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['Confirm Email']Joined: December 09, 2017 at 06:08Last active: December 13, 2017 at 20:211 discussions119 comments

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The how hides.

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As I've argued, I don't find the idea of an answer in general plausible. If there is something because of X, then X itself is either the brute fact or...
December 13, 2017 at 11:52
Hegel has a reputation of being unreadable, but he could give quite a speech. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/1818/inaugural.ht...
December 13, 2017 at 11:26
Been awhile, but yeah. I liked some of it, but never real fell in love with guy. I have a vague sense that he was a bit righteous and effete for my ta...
December 13, 2017 at 11:13
Even if Hegel exaggerated (or doesn't satisfy us today), his idea that the plurality of apparently opposed philosophies constituted one living, evolvi...
December 13, 2017 at 11:12
Right. I more or less read the authentic mode as the phenomenological mode. It's one of the slippier themes in Heidegger (to me), but he does speak in...
December 13, 2017 at 05:58
Right. Life is bigger than language. It's even bigger than all of those languages you mention. The way the body moves through the world comes to mind....
December 13, 2017 at 05:46
Beautiful. Exactly. Pure math is also a good example. No one has to know what is being talked about --not as long as the standards of what constitutes...
December 13, 2017 at 05:33
To me he's just a vivid personality. At his best, he's great (for my purposes). At his worst, I can't say. Because I stop reading when I'm bored. We c...
December 13, 2017 at 05:27
I find the critics of the Cartesian approach pretty convincing. I'd like to know what you'd make of Heidegger's The Concept of Time. It's a short, ear...
December 12, 2017 at 21:45
Sure. It's my favorite theme lately. Given your post above, none of this will probably sound new to you. I'm largely inspired by Heidegger, though I l...
December 12, 2017 at 21:31
Perhaps you'll agree that his theism (or my rough portrait of an interpretation of it) is far from non-theoretical theism. For many, he might as well ...
December 12, 2017 at 21:21
This is a good issue. For the most part we are immersed in life. We don't have time for wonder. We desire or fear certain situations and work to attai...
December 12, 2017 at 21:06
Can we make the way a word functions in the world totally explicit? I don't think so. At best you can sharpen the meaning as much as possible for a pa...
December 12, 2017 at 20:44
Here's Hegel being something of a concept-monger. He sure doesn't like his Divinity vague and indeterminate. Sorry, Hegel. That's all you.
December 12, 2017 at 10:58
But that's more or less what I meant. The 'how' or the method or the approach is what we take for granted. As I read him, Hegel is criticizing a certa...
December 12, 2017 at 10:51
What I have in mind as an unacknowledged-by-some foundation is the know-how of everyday life. We understand an ordinary language (a meta-language for ...
December 12, 2017 at 10:35
Right. I think that's where certain authors are right about 'existential' time. It is directed and finite. Gold won't buy it back. And even the usual ...
December 12, 2017 at 10:07
Yeah. I think OLP and pragmatism exploded the 'ism' approach to philosophy for me. I see that there's an -ism on the end of pragma- there, but I read ...
December 12, 2017 at 08:48
Great sketch. All those thinkers are great, and those are strong paraphrases. You left off Heidegger, I note. For me the 'first wrong move' is 'wrong'...
December 12, 2017 at 07:47
Fallibilism? You're touching on a great issue here. Probably some could say the same of idealism. But if the realist and idealist live the same kind o...
December 12, 2017 at 07:21
As far as I know, no one hammered this idea home like Hegel. I'd be glad to be corrected. The path to truth is the truth itself. But the path (thinker...
December 12, 2017 at 07:07
Oh yes. I've read his bio. Even in my first philosophy book (Durant's Story) I think this was mentioned. I find it hard to choose. They both pay atten...
December 12, 2017 at 07:00
I know. It was a rhetorical question. The point is that scientism (as distinct from science) ignores all of this. It's all 'really' quarks, etc. This ...
December 12, 2017 at 06:55
That was an ugly, seemingly covetous moment for Schopenhauer. If memory serves, Schopenhauer more or less ignored the historical. From his 'mystic'-bi...
December 12, 2017 at 06:47
Right. The theoretical picture of nature reminds me of a grid that's loosely projected on an everyday experience of just being in the world with furni...
December 12, 2017 at 06:34
For what it's worth, I like this theism. I find it honest to speak of impressions and feelings. I also like the humility about the difficulty of expre...
December 12, 2017 at 06:24
This doesn't make sense to me, or not if facts are made of language. God is love. Is that a proposition? Is a metaphor a proposition? How is such a st...
December 12, 2017 at 02:09
You guys make me want to reread Brothers. I have a better memory of The Possessed and Crime and Punishment. Suffice it to say that Dostoevsky is a mas...
December 12, 2017 at 01:57
Yes, in that order. If I give scientism hell, it's only because I think people in fact experience one another in a non-theoretical sense that transcen...
December 12, 2017 at 01:44
In my experience, the young are more terrified of death. As we age, we start to understand its attractions. We go from terror to mixed feelings. I did...
December 12, 2017 at 01:35
I agree. My understanding of it includes getting behind all of this encrusted theoretical language. To the things (factic life, existence, being there...
December 12, 2017 at 01:00
When it comes to what we care about, no. In my opinion. It may be an exaggeration to get the point across. Accusations of anthropomorphism don't ring ...
December 12, 2017 at 00:02
I like Feyerabend. It's been awhile, but his Conquest of Abundance is pretty great. I hope I remember the title correctly. But I could also drag in Wh...
December 11, 2017 at 23:47
Consider the title of the book. No doubt Heidegger was more radically phenomenological. And lots of Hegel is still too metaphysical for my taste. But ...
December 11, 2017 at 23:41
That's a pretty good description. But we might also speak of attaining a kind of emotional equilibrium, of making peace with death or 'evil,' etc. Of ...
December 11, 2017 at 23:37
As I read it, he's talking about a certain kind of philosopher taking classic metaphysical terms for granted --as if they had fixed meanings that were...
December 11, 2017 at 23:24
Good point. It may be that a certain discourse functions well because it ignores its own foundations. What we might call scientism is something like a...
December 11, 2017 at 23:19
To be fair, some of Hegel's prose annoys the crap out of me. But he was sometimes quite clear and even eloquent, at least in translation. I find it ha...
December 11, 2017 at 23:14
Ah yes, and others. I like the idea of actually 'looking' at this flow every once in awhile to see if I'm not floating away on a pile of seductive abs...
December 11, 2017 at 23:11
That's pretty silly. Hegel is often as clear as Russell. And Russell could be a real dufus at times. Repeating negative gossip is lazy, man. Not that ...
December 11, 2017 at 23:08
On what merit? That they get things done? I agree. But that's a pragmatic foundation, a vague foundation, an 'irrational' or inexplicit foundation. I ...
December 11, 2017 at 23:01
I like this. I've been trying to say something similar from a phenomenological angle. Experience isn't so neatly conceptual and machine-like. 'Between...
December 11, 2017 at 22:51
Exactly. We lust for the right angle, for the fixed simplified situation. But this leads us to ignore what doesn't fit that tempting picture.
December 11, 2017 at 22:34
I think we basically agree here. I might phrase 'productive agreement' as a the friendly disagreement that wants to get something done together. But e...
December 11, 2017 at 22:32
Indeed. Well said. And this is naked for whomever just looks.
December 11, 2017 at 22:04
I don't know. Seems like total agreement has no need for creative compromise.
December 11, 2017 at 22:03
Who said it's about answering questions? Again, this assumes that philosophy is a kind of science. We can also think of philosophy as a questioning th...
December 11, 2017 at 22:01
As I read this, we evolve via self-consciousness. We discover ourselves as freedom. But this means we were potentially free all along.
December 11, 2017 at 21:18
I hear you. But do you yourself consider the first-person experience of heartbreak to be physical in the same way that an electron is physical? For me...
December 11, 2017 at 21:14
Well said. What may be usefully found in a philosophy text, though, is this kind of reminder about the limitations of any mere text.
December 11, 2017 at 21:02