mcdoodle

Anisotropy is a beautiful word. On the BBC, one commentator was explaining during a lull in the Masters' golf coverage how the powers-that-be at Augus...

Truth may be the result of evaluation, but back at logic, that would be quite different from validity. One can make a valid argument and end with up w...

Back at the opening theme...in fact tailor-made for you, Question... People often forget that Ludwig Wittgenstein was once one of the richest people i...

Here's their latest trick: they claim to have shown you're more productive if you work less hours. What kind of an example is that to set to the rest ...

Well, I was trying to understand what Simmel meant. I thought you were trying to contradict him without greatly caring what he meant. After all, he wr...

And yet even then the USA road fatality rate is more than three times worse than the UK. Or Sweden, which always wins in social democratic contests :)...

Yep, meaning is use :)

This summarises what seems to be Simmel's argument well: valuation is a naturally-occurring phenomenon. And yet our talk about it seems transcendent. ...

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I'm definitely seeking after wisdom, of which 'the truth' may or may not form an important part. On the Uni course I'm currently on I attended a lectu...

Andrew, I was only the other day thinking the very same. Of course the notion has been taken up by logicians, who would require any given world to be ...

I was talking to you, Ernest. I have read some of your website, and the breadth of your reading is amazing, but I am well-versed in this corner of lea...

Some of us are socialists, and are likely to take umbrage at this. We have been lumbered with accusations about 'Marxism' all our lives. Well, we sold...

Pardon me butting in - I like the 'genres'. I'm interested in taking from Bakhtin the notion of speech genres and applying them in the philosophy of l...

Thanks for amplifying what you mean. My memory of Sartre is that he isn't as minimalist as this, but the core is, I suppose, as you say it. My memory ...

Well, I shall doodle. My lifetime is the age in which individualism has become enshrined in various 'universal human rights', so I can't say I feel fi...

Just remind me where Sartre says something like this, would you?

There is an organisation called 'Muslims for Progressive Values: http://www.mpvusa.org. They make very clear statements against child marriage, fgm an...

I don't think our knowledge of Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture, for instance, bears this out. In Greece, in quite a short period the favour...

There seem to be some humans following the same line of 'modal collapse'. Here's a paper by a guy called Kraay arguing that theists should embrace mod...

You're assuming he didn't later do a spectacular fly-past.

My understanding would be that there is an assumed ground for understanding the history of thought beyond the rules of logic and grammar and beneath c...

You write about presuppositions and here to my mind is one of yours. These three rules are about formal language. They aren't about ordinary language....

I've been a professional writer most of my working life and pride myself on my clarity. Nevertheless I think there's something to be said for Barthes'...

I suppose all work about the facts of other people's lives is exploitative, but this one does look, well, exploitative, in the context of an artist wh...

One old definition would be the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. While there are a zillion interpretations ...

Educated feelings are as good a guide to right action as any other. Reasoning is always built on premises: where are the premises for moral action to ...

One difficulty for this line of argument is that from 1930 to 1970, say, some of which were the days of my youth, it was in atheist countries where by...

It's a thing of beauty. I ate of the fruit.

Well I am hoping to read some Bouveresse anyway, about language, though not in the near future as I have a reading list a mile long. What people have ...

Yes, I'm against that too. You keep asking rhetorical questions as if they were somehow responses to what I write. I'm very happy to have a debate, bu...

I don't understand what you're saying here. Most Muslims are moderate people, just like the rest of us. Perhaps you mean that there aren't prominent M...

Muslims make up a little under 15% of prisoners overall. Most of them are in jail for ordinary crimes. It's a puzzle, but it seems more likely to be c...

The Janus principle. I'm reading about 'mood' which I'm writing about. Oddly enough this very issue comes up there; I suppose it comes up everywhere s...

To recap. I'm against vague blanket criticism of some body of work called 'postmodernism'. I've stood up for Foucault and partly justified that by rem...

Like lots of these questions, to me certainty depends on who wants to know and why. In that sense, propositional certainty just has degrees. Are you c...

The Stanford entry on neutral monism suggests that, rather, his was double-aspect monism, and that's how I understand it. (Stanford entry)

You juxtaposed this to my remark that analytic philosophy is largely blind to the workings of power. I'm not clear what point you're making. Philosoph...

I think the Wittgenstein answer would start here. Is to say that 'everyone is bad at philosophy' meaningful? How is it meaningful? To what or whom are...

I'm glad the conversation has shifted to an actual writer. What you say, jkop, sounds quite like what a lot of students and teachers of analytic philo...

Someone should send for Banno and ask him to argue for Davidson's view: Here is Davidson's paper: On the very idea of a conceptual scheme. His argumen...

Thanks un that's a thought-provoking piece. I've said I'm on a uni course. Last year I proposed an essay based on some wacky ideas about language. My ...

Well, that was 20 years ago, and quite a lot of ink has been spilt over it. Of course the Sokal hoax was brilliant. Still, I thought there was nothing...

My point is that the op and others also have such access. In a philosophy forum I would like to see specific remarks quoted and debated. That's the in...

But my earlier point is, people are often saying this sort of thing, but not citing the apparent purveyors of it. Who are these postmodern 'thinkers'?...

This is quite a common view on this and the old pf forum. An odd thing is, the assertion is rarely backed up by an actual quote from an actual post-mo...

Like jkop I feel there's nothing to doubt about my personal experience. It happens...it happened. As soon as it's in the past some doubt can reasonabl...

I know you're interested in this interpretation of final cause, and I'm interested in different ways of understand the four aitia or causes, but I can...

I know this is a bit of a side road, but...I don't recognize Aristotle in this. The contemplation of the one comes later, surely, with Plotinus. Arist...

The claims of philosophy of language, which I think needs a complete revamp.