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Gary M Washburn

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In: Death  — view comment
Well, even if we have a right to say pretty much whatever is on our mind, that doesn't mean we have a right to be understood as we believe we mean it....
September 12, 2021 at 23:39
In: Death  — view comment
I think you've answered my question. If so, there's no point. However... Every word we utter is inflected, every gesture or expression we share charac...
September 12, 2021 at 12:32
In: Death  — view comment
That's the wrong way to look at it. We can't really get each other right in life, but we can interact and respond to each other, and the real measure ...
September 11, 2021 at 22:51
In: Death  — view comment
What about the chance to know what the dead really meant? (in the case of others' deaths) Or what they really think of you. (in the case of your own)
September 10, 2021 at 12:13
In: Death  — view comment
Is it possible to recognize when consciousness is lost? Careful! It's a trick question. but there is an answer.
September 10, 2021 at 10:44
In: Death  — view comment
Whose? When is this if only recognition of the difference lost life, or new life, is is knowledge of what time most really is? Surely not consciousnes...
September 09, 2021 at 21:38
In: Death  — view comment
Think of Damocles before you get all Humean! Is it metaphysics to change position on that? What does "Get real!" mean? Death is the completest term of...
September 09, 2021 at 10:33
In the same dialogue, Socrates shows Gorgias how an idea is a differentiation made recognizable as a similarity with another differentiation. Medicine...
August 27, 2021 at 12:31
So why bring him up? I don't waste a lot of time on fiction, not even Sartre's. I've tried to write some, but I'm not at all happy with the results. I...
August 19, 2021 at 14:39
Some things really do just have to be left to personal discretion. How I spend my study time is one of them. Just answering your inquiry. No, Nabokov ...
August 18, 2021 at 22:28
Which is the more completed moment? When you suddenly realize what you thought to be a friend, even a lover, is a betrayer, or when the stranger you m...
August 18, 2021 at 21:43
So what? it's an argument that serves as long as all are in agreement, I suppose, but it aint much of a response to a different view. Maybe my views a...
August 18, 2021 at 21:25
Can't difference be shared? If the paradigms of reason just don't quite cut it, isn't difference more "primordial"? And if so, contrariety is more fou...
August 18, 2021 at 20:43
"unity" "concordance"! Listen to yourself! These are quantifiers! Worth is qualifying. Meaning is qualification. Language is its intimation. We resort...
August 18, 2021 at 19:38
Bit of crib, aint it? I mean, this simply elides the dependence between reason and experience. Pretending it all happens by some ineffable means, so l...
August 18, 2021 at 17:50
..., and the first great art form was spitting at our hands...
August 18, 2021 at 16:50
From where does logic receive its terms? Once it has them it can only manipulate them reductively. That is, by dividing what is said in them between '...
August 18, 2021 at 11:43
Not enduring is unendurable. Extension without change is a myth we create to make being bearable. To forfend loss. After all, or before after all, dea...
August 16, 2021 at 19:42
Time is not a dimension. It is the qualification of dimensionality. Not an extension, but a revaluation of the character of extension, or the characte...
August 16, 2021 at 18:48
I'm saying that Sartre produced rigorous philosophy, not just the impertinent fictions. I'll let you decide whether he agrees with Husserl or critique...
August 16, 2021 at 15:32
Try Sartre's two tracts on imagination. You cannot distinguish Husserl's intentional object from the intentional act, image from imagining. https://bo...
August 15, 2021 at 12:20
If there are limits to reason it is perfectly rational to acknowledge them. Some will use this as a pretext for abandoning rigor, and even endorsing i...
August 14, 2021 at 20:52
The renaissance was a reaction by ancients modes of thought to rebelliousness in the northern reaches of Europe against them. Latin forms embellished ...
August 13, 2021 at 12:14
Existentialism is what happens when systems of grasping reality and ordering our lives succumb to irresolvable aporia. Failing to grasp the crisis of ...
August 12, 2021 at 12:35
I suppose I shouldn't expect better. Heidegger, as he claims, was not an existentialist. He was a crypto-existentialist. And so his work is not a usef...
August 12, 2021 at 10:39
Discovering the stranger we more truly are to the means of our enduring life, and to the disciplined engagement of ideas through which we urge each ot...
July 18, 2021 at 21:54
The stranger. And not just the stranger you may think I am to your terms, or terms you take to be common enough to us all to be relied upon as a rough...
July 18, 2021 at 21:08
Exactly, but reason only works by division. There is no valid induction. And so, it is only by extending that division toward the moment it becomes im...
July 18, 2021 at 13:34
From this it could be inferred that you do not want me addressing you. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I'm prone to social malapropisms. Thing is, the whole ...
July 18, 2021 at 13:26
In Gorgias, Socrates explains how a predicate is a similarity in difference. Taking a predication to signify a sameness from which we can infer furthe...
July 18, 2021 at 13:15
Don't forget Egypt. Hindus, of course, believed in Karma, but the Egyptian concept of a soul living after death was closer to home for Athenians, and ...
July 18, 2021 at 13:03
Not so much by inquiry as by interrogation. I'm sorry if I peg anyone with views they do not really hold, but responses to my views often put me on th...
July 18, 2021 at 12:48
All of which is fraught with often hidden baggage. I'm afraid I do worry I might be up against something of the sort. But convention has it that holdi...
July 17, 2021 at 21:57
Autos (alpha, mu, tau, omicron, sigma) does indeed open the dialogue, but only to permit the list of persons present, and to note Plato's absence. Cla...
July 17, 2021 at 21:30
I'd like to make it helpful, but I'm afraid of what commitments you might have to convention that might interfere with the effort. What is a propositi...
July 17, 2021 at 21:19
Convincing, on the face of it. But seems to confuse two significations. Life, animus, can hardly be rigorously meant as the paradigm of spirit. Soul, ...
July 17, 2021 at 20:38
Yeah yeah yeah, sure. Socrates does indeed speak of something like "soul", but, for goodness sake, don't confuse this with the Christian era notion. W...
July 16, 2021 at 23:47
But what if participation is by departure? Harmony is inarticulate. it is a ping-pong game that goes on forever without anyone ever scoring. It is end...
July 16, 2021 at 19:41
Can't there be a harmony in dissonance? A symmetrical contrariety to the prevailing paradigm that erodes that paradigm, while erecting a replacement? ...
July 15, 2021 at 13:54
The intimation is a concept I use advisedly. I am very concerned it will be taken as some tawdry sentiment or spiritualism, I've even been accused of ...
July 14, 2021 at 23:31
Time is qualifier, space is extension, or quantifier. Moment, the worth or meaning of time, is complete, too complete to endure, or to be extension. T...
July 14, 2021 at 23:20
I'll take that as a compliment.
July 14, 2021 at 19:42
Without certitude which one is which, an issue which "philosophy" perversely ignores, the whole edifice of inference by dividing reality between premi...
July 14, 2021 at 14:19
Too broad a view and we are using Plato as a scene of personal exposition? Too close and we're cherry-picking? Here's a cherry: at the end of Lysis, d...
July 13, 2021 at 17:06
Do we need to crib on an issue so fundamental to understanding Plato? Dialectic is (friendly) wrestling with each others' convictions. Those convictio...
July 13, 2021 at 13:02
Might want to look at Charmides. But, I suppose, there the charm is the enticement to take the cure, which may not be so charming. The characters acce...
July 12, 2021 at 22:05
Plato couldn't face the event. We are told he was ill, but we can guess why, and if we cannot do so we shouldn't be speculating about his meaning. The...
July 12, 2021 at 13:33
Socrates is not trying to convince anyone of anything, except, I suppose, that his imminent death is no reason to freak out and abandon philosophy, or...
July 10, 2021 at 12:43
Socrates says philosophy is practicing death. Maybe I'm not quite that dedicated. If the final term of rational reduction is the ruin of its premise, ...
November 13, 2020 at 13:14
We seem to be leaving the topic, but you certainly deserve a response. It's weight hinges on some claim that truth is something we do or can aspire to...
November 12, 2020 at 13:59