But he said you don't need good grammar, philosophy or science in general. Just Jesus. Or at least the plain commonsense that Jesus expressed in saying competition must be tempered by cooperation. The social and ecological organising principle that hierarchy theory captures with mathematical crispness. — apokrisis

In history I'd call this "cherry-picking" -- he says this in some context at some point, but what else did he say? What else did he do?

You might have approved of Prigogine as a person. — apokrisis

We definitely sound like kindred spirits :D

It is worth keeping an open mind and reading on. Your reaction to the term "thermodynamics" maybe because you view science and scientists as it they were some race apart from their worlds. Your lens is the one set to "scientism" as being dialectical to ... its righteous other. — apokrisis

My reaction may be due to this. How would you know, though? I agree that keeping an open mind and reading on is worthwhile.

I think the question is more of a: where does the rubber meet the road? Same sort of question Marx receives. If we start from any thermodynamic paper, how do we get to "ought"?

Were you referencing? — apokrisis

No.

Though any other activist would do the job just as well, and I reached for King because he's familiar and a person who, no matter what we say here, did good things. And in order to do good things, so it seems to me, we must know something about the world.

Whatever King said his actions resulted in various good things, so we must accept that King knew something about social organisms since he had real effects upon them that continue on into this day.

At least, I'd suggest that. And so his writings on how to do things become interesting in light of that fact. They do not include thermodynamics as a base of thought to come from, though.

What was the Enlightenment all about then? — apokrisis

Oh, the easy questions, eh? :D

Maybe I should say: I don't believe, at present, we can science our way into future social organizations, and I'm skeptical of the attempt due to the many attempts thus far.

I'd say the Enlightenment is over. I'm not sure where we're at now, but what could succeed in the Enlightenment as done so and what couldn't could do so again -- but that doesn't mean it's the only philosophical project in town either.

Well exactly. And are you planning to do that individually or collectively? Do you expect it could be done collectively and not hierarchically? Is it some form of evidence here that you can’t even advance anarchism or Marxism as politics that achieve their stated in advance goals?

If one ought not piss oneself does that not require one ensures he/she is not pissing into the wind?

Nature created human social order in its image. How you piss about starts from that thermodynamic foundation. The rest is the unfolding of history as an ever-enlarging and hierarchically complexifying growth project. With its own grumbling chorus of dissent. — apokrisis

To take it back down a few notches of abstraction: Did Martin Luther King begin with thermodynamics? No of course not, but surely he knew something about how social organisms work. Or is everything he wrote and did parochial in the face of the new science?

Heh, I think he paints himself the clown so it's all in good taste. I also like Žižek, though find him frustrating for similar reasons.

And I bet it's even less central to your Doing! — Banno

Well, here's where we can get critical of ourselves and maybe don't realize what it is what we are doing. So the dialectic plays no role in my doing, I'll say, but I go to work and pay my bills and dance around the boss all the same: so the material dialectic would play a role in my doing even if it's not a part of my thinking.

But, I take your point. It's not clear enough to myself to say one way or the other -- I can give some nascent beginnings of an attempt to give clear distinction, but that's about it, so clearly it doesn't play a role in thinking or my conscious doing.

Wittgenstein and Anscombe are lurking in the background here, pointing out that it's the use of our metaphysics that has meaning. — Banno

Heh. So Hegel's metaphysic is a good way to ensure the continuation of philosophy professors? :D (EDIT: I ought say this would be a point in its favor, for me)

Of course. Marx was a decent critic of his times. He took a systems view. He and Engels had their model of Dialectical Materialism.

But diagnosis did not produce the cure. Fukuyama points to the historical evidence that dialectics can't balance things. You need trialectics to achieve that.

After the madness of Stalin, the USSR achieved a stable political formula in having the triadic balance of the Politiburo, Army generals and KGB. An arrangement of power was institutionalised.

So we do know what makes systems work. And it ain't demolishing hierarchies. It is ensuring that hierarchical order does in fact have the two way information flow where top-down constraints exist in balance with bottom-up construction. A society is well balanced when it is a collective of interest groups formed over all scales of its existence. — apokrisis

My view is that you can't science your way into future social organizations -- I think it's the scientific claim of Marx's that fails. Though it describes a pattern we still are contending with fairly well, it's not at present a scientific theory in the sense that it wants to be.

So when I see these sorts of claims it looks to me that you guys are in the same camp: you have the Newtonian Laws of social organisms and from those Laws we can control the direction of development of social organisms. Something like Comte's positivism?

And what social purpose was that existentialism shaped to serve?

At what point did a revolutionary political idea become the basis of modern mass consumerism? The "because you're so individual and special" reason that you deserve a Lamborghini or Rolex?

At what point did it become the justification for neo-liberalism and the worker as entrepreneur?

Counter-culture mutates into mainstream culture to the degree that it fuels the end result – fossil fuel burning and resource consumption. If it is a "good idea" in that sense, it becomes the norm. The new ought. — apokrisis

We can describe norms, but that's not the same as saying which norm we should pursue. The question isn't "What social purpose was that existentialism shaped to serve?" but rather "How shall we shape this existentialism?"

hink about it this way: if you became convinced that all of the Dialectic was in error, would that change your view of what ought be done? — Banno

Oh no. It's not that central to my thinking.

So what is it that dialectic does?

Mostly cause me a headache :D -- it's more that it's so undeniable to Marx's philosophy that it's something I have to contend with and figure out its boundaries in understanding that philosophy. Although I see value in understanding a thinker in his own time on his own grounds even where I disagree with him -- but here it's not clear enough yet for me to agree or disagree, but it's something I like to work out.

Apo, Way and Moli are all attempting to answer the Big Questions with various stories. Much easier to point out the problems with their accounts, — Banno

Heh, I don't mind. Without something to think against the thoughts kind of just drizzle away in the day to day. So pick away.

Your choices may be free - but also likely to fail if your analysis of how is and ought are connected is faulty. The past doesn’t determine the future but it sure as hell constrains it. — apokrisis

I think the question about thermodynamics and value is to ask: How are is and ought connected?

And this also highlights a difference in our approach: I tend to think of these organisms in a historical model, meaning we come to understand them through political practice and study, of course. I'm not averse to description at all. And I'm trying to point out that what you say is pretty much what Marx is on about :D -- wanting to understand how the capitalist machine works through critique in order to supply theory for the movement.

One's freedom of choice is an existential condition more than a political one, I'd say. What position within a social organism you're born within has a lot more to do with the political situation than one's free choices.

For Marx if you're a proletarian then is/ought are connected through the teleology towards communism. It's the revolutionary program which "bounds" the dialectic: which in turn is bounded by the concrete conditions one finds oneself in, and what we are able to do together.

It's this latter part that gets more into the anarchy side. Marx's philosophy is a revolutionary philosophy much in the vein of progressive humanism, but anarchy supplies the positive vision which is at the same time presently practical in a prefigurative way or within collectives.


In order that I might understand ways in which to avoid such endings.

Though "confabulate" isn't the same as "making stuff up" -- if nothing is working then "making stuff up" is a necessity to continue.

In my discussions with fellow semioticians, a dichotomy of dichotomies emerged from this murk. The local~global and the vague~crisp. — apokrisis

Could another set of dichotomies emerge?

What I'm noticing from the primer on hierarchies is that it's a descriptive venture. It's purpose is to model phenomena.

But what if rather than modeling the world we wanted to change it?

Then the question: "To what?" comes up.

That's what the "ought" side of the is/ought distinction is asking.

The description of the hierarchies may be useful to this or that end, but without an end there is no ought, only description.

A bit more on dialectic. A contradiction leads to explosion, as explained. Dialectic bases itself on contradiction, where "opposite sides" lead to a "speculative mode of cognition".

I would like to place some emphasis on the second criticism I offered above, that " even if we supose that dialectic does not breach non-contradiction, the result is not clear."

In Hegel the first moment, of "understanding", gives way to the instability of the second moment, the "negatively rational", and thence to the third moment, the "speculative" or "positively rational".

But somewhat notoriously, what that third moment consist in remains quite undetermined. Just as from a contradiction, anything follows.

This is close to Popper's criticism, that dialectic is unfalsifiable.

In effect dialectic provides the opportunity to invent a just-so story in support of your preferred third moment, by choosing your first and second. But such a method can explain anything, and so ends in explaining nothing. — Banno

This is nice to think against, and I had a thought this morning about just accepting the principle of explosion as an outcome, but one which is somehow bounded by informal rules of practice.

At least, this is how I'd lay out Marx's dialectic, which I think I have a better handle on than Hegel's. The practice is the point so the dialectic continues on, but unlike with Hegel continuing on within the halls of philosopher's concepts forming the Prussian state and on upward towards human Freedom through this dialectic, Marx's dialectical pursuit of freedom occurs in collective practice which "bound" the contradiction from an arbitrary conclusion that the Principle of Explosion would allow. (at least, so the thought goes -- there may be disagreement later on, and the problem then is that there won't be any easy way to deliberate: the practices diverge and inform our ideas, and we diverge in practices so the ideas can be different, or you're not thinking dialectically enough :D )

It may be that the dialectic is not so much an explanation, but as recognition of the collective. I think Hegel is similar there in his emphasis on the community coming to define the self. But with Hegel I believe his motivation is more along the lines of defending an Ideal of Humanity as an agent of Freedom, and through the dialectic of concepts progressing towards this humanistic vision of the future (which surely starts in the Prussian state ;) )

Whereas with Marx Freedom is still the goal -- for all of humanity no less -- but the dialectic is historical.

So one way I think of seperating Hegel from Marx is to say that their domains of evidence are different. For Hegel the domain of evidence are the classic philosophical corpus, Christianity, and the political movements of his time. For Marx the domain of evidence is the records, the balance sheets, the newspapers, the reports from the workers front, and so forth (which is why it can dovetail pretty nicely into modern historiographical methods), with the philosophical influence, of course, to provide the intellectual frame for understanding said evidence.

Where I disagree with Popper is that something needs to be falsifiable in order to be valuable on pain that history is not falsifiable, and that this is the only way we understand how science works -- rather than a science of science we understand science contextually, by the records and practices of scientists and this knowledge is transmitted from one generation of scientists to the next even though it's not falsifiable.

I'd hazard that what's being chased after in Hegel and Marx is simply different from what Popper wants.

There is a retrojective argument. For things to be crisply divided then they would have had to have been previously just an undifferentiated potential. A vagueness being the useful term.

Our imaginations do find it hard to picture a vagueness. It is so abstract. It is beyond a nothingness and even beyond the pluripotential that we would call an everythingness. It is more ungraspable as a concept than infinity.

Even Pierce only started to sketch out his logic of vagueness. That is why it excited me as an unfinished project I guess. One very relevant to anyone with an evolutionary and holist perspective on existence and being as open metaphysical questions. — apokrisis

I'm excited for your thoughts on the unfinished product. These are open metaphysical questions; I have no doubt on that. If you could do more than sketch out a logic of vagueness that'd be impressive, and I can see the connections to the perspective -- I think I'm less holist these days, but still on board with evolutionary perspectives.

So the "leap" is : things are individuated, and they can only be so if they were an undifferentiated potential.

Things are Individuated

Therefore, things were an undifferentiated potential.

How do you get to the PNC from there?

The result of contradiction in classical logic is not just vague - it's quite literally anything.

(p ^ ~p)⊃q. From a contradiction, anything goes. That is, if we allow contradiction then everything is both true and false, and we cannot explain anything. There are various systems of paraconsistent logic that accomodate or mitigate explosive results, so I won't rule out some form of dialectic, but I won't rule it in, either. (see what I did there...?) — Banno

:D

Yeah.

I got Marx so I gotta rule it in, in some sense at least, and figure that out. If possible.

As long as they have 2 legs, I'd call them human. Featherless biped and all.

Yes, that's true. But both have their uses in a building. Whether the same proposition can be a hinge and a foundation is hard to say. We could perhaps say that the same proposition might be used as a hinge in one context and a foundation in another. But not, I think, at the same time. Case studies would be interesting. — Ludwig V

I agree with holding to the metaphor -- the hinge is easy to replace, or even switch over, but the foundations we build upon -- whether they be river-beds or mountains, geological timescales don't care about the chemical distinction between solid and liquid and air -- are the sorts of things we identify as "OK I don't think I can pull that bit out yet" -- though, to continue the metaphor still, there are houses that are taken across the highway which gets us into Capital volume 3 and . . . :D

The result is mathematically clear. Reciprocals and inverses are pretty easy to understand as approaches to mutually complementary limits of being. A dialectical “othering”.

The dialectic doesn’t have to worry about breaching the PNC. It is how the PNC is itself formed. It is the division of the vague on its way to becoming the holism that is the general - the synthesis following the symmetry-breaking. — apokrisis

The part here that I'd like to better understand -- and is part of why I find Hegel frustrating -- is the "leap" from prior-to-PNC to PNC, or some variation thereof.

Basically I agree that the dialectic doesn't have "to worry" about the PNC in the sense that it's philosophically legitimate. But I'd like that "doesn't have to worry" spelled out more such that I can say how it avoids the principle of explosion.

That's where I get stuck still.

Ah ok in that case I'm just being a sensitive-something.

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

In the context of him analyzing a debate: debates turn on fixed points, and foundations are below those fixed points: a hinge can be replaced, but the foundations take time to change.

Heh. Musical theatre is good for entertainment at least :D

It came to mind cuz:

naw this one:

https://youtu.be/rfywkvRq4Ns?si=utbm4wP1Afol_8ed&t=34

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.