Pneumenon

If you understand "abstraction," then you understand "big group of abstractions." That's all there is to it. Not sure what's so baffling about it. :-|

But Brassier said, He's not saying that internet philosophy must be held to a higher standard. He's saying that you literally cannot do philosophy out...

Ah, yes! I call this one the "profligacy argument." It's the nominalist argument that basically says, "Well, then there would have to be abstract enti...

It seems to me that a lot of discussion about abstraction gets caught up in semantic irrelevancies, where we draw weird distinctions between "real" an...

No verbal Judo here. More like verbal baseball bat to the cranium. :-O In all seriousness, it never ceases to amaze me that academics in the humanitie...

Generally speaking, is the quality of internet philosophy low? Yeah. But to say that it's impossible for anyone to do any serious philosophy on the in...

Well, here we go: Um... Anyway, let's say that I say "Bob" twice. In what sense were both actions "the same?"

I'm sorry, but if you want to be butthurt about Judith Butler, can you do so in a PM or something? I'm trying to have a conversation here. Whichever q...

I've tried really hard to be a nominalist for a long time. What I've found is that, if you're too quick to reach for Occam's Razor, you slit your own ...

I can't tell if you're making fun of yourself or everyone else. :/

The problem is that you are attempting to drive a wedge between classification and everything else that just doesn't work out. You say, Which is only ...

Okay, I give up. If you're going to take it as axiomatic that language or "classification" or whatever exists in a magical never-never land estranged ...

Having the energy. :)

I'm not trolling. It just seems as if pessimism is really convenient for people who want to do nothing, even if that's not always the motivation.

Are pessimists just lazy? Laying hold of things takes effort, but it's more fun than wallowing.

I think that "find a way to adapt to it" is a healthier outlook than "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

Spurious appeals to radical contingency and "quantum mechanics did it" don't stop the world from making sense. They also don't force reality to bend t...

Trying maintain reality while making everything humans say arbitrary is a losing proposition.

So, ah, at what point do social classifications become independent of reality? And how do we do this magic trick where we create a world that is compl...

You're not ignoring reality in favor of a personal fantasy world. You're ignoring reality in favor of a social fantasy world. Feelings, classification...

All cinnamon buns are giraffes. If you answer in the negative, it will hurt my feelings.

You are being silly. If you don't like a philosophical position, then it's acceptable to argue against it.

Perhaps pessimists are just lying to themselves? Secretly they're all happy and bursting with joy, and just refusing to admit it.

Well, that explains the huge number of upper-middle-class kids at liberal arts colleges who think that "You're not oppressed" is a refutation of an ar...

You have never met someone who had something bad happen to them, and was helped in their situation by being told to get over it? Another thing that he...

You might be surprised at how childish we adults can be.

Operative word in my second sentence: "might."

Well, yeah, if you're gonna deny free will, then there's no reason to think of anything as being self-inflicted. On the other hand, a "pull-yourself-t...

You sure, man? I mean, you've never met someone who wallows in their own bullshit to the point of hurting themselves far beyond the original stimulus?...

You know, you have a DUTY to fight for . If you don't do that, then you're complicit in OPPRESSION. I totally don't sound like George W. Bush with thi...

Hey, now. The under-representation of women in philosophy means that you have to take Judith Butler seriously. Accusing me of a non-sequitur here make...

Well, Dickinson's three little stanzas get a better reaction out of me than Heidegger's endless rambling about Being-Toward-Death, despite being about...

Aaah, who am I kidding? I'm secretly a white supremacist Nazi KKK Grand Imperial Wizard Patriarch Racist King of Oppression, and I HATE ALL FEMALE PHI...

I was feeling ornery.

I am open to the idea that bullshit artists can reform. Not my job to give them a second chance, though.

Don't you mean "Your trans-phenomenological intersubjective consensus-reality-impacting physical re-structuring of your standpoint has been critically...

If that's what you mean, then wouldn't your comment about logical positivism hanging on nothing apply to pretty much every philosophical position? Of ...

It does seem arbitrary, doesn't it? Sort of an immature air about it.

I actually have no idea what she looks like. But her philosophy is so vapid that I can't think of anything else to say about her. "Epicene" and "Crypt...

I'd get a lot of insults thrown at me about my appearance, too, if I looked like the Crypt Keeper.

The latter is evidence that, if there's not enough pain in a person's life, that person will typically invent some.

Given Butler's epicene appearance, "Fuck Judith Butler and everyone who looks like her" would seem to include a lot of men in the first place.

In my experience, really smart guys can have a lot of trouble with women. This is not always the case, but very often is. And it's not mere disdain in...

Interesting, especially because this would seem to imply that the difference between language and reality is "merely" linguistic. Does this instance o...

"Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" by Philippa Foot (Nope. Looked at some summaries and skimmed the actual paper. Not very exciting. L...

A text can attempt to sell itself as "just a description," but there is such a thing as describing things in a way that carries subtle value judgments...

I am not sure about the difference between "following a rule" and "using language in a peculiar way." It's like saying, "Adult language isn't more spe...

There is an element of machismo in the writings of some prominent pessimists. Read Schopenhauer's Councils and Maxims and the Wisdom of Life. Can he g...

I was being inflammatory. In all seriousness, Stoicism works for me, at least, because its ideal state (that of the sage) is more or less impossible, ...

It helps to think of Stoicism as existentialism, but for grownups.