You think a genius of his stature couldn't manipulate a woman to sleep with him?

In my experience, really smart guys can have a lot of trouble with women. This is not always the case, but very often is.

And it's not mere disdain in Schopenhauer's writing. If he really was that superior to the masses, why did he devote so much time to excoriating them? There is a definite slant to his writing that speaks of bitterness and disappointment. I'm not saying that he wasn't a genius. I'm saying that, if his isolation was truly a result of his genius, then why didn't he just ignore the stupid masses? He was rich, after all. It's not as if he couldn't isolate himself if he wanted to.

Incidentally, Einstein chased quite a few ladies - and frequently, they allowed him to catch them.

Interesting, especially because this would seem to imply that the difference between language and reality is "merely" linguistic. Does this instance of self-reference do anything interesting? I have some ideas, but if you have anything to say, I'd like to hear it first.

"Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" by Philippa Foot
(Nope. Looked at some summaries and skimmed the actual paper. Not very exciting. Looks like typical Pragmatist sleight-of-hand)

"Merely Cultural" by Judith Butler
(Nope. Fuck Judith Butler and everyone who looks like her.)

"The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiotics" by H. H. Pattee
(Nope. Too trendy, and seems to have "Hofstadter Disease.")

"Concepts and Objects" by Ray Brassier
(Yes! This is some good stuff. Accessible to people from different schools, fundamental, relatively short, and focused on big-picture issues. Gets my vote.)

"How to Define Consciousness: And how Not to Define Consciousness" by Max Velmans
(Nope. Good observations that are well articulated, but too narrow to be fecund enough for discussion.)

"Freedom and Resentment" by Peter Strawson
(Fascinating, but I think the Brassier paper beats it.)

A text can attempt to sell itself as "just a description," but there is such a thing as describing things in a way that carries subtle value judgments. A kind of semantic passive-aggression. But that's a tangential point.

My real question is this: how does your conclusion follow from your observations at the beginning? Are you just observing that language is derived from a more general set of behaviors? I'd grant that, but I'm not sure how this eliminates problems in philosophy of language; I could observe that the practice of mathematics is derivative of symbol manipulation, and then make some argument about how symbol manipulation is derivative of pre-rational behavior. None of this would inform me as to whether or not Platonism is true, however.

(Apologies if the foregoing is a bit cranky-sounding. I've been in a rotten mood lately and may be engaging in some semantic passive-aggression of my own.)

I am not sure about the difference between "following a rule" and "using language in a peculiar way." It's like saying, "Adult language isn't more specific than baby talk, baby talk is more general than adult language!" Um...

Also, the quoted passages in the OP seem to beat a dead horse of "Language is about restrictions and rules and smothers the free play of the child's naive mind!" Well, okay, but what are we supposed to do with that?

That being said, one seems to learn the particular sorts of nonverbal communication that normally come with spoken language before one learns the actual words. This toddler can't quite talk yet, but she has no problem carrying on an argument with her father:

There is an element of machismo in the writings of some prominent pessimists. Read Schopenhauer's Councils and Maxims and the Wisdom of Life. Can he go for more than a page without ranting about how dense everyone else is, with the obvious implication that he's smarter than everyone else?

I can't prove a link here. But there does seem to be a definite correlation between curmudgeonly thinking and bitter superiority.

I was being inflammatory.

In all seriousness, Stoicism works for me, at least, because its ideal state (that of the sage) is more or less impossible, which is good for me, because then I have something to strive for at all times. Additionally, I like Stoicism because it's anti-hedonistic. This is possibly because I'm rather anhedonic most of the time, but also because hedonistic philosophies just look like a recipe for slavishness and misery to me. I also like Buddhism a lot, if that tells you anything.

I suppose that Stoicism may be a form of negative hedonism, but in all honesty, I think that "negative hedonism" is a misnomer. It should be called anti-hedonism.

The emphasis on controlling the emotions is important for me because I'm a grotesquely intense person, so I gravitate toward philosophies whose message can be interpreted as "reign it in ya fuckin' lunatic." I'm also really self-indulgent when left to my own devices, and it can lead to problems, so keeping a mindset of moderation is probably a good prescription for my ills.

I don't consider Stoicism to be good for everyone (is there such a thing as a life philosophy that works for everybody?), but when I read the Stoic texts, they just... resonate somehow.

It helps to think of Stoicism as existentialism, but for grownups.

Sapientia, I have no doubt about your natural capability to be a gaping, steaming, prolapsed asshole.

In response to @Postmodern Beatnik and @Baden, I wanted to say: is there any way that perhaps we could make post counts invisible? Post counts can have the same effect as a reputation system, albeit more mild, so perhaps we should make them invisible.

Perhaps it's a 'Let's Pretend Democracy' that was formerly an oligarchy. It was designed to be a democracy where votes were restricted to the wealthy. Then the masses demanded votes, and it became a "Let's Pretend Democracy."

Was always a black metal guy myself. Still don't mind Iron Maiden or Venom, though. :D

"Socratic irony" should have a more modern name. Perhaps "malicious bracketing?" :P

On a more serious note, I am a bit at a loss to ask the right question here. Perhaps this will work: I understand that you don't take language the same way that a lot of other people do, so, for example, I'm not gonna be dense enough to ask you "What's left once language collapses?" Rather, I'd like to ask: "How do you communicate the stuff that's left after the collapse of language?"

I guess if by "collapsed" you mean "no longer taken seriously," then language isn't destroyed so much as deflated. But then, what can you communicate that is meaningful, if anything? I seem to remember you saying that people can't relate to one another meaningfully. Is this an example of that?

(no Socratic bombs here, just poking around)

This makes the game easier: http://xefer.com/wikipedia

I think that there exists a class of people who take capitalism as a kind of metaphysical statement about reality. Everything must be judged according to profit, because profit is viewed as some sort of transcendental standard of meaning. Hard work is sacrosanct, but only if it makes money; working hard on, say, raising children isn't really working hard, unless you charge them rent. Hence the juxtaposition of "Welders make more money than philosophers" and a statement about their relative importance. One wonders whether meaning existed before the advent of currency.

Your use of "in league with Satan" and mention of playing a riff warms my steely heavy metal heart. ;)

I am not accustomed to hearing "irony" in the context in which you're using it. Can you say a thing or two about what it means here?

EDIT: normally I think of irony as either 'poetic irony' or something like sarcasm. What is this you're doing with the word?

Quote them if you would. I'll fire up an online edition if I can find one.

Well, I think I may have some unusual views here that are reflected in how I think about this. This is my unusual view: I don't differentiate between actions and situations, between objects and states of affairs, between things that "are" and things that "happen." Because really, what is an event if not a four-dimensional object? You can specify a point on a sphere using three coordinates, and you can specify a point on the event, "The sphere sits on a plane for a thousand years" using four coordinates. I don't think that adding another coordinate creates a qualitative difference.

This isn't just a wacky ad hoc means of getting around you, by the way. I am, in fact, very grateful for your objection, because it made me realize why people looked at me funny - they don't share my weird views about time.

One minor point: I don't think that I was framing this as short term consequences vs. long term consequences. If a deontologist could guarantee that some good thing would be done in ten years, without doing anything wrong right now, they would, if they were rational and consistent, do so. What the deontologist would not do is cause some kind of harm, justifying it as paying dividends down the line. Not short vs. long term consequences, but willingness to trade bad for good.

Would it be too difficult to implement an ignore function?

Ahh, another one of my favorite posters! I believe I have some bones to pick with you, about chirality and time and aperspectival knowledge... ;)

I would guess that Paul's motive was cash, and that's probably it. As PF grew more popular, the amount of money probably grew larger and more and more tempting. After a while Paul got the proverbial dollar signs in his eyes and sold the site. No condemnation, praise, or excuses here.

"Woo" can mean pseudoscientific nonsense. It can also mean science that offends people; I can see a creationist referring to evolution as "woo," or a somewhat-too-ardent egalitarian getting defensive and saying the same thing about the genetics of intelligence.

edit: I know this thread was just for posting videos but there was some discussion about what "woo" means as a slang word.

Reading thesoren's (or should I say, "thesockpuppets") first post kind of made me wonder if he didn't just read some random Wikipedia articles on philosophy and tack them together in a hastily-constructed post.

That's why I am curious as to his view on causality. He says,

Sure, if we believe that we ought not do X then we might not do X, but then it wouldn't really matter if our beliefs were true; only that we have them.

Granted, the truth of a belief doesn't always effect the actions taken by the person who holds that belief. But suppose that we believe that X is moral, and our reason for believing it is because it's true? It would be a bit like beliefs about mathematics: presumably, I believe that 2+2=4 because 2+2=4.

But now we come to the sticky question as to whether the relationship between mathematical objects, such as 2 and 4, "caused" me to hold that belief. The answer would seem to turn on how causation works.

As to causation, I think that we're going to get into the metaphysics of causality here. Morals may or may not cause things, but there seem to be an awful lot of philosophers who insist that mathematical objects, while really existing independently of the mind, do not stand in causal relations.

Can you say something about the metaphysics of causality, Yahadreas? I'm not asking for a full-blown dissertation here, I just want to get the gist of how you think causality works before I write a detailed reply, since it seems to be necessary here.

I agree that disquotationalism is, prima facie at least, not a position that implies realism. This makes sense: disquotationalism is a deflationary theory of truth, and I suspect that, like other deflationary theories, it was conceived of with an eye toward eliminating the problems that plague correspondence and coherence theories.

The question, "Why should I be moral?" is not sensible, because it amounts to the denial of a tautology. By asking it, you are asking, "Why should I do what I should do?"

Good God, I come back to PF after a few months' hiatus and the place is suddenly a cesspit run by some 24 year old smartass from Brooklyn who likes to steal credit card numbers. The temporary forum created before this one had a lot of the old regular members, so I'm glad that all of the people I want to read are showing up.

Also, I noticed that Sapientia is back! Good to see you, dude. Were you just lurking since God knows when?