The model of pop music:

Nothing to do with King Crimson.

This really is a sermon on Marx. I love it. — Moliere

Good stuff.

This is quite something. Others may be aware of it already since it’s been used in some TV shows recently, but I found it just yesterday after it was mentioned in a video about linguistics.

It’s a song by Adriano Celentano and it’s designed to sound the way that American English sounds to Italians, but it’s actually gibberish. I can make out “baby” and “alright” but otherwise the words are invented, in a phonetic impersonation of English as it sounds in rock n roll. It actually does sound like a real American song.

And unlike many novelty songs, I actually like it.

Or rather, can only be known to apply to phenomena.

Plurality is a category and can only apply to phenomena, so...

I meant to say that isn't he making an assumption that things in themselves, are plural? The fact that he is referring to plurality by speaking of "things" adds individuation, which is an additional attribution to the general idea of the "thing-it-itself". — Manuel

This was one of Schopenhauer's criticisms of Kant.

:up:

In British English it’s only very mildly insulting. You got off lightly :wink:

Don’t be a pillock. I was very clear about what I was responding to. I even bolded the crucial line.

colour perception is not just cultural — RussellA

That seems fairly obvious. I was just correcting your anglocentric assumptions.

On the one hand, a wavelength of 420nm is a different colour to a wavelength of 470nm, but on the other hand, even though we can distinguish them, we perceive them both as the single colour blue. — RussellA

Note that this is cultural. Russians have no word for blue*. Light and dark blue, goluboy and siniy, are seen as different colours, as different as red and orange.

*The word you get if you Google Translate it corresponds only to dark blue, i.e., it is untranslatable into Russian.

we should discuss why this was never put in The Lounge — javi2541997

It’s in the category “Politics and Current Affairs” and it fits perfectly in it.

If you have more complaints about staff decisions, there’s a category for that too, called “Feedback”.

This thread could in theory lead to a discussion about what grammar is. I come from linguistics, and I've often felt confused about how philosophers use the term grammar. It sometimes feels like philosophers think grammar is the structure of thought, when it's just the structure of language.

"Jack-in-the-box" and where the plural goes is actually a pretty good example. People here keep talking about Jacks and Boxes, but the grammatical structure does suggest you tag the -s onto Jack. — Dawnstorm

The discussion here about "jack-in-the-box" is mostly humorous, but it does show that grammar and thought needn't be the same. — Dawnstorm

A valiant attempt, which I appreciate. Perhaps if I’d left this discussion on the main page, your post would have produced an interesting discussion.

Perfectly good word there, fine example of where to put the S — Sir2u

So what?

I was genuinely open to persuasion, but since you characteristically responded obnoxiously, to the Lounge it goes.

Gins and tonic, passersby, etc. This is barely even linguistics, and I'm not sure why it's been put in philosophy of language.

Can anyone tell me why this shouldn't be put in the Lounge?

Who was it who said...

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; tiny minds discuss grammar.

The Histories by Herodotus.

What say you, Jamal? — Noble Dust

I refer you to the post above from , because I don’t remember that one very well, though I think I did read it. I have a feeling it’s a less substantial work than the other Austers I’ve read, all of which I remember more.

According to the records, as of three years ago, Jamal has read Mr Vertigo, Leviathan, Moon Palace, and a couple of others — praxis

I think this is my list, in order of reading:

The New York Trilogy
Moon Palace
Leviathan
The Book of Illusions
Oracle Night
Mr Vertigo

Except for Mr Vertigo, which I read about 8 or 9 or 6 years ago, I read the others probably between 25 and 19 years ago. They’re all memorable except Oracle Night, which I seem to recall thinking was just doing things he’d done better in the others, but which I also seem to recall quite enjoying. Or maybe it was that one that made me bored with Auster. Or maybe I never read it at all.

I’d be interested to (re)read it.

Attention spans are down to 5 seconds.
Being interrupted or talked over.
No one reads anything greater than 3 or 4 sentences.
No one will read, watch, or listen to what you recommend - no matter how enthusiastically.
People who, when describing what person X said, does a voice impression that reduces that X to a blithering idiot.
Anyone who thinks "Saving Private Ryan" is a great movie.
Reaction videos.
The phrase "YOLO." — Mikie

I share your intense annoyance at being interrupted or talked over, but the others don't bother me much. To be sure, I'm annoyed at how addictive reaction videos can be--I've even watched reaction videos of reaction videos--but I can't say I experience intense annoyance; I've never seen Saving Private Ryan and have no interest in seeing it (I suppose the one that annoys me that everyone goes on about is the Shawshank Redemption, which I dislike); I had to look up "YOLO".

Recommendations are quite interesting and I know it can be frustrating when people ignore yours. I've followed up on a few recommendations I've been given that have shaped my life importantly. However, you learn from disappointed experience to ignore most of them. Obviously who gives the recommendation is important, but also I think how the recommendation is given matters. I think the recommender has to make a case for it, rather than just "check out x, it's cool". It also has to come at the right time for the recommendee.

Current intense annoyances of mine:

• Liars and bullshitters: the reason this is intensely annoying to me and not just a bothersome but ordinary fact of life is that I didn't know until recently just how many of them there are. There are a lot of them. Disappointed!
• The bureaucracy of national residency, visas, taxes, etc.
• The punishment of ordinary Russian citizens by EU sanctions, banks, etc.

I am from the United States and am moderately conservative. I am a Christian of the Catholic/Orthodox variety. — Leontiskos

Hey, you didn’t tell me that when you were asking for an invitation! :angry:

Only kidding. Welcome aboard.

Seems like Dick was in the vanguard — T Clark

From a certain perspective, maybe he was, since he was influential in the New Wave SF of the sixties, when authors were reacting against the Utopianism of Golden Age SF. But since the nineties, I get the impression there’s been a lot of more or less utopian space opera. I don’t really read that stuff though (Banks, Reynolds, Hamilton, Vinge, etc.)

In a sense I guess he invented dystopian fiction — T Clark

Dystopian fiction goes back to the nineteenth century and there are several famous examples from the early twentieth century, so I don’t think so.

Otherwise, thank you for attempting to explain your tastes, not an easy thing to do.

Yeah, I haven’t read as much PKD as you. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Sounds interesting.

Here’s where I’m coming from. So-called depressing stories and novels, though they might be about the pointlessness of existence and the stupidity of humankind and so on, can be so well-written, so full of energy and ideas, that they stimulate you more than depress you.

I'm responding just to say that Philip K. Dick is not depressing to me. On the contrary, I find his writing delightful and stimulating, the opposite of depressing. Especially Ubik. It's a blast. I expect many of his other novels, most of which I haven't read, to be similarly anti-depressive.

Edit: what is depressing about PKD? I don't get it.

My favourite temperature for an appendectomy is 21 Celsius, dry air.

Real name - Adrian Czajkowski — T Clark

Just a different spelling. People don’t buy books by apparently unpronounceable authors.

Just read The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard.

The last time I read a Ballard novel (Crash) and gave it a review, I was too hasty—I’ve since revised my estimation upwards—so I’ll refrain from saying much about this one. Once again, I didn’t like it much, but who knows what I’ll think in a few weeks. Some quotations:

Soon after dawn I stood naked on the lawn among the drowsy pelicans.

Again I ejaculated beside the tennis courts, and hurled my semen across the flower-beds.

At the filling-station I ejaculated across the fuel pumps, and over the paintwork of the cars standing in front of the showroom. — Ballard

Adrian Tchaikovsky — T Clark

I like the spider stuff.

Both from The Atrocity Exhibition. Weird stuff — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I should probably read them as part of that book, as they were published.

But don't miss Vermilion Sands for the other side of Ballard — Srap Tasmaner

Now on my list :up:

Currently reading The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa.

Has no one on this site read any sociology or anthropology? — unenlightened

I can name three or four members who probably have. Only slightly fewer than those who have read any philosophy.

It seems to me a lot of our traditional "mental" vocabulary does not refer to exclusively internal states of human beings, but rather to mental rather than, I guess, bodily interactions with the environment and objects. We distinguish, and presumably have for a very long time, between chopping down a tree and looking at it, wondering if it's big enough for the beam we need. Both descriptions involve both the guy with the sharp implement and the tree, so just as <chopping down a tree> doesn't map cleanly onto postures and movements of my body alone, in the absence of a tree, so <estimating a tree's yield> needn't map onto something going on in my brain in the absence of a tree. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree. We talked about the mind long before we gave much thought to brains--that is, when we were describing certain activities rather than describing something the brain does--but even from this point of view, what is mental can still be seen as material, just not in the neuro-reductionist way.

As it happens, representational theories of mind will map the necessary tree onto my internal representation of the tree, and you'll see often on this forum theories that claim my goal in either case to produce a certain state of my internal model. I think that's a very different issue from whether our everyday vocabulary around thinking, perceiving, imagining, remembering, and so on, not only presupposes objects for these activities but folds them into terms that are in some ways holistic. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not quite clear what you mean here. If you mean that a non-neuro-reductionist understanding of the mind, while it does presuppose mental objects, need not presuppose internal representations, then I think I probably agree.

Welcome Spencer :smile:

Not a fan, but he did bring hot dogs to Russia.

Does that make any sense? — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not finding much time to dedicate to TPF right now, except for posting photos of my lunch. I'll try to come back to it.

The last time I had a pizza, probably two months ago, it was quite chilly. Maybe around 10-15 Celsius. I still wanted to sit outside in my shorts and t-shirt, and I refused the kindly offered blanket until I changed my mind and asked for a blanket after all. The pizza, which did not have a blanket, got cold very quickly, but it was good.

My favourite weather for eating asparagus is drizzle.

I can see you have not been persuaded by the argument thus far and probably won’t be, until you can see a reason why you should accept. At that point, you might typically say I see. So - what is it that you see? (Or in the other case, what is it you’re not seeing?) Whatever it is (or isn’t) it won’t be seen as a consequence of anything physical that has passed between us. — Wayfarer

If you think that the use of reason within this discussion demonstrates the soundness of the argument from reason, I think you’ve misunderstood Srap’s criticism.

He asked you to defend this:

No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes — Wayfarer

That you will defend it with reason is irrelevant (although you haven’t actually defended it yet).

I’d add that metaphysical naturalism can be true even if beliefs cannot be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes. Nonreductive materialism is popular among philosophers. Which takes us back to @180 Proof’s early response, which I don’t think you’ve addressed.