ou wouldn't necessarily see "rays" (unless there were clouds or mist about), you'd see the sun shining if it was shining. Checking the news is fine, but as I have argued that introduces the semantic element, because you couldn't tell just by looking at the paper, whether New York is the capital of Paris or not; you'd have to read it. — John

Yeah, idk, I could go to Paris too and talk to people. For sure, a change of capitals would be a social fact, but I don't see how that changes things. I agree sight is involved in one case, not in the other, but I don't think sight is the sine qua non of the empirical. Do you?

All due respect, I've also read N&N (tho a long time ago) and a bit of secondary literature & am similarly confused by your reading of him.

@John
I may disagreee with you, but more importanly I don't have any sense of what you think is at stake or what roads your distinction opens. What are you ultimately driving at?

Well yeah, I think it's the pegasus thing. I don't disagree that this is a confused way of looking at things. But I can understand a frail and tidy aristocrat enamored of logic and irritated by untidy Meinong taking to it. (I'm being just a bit facetious but I don't have it in me to post a full-fleshed response on a phone. I think it ultimately stems from the british empiricist idea that imagined things are amalagations of experienced things combined with a sympathy for plato's susicions of sophists, who make what isn't seem like it is)

Well I'd have to go to that location and check for rays. In the latter case, I'd have to check the news to see if something crazy happened (and sometimes crazy stuff happens.) Course I'd be boggled as fuck at NYC being the capital, slightly less boggled at Marseilles being the capital. I don't see the essential difference between the two cases.

I'm familiar with the debate (and I think it's clear why Russell thought it was a good idea, even if it isn't) But, so that's just it, with that way of thinking, my example still stands. Even if a capital is that-which-we-call-a-capital, it remains a city first, a capital second

That's interesting. That way of thinking, though I don't know how I feel about it, actually slightly inclines me to John's position. Precisely because most people, who have never been to Paris, know paris first-and-foremost as 'the capital of France.' I think if you asked most people 'What is Paris?' the answer would be "the capital of France". Knowing that paris is the capital of france is knowing how to use 'paris.' Yet I am quite certain "paris is the capital of France" is not analytic.

When qualifiers come into play, one ought be wary. "basic" here. Even if one accepts this characterization, this would mean that there can be non-basic empirical propositions (otherwise appending "basic" would be empty or tautologous) . And then being 'basic' simply wouldn't be a necessary condition of being empirical.

Either way invoking "basic empirical propositions" doesn't help your argument.

But doesn't x being the capital in a the-capital-is-that-which-we-call-the-capital scenario remain empirical since one must still observe people calling x the capital in order to determine what the capital is?

I think the tricky thing here is "we." by which I mean: Even if x is only the capital because we call x the capital, two people calling y the capital wouldn't change things. power (authority, legitimation?) and history slip in through the we.

Washington DC was not always the capital of the US. Was the US not the US when philadelphia was the capital? Or is it no longer the US now that DC is? Or is the particular location of the capital of France essential to Francehood in a way the capital of the US is not essential to UShood?

I agree with you, but wouldn't it remain empirical even if capitolhood were nothing more than an agreed upon designation? Say people nominated cities for position x solely for murky spiritual reasons.

Edit: looks like jamalrob beat me to it

Yeh I don't get the views that Paris is necessarily the Capital of France, if we are using Kripke's modal logic. — shmik

Yeah, same

Perhaps you could quote where he's arguing that 'we can discover moral truths through self-examination alone', or explain the steps from his words to your summary. — mcdoodle

Sure. The crux of Thompson's argument is that, in addition to possessing an a priori ( & universal) concept 'life-form,' we are also able to form an a priori conception of own particular life-form. We are able to this do this because we have a non-empirical representation of ourself - namely, our "I". Since the I refers to our self and since our thoughts are expressions of the life-form which thinks them, we have, says Thompson, immediate, non-empirical, understanding of the form 'human.' Thompson isn't seeking to furnish any particular ethical truths in this essay, but he's clearly suggesting that this first-person awareness is what would serve as a ground for such truths.

This strikes me as being an inside->out way of looking at things, even if its quite different from Levinas (who by the way I'd say is equally outside->in, with the enormous emphasis he places on the traumatic encounter with an unknowable other)

Isn't Thompson explicitly arguing from the "inside out"?

@Pierre-Normand
I'm curious as to whether you think Thompson's argument works. It feels to me like, if you drop the slightly confused transcendental idealist trappings, he's basically saying we can discover moral truths through self-examination alone. But what if I'm a sociopath? Doesn't his argument presume that through introspection alone I can infer rules which obtain for the entire species? And doesn't that presume I'm well-formed, not "blind?"

Vadim, my dude, I love it.

i think it's also worth mentioning that, for Kant, a priori knowledge is always characterized by both necessity and universality. Thompson does not appear to share this view. But this means he's more or less guaranteed to talk past any deontologist he chooses to engage.

I understand the concern about biologism, but the empirical as such doesn't seem too threatening. — jamalrob

The only way I can parse this concern is to read into it a fear of ethical dictates being merely contingent. Except (1) Thompson has already jettisoned any hope for a universal ethics (maybe justice wouldn't apply to aliens) & (2) the a priori knowledge he claims we have about our own life form is thoroughly contingent (&, like you, I'm not even sure it really is a priori. )

It feels to me like Thompson, in this essay, is more concerned with beating his opponents on their terms (wiping away the 'smugness' he mentions) than with working out the immanent logic of his own view.

And if we also agree that there is an a priori intellectual structure carried into the scene, couldn't we say that this structure is not that concerning life forms, but is rather that which lies behind these concepts, pure a priori concepts such as universal and particular or form and individual? — jamalrob

I had this problem as well. Thompson kind of - kind of - addresses this:

"The opposition of individual organism and life form is, as we might say, a more determinate form of the opposition of individual and universal in general, and shares the a priori character the latter"

But I can't identify any aspect of Thompson's five-fold grammar of life that is more determinate than the universal 'grammar' of any object at all. Wouldn't all five types of judgments apply just as well to, say, stars?

Regarding the language metaphor: It's basically the old langue/parole distinction so dear to the structuralists.

To understand any particular utterance in language x, one must have a broader understanding of x as a whole. This broader understanding - comprising syntactic rules, vocabulary etc. - is atemporal in the same sense that 'umbrella jelly' is atemporal. It doesn't - in fact, cannot- fully realize itself in any one instance, yet is the implicit whole without which the understanding of any instance would be impossible.

While it's certainly true that all languages develop over time, it nonetheless remains the case that to understand an utterance in any particular language, one must have a relatively fixed understanding of that language as an atemporal whole. Similarly - to multiply analogies - you can't make a move in chess (or identify your opponent as having made a move himself) without understanding a static 'atemporal' set of rules.

I think the analogy is a fine one, though I agree with jamalrob that Thompson's point was clear enough without it.

that sounds unpleasant, yeah

I think the more pressing point about the post-irony is that on the internet it isn't affected or academic or literary or part of an experiment, but actually comes quite naturally as a mode of casual discourse, and as something superior its lesser cousins, like (God help us) 'snark'

Ok, yeah, I hear you, but I think I'm with jamalrob on this one. The natural, casual thing is a function of being in a safe space where there's no pressure play a certain role. The internet's one place, but just hanging out with friends at someone's house, or a bar, or around a campfire or wherever is just as good.

I can't read about a middle aged white woman trapped in a failing marriage who spiritualizes the prospect of having an affair anymore. I just can't do it.

Concretely, which contemporary novels are you referring to here? Sounds like you've read a lot like this! (cf 'anymore')

sorry, jk, but seriously

I don't think 'post-ironic, trans-sincere' literature originates with the internet. Bartheleme had mastered the form by the late 60s. Maybe the internet just makes over-culturalization more widespread?

things change

ugh, there's a certain type of person who needs others to understand how brimming they are with joie de vivre. The most vibrant prof at the seminar! "Dancing in the morning sunlight" "kisses and caresses to squander on someone." This is Walt Whitman Kitsch with a dash of narcissistic faux-paganism. It's as irritating, in its way, as the jeremiads of a Cioran.

Anyway, how in the dickens does fatigue-as-defense-against-overexertion mean we ought to be exuberant Nietzscheans? What?

I always thought this one was funny

"I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when one's opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

This one too:

"What if laughter were really tears"

ha

Yeah, so this is exactly the kind of response I'm talking about.

Yeah, idk man, one can only take so many 'language itself is metaphorical' type responses before it stops seeming worth it.

I think, to be honest, I'm happy to just leave Schopenhauer altogether. An atemporal, unified, will doesn't make any sense at all. What is will-like about such a thing? There are many beautiful passages and insights in WWR, but as a system, it's hard to take seriously.

eh, sure - think we lost the plot for tepid niceties but this thread's toast anyway

Then why did you claim it's incorrect to say the will clashes with itself?

Even if the doxa blows where it pleases, it does so in a strange way. The type of movement you'd be itching to draw diagrams of, if you were a kabbalist. Imagine the New Yorker or The New York Times or Rolling Stone as a a kind of sphere, internally complex, linked, through subtle channels, to other spheres. The wind blows, but it has to be filtered to be registered. I don't think it's so contingent and arbitrary that there's nothing left to be said. Maybe the heart of it is pure arbitrarity. But get to know a group of aesthetes, watch how things change. There's a subtle logic at work. Maybe it's not worth looking into, but I'm curious.

Well, the convenience store was Amato's, whose deal is convenience store + authentic deli! I don't think Amato's exists outside of Northern New England, but I might be wrong. I personally hate Amato's (everything is marked up and I have no idea why. My brand of cigarettes is $2.00 more there than anywhere else in the city, besides a small shop in Portland's Old Port which everyone local avoids because they know it's designed to prey on tourists) but the next closest store adds another 15 minutes to the walk (I don't have a car.)

I got a sixpack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Classier than bud or pbr but nothing special.

But I want to get at something beyond the hierarchical classification of tastes and aesthetics. I guess what I'm really interested in is why and how a particular group (with its tastemaker-sanctified standard) changes or modifies its tastes.

It seems very strange to me to say that its not the will that clashes with itself; that, instead, it's the manifestations which clash. Is the will not present in its objectifications? If not, how are they manifestations of the will?

Been hearing this a lot from the remain camp -- interesting look into the psychology of that side. The referendum was, broadly speaking, a nationalistic revolt against globalism and a democratic revolt against authority, at least in the popular mind. Maybe that's not what it actually was, but the psychology of the two sides seems pretty consistent on this. The remainers protest that people (especially working class people) don't know what's good for them, that a thing of any importance shouldn't be put to a vote, that people inhabiting a country have no right to self-determination but should be grateful to be determined by rulers, etc — TGW

Good article about this.

I think the dumb dad trope is part of it, but only at its most superficial and benign. It's an increasingly important part of virtue signaling, social acceptance, and displaying culture for young men, especially liberal and/or educated young men, to engage in non-trivial self-flagellation for being a man that goes beyond jibes and gets into legitimate self-hatred, and it seems like this trend is only going to get more severe and mainstream as time goes on. — tgw

Ivory Tower seems v scary if that's the case.

Alright, if I was one of those leftist types, I'd say this is classic petit-bourgeois or whatever, you get the idea. It's not just a matter of individuals -- there is a way in which men are expected to be self-denigrating (and in virtue of their being men, this is the crucial part; we are all called on by women to collectively make fun of men on our own behalf for the amusement / appeasement of women, and devalue our own lives in various ways) that is not expected of women, and men are expected to take jokes and insults at their own expense (and physical harm!) in a way women are not. Surely you'll admit that's a trend that transcends individual people not being able to take a joke etc.

Yeah the dumb dad is a common mainstream-media trope, sure. (Modern Family would be the perfect example. The dad in Beethoven. Clark Griswold) The ditz and the oprah-mom are both, also, common mainstream-media tropes. The real sin, today, is taking your societal/familial role seriously. Jim & Pam, from the Office, provide the non-gender-specific mainstream ideal.

I think what works in academia is being stable and attractive an unthreatening, which most people in academia are, and then complaining that it's soooo hard to have kids and the travel is just ugh! and why don't we get paid more for being literally the most valuable people in society? You probably also want to make smug comments about poor and uneducated people disguised as comments about 'republicans' or whatever, and then behave in such a way in public that it's not always clear to people who don't know you that you're a couple, since romance and friendship are all equally flaccid and indistinguishable.

That's all just in good fun. ^ — tgw

That makes sense to me. I'm a bit confused, though, because dropping 'all in good fun' usually means that you think the person to whom you're speaking might have been offended.

I don't really think it's an act, I think these things are part of the air people breathe. You believe and do whatever you were born into. Ingratiation with women by men (and self-denigration by men) is just a cultural trope, that becomes more prevalent the whiter, more liberal, more educated, etc. the demographic. There is a kind of falsity to it, but it's a deeply ingrained falsity. You've gotta have the 'man bad woman good line' somewhere in a popular work in the media, that's just how it works, it's like the invocation of the muses, part of the cultural makeup. I don't doubt that you don't experience yourself as part of any such thing. — TGW

Again, though, I'm not a fan of the man bad woman good thing. I'm not sure if I'm getting through. let me try it in italics. Women are as shitty as men. They're also as nice to hang out with as men, if you click. Again, I think you're severely missing the mark here. Women self-denigrate all the time, even in the company of men, and women who don't, or can't, or won't, drive me crazy. You can only relax and enjoy the company of people who are as aware of their flaws as they are confident in expressing their strengths. That's what makes a good fire or dinner or whatever.

I don't think it's a m'lady type, so much as, a David Foster Wallace fan, I guess would be the best way to put it. However you want to interpret that. There is a kind of misogyny that the m'lady type buys into that the DFW fan sees himself as above (because he is more sincere, self-critical, and empathetic than that) — tgw

Ok, that's fair. But that's only one side of me (the side probably most on display here.) I certainly don't do a DFW routine to pick up women, because that'd be stupid. (though maybe it works in academia?)

Yeah, but that's exactly what I'm saying, I don't think it's idiosyncratic at all, & I don't see myself as idiosyncratic for saying it. I def like to think of myself as idiosyncratic, you're right, but this isn't the well from which I draw my sense of uniqueness. I think most people who have spent time with women (without approaching them with a priori idealization or denigration) seems to have more or less the same takeaway. It seems like you won't believe me, and I don't know how I can make you believe me, but it's really not an 'act' for the benefit of women (It is for some people, sure, but not for most) The look from outside can be as skewed as the look from inside. (Plus women aren't that attracted to men who docilely tow the feminist line. Even if it were a strategy, it'd be a pretty bad one. Nice guys may not finish last but guys who labor to appear nice guys almost certainly do)

But I understand a little bit better where you're coming from though. You're pinning me as the sensitive guy who, listen, I understand you, you as a person, you as someone with a soul, unlike those other animals, those jocks for whom you're just a piece of meat. You're aiming at the wrong target entirely. I've never been a m'lady type.

I don't really think the motives are hidden. Maybe I'm wrong about your super special idiosyncratic way of viewing the world. Maybe you act exactly like everyone else but for secret internal reasons opposed to theirs. Alright, but I'm not a mind-reader.

Yeah, I mean, nothing that I've said on this thread strikes me as particularly idiosyncratic (though it was nice what I did with that raise/raze thing right? Using a pair of homophones to capture the only two things men are purportedly good for? Thought that was pretty dope)

But, in any case, that's the point, your motives don't seem all that hidden to me either. So if you want to keep going forward with this, here's my interpretation: I don't think you know very much about what women are actually like, because you haven't spent very much time with women and they don't seem to want to spend time with you and I think that makes you very mad at women.