Put it this way: paradoxes indicate a failure of thought, and say nothing - literally nothing - about their object. To the degree that Frankfurt's argument is simply a transposition of Meno into another register, the only 'systematic incoherency' at issue is Frankfurt's - just as Meno's paradox testifies to Plato's own incoherency - and nothing else. There are only negative conclusions to be drawn from the tripe quoted in the OP.

You're both asking the wrong questions and posing the wrong distinctions. An object lesson in how not to talk about ethics.

No. Ethics is among the most pedestrian of all things. We practice it with our every breath, and we talk about it with friends, colleagues, and lovers all the time. It takes a pathology particular to philosophy to make it some mystical unsayable.

I doubt you - or most people - go about intellectualizing ethics in your day to day life. Only when you talk about it on philosophical forums. Only when discussing ethics do people seem to forget how even they thenselves approach ethics.

All I'm saying is, it takes a special kind of (philosophical) idiot to think: "'how should one live: now there's a question that is 'systematically incohate'"; and not 'wow, wtf am I doing so wrong that I think the very question of 'systematic coherency' is at all revelant to that question whatsoever'?; 'Why does my approach bear not a single bit similarity to how people go about dealing with questions of how they should live'?; 'Why am I such a complete failure at ethical phenomenology?'. These are the questions Frankfurt might want to ask himself.

I didn't address it because I told you point blank that's not what I said. But sure, if you think ethical issues are best dealt with at the level of thought - as if you just cogitated hard enough ethical problems would be properly addressed - then be my guest - think away while people starve and die.

just was wondering why you seem to be against discussing matters of what you call the only ethical question there is. — Posty McPostface

I'm not. The fact that I need to explain this - yeah, I'm done.

Ever tried to intellectualize your way into scoring a goal in a game? Can we not talk about scoring goals? Ugh, if you can't do better I'm done here.

:lol:

I don't particularly care how you respond. You asked a question, I gave you an answer.

That something is not an intellectual issue does not translate to 'it can't be talked about'. This is basic, so basic.

Discuss away.

I don't particularly care how you respond. You asked a question, I gave you an answer.

if they can't be intellectualized? — Posty McPostface

Not what I said.

Anyone who thinks they are is a monster or a savant.

An ethical one. Maybe the only ethical question there is.

As if 'how should one live' is an intellectual issue. As if it's a question posed at the level of propositions. This coming from a man who wrote 'on bullshit'. It's unbelievable that this sort of dreck passes for philosophy.

What's overly intellectualized here? It all seems plain and simple thinking to me. — Posty McPostface

It is plain and simple thinking. Thinking for the plain and the simple.

Meno's paradox transposed onto a different field, with all it's attendant vacuity: an overly intellectualized approach to the issue.

*yawn*. Objectivity is just repeatability under invariant conditions. Ain't nothing to write home about. Also worth noting that in the medieval terminology from which the subject-object distinction derived, an object was a strict correlate of a subject, so that the two were conceptually inseperable. The esse objectivm was that which existed only for a knowing being - something was objective only to the extent that it existed for a knowing being. That objectivity has come to mean that which is somehow totally seperate from a subject is just an unfortunate conceptual slide which has caused all sorts of confusion.

Not to be too flippant but isn't this just a rehashing of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities?

Mmm, singularity is the madness of reason, its vertigo and its dirty little secret.

Yeah, all language involves commitment at some level. Like I said, it's about pragmatics.

On the face of it, it's true that "I speak" doesn't generally function as a performative because it doesn't really commit one to anything. But, one can imagine situations where it could function performatively - perhaps as a response to "if anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your peace". Here, "I speak" would have the illocutionary force of an objection, and not merely some kind of indexical declaration. In general, the line between constatives and performatives is, I think, better cashed out in terms of pragmatics, rather than by any principled distinction.

I recently reread Giorgio Agamben's The Sacrament of Language, and something 'clicked' in me about the role that language plays in his work, so I've gone back to reread chapters and essays from almost every second book of his in the last week, including:

Opus Dei (Last chapter)
Remnants of Auschwitz (Last chapter)
State of Exception (Chapter 2 and 3)
Homo Sacer (Section II and most of Section I)
Stanzas (Section I and III)
The Signature of all Things (Chapter 3)
Infancy and History (Whole book)
Potentialities (Whole book)
What Is Philosophy? (Whole book)
The Coming Community (bits and pieces)
Profanations (bits and pieces)

It's been exhilarating.

Also:

Finished V1 of Capital — Maw

:clap:

The real job of criticizing a thinker comes only after you've taken on and worked at his thinking - made it yours, at least to some degree. — tim wood

Yes, yes, you've read a book and now you're a all about reading Descartes sensitively. But Descartes largely muddled his way through his own understanding of the Cogito, and gives inconsistent readings of it all through his works. As Jaakko Hintikka rightly points out ("Cogito, Ergo Sum: Inference or Performance?", in Hintikka, Knowledge and the Known), Descartes frequently vacillates between understanding the Cogito as either an inference or as a performative, leaning on one and then the other depending on the argument he's dealing with. The fact remains that Descartes tried to leverage cogito ergo sum in order to get to sum res cogitans, and that this move was and remains totally bogus, no matter how generous one in is reading our eponymous Frenchman.

It always pains me a little bit when the popular press - or the non-philosophically inclined - take Descartes' maxim to be a self-evident statement, and not the logical muddle that it is (it doesn't, for a start, even meet the minimal requirement for a syllogism, which needs at least two premises, and not the dangling and lonely 'I think' that preceeds the 'ergo'. Whatever the content of the statement, it doesn't even have the form necessary for an argument!). There is a grain of truth in it, but it is generally elsewhere than where it is normally taken to be, and certainly not where Descartes thought it was.

Thinking about this a little more, another way to put all this is to remember that the PSR is simply a principle, and that principles can be made good on in various ways. It is not necessary that one speaks of 'a' sufficient reason: rather it might be that things in the universe - or rather the universe itself - is structured in such a way that the the principle is abided by (or not). A 'sufficient reason' in this sense is not just another reason along side other reasons, as if just another line in a list of reasons. It's something more complex and more interesting than this.

. If you'd like to discuss whether or not the Leibniz' Cosmological Argument makes a good case for God's existence, — Relativist

Not sure what made you think I'd want to discuss this since I didn't so much as mention it.

Are you suggesting an atheist is having faith in atheism, or that this sends theists into expressions of faith? — Relativist

The latter.

In case I haven't dumbed it down enough;

What is a sufficient reason? — Posty McPostface

The problem with answering this question in any straightforward way is that what kind of thing counts as a sufficient reason can be cashed out in a few different ways. To take Leibniz again as an exemplar, for him, the sufficient reason for any one thing was, in a certain sense, the entire universe. For Leibniz, one cannot think the sufficient reason for anyone one thing without including the entirity of the universe within its ambit. In fact, not just one universe, but multiple worlds, along with certian logical relations between them, were necessary to properly cash out the PSR. The thing is, this is quite clearly not the only way to do so (and it is often said that Leibniz ultimately fudged the whole enterprise right at the end with the God stuff, and didn't quite fulfill even his own strictures on the PSR).

Deleuze, for instance, has a reworked understanding of the PSR that dispenses with the many worlds, along with the God, while at the same time insisting on its non-causal, transcendental operation (and there's lots of gaps to fill here with respect to just what that means). So, long story short, what counts as 'a' sufficient reason depends on who you ask, and it won't be some simple answer like 'because x'. As Deleuze said of Leibniz, his pursuit of the PSR required a 'crazy invention of concepts', each interlocking in various ways in order to really do the work of the PSR. The PSR on its own simply says: there are reasons for why things are as they are and not otherwise. Exactly how this is put to work, is the work of philosophy.

It's an assumption that entails a causally efficacious necessary being, which is unique .... Theists are drawn to the assumption of a causally efficacious necessary being, while atheists would propose the brute fact. — Relativist

While it's true that the PSR has traditionally been pressed into the service of theistic arguments, that it necessarily entails a 'causally efficacious necessary being' is just another unargued-for assertion. In any case, 'brute fact' plays right into the hands of fideism anyway, so the alignment of the one with theism and the other with atheism is largely a forced and unconvincing one.

Oh, good.

I'm not, at this point, trying to justify the PSR at all. I'm just trying to give a flavour of what it might involve. It may well be the case that the PSR does not hold. But that is not, at this point, what interests me.

If I'm right that the justification is based on the presence on causal reasons, then it is unjustified to claim there are necessarily reasons when there are no causes. — Relativist

If. But there is no argument against an if.

Why should we think reasons can only be causes? I'm not saying that they're not - only that, it requires some work to establish an identity between the two. Moreover, given that there is a rich and long literature of debate regrading that identity, I'm pretty disinclined to take for granted your rather presumptive and unargued-for assertion.

Certainly, Leibniz did not think that reasons are causes, and given that he was among the principle formulators of the PSR, it seems unproductive to try to understand it on the basis of assuming, without any argument sans your incredulity, that identity.

Only by considering causes to be reasons can the PSR be justified. — Relativist

Not in the least. Leibniz, for instance, will cash out the PSR in logical, rather than causal terms, and there is nothing prima faice 'unjustified' about this.

I came across Contra's videos not too long ago and tho the gags are super hit and miss for me, I think she's doing wonderful work, esp. with vids like that.

Perhaps part of the issue is just how strange the idea of a 'sufficient reason' is. Here is a passage that might help, taken from Deleuze's lectures on Leibniz:

"The causality principle states that everything has a cause, which is very different from every thing has a reason. But the cause is a thing, and in its turn, it has a cause, etc. etc. I can do the same thing, notably that every cause has an effect and this effect is in its turn the cause of effects. This is therefore an indefinite series of causes and effects.

What difference is there between sufficient reason and cause? We understand very well. Cause is never sufficient. One must say that the causality principle poses a necessary cause, but never a sufficient one. We must distinguish between necessary cause and sufficient reason. What distinguishes them evidently is that the cause of a thing is always something else. The cause of A is B, the cause of B is C, etc..... An indefinite series of causes. Sufficient reason is not at all something other than the thing. The sufficient reason of a thing is the notion of the thing. Thus, sufficient reason expresses the relation of the thing with its own notion whereas cause expresses the relations of the thing with something else."

I noticed that in your OP you qualifiy SR with the term 'epistemically' ('epistemically sufficient reason'), and that your questions in your later posts seem to ask about questions of 'knowledge' and 'how we know'. Epistemological questions are not traditionally within the ambit of discussions of the PSR (although maybe something like: 'how can we know the PSR is the case?'). So you seem to be trying to relate the PSR with questions of knowledge, but it's unclear to me how exactly you're trying to make this relation stick. I think there's some kind of confusion over what the PSR is for you (I suspect you think it is something else than it is, and are asking the wrong kinds of questions of it), but then I can't be sure.

I think the difference is superficial — Posty McPostface

If you don't keep the distinction firmly in mind then, as happened in your last thread, the specificity of sufficiency is entirely lost. So -

Anyway, how would you answer the question about the difficulty in determining one reason from another for some event? — Posty McPostface

- I still don't understand the relevance of this question.

How are we to know what causes led to what event given uncertainty about said (necessary) sufficient reasons. — Posty McPostface

Hm, this seems to me to be a different question. Remember, the question is not over which reasons are in play, but over the status of such reasons, whatever those reasons may be. Post hoc... concerns bear upon the former line of inquiry, not the latter.