Anyway, a small commentary on the structure of the (early sections) of the paper. It seems to be something like this:

(1) Quick survey (and dismissal) of the majority of prevailing moral theories.
(2) Discussion of Hume, and the relation between 'is' and 'owes'.
(3) Historical digression on law conceptions on ethics.
(4) Return to Hume, and and the relation between 'is' and 'needs'.
(5) Conceding that Hume was right in a way, but he mistook the force of his own argument: it doesn't vitiate ethics (pace Hume), nor does require that we need to bridge a gap from is to ought because that's not how 'is' and 'oughts' work! (this is what 'modern moral philosophy' ties to do).

(6) With the above in place, lets vivisect 'modern moral philosophy'.

Perhaps; but even that would need a philosophical account of why virtue functions extraphilosophically (a meditation on philosophy and its limits, from within philosophy). Which I don't doubt can be done, but I don't think that at least that project is being pursued in this paper.

I think it might even be fair to say that in some of her other work, Anscombe saw herself as supplying at least part of what she claims is needed in order to properly account for ethics. Especially this bit:

"That an unjust man is a bad man would require a positive account of justice as a "virtue." This part of the subject-matter of ethics is, however, completely closed to us until we have an account of what type of characteristic a virtue is - a problem, not of ethics, but of conceptual analysis - and how it relates to the actions in which it is instanced ... For this we certainly need an account at least of what a human action is at all, and how its description as "doing such-and such" is affected by its motive and by the intention or intentions in it; and for this an account of such concepts is required" - her book Intention can be read as an attempt to provide exactly such an account, or at least part of it.

It's interesting that this paper is so commonly associated with the revival of virtue ethics; there's definite warrant for it - it is even perhaps it's point - but if you go looking, the paper has very little to say about virtue in any direct way. At best, her remarks on virtue function as promissory or as a place-holder for an alternative to the points of view she does in fact engage. These passages are about as close as she gets to talking about virtue, and they are both incredibly indeterminate and hesitant:

"Eventually it might be possible to advance to considering the concept "virtue"; with which, I suppose, we should be beginning some sort of a study of ethics."

"It can be seen that philosophically there is a huge gap, at present unfillable as far as we are concerned, which needs to be filled by an account of human nature, human action, the type of characteristic a virtue is, and above all of human "flourishing." And it is the last concept that appears the most doubtful". — MMP

Anyway, I say this only because I'd like to warn against coming at this paper by placing it into an immediate 'virtue ethics' box: its argument is largely negative, a kind of attempt at ground-clearing, although the way it goes about this is by establishing a minimally 'positive' account of what kind of thing 'moral oughts' are, and the role they play. I'd even say it might be best to bracket any talk of virtue whatsoever unless directly sanctioned by the passages in the paper itself.

Anscombe's paper "On Brute Facts" is quite useful to read here as supplementary, at least to the awful passage about brute facts I quoted earlier. It's only 5 pages long (available via google search) and it slows down and fills out the leaps made in the 'brute facts' passage. Will quote the bulk of the last page here for context:

We can now state some of the relations which at least sometimes hold between a description, say A, and descriptions, say xyz, of facts which are brute in relation to the fact described by A.

(1) There is a range of sets of such descriptions xyz such that some set of the range must be true if the description A is to be true. But the range can only ever be roughly indicated, and the way to indicate it is by giving a few diverse examples.

(2) The existence of the description A in the language in which it occurs presupposes a context, which we will call "the institution behind A "; this context may or may not be presupposed to elements in the descriptions xyz. For example, the institution of buying and selling is presupposed to the description "sending a bill", as it is to "being owed for goods received", but not to the description "supplying potatoes ".

(3) A is not a description of the institution behind A.

(4) If some set holds out of the range of sets of descriptions some of which must hold if A is to hold, and if the institution behind A exists, then " in normal circumstances" A holds. The meaning of "in normal circumstances" can only be indicated roughly, by giving examples of exceptional circumstances
in which A would not hold.

(5) To assert the truth of A is not to assert that the circumstances were "normal"; but if one is asked to justify A, the truth of the description xyz is in normal circumstances an adequate justification: A is not verified by any further facts.

(6) If A entails some other description B, then xyz cannot generally be said to entail B, but xyZ together with normality of circumstances relatively to such descriptions as A can be said to entail B. — Anscombe, 'On Brute Facts'

Man I hate the way Anscombe writes. I read Intention last year and it was a terrible experience, and this reminds me why. Like, this is such incredibly ugly writing:

"if xyz is a set of facts brute relative to a description A, then xyz is a set out of a range some set among which holds if A holds; but the holding of some set among these does not necessarily entail A because exceptional circumstances can always make a difference; ... Further, though in normal cirucmstances, xyz would be a justification for A, of which instituion A is of course not itself a description." :vomit:

I have been wanting to read this essay for years so yes.

The story is apocryphal. It's likely that Hippasus was not in fact drowned for his discovery, and the Greek response was simply to exclude irrationals from the class of 'number', while admitting irrational magnitudes. The story does attest to the offence that irrationals caused to the Greek sensibility though, which had a preference for holism and perfect divisibility. Pappus of Alexandria, a late Greek mathematician, is on record:

"The school of Pythagoras was so affected by its reverence for these things [rationals] that a saying become current in it, namely, that he who first discovered the knowledge of incommensurables or irrationals and spread it among the common herd perished by drowning. This is most probably a parable, by which they sought to express their convictions: first, it is better to conceal every incommensurable, or irrational, or inconceivable in the world and second, the soul that, by by error of heedlesssness, discovers or reveals anything of this nature that is in it or in this world, wanders thereafter to and fro in the sea of non-identity, immersed in the stream of becoming and decay, where there is no standard of measurement".

It's really coming down to what the possibilities of political action are and which ones are most relevant; race, gender/sex and disability are differences between people which engender risks that both matter a lot and can practically be mitigated or stopped through intervention. Nose size, hand span, and whether you like marmite are not. — fdrake

:up:

Lol you think Wayfarer reads books and not blurbs.

Yea, David Frum, who was a speechwriter from George Bush, was a big War on Terror cheerleader, and coined the term 'Axis of Evil' wrote The Atlantic article. — Maw

Oh, him. I was too flabbergasted by the title and the content to read who actually wrote the damn thing lol. But yeah, that makes total sense. And Chait is a fucking joke too.

"Here then, is the basic difference between all pre-capitalist societies and capitalism. It has nothing to do with whether production is urban or rural and everything to do with the particular property relations between producers and appropriators, whether in industry or agriculture. Only in capitalism is the dominant mode of appropriation based on the complete dispossession of direct producers, who (unlike chattel slaves) are legally free and whose surplus labour is appropriated by purely 'economic' means. Because direct producers in fully developed capitalism are propertyless, and because their only access to the means of production, to the requirements of their own reproduction, even to the means of their own labour, is the sale of their labour-power in exchange for a wage, capitalists can appropriate the workers' surplus labour without direct coercion.

This unique relation between producers and appropriators is, of course, mediated by the 'market'. Markets of various kind have existed throughout history and no doubt before, as people have exchanged and sold their surpluses in many different ways and for many different purposes. But the market in capitalism has a distinctive, unprecedented function. Virtually everything in capitalist society is a commodity produced for the market. And even more fundamentally, both capital and labour are utterly dependent on the market for the most basic conditions of their own reproduction. ... This market dependence gives the market an unprecedented role in capitalist societies, as not only a simple mechanism of exchange or distribution, but the principle determinant and regulator of social reproduction."

- Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism

Articles like "Bernie Can't Win," — Xtrix

I saw this in the Atlantic and actually laughed out loud. They're fucking terrified, and it's hilarious. The article itself is mind-bending too: it compares Warren to Sanders on transgender issues, and disfavourably knocks Sanders for emphasising healthcare over - wait for it - Warren's promise to read out names in a fucking rose garden. Bsvakdvzjclcgsusks. Words actually fail.

I missed this thread. This is great.

Yeah nah definately woo invoked by our resident woo oil salesman.

A part of me very wants to strongly characterize analytic philosophy as a long, enduring attempt - still ongoing - to come to grips with its own stillbirth. I don't intend to mean this harshly, but there's a sense in which AP was a kind of promise - held out by Frege and Russell in particular - that philosophy could be conducted in a new key, characterized particularly with the tools of a mathematicized logic, with clear and unambiguous foundations that all could agree on and which could then be subsequently built upon - not unlike a species of science. Hence 'analytic', the attempt to break things down in a process of 'analysis' (as distinct form synthesis), out of which a progressive edifice could be built.

And then in a wonderful (or terrible) stroke of irony, it was Russell who pretty much blew up that project almost as soon as it began by dismantling Frege's Basic Law V ('Russell's paradox'), and putting the whole thing into question. I almost want to say that analytic philosophy since then has been a kind of rear-guard action - a fantastically creative, interesting and, wide-ranging one - to hold true to the promise of what 'analytic philosophy' was meant to be while at the same time having been almost completely deprived of the means to do so, settling instead for a variegated patchwork of linguistic and logical analysis without any of it vying for the 'foundational' status that underlay the hopes of Frege and Russell.

(Quine tries to get around this by offshoring the foundational stuff to science - his 'naturalism' - insulating philosophy from the pressure of having to provide those foundations from 'within'; likewise the OLP crew who instead substituted out logic and science for 'ordinary language').

On this score, analytic philosophy had a brief existence after which it winked out spectacularly, and everything else is picking up the pieces. Of course calling analytic philosophy a rearguard action on a stillbirth won't quite make for good wiki material, but there you go. Alternatively, a nicer way to put it is that all of what currently travels under the name 'analytic philosophy' is already post-analytic philosophy.

Ontological Catastrophe, Joseph Carew — 180 Proof

Whaddya reckon btw?

I suppose an alternative distinction - if one must be made - would be analytic/synthetic.

The two things that stand out to me I guess are that:

(1) Any way to formulate falsifiability will need to include some kind of modal word - can, should, might, ought, must, etc. This referring to the '-ability' part of falsifi-abiliy. There must be a capacity of some kind involved.

(2) I would include a reference to falsifiability being a matter of principle (de jure) and not fact (de facto); As in, that which is falsifiable is so in principle regardless of whether one does in fact have some evidence that would make it false.

---

I still don't like "an" hypothesis because I breathe out the "h" and it sounds awful! Team "a" ftw.

Ah. Silly ache.

It's not right because the indefinite article should be 'a' not 'an', given that 'hypothesis' does not begin with a vowel.

But, uh, otherwise, seems right.

The video clearly reveals the basis of racism as based on phenotype (external, physical appearance) and then demonstrates that these physical differences don't have a counterpart in genotype based on which all races are more similar than different. — TheMadFool

You're actually so fucking stupid. Fuck. You think the Germans murdered the Jews because they didn't look like them? Based on 'phenotype'? Fuck you're an idiot. Just fuck off.

Look, here's an analogous argument to the OP: "Without the sun, there would be no people. With no people, there would be no racism. Therefore, the sun is the root of racism".

Its that fucking stupid.

I'm going to keep repeating this until it seeps into your head: Racism is premised on differences deemed signifiant and not difference simpliciter. The 'deeming' is not biological but social and political.

I'd advise you to look at the video that @fdrake posted. You're writing on things you seem quite ignorant about and you ought to inform yourself before speaking further.

I'm not interested in having a biology vs. culture debate. The claim in the OP is that the mere fact of being able to recognize difference implies that racism is 'primal'. That's an incredibly dumb inference for reasons I pointed out.

Your daughter shares 50% of your genes compared others of a different race in which you share less. — Harry Hindu

I didn't say genetic differences, so thank you for your otherwise entirely useless reply.

Still have no idea what you're on about.

I didn't say race doesn't exist so I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not trying to justify or naturalize racism; all I'm offering here is a biological explanation for it. — TheMadFool

You're not offering shit. Racism is premised on differences deemed signifiant and not difference simpliciter. The 'deeming' is not biological but social and political.

Yes.

It's quite clear from the passage above that racism grows out of an emphasis, or overemphasis if you like, on differences and overlooking similarities. — TheMadFool

Read what I said again. None of what you said responds to it. Anyone who naturalizes racism can fuck right off, including you. Your two-bit line of reasoning - which unjustifiably and erroneously jumps from the mere necessity of recognizing difference to making racism a 'primitive instinct' - is employed by racists everywhere to justify their utter bullshit. This thread is fucking trash. Use your goddman head.

Trump clearly has the most youthful mind of all the candidates -- mid-teens — Bitter Crank

:rofl:

I think you underestimate just how much the establishment is despised. Like, consider that people are aware of all the things you listed about Trump, and yet the establishment would be worse that even all that.

I dunno I think they should just challenge each other to a push-up competition and whoever wins gets it.

The vindictive part of me wants Biden to win the nomination, and then watch with glee as he loses the presidency - as he obviously will - and watch democrats wonder HOW THIS COULD HAVE POSSIBLY HAPPENED.

But Bernie yes.

Thus, the net effect was our brains evolved to see differences rather than similarities and this is the root of racism - we see differences in eye, color, face, etc. and since differences meant either prey or predator some races discriminate against other races as threats or inferiors. — TheMadFool

This doesn't follow at all, and it also happens to have the effect of attempting to naturalize racism, rather than recognizing it for the political phenomenon that it is. What matters is not difference simipliciter - there are as many differences between me and my daughter as there are between me and my other-raced friend - but differences deemeed significant or relevant in one way and not another. It's somewhat embarrasing that this needs to be said.

That we evolved to recognize differences is no less the 'root of racism' than the fact that we all have lungs. A necessary but not at all sufficient account of racism. Maybe think a little about what you're saying before spewing this dreck into the ether, hey?

Jerome Roos - Why Not Default?: The Political Economy of Sovereign Debt (SO GOOD; ESSENTIAL READING)
Ellen Meiskins Wood - The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View
Ellen Meiskins Wood - Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism

I tried to grapple with some of the ideas in Jodi Dean's book in a recentish thread which you can read here. Essentially this really got me thinking about collective action and the need for organization in a way that I hadn't really before. Also things like the organisation of public space, and the how democracy always exceeds the formal mechanisms set in place to try and guarantee it, by necessity. Thinking about crowds and acting together is also just really refreshing when the overwhelming imperatives to act are predominantly individualist, rather collective. It also really brings out the embeddedness of humans in the world around them, and how reliance and dependance on others is not always necessarily a fault or something limiting, but something that can be cultivated in the right way to bring out more potentials and greater freedom than were available before.

So perhaps my biggest takeaway wasn't so one one particular insight so much as a point of view from which to think about things: from the perspective of the/a crowd. It's not something that comes naturally (to me) unless you often engage in collective action, or make an effort to highlight at an intellectual level. Hope that makes sense.

Cool question! I've been trying to do some reading around this since its become quite topical, and I've really enjoyed:

Judith Butler - Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly
Jodi Dean - Crowds and Party

Two that are on my list to check out are:

Elias Canetti - Crowds and Power
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt - Assembly

Hope these pointers might be useful.

The hardest thing about thinking philosophy and activism together is the necessity of philosophy's critical distancing of itself from the world; philosophy at its most potent defarmiliarizes the world, casting it in terms and grammars that are not of its own. It's only by keeping this distance in place that philosophy resists an impotent re-doubling of the world in thought.

But it's also exactly in this way that philosophy can inform activism, by helping to provide grammars of action at a tangent from what's established, by malforming what is, in the service, perhaps, of what should be. So in a sense philosophy always has to walk a kind of tightrope stretched between the idealities of theory and the concreteness of practice without wholly collapsing into one side or the other.