Streetlight

Something like this is probably the most useful way to grasp the concept of randomness: as 'equiprobability', or the equality of probable outcomes. Co...

There is currently a debate happening in the forum about penguin suicide. That is all.

But surely such 'active pessimism' would simply no longer be pessimism any more? Wouldn't 'active pessimism' simply be.... optimism? One of my favorit...

That's the price we pay for civility around here.

You can call our vulgarity without yourself being vulgar. Watch this: Augstino, I find your rhetoric vulgar. Ta da.

This. For all your 'conservatism' your rhetoric tends to be shot through and through with sheer vulgarity ("You'll marry some slut who fucks left and ...

Haha, fair enough. Sometimes I get carried away and forget to parse things down to make 'em more digestible. Its hard in this case too because the ide...

Like this?: ? ?? Again, almost everything that can be represented in a higher-dimensional language can be presented in a lower-dimensional one in a si...

This is generally the case, but it's important I think to remember the power of writing to participate in these kinds of variables. Think here of say,...

Cheers - I've actually come across that book a couple of times but haven't yet gone out of my way to pick it up. I've got a list as long as my arm of ...

You're all positively barbearic.

I would suggest we do have something like this already too, except this higher-order dimensionality resides in nothing less than human behaviour itsel...

Not necessarily. The unimaginable power of language comes precisely from it's reduction of dimensionality: being able to compress so much information ...

But we can already employ language in higher dimensions than two. Consider: Sky -- Earth Here, the spatial distribution of the words conveys informati...

http://i65.tinypic.com/f44848.jpg Happy New Year from down under, kids!

Either Plato... or Deleuze. Plato it is.

Ya, Arendt is fucking awesome (voted!). This list is a rather sad, barebones one though, missing some pretty much all of my favorites - Alicia Juarrer...

It's between Kant and Nietzsche, but I went with Nietzsche because he's a bigger influence on me, and far more fun to read than Kant!

Denise Riley, but she isn't here :(

Dunno about *best*, but my favourite modern trio would be Alva Noe, Andy Clark, and Evan Thompson. Only Clarky is there so he gets my vote. Henri Berg...

I post truth all the time!

I don't really talk about philosophy outside of the circles of those who are familiar with it already, unless people ask. It's just kind of hard to, b...

As per usual, here's the 2016 list: Deleuze reading: Gilles Deleuze - What Is Philosophy? Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition* (reread) Gilles ...

Only have time for a quick schematic reply but the singular <> the particular. It's not nominalism. The singular exemplifies a universality: the parti...

Yes, but then, I'm elaborating in 'enemy territory' as it were, and if I could give up the use of generality altogether, I would. In any case what I'm...

Sure. For an excellent discussion of generality and particularity, check out the Introduction to Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. For a discussion...

Not at all - generality is opposed to particularity, and not singularity; the particular is what is replaceable, interchangeable, amenable to generali...

I deleted it. Feedback threads are fine but that was four pages of pure infantilism. I'll soon get rid of this one too, if it remains that way.

I don't quite understand the perplexity here: the Earth has certain zones of climate, formed over the course of millions (billions?) of years of geoge...

What do you mean? Snowflakes dont preexist the processes by which they come into being - if there happen to be a bunch of dust particles floating arou...

Probably one of the best ways to think about it is in terms of morphogenesis (the genesis of form). Does a soap bubble look like a soap bubble because...

I don't know about physicalism, but Gilles Deleuze once remarked that the first principle of any empiricism ought to be that universals do not explain...

Hmm, the videos were fine, but I was surprised that you didn't really go into the scholastic context in which these terms were defined: i.e. univocity...

Kripke more or less uses the word 'essence' as a synonym for necessity (or rather necessity as a synonym for essence), and to the degree that he does ...

In modal logic? You mean the thing Kripke invented? Yes I can see how his usage would be soooo outside of the standard usage of modal logic.

Nah, p. sure 'standard sense' = 'terrapin sense', but that's no sense at all! And anytime someone says Kripke is dealing with essences, you can be 100...

That's... really not it but OK.

Standard sense? Author and publishing date pls.

Truth, dude, truth. The whole payoff of the theory has to do with truth.

So... If the law of identity didn't obtain, the concept of the rigid designator wouldn't be useful... as a signpost that the law of identity obtains? ...

Necessity qualifies truth. This is rigid designation 101 dude, if this confuses you maybe you need to read the book again?

I still don't understand your conditional: "if the law of identity didn't obtain the RD wouldn't be useful"... But useful for what? What (as-yet-unspo...

Dude, I intervened to try and clean up some misconceptions in the thread, I legit don't care about your dinner table opinions like 'I dont get it'.

Ah, yes, I remember that time I presented the 'I can't wrap my head around it' argument, coupled with the irrefutable 'it struck me as untenable' coro...

Good for you?

Hmm, I'd say the theory is 'existent-neutral' though: it applies to Pegasus no less than it applies to the Eiffel Tower. But perhaps I'm using the wor...

Here you go: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/#BasChaRigDesTheInt

To clarify, necessity here qualifies truth - it is necessarily true that this is Earth - by virtue of it being called that. I'm not sure what it means...

Ah. Yeah, I think that follows. Insofar as we both recognize that we're talking about the Earth, even through we've been wrong about what it is this e...

I'm not sure about the relevance of this question - what does this have to do with rigid designation or naming? (honest question, I really don't under...