I could never get into that style. I think language is more organic than that, that words don't have sharp, independent meanings, that meaning is cumulative and contextual. Basically I don't think we can do math with words. That's one of my few complaints about Hobbes. He's a little too attached to Euclid. — ghost

even math isn’t absolutely objective; 1 + 1 being equal to 2 is dependent upon what the numbers represent; that is, whether coalesce is occurring or not, that is to say that 1 sperm + 1 egg = 1 embryo (and 3 persons), or if it must be so that the 1s in each case are identical, then in terms of ontology, there are no two identical things, meaning that 1 + 1 = 2 becomes 1a + 1 b ≠ 2ab. So I’m going to shake up the foundations of math a little bit. Playing with numbers in the abstract that do not represent things with essence, is helpful in some sense, but not in others.

But I do admit, working with words and definitions is a real pain in the ass. I spent like an hour today trying to get my wording right for my ‘principles of ontology’ and found myself struggling with the limitations of language...i’m trying to reduce things to concepts so that I can use set theory and the notion of ‘containment and non-containment’ and contingency and necessity and also precedence to deduce which concepts are necessary for others to exist and therefore precede their existence in time (i.e. contain them as subsets) so that I can find the essence that the first concept points to, that is, the essence of being itself, but I’m having some difficulties with it. essentially, if objects are at the same time both concepts and objects, and this must be so, I think, because we can only conceive of concepts and all objects and all parts of objects can be conceived of, I can just avoid the distinction between them and deal with concepts alone. I’m not sure if this is the best strategy.

Have you presented your ideas anywhere else on the internet? On other phil. forums? If so, how was the response different or similar? All other forums I've looked at are eye-sores. This one is slick. — ghost

no, I have not; there doesn’t seem to be many forums and the Facebook forums are worse. this one isn’t even heavily populated; I think philosophy is officially dead.

even math isn’t absolutely objective; — TheGreatArcanum

I agree. I know lots of math and have spent lots of time thinking about math. I think these guys pretty much get it right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Mathematics_Comes_From

I'd say that it's our shared human cognition that gives math is relative unbiasedness (objectivity). It's a particularly normalized discourse (there are clear rules for what counts as a valid move in the mathematical conversation.)

But I do admit, working with words and definitions is a real pain in the ass. — TheGreatArcanum

I used to work hard toward finding a system of words that didn't eat itself or fall apart. It was thinkers like Wittgenstein and James who convinced me that yanking words out of their practical contexts usually leads to trouble.

essentially, if objects are at the same time both concepts and objects, and this must be so, I think, because we can only conceive of concepts and all objects and all parts of objects can be conceived of, I can just avoid the distinction between them and deal with concepts alone. — TheGreatArcanum

Believe it or not, I've wrestled with exactly that issue. I used the word 'ject' once. If we dissolve the subject into a system of concepts, then concepts are no longer the thoughts of the subject. The subject is one more concept. But then there are no concepts! There is no subject left to 'have' these concepts. All we have left is a system of intelligible unities that have their essences entangled. The 'ject' that we call cat ...only makes sense with the help of the 'ject' that we call mouse. Reality is one system of 'jects' or 'objects that are not for a subject.' And what is consciousness? No. We can't use that word. The subject is 'in' what we want to call consciousness. The subject is one more piece of the dream. So we have a stream of experience, a stream of entangled 'jects.' http://fair-use.org/william-james/essays-in-radical-empiricism/does-consciousness-exist

This is only one 'crazy' theory that I've borrowed from others and tinkered with. I've been very high on this stuff. It has a certain spiritual or speculative truth. But these days I'd say the ordinary 'useful illusions' of common sense are there for a reason, for their utility. And even my theory of 'jects' exists more as a work of art or the questionable solution of a puzzle than anything else. I think you said you didn't like pomo, but I think that some pomo is really psychedelic metaphysics, basically serving the same motive to beautifully violate common sense... and get away with it.

I have many many coherent paragraphs — TheGreatArcanum

If only you'd share one.

maybe later. don’t you remember when I posted an inarguable refutation of your nominalistic worldview that “nothing is unchanging” and you failed to change it?

I think that its been well established that you care more about arguing semantics to grow you beak than attaining metaphysical truths. I’m assuming your nose in real life is, gigantic?

maybe later. — TheGreatArcanum

I'll keep an eye open for one. I'll send you a cookie.

My question is whether your slobbiness is ultimately an artistic decision, a costume of humility or transcendence of fashion.. Like a king in his bathrobe. I'd be surprised if you didn't walk through the world feeling tuned in to something rare. — ghost

A transcendence of fashion would be nice, but its mostly exhaustion. I am familiar with the dialectics of fashion, which is just the dialectics of anything which oscillates between ideal/fallen rare/common. cool kids dress shitty, because they know (intuitively) that dressing fancy is aspirational, and that aspiration means lack. I dress shitty because (1) I can't afford to dress nice & (2) the more I try to dress nice, the more I feel I've fallen short.

But there's also this: being 'a king a bathrobe' when you're not a king, and you're in a bathrobe means you're injecting some phantasmic other-viewer (even if it's your self) into the thing. You are being to be seen - and you're supplying the seer. This seems to me like a very primal form of self-protection, a psychic self-gilding that keeps away the bad stuff. King in a bathrobe as ultimate transcendence is the same in essence as a high schooler wearing a fedora.

So to transcend that.....


But that's why I'm hammering away at action over words. You can't win, fashion or poetry or philosophy, because even king in a bathrobe may not be as king in a bathrobe as the other king in a bathrobe. And you'll never quite be sure, when you're tuned into the 'rare,' what is real and what isn't. That's the thing I would like to untune from, because the same way :

king in a bathrobe ---fedora

-

tuned-into-the-rare---everyone loves my dank weed, i have the best weed.

That Hegel quote is very good and I'm inclined to agree with him halfway. Have I spent sordid hours googling 'was hero [x] an asshole?' Yes.

Buuuut

Did I feel better than hero [x] after confirming he was an asshole? No, I felt worse.

Which is to say : there's a difference between (1) getting a moral one-up on someone great to feel greater-than-Great and (2) feeling disheartened learning about the moral failings of someone you identify with, in one way or another.

To maintain the self-protective-gilding metaphor, it feels like a scratching away.

But you only do the googling, of course if there's already something biting at you. I'm tired of - tho addicted to, as my post-composition shows - the gilding. It's an inverted status, its a compensation. And any sort of gilding (rare attunement,etc) can all too easily become a carte blanche to discount the real effects of one's real actions on people. If your dad or husband was a dick, it doesn't really matter how in tune with the rare he was. Maybe its different for caesar and alexander on account of they were doing hyper realpolitik war campaigns. John Cheever ( & Hegel!) they were not.

You mentioned Nietzsche, and Nietzsche loved Dostoevsky and Dostoevsky followed the entrancing, lyrical, hyper-personal, boundary-violating turbulence of Notes From The Underground with Crime & Punishment. And the joke of crime and punishment is that once you zoom out from the thoughts and words, and look at the person thinking them, you just have a neurotic in squalor earnestly comparing himself to Napoleon in order to justify being shitty. Sure, I'm doing what people I despise do, but it's different, in this case, because its like this gilded thing.

It's meaningful that C&P came second. We're used to narratives that start with the objective, then try to 'get to the truth' by diving into the subjective. It's just the opposite - the thoughts are less important than the lived situation. (Of course the Notes narrator would know that, and agree, and work it into his monologue - what he would never allow is someone else (an objective narrator) to speak on his behalf.