The Great Whatever

So the solution is to beg entry from the dumb people who run dumb institutions, in hope of being part of them? Something does not add up here. And I a...

So why is the solution, on behalf of people afraid they will not exist if people the same color as them are not awarded statuettes, to stop caring abo...

Hunger/starvation. And it doesn't matter whether you have sufficient nutrients, any more than it matters that you have sufficient heroin. Without it y...

But the Oscars don't matter. They have no artistic importance, anyway.

I think modern 'liberal' politics has taken this on as an explicit belief, that representations of things somehow precede their existence: thus we nee...

Everyone is suffering from a psychological problem: it's called being alive. You are literally moving toward excruciating pain / starvation at every s...

??? You end up unfulfilled and grouchy no matter what you do. All this New Age stuff that jokers like the Dalai Lama are feeding you are deluding you ...

An epistemology not governed by the metaphor of 'access' would be nice.

Because the Dalai Lama is an astrologist / snake oil selling theocrat. No one is happy. Obviously you're not, unless you're just not paying attention ...

The Dalai Lama. Beware of jokers, con men, and bastards. You're not going to be happy. But there's no 'more important' thing either. Stop being a chil...

But humans are like natural disasters. You can't control what they do, and killing them doesn't bring back your loved one any more than trying to kick...

Pain and confusion, attempting to instill a moral order on the universe. Ultimately like most conventions it's rooted in self-hatred.

Maybe. I think the Academy was already concerned with technical issues of no general interest.

The professionalization of philosophy began with Plato, not in the 19th century.

In many possible worlds frameworks, truth simpliciter is defined as truth with respect to a privileged world, sometimes designated w@, that is, the ac...

I'm so glad the interesting paper got chosen over all that other boring crap! Quine, oh boy~ /s

"We gain access to the structure of reality"... Someone take Old Yeller to the back and shoot him, for Christ's sake...

I've come to think, as I got more seriously into philosophy, that this is just true of continental philosophy generally, but it doesn't always manifes...

One of my deep displeasures in studying philosophy has been people dumber than Berkeley acting like Berkeley's too dumb for them to bother with. I don...

I just want to reiterate that, the issue is not really a subtilization of the argument insofar as, to the extent that Brassier addresses it all in the...

The "Throwing like a girl" one sounds interesting. I used to have a hill I would go out to and read, and a phenomenon I noticed is that, for some biza...

I think that's fair. There is nothing inherently good about genius, and many geniuses are people who I wouldn't have wanted to be, or even be around. ...

Effort by itself is worthless, and if you don't have that spark to seek out the right kind of effort, it won't matter how much time you spend. People ...

I see genius as specifically human powers not reducible to, or explicable solely or primarily in terms of, the milieu in which a person exists. For th...

It's in a dialogue between Aristippus and Socrates constructed by Xenophon, in the Memorabilia of Socrates, the second section.

No, it means 'alien' in the sense of 'foreigner.' In context he's literally talking about being physically itinerant and refusing to be a citizen in a...

That quote is about political identity.

Cosmopolitanism was espoused by Diogenes of Sinope: I am a citizen of the world. Its inversion was espoused by Aristippus of Cyrene: I am an alien eve...

No, most committed suicide. Those that didn't endured a hollow living death.

They already had everything they wanted so they didn't invent or do much of anything.

There already isn't any joy. That was all made up by poets who couldn't get laid.

Because then there would be no more suffering.

It's not depressing, it's happy. And my avatar is from the cover of the Jethro Tull album, A Passion Play.

Getting in touch with your true self? If you're into that.

Your being a shit person might have something to do with it.

Rarely does the veil come off for people to speak with this kind of honesty, I guess. Remember that these sentences ^ are what underlie every 'philoso...

That'll show 'em how above this conversation you are...

But what you think doesn't have to be so, if by 'think' you mean 'have the opinion that...' Certainly I can think 'this is great!' at my pain, but by ...

But this fascination is itself extrinsic, since it is possible for that fascination to disappear. Thus, it is only fascination 'insofar as...' whereas...

The condition might be anything you like. For example, you might be compelled by metaphysical hypotheses about the basic structure of the world becaus...

No, they don't. They find them interesting insofar as... Remove the condition following, and they lose their interest. Their interest is, in other wor...

Because that's what matters. You can of course say philosophy is anything you like, but you have to make it something in order for it to have any subs...

Oh, brother. As if there's a class of people out there preserving philosophy in its pure form, free from psychologization and instrumental ends, and d...

Yeah, because you've got so much to say about that, I'm sure. I can't wait to listen to your wisdom on these topics. (This is sarcasm; I believe you h...

To use a technical term, it's a Stirnerian 'spook.' To believe that one has 'political agency' is implicitly to buy into the political framework in wh...

Well, you have it a little backwards. It's not that everything is natural, but that everything is artificial. Read your Gnostics! Teleology is just pu...

The models we get from the ancient philosophers are people who, just by living, outraged and inspired people. Many were killed by the state, exiled fr...

Having met and discussed philosophy with a number of philosophy professors, that has not been my experience of them. Some of them come off as arrogant...

I've never had much of an eye or head for architecture, but brutalist buildings have always struck me as beautiful. I especially like when weather sta...

What is uninteresting depends on your taste. So statements to that effect are arbitrary and no better than statements to the contrary. A funny thing i...