If your objective it to make me remove Kirk from the Saint list, I never put him there, but if it's to have some understanding for those who felt a fleeting sense of joy at his having been shot in the neck, you'll be wasting your time. — Hanover

You said he represented views that might be distasteful to the left. I think it was a little worse than that. He openly disagreed with the principle of separation of church and state, he advocated Christian nationalism, and he embraced the replacement conspiracy theory.

I agree his assassination was a terrible thing, for a variety of reasons. And I'm sure there are evil Jews in the world, but when a person is found to have rambled on about that from a stage in front of crowds of people, a little blip ought to appear on your Neo-Nazi radar. I'm just saying, stop saying he was just a regular devout Christian. That's not true.

He was not a firebrand and he really didn't spew hatred in the sense that I think some on the left think he did. — Hanover

He was like: 'I love Jews, but they hate white people, they want to destroy them by importing non-whites.'

I think we probably disagree on which direction his boat was eventually going to tip.

..In October 2023, Kirk said on The Charlie Kirk Show that "Jewish donors have been the Number 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border, neoliberal, quasi‑Marxist policies ... This is a beast created by secular Jews, and now it's coming for Jews", and also suggested that these Jews control "not just the colleges; it's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it". Soon after, he said that "Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years."[211] Kirk called on American Jews to stop "subsidizing your own demise by supporting institutions that breed Anti-Semites and endorse genocidal killers".[144]

In November 2023, Kirk said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."[212] He went on to claim "the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors", but said he was glad that some donors were reconsidering.[213] Some Jewish public figures have defended Kirk against accusations of antisemitism, citing his pro-Israel stance. Kirk was funded by some Jewish donors, including Bernard Marcus.[214]

In July 2025, Kirk warned his followers against hatred of Jews, calling it "evil" and "demonic".[215] He was quoted as saying that "no non-Jewish person my age has a longer or clearer record of support for Israel, sympathy with the Jewish people, or opposition to antisemitism than I do".[144] However, Kirk was also accused of antisemitism by multiple people and organizations;[144][212][216] the Anti-Defamation League accused Kirk of creating a "vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists".[144] — Wikipedia, NYT

Have you been paying attention to the same courts I have? — Michael

I'm saying we aren't at dictatorship yet. What's happening now is we're all getting used to the ideas associated with it, like censorship, domestic use of the military, rigged elections. Going forward, nothing could stand in the way except the courts. If the courts go under, it's over.

I think right now the only thing that stand between us and dictatorship is the courts.

I think JTB is a characterization of internalism..

"That is a prime number" is true (or false) regardless of what John thinks about it. The question is, How confident can he be that he knows which is which? — J

If he read Descartes' Meditations, he would be cautious about knowledge claims. If he asserts things in spite of Descartes, he could say he's secretly prefacing the assertion with "If the Evil Demon isn't tricking me right now, ..."

Under the strongest possible interpretation of truth-conditional semantics (the principle of maximal charity), the meaning of your use of a sentence S refers to the actual cause of your use of S; — sime

John points to the white board, which has the figure 2 written on it. He says, "That is a prime number." We'll call the sentence he uttered S.

The cause of his use of S is a factor in determining the truth conditions. That cause is not the truth conditions, though. Or if it is, how?

On the other hand, if the community gets to decide the truth-maker of your use of S irrespective of whatever caused you to utter S (the principle of minimal charity), then you cannot know that S is true until after you have used S and received feedback. In which case, the truth of S isn't a quality of your mental state when you used S. — sime

"Truth-maker of your use of S" doesn't make sense to me. What are you talking about?

The problem wasn't what Kimmel said. The problem was that he didn't have anyone on his show to provide an alternate view or argument to what he said. — Harry Hindu

I think the real problem is that ratings are down for all the late night talk shows. They're a vestige. Colbert's show was losing money. In order to be provocative, you have to have a fort from which to shoot.

That's one of those vacuous merely logical possibilities that are best ignored, because even in the unlikely event that it were true (which we could never know) it would be a difference that makes no difference. — Janus

Ah, the sound of intellectual impotence. It's uninteresting. It's unimportant. It's irrelevant. Why in the name of John Locke should I be concerned about what you find to be uninteresting?

A. a belief merely refers to the coexistence of a believer's mental state and an external truth-maker, — sime

Did you mean correspondence? I don't see what coexistence does there.

No belief is an island. Any particular belief implies a web of associated propositional attitudes, much of which is worldview, the present generation's heritage. Being wrong involves miscalculation, misinformation, misconception. What's wrong with that account?

See what I mean?

Anybody else notice that Charlie Kirk's face was too small for his head?

OK. But if you say we don't know, you are suggesting that if certain things happened, you would know. What might those be? — Ludwig V

I don't think we have any criteria for determining what's real and what isn't in the philosophical sense. It's interesting to consider that this might be a dream or some kind of collective construct.

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin:
— frank
What's the evidence that it is? — Ludwig V

I didn't say that it is, just that it could be. We don't know.

So this may be a collective dream. We don't know.
— frank
I don't think it is a question of whether it is or is not a collective dream, but of how one chooses to think about it or how one decides to approach and cope with the reality we experience. — Ludwig V

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin:

I'm more a positive nihilist. A sad nihilist is trying, but failing to accept life on its terms.
— frank

A vestige of science's physicalism, which kills the soul. Defining the world according to empirical discovery (which usually carries with it a philosophy of foundational physicalism) is such bad thinking. Hard to imagine taking it seriously. — Constance

I'm not sure what you're talking about. My baseline view is Neoplatonic, not physicalist, although I think one ontology is as good as another.

but it does suggest that our ordinary tests are pragmatic rather than metaphysical. — Truth Seeker

:up: So this may be a collective dream. We don't know.

There's no criteria for testing which of your experiences are of something real and which are false, for instance, drug induced, right?

Maybe the first idea was money. Not bartering items, but coinage. It's a blank space that can be filled with a thousand things of value, so it's value itself, in the abstract. As you say, value is part of a web of ideas, some directly opposing and some kin, but different. No idea is an island. They always belong to a web, so it takes only one idea to establish all ideas.

You can only put off becoming fascist for so long until BAM! You're there. Deal with it.

You are full of surprises Frank. I took you for a cynic, a nihilist. — Constance

I'm more a positive nihilist. A sad nihilist is trying, but failing to accept life on its terms.

identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. — NY Times

The only people who believe there are organizations that would fund violence against conservatives are people like Kirk, who believed Jews are attempting to eliminate all white people by importing non-whites. So it appears the cabinet is being motivated by conspiracy theories, to no one's surprise.

See Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith in Fear and Trembling. — Constance

I have passages of that memorized. One of my favorites.

I think JTB is intended as a test for knowledge — J

I think it's just meant to express what we mean by know, especially if we're knowledge internalists, which means we believe knowledge requires access to justification. A knowledge externalist doesn't require that.

So if we say Bill knows that Carrie was written by Stephen King, it's implied that the proposition is true. We aren't worried about how we know it's true.

I don't see how it matters what we call it.

. I cannot know false propositions a priori. — sime

What does it mean to know a false proposition?

Jon Stewart
https://youtube.com/shorts/OvjsN7h1Zc8?si=ZdYk_0Rt6e0To95o

Yep. But isn't satisfaction fleeting? Pain endures, the pain of guilt, the pain of regret, the pain of resentment, the pain of longing for forgiveness.

Once the pain is gone, the mind wanders to find the next problem to solve. Pure, eternal satisfaction is the end of all quests. It's the end of the life of the mind.

Life is pain, satisfaction is death. More Schopenhauer.

These are negative. What about wonder, happiness, love, hagen dazs, Debussy, — Constance

I said engine of emotion. For that, you need emotional wounds. That's what morality is all about.

We need to clone that guy. He's amazing.

Sacrifices have to be made apparently.

I've noticed that everyone around me is happy Kirk is dead, not happy that people are going around shooting each other, just happy one jackass is gone.

If all it led to was something like what you say that'd be evil.

But that's not what happened. — Moliere

There was no massive retaliation from whites because there was no violence from blacks. You see, this is what's missed when you advocate violence: that it never ends with one event. It just goes on and on.

From my perspective he already accomplished many things, and died in that pursuit. — Moliere

He wouldn't have accomplished anything by instigating violence, other than to have numerous lynched black men in his wake, lynching involves torture, with a preoccupation with genitalia, burning, shooting, and hanging, all to the same bloody pulp of a human. That's what Malcolm X would have accomplished by making white people more afraid than they already were.

It sounds like your concern is primarily political.
— frank

Yes. — Moliere

We have different priorities. Politics doesn't mean much to me. People's lives do, whether it's one person or 9 million. I realize you care about people too, it's just it's the politics that motivates you to speak.

And Malcolm X was full of shit. He wouldn't have accomplished anything but to get a bunch of black people killed.

The reason Gaza "sticks in my craw" is because I went to a conference and spoke to various Palestinians there. I did this because I had a friend from Gaza and he suggested I go. I looked into the history and am basically on the Palestinian side in terms of rights, such as the right of return, though these things are so far off the table due to what Israel has done.

Now if Israel happened to be manufacturing their own weapons on their own soil by their own means it'd be just another genocide -- but it's a genocide the country I live in supports. Not in a small way either.

So the answer to your first question is "yes", but "political scene" denigrates the efforts of people in the United States who have pushed for non-violent change even in the face of genocide. Truly moral giants to my mind. BDS is such a movement, and the US equates it with "Hamas" — Moliere

It sounds like your concern is primarily political.

Did Nietzsche come to terms with our potential for horror? I'm not sure. If so, that's a shame that that's all we could come up with is an eternal return to the same. — Moliere

:meh:

There's a big difference here -- I'm not looking to honor death, since there is nothing to honor there. Remembering death is worthwhile insofar that we can prevent death. There may be other valences, spiritual respect and such. — Moliere

You like that word "valence" don't you? :grin: There's a big valence band around the whole nucleus of the situation.

The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.

Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia. — Moliere

I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works?

Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return.

Also, Israel won't be there for long. In 2100, the only livable areas will be right on the coast. Soon after that, the final diaspora will take place silently. Only historians will know about Israel.

Like asking what if Christianity were actually true. Nothing woudl change, one would still do one's laundry, cook dinner, go to work, but the whole thing would be deeply meaningful. Physical death would still be imminent, pending, inexorable. But then, a human being never was a physical thing...was it? — Constance

I'm all for that. I think guilt and condemnation are the central engine of emotion in human life. It's incredibly powerful stuff. If finding a moral foundation helps finding a way into it, good.

If being distressed about Palestine leads to bloodlust for conservative assholes, it's probably time for a therapist and some meds.

So, yes, like a jellyfish floating inside the skull. — MoK

Ok.