I'm a dick too tho, and I'm sorry to hijack this thread.

Yeah, I think the well being of others, who are real, even if theyre on a forum, does matter and i think its sad you don't. But hey, no one else would have the edge to joke about taboo sex acts. Sad!

obv you realize the harshness. The harshness is the role youre playing. All that stuff about missing dads may be true, idk, its the thesis of fight club, but either (1) you diagnosed the op's problem and didnt really care about fixing it or (2) you were trying to play the part of that absent dad which begs two more questions (1) is that how you parent? and (2) why are you trying to surrogate parent on a forum when you have actual kids?

But it's not 'it's fine to stay home' v 'you gotta get in gear' - its ' here are some real tips to help you' v 'let me play my no-nonsense realist role at your expense'

Ya wrong, Hegel's great.

Maybe you have some sense of yourself as a no-nonsense straight-shooter, with an ironic wit, and an endearing faux-narcissism (which im sure you would never come out & say you think is endearing, because that would ruin the joke or pose, but you do think that.) Maybe you think your tough love is just what the doctor ordered.

But you're just an asshole. Not in a cool way.

I lived with my mom for a year and a half, at 22/23, and had v bad self-esteem, and some dude who thinks its HILARIOUS to talk about how great they are telling me I was pathetic wouldn't have helped a bit.

You're a third-rate wit (with no ear for meter btw, yr limericks suck. But oh so edgy!) who posts on a philosophy forum in a tone that conveys they're too clever or woke or worldly for the stuff ppl talk about on philosophy forums. How is that any less pathetic? Sad!

All that being said, I think this quote from The Gay Science is worth a hundred moral treatises.

What do you consider the most humane? - To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? - To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself. — Nietzsche

I agree with your criticism of Camus. I never really got into him though, to be honest. I did read The Stranger, in high school, and I can't remember it all that well now, but I remember thinking it was unintentionally hilarious, in the same way Kierkegaard's aesthete was hilarious in Either/or (tho K was probably in on that joke himself, while writing it.) My mom died and I felt nothing. Killed that dude, and I feel nothing. Felt sometimes like a hyper-caricature of a bad western, or a bad noir.

Nietzsche's not so bad, but maybe we're in the same boat. I like some of his writing and some of his spirit, while not really feeling like he's some ultra-profound thinker. He's much more interesting on individual authors and passages, and the history around them, than he is on Big Ideas. He was trained a philologist and philology is where he actually shines. People like to say he registered the shocks of his time, like others, but that he alone was able to divine what those shocks would actually mean and where everything was headed. I kind of doubt that. I think a certain type of person NEEDS Nietzsche to be profound to justify other aspects of their life. Nietzsche himself was probably that type of person.

James Joyce - speaking of pretension - has a great treatment of a 20th century 'Nietzschean' in his Dubliners. It's pitch perfect. First quote is the 'hero' talking to a woman sincerely interested in him. Second is about his life after he pulls away from her. The two quotes are not consecutive in the actual story (called A Painful Case, totally worth checking out!) (In its way, its even a parody of Camus avant la lettre. Being schizoid isn't cool or profound or noble, it's just kind of sad.)

She asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked her, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?

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Four years passed. Mr. Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room still bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of music encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk. One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse. He kept away from concerts lest he should meet her. His father died; the junior partner of the bank retired. And still every morning he went into the city by tram and every evening walked home from the city after having dined moderately in George’s Street and read the evening paper for dessert. — Joyce

I'd have to say Derrida, and I know he's an easy target, an obvious one, but I actually like continental philosophy. Quite a bit. I feel like I'm exactly Derrida's target audience -- & he still drives me crazy.

I was always kinda interested in his stuff, tho kinda skeptical - but then we did a reading group here a few months back, on his Voice & Phenomena*, and it felt like hardcore charlatanism to me. Which isn't to say he isn't smart, or capable- he is. But I think he sacrificed his talent totally for fashion and influence. Reading V&P, I got the sense he familiarized himself with the tradition just enough to cover his ass, to make a minimally plausible case for himself as a scholar. And, having done that, felt free to say whatever the fuck he wanted. His Glas is probably the single most self-indulgent piece of 'philosophy' ever written (at least the most self-indulgent piece taken seriously by others.) Really have no respect for the guy at this point. I think he's responsible for the worst excesses of us lit crit/cultural studies etc etc.

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* and V&P is the piece Derrida defenders point to when people criticize him. Supposedly, this is where he 'earns' all his later decadence, through serious scholarship and sharp argumentation. Which defense, if you actually read V&P, is mind-boggling.

You ever know anyone in high school who was too smart for their own good, submitted a perfect paper that mocked the assignment itself, but still got an A? It's not that absurd, it happens

My extremely underinformed, biased, i've-never-read-the-whole-thing take is that the tractatus was at least half tongue-in-cheek, a smarter-than-you-so-smart-you-don't-even-know-i'm-mocking-you attack on Russell & co. Like he used their own philosophical building blocks better than they could, only to say it's all nonsense anyway, at the end. Kind of a punk-rock thing, like I can do 500x better, with one hand tied my behind my back, and even after all that, i think it's all bullshit.

That's how I like to think of it at least.

Interesting. I get it when waking up. Usually I just become aware that I'm (sort of?) awake, but can't move. I've developed this thing where I mentally "push" outwards until I eventually gain control again and can move. It's strange.

Same for me, almost exactly. I've never heard anyone else talk about the 'push' thing, but that's a good way to put it.

That's true. Maybe they only base your 'label' on your top foundation.

Like I said, the first test really measures one's own idea of one's moral foundation. You spend a lot of time consciously grooming your moral self-image, so it's not surprising that the results of the first test would seem more pleasing and correct to you.

That moral foundations test is terribly designed. Almost all of the questions are super abstract. It doesn't test how you think about things; it tests how you think, abstractly, about your moral self-image. This one, though clearly low-rent, is way better. It's not great, by any means, but it at least has the virtue of being concrete.

I'd do one on universals & nominalism. I'm a total amateur on the subject, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

I really like the concept. I'm not sure how well it would work on the forum tho. I suppose it'd have to be an agreement between two members to post within x minutes of the other person posting. It could be cool.

Any philosophical discussion that reaches for QM has gone astray.

It's a good practical rule of thumb, but, then, has any philosophical discussion that's reached for atoms gone astray? How about any that reaches for DNA? Cosmology? Newtonian Law? Geometry?

It's kind of a troubling thing to think about. If some scientific ideas are on the table, but not others, isn't the reason the latter aren't on the table that we amateurs don't know enough to effectively speak about them? But, then, if we disallow the complicated stuff, but still allow the former to figure into our conversations, especially when talking ontology or metaphysics - then we've essentially agreed (implicitly) to do philosophy in a kind of make-believe setting, where we pretend the state of the scientific art is what it was long ago. It's a kind of parlor game. In this sense QM is a kind of 'card' that sophisticated parlor gamers overrule, perhaps justifiably, with a disdain 'card.' These same sophisticated players nevertheless feel free to use other science 'cards' because they know the rules of the game - and the attitudes of the other players - will allow such cards to be played

But if we decide that no scientific stuff is allowed in - we're then committed to an idea of philosophy as utterly independent of scientific findings. Which seems bad.

Which leaves one last sobering option: Only people who truly know QM can do philosophy (and most of them seem not to want to.)

All 3 options suck. But what's the 4th option? (This isn't snide or rhetorical, I think about this often, & I don't have a good answer.)

Also: the stuff apo and street are always talking about: 'the epistemic cut', the ability to make distinctions. And the ability to hone in one thing, to pay attention, at the expense of other things. And then, also, fear & desire (as well as repose, discontent etc etc). Those are the big 'mind' things, as I see them. And it seems perfectly sensible to think that the mind, while distinct from matter, interacts with it (through distinguishing, paying attention-to, fearing, desiring.) In fact they seem very importantly bound up, though distinct.

Are a foot and a rock distinct?

What is the bridge?

Isn't this a problem for physicalists?

So, right, as Rich says, the bridge is 'matter.' & my guess is that the intuition the physicalist is trying to express is that both that foot and the rock are made of atoms - and the atoms in the foot, and the atoms in the rock, should they meet, will interact with the same lawful regularity that characterizes any meeting of any atoms, anywhere.

Which is to say, I guess, thinking about it, that this kind of substance monism would be ultimately a kind of physical reductionism.

But then (drawing obviously from an emergentist vein) How do hurricanes and representative democracies interact? Stock markets and Film Festival circuits?

These questions all seem to involve form as much - if not more - than the material. And it's not like the mind is formless. But it still seems another step to then say the mind isn't supervenient on matter, the same matter that anything else, that exists, supervenes on. But maybe that's just because it would make the mind seem too free of limitation, formless.

Just kind of rambling here. I like the conversation so far.

thx for that, nice to have a sincere, personal, earned defense of philosophy. Needed that, for real.

It's not the discovery that is significant, it's that messages can be targeted. If you're gay, you'll get messages about Islamic gay persecutions, if you like US cars you'll get messages about foreigners dumping cheap cars.

But how does this cash out concretely? You get some extra, tailored political ads on your facebook if your data points show you undecided? It just doesn't seem that scary to me.

Especially since cambridge analytica, running Cruz's digital campaign, lost handily to Trump. And, as the article informs us, Trump, at that time, had essentially no digital campaign. So if, in the primaries, he beat cambrdige analytica without much Big Data at all, then I'm skeptical about how big their effect really was on the general election.

And here's a link for anyone who hasn't quite seen the connection between my threads, or whose paranoia level is a little low. — Un

And just as Kosinski had established that men who like MAC cosmetics are slightly more likely to be gay, the company discovered that a preference for cars made in the US was a great indication of a potential Trump voter — article

Men who like makeup likely gay, trump supporters more likely to prefer US-made cars. This is some sophisticated stuff. Amazing that they discovered these correlations.

So I'm 28 &, so far, I've experienced at least 2 distinct waves of 'aha' w/ other thinkers validating, expanding, and contextualizing that 'aha.' That shock of happy recognition is the best. I still haven't gotten to the point, at least yet, where I've found a thinker who totally nails it. Each 'aha' thinker I've found, nails a region I'm keen on, but at the expense of other regions. I like Hegel on some things, Deleuze on others, Sellars (recently) on yet others. Zizek for the cultural stuff. (and then the literary guys, who do another thing.) haven't found someone in the way you've found Peirce.

I had no idea you'd published. I'd be interested in checking out your book(s).

It feels like a state of completion, like something is "sinking in" and which compels you to investigate further. As if there would be something wrong with not investigating further.

That last sentence especially. For whatever reason Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason really had that effect on me (though, like so many other books, I've yet to finish it.) So many things clicked in exactly that "I knew it all along" sense, but with the important addition that it took 'what I knew all along' and brought it somewhere a little new, that made perfect sense, and that in turn suggested further avenues that, yeah, would be almost wrong not to go down. I know Sartre has his critics, but I love that book, and like some other big ones I haven't yet completed, I keep returning to it.

I don't want you to to change your approach, really, I like things to stay at least a little the same, and you're a fixture. It's just that anyone with a strong presence and style calls out for caricature, and this post is that caricature. Darth asked if anyone knows that feeling of some new thought forming, some insight on the brink of being realized - and you answered ah yes, of course, that feeling of some new insight forming, let me explain that by means of the same insight I refer to in each of my posts. That feeling is Peircean abduction.

It's too perfect

I'm not knocking your theory, at least not here. I'm genuinely interested in - if a little uneasy with - your approach. I'm still browsing the philosophical market and probably will be for some time yet. But don't you see the joke?

But essentially I'm thinking about the feeling you get when you know you "get" something but aren't sure how to articulate what exactly you "get" — Darth

That's Peircean abduction — apokrisis

lol, I don't mean this as a dig ( liked the post) but if you wanted to capture apo in two quotes, couldn't do better than this

Non-hedonic is too strong for me, but I see your point.

But we're not satisfied, leaving it at Leopardi's quote, are we? (I know I'm not)

No, but so I actually like - & somewhat agree with - the Leopardi quote. But there's a hint of self-pity that rubs me the wrong way. And not just self-pity, but respecting oneself for having come to the impasse where one can pity oneself in such a way.

Not a quote by a philosopher, but I've always loved this (used to be in my signature on the old pf.) I offer it as a counterpoint to Leopardi. All you have to do is stop seeking some ultimate truth, look around & lo! so many seals.

"In those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." - Jan Weizl

So many seals! And then you can hit them.

Can you develop the Hegelian point?

I'm never sure what's meant by "qualities" and "universals." I recall Kant speaks of "sensible qualities" -- is that the right ballpark?

I can think of two sorts of "mediation" to watch out for: mediation by inference and mediation by concepts. I expect the given to play the role of foil in this narrative, while Sellars develops an argument supporting a view in which nothing is given in noninferential knowledge acquisition without some contribution from concepts -- or however he puts his version of the Hegelian theme developed in our time by Sellarsians like Brandom and McDowell.

I'm thinking of Hegel's analysis of perception in Section 2 of Phenomenology of Spirit. I just took a look back at the text and I guess he actually uses the word 'property' (or, more exactly, Eigenschaft, which can be also be translated as quality.)

In any case, (my interpretation of) Hegel's point is that, in speaking of a 'quality' or 'property,' we're speaking about something repeatable, something that could (at least in principle) also be a quality or property of something else. For Hegel, this means that we're dealing with universals and I think he's right. But 'universal' is a loaded term, and I don't want to drag things too far afield. In any case, the 'mediation' I mentioned is exactly the second sort of mediation you mention, a mediation by concepts. To understand a quality or property as a quality or property, we must have recourse to the conceptual.

I hope that makes sense. A lot of these terms (concept, universal, property, quality) kind of bleed into one another.

Is your user name based on the brewery?

Thanks for the background! Super helpful

Still don't get it. If the US were communist, then the USSR, upon defeating it, would make it communist? When does the US become communist in this scenario? In any event, using the USSR as an example doesn't work because it lasted less than a century. It meets very easily the criteria for being intolerable.

Yeah, I'll eat my words and admit this wasn't a clear illustration A better one would be the US govt and native american tribes.

Basically, besides the knock-down argument Un already provided, this is the problem with Marquez: So, yes, per @Emptyheady, he's against slavery. Of course. But how does he explain this? He says it's an evil. So, great, people can bring in value systems, independent of the epistemic argument, in order to challenge existing systems - which include systems that, per the epistemic argument, we owe deference to. So - and this is the million dollar question, the one Marquez doesn't (in fact, remaining within his argument, can't) answer: How do we decide when to bring in independent value systems to override the epistemic argument? His argument is structurally blind to this question, and its precisely the answer to this question that lets him passingly say, yes, slavery is bad. That passing dismissal contains within it the reductio ad absurdum of everything else. It's not a surprise he's so quick to pass it by.

On the contrary, I think it would be very easy for him, and anyone, to argue that human beings are not property and that one does not and ought not have the right, political or otherwise, to own them as such.

Which is precisely to argue that the Southern plantation system was an illegitimate system of property and political rights. & Marquez has some very piquant things to say about legitimacy, if you recall.

Assuming that 'actual meaning' is 'denotative' is a tall order*. What do the following denote: 'the' 'or' 'whereof' 'solemnly' 'please,' 'begone' ? etc etc.

And even if we do assume that 'actual meaning' is denotative, then we'd have to assume that connotation is 'non-actual', and explain how non-denotative sentence have 'non-actual' meaning (& how, despite their meaning being 'non-actual,' these sentences still somehow 'mean'.)

But that seems like an inauspicious path to go down.

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*(in the sense of denoting something...unless you're slipping quietly from 'denoting something' to 'literal meaning.' tho even this slippage wouldn't get you far, since 'nothing' itself has a 'literal meaning').

When you say it 'should not' be used in ordinary language, do you mean the meanings expressed in sentences using 'nothing' should not be expressed at all, or that those sentences really mean something else, and, ideally, people should alter their usage to reflect that?

Eh, everything creates cognitive distortions (cognition itself distorts). If you want to eradicate nothingness, you need to show how any actual, concrete meaningful usage of the term must really mean something else, something that isn't nothing. A task like this seems quixotic (and I suspect its doomed to fail from the beginning. The very idea of getting rid of something, I think, probably has nothingness nestling right in its belly.)

Whether it denotes anything (or whether it denotes nothing at all), we understand what it means, and we use it - and our understanding and usage of 'nothing' and related terms is far more fundamental than 'a square circle' (or 'the present king of france' for that matter) Nothing is all over the place -you can't just wave it away. In short: if your ontology can't cope with 'nothing', then that's a problem with your ontology.