If for no other reason, Plotinus is interesting because he would have been the first to object to Augustine co-opting him as the 'best Platonist'. Plotinus saw himself as carrying forward the best interpretation he could make in his circumstances. If somebody told him he was better than Plato, he probably would have lapsed into a coma.

Before looking at Athens as an ideal not attainable to the Romans, consider that slavery was a big part of both societies. Aristotle took it for granted that society was hierarchical. I don't say that to erase differences. There are many. But I am reluctant to invoke Golden Ages after Plato did such a good job of making fun of them.

Silversun Pickups has changed their approach:


Much different than the concerts I went to.

That's a reshash of Descartes' cogito etgo sum. — Agent Smith

That formulation leaves out a critical component. Is one being deceived by design, or can one proceed in the confidence that it would be stupid to fool somebody who is pretty clueless to start with?

And Viktor Bout busts out of prison to run to that end of the field.

Neil Young put it best: "A different story for every set of eyes."

Why does Roman writing set our understanding of classical stoicism? — Athena

I think a lot of that can be credited to the destruction of texts from the closing of the Hellenistic time where we can see many sources are referred to but are now lost.

One of the last to view the Platonic legacy in regard to Stoicism was Plotinus. He wrote polemics challenging Stoics in the Enneads but also included elements that recognized many previous arguments,

This essay by Gerson does a good job of contrasting Plotinus from the 'classical' thinkers: Plotinus On Happiness.

I take issue with his view of a Platonism 'beyond Socrates' but the stuff about Aristotle was helpful to me.

Yes, the Iron Curtain kept events and narratives out of view. It also put a lot of traumas in suspended animation. Dealing with complicity and resistance in each country was delayed when compared to the dialogue in Western Europe. As an American, I have to admit that my education of the region was blank in that regard until I became interested in the Nineties.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has participated in the support and encouragement of European and U.S. ultranationalists. Some of that is geared toward normalizing their agendas as discussed here by ORF. The violent and terrorist end of the spectrum can be seen in groups like the Russian Imperialist Movement. The international quality of that group is reflected in reports such as the following from OSCE:

Swedish investigators discovered that Thulin and another accomplice had received weapons training in St. Petersburg from the Russian paramilitary group Partizan. Partizan runs weapons-training courses on behalf of an ultranationalist organization called the Russian Imperial Movement, which has avidly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Russian Imperial Movement was previously designated by the U.S. Department of State as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization in April 2020 for providing training for acts of terrorism. Despite the all-encompassing crackdown on domestic civil society groups across Russia, curiously the Russian Imperial Movement continues to operate.

Now, this element does not prove that the nation is ruled by this contingent alone. Russia does go pretty far in letting them think they are calling the shots. The brutality of the rules of engagement does nothing to belie that impression. At some point, actions reveal more than statements of intent.

Solipsism founders on the existence of the image as image.

Narcissus falls in love with his image and does not see the pool. Nor does he see himself as he exists.

Yes, ultranationalists are much alike in their way of identifying themselves through who they wish to expel or worse.

Eastern European nations have the extra twist of having had some of their populations participate in the Shoah. Other groups fought for autonomy against the Red Army or against the Germans depending on who was seen as the bigger threat. Ukraine had the special attention of Stalin before the war when much of the population was starved to death in order to eliminate the Kulaks. The swirling series of conflicting ends defies simple categories. The groups mentioned have a number of overlaps that History still has not resolved.

But to return to your point, Ukraine does have a lot on its plate if it survives.

It is useful to me as well.
If I understand your work life correctly, then the matter relates to what you do as well.
I am just curious, not trying to challenge you.

But not relevant to your practice?

Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World's Classics) by Epictetus — 180 Proof

That is the best textual reference. I still like my translations that refer to a 'manual'. How to set up a tent. What to do when the fire conks out. Etcetera.

Some of the tension between different views of the 'real' in Nietzsche's work involve views of natural law.

While noting that what has transpired is a vital testimony to what is happening now, he is very skeptical of the search for laws of the universe in the way Kant, for example, said was given to us to discover.

And yet, N was not claiming Hume was correct in saying causality is only a story we tell ourselves.

Was there some magical reification of it or did external circumstances change so much that apathy has no bearing on the ancient use of the term? — Shawn

Pardon me for butting into the conversation but I think the quality relates to the modern idea that one is a slave if one agrees to be one. Epictetus was a militant in many ways.

I would like to talk about On the Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche.

quote="boethius;765395"]Ah, I see, you're just virtue signalling that you've found the extreme-right association after 420 pages.[/quote]

You put words in my mouth again.

You keep making rebuttals to arguments I am not making.

I never said you did, — boethius

But you said:

Predicting Ukraine will win when they won't, is not "pro Ukraine" it's just wrong if Ukraine doesn't win. If you think Ukraine will win, ok, why, how, when?

You put words into my mouth.

You're in the true adherent to cancel culture category. — boethius

How would you guess that from my life of work? What is your life of work?

I haven't made any predictions.

↪Paine, or then afraid of career repercussions so not saying anything. — boethius

I am an old carpenter and a stone mason.

Interesting to know.
I see that Berletic is well established on the New Atlas platform.
I remember some of that messaging from the Syrian conflict. It prompts me to learn more even though I got burnt out by the Chechen wars and was hoping not to explore all of this again.

Certainly. Pardon me, I misunderstood you the first time around.

I was not questioning the validity of QM. It is the connection of that theory to the emergence of consciousness that needs more than wishful thinking.

Yes, I see that you are not saying that one realm excludes the other. But how do we know enough about consciousness to recognize it as a player in the universe in relationship to 'physical' components you refer to as accepted facts?

I am curious why you frame the idea as a possibility rather than as something you know about directly.

Did you not introduce transcendence as what the 'physical' could not provide?

You have introduced a 'non-vital' substance to surprise us with what it is not. Aristotle took a different approach.

I agree there is a dynamic between public and private that is difficult to understand.
Aiming for excellence depends upon how that is conceived. If it is always beyond what can be achieved, then it is a monkey on your back. If it is something you get close to now and then, the picture changes.

I grew up in a parallel set of expectations regarding performance. My mother was a performer of song for a good while. My father was deeply engaged with Mathematics. While I had good and bad experiences in the Theater, I tend to view the matter mostly through the lens of my work life in construction.
When I accepted the work as performance, it stopped being something I did to just to get along. It became my own, to lose and win.

The spontaneous popping into existence of elementary particles is propagation from a physicalist ground; it exemplifies serial holism. Life propagating spontaneously from a physical ground is transcendent holism. Existence is peer to peer. Existence never propagates from non-existence. — ucarr

How do you know that a 'physical ground' is bereft of life? It seems like you excluded the possibility as an assumption in order to introduce it as a necessity.

I, too, was greatly impressed by the influence of indigenous voices, both as a competing vision of social order and how the thinking in Europe was changed through the encounters.

What I find most interesting is the challenge to the 'stages of development' framework often used to link human capacity to particular levels of organization. The presentation reveals a bias that I did not realize that I was keeping alive.

In regard to the experience of heading up or down, I have been long influenced by the perspective of Stanislavski given in his work An Actor Prepares. The work of maintaining and developing the instrument is not the same as what emerges through performance. Finding a balance between the two is, perhaps, what the "unforced" quality of the Dao is about. It is more sustainable as a form of life than burning oneself up at the bonfire of Dionysus.

Wow.
I read several of those articles and found the talking points of boethius and Tzeentch in bold relief. In some cases, they have been transcribing the text verbatim.

I have learned a lot from people who have read the same works I did. I have been encouraged to read new works as a result.

Sometimes the arguments involve matters I am concerned about. Continuing in a dialogue is better than seeking a judgement that would end it for all time. Unless the question was stupid.

The shape of every TPF discussion, ever.

Edit to add: I don't mean to say something stupid happens all the time. Only that dismissal of arguments is not an argument very often.

I think there is a Yin/Yang relationship in design. The imitation of symmetry and patterns we encounter in nature are transformed into the formal element that emerges in what we make. What is beautiful is not, however, the artificial replacing the natural. Too much structure is oppressive. Leaving everything to chance is a kind of submission. Repetition of some things is ugly, even if not oppressive by themselves as rare events. The inability to repeat other events is a source of much torment.

So, the one who makes, lives in a complex web. The balance depicted in the symbol of Yin and Yang is usually envisioned as a gift. The speaker in Homer asked for the Muses to sing.

By saying, 'mapping the body', I meant to distinguish Chalmer's issue from the question asked by many as to whether 'consciousness is purely physical activity'. In his essay, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Chalmer says:

When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the
hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

Chalmer goes on to say that the 'simple explanation' of functions is reductive, as a rule, because it develops models to show what generates what we encounter through experience. That kind of reduction is an important part of much of the 'scientific' method:

Throughout the higher-level sciences, reductive explanation works in just this way. To
explain the gene, for instance, we needed to specify the mechanism that stores and transmits
hereditary information from one generation to the next. It turns out that DNA performs this
function: once we explain how the function is performed, we have explained the gene. To
explain life, we ultimately need to explain how a system can reproduce, adapt to its environment, metabolize, and so on. All of these are questions about the performance of functions, and so are well-suited to reductive explanation. The same holds for most problems in cognitive science. To explain learning, we need to explain the way in which a system’s behavioral capacities are modified in light of environmental information, and the way in which new information can be brought to bear in adapting a system’s actions to its environment. If we show how a neural or computational mechanism does the job, we have explained learning. We can say the same for other cognitive phenomena, such as perception,
memory, and language. Sometimes the relevant functions need to be characterized quite subtly, but it is clear that insofar as cognitive science explains these phenomena at all, it does so by explaining the performance of functions.

When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

There is no analogous further question in the explanation of genes, or of life, or of learning. If someone says “I can see that you have explained how DNA stores and transmits hereditary information from one generation to the next, but you have not explained how it is a gene”, then they are making a conceptual mistake. All it means to be a gene is to be an entity that performs the relevant storage and transmission function. But if someone says “I can see that you have explained how information is discriminated, integrated, and reported, but you have not explained how it is experienced”, they are not making a conceptual mistake. This is a nontrivial further question.

This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on “in the dark”, free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.

This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function. Perhaps it will even turn out that in the course of explaining a function, we will be led to the key insight that allows an explanation of experience. If this happens, though, the discovery will be an extra explanatory reward. There is no cognitive function such that we can say in advance that explanation of that function will automatically explain experience.

To explain experience, we need a new approach. The usual explanatory methods of
cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice. These methods have been developed
precisely to explain the performance of cognitive functions, and they do a good job of it. But
as these methods stand, they are only equipped to explain the performance of functions. When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say.

By seeking a 'bridge over the explanatory gap', Chalmers says science can still go forward even if the problem of reduction is acknowledged. We don't know enough to say where the limits are. The approach does bring into question the way we use terms like 'virtual' over against 'actual' and the inner over against the outer. I haven't read much of Chalmers regarding Metametaphysics as it relates to the "ontology room." In terms of establishing a language for science, I did notice AW Carus making the following observation:

For Carnap, a framework was a candidate language of unified science (i.e. for all knowledge), while Chalmers’s “domains” determined by furnishing functions result merely from various gradations of ontological assertion, unconnected to any larger bodies of knowledge (pp. 114-16). The point of classifying a question as “internal” to a framework, for Carnap, was to regard it as, in principle, answerable, with the resources specified by that framework — i.e. to distinguish what we can in principle know from what we in principle can’t.  In Chalmers’s terms, the Carnapian constraints on admissibility are explicitly supplied by the framework itself, and have no need of any supplementation by ontological fiat. So from a Carnapian point of view, the best sense one can make of Chalmers’s supposed “replacement” for the internal-external distinction is that he is attempting to create a space for a “third realm” of statements that are neither answerable in the cut-and-dried, scientific or mathematical sort of way (i.e. internal), nor are fully indeterminate (i.e. external), but, let us say, possibly-answerable by looser constraints in a not-quite-scientific, ontological dialect of ordinary language (and the intuitions it supports) that is somewhat regimented but whose boundaries are unclear (Chalmers refers to Cian Dorr and Ted Sider in this context, p. 100). Between properly behaved frameworks and the outer space of indeterminateness, that is, Chalmers wants to introduce a space for quasi-frameworks.

Carus is critical of Chalmers' approach (i didn't quote the whole thing) but I presume there is a connection between the “third realm” of statements" and the search for an 'explanatory bridge' sought for in the first essay. If I understand correctly, the Metametaphysics is not, by itself, the explanatory bridge.

Sorry for the long post.

You won't find a credible source portraying Russia as a "hostile militant aggressor" before 2014. — Tzeentch

Medvedev agrees with your view of Georgia incursion.

Which text from Occam do you derive the proposition that "Occam says properties are lies?"

When Occam admonishes those who 'multiply causes beyond necessity", is he not repeating Aristotle's demand for a crucial difference versus a classification like "featherless biped?" Which, by the way, was a criticism directed toward Aristotle.

You seemed to be on the verge of recognizing those aforementioned crises are real ones and then you say: "European stake in this conflict is mostly the ego of its deluded leaders." It sounds like you are saying that the leaders could solve those problems if Russia wins or not. You will have to explain what the former scenario would look like. The latter has already been established as the basis for policy decisions.


Please link the document you are quoting Merkel from. Whatever were the concerns about Russia's intentions before 2014, 300 days of preemptive war has given us a chance to learn more about them.

Alas, rounds of hypocrisy abound. Machiavelli lives.

I was not, however, addressing the purity of their hearts but your claim that only the U.S. (and some peasants living in the wrong place) have something to lose if Ukraine goes tits up.

Other nations have more than a rhetorical interest in the outcome. The security crisis in Europe is real. The economic crisis is real. The refugee crisis is real. It is all very well to analyze what all parties did to get us to this place. But to depict Russia as merely defending itself is to turn a blind eye to what they have been doing and what they are capable of.

Being only capable of thinking in terms of absolute hierarchies leave only orders of rank to be perceived. Everything else fades into the mist.