It's been forever since I've read Kierkegaard, but he does declare that "Subjectivity is Truth" in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments uner the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. I agree, but you'd have to give it a couple of months before I could adequately respond to this. I'm of the opinion that it should be emphasized that all knowledge is situated by subjective experience. I actually reject objective truth altogether, but haven't quite hashed this all out well enough to deliver a decent argument.

Well said, ssu!
The established distance of the war is disconcerting. I, myself, had once come to the realization that we were still engaged in the War in Afghanistan. This was sometime around 2014. I had honestly forgotten that we were engaged in the conflict in spite of that I had protested us being there before. What will happen in a world where ongoing wars can just simply be forgotten by the general populace?

Responsibility arises out of that there are others, but I think that your conclusion may still assume that it can be soundly considered. Because it is impossible to know the consequences of our actions before they are committed, how can we be held accountable for them? Arendt, I think, only asks the question. I would suggest that formal responsibility is an impossible ethic to maintain. A person always takes a leap of faith by acting. Human agency is always beset by the perils of Ethics. The consequences of an event can only be understood after the event has taken place. You just have to cope with that it's all kind of a lot of guesswork.

Well, you don't have to. I was just sort of tossing that out there, and don't necessarily care to get into an argument.

I honestly don't know all that much about Metaphysics. I've read some Pirsig who I do think is rather interesting. I also ostensibly, because I could not at all understand it, read François Laruelle's Introduction to Non-Philosophy (or something like that). I took some really great notes on that text which look like the records of a Physics experiement, but still have no idea as to what it was that he was on about.

You seem to be utilizing an appeal to the boundlessness of a theory which I think could be a logical fallacy of some sort. It's like an appeal to ideology. It'd be like suggesting that because Christianity is so widespread and nearly everything can be interpreted as a Christ metaphor that it is impossible not to believe in God. The antithetical negating claim is still concerned with the topic at hand, but does not prove for what it negates to be true by that it is still concerned with the topic at hand. There's some logic or Philosophy of Language that I don't know which could probably support this.

I was honestly just tossing that out there, though. The reason for the bias could be that Science has surpassed Metaphysics. The bias is still problematic, but it may not be wholly unfounded. I actually rather dislike the Scientific slant against Philosophy. I'm just arguing to the contrary.

I don't know. I only care so much to get into a dispute. I realistically don't know enough about this to level a decent argument.

I see what you're saying. I just don't think that Metaphysical methodology is any longer all that useful.

You claimed that I had made a metaphysical statement. I don't think that I did.

To me, proceeding from Platonic forms, Metaphysics seems to assume that there is an abstract realm where truth resides and sets out to discover what it is. It's like a substitution for the divine. I don't think that the abstract realm exists.

I'm sort of critiquing the metaphysical assumption that abstract truths exist. I'm not stating that there is an abstract truth which Metaphysics seeks to discover.

Eh, it's just speculation. I think that we will only be able to prolong life for up to upwards of around 200 years given the current technocratic establishment. I think that an alternative society would need to be created before technology can really boom to where life can be extended much further than that. I'm skeptical of that what would be like eternal life is possible. Human beings a-anthropocencitically (I don't know what the correct word is here.) usually die at around 30 from what I understand. I think that that could be multiplied by itself, but don't expect that human life can truly be prolonged indefinitely.

Life is strange. Even if it's not really all that great, you still always want to be living. I doubt that almost anyone would choose not to extend their life given the chance to.

I think that for eternal life to be possible you would have to assume that technological progress will continue exponentially. I honestly think that it will sort of plateau in the not so distant future. It'll take a radically different society to continue with technological advancement.

Being said, I don't think that it is impossible for people to be able to live up to upwards of 200 years in, perhaps, even our lifetime. In so far that this can be done, it should be done. Heidegger was wrong about authenticity. One should not be resolute in the face of death, one should actively flee death for as long as humanly possible. In the distant future, I think that people will be able to live for upwards of 900 years, but I doubt that it will ever be possible to live forever. I don't think that consciousness could be downloaded to a harddrive. There are no spiritual reasons for this. I just chalk it up to quantum mechanics or something.

That was an interesting anecdote. Thanks for sharing ssu.

Stalin was notorious for purposing anti-Fascist praxis for totalitarian repression. I once had a Marxist-Leninist show me documents from the Moscow Show Trials as evidence of that Leon Trotsky was a Fascist collaborator. There's an odd kind of logic to Stalinism, but the predisposition is just totally insane.

Concerning that it would take brave decisions by any political leadership, I agree wholeheartedly. They are brave decisions that need to be made. The repercussions of US interventions in the region have been catastrophic. None of what we have done there in nearly all of the past century has brought about anything that could at all be considered to be positive. All of American foreign policy in the region needs to be radically reconceptualized. It's sort of massive undertaking, but is not outside of the realm of what is possible.


Oh, I am well aware of Operation Cyclone. I think that one of the CIA Library Reading Room articles that I cited mentions it. I couldn't find an irrefutable enough source to bring it up in my paper. I cited Wikipedia in order to prove that Mohammad Zahir Shah did come to power following a series of political assassinations, but felt that Operation Cyclone would be too contentious to just cite Wikipedia in spite of that I pretty much just believe what Wikipedia states.

And, let your mind be boggled! I do support a complete withdraw. What do we have to gain by staying there? I would be willing to wager that the attacks, anymore, are just simply in response to the American presence. It is impossible to neutralize an insurgency through asymetrical warfare. The best that you could hope for would be a never-ending, low-intensity conflict. It'd be best to leave well, but still better than things stand now to just simply leave.

My assumption is that what Metaphysics originally set out to do was to discover what could be referred to as "objective reality". The methodology became much more open and, so, I was perhaps being unfair to the field.

How is a statement about the methodology "metaphysical"? Everything can be defined as being metaphysical, but I fail to see how I've made a metaphysical statement.

Eh, it's fine to get off topic. Have you ever seen My Perestroika? It's a pretty good documentary on the collapse of the Soviet Union. Adam Curtis also has a pretty good bit on it in I can't remember which documentary.

While we're off topic, the right-wing caricature of a Yale Law student has suddenly just made perfect sense to me.

To get back on topic, I don't know that a proper response to the attacks would have necessarily required outstanding politicians. A more pragmatic response would have effected a more pragmatic reaction. People also become "great" in dire situations. All that the U.S. would have needed following the attacks is someone who was level-headed.

Yeah, 9/11 conspiracies are kind of depressing. You always have to wonder. They weren't as common as you might expect, but fairly common during Occupy. Aside from that they do tend to ultimately be anti-Semitic, they also distract from actual legacy of U.S. foreign policy in the region. I don't know how so many people became liegeman to a worldview that was primarily promulgated through YouTube videos. It was kind of a real problem in the Green Anarchy Movement for a while. Like Occupy, it wasn't quite as common as you might expect, but it was common enough to be of legitimate concern.

I guess I feel like the response should have been similar to the earlier attacks. If we seriously wanted to prevent further attacks, then there would be no reason to engage in a ground invasion. Al-Qaeda should have just simply been quelled by some sort of spec ops. I still would have ultimately had some sort of ethical qualms with that, but would certainly be less inclined to be so critical of American foreign policy had that have been the case.

Edit: I actually don't know that I would say that most 9/11 conspiracies were actually anti-Semitic. They usually tended to revolve around the Illuminati. So, with a somewhat irrational hatred of Yale University, but not necessarily anti-Semitic. They do adopt anti-Semitic reasoning, though.

Well, I'm in favor of a complete withdraw. I think that, since it's still kind of a powder keg, non-military efforts could be made to transition peacefully. We should be building infastructure and schools and getting people access to food and water. Somehow that can be carried out peacefully, I think. If not, I still think that we should just withdraw. I don't think that we ever should've been in Afghanistan in the first place. There was never a reason to engage in a conflict on the ground whatsoever. One could argue that some sort of operations should have been carried out against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but I still would have probably been ostensibly opposed to even that. The whole thing should have been more of like a strageic counter-terror operation than a full-blown war. It's still chaos over there, but I do think that an actual attempt to leave some sort of democratic polity to substantially govern over Afghanistan would do a lot more to prevent terror than any war operations ever could. The U.S. should go full First Earth Battalion with it. We could actually become the U.N. Peacekeeping operation that seeks only to amerliorate the conditions of people ravaged by ineqaulity. We're sort of doing that now, but it should really be handled a lot differently. Our current strategy seems to be to con the Afghan people into accepting the notoriously corrupt Afhgan state and to figure out how to mine the region for resources. We seriously need to be concerned with leaving the country in a state that will not result in another conflict. Such concerns also necessitate a different approach to peace talks. There's a documentary that I can't find that addresses this which I thought was pretty good, but, like I said, I can't find it.

Ideally, I would suggest that the people of Afghanistan should spontaneously create an Anarchist commune and that we should act as their allies in this new utopian project, but I don't really think that those hopes are all that reasonable, and, so, what we should be doing is to figure out how to leave a genuine Liberal democracy. Doing so would have a lot more to do with alleviating the plights in the country than it would with waging military operations. There shouldn't be any set out operations at all.

We should actually be doing what the UN claims that it does. We should actually be protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and abiding by international law. If you eliminated the "maintain peace and international stability" section from the UN's website, than that is what we should be doing.

Edit: It's a little bit confusing to explain because my exit strategy is, like, how the US and other nations who are involved with the conflict talk the rest of the world into its continuation, but, like, we should actually be engaged in the exit strategy.


Are you suggesting that we created the mujahideen or just that I should have gone into further detail concerning the insurgency at its inception? My assumption has always been that we just ostensibly backed them.

You necessarily have to presuppose some information, but ideally it seems like you shouldn't presuppose anything at all. It's unlikely that I would agree with Aristotle, but I will avoid further derailing this thread as none of this has all that much to do with bias against Philosophy in scientific circles.

I don't know that I would define a priori as being equivalent to presupposition in a Philosophical sense. Philosophically speaking, a priori truths are those which exists independent of the human experience. Kant critiqued this in Critique of Pure Reason which I haven't read in a long time. A critique of a Rationalist epistemology could be that a priori truths are presupposed. We presuppose things all of the time, but that one should do so in Philosophy, I think, would indicate that they haven't thought critically enough about their subject matter. Nothing is given and all reason is somewhat faulty, but to assume in advance that one does, in point of fact, "know" how things stand seems, to me, to be indicative of a lack of critical consideration.

To be honest, I do have a fairly rudimentary understanding of Metaphysics. From what I glean, the methodology does sort of assume that there is an abstract truth that is to be deigned somehow.

I think that I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that I would define Metaphysics as being "presuppositional". Metaphysics assumes that there are things that are "out there" that are "true". I don't quite know how to put this as I am just parcelling this out. It seems to assume that there is an abstract truth that exists which is independent of the human experience. I feel like the methodology was a substitution for the mythic that didn't go quite far enough. It proceeds too much from Platonic forms. Granted, I'm only really considering Western Metaphysics, and haven't really given the methodology quite enough credit.

Edit: Like, what I mean is, like, that there's no abstract thing that is "out there". Like, when you do logic, things are defined as being "true" and then you discover what is comparable as according to the rules that have been defined. "Truth" is not discovered through abstract reasoning. Concerning "What is?", scientific methodology is better suited to discover what there is and what it is like. If I want to know about a rock, I will ask a geologist. A Metaphysician no longer has all that much to tell me about a rock.

I've written this in a colloquial sense because I'm not quite sure how to get this across, but, like, what I mean is that there is no abstract "thing". I guess I feel like Metaphysics assumes that another abstract world exists somehow.

I'd also like to know whether or not people think that it is useful to capitalize "Absurd". I did so in order to refer to the concept by Camus, but felt a bit strange about it as he does not capitalize the concept in his own work.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. If you do have a really good point, then, you ought to learn how to get it across in a manner that can be easily understood by all. There is something to be said for rambling, though.

I guess I feel like I almost take more from succinct phrases in poems than I do from Philosophical text. The whole world can be discovered through a simple phrase.

Not everything can be expresses laconicly, though.

Is that Metaphysics, though?

I think that they'd be acutely aware of green. I don't necessarily know a lot about water, but I feel like a chemist would be be able to tell you all sorts of things about the properties of water. It could go unnoticed, though. It's your hypothetical.

Metaphysics is more complex than I have made it out to be. In so far that Metaphysics addresses "What is?", I feel like "Science" is better suited to discover what actually exists. To me, Metaphysics is sort of the school of thought from when all philosophers were polymaths and part-time astronomers.

I would recommend reading Sartre, but it is a rather daunting task. You've kind of got to read Heidegger first, and while I get the gist of Heidegger, I honestly just can't pay enough attention to really understand Heidegger. Being and Nothingness is incredibly boring, but it is the book to recommend with the set of interests you have already mentioned. Don't feel like you're in over your head when you read it. No one really pays enough attention to actually understand Sartre. Who knows if he was really right about anything anyways? Negation is probably just a facet of thought and not the central crux to thinking. The chapter on "bad faith" is really good, though. I actually think that he takes too much of a leaf from Heidegger in adopting his concept of authenticity, but you should come to your own conclusions. I may just read that and Nausea, which I honestly haven't read myself.

I think that there ought to be a loosely affiliated set of freely associated societies who decide upon matters through participatory democracy. I kind of started my own Leftist sect, though, so, I understand that my political stance may be somewhat difficult to parcel out.

I just let the lines go. I'd rather miss a line than disrupt the action. I can keep up with most anything, though. Sometimes I feel like I should watch films with my reading glasses. My eyes can get a bit tired if there is too much dialogue.

I had never heard of that Woody Allen film before. That's pretty out there.

I haven't argued for forced egalitarianism, though. I'm an Anarcho-Pacifist. I feel like we're talking at cross paths here.

Both. Functional egalitarianism necessitates an equitable distribution of resources. How that is to be done, I honestly don't know. I don't think that it should be done through the implementation of an allegedly temporary totalitarian regime. I think that it somehow possible to equitably redistribute resources without relying on a governing body at all, but I'm also of the opinion that a genuine participatory democracy would not constitute what we understand as a "government".

I define Socialism as being a political philosophy that prefers egalitarianism. I'm also from the States, but I don't think that the American attitude towards politics adequately assesses political situations.

The historical examples of the atrocities incurred under Stalin and Mao are a fair enough argument. Dogmatic Marxism did lent itself too well to totalitarian ideology. I think that those regimes were bastardizations of Marx, and not just simply what Marx advanced, however.

I don't necessarily agree with Marx, but I do think that he deserves more credit than to be thought of as the testator of totalitarianism.

Do you think that egalitarianism is inherently flawed or do you just take issue with Socialism?

What do you mean about the Frankfurt School? The Frankfurt School was just the institutionalization of what we know as Critical Theory. There are plenty of critiques to made of that, but likening them to Stalinists is not necessarily one of them. Orwell was, at the very least, an Anarchist sympathizer. Anarchism is historically a left-wing philosophy. There was no Post-Left Anarchy at the time, and, so, Orwell would have to be classified as a libertarian Socialist of some sort. The point is just that there are anti-authoritarian schools of thought on the Left.

The graph assumes that Socialism necessarily results in totalitarianism. I don't agree. Perhaps you would like to justify such a claim with an argument.

I don't actually agree. I think that the people in WG would have a plethora of terms to describe "green". It'd be like what they say about Inuits and words for snow, which apparently is a bit of a myth.

Oh, God! The Left...
I consider for the Left to consist of everything from Marxism-Leninism to libertarian Communism. It's the whole school of thought proceeding from what can more or less be described as Socialism. I consider for myself to be a libertarian Socialist. I also happen to be an Anarcho-Pacifist, but that isn't terribly relevent to this discussion. We do not advocate for what is meant by "Big Government".

Where, for instance, would you put George Orwell? He fought with the Anarchists in Spain during the civil war.

Even Bob Black has no place on this graph. The entire history of Anarchism could not be placed on this graph.

What is it with Libertarians and these graphs? Why create more thought-terminating clichés in politics? You have totally denied that the libertarian Left at all exists. We exist, man. Don't negate my existence with a graph.

A Nihilist does choose to become a Nihilist and can choose to unbecome one. There is no inherent inequity concerning the human psyche and the pathology of Nihilism.

I like them as well. I just wonder if I haven't added another layer of abstraction to the experience. You have to read the film as you watch it. I actually think that people who watch films with subtitles may be better able to analyze them, but that some of the emotive experience is ultimately lost. The fourth wall is all too present when watching films with subtitles. It's not just the nuances that are lost, I think that experience actually radically differs.

I can't remember why I brought up The Power of Nonviolence. That doesn't really have too much to do with what I'm on about.

I don't actually agree that emotionality is problematic for Ethics. I think that the problem is just sensationalism. What is felt is the natural response to whatever Ethics there are.

Also, I think that the philosopher that I'm looking for is Thomas Hobbes. Assumedly, I should read Leviathan. Does anyone know where Hobbes parcels out an ethic, or of theories of Ethics that stem from Hobbes. I feel like there is an antithetical methodology to my general sentiments out there somewhere, but, as I do, admittedly, tend to keep to my own circles, I'm not entirely sure where to look.

Dubbed films are ridiculous. I'd much rather read the subtitles. I can't even stand dubbed anime. It's only tolerable in karate films.

Translations are especially troubling. What becomes of the text when you translate it? How will anyone know that you have been faithful? Can a person truly be faithful at all? By translating the text, you always, to some degree, rewrite it. Writing is so particular. It seems like everyone is just lost in that communication is only ever partially understood.

As much as I actually have somewhat of a bias against the preference for "logic" within scientific reasoning, I actually don't think that scientists have much of a use for Metaphysics or that Metaphysics has much of use in general. Metaphysics asks, "What is?" Scientific reasoning is better suited to the task in most regards. The whole theory and method can be better applied to everything corporeal, which I would argue is all that anything is comprised of. Nothing exists except for atoms and the void and all.

"Science" has replaced Metaphysics. Because the reasoning is better suited to task, this is not necessarily negative.

I would imagine that no term could describe what "green" connotes in WG. WH would only have a rudimentary term that would never apporach what is meant by "green" in WG. For someone to speak of "green" in WG to someone in WH would require something like that the other person would learn another language.