So you're arguing that because moneyed interests are supporting Shapiro, and because ideological merit has nothing to do with politics or democracy these days, the use of intimidation, force, and violence to silence him is well justified? — VagabondSpectre

I'm arguing that people like Shapiro got to where he is by means far beyond that of his power of speech alone, and to restrict responses to those means to speech alone is asymmetrical and democratically fatal. It is to enter the fray with one's hand deliberately tied behind one's back while giving the other a full range of movement and then having the gall to call this 'fair' and 'democratic'. It's yielding to a profoundly uneven playing field that, in all naivety or idiocy, is subsequently earmarked as the only one that's 'fair'. Meanwhile, anyone who knows anything about anything is laughing all the way to white house while liberals congratulate themselves on how they are apparently not the idiots (and oh-so-democratic).

And this is all to say nothing about the reductive and myopic tertium nom datur that is speech or violence that you keep pushing. As if this silly little duo exhausted the means and range of political action. Most of those having their au courant whine about deplatforming or whatever are responding less to incidences of violence - rare and sporadic as they are - than to the sense of damage done to their bourgeois sense of dinner table manners ('let the man speak, chérie'). Violence is rarely at issue*, and to pretend that it is is misdiagnosis, either deliberate, ignorant, or both at the same time. In any case the right - who have been pushing just this line, to their infinite benefit - couldn't be happier with this utter failure of political imagination.

*On the left in any case. Let's not talk about how nearly every single ideologically related murder in the US was commited by right wing terrorists in 2018. Let's keep pushing the bullshit line that it's the PC snowflake left that's after violence. Speech or violence? Fuck that entire framing of the issue, and anyone who peddles it. 'World weary stress syndrome'. Yeah, you fucking bet.

Brecht's lovely little poem comes to mind:

Step foward: we hear
That you are a good man.
You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend
Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall.
But in consideration of
your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

A thought prompted by this: I don't think the liberal has any capacity to think of political action beyond political speech. Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence, and the whole content of politics lies entirely in the ephemera of 'argument' or 'agreement', which now come to bear the entire weight of politics. Nevermind that the world around the lectern is literally on fire - what happens out there, beyond the charmed circle of intellectual spar and parry simply cannot so much as even be thought. The liberal literally doesn't even have the vocabulary to deal with it, let alone act upon it.

Worse still, having plucked her own eyes out, the liberal then denies that anyone else ought to have recourse to action beyond speech either (despite such actions saturating the ground aroud her). Anything else is apparently 'violence', 'unfair', 'undemocratic', or whatever empty pejorative might fit the current flow of conversation. And this sort of bullshit renders fascism utterly unintelligible to the liberal, who can only treat of it as a set of ideas while actual fascists get on with the job of grabbing the levers of power where they can. People don't get hurt in the liberal imagination because there are no people in it: only 'debatable ideas' - words. And while everything burns, the liberal can only stammer on about m-m-muh free speech... Good-intentioned pavers of the road to hell, all of them.

I'm not convinced by any of the readings of §128 put forward here so far. Right now, I'm inclined to read it as an ill-tempered sneer: 'you can't put forward theses, and even if you could, they'd be trivial anyway. Nah nah na na nah'.

No, I want a non-hypocritical political sphere. One in which the politics at work in platforming some dickhead like Shapiro is acknowledged as political, and not the outcome of some 'natural', merit-based, extra-poltical process. Where money is similarly acknowledged as a political tool that anyone who holds it knows it to be. What is 'undemocratic' is the (pseudo-)depoliticization of what is obviously political: of putting these things out of democratic play. I want more democracy not less. But this requires a less shallow, less emaciated understanding of democracy than just what happens in 'voting booths'.

Or are you just broadly equating the political sphere with force? — VagabondSpectre

I'm not 'equating' the political sphere with anything. What counts, and does not count, as political, is the political act par excellence and the liberal con is to imagine that one can set out, in advance, what ought to, and ought not, count as political. The neutralization and sterilization of politics passed off as sensible political theory. Trash.

Love how having money somehow puts one beyond the sphere of politics. B-b-but they paid for it! This means they have rights!

Pathetic.

Hmm, fair enough. The triple negative(!) is tricky - we cannot show that it is impossible that effects exist without causes. But yes, the point bears on what can - or rather cannot - be 'shown', moreso than what is or is not the case.

But I'm not interested in what the theses are. At least, not in this passage. I'm interested in why, were such to be produced, "it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them.".

But in order to make this point, he argued that there's no reason to believe that events couldn't occur without causes. — Dusty of Sky

Produce the quote. We can take it from there. As far as I know, 'to make this point', he denied the principle of the uniformity of nature; or at least, denied that such a principle could be upheld. Not that 'there's no reason to believe that events couldn't occur without causes.'

I take the point to be that attempts to establish a theory of language or a theory of meaning, questions of the essence and foundations of language that must be uncovered misleads and confuses us. We are not in need of a theory of language. — Fooloso4

I agree that this is a point that Witty makes, but is that the point being made here?: How does one derive the above (what I quoted of you), from this?:

"If someone were to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them."

How is what you've said, the point of this? Something still needs to be said about the possibility of debate, as well as agreement.

That people can be wrong about description does not mean that there can be room for debate, the two are not necessarily linked. — Isaac

Mmm, that 'theory' simply collapses into description is the most strightforward reading - especially if your counter-objection holds - but for whatever reason it also feels like a very disappointing reading. I think because it simply feels like word-play to me, 'too-clever-by-half' kinda thing.

--

With respect to normativity, I largely agree that there is a normative force to Witty's own strictures about what philosophy 'is' or 'ought to be', and if I drew too sharp a distinction it was for brevity's sake. A more nuanced take might distinguish two 'sources' of normativity: idealizations and actual use.

I've tried to bring this out in many of my comments here, but I refer you to this one in particular.

I'll only add that I too think that these sections refer to 'philosophy in general', with the caveat that Witty has just such a circumscribed notion of what 'philosophy' consists in.

Yeah, I've come to a similar conclusion. :up:

§128

This is another very tough one, thanks again to any lack of elaboration on Witty's part. The immediate remark that comes to mind is §109: "We may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place" (emphasis in the original).

So in §109 it is held that we cannot (should not?) advance theories (theses). Here it is held that even if one were to advance any, "it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them".

A theory, on Witty's account so far, is one that sets out what language 'should' be - an idealized account of how it 'should' function. Witty denies that any such theory can (should?) be advanced. If so, what would it mean to say that 'if' one were to advance a theory, everyone would agree to it? There's a paradoxical air to this, like: 'You can't do the Thing. And even if you could do the Thing, it wouldn't be the Thing you think you're doing': after all, what is a 'thesis' that no one could debate? Would it even be a thesis? Maybe that's Witty's point. But it seems a clunky way to put it.

Does Witty simply mean that all theory collapses into description? But surely people can describe 'wrongly' - we can be wrong about descriptions, and therefore there is room for debate? Questions to provoke some replies, hopefully.

---

I will also mention that I can't help but feel a very strong connection here to TLP 7: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" - another paradoxical statement, if not an outright tautology: if we can't speak of it, why the imperative ('must') to be silent about it? So too with §128: if we can't advance theses, what would it mean to say that if we could, everyone would agree to them? There's something, I think, to this oscillation between "can't" (a 'descriptive') and "mustn't/shouldn't" (an 'imperative'), but I don't know what to make of it. Hmm...

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Hume said that it was possible that events can be uncaused. Rather, he said that it was impossible to establish such a thing as causality. His point was epistemological - about the nature of our knowledge - and not ontological - about the nature of the world. To put it awkwardly, we lack the ability to 'know causes'. Whether or not there are 'in fact' uncaused events is not the kind of question Hume engaged.

Hmm, I don't think that works: "The work of the philosopher consists in marshalling recollections... of just what it is that philosophy is trying to do".

That said, I think there's a grammatical ambiguity that might be helpful to exploit. Is it:

(1) "The work of the philosopher consists in [marshalling recollections] [for a particular purpose]."; Or,
(2) "The work of the philosopher consists in marshalling [recollections for a particular purpose].

That is, what does the 'for a particular purpose' qualify: the marshalling ('assembling' in Anscombe's translation), or the recollecting ('reminding' in Anscombe's translation)? I suspect it's the second: what is recollected is the purpose - the use - of words in a language-game. And the philosopher needs to recall that, so as to not to attempt to provide theses or theories of language. So if this reading is correct, one recollects (remembers) the purpose of a word (I think here again of §87: "The signpost is in order - if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose"; the philosohper's job consists in recalling these purposes). I think that works.

§126, §127

Not much to say about these other than they recapitulate, again, that philosophy is descriptive and subtractive, and not explanatory. That said, I'm not sure what it is that the philosopher 'marshalls' when he or she 'marshalls recollections': recollections of what? Any ideas?

§125

§125 is a slightly deeper exploration of math that was broached in §124. In particular, it takes contradiction in math as a working example. If, in §124, it was asserted that it isn't philosophy's job to extend math in any way ("it leaves everything as it is"), here in §125 philosophy cannot, or rather, is "not in the business" of solving mathematical contradictions. So what does, or can, philosophy do?

I read §125 as saying that what philosophy can do is show how contradictions can arise: we lay down rules, and in following the rules, we end up with a contradiction. Note the 'deflationary' import of this: contradictions result from the rules we lay down - they are not, as it were, mathematical 'facts', like 'this stone is grey'. No change of rules will change the (empirical) fact that the stone is grey. Changing the rules however, will change whether or not a contradiction results. This is all to emphasise (again) that philosophy works at the level of the understanding, and not at the level of facts.

The philosophical 'problem' is in understanding just this 'status' of contradiction: to understand that it results from our 'entanglement in rules': that it has this status, is just what philosophy can show - can do (as distinct from what it cannot do: 'solve' the contradiction). So this is not a 'mathematical discovery': one might call it instead a 'discovery about math'.

That's reasonably intuitive from the perspective of pure math or logic (though still debatable), but it's very wrong for applied math/physics and statistics. — fdrake

Hmm, I think Witty's point deals more with facts 'of' math: things like Goldbach's conjecture, the 'neverendingness' of transcendental numbers, how to deal with negation, the Riemann hypothesis and so on. I imagine that Witty's response to the formula your provided is that it isn't a 'mathematical' one, but a physical one. So there, you're dealing with a fact of how long it takes for an object to drop - and therefore an empirical fact, and not a mathematical one (even as it employs mathematical 'means'). The idea (in §124) is that you can't 'philosophize' your way to, say, a proof or disproof of Goldbach's conjecture. Only actually doing the math can furnish such a proof. This is the sense in which philosophy 'leaves mathematics as it is'.

I know it seems a finicky distinction, but I think that's the 'range of application' of what Witty is saying. One should also read these passages with Witty's intellectual context in mind: he's responding here to Frege, Russell, Cantor and the like: the 'atmosphere' in which his words are being set out are against these debates on the status of math qua math. Some of this might be brought out in read §125. Let me move on to that and see.

Democracy is the pacifying of those who might otherwise turn to violent revolt by providing alternative means of complaint. — Isaac

Lazy edgelord rubbish.

I think you are using stakeholder too loosely, idealistically and axiomatically to be really addressing the argument made at all... — thedeadidea

The argument is based on a bad analogy. That's all I'm pointing out. Everything else you wrote is irrelevant.

Because these people either refuse or have an incapacity to think they should not vote because it is impossible for them to become a stakeholder in a democracy.... — thedeadidea

Whether or not you can or cannot 'think', you are a stakeholder in how you are governed. Your comprehension of how you are governed is irrelevant to that fact that you are governed.

If you don't drive a car, you are not a stakeholder in the driving of one. You are a stakeholder in how you are governed, weather you like it or not.

If you took a shot for every time someone in this thread unnecessarily qualified something with 'objective' (objective truth, objective fact, objective reality objective utility(?)), you'd straight up die. Skip drunk and go straight to alcohol poisioning induced death.

or have others write about you, on how the Left is so deeply intolerant and totalitarian. — Maw

Mmm, the best part! Watching cherub-faced liberal dupes then vomit out defenses of free-speech in response (oh so enlightened, oh so sophisticated), while playing right into the hands of those happy to watch them safeguard their dirty work. And you don't even have to pay them. They'll do it out of the sanctity their own rightous good-guy soooo-not-mainstream convictions. An unpaid force of mercenary enablers. It's a maddeningly effective cycle.

Cavell on modernism and philosophy:

"The essential fact of (what I refer to as) the modern lies in the relation between the present practice of an enterprise and the history of that enterprise, in the fact that this relation has become problematic. Innovation in philosophy has characteristically gone together with a repudiation — a specifically cast repudiation — of most of the history of the subject. But in the later Wittgenstein (and, I would now add, in Heidegger’s Being and Time) the repudiation of the past has a transformed significance, as though containing the consciousness that history will not go away, except through our perfect acknowledgement of it (in particular, our acknowledgement that it is not past), and that one’s own practice and ambition can be identified only against the continuous experience of the past.

But “the past” does not in this context refer simply to the historical past; it refers to one’s own past, to what is past, or what has passed, within oneself. One could say that in a modernist situation “past” loses its temporal accent and means anything “not present.” Meaning what one says becomes a matter of making one’s sense present to oneself.

...The modern [is] ... a moment in which history and its conventions can no longer be taken for granted; the time in which music and painting and poetry (like nations) have to define themselves against their pasts; the beginning of the moment in which each of the arts becomes its own subject, as if its immediate artistic task is to establish its own existence. The new difficulty which comes to light in the modernist situation is that of maintaining one’s belief in one’s own enterprise, for the past and the present become problematic together. I believe that philosophy shares the modernist difficulty now everywhere evident in the major arts, the difficulty of making one’s present effort become a part of the present history of the enterprise to which one has committed one’s mind, such as it is."

--

On words and world:

"Now imagine that you are in your armchair reading a book of reminiscences and come across the word “umiak.’’ You reach for your dictionary and look it up. Now what did you do? Find out what “umiak” means, or find out what an umiak is? But how could we have discovered something about the world by hunting in the dictionary? If this seems surprising, perhaps it is because we forget that we learn language and learn the world together, that they become elaborated and distorted together, and in the same places. We may also be forgetting how elaborate a process the learning is. We tend to take what a native speaker does when he looks up a noun in a dictionary as the characteristic process of learning language. (As, in what has become a less forgivable tendency, we take naming as the fundamental source of meaning.)

But it is merely the end point in the process of learning the word. When we turned to the dictionary for “umiak” we already knew everything about the word, as it were, but its combination: we knew what a noun is and how to name an object and how to look up a word and what boats are and what an Eskimo is. We were all prepared for that umiak. What seemed like finding the world in a dictionary was really a case of bringing the world to the dictionary. We had the world with us all the time, in that armchair; but we felt the weight of it only when we felt a lack in it. Sometimes we will need to bring the dictionary to the world. That will happen when (say) we run across a small boat in Alaska of a sort we have never seen and wonder—what? What it is, or what it is called? In either case, the learning is a question of aligning language and the world. What you need to learn will depend on what specifically it is you want to know; and how you can find out will depend specifically on what you already command. How we answer the question, “What is X?” will depend, therefore, on the specific case of ignorance and of knowledge."

I won't speak for Maw, but I imagine the 'strategy' is not to 'cook up the Paglia incident', but to elevate it (an already existing 'incident') to the status of an 'incident' to begin with - something to be debated over, something as part of the national (international?) discourse, a conversation or argument to be had writ large to begin with. So much in line with @Csalisbury's post.

To win the culture war is not to be on a particular 'side'; it's to shape what counts as a side to begin with. And that's the function of articles like that - to define the debate, as much as come down on a side of it.

To infer then that Paglia is vouched by Koch Brothers is a long shot. That is my point. — ssu

Did anyone say that 'Paglia is vouched by Koch Brothers'? [sic]

Here's what Maw said:

"The Atlantic published another article on Camille Paglia paid for by the Koch Brothers."

Here's what I said, paraphrasing Maw:

"They're paying for - or at least funding - an article on Camille Paglia".

Because of a byline that reads:

""This article is part of “The Speech Wars,” a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute."

Maybe should you reassess the relevance - or complete lack-thereof - of 'your point'?

Sorry, what's bullshit? The line literally says:

"This article is part of “The Speech Wars,” a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute."

Is reality bullshit? Why are you dancing around this?

They're paying for - or at least funding - an article on Camille Paglia, which is exactly what Maw said. Not sure what you're getting hysterical about.

An article mentioning among other things Paglia and you are saying the Koch Brothers are vouching for Paglia??? This is as silly as the Soros hysteria on the right. — ssu

Um, the article literally says this at the bottom of it:

"This article is part of “The Speech Wars,” a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute."

Which was also appended to the original article posted, it should be noted.

Yet more Cavell - On Horror and the Human:

"I do not expect that horror movies really cause honor, but, at best, "horror". But I also do not know that I know the difference. I do not suppose that what I have, when I am horrified, is horror; it may only be "horror". - What is the object of horror? At what do we tremble in this way? Fear is of danger; terror is of violence, of the violence I might do or that might he done me. I can be terrified of thunder, but not horrified by it. And isn't it the case that not the human horrifies me, hut the inhuman, the monstrous? Very well. But only what is human can be inhuman. - Can only the human be monstrous? If something is monstrous, and we do not believe that there are monsters, then only the human is a candidate for the monstrous.

If only humans feel horror (if the capacity to feel horror is a development of the specifically human biological inheritance), then maybe it is a response specifically to being human. To what, specifically, about being human? Horror is the title I am giving to the perception of the precariousness of human identity, to the perception that it may be lost or invaded, that we may be, or may become, something other than we are, or take ourselves for; that our origins as human beings need accounting for, and are unaccountable"

On Descartes:

"In the light of this passing of the question of the other, a change is noticeable in the coda Descartes supplies his argument at the end of this third Meditation:

'The whole force of the argument I have here used to prove the existence of God consists in the fact that I recognize that it would not be possible for my nature to be what it is, possessing the idea of a God, unless God really existed- the same God, I say, the idea of whom I possess, the God who possess all these high perfections... [who] cannot be a deceiver...'

The main point of summary is that I could not have produced the idea I have of God, for it can have come from nothing less than God himself. But a new note of necessity is also struck, that without the presence of this idea in myself, and (hence) the presence of the fact of which it is the imprint, my own nature would necessarily not be what it is. (Nietzsche's idea of the death of God can be understood to begin by saying roughly or generally as much: the idea of God is part of (the idea of) human nature. If that idea dies, the idea of human nature equally dies.) So not only the fact, as it were, of my existence, but the integrity of it, depends upon this idea. And so these meditations are about the finding of self-knowledge after all: of the knowledge of a human self by a human self."

Only "their" defence of free speech? I guess you mean either the defence of free speech for the views you don't like; or, which for you comes to the same thing, the defence of free speech for all views. — jamalrob

But I don't mean this: I meant the defence of free speech on the grounds of protecting it from machinations of power as though access to the 'marketplace of ideas' were not already gate-kept to the nth degree. It's that specific argument for the defence of free speech that I was attacking as being naive and hypocritical. The point is simply that it is prejudicial, that it sees power only where it wants to, and not where it largely lies. Mistaking trees for forests and all that. If an attack on an argument is an ad hominem then I suppose I've been using that word wrong for a long time.

And I'm not sure what to make of your complaint that I don't believe there is a debate to be had over 'who holds power': my whole point is that this debate is explicitly not being had, and that it should be. Have I read you wrong, or you me?

It was Luke who provided the link. — Fooloso4

My bad! It was quite a few posts back. And yeah, the conception of language as a maze of different (kinds of!) streets is a very nice one and well worth invoking in the reading of §122-123.

§124

§124 comes in something like two parts, with the first part acting as somewhat of a recapitulation of a lot of what has been said so far, and the second part linking what has been said with mathematics.

So: The first part underscores, again, the distinction between facts and understanding that has been operative all throughout these sections, along with affirming that philosophy only ever works at the level of the understanding - that is to say, at the level of idealisations about what language should be, or ought to be. Given then, that Witty has argued all along that all such idealisations should be expelled, and that philosophy only ought to describe language, it follows that philosophy ‘leaves everything as it is’. It does not 'contribute’ in any way to language as it is actually used. Language is, or would be, indifferent to anything philosophy has to say about it.

--

Just before going on, it’s perhaps worth pausing to do a quick comparison to some of Witty’s views on philosophy in the Tractatus. For, despite the heavy critique of the Tractatus here (re: idealisation and so on), Witty’s understanding of philosophy remains strikingly similar. For, recall that in the Tractuatus that "Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (TLP 4.111: i.e. does not deal with facts, or the empirical); and that famously, one who has ‘climbed the ladder’ of the TLP ought to throw it away; In the PI, philosophy has a similar role, but unlike the TLP, it cannot be done away with so definitively: philosophy in the PI is always something of a standing threat (§109: "a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the resources of our language”), against which one must remain, in some sense, ever vigilant.

Where philosophy in the TLP ought to self-immolate once and for all, in the PI, philosophy is both cure and disease, and one always needs philosophy in order to ‘cure’ oneself of philosophy, indefinitely. If the illusions in the TLP were Cartesian, in the sense that, like the illusions of Descartes’ evil demon, they could be overcome once and for all, the illusions of the PI are Kantian, in the sense that they are always looming. Philosophy in the PI is a pharmakon, to use one of Derrida's terms if anyone is familiar with it.

—

The second half of §124 extends Witty’s point about philosophy and language to mathematics. Just as philosophy does not ‘interfere’ with the actual use of language, so too does philosophy not ‘interfere’ with the workings of mathematics. Witty doesn’t really explain himself much here - the bulk of the good stuff is to be found in the Remarks, Lectures, and Philosophical Grammar - but there is one important point that I think is worth noting. If the reason that philosophy leaves everything in language ‘as is’ because it only deals with the understanding and not facts, this cannot be the same reason it leaves everything in mathematics ‘as is’: this is because mathematics, for Wittgenstein, is also not empirical: that is, math also does not deal with facts, or at least, facts in the empirical mode.

This isn’t something that Witty insists upon here in the PI - at least, not that I can recall - but he makes the point almost everywhere that he explicitly deals with math. All of this is simply to say that despite the fact that Witty says that philosophy does not ‘interfere’ with either language or math, this lack of interference does not happen for the same reason in both cases. Something is slightly different about math. This gets brought out somewhat in the next passage, but all I want to do here is mark or take note of this not-so-obvious asymmetry between language and math.

But free-speech (in terms of having a platform like the one Ben Shapiro had) is interfered with in this way all the time. I don't have enough money to do what Shapiro does, is the economy interfering with my free speech? The trouble is we're not starting from a blank slate, so to give people an equal right to speak from where they are now, is not equality of opportunity, it's re-inforcement of the status quo. How is the effect on freedom to speak of the protesting students materially any different to the effect on the freedom to speak of the revenue-based format of the global media? How is it materially any different to the qualifications/fame barrier of columnists for major newspapers? — Isaac

This is probably one of the few sensible things said in this thread so far. The middling liberal approach taken by many in this thread looks at issues of ‘deplatforming’ and so on as though politics and power only ever intervene after the fact, as though the ground of speech were a priori neutral and only then ‘interfered’ with from the outside, per accidens. But this is naïvety at best, utter stupidity at worst - anyone who isn’t a complete idiot knows that only some are ever given a platform to begin with - are ‘platformed’. The rest - the majority - simply shout into the void.

It is simply political infantilism to believe that everyone has a platform - is born with one, as it were - and that harm only comes from 'taking it away’. As if some stupid toy. Platforms are rare, hard-fought over, and mercilessly defended and attacked. Those who complain about ‘deplatforming’ usually have nothing to say about platforming to begin with, because they are so utterly insensible to the play of power everywhere at work long before some wanker has their stupid ‘say’ on a lectern somewhere. Their defence of ‘free speech’ is nothing but a defence of the arrangement of power just as it is - the status quo, all the while denying that power has any role to play expect on the side of those who argue for ‘deplatforming’. It’s hypocrisy unnamed.

Liberal shills have nothing to say about the structural, socio-economic conditions that precipitated the situations they are decrying. They'll bark your ear off about 'deplatforming' and remain deafeningly, fatally silent about the far more significant, far more pervasive issue of platforming. Their politics is reactive, as reactive as any they blab about with their reams of words.

Stanley Cavell - Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays

Also a good one! His I Am Not A Brain is also meant to be accessable and good as well.

Some readable, contemporary recc's, continentally inclined:

Elizabeth Grosz - The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of Materialism
Martin Hagglund - This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
Heidi Ravven - The Self beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will
Mari Ruti - The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within

The 'argument from aliens' ('could aliens have the same math as us?') always struck me as interesting because it's so ambiguous, despite it seeming not to be. The force of it, I assume, comes from its seeming to shore up the 'discovered' position, ('if something so different as an alien uses the same math, this must mean math is "objective"'!). But would this argument have the same force if applied to, say, wheels? Would we be surprised - or not - that aliens also have wheels? And would this mean that wheels (the quintessential 'invention') are therefore discovered? Do wheels have 'objective reality'?

Or imagine that aliens have cars - or at least, transport vehicles with four wheels. Would this mean that cars have objective reality? Or would it be that four points of contact with the ground works really nicely for stability? (more stable than 3, less unnecessary than 5 - are 4 wheeled cars an objective truth?) And that circular structures are good for things that move? Could it be that math is as it is for similar reasons? All of this is not to 'take a side' in the invented/discovered debate, but only to point out that the 'argument from aliens' is not a particularity strong one. At least, not without a whole bunch of other qualifications.