sometimes people make too much hay out of the relation of power to knowledge in science and then draw over-reaching conclusions. — csalisbury
I think I relate & agree here. I tend to blend the prestige issue with the demarcation issue. I think ordinary people care about science because of its power. We can lump prediction and control into coping if we want, or tools that work with or without their users' faith in them (where Buddhism or Satanism or Hegelianism may or may not work.) — j0e
Anyone can read the book, but it is written for the few who understand it. If only a few will understand it then most who interpret it do not understand it, for they cannot hold different opinions about what the text means and all be correct. — Fooloso4
If you're not a redneck, it's clear. Everyone I know at the temple agrees, and we have a good laugh at their expense, drinking wine at home. — csalisbury
the impulse behind the scientific method is the same impulse we have when we are skeptical of its claim to truth. And that, I think, is good. The same monks who thought hierarchy was bunk, and wanted to experiment, came up with ways to experiment. We can come up with ways to value what they did, and also see how it's limiting in some ways. — csalisbury
Yeah, that's it exactly. — csalisbury
That was always my criticism of U.G. Krishnamurti, back when I used to talk to people who talked about U.G. Krishnamurti. His thing was that he didn't care at all about guruhood, that people came to him and he didn't even want it. Still, on his deathbed he dictated a guru-y swan-song. He knew what he was doing the whole time. So it goes. — csalisbury
More often than not they are passed around without any awareness that they contain secrets, but what is behind a locked door is a secret. — Fooloso4
I found him fascinating once but was eventually put off by certain contradictions. That's how complicated this game can get. There's always a cave or a bottle or a matrix. We can't escape this structure completely without inhabiting it naively, so we seek and half-find a reasonable version of it.
(?) — j0e
On the question of being understandable–One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand:
perhaps that was part of the author’s intention–he did not want to be understood by just
“anybody.” All the nobler spirits and tastes select their audiences when they wish to
communicate; and choosing that, one at the same time erects barriers against “the others.”
All the more subtle laws of any style have their origin at this point: they at the same time
keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,” understanding, as said above–while they
open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours. — Gay Science Aphorism 381
I like the forum split in some ways. argue stuff on here, live a normal and unphilosophically related life irl. — csalisbury
I've really wanted a guru at parts in my life, and have alwaysfound something to distrust in everyone. — csalisbury
What's the song? a quick glance at the clock tells me too late to buy a beer, but i got some weed and tobacco. — csalisbury
I know some people who delight in digging up evidence as to why Jesus wasn't a real figure, while idealizing science. — csalisbury
I think ordinary people care about science because of its power. We can lump prediction and control into coping if we want, or tools that work with or without their users' faith in them (where Buddhism or Satanism or Hegelianism may or may not work.) — j0e
The fact is we need science elders to talk as through ideas because quite frankly much science remains as inscrutable to ordinary folk as Plato's theory of forms. — Tom Storm
I'm saying that the relevant point here is how one deals with such exclusion. How does one deal with unknown things, things currently unknowable to one, things currently undecidable to one. How does one deal with ambivalence and uncertainty. — baker
"Rational" is one of the most debated terms. I refer you to Elster's classic Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality.
Like I said earlier:
If you want to limit the meaning of "rational" to a particular flavor of secular academic discourse, then you should recognize this as a matter of your choice, not a given. — baker
I am pretty comfortable with tentative working models based on the best evidence we have for now. — Tom Storm
Both Witt and Nietzsche were pioneers, ahead of their time, probably used to being misunderstood. I find it plausible that the times caught up with them so that many more understand them than they might have dared hope. — j0e
I don't think that even the author knows the exact meaning of their text — j0e
In the aphorism Nietzsche talks about "nobler spirits and tastes" and "open[ing] the ears of those whose ears are related to ours". I don't think ours is an age of nobler spirits and tastes. Wittgenstein talks about how he is at odds with the spirit of the age. It is not a matter of cracking the code but of a sympathetic attunement, of kindred spirits. And since kindred spirits are so few, they write in such a way so as to address those spirits while keeping others out. — Fooloso4
Texts take on a meaning of their own. But when Nietzsche and Wittgenstein talk about being understood they mean according to their own understanding. — Fooloso4
I do think our age has some noble spirits though. — j0e
I must confess that I do not know what Nietzsche means by noble spirits. — Fooloso4
The little I know about Nietzsche tells me (not me, I ain't telling this to myself) that it's the opposite of the slave spirit. The slave spirit is the birthchild of Christianity: always apologetic, pleading, happy with little favours, not thinking of himself or herself worthy of large favours.I must confess that I do not know what Nietzsche means by noble spirits. — Fooloso4
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