An accounting textbook, god help me.

It's interesting though. It's easier to understand why corporations have come legally to be people when you can see exactly how actual people are already treated like corporations (who have only partial claim to their own assets, so that your name & ssn is an abstract entity whose assets the actual you relates to as one claimant among others)It also helps you realize exactly how the language of business inherently backgrounds everything else & how that can abstract you from everything else, out of fascination -without needing to introduce 'greed' as primary motivation. You can see getting sucked into it for the same reason people get sucked into RTS games etc (im being a good marxist here)

Also:
Austerlitz - W.G. Sebald (re-reading)
&
Guns, Germs & Steel (finally)

@jjAmEs

Last time we talked on this thread, I was a substantial number of drinks down. I think I was rumbling on with my own train of thoughts and projecting onto your responses what I needed them to be, in order to keep it going.

Scared kid & monster for me too. The last time I was hospitalized, mixed manic state, things came to a peak when I couldn't decide whether I was a monster (I thought in terms of 'demons', then) masking itself as a helpless kid, or a helpless kid being preyed upon by a monster. I wasn't able, then, to even consider that it's possible to be both.

I don't want to presume too much, but it seems to me that we're both susceptible to what the psychologists describe as 'splitting' where most important things in our lives are either hyper-valorized or largely devalued. In the past, when we've talked, I've sometimes done this: I've 'split' things into 'splitting' and 'not-splitting' (splitting's last desperate gasp) & tried to position myself as performatively 'not-splitting' vis-as-vis your posts, as splitting.

I want to take a different tack here and instead explain why this topic is important to me. I still 'split' but I would like to emerge from it, not because I would like grow into a Mature Adult (which would be Mature Adult (valorized) vs immature (devalued) in order to be protected by inhabiting a valorized 'mature adult' mask ) but because splitting hurts and I don't want to take much more hurt. The psychological pain of being self-devalued leads to a constant struggle for self-valorization which never satisfies for long. It's like treading water outside a sinking ship, grasping desperately at this or that piece of flotsam, until that piece is sucked into the whirlpool, and you have to grab another. Whatever I was trying to get at with The Fire is that, if there's a way to break the splitting cycle, it seems like a different kind of space altogether. When I shy away from rare/common ecstatic/mundane infinite/finite, it's not to bundle those things up into something else that I can put into [those-things]/[what isn't those things] though I have done that in the past (and of course it's still partially like that and there's no way to talk or think about it wothout using binary language.) I see them as something that causes me pain that and any fleeting dionysian delight is purchased at too dear a cost.

I also understand that you may very well be perfectly aware of all the above and simply feel that the highs and lows are worth pursuing for their own sake. That I can understand as well. I think many a-time, I've been trying to articulate an embryonic set of values, or feelings or guiding lights by setting up an asymmetrical moralizing dialogue (externalizing my own self-conversation) which progressively seems unhelpful and self-defeating.

In terms of masks, I think the non-masked is simply the reverse of a focus on the mask, as you say. The only way out is to let thoughts about masks arise and pass away, without giving them to much credence, one way or another.

@StreetlightX Building off of that, and reflecting personally. I think what happened is the 'explanation' aspect of myself got hypertrophied. When I look back at my life - from a little kid, up to now - I see a lot of unpleasant things happening and I see myself finding safety in explaining what's going on in a way that fits everything together. This was my way of coping. Explaining is always explaining to-someone-else, even if you do it by yourself (there's an imagined interlocutor, sort of like an 'imaginary friend.') I find myself with friends, just compulsively explaining things. A few years back, I got hip to what was going on, but couldn't quite stop it. I realized how lonely it made me, but I couldn't seem to 'snap out of it'.

I think this is because relying too heavily on this coping device meant I didn't develop other ways of interacting with the world or other people very well. When I sense that someone is trying to 'reach me', reach the me behind the explanatory monologue, I reflexively withdraw. This, in turn, leads me to rely even more heavily on explaining. What I've found is that it's very difficult for me to develop other ways of living. This makes me feel helpless and frustrated and makes it more tempting to return to 'explaining' (or drinking, or making ironic jokes). Again, this looks a lot like how addictions function. Or abusive relationships, for that matter. Take these posts. My plan today was to go for a walk, meditate, journal and write poetry. I know that these things would make me feel better than what I'm doing right now. Still, I felt anxious and disconnected today, and it seemed overwhelming to do these things, and I find myself here, explaining.

My immediate reaction to the OP is that the *kind* of explanation at issue (broadly: Why X? or What explains Y?) is too broad and underdetermined. What I mean: explanation is usually on the order of: "explain X about Y" or "why is it that X now and not later", or "why does the phenomenon of X take place at all?". In all three cases there's something like a 'third term' involved: you're never just 'explaining X', you're explaining something about X. (in the back of my mind - Deleuze: not 'what?' but: who?, how much?, how?, where?, when?). — StreetlightX

Oh, for sure. I'd respond by saying that those are all determinations of the 'broad and underdetermined' practice I'm talking about - not as a way to downplay what you're highlighting, but to say that I think we're in the same general neighborhood, drawing attention to different landmarks.

So, in each case of explanation you highlight, there's something that doesn't fit continuously into a current 'space of reasons' or network of conceptual implications. Pre-explanation, that thing or aspect, while still contextualized, is discontinuous at the cognitive/conceptual level - which gives it a shimmering salience that draws thought's feelers toward it. What happens then is a process of explanation which aims to bring it into that space, or network. The 'third term' is a way of determining how, and in what 'region,' x will be brought into the space of reasons. It's like determining what part of your lego world, you're going to set this lego man down in (which isn't to say, it's arbitrary- just as kid's play is never arbitrary.) In the example of Gods and lightning, what's implicitly being asked is 'explain why the world takes on a lightining aspect when it does, with reference to where it comes from ' & the answer of 'the gods do it' brings bundled with it, in turn, a further suite of implicit 'when, where, how, why' questions.

This integration can be imagined in a narcissistic (gustatory, hedonic) way (mind turned belly) or also imagined as a socially shared construction, like bees returning to the hive and dancing. I think it probably usually is operating at both levels at once (both of these two species of 'thinking-for' are operating.) There are probably a lot of other ways of imagining it, as well, but those are the first two that come to mind.

I think the metaphysical illusion - the Ultimate Because - comes about when we think we can dispense of this third term. What the third term introduces is a kind of naturalized perspectivism: it introduces a motive, something that animates inquiry, it puts the inquirer back into the inquiry, and dispenses with the idea that there are 'neutral' questions. Explanation is always relative to a frame of inquiry (which doesn't mean it's 'subjective' - a frame of inquiry is largely determined by the phenomenon itself: asking the right questions is as much a matter of 'getting the answer right' as... getting the answer right).

So w/r/t explanation existing prior to philosophy - yes, but also no. I wanna say: there's always an implicit philosophy in any explanation, and the 'spontaneous' frame of reference is egocentric bodily life: why does dad hit the bottle? Because he suffered abuse of his own, because life is shitty, etc (implicit: can I use this info to avoid his outbursts of rage in my day to day?). Philosophy, when undertaken explicitly, 'de-indexes' inquiry from egocentric concerns and 'attaches' them to other 'third terms': what is the phenomenon of dads hitting the bottle indicative of? Should it be treated sociologically? psychologically? Does it tell us something about 'the human'? etc etc.

Philosophy multiplies frames, makes them proliferate, introduces new 'third terms' motivated by [anything whatsoever] (in the back of my mind - Brassier: "Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of living": again - not a matter of 'subjective inquiry', perhaps the opposite - but not 'objective' either). My line of thought is that once explanation becomes de-coupled from a 'view from nowhere', once explanation is always 'from somewhere' then the kind of aporias and anxieties you outline if not dissipate, are at least transposed elsewhere

There's a lot of elements you introduce here that also seem key to me, but I think we're putting them together in different ways. Because I see the 'third term' as part of 'explanation', and the Ultimate Because as Explanation gone wild, I don't think the Ultimate Because arises when it's decoupled from the third term (For instance take contemporary continental philosophy & 'thinking otherwise.' How this slowly becomes thinking 'thinking otherwise', using various third terms to bring this or that thing back to the 'thinking otherwise' cluster of concepts (or performatively thinking otherwise in order to furnish examples of 'thinking otherwise')

That said, I do agree that 'decoupling' is key.

I see the Ultimate Because as the process of explanation exerting too powerful a fascination, decoupling itself from other concerns of life, sometimes relating to all aspects of life as mere fuel for explanation. This is Explanation Unbound (then rebound, then unbound again) which, like all addictions, for sure has interests that do not coincide with those of the living

Think of how strange it is to celebrate the distinction of working for the furtherance of something that has no concern for your well-being, or the well-being of those you love - and think about where we see similar kinds of celebrations outside of philosophy. (next time you watch a Brassier lecture focus on his body language and tone rather than his words ; to me, he looks & sounds like a man badly hurt, if not poisoned, by his work. Think of where else you see body language and tonal inflections like this.)

I want to conclude by doing a little self-phenomenology of my experience writing this post. I can't rule out that I'm speaking largely from my own pathology, but I've found that after getting into really abstract stuff, pushing myself to figure out how to articulate what I want to say, and what conceptual moves to make -I feel jittery, irritable and the physical world seems to have receded a bit in the background. I feel slightly dazed. I have a rumble of aggressive inertia. There's some satisfaction in having put together a short mini-essay that I think succeeds at conveying what I wanted, but it almost doesn't seem worth the icky mood I've stirred up in the process of producing it. I have a weird compulsion to re-read what I've written, and to imagine others reading it, approvingly. It feels similar to the cocaine-induced feeling of wanting more cocaine. Again, this may be my own pathology, or maybe I'm higher on this spectrum, but when I look around the forum at others posts, and how they respond to challenges, I don't think I'm alone in this. There's a tense, aggressive atmosphere in at least 7 out of 10 threads.

I know what you mean. I can only talk about the black dragon when he's not around. When he's around, the futility and obscenity of talk is palpable and paralyzing. That's the black fire.

But you maybe you mean the good fire. — jjAmEs

I mean both, I think? That's the hard thing, if I understand what I'm talking about. The Black Dragon & The Good Fire are childhood ways of navigating a tough space. They do good work, for us as kids, but they eventually have to go. And they do go, no matter what we do, I think? But it's like a fantasy world map - if there's a Violent Cataract, it's ok to shelter in Pastoral Cottages for a while, but eventually all of this has to be brought together. It's a psychological way of working out what's happening in real life. A big split can happen when the fire is too violent.

I'm not sure I understand you. I do think that we humans are deeply invested in various performances. In this space we have no choice but to be self-conscious and perform. More than most perhaps, you and I work this self-consciousness into our performance. I do think that the rarest stuff is mostly found in unbearably tender places that can only be talked about (if at all) in whispers. Or in very rare friendships and perhaps under the influence. Maybe some of us have a 'secret doctrine.' And all public-facing doctrines are all the more suspect and shallow in the light of this. But 'doctrine' implies something too articulated and stable.

But I'm down with protective forces and characters in general as trauma-generated 'illusions' or hoodwinks. 'Truth' and madness are dangerously familiar here. The 'sane' monkey rides the network of norms, and all that Nietzschean stuff about lies that keep us alive come to mind. — jjAmEs

I think this way of thinking sprouts, ultimately, out from a scared kid who needs a good shield to protect him from the scary thing. I say this as someone who thinks I do this, or at least is particularly susceptible to it. This sort of thing can start simply and ramify out, with infinite potential for endless subtlety. For instance, your last paragraph is a wary thing saying ' I recognize what you're saying & agree ' as a way of really saying something else. Which I respect & am not trying to press. But the performing self knows how to set up opposing values, and explore them cognitively - often, very well, convincingly - to shade the fact its the performing self speaking. What happens then? It eventually fails to constrain what it's trying to constrain, breaks out, feels remorse, erases the past, and tries to restart. Everyone does this, all the time, on a spectrum, I think?But I think the severity of this is tied to the degree to which the mind divides two realms - that can take any number of forms but resolves ultimately to a self-image of lovable vs hatable. At the limit, If any self gets a splotch of hateful on it, it has to be jettisoned, so a new self can begin from scratch.

Perhaps you'll agree that it itself is a landline. The state of truth is an abyss, but the abyss recognized as such functions as a foundation. 'I know that no one really knows (and that's enough for my performance of the hero).' — jjAmEs

Yeah, I'd agree. I don't know to what extent I can step outside the 'landline' -at least right now, on the forums - because the forums are the place I gather my thoughts out of the outside muck.

Talking about the fire is one thing; going to the fire is another. Here, I'm talking about the fire. But I know what I'm talking about, even if it's going to take me a while to zig zag to that space, irl, as a real person.

Which, I'd like to add, as a Forum Talker -- that 'space' is not 'the thing itself', the ecstatic opening-up, the culmination - but the space of the fire. If you can dive back - it's the place where the grown-ups were talking, the central area (Robert Frost, severely paraphrased: 'I was trying to capture the sense of conversation heard in the room over, without hearing the words') You know, immediately, what the space is as a kid - it gets blurred and conceptual as you develop your own defenses. But it's not either a void or an ecstatic fulfillment - its a finely differentiated and dangerous place, but also a finely differentiated and loving place.

I'm tailoring my talk now - on account of I suspect we may have talked to one another in a past life, - but I think 'the culmination' is a self-protecting way of turning away. The moment the idea of the Everything & Ecstasy comes into play, that's a sure sign a protective force (a psychological Daemon) has taken over and is showing a movie (or playing a song) of Things Are Now At The Level of The Rarest Stuff. That's always a hoodwink.

If you are drawn to the Rare, I think, you probably also have a painful memory of something that happened around 'the fire' that led you to retreat and set up base in the shadows. That happened to me, and I think that happens to the majority of people. Philosophy is one way of confusingly groping toward a solution. But that trauma limits access to the communal fire. All sorts of compensations flood in, like lobbyists, to make things easier, if only you give up this, or that. Eventually, you forget that happened.

There's also the odd thing that it's not even true – it's like a robot shorting out and running a default message, even if it has nothing to do with what the interlocutor is actually saying. I mean, come on – 'a historical examination of the relation between rhetoric in the Athenian legal tradition as it relates to history? That's just more philosophy!' It's not even a coherent objection! — Snakes Alive

But do think it's interesting and para-philosophical - I mean, I was the one who introduced the relationship between litigation and philosophy early on in this thread! I think we're on the same page on a lot of this. What I object to is something that seems like a motte-and-bailey shuttling between bona-fide meta-philosophy & historical examination.

You're just doing #2, though. — Snakes Alive

I wouldn't lose sleep if I was - I don't particularly care for the whack-a-mole, spot-a-fallacy vibe that's developing here & don't think avoiding snake's three is a constraint worth keeping ever in mind - but I think a close reading of what you've described as two and what my post says reveals a signficant difference. If you're settling into whacking, you're probably gonna get a lot of false positives for moles, its almost unavoidable.

it's a muck and a mess. it's just a mess.

I like a lot of what you've been saying in this thread if taken in a weak, rhetorical sense. 'Agree' isn't really the right word, but I mean taking what you've said as conceptual offerings or rhetorical moves that help shake off some bad ideas, or limiting ways of thinking. (I don't mean 'weak' in a perjorative way but 'weak' as in 'not an overly rigid conceptual claim')


At the same time, It feels like the line of thought you're pursuing will culminate eventually in (or at least require) a method of canonization where certain philosophers and works are considered part of the tradition, while others, who may seem to be philosophers, are actually doing something else. Newton & Natural Philosophy is one example of this, but I'm sure we could quickly multiply examples. But what is this? It's asking a 'what is x' question and then determining which things are and aren't x on the basis of whatever the answer is (if you're not doing that, and are simply looking at what's taught in philosophy classes today without establishing an essence, then all you can say is that only those things that are taught as philosophy today are taught as philosophy today.) You mentioned a religious analogy where philosophers will backpedal or re-cast their claims so they can never be shown wrong. There's also a robust religious tradition of editing received tradition (almost always baggy, multiform, all over the place) in order to draw out a single thread of continuity that links it all together with reference to the present state of affairs.This could look like Josiah justifiying his reign, but it could also look like showing a throughline from Jereboam to his descendants to trace an inherited corruption.

there's a thin line between leaving philosophy 'standing up because you're tired of sitting' and a sons-eating-the-father thing which is a matter of wresting control through laying claim to a higher-order narrative. Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, UG Krishnamurti, Richard Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida and Laruelle all come to mind as people who it's unclear to what degree they're doing one vs the other.

Another way to say this: It's possible that most of what's going on in this thread is well within the folk tradition. It increasingly seems that way to me.

@Shawn nothing substantial to say, but I like your pic.

I also suspect that the very idea of a syllogism, or any kind of deductive argument set out in premises that implies a conclusion, has its roots in courtroom procedure. People noticed in getting people to make statements, that multiple statements, due to their natural semantics, had commitment relations to each other, and noticed that if you said one thing, you then had to say another, on pain of contradiction. This then became a model of reasoning. — Snakes Alive

That would make a lot of sense.

Another thought: I think you can marry the agonistic and litigious aspects of philosophy in the general idea of laying claim to something. People compete to lay claim to truth. First, in the sense of legally establishing a claim to this or that.But also in the sense that one jousts, as as a show of strength or skill, to lay claim to the king's favor. (or the adulation of a teacher, or the public etc) think those two aspects ave been joined in philosophy for most of its history.

"Such is perhaps the most difficult challenge in a lockdown situation: to clear a space where to be on one’s own while already separated from the community. Being cooped up on a boat with a few others of course generates a feeling of estrangement, but estrangement is not solitude, and solitude is, in reality, what makes confinement bearable. And this is true even if one is already on one’s own. I noticed that what made my isolation extremely distressing was in fact my incapacity to withdraw into myself. To find this insular point where I could be my self (in two words). I am not talking here of authenticity, simply of this radical nakedness of the soul that allows to build a dwelling in one’s house, to make the house habitable by locating the psychic space where it is possible to do something, that is, in my case, write.

I noticed that writing only became possible when I reached such a confinement within confinement, a place in the place where nobody could enter and that at the same time was the condition for my exchanges with others. When I was able to get immersed in writing, conversations through Skype, for example, became something else. They were dialogues, not veiled monologues. Writing became possible when solitude started to protect me from isolation. One has to undress from all the coverings, clothes, curtains, masks, and meaningless chattering that still stick to one’s being when one is severed from others." — StreetlightX

Yeah, I think I know what she's talking about. It sounds trivial, but it really is frustrating to just want to be home, like just be at home, and then have to either make small talk, or awkwardly remain silent every single time you have to go to the bathroom or make a sandwich. It makes my living room/kitchen feel like the break room at the office when there's just one other person there, you know that weird feeling?

You perhaps felt more acutely that we are just finding ways to occupy time, survive, maintain. Others who are used to routines and getting caught up in some sort of task, might have to be more introspective than they are used to. This causes mass existential questioning of life itself, purpose, and what the hell is the point of perpetuating it, maintaining it, dealing with it in the first place. Of course, existential reflection will just become a passing fad.. "That was so 2020" they might say.. Back to unreflective living it is. — schopenhauer1

that doesnt sound like my experience, but it does put me in mind of the revolving door of your thinking. i don't want to jump to conclusions, but maybe you're thinking of what you think about?

On the positive side, as very introverted person the stay-at-home order has made my job much more comfortable and enjoyable. I'm eating healthier and exercising regularly. Obviously this is not the case for many people, especially those who have lost their jobs. Silver lining, I suppose. — darthbarracuda

I've felt weird about this, but same. I've lost 6 pounds since this started (or to be precise, since when I started working at home the beginning of this month) I've felt happier and more relaxed. I *look* much better, almost dramatically so. I've felt significantly happier. I've been thinking about this - is it that I'm usually so morose and anxious with no clear cause that that makes me feel isolated - but when everyone feels similarly, I feel more connected?

Joining the conversation late so perhaps this has already been discussed; where I live there is a statewide quarantine until mid-April since last week, and I have been working from home since the week before. I suspect the stay at home order will be extended. Others I have talked to have predicted the same, but for how long seems to be up in the air. Some have said May, others June, and still other September and even November. Mid-April seems too early, but to extend it to November seems impossible to enforce and will tank the economy in ways that will ultimately hurt more people than the coronavirus itself would.

What do people on here think? When do you expect things will begin to go back to "normal"? — darthbarracuda

gut take - I think April is going to be horrible. We're still at the beginning. It will get real, next month, when cases overwhelm hospitals. I think that will carry on into may and, at least, June. I think we'll all be collectively traumatized going into july. My guess, as of now, is August will be when things will start kind of adjusting to normal (where 'normal' means merely 'not a disaster') (obviously this is all wild speculation, but thats my spur of the moment reaction)

if i cant handle you at your skipped rock, i dont deserve you at your godspeed. this is perfect for right now, good play

hell yeah. I haven't talked frog eyes in a decade, cheers

One thing that always stuck with me: I remember my friend telling me about an interview with Mercer he read where Mercer talked about how whenever he hung out with his musician friends, he always had to 'be on' and be funny (iirc, he was talking specifically about camping trips ) because he was poor. They could relax, but he always had to be entertaining to prove his worth. I feel like you can feel that desperation for expression in his music. It's beautiful, but also sad.

That said, technically all capitalism is state capitalism, as Polyani pointed out long ago. — StreetlightX

Polyani rules, but this sounds like a blurb of a blurb. Polyani was cool, he was in it, he wrote what he experienced. If you've read The Great Transformation and are drawing from that, I apologize. The quote just feels like a skipped rock.

One of my favorite albums. Are you familiar with Spencer Krug's work in Frog Eyes? — ZzzoneiroCosm

I am! Tears of the Valedictorian. One of my big high school albums. Frog Eyes is by far the grimiest (in a good way) of all his projects, though, to be fair, that album's largely Carey Mercer. I saw Krug live, with/as Sunset Rubdown, a few times at the Middle East in Cambridge. i was 18 and 19 and those shows still mean a lot to me. Of all of his stuff, Dragonslayer is still my favorite album, but it goes too close to the nerve if I try to listen now. Too many hard memories bound up with it.

fair enough, but i don't want you to leave thinking this is an AI question. I could have said 'Nike Airs' or even ' baseball cards' instead of 'computers', and it would have been the same point.

...through the process of apperception whereby the mind relates particulars to classes and categories. That kind of analysis even filters through into phenomenology and indeed cognitive science (there's such a topic as 'Kantian cognitive science'.)

Think of it as underlying the structure of consciousness - the means by which knowledge organises itself into categories and intelligible relations. Then you begin to see more clearly the relationship of thought with the intelligible order - that mind grasps the ideas of things, whereas the senses grasp their material form to create a coherent whole (coherent meaning 'holding together').

Where it's very difficult for us moderns to grasp, is that for us, the 'ideas' are identified as the activities of the brain, which itself is the product of evolutionary biology. So 'ideas' can't have any foundational reality if they're understood in those terms - they're a product, not a cause. Somehow - we presume according to broadly Darwinian principles - the capacity for ideas emerge in response to the requirements of natural selection. However I find that attitude irreducibly reductionist. — Wayfarer

I may be fanning my vanity, but I flatter myself I can understand both modern skepticism and appreciation of the scholastics. Wherever you stand, it's a fact that new things like, say, computers didn't exist from the beginning of time. Recognizing a computer as a computer, for a kantian, presupposes an existent concept [computer]. The raw matter of sense gets organized into the [computer] form. Only, there were no computers when Kant was alive. That form had to have developed at some point. How does that work? A lot of Kant has to be heavily modified or augmented for his stuff to work beyond mere recognition of a pre-existent conceptual web. I spent a couple years on Kant, & I truly don't think there's anything to explain this kind of idea-genesis in him. I like Kant, don't get me wrong, but you can see his limits here.

Anyone who has to do triage during the peak should get a full paid year off after this, at the very least. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

"There was a flood
A world of water
The mason’s wife
Swam for her daughter.

One thousand people
Did what they could.
They found the steeple
And tore out the wood.

Five hundred pieces
Means five hundred float.
One thousand people means
Five hundred don’t."

jesus. What happens when the bed shortage mean 50000 uncared for? People die at home and in the streets? I guess that's already happening to some extent in Italy and Spain. This is ugly.

I think that the magnitude of the attention-seeking is important, normal people normally seek attention from their surroundings - the poeple they interact with -, whereas philoshophers seek attention from the whole, which is normal, if you think of it, since philosophy, traditionally speaking, has to do with the whole: philosophers do not speak to normal or common people, but to this notion of the whole. Whoever undestands this, is on the same page with them, whoever not, is considered inadequate or simply not ready yet. — Pussycat

For sure. I feel like this is the source of the infamous arrogance of philosophers. I think it applies to a lot of types, but philosophers can be some of the worse offenders. At its simplest, its a devaluation of those around you combined with an over-valuation of the thing you're into. And then valuing or devaluing others depending on how well they can do the thing you're into. Again, I think this applies to all sorts of things, but I also think its true people into philosophy often do this more intensely (myself included, though I hope I'm getting better.)

I do think @Snakes Alive's characterization of philosophy as a folk tradition is helpful, in this respect, because it helps brings everything down to earth.

A form is what makes a thing 'this thing' as apart from 'that thing' - it confers identity. Whereas matter itself is indeterminate, it's simply the primal stuff which, until it 'receives' form, is not intelligible, because it has no kind, resemblance, principle, etc. Bear in mind, Aristotle's 'hyle' is derived from 'timber' i.e. 'that from which things are made or carved'; so it doesn't correspond with 'matter' in the modern sense of the elements of the periodic table. — Wayfarer

that's a really good way of breaking it down. Once a thing is seen 'as a thing', its fitted into a vast network of other things and their relations. Kant's limitation is that he has trouble considering consciousness (or, better, life, living) outside of this cognitive way of relating to things as instances-of. He also can't provide an account of where this network of things comes from - implicit in his system is that the whole cognitive complex has to have already been given, somehow. There's no way to account for novelty.

Transitioned to that same kind of arrangement sophomore year. My ex-girlfriend at the time began freshman year with that arrangement at well, but she was at a significantly more esteemed university than me. I think it's not uncommon, here, for freshmen to get the most cramped arrangements, then move on to better pastures. Don't know enough to say for sure though. I've also known a lot of people also just end up renting on the normal market outside university property.

We do, at least if we can afford the million dollars a year to attend. My freshman year of college there were three of us in a room about 2/3 of the size of my current bedroom, and I was paying about the same for lodging that I do now. Maybe a little more.

:up: :up: that's not a bad idea

Good question, what with us not living in the same room. I assume the term is some kind of manifestation of our great entrepeneurial spirit and for now I can only glimpse its significance through a glass darkly.

I have a dear abby question, corona related. My roommate's girlfriend has been here for three weeks now, has left the apartment maybe three times during this period, for an hour or so. If there had to be a roommate's girlfriend here for three weeks, she's not a bad one to have. Cleans up, goads my roommate to clean up. She's nice and friendly. Still, it's a two bedroom with an open concept main room (living room separated from kitchen by an island) and it's a little too small for three people to be there all the time. I've overheard her, a few times, explaining that she can't go home ( a couple hours north) because of the stay-at-home-order in Portland (which is a willful misinterpretation of what the stay-at-home-order is).I would prefer to have a couple days with no girlfriend, I like to be able to walk around in my boxers and bump loud music and sing along, every now and then, just to decompress. I talked to my roomate and said that if she is gonna be here full-time for the forseeable future, then we should all split rent and utilities (maybe not an equal three way split, but there has to be some sort of sharing of costs. She lives at home, up north, and has no rent or utility costs). He agreed and said he'd been thinking the same thing, but this was a week ago and nothing's come of it. The Dear Abby question is: what's the right course of action here?

But yeah, let us entertain that thought, that philosophers are no truth seekers, no wisdom seekers either, that truth and wisdom are in fact myths promulgated by them, because in essence what they really are is attention seekers, what say you sally? — Pussycat

I'd been drinking the last time we talked. Looking back, I was surly and projecting. I'm an attention-seeker myself, so I'm probably more likely to diagnose others with the same. Still, even if I use philosophy as way of getting attention, I genuinely enjoy reading difficult texts alone, working them out., putting thoughts in order. So there's the attention-seeking aspect, and the material itself. The material can be used to get attention, but its almost like one subself using the work of another subself, the way a wheeler and dealer will leap on the work of a creative for his own gain. I guess that's the same with all things, and the relative weight of either part depends on the individual in question.

I would still say that the thing of doing philosophy is something different than the pursuit of wisdom, though they may both be tributaries of something upstream. As has been said on this thread, there's a strong litigious element to much of philosophy. I also think there's a strong public-wrestling aspect to it. You see that even today in the most dry and academic of philosophy. There's an strong agonistic aspect that I think might be more central than the widsom-seeking aspect. Still, I don't necessarily think most philosophers are disingenuous in the sense they claim to do one thing, while secretly knowing what they're really doing. Analagously : a lot of finance guys probably really do believe the hayek-derived approbation of the freemarket and that allows them to do one thing, in real life, while telling themselves a parallel story that explains themselves to themselves in agreeable terms.

You're always asking for personal solutions to transpersonal problems. I don't have any answers for you. I don't have any answers for any particular people, and I am in no position to offer them. Here I just normalize a certain discourse, make it stock standard and create an atmosphere - make the obvious unobvious and the unobvious obvious. You do whatever you want or can. — StreetlightX

Fair enough, I don't think I disagree with most of what you've said in this thread, factually. I just tire of the viewpoint/approach, which feels like a passive attack on power, a report filed. I don't think it's helpful now, and things about the temporalty of capitalism etc - it seems to be a vestige of pre-all-this. I'll leave it there.

I would characterize your recent post history as something like : 1 won't happen. ok 1 happened, but 2, are you crazy? ok, 2 happened, but 3 would never happen, plus you're misreading 1. ok 3 happened, but 4 is crazy, and besides. Yes, of course 4, but that's to be expected, and you have to approach it in the right way, but 5?

can we just collectively let go with being more level-headed than the next guy and deal with what's happening right now?

If Schopenhauer was pissed with Hegel on those terms, he wouldn't have written WWR! A system is a system is a system. He was probably more upset with a lack of attention. Imagine two kids building two lego structures. Two prodigies at building lego structures building lego structures.

By 'will', we normally think of what we want to do, but I think it is what we think is right, right to do, right in an absolute sense. When we are absolutely certain that a course of action, or thinking, was the correct one and could not be otherwise. But when we ponder on the same situation and think otherwise, then this conflict of wills becomes evident. — Pussycat

I think that's right. And I think, in that stroke, the whole idea of 'will' becomes void, like you said. Still. We live, and see what we do, and then reflect, and think we want to realign in a certain way, act in a better way. But if you self-tyrannize, and will yourself to will the right thing, that tends to backfire. So there's a new situation?

But philosophically speaking, a lot of philosophers take the I to be a representation of the will, or Will, and to be one and only. And so there is this notion of "my will", pointing to something definite, if not quite. But of course, if there is a multiplicity of I's or Will's, then it makes no sense to talk that way. — Pussycat

sure, Schopenhauer it sounds like. What do you understand by 'will'?

I think the multiplicity is itself a bright side! I'm slowly getting to know myself. That's good. And the bad sides of myself too. That's hard. But at least I'm learning the sides of myself my exes already knew, but that I hid from my own awareness.

But what does this have to do with contempt for 'common people'?