Zugzwang

Don't forget that it's parents (or the like, and usually many others) who teach baby to talk in the first place. The boy in the bubble doesn't need ex...

Complex terrain. In one sense, I agree. No token is ever used exactly the same way twice (is ever used in exactly the same context. That can't be a th...

:100:

Perhaps he means the difference between some postulated 'raw feel' and all the understood-as-signs for it. 'Logically' one cannot be wrong about how t...

I don't see it (or I choose to ignore it perhaps.) Roughy it's as if 'form of life' = 'Das Man.' Being-in-the-world, being-with-others,... is being-in...

:up: :100: The book is like a disposable vessel, or rather an incendiary device, since vessel misleads us in to thinking of some stable goo inside the...

. Personally I find all this in implied/suggested by Wittgenstein. If meaning is outside, part of the world, then the 'internal monologue' is not long...

. That's just it. The meaning of the sign 'pain' (if we insist that there is such a thing) has to be 'out there' in the behavior that one would appeal...

For some perhaps. But 'shut up and calculate' might instead be interpreted in terms of worldly power and the species becoming more godlike. From this ...

. Many, in times of crisis, might. I wouldn't, but then things are going OK for me, for now.

Gallows humor. Was Sartre a bit of a Jerry Seinfeld? Is there fun to be had in the darkness? The entertainment industry suggests that we love to watch...

I'm not sure we can escape this 'prison.' To me it seems the high and free and awake self is built from the usual junkyard parts. To me, the meaning s...

Isolated from the world, from others. The basic myth of modern philosophy, one might say, is a version of the picture-box soul. Then one can ask wheth...

:up: This bolded part is more of that good 'nonsense.' It can't be proved as a theorem, IMV, but it's a gesture, a poem, an aphorism...that tries to g...

To me it's more about being aware of how much clarity is possible or appropriate in a given context. The naive metaphysician does a pseudo-math with w...

:up: What excites me is a willingness to fuck with the code. It may be a terrible idea, but it's hard for me to expect much from the tired, other idea...

It seems that a few English idioms are not within my house for wheels. I do appreciate the tender attention to my details.

Let's throw in working to improve that reality while simultaneously adapting one's attitude and I'm with you. Also include an escape clause: some situ...

Small point, but do you not think certain non-human animals are complex enough to have crises of conscience? I doubt that they know they are mortal, b...

Now you add another layer as you present your optimism as a choice. Sartre's a dark philosopher, after all, speaking of human being as an impossible q...

Interesting distinction. I think I agree.

To say we are cyborgs in this case is to emphasize how technological we are. Language is something the ur-technology, that plugs us into something lik...

I think you nailed down something interesting here. We often prefer to be 'robots' on script, to escape any possible blame, as you say. When I was you...

Beautiful. I love that. I like to think that my pragmatism is partially redeemed from that critique by pointing toward practical reality. 'Truth' is d...

I like the way you wrote that up. Haven't read Cavell, but I came away with a sense of the gist of the book. Impressions: he seems reasonable, likable...

:up: I think reality not caring about our feelings is a 'cultural fact '(or a subcultural fact, let's say). As in I'd think it was flaky or suspect to...

Excellent points. What comes to my mind is that gap between the game of philosophical spiderweb (some of them spectacular) and all the stuff we do out...

Sidepoint, but to me it sucks that our culture embraces pointlessly drawn-out and painful deaths for no reason that I find valid anyway. Obviously I w...

I dig the catalog. I agree that we fear death as a loss of nice things. But we can reason that being dead involves no fear, no sense of loss. I'm in n...

I like your style. I vote for evolved self-deception. We're in the grip of a master madness, the fear of perfect sleep.

I like the way you are connected these concepts. One might first say that we are thrown into sin but then decide that having-been-thrown is itself the...

Fair enough. God knows I'm not saving the world from its ordinary madness with my own points.

I like David Pearce. I'm not quite drunk on the Kool-aid, and I'd argue with some of the metaphysical baggage, but the whole project of transcending t...

I like the focus on decision making. I'd make this even more active. Not mere assent but action, action with risk especially. For instance, it's one t...

Butting in, but...I get your point. Perhaps the ultimate point, though, is what we do. Do people vote for creeps, allow the needle into the arm, chang...

And then there's yanking Everest out of its background, etc. Agree, though we could shift away from concept talk toward something like usage. The toke...

I like enactivism, or at least the quote below.

We're on the same page. Real numbers, Turing machines,...infinite fictions that (impressively) guide/inform the creation of all the tech we depend on....

I like deconstruction, and in general like what you say here. But does 'ultimate skepticism' keep one from successfully ordering a cup of coffee? Perh...

I appreciate your polite engagement with a skeptic. So you are saying matter = energy = information = everything. I'm not up on the latest physics, so...

Or does the process work backwards? Or in both directions? We could also say that certain devices can be made in our vivid and smelly world if we play...

:up: To me this is also the dark side of philosophy. 'I care about truth more than you.' Socrates can be grating, a self-righteous, falsely modest clo...

I loved the first. I could pick holes in it now, but it was just pure entertainment during that first view (almost alone in the theatre for a matinee,...

Shannon's warning is basically my original point. It's technical concept. In fact we do want to transmit bits effectively, and part of that is coming ...

I agree that there's a vague 'background' notion of 'mind' that we pick up from all the uses of the word. It's like the metaphysics of ordinary langua...

Good quote. That's W in a nutshell, perhaps. 'Knowing what it is' is something banal like knowing how and when to invoke and respond to the familiar t...

I was explaining what I thought a case could be made either way, but recall that I also called it clever game, so I'm not trying to work through those...

I do think 'truth' and 'fact' do lots of solid work in the real world, tho. It's us philosophers who can't help trying to do math with them, 'clarify'...

OK, I'll move. Your relentless optimism reminds me of a program, featured perhaps in a scene cut from The Matrix. Don't get me wrong. You add value. A...

I speculate that actual usage is just too complex for more than sketches. English runs on a brain with brains for neurons. Another example: how many b...