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I bow in gratitude. Indeed, we are self-replicating machines for converting disaster into opportunity and necessity into contingency. Thus spake the s...

He gave Wagner hell for what they had in common perhaps, for being an actor, a drama queen. I recall Socrates asking the poets where they got their st...

:up: I think (?) that the rushing by of time as we age is because the vast machinery of a personality has long been assembled and is now settled and h...

Your post is helping me work this out. The earliest lecture/draft of Being and Time has everyday or inauthentic running like a rat in the wheel of a c...

Let's think game theoretically. If a nation forgoes some advantage in the name of goodness and decency (if it hobbles its economy and outlaws fossil f...

Is it more like the acceptance of death is precisely that liberation from dread? Perhaps dread is a terrified resistance to the endless rush forward o...

This is possibly (?) the freedom or self-becoming Heidegger and Derrida had in mind. If I stop desperately trying to identify with something lasting a...

You may be dealing with a compulsive thought that will not be fixed with a rational argument. Solipsism looks 'existentially' like a denial of the rea...

If you are making something like a psychological point, then maybe I agree. One does not reason madness. In the case of this thread, my hypothesis is ...

"I am certain that I cannot be certain."

Thanks. In case you missed this one: what crystal castles we construct when first we see that we are fucked

Yes, and of course it is self-praised. Voices float to the top, predictably, which praise themselves and their listeners. Have you heard of the concep...

I agree and would interpret this in terms of something like a 'hero program' which I take to be fundamental. We are programed to put on a costume and ...

To me the pleasurepain loop is undecidable. I might tell the demon 'yes.' Beauty and horror and terror. Cacophony of voices. The best lick all convict...

Of course. Hence the joke (?) about getting that carbon out. We are replicators who somehow woke up within the Darwinian nightmare orgy and saw this a...

I'm a fan of Zapffe. Do you like Leopardi ? Discovered him recently. I respect the courage of pessimism. It looks at the world as at a painting that p...

Yes. It's all too easy to cheat and make excuses. Old fashioned virtues like honesty and courage have no small place here. We've got to be willing to ...

I don't think we ever know exactly what we mean, which means I don't know exactly what I mean when I say that. But if I keep trading strings of words ...

:up: Good point. Philosophy seems to me like exactly that kind of self-referential insanity, the cat trying to catch its tail. It seems to me that we ...

Otto Rank has a theory about the artist being a certain kind of neurotic, who has escaped or rather tamed the terror of life by a certain kind of exte...

Don't underestimate the permanent revolution in the means of production. Wild imaginations and daring egoism can pay off hugely in certain sectors of ...

I've been thinking about a similar issue. Is the fear of death an evolved irrationality ? At first I thought so. One might think that lacking such a f...

There's also the strange case of the talking class and the 'knowledge industrial complex.' Professors do what they can to train the unruly children wh...

Perhaps this thread is about the vanishing core of heroism, its unnamable kernel. The goal is self-esteem, which seems related to a can-do courage to ...

This is good sketch of why we do or don't give a damn about such issues. It reminds me of Heidegger. Life is not primarily theoretical. Our 'understan...

One way to approach it is as a generalization of virtue. Do you go off to join the revolution or stay home to be with your dying mother ? Perhaps eith...

Could you say more ? I've always had trouble (ain't it ironic?) feeling understood on this issue. It'd be great to wring out some solidarity.

Of course I disagree. When entertained as a philosophical thesis, subject to rational norms, it's absurd. What is the minimal concept (in an epistemol...

But it does 'touch' the world. That's what retinas and eardrums are for. Photons from distance stars are even part of it. Also, how and why did it eve...

:up:

That last part really illustrates the creepiness of solipsism. I take credit for everyone's lines. Soul snatching at its finest.

Me too. Existentialism done right. Desolation Angels is one of my favorite works. Sort of the same idea. Me too. Last one I read was Bleak House. Powe...

Why is it not the hard problems of consciousnesses ? If consciousness is radically distinct from its other and radically private (known only by itself...

That made me laugh. If I recall correctly, Mencken laughed at his typewriter, cigar in his mouth, and Joyce annoyed his wife by laughing at his work o...

Wow. I hope you're just sleepy. You speak of 'careful reading,' but here's a reminder of our conversation. I quoted 'Self Reliance' by Emerson and the...

:up: On the other side of the ledger, there's no one to compare yourself to. (I suspect that art generated by bots is going to mess with artistic iden...

I can't be sure what you mean, but I was once tempted to say that there is only presence. But in the context (Derrida), I was missing the point. It ca...

To me it's not bad or wrong to leap from stone to stone. The point for me is to grasp something about the nature of meaning. I won't say it's only str...

That sounds (maybe) like the space of reasons.

No, I reject Cartesianism. Wishes and neutrons and commitments and toothaches are all in the same lifeworld, on the same 'plane.' There is not really ...

Excellent selection. You must like Cormac too. Blood Meridian is something else, Deadwood's unfilmable cousin. It was great to see Bullock grow into h...

Same here. In case it's helpful, I don't personally think philosophy is very much like math. I agree with Lakoff and others that humans think and ther...

To be clear, I am not saying that communication is impossible. That would be self-cancelling. I am saying that a certain tempting conception of how th...

I'm referring to Heidegger's notion of chatter. Our 'given' is the sediment of decisions made before our arrival. This layer of 'interpretedness' is w...

You made me laugh. I really don't know. I might have a cute grimy little novel in me, along the lines of Nausea. But it'd be a fun, nasty little book....

I don't know. I might be stupid enough to say yes. Saying no means no more girls' eyes.

Of course. But these cautionary platitudes are only appropriate if your hearers are consciously taking an artistic risk. Are these cautionary platitud...

We of course don't need to take our hemlock and follow Socrates. And most don't. What kind of fool aspires to philosophical greatness ? Probably every...

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to imply otherwise. I'm just using vivid language to draw out the situation. What is the correct attitude ? To read ...

These are good points. The more you think about, the more it falls apart. And who is this 'you' who 'got' the language in the first place ? The self t...