The history of YKK, the zipper king.



It’s is the kind of uselessly interesting viewing that works for me right now, while I am in bed with a transient but bothersome illness.

I’ve seen that. It was a long time ago but I know I liked it. MD is always an engaging presence.

I love rereading books. It makes me feel a sweet nostalgic vibe. — javi2541997

The interesting thing to me is how different they seem at different ages. I’ve read Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess three times. The first two times, in my twenties and thirties, I thought it was exciting and fun. The last time, in my forties, I found it sad and disturbing.

Currently reading: The Tunnel, Ernesto Sábato. A classic of Argentine literature. A novel of gorgeous existentialism and a sense of despair. — javi2541997

I’ve added it to my list. Argentina has been good to me so far with fiction.

I have a few things going:

Getting into Death, a collection of stories by Thomas M. Disch. The one called “The Asian Shore” is top tier. Check it out.

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, a post-apocalyptic SF novel written in its own unique dialect.

Super-Cannes by J. G. Ballard. Ballardian creepiness on the French Riviera.

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss. I read it in my teens; time for a reread.

Diseases of the Head: Essays on the Horrors of Speculative Philosophy, edited by Matt Rosen, an open access book you can download freely online. It’s “an anthology of essays from contemporary philosophers, artists, theorists, and writers working, broadly speaking, at the crossroads of speculative philosophy and speculative horror.”

Multicultural Dynamics and the Ends of History : Exploring Kant, Hegel, and Marx by Real Fillion, which is an attempt to rehabilitate speculative philosophy of history and “rearticulate a sense of the movement of history as a developmental whole,” with its own dynamics and telos.

Time and Free Will by Henri Bergson. Starts well:

We necessarily express ourselves by means of words and we usually think in terms of space. That is to say, language requires us to establish between our ideas the same sharp and precise distinctions, the same discontinuity, as between material objects. This assimilation of thought to things is useful in practical life and necessary in most of the sciences. But it may be asked whether the insurmountable difficulties presented by certain philosophical problems do not arise from our placing side by side in space phenomena which do not occupy space, and whether, by merely getting rid of the clumsy symbols round which we are fighting, we might not bring the fight to an end. When an illegitimate translation of the unextended into the extended, of quality into quantity, has introduced contradiction into the very heart of the question, contradiction must, of course, recur in the answer.

Banned @Vaskane for flaming (even after multiple warnings) and low quality.

This is the first time I've listened to it, so keep posting I say!

I enjoyed listening. — Moliere

Thank you for the encouragement :smile:

I think I’ve read those before. Ok, fair point, I’ll have to come back to it. Or I can hand-wave in the direction of dispositional properties (also in that SEP article).

And, most importantly, the features of phenomenal experience (colour, smell, taste), are not properties of those distal objects, contrary to the views of naive realism. — Michael

Nobody has ever thought that fire engines are red in the dark; colour can be seen as relational or dispositional, compatibly with direct realism.

There are many intermediaries between phenomenal experience and, say, a painting on the wall. There's light, the eyes, and the unconscious processing of neural signals. — Michael

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I meant phenomenal intermediaries.

I have basically less than zero sympathy for the positions of @Michael, @hypericin and their ilk. I’m aware there are still some philosophers around who tend to kind of agree with them, and I know that there do exist non-stupid ways of arguing for indirect realism. Even so, the position seems really weird to me. What I have the most trouble with are four things:

1. Their notion of directness, seldom stated and even seldomer relevant or coherent.
2. Their notions of “as it is” and “what it's really like.”
3. Their constant appeals to science, which are bewildering.
4. Their motivation: where they’re coming from is really unclear.

I’m on holiday without a computer so posting to TPF is a struggle, and yet this debate always has the power to draw me in. I’ll say something about (1) and might come back to the others some other time, when I can read and quote papers etc.

1. Directness

Here’s an argument…

Directness at its most abstract is the lack of an intermediary between two connected things. Directness in perception can mean two things: the lack of an intermediary in the physical process of perception, or the lack of an intermediary in phenomenal experience. The relevant context is phenomenal experience, and perception phenomenally lacks intermediaries between experiencer and object of experience, therefore perception is direct.

For example, if someone is watching a film it is not at all clear that the sounds are more direct than the story — Leontiskos

To me it is crystal clear. Only by way of the sounds and sights coming from the viewing device do you experience the on screen action of the film. And only by experiencing and interpreting the on screen action do you construe the story. This seems indisputable. — hypericin

In phenomenal experience, it’s crystal clear to me that when I hear spoken language, I directly hear words, questions, commands, and so on—generally, people speaking—and only indirectly if at all hear the sounds of speech as such (where “indirect” could mean something like, through the intellect or by an effort of will). Our perceptual faculties produce this phenomenal directness in response to the environment and our action in it.

Maybe an example from vision is less controversial. When you walk around a table, you don’t see it metamorphose as the shape and area of the projected light subtending your retina changes. On the contrary, you see it as constant in size and shape.

The empirical evidence suggests that perception distorts reality. — Michael

The very idea of a perceptual distortion of reality, or even of a distortion of reality per se, is suspect. As far as perception goes, surely only the perception of reality can be distorted—by earplugs or hallucinogenic drugs, for example—rather than reality itself. In other words, the signal can be distorted, but not what is sending the signal (I use this metaphor because it fits my point and because the concepts of distortion and signal go together so nicely–not because I think it's a very good description of perception).

If you mean, e.g., fire engines look red even though they are not red except as perceived by certain creatures like us, this does not amount to any kind of distortion, since the concept of distortion is meaningless without a conceivable neutral and undistorted perception to oppose it to. In this case a neutral and undistorted perception could only be seeing the red fire engine as red, not some super-perception without perspective and particular characteristics.

So I understand perceptual distortion, but I do not understand perceptual “distortion of reality”. So I have to ask: which evidence?

the science shows that this isn't the case — Michael

You haven't shown how. It doesn't.

Do you know O.rang ? — Noble Dust

No, I didn’t know about them :cool:

:up: I like the solo record best but love Laughing Stock too. I don’t listen to the other stuff much any more.

I just watched Color Out of Space from 2019. I loved it. My kind of film. Some people say it’s best to be stoned while watching it, but I say there’s no need, since the film itself is in a sense totally wasted.

(I was told that I was 'bordering on insanity' by one of the mods for bringing it up, speaking of insults.) — Wayfarer

I think @Mikie took you to be repeating your claim that the word “being” refers only to conscious referents. Perhaps he wasn’t right about that—and calling you borderline insane was mildly bad—but it was understandable, because in fact you have conflated the issues.

It is this distinction which I say has been occluded by the fact that physicalist ontology only allows for one kind of fundamental substance, namely, the physical, so it can't allow for an in-principle difference between beings and things, of the kind that Aristotlelian philosophy refers to here. (I was told that I was 'bordering on insanity' by one of the mods for bringing it up, speaking of insults.) — Wayfarer

Okay, so according to Aristotle, for living beings, living constitutes their being. I can go along with that. I don’t know my Aristotle well enough to know if Perl’s interpretation is correct, to the effect that living beings are more beingy than non-living beings, but I can go along with that too if pushed. (It does not, of course, follow that rocks are not beings.)

You’re right that a distinction has been lost in the physicalist paradigm. This is because physicalism has no need for the general concept of being. But it’s crucial, I reckon, not to respond to physicalists by using being in a way that is equally as restrictive as their concept of existence. It’s good to have a general notion that is uncommitted, and that’s what being is. To stick to the grammatically basic meaning is to preserve the non-physicalist notion, even though it doesn’t assert—indeed, partly because it doesn’t assert—anything about consciousness.

There is another example that came up in my reading the other day. In the paralogisms of pure reason in the CPR, Kant argues that the “I think” cannot be said to be a substance, though there is a logical or transcendental subject. I wondered if this was an example of being (transcendental subject) vs. thing (substantial immortal soul).

Good question!

I don’t know, but the fact is that in certain contexts they mean different things. Although being and substance are related and sometimes coincide, the former can refer to a referent more fundamental than the latter. Substance tends to have a more specific meaning:

This conception of substance derives from the intuitive notion of individual thing or object, which contrast mainly with properties and events. — SEP

So in a process metaphysics, you have dynamic beings, as opposed to things—or maybe things are seen as dynamic beings. In any case, I don’t know about the ontological difference, but the words/concepts certainly can be different.

Yep, it’s annoying. The devs won’t change it.

That's basically the only point that was ever at issue in this argument — Wayfarer

No, the point at issue was whether beings are all sentient or conscious. They are not. Only sentient or conscious beings are sentient or conscious. The reason you keep on confusing the issues is that you have not suspended judgement about whether inanimate objects are beings; the difference between beings and things, insofar as there is one (and I think there is) is not about sentience or consciousness.

Didn't mean to be insulting — Wayfarer

Whether you mean to be or not makes no difference. I carefully and politely showed you that you were wrong, and you stuck your fingers in your ears, because of what you want to be true.

but I really don't think it makes sense to declare that anything that exists is 'a being' — Wayfarer

That is how it is used in philosophy, as I showed you, and as anyone with a familiarity with Western metaphysics ought to know.

The only passage about Heidegger that I quoted in this thread was a snippet I found in a Philosophy Now article, to wit: — Wayfarer

I’ve tracked it down. You quoted me in this post and attributed the quotation to Heidegger, which I had clearly not attributed to Heidegger.

Hold on. Who started saying that that quotation was from Heidegger? Whoever it was, now you’ve got me doing it. It’s a quotation about Heidegger.

rocks... are...beings — Mikie

Am I take to it you're pan-psychist? — Wayfarer

On the assumption—no matter how unbelievable and insulting—that you are not joking…

You didn’t complain of Heidegger’s panpsychism when you quoted him saying the same thing (“beings in general—from particles to planets, ants to apes”). As you do know, Mikie is using the term in the way that’s conventional in metaphysics, going back thousands of years and still in use: that which is. It says nothing about consciousness, when used in the standard Western philosophical sense.

Whether there is a difference between beings and things is another matter. I think there is.

If you want to use the popular sense—or the one used in some Eastern philosophy—in the context of Western philosophy, say so openly, and make it clear when you’re doing so.

I don't agree with this, because the a priori intuitions are necessarily "inner" as the conditions for the experience of the outer. The concept of a priori pure intuitions gives primacy to the inner, as the conditions required for the possibility of an experience of an outer. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I’ve mentioned the tension several times. It’s important to distinguish between (a) a priori concepts and forms of intuition, and (b) inner/outer experience. Although Kant is obviously stuck in a cognitivist and Cartesian paradigm, he is pushing against it in exactly the way I described. Flipping the priority of inner and outer experience is an important aspect of the CPR, expressed first (in A) in the fourth paralogism, and then (in B) in the “Refutation of idealism”. The latter especially is a paradigmatic case of Kant’s transcendental arguments.

(Note that in the following passage, by “idealism” he means Cartesian doubt as to the existence of the external world)

Idealism assumed that the only direct experience is inner expe­rience and that from it we only infer external things; but we infer them only unreliably, as happens whenever we infer determinate causes from given effects, because the cause of the presentations that we ascribe—per­haps falsely—to external things may also reside in ourselves. Yet here we have proved that outer experience is in fact direct, and that only by means of it can there be inner experience . . .

Thus, consequently, inner experience is itself only indirect and is possible only through outer experience. — B 277

I don’t really want to address your other comments except to say that I’ve pointed out many times here that a fundamental difference between the two philosophers is that Kant is all about what’s in your head whereas late Wittgenstein is all about what people do together. (Also, using transcendent to refer to the transcendental without pointing out the potential confusion is dangerous, and may indicate that you’re not clear on Kant’s different uses.)

Your position on this looks a lot like those odd people who turn up here sometimes, loudly calling for the end of belief. They seem to think belief only pertains to belief in God.

faith (n.)
mid-13c., faith, feith, fei, fai "faithfulness to a trust or promise; loyalty to a person; honesty, truthfulness," from Anglo-French and Old French feid, foi "faith, belief, trust, confidence; pledge" (11c.), from Latin fides "trust, faith, confidence, reliance, credence, belief," from root of fidere "to trust,"from PIE root *bheidh- "to trust, confide, persuade." — etymonline.com

Interesting.

Wittgenstein is observing the same limits of 5.557 in both works. The use of "form of life" is not a replacement of a previous schema. — Paine

Are you suggesting that the idea of a form of life is an elaboration of the earlier position?

I don't see your point. He is exactly saying "that cannot be said: it makes itself manifest", right after he has explicitly said it; "there are laws of nature". If you somehow think that he is not saying what he claims cannot be said (hypocrisy), then please explain yourself — Metaphysician Undercover

But he does not explicitly state that “there are laws of nature”. He says we could say “there are laws of nature” if there were a law of causality. He does not say P; P cannot be said. He says If X then we could say P; but we cannot say P.

The quoted passage here is completely nonsensical. — Metaphysician Undercover

blatant hypocrisy — Metaphysician Undercover

utterly ridiculous — Metaphysician Undercover

Because you are deceived by this hypocrisy — Metaphysician Undercover

For fuck’s sake. Check what Wittgenstein actually wrote before you go off on one of your rants:

If there were a law of causality, it might be put in the following way: There are laws of nature.
But of course that cannot be said: it makes itself manifest.

Good story :cool:

while there are plenty of issues here we might discuss, I see Kant as being of little help. — Banno

I think it's a matter of taste. But Kant is indispensable for a discussion about Kant, which is what this is (as well as being a discussion about Wittgenstein).

And the point is not simply that Kant and Wittgenstein used transcendental arguments, but that they used them to the same ends. Or put another way, transcendental arguments are not just arguments of a particular logical form but tend to be motivated in a particular kind of direction: the critique of the legitimacy of metaphysics; more specifically, the critique of transcendence, i.e., wondering if the cup disappears, wondering about noumena; and to flip inner and outer and make what’s outside the head primary.

Together these amount to a transcendental approach that wrestles with global scepticism (neither of them just dismissed it) and challenges the Cartesian and Humean tradition of inner/outer and appearance/reality. I think that’s significant. You on the other hand, with your Wittgensteinian disregard for history, do not. No problem.

Soon I hope to present my thesis that Wittgenstein was a Hegelian. :wink:

Yes, I often say if you want to know about a place, don’t ask a local. Or at least, be very careful who you ask. A few times I’ve seen tourists in Edinburgh being given the most awful advice and information, laden with prejudices, cynicism, and basic ignorance.

British Columbia, Canada is my first choice — 180 Proof

:up:

I’ve been to Vancouver Island a couple of times, would love to live there. I knew someone there who lived off the grid in the forest in a small geodesic dome.

I consider BC to have far too many trees but I could get used to it.

I was being tongue in cheek — fdrake

Ah, I get it now. A @Banno impersonation. Still, good question.

If you do make your way to Norfolk you would be very welcome to visit. — Punshhh

Thanks!

The consensus seems to be that they missed what made the book great.

Good points. It’s a minefield.



Maybe they’re like beliefs, only determined post-hoc. Does it make sense to say that in the moment I was enacting the concepts, such that they were not at that stage concepts at all? But I’d still want to maintain that I was thinking, for no more reason than it really felt like cognitive work.

Sounds promising. I was put off reading it by the crappy film.

I suspect that happiness is mostly about the motivation and energy you bring with you. — Pantagruel

In my experience, largely yes.

We are also considering the Wye Valley — Pantagruel

A very beautiful area.

Alan Partridge, from Norfolk, suggested amalgamating Norfolk and Suffolk to form a new county. Its name would combine the Nor- from Norfolk with the -folk from Suffolk: Norfolk.