Some of the things that resonated...

An Australian style of philosophising that is argumentative but without rhetorical excess.

Realism.

A disdain for the poststructuralist bullshit

Chalmers.

Poststructuralism is at this point, by serious observers, an seriously empty vehicle.

Why? It provides no solutions. It only dissolves them. This is fun but not helpful or scientific.

Nice article.

Yeah, but shame it doesn't include some info on how to throw a boomerang.

Yeah, but shame it doesn't include some info on how to throw a boomerang. — A Seagull

Or what a knife is. There's been some controversy about that in the States.

Yeah, but shame it doesn't include some info on how to throw a boomerang. — A Seagull

You just chuck it sideways, right?

The demonstrative presented by a famous Australian ought to have settled that. You gotta learn to listen: "This is a knife".

Yeah, but shame it doesn't include some info on how to throw a boomerang. — A Seagull
You just chuck it sideways, right? — frank

I wouldn't know. :(

The demonstrative presented by a famous Australian ought to have settled that. You gotta learn to listen: "This is a knife". — Banno

If Professor Dundee holds knife-X is not a knife because knife-Y is a knife what are we to think of the hypothetical knife-Z? It may well be so much knifeyer as to negate the knifeyness of knife-Y. Ad infinitum. I fear we can never truly know what a knife is.

I fear we can never truly know what a knife is. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Rubbish. This is a knife. Therefore we know what a knife is.

Rubbish. This is a knife. Therefore we know what a knife is. — Banno

Ah, the perennial Bannoian denoument: loud fact and self-ovation. :clap: :clap: :clap:

Corollary: The louder I say it the truer it is.

But tell me where are we to situate Professor Dundee's originary proposition?: "That's not a knife." Had he not, with this overbold commensal sally, undercut his credibility?

commensal — ZzzoneiroCosm

...an association between two organisms in which one benefits and the other derives neither benefit nor harm

???

Are you willing to claim that this is not a knife?


And perhaps more interestingly, does Sue Charlton think it is a knife? Or is she thinking of something else entirely?

But more to the point, what is it about 'mercans and Crocodile Dundee?

But more to the point, what is it about 'mercans and Crocodile Dundee? — Banno

As far as we know, he's the only Australian.

Those adolescent memories really insist.

Are you willing to clim that this is not a knife? — Banno

No, that's not a knife. Those are pixels.

Sue Charlton has a broader definition of 'knife' than the good professor.

Or is she thinking of something else entirely? — Banno

No doubt she's thinking of Dundee's bronzed dong.

No, that's not a knife. Those are pixels. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Your error here is to do with reference, not knives.

error — Banno

Rubbish.



I didn't know how easy that was to say.

SO far as we can tell he is still using it.

Too much aussie pride on the forums lately; I think its incumbent on the rest of us to stem this before it goes too far. For instance, the Sydney Opera House looks like a bunch of nuns seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The Thorn Birds? more like The Dumb Birds!

the Sydney Opera House looks like a bunch of nuns seen through the wrong end of a telescope. — csalisbury

No no no no no.

Sorry, I can't take anyone speaking with an Australian accent seriously as an intellectual. It's an inherently funny and ridiculous accent.

A disdain for the poststructuralist bullshit — Banno

The article doesn't really say this - in fact it almost says the opposite, that there is indeed 'plenty of enthusiasm' for that kind of thing, after which G-S just opines on his own distaste for it.

After all, if you're involved in the uni systems here, theres a very healthy interest in alot of that stuff in the humanities, and Australia is well known for having some of the best post-structuralist leaning philosophers in the world.

One really can't argue with the wisdom of Australian bush philosophers, especially when they are holding a medium to large knife.

:razz:

thats another point I want to raise - aussies never clean their dishes. I base that on intuition.

Yeah, it's true.

Too much aussie pride on the forums lately; I think its incumbent on the rest of us to stem this before it goes too far. — csalisbury

They're outnumbered by Americans here and that seems to frustrate them. It's like when you corner a Tasmanian devil: even if you don't mean any harm, it attacks anyway.

They're outnumbered by Americans here and that seems to frustrate them. It's like when you corner a Tasmanian devil: even if you don't mean any harm, it attacks anyway. — jamalrob

That reminds me of what a wizened Tasmanian told my father, years ago:

"Legend has it that if you dive far enough into the dreamtime, down past the ruins of dusty frontier towns, down past the layers of fossilized megafauna, down farther still, past the belly of ayers rock (which, like an iceberg, bares to topdwellers only its top tenth), down, down, down; down past even Agartha, deeper, into the inky, brilliant pool from whence the australian soul was born - there, as in a dream, you'll see, gleaming, Stove's Gem.

And that'll make you think twice about idealism, diver boy.'

At that very moment, my father dropped his ceramic Hegel mug and became an eliminative materialist ( by that same stroke, eliminating his marriage, and who knows what else; the eliminative faculty, like the magic of the sorcerer's apprentice, betakes itself, once set free, to apply its powers wantonly, bearing indiscriminately on whatsoever object has the misfortune of meeting its truculent, bull-like path.)

(sorry, reading Moby Dick to while away the empty covid hours. doing my best Melville pastiche)

But more to the point, what is it about 'mercans and Crocodile Dundee? — Banno

I have a theory on this: Australia, in the American imagination, is more West than our West (& we love our West.) Our West is laconic Clint and ironic (but serious) John Wayne. Croc Dundee has all that masculinity and frontiersmanship + a little flamboyance & charm. Those repressed aspects of the American psyche blocked by Clint & Wayne are let loose with croc dundee, but with enough attendant machismo to make it feel safe (in some ways, though not in others, he prototypes Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow.)

Or so it was, last generation at least. I think the dundee coin has lost its value now, except in the levelling medium of the meme where dundee's the same as spongebob or Boris Johnson.

Australian philosophers always struck me as caricatures of their English counterparts. I've never really liked the style – whereas the Englishmen always seemed to feign ignorance in order to subtly assert the fact that they don't need to think, because they rule the world (and so they can insist anyone different from them is crazy, because they can always take for granted their superior position, knowing full well what they're doing), Australians just seem to not even know that anyone else exists, so when they call other people crazy it's not an ironic game of gentleman, they've actually just never met anyone unlike them.