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I can relate to that. I also have lots of influences, and I couldn't point to just one. Also, I don't agree with everything Rorty or everything anybod...

OK, that's why I mentioned intentionality earlier. If we tell a kid to go get a screwdriver and he brings the screwdriver back, does that work? We can...

What about when a dog pees where other dogs have peed? We can say that they are indicating their presence, maybe other things. But all we see is that ...

Ah. For me the issue is maybe this referral. Do you mean that one thing represents another, or points to it in some sense?

Is there someone you can refer me to that's closer to your approach? Just to see it in another vocabulary? Or are you working on something fresh?

I guess I don't see a clean break where language begins. If animals coordinate their behavior with noises and scents, that's a kind of language. What ...

I'm tempted to think of organisms reacting to stimuli. One can be https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/ So we have non-human animals doing as they...

Thank you for the excellent reply. We're not so far apart after all. I think you are referring to quantum woo, which I also dislike. I studied some QM...

I think this nails it, and I agree. Heidegger is a constipated priest. No golden laughter there, instead a heavy mystic gloom, a sort of concentrated ...

I've been bringing up consciousness and mentalistic language in order to avoid it and take some distance from it. But it's hard to strip it entirely f...

Yes, I hear you. This touches on intentionality. What interest me is that this is one more beetle in the box. People might say that AI can't have it, ...

Wow, we are misunderstanding each other. I've been contorting myself to get away from 'consciousness' and 'the unnecessary multiplication of entities....

Right. And we can think of physics time as deworlded time. I think we can also drag in Sellars. The 'manifest image' is like the holistic network of e...

I think the bot-stuff is connected to bedrock beliefs. We enact our expectations of being intelligible as we engage in various linguistic conventions....

I think our views are pretty close. If I'm being eccentric, it's in good faith. I really was just trying to get clear on what you meant. I think I may...

To me it's just like it is with Heidegger. I can find passages or lectures that speak to me. But then there are long passages that remain obscure, or ...

OK, he was a creep. But do I also have to pretend that all of Woody Allen's movies suck? That Louise CK was never funny? Where does it end? Why not al...

Indeed, and we just echo the 'problem' of the 'scandal' like bots. Or (as I am doing now) the scandal of the scandal. But Hegel saw that we had to be ...

Thanks! Yeah, that's what I was going for. Being a bot about being a bot...

I think you are missing the joke.

Yeah. The way I read it is that he was an applied philosopher. We just don't like the way he did it. His world-historical fantasy of himself is pathet...

I just suggested installing one... And I know that you're not really a bot, so no offense intended.

I think the bot metaphor genuinely fits in here. Chatter is the swamp of hazy everyday intelligibility from which we emerge. Everybody knows that Hied...

But that's what an anti-Heidegger bot would say....

How might you address the attack on the myth of the given? Here's what it 'is' and a link to more detail. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/ ...

I was just trying to figure out how you were using 'expectation,' I guess. If we are ignoring the cat's consciousness, then what is given is just a re...

Well arguably philosophy is just too complex for perfect transmission. It's as complex as life itself. Philosophers partially convince one another all...

Of course my more sincere view is that science is more than technology. But to simply say that it studies reality is not very illuminating. Why doesn'...

That's not unlike rejecting art because artists vary or all of religion because religions vary. It equates progress with consensus. Do scientists agre...

One way I can approach this (which is maybe Braver's way) is to think of being as reality. Philosophers obsess over what is real. What do they mean? S...

Thank you for the charming response. You make me want to study Spinoza closely. I mostly just know what Durant writes about him in Story. Durant adore...

It's a good point. I think Heidegger is insightful on our current situation. It sucks that he acted on his insights then the way that he did, but we c...

I love this. Thanks!

Right, and I'm in interested in 'false necessity,' what we learn as children to take for granted, as if the nature of things and not some invention th...

This is a deep issue, which is maybe two issues. On the mirror issue, I have coded some neural nets and I really personally don't see them becoming da...

If you mean the meaning of life, then I think I agree. To me there's enough 'enlightenment' in just getting back in that state of immersed play. The c...

Of course! You are too valuable a conversational partner to abandon. I like the way you frame this. I'm no expert on the conflict, but I think of Hege...

No, I'm not claiming that at all. In ordinary terms it's the cat displaying its expectation, absolutely. So maybe it's a trivial point --- but one mor...

That's music to my ears. We 'bind time.' We are cumulative beings, increasing in complexity. Indeed. Or I like when I can get into a mode of praising ...

You are quite welcome! I'm thinking you know though that I chose that infamous gem precisely as an easy target in order to rescue it somewhat. FWIW, I...

I'll just make one last comment. In The Possibility of an Island, we get to see the 'neo-humans' who drink sunlight through their green skin. Yes, it'...

Indeed, I am even tempted to speak of the primacy of the political and the embedded-ness of any philosophy within a contentious history. Right! And be...

Yanked out of context like that, the passage is far from conclusive. Surely I am reading into it also. But if the beetle in the box plays no role, the...

I agree that tech won't save us. If something can save us, I (also) think it will be spiritual in the philosophical-artistic sense, which will manifes...

Yeah. I studied the clash of 'sec' and 'sarl' (Derrida and Searle) closely in Limited Inc. Even at the top level there's the same kind of nasty and im...

I haven't studied Anaxmander or Chomksy closely, but the others have been important to me.

As I grow older I become more aware of how much I do care about the human future. I think we all do, and that to be intellectual is even to implicitly...

Thanks! Indeed, that's just how I hopped from poet to poet, novelist to novelist. Someone wins your trust. It could be a friend, or it could be a phil...

Yeah I like that. I haven't always lived up to it, but yes. And we can question the notion of expertise beyond its vague relative use. I've read passi...

Here's an infamous line, yanked out of context, that I'd like to re-contextualize. A thinking is 'strong' if it questions the very framework ('vocabul...