When we find evidence that we're not all the same it's a little jarring. — frank

Very true. I still remember my surprise as a small kid when a friend told me he didn't like oranges at all. I could not understand that. I could not even explain to him how obviously good oranges tasted...

You are a word fetishist. Instead of treating them like tools, you treat them as some sort of magic entity capable of corrupting your thoughts. Relax already. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

You want to use another word instead, like "shoobeedoobeedoo"?

on what rational basis, other than visceral repugnance, do you base your disapproval of it? For you have stated that you disapprove of it. Come now! As a philosopher or student of her, on what rational basis do you rest your opposition to the changing of sex? — Todd Martin

None. And I said as much: I don't oppose to it on theoretical grounds; I just find it gross and repellent, emotionally. IOW I don't like it. Even circumcision is a bit untoward in my view, and I routinely advise parents against it.

Intersubjectivity is a very useful concept, especially in philosophy of science, in that it bridges the gap between subjectivity and objectivity. It explains how we build some extent of objectivity NOT by deleting the observer (the subject) but on the contrary, by ADDING other observing subjects and comparing MANY subjective observations.

Too bad, I was looking forward to reading it...

Sure. Write a nice letter to Francis and he'll see what he can do.

don’t you see all the public men and women who are regularly censured for violations, in speech and/or deed, of the PC standards that have been set by our society, and suffer loss of their jobs and of their public standing? — Todd Martin

I encourage you to cancel cancel culture. Simplify your life. You are free to say whatever you want, and other people are free to like or dislike it. Where's the problem?

Let me take an example. Surgery on genitals is something that makes me cringe. I find people who surgically switch sex kinda gross (cross dressing is something else, it's fine and even funny). I don't hate them, just find them crazy. Now, I'm not gonna say that to any and all gender confused people out there just for the sake of hurting them. That would be mean, and very tiring. But if one wants to know, I disapprove of changing one's biological sex via surgery. At any age. Of course now some people will call you transphobic for saying that, but they are entitled to think whatever they want about me. I don't give a flying rat's ass.

I want to solve climate change. That will be my life's work. I'll have no time for theory. — counterpunch

Sure thing.

Fine, IF you don't try and pin down climate change on pope Urban VIII ever again.

the outline is not imagined. — counterpunch

The general outline, as I explained, is that the debate happened within the Church as much as it did outside of it. Copernicus was probably a priest. Giordano Bruno was a Dominican friar. Kepler attended seminary and wanted to be a priest.

I am arguing that Descartes was intellectually dishonest - or what you would call prudent; while Galileo was intellectually honest, and condemned for it. — counterpunch

Galileo too was prudent. After his first trial he stayed put about heliocentrism for two decades. It's only after the new pope, a body of his, encouraged him to write about it that he did... Hobbes too was prudent. He accepted a pension from his king, who just asked him in return never to publish anything about religion or politics again... It's quite facile to condemn past philosophers for being prudent, from the comfort of the present, when you ain't gonna burn for anything you say...

Had that been so, perhaps now, we would not be facing a climate and ecological crisis that threatens the stability of civilisation — counterpunch

The Catholic Church is 100% committed to ecology and fighting climate change. It's the anglo-saxon Protestants, the anti-papists who deny climate change today. So something doesn't work in your story.

It's puzzling though - why Descartes would be invited to the Royal Court of Sweden, if Queen Christina so objected to his ideas? — counterpunch

He was perhaps the most famous philosopher in Europe at the time. She spoke excellent French and surrounded herself with luminaries, many of them French. She was just curious to know him, I guess.

You are imagining a kind of cosmic battle between science and religion, in which Galileo was a hero of science and Descartes a kind of traitor, while the 'aristocracy' and the Church are on the other side, fighting for obscurantism. But my contention is that the historical facts paint a far more complex and less manichean picture.

For instance, Queen Christina was not any aristocrat. She had a rather peculiar life, had a few lovers, men and women, and thought of herself as no less a philosopher than Descartes.

Galileo is my own hero too, more so than Descartes, so no dispute on his contribution. But he, like Descartes and all the others, was a devot Christian educated by the Church and tied to it in many other ways, including financially. Galileo seriously considered the priesthood as a young man. The very name 'Galileus' originally means 'Christian'. The Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems was commissioned by no other than Pope Urban VIII, who had supported Galileo during his first trial.

So this battle between science and religious tradition was happening within the Church. It was not pitting the Church vs the scientists, but splitting the Church and her flock in two camps: those who believed that scripture was the only certain source of knowledge, and those who thought that human reason and observation were God-given faculties that, if used well, could help get a glimpse of the glory of God through the study of His creation.

I don't deny facts, ever. But the fact Descartes died is somewhat incidental — counterpunch

You presented his being invited to the court of Queen Christina as a reward for his supposedly 'subjectivist' philosophy, which the powerful would have some interest in promoting... In truth Christina didn't like Descartes's philosophy, which she found too mechanistic, and he fell sick and died as a direct result of accepting her invitation to Stockholm. So your nice conspiration theory crumbles.

How could he have doubted that the world exists, and that his own body exists, and not cared if it was credible doubt? — counterpunch

It was a thought experiment about doubting the world, not a real doubt. He was just playing with the idea of radical doubt.

Because he already had a conclusion in mind - that, thrusting his hand into the fire and finding 'I'm in pain, therefore I am' - would rule out, by implying the undeniable existence of an objective reality, it was his intent to undermine. — counterpunch

You don't get it. Pain can sometimes be an illusion. Descartes cogito's point is that one cannot doubt the doubter himself. Descartes was well aware of the existence of an objective reality, and his cogito is an attempt to prove that it does exist.

we can very reasonably conclude that Descartes wrote the 'cogito ergo sum' argument to accord with Church doctrine - using a dubious method to find certain knowledge in the subjective/soul, rather than, find meaning in the physical world through hypotheses tested by the evidence of the senses - and maybe find himself on trial for his life. — counterpunch

Descartes did scrap a book almost ready to publish on heliocentrism, after the second Galileo trial, because he was afraid of being jailed. So he was prudent. But he was not the mouthpiece of the Church. After his death all his books landed on the Church index of prohibited works.

Important in what regard? It remains, Galileo was grievously suspect of heresy - which is about a hair's breadth from being burned alive, while Descartes was rubbing shoulders with European aristocracy. And so it remains that science as an understanding of reality was potentially heretical - while subjectivism was potentially a ticket to the big show! — counterpunch

Important in that Descartes was invited to what was then a pretty horrible place, and he was reluctant to go, and when he went there, he died of cold. That the extent to which he ‘rubbed shoulders with aristocracy’, as you say. Descartes was also a believer in heliocentrism and a scientist, who invented the cartesian coordinates. You are the FAUX News of philosophers.

It begins with Galileo - who formulated scientific method in order to prove the earth orbits the sun, and was threatened with torture and forced to recant, was found grievously suspect of heresy and held under house arrest for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, his contemporary, Descartes - using an argument that can only be described as sophistry, asserted the primacy of the subject - in a manner consistent with emphasising the spiritual and reviling the profane, and he was appointed to the Royal Court of Queen Christina of Sweden. — counterpunch

If we are to use history as a source of philosophical insight, it might be useful to recall a few important points. One is that Queen Christina was well versed about the heliocentric system. Her favorite philosopher was Gassendi, an heliocentric. Another is that, while Galileo did live under house arrest, he died in his bed at the respectable age of 77, while Descartes died at the tender age of 53, of pneumonia, four months after accepting the queen's invitation to come to Stockholm. According to Wiki, neither the weather nor the queen agreed much with him. Should have stayed in his bed...

Descartes arrived on 4 October 1649. [...] With Christina's strict schedule he was invited to the cold and draughty castle at 5:00 AM daily to discuss philosophy and religion. Soon it became clear they did not like each other; she disapproved of his mechanical view, and he did not appreciate her interest in Ancient Greek.[40] On 15 January Descartes wrote he had seen Christina only four or five times.[41] On 1 February 1650 Descartes caught a cold. He died ten days later, early in the morning on 11 February 1650, and according to Chanut the cause of his death was pneumonia.[42][note 6]

This starts almost like elevator music, but it quickly becomes orgasmic.




Je l'salue les mains dans les poches
Le cœur dans la gorge
Une semaine m'a semblé un an
Il s'assit tout à côté de moi
Ma peau commence à brûler
Et je cache mes joues rouges
Ses yeux s'allument
Je fais la fière devant tous ses copains
Mes lèvres tremblent au souvenir
D'une nuit blanche dans ses bras
D'une nuit blanche dans ses bras

Il fait de moi un gosse
Je me perds, je me perds dans son sourire
Il fait de moi une femme
Je me noie, je me noie dans son corps

La chambre commence à se vider
J'suis paralysée
Je n'le regarde pas
Il me met la main sur la joue
Mon visage est tout chaud
Et ma bouche est excitée
Ses yeux s'allument
Je fonds en dedans, je me sens si chanceuse
Mes lèvres tremblent au souvenir
D'une nuit blanche dans ses bras
D'une nuit blanche dans ses bras

Il fait de moi un gosse
Je me perds, je me perds dans son sourire
Il fait de moi une femme
Je me noie, je me noie dans son corps
Il fait de moi un gosse
Je me perds, je me perds dans son sourire
Il fait de moi une femme
Je me noie, je me noie dans son corps

One could define philosophy as an effort to clarify one's ideas in a progressive, heuristic manner. From this perspective, philosophers need to deal with unclarity, try and reduce it, try and think a bit more clearly than yesterday if you wish. I agree that it's not black and white, that there are layers and layers of ambiguities, and that good philosophy works on the ambiguities of life but it shouldn't wallow in ambiguities; it should try and reduce them. So Ludwig was being simplistic here, though he is right to value clarity.

Many proverbs speak of the limits of speech. Speech is silver, silence is gold... De gustibus non est disputandum... Stay away from people who talk too much... These proverbs point to subject matters (eg tastes) or manners of speaking (eg gossip) which are beyond the remit of useful language. Then there are also purely metaphysical or theological questions without any real bearing on our lives, like the sex of angels or the number of gods, or why there is something rather than nothing at all.

Socrates corrupted the youth by teaching strange gods, not by loving boys sexually... — Todd Martin

That' strikes me as naïve. In any case, he accepted his sentence, and that is the central point: he realised that one can't be free and expect others to like it.

What you want is more than just freedom of speech. You want to speak freely AND be listened to and agreed with. But people have the freedom not to listen to your speech, and usually that's what they do.

Anti-burners kind of works.

Freight train, freight train, run so fast
Freight train, freight train, run so fast
Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I'm going

When I'm dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
And tell them all I've gone to sleep

When I die, Lord, bury me deep
Down at the end of old Chestnut Street
So I can hear old Number Nine
As she comes rolling by

When I die, Lord, bury me deep
Down at the end of old Chestnut Street
Place the stones at my head and feet
And tell them all I've gone to sleep

Freight train, freight train, run so fast
Freight train, freight train, run so fast
Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I'm going

Bernie Sanders' inauguration memes help raise $1.8 million for charity
"We're glad we can use my internet fame to help Vermonters in need," Sanders said. "But even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress." — Olivier5

Sanders' capacity to piss off people will never cease to amaze me. A Frisco teacher -- Ms Ingrid Seyer-Ochi -- has written an OpEd about how his mittens at the inauguration were a symbol of "subtle white privilege".... Very subtle indeed.

We need a word for all those folks who hate Bernie with a passion. There's a few words for his supporters already: the Bernites, the Bernie bros; but how do we call those who suffer from the opposite condition? The Bernophobics? The Anti-Socialo? The Truth-Haters?

In truth we know very little about Socrates, and it's all based on one single source: what his student Plato wrote. As for his ideas, they were not actually killed. We're still talking about him after all this time.

Socrates was a disruptive influence and his ideas corrupted the youth of Athens so had to be killed. — Nikolas

The phrase "to corrupt the youth of Athens" has more than one meaning. The charge may have refered to something far more mundane than philosophy. We know next to nothing about Socrates.

In any case, the point was that philosophers today are not sentenced to death for their ideas. Go easy with the drama.

Vive la différence, oui.

The French were initially baffled by #metoo because we invested quite a lot culturally onto the idea of romantic heterosexual love. Not that every single French national is romantic of course (or heterosexual for that matter) but it's a strong trope in the culture, which I think made us less able to see the harm done by men onto women in the name of "love".

Things are changing, I believe for the better, but still I doubt my nation will ever fully embrace the idea that men should wear lingerie, for instance. A less extreme perhaps example is that of the skirt for men and boys: there are men (and couture dons) who tried wearing the skirt but it's not gelling in the culture.

I actually wore a sort of skirt for a few weeks, and enjoyed it quite a lot. But I was in Somalia then, where men do wear sorts of skirts (a scarf wrapped around the waist) so I was just conforming to the local gender roles. It's great for hot weather... The breeze keeping your thing ventilated, that's priceless! So we're missing something. I guess the downside is a bone is harder to hide.

They will have to drink the hemlock. — Nikolas

Oh really? I thought Socrates was sentenced to death because he was what we call today a pedophile. Also I am not aware of any present day philosopher forced to drink any hemlock...

It goes beyond the essentialist idea that some things are bad and others are good by nature. I believe it applies to gender roles and differences. A touch of contrast between men and women, between feminity and masculinity, is not a bad thing per say.

Balance in all things. Very Aristotelian! — Wayfarer

According to Wiki, the idea dates from the renaissance, and from a physician:

"The dose makes the poison" is an adage intended to indicate a basic principle of toxicology. It is credited to Paracelsus who expressed the classic toxicology maxim "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison."

what is masculine assertiveness? How does it differ from general assertiveness? — Uglydelicious

Not sure that it does differ from general assertiveness.

29 years here... :-)

Like always, the dose makes the toxicity. You have to allow for a little masculine assertiveness once in a while. The women who castrate their men don't have a good time in bed. Masculinity, like feminity, they spice up life.

Thank her for it.

When it stops listening. — Wayfarer

That's a good one.

There's a point where masculinity becomes toxic, but where is that point? — Edy

When you start to suffer and make others around you suffer because you try too hard to conform to masculinity standards.

Personal liberty is not the same as societal liberty. — Nikolas

That's a totally different topic. My point is you cannot be a free spirit if you keep anguishing to no end about what others will think of what you say. Of course if you want the folks on twitter to love you, you may have to give them what they expect, but what's the point of that?

You don't actually need to conform to PC in real life.

If you don't care much about what others expect of you, you put yourself at risk of their anger and their revenge. — baker

Sooooo scary.

Philosophy 1 -- Hawking 0 — Kenosha Kid

Hawking should have known that philosophy cannot die -- she's a goddess after all -- but that she can hide from her enemies alright.

Opposing free speech in schools, the media, political correctness etc. is instead rewarded. — Nikolas

If you care so much about what others expect of you, you will never be free. Rewards from society are not necessary to live well. Your own personal freedom to say whatever you want may not agree with other people's expectations that you're going to stick to "proper language", but then, don't you also expect things from others? And do you feel like you restrict their freedom when you expect something from them?

Does the question matter? They are not in a competition for any job. Their views are qualitatively different, they each have their pluses and minuses. The peasant doesn't understand the politics of the age very clearly, nor the economics; and he may at least initially not be aware of certain innovations or scientific developments that may come to define an age, a posteriori.

The point is that no historical period was ever embraced in its totality by anyone, contemporaries included.

Stephen Hawking said that Philosophy is dead. — Nikolas

I don't know about that, but last time I checked, Stephen Hawking was certainly dead. Maybe philosophy had the last word after all.

it seems reasonable to say that the living only truly know their own time — Gregory

Do they? For the fine details, yes, but their knowledge of their own times was necessarily partial, limited to their surroundings and social class (the fine details of which I agree they knew better than we can). But an historian today can access a more global view of say the middle age, more comprehensive, cutting across locales and social classes, than anyone from the middle age. He also has the benefit of hindsight.

Another text by Nougaro, on the music of Berimbau (Baden Powell & Vinicius de Moraes)


Regarde-la ma ville
Elle s'appelle Bidon
Bidon, Bidon, Bidonville
Vivre là-dedans c'est cotton
Les filles qui ont la peau douce
La vendent pour manger
Dans les chambres l'herbe pousse
Pour y dormir faut se pousser
Les gosses jouent mais le ballon
C'est une boite de sardine, bidon

Donne-moi ta main camarade
Toi qui viens d'un pays
Où les hommes sont beaux
Donne-moi ta main camarade
J'ai cinq doigts moi aussi
On peut se croire égaux

Regarde-la ma ville
Elle s'appelle bidon
Bidon, bidon, bidonville
Me tailler d'ici, à quoi bon
Pourquoi veux-tu que je me perde
Dans tes cités, à quoi ça sert!
Je verrai toujours de la merde
Même dans le bleu de la mer
Je dormirais sur des millions
Je reverrai toujours bidon

Donne-moi ta main camarade
Toi qui viens d'un pays
Où les hommes sont beaux
Donne-moi ta main camarade
J'ai cinq doigts moi aussi
On peut se croire égaux

Serre-moi la main, camarade
Je te dis au revoir
Je te dis à bientôt
Bientôt, bientôt
On pourra se parler, camarade
Bientôt, bientôt
On pourra s'embrasser, camarade
Bientôt, bientôt
Les oiseaux, les jardins, les cascades
Bientôt, bientôt
Le soleil dansera, camarade
Bientôt, bientôt
Je t'attends, je t'attends, camarade