sure what to say in response.

All rules prior to this post are not to be followed after this post.

All posts ought to follow the rule: share your favorite (philosopher, artist, food, or quote)

But what is the plan? Beyond being polite and amiable to your fellow human? — apokrisis

I mean, that's at least step 1, yes? If you can't be polite and amiable to your fellow humans, then it's unlikely anything will come of our efforts (though possible, in the case of the smarties out there who luck out)

I'm tempted to go anarchist here and say "Plan?! There is no plan -- only the impulse towards freedom and figuring out how we get there, but together!"

But really I don't mean that.

I'm somehow trying to figure out my own anarcho-marxism, whatever that amounts to. I suppose it's my own dialectic.

He famously stated that "existence precedes essence". As I understand this the very premise Sartre works from is that of atheism. The paperknife is an object created for a purpose, where the purpose is its 'essence'. Humans have no 'essence' because they were not created.

The term object can be attached to a being-for-itself in the realisation of an individual being among other individuals. He terms this as the 'Other'. — I like sushi

The small disagreement I have is I'd sayis that "The paperknife" is more meaningful than "Being-in-itself", at least within my head-cannon right now (I've recently been going back to Sartre)

Yes, Sartre is an atheist. Though I don't think it's a starting premise.

I want to suggest that the free individual could choose to find Hazel Barne's translation online, then discuss it -- Sartre has been coming back to my thoughts a lot recently, and I was very happy to see a thread trying to grapple with him. I've at least read Sartre's introduction and Barne's introduction, with some selections in Being and Nothingness.

I'm excited to see what comes of this.

True.

Maybe that's why it's confusing? It's an implication of two implications, and material implication is already confusing . .. lol see I confused it even in response.

Awwww ... there are minds out there who think like this, and if I'm in the habit I can -- but it's not my normal way.

Is what I get. (EDIT: I made a mistake, as pointed out by )

Since the last column is not all "F" it's not a contradiction, I believe. (though I see I confused myself earlier, looking at the T-table)

Eh, that's a bad reference, just the name that came to mind. Material implication is what I mean.