I'm trying to get a 'Blue Book' thread going. There are some great quotes there that might inspire you, and I'd enjoy hearing your reactions to them. ...
I'm glad to hear it. Please say more if you feel like it, here or on the Blue Book thread. I don't like the image of linguistic philosophers as spoils...
I think Fish is wrong here or only thinking of the academic philosophy game. Are you saying that Epictetus, for instance, can't help people with life?...
Sure. It's all about context. As a matter of interpretive skill (always a risk!), I can speculate that Vonnegut meant something like: if you care abou...
I agree that the ideal florist does not feel that need. But what of the imperfect florist? The aspirant florist? I can imagine ego-battles at the flor...
I love that you mention the second death of the species as a greater terror. I have thought about that too. My secular version of partial immorality i...
Yeah, it's a slog. I've never read every page. But I have a paperback that includes the chapter Existential Psychoanalysis, and there are some great p...
IMO, it's a personal issue whether they are swept away or not. Take the God issue. For some people, including me, this is settled. Doesn't mean I can ...
:up: I agree, and this reminds me of know-how or skill. Explicit principles (from 'folk-psychology' perhaps) can be helpful, but to some degree there'...
That does seem to be the way of the times we live in. It's easy to take for granted, but it was a revolutionary idea. I think Athens and Rome probably...
:up: Also (kinda what you already said) the very meanings of God, free will, and so on might be there in the actual influences on our shared existence...
We might even say explicitly poetic ontologies as opposed to the anti-poetic ontologies of a merely relatively depoetized reason. In other words, even...
Maybe you're right. I'm just commenting from my anecdotal experience. My wife has clued me in to a culture (largely feminine) of soft but unironic pag...
Seems to me that Witt is doing a kind of negative metaphysics. Philosophieren ist: falsche Argumente zurückweisen. We can trust our blind skill enough...
Thanks for this too ! They all fit together for me. I just yanked out my favorites. I like the idea that we fill up the spaces between these fragments...
This heads toward the 'beetle-in-the-box' idea. How can 'pain' have a public meaning? And yet it does (there are right ways and wrong ways to use the ...
Great quote. There's some taboo-violation there, right? All men are not created equal. This is the dark side of Nietzsche too, with his idea of ranks ...
I'm with you on this floating metaphor. The ground is an abyss, an ocean whose bottom is lost in darkness. I'm not sure I'm reading the last part righ...
I like the introduction of the childhood theme. Think of adolescent concerns, being funny, dressing well, sports, cheerleading. All quite embodied, no...
What is 'height' here? What makes one judgment or proposition higher than another ? Is it generality? That the statement speaks of larger structures i...
I really like this and agree. What is it that people hunger for? Some kind of impossible explanation of the whole deal, even though an explanation of ...
I've never owned one of his books, but I'm curious about A Spirit of Trust, which seems to be an assimilation of Hegel, finally, in the analytic tradi...
I understand Baker's quote. It just seems to stretch the meaning of 'investigation.' The notion of 'Direct Experience' is an epistemic disaster. Think...
I think that W would say something like 'we shouldn't take this image metaphor too seriously.' Contrast this with Plato or someone who sees that we ge...
IMO, one of his great charms is that thinkers don't get more readable than Witt. His thought is chunked into little sections but often these sections ...
It seems a little wacky to me too. But perhaps our florist is happy. Then I'd classify it as more of the usual human vanity. The woman probably obeys ...
OK. Well I could see it working both ways. People need community, or most people do. I can imagine just being accepted by some group could rescue some...
To me this is about the notion of Direct Experience. How does one florist convince another that she too has had the Direct Experience of the world as ...
Imagine a florist who develops over many years of dedicated practice the insight that 'the world is a purple rose.' She explains that this truth only ...
I'm not one to step on non-threatening spiders, but what's the practical gist of such equality? Is wiping the place where my dog had diarrhea with ble...
I would say that it has that Kantian flavor except that in my imperfect understanding of Kant is that it's too contingent. We can imagine more than on...
I agree that the Quest can take a sickly form (certain god-and-antinatalism loops come to mind, but also the less offensive stuff Wittgenstein invente...
I think you are right that religion offers some people these things. Calling this 'truth' still seems to stretch the word too much. Many an atheist wo...
I think your point is clever. That said, you are giving us a philosopher's god. This is a late concept, which has drifted from traditional human-centr...
I haven't studied metaethics with any seriousness, unless reading lots of Nietzsche counts (for reasons hinted at by the example problems.) I think we...
Comments