Coherence is on a continuum and so is understanding. The drunk cab passenger is incoherent but just coherent enough for the driver to understand what he says. Most of the sentences in Finnegan's Wake are incoherent but critics and readers have understood the book to some degree. It's not completely incomprehensible.

Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. — Blake

Means either: you must gratify your desires regardless of the harm you cause to other people.

Or: kill off your evil desires and do not encourage them, however attached you are to them.

My guess is that he intended to cause profound discomfort with this saying. We are left unable to agree or to disagree with it. We are left with an image of a baby that we have somehow been persuaded to strangle for a moral reason that we cannot clearly state. Disturbing and disturbed.

Is there a context where delusion isn't bad? — Varde

E.g. when conceiving the truth will cause you harm. 'Walk towards me very carefully and don't look down'

There's talk here as if beliefs are things in our heads. In a way that's ok, as far as it goes. But it can also be useful to see beliefs as instances of acting as if something is the case. I believe the shop is open although at no time internally or externally do I utter the sentence 'The shop is open' or 'I think the shop's open.' My going to the shop is often enough to evince my belief that it's open. Not always, but often.

True. And circumstances aren't conditions. So, the OP asked about 'circumstantial' which is a bit different. If somebody asks me 'What's 60% of 450?' my first response is: 'It depends who's asking'.

I think all truths are conditional. — Jackson

I'd say that is broadly true, but with some caveats.

And I don't know why that bothers some people — Jackson

It's because they care what you think. The alternative would be them not caring what you think, which would be very discouraging.

Well, kindly justify why...we're allowed to state contradictions? — Agent Smith

I can't believe you asked that question.

In our experience we are, perhaps, directly acquainted with the facts concerning our mental states, but the possibility that experiences are hallucinations proves that we cannot be directly acquainted with the facts concerning physical objects that, beyond our reckoning, may or may not be causes of our experiences. — javi2541997

I have two things to say: one about acquaintance and one about certainty.

I don't think 'impossibility of direct acquaintance' follows from 'possibility of hallucination'. It's possible that I'm hallucinating my cup of coffee. So I cannot be looking at a cup of coffee, as it doesn't exist. It's also possible that I'm not hallucinating. In that case, I'm as directly acquainted with my cup of coffee as I am with anything else I could be said to be directly acquainted with. Or, if I'm not, I need to see additional argument why not. Here is the objection in summary:

It's possible I'm hallucinating my cup.
If hallucinating, no cup.
If no cup, no acquaintance with cup. But also:

It's possible I'm not hallucinating my cup.
If not hallucinating, then cup.
If cup, then acquaintance with cup. Hello, cup.

There's a separate argument about certainty. If it's always possible that I'm hallucinating and it's never possible for me to be certain that I'm not hallucinating then (it's claimed) I can never be certain that I'm not hallucinating my cup. From which it follows (it's claimed) that I can never be certain that I'm looking at the cup. This is a trickier proposition than the first. One approach is to claim that we can no more be 'certain' about some things than we can reasonably doubt them. If I try to doubt, for example, whether I have a body, then it is hard to give sense to that doubt or say what it consists in or what would follow from it. Both doubt and certainty are off limits in such cases and in many others in everyday life.

Another approach - @unenlightened 's above - is to claim that the concept 'hallucination' itself depends upon the possibility of distinguishing hallucination from reality, if not always reliably in our own case then at least in the case of the patients, students, tutors or other victims under our surveillance and care. We may only suppose ourselves to be hallucinating because we know what it would mean to not be hallucinating. And if we know that then the argument undermines itself by invoking a concept to prove that the concept may not be reliably invoked.

No approach will be persuasive to someone who is convinced that everything might be a hallucination. There is no knock-down argument.

I could have tried signing up with the correct spelling — Valued contributer

I think the handle is better as it is. It suggests modesty: the value of your valued contributions will have at least the limitation of not being correctly spelled - and so not always beyond criticism.

True. That would mean my life is worth the relief from unbearable suffering - I will avoid the suffering even if that means foregoing life. But who is the suicide doing that trade with? My point was about money as a means of exchange between individuals - we can trade money and goods. The suicide renounces life, but doesn't trade it with anyone. Nobody else gets his life once he's given it up. Unlike, say, swapping a car for cash.

Life can be traded through our actions — Benj96

Trading an increased risk of death is possible (kidney example). Trading the means of life is possible (water example). Trading someone else's life is possible (assassin example).

Trading my own life is not possible. I can't exchange my life for anything. Being dead puts me beyond the possibility of taking anything in exchange. The value of my life to you (or the health service or any other party) is in that way incomparable with its value to me.

By contrast, I can trade my car, kidney, etc, take something in exchange and enjoy the benefit if I make a good deal.

Diogenes syndrome is a disorder characterized by self-neglect, domestic squalor, apathy, compulsive hoarding of garbage and more importantly lack of shame — Hillary

The Diogenes Plan is characterised by freedom from personal vanity, simplicity in home arrangements, refusal to indulge in displays of emotion, commitment to recycling and saving energy and most importantly indifference to being mocked for any of the above.

I think it is important for companies and governments to do this, despite it seeming unsettling. If someone cannot afford a medical treatment, is society/everyone willing to pay for it? What if it isn't a life saving treatment, but one that will enhance their life or make it happier, or potentially extend it? — Paulm12

I agree. If we refuse to answer those questions explicitly then we will answer them implicitly by how we share out healthcare and other resources.

I think the philosophical problem with putting a monetary 'value' on human life is that money is a medium of exchange for tradable benefits such as goods or services. But life itself is not tradable. Each person's life is of infinite value to them. 'Infinite' here means that no quantity of other benefits can compensate for the loss of a person's life because the possession of life is a necessary condition of that person's enjoying any benefits at all. "What is my life worth to me?" is a quite different question from "What is my life worth to a limited health service?" I think those questions get conflated, which is the source of the unsettling nature of the general idea of a 'value of a human life'.

So therefore, getting something done sooner doesn't mean you're less patient, on the contrary it can mean you're more patient — HardWorker

Your story reminds me of the conversation about becoming a surgeon -

Person: I want to be a surgeon but I think I'm too old to start. I'm 25.
Friend: Well, you still have time.
Person: But it takes eight years. By the time I've done the training I'll be 33!
Friend: True. And if you don't train to be a surgeon, how old will you be then?

People choose to play or not play video games. Perhaps the people who choose to play are those who already possess the skills they need in order to play well. So finding out that they do indeed have those skills will tell us nothing about the effect of the games. It's the problem of 'backwards causation' and self-selection. It comes up in a lot of contexts. People lose weight when they go on a particular programme. Is it effective? It could be that the motivation to go on the programme is just what they need in order to lose weight and they would lose weight with or without the programme.

Any money might be fake, therefore all money is worthless.

In Rothenberg's 'The Excessive Subject' it means the aspects of a person (or a thing or event) that are revealed at later stages and make us re-assess causes and motivations. Rothenberg's example: “Carl smiled as he gently stroked the skin of his lover with the keen edge of a knife.” The last five words of the sentence determine what we think of Carl and how we interpret the scene. 'Excess' suggests spillage, as if a glass has been over-filled and we are now seeing the contents over-running and revealing themselves in a new context. 'Excess' is also connected with 'extimacy', the inner lives that are revealed to others and displayed on the outside (Lacan) . Magritte's L'Homme au Journal can be used as an illustration pre-dating the theory. We are invited to interpret the first panel as a room in which there will be or was no man reading a newspaper - not just an empty room but a room emptied of a specific person - the 'excess' in this case is the whole subject, the man himself.
https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/postales-arte/tc/2019/10/01/21/177953755.jpg?size=720x720

I thought MmeGazelle was a fanatic. I was wrong.

Now I am sure I am talking with one. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

True. Another difference is that MmeGazelle is making clever and insightful points whereas I am just being randomly sarcastic.

England has been playing a 'play-to-lose' version of cricket for several decades. We are world-beaters.

Hands up – who actually read Anscombe's article? — Banno

Hand up. At a slight tangent, it is relevant to the use of statistics in public health. Durkheim studied suicide rates and noticed that whilst each suicide is an individual choice made from personal motives the death rates from suicide in a population are remarkably similar from year to year. The cause of an individual event can be seen differently from the cause of a pattern or rate of such events.

https://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/suicide.html

I don't know whether it qualifies as a paradox. Random coin flips result in a predictable result of ever more approximately equal heads and tails.

A different but related idea is the Prevention Paradox. To reduce the rate of heart attacks in a population the interventions need to apply to the whole population, people at low risk as well as at high risk.

‘Why do some individuals have hypertension?’ is a quite different question from ‘Why do some populations have much hypertension, whilst in others it is rare?’ — G Rose

https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/30/3/427/736897

I award myself beta plus minus for the above. "It is an interesting connection but you did not relate it back to the original article." True. I leave that to others and anyhow I'm supposed to be working.

Read more. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

https://diferenciaslegaleshombremujerenespana.law.blog/

Spain has laws aiming to protect women from domestic violence and sex-trafficking. I read a blog about it. Who knew?

Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? — Eskander

So that we can pretend we are one day going to make the stuff they are showing on the TV cookery programmes, of course. That's why we've always had them.

A four year old and forty year old may be same person, but what is that property? — Jackson

What I'm suggesting in this thread is that we first consider the circumstances in which we ask this question - "When do we ask about a four year old and a forty year old - 'Are these the same person?'" For example, we might see two photos and ask whether they are of the same person. Then let's think about how we go about answering that everyday question. That will tell us what makes them the same person - or makes them different people. For example: "No, I was mistaken - that must be my brother, not me, because I was dark haired and he's blonde."

Having done that we can go back to your question "....what is that property?" .

The answer is that there may be no property and there may be no need to assume that there is or is not any property. We have just succeeded in identifying the two people (or distinguishing them, if they are different) and we have not attributed any particular property in order to do it. We have not mentioned continuity of consciousness or got stuck on the replacement of cells. DNA has not figured in the exercise.

Hair colour did come into the example. Do I therefore propose a theory that personal identity is a function of hair colour? No, that would be absurd as a general theory. And yet it would be perfectly sensible in particular circumstances. What I'm suggesting is that we first look at how we identify and distinguish persons. Otherwise we may be tempted to hunt for some essential property of personhood without first thinking whether such a hunt even makes sense.

Do you thing that’s a good definition of a shoe? — Benj96

Not quite. Horse shoes come in fours and you can't wear them on your feet. The brake shoes on your car cannot be worn at all. Cinderella's shoe was not a physical object - it was a fictional creation. Etcetera.

A good definition is that which describes something discretely, that is to say it doesn’t omit any characteristics about said thing, it perfectly encapsulates the existence of said thing. Nothing is possible for that thing outside of its definition. — Benj96

It seems a natural starting point. If you define 'X' well, then your definition should fit all X's and it will fitf nothing else, only X's. It will state all the necessary and sufficient conditions for being an X. Unfortunately, as with 'shoe', there will be quite limited possibilities for defining anything well in that particular sense of 'well'. But we can still define things well in other ways.

Hume made the argument against identity. — Jackson

If someone had stolen his Treatise manuscript and published it as their own he would have suddenly remembered who Hume was and he would not have forgotten in a hurry or allowed anyone else to claim that his personal identity is an illusion. Also, he knew this. He was not happy with his own theory.

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” — Eliot, The Rock

And for the computer age:

Where is the information we have lost in data?
How the hell did we lose the data?

a group like the Regional Defence Council of Aragon could hold them back. — NOS4A2

I rest my case.

I believe it because I’ve seen it first hand in a local anarchist community. — NOS4A2

Funny place for a rabid right-winger to be hanging out.

It was the Inclosure Acts in England that forced people into the hands of the factory owners, for example. — NOS4A2

Strange example for a 'let me profit from your disadvantage' capitalist to choose.

I think you noticed it too @Isaac:

So if we want our anarchist utopia, how do we get there from here? — Isaac

@Isaac Hmm, yes, there is always that problem with anarchism. It can be self-defeating. Perhaps it always is. I'm sympathetic because I think NOS is exploring an area where bog-standard right wing politics meets radical anarcho-socialism. If we are free, then we are free to exploit and enslave and also free to share and support one another without coercion. So it's philosophy and it's worth a discussion.

....selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him — Winstanley

I might have it wrong but I think this is the spirit of the OP and subsequent debate.

hilarious dick sucking for alleged billionares like Trump — Streetlight

Nah, I don't think it's Trumpism. It's idealised anarchist socialism and I'm glad it's still alive even if only as a dream. The roots are not in industrial capitalism but in rural protest, people like the Diggers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrard_Winstanley.

No rules, no management, no authority, no mechanism, just a community of people engaging in common enterprise on the land they loved. — NOS4A2

Amen. Now let's get back to paying our taxes and keeping the gas pipes open. Or not.

So the answer for "why" things happen the way they do in nature...is ...because they do. — Nickolasgaspar

That was Aristotle's answer to the question 'Why do stones fall downwards rather than upwards?" It's their nature. They are heavy. That's what heavy things do. But it turned out that there are better answers and that it's not such a dumb question. On the other hand, there are dumb questions. Sorting out the insightful from the fatuous is not so easy and cannot be done with a broad sweep of response.

I guess the OP wants a humanistic answer. — javi2541997

Guessing has to be a bit wild in this context, as the OP gives us not many clues, but you may be right. I will start with "We are the people who, when our rent is owed, owe it." I'm thinking of an example where the landlord asks for the rent and we respond with the statement "But you have not defined who 'I' am and who 'you' really are. Without that, there is no owing or being owed." The landlord (being a philosopher) will reply that we already know who we both are because we are both engaged in a way of life in which some people owe rent and others have it owed to them. Of course there's more to life and death than rent. When a relative dies and it's my job to organise the funeral I do not need to work out first whether or not it is possible for me to organise something for a person who does not exist and perhaps who never was the body that is lying in the funeral parlour. When I identify the body I would not look blankly at my deceased relative and say that I can have no idea whether it is the person whom I knew because I never had any idea what they were anyway or whether their physical body was them or not. These are the contexts in which it is clear that the question "Who are we?" makes no sense. My question is: are there any contexts (outside of a philosophy seminar) where it does make sense?

Some bees are just lazy. This is down to feckless parents and too much socialism meaning they don't have to fend for themselves.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/62850

Some ants are fussy about their nests whilst others live like slobs. This is because their parents never made their them tidy their bedrooms. It's got a lot worse over recent years because of a spoiled generation bringing up ants who've never even heard the word 'no'. Trust me. It's all over facebook.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331114-200-personality-of-individual-ants-helps-colonies-choose-best-nest/

Some examples have curious results. You could play misere football so that any goal scored is awarded to the opposing side. I think the game strategies would be identical, only the goals would be renamed, so your keeper would be 'keeping' the other team's net and trying to stop them scoring 'own' goals. Walking off the pitch wouldn't help. I think.

I was relying on old friend Charity to supply the contradiction but fwiw here it is again:

If we call a dog's tail a 'leg', then a dog has five legs. There are no brute facts.
A dog has four legs, no matter what we call them. There are brute facts.

I was curious where the example comes from and it turns out it's used by many from the early 19th C onwards. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/11/15/legs/

We cannot impose an electrical charge just by deciding to count something as an electrical charge, but we can impose the office of the Presidency just by deciding what we will count as becoming President, and then making those people President who meet the conditions we have decided on. — The Construction of Social Reality, Searle quoted in Michael's post

Onward and possibly upward.

My sentences are all supposed to be read slowly.

I started the Tractatus in 1976 and I'm still on 2.15121. About half way through.

On slot machines you are guaranteed to lose and the less money you put in the more you will go home with. I have been winning on slot machines for many years simply by putting no money in them at all.

When one AI poet drunkenly criticises another AI poet for the shallowness of its simulations and lack of soul then I will believe that AI can produce poetry. Until then, I'm a bit sceptical.

You can play a 'misere' (play-to-lose) version of almost any game. It's often played with life itself, where the stakes can be pretty high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mis%C3%A8re#:~:text=A%20mis%C3%A8re%20game%20or%20bettel,the%20normal%20game%20rules%20loses.