Why the "similarly enough"? Why did the universe or human history need someone Coltrane-ish? Why did it need jazz at all? What on earth can anyone do ...
For the record, no, not at all. Just realistic. I tell my son, who's further left than I am, though perennially at war online with the tankies, that a...
Sure, my simplistic history was *not* talking about the modern nation-state, which comes after and out of feudalism, but central authority. "State" th...
One thing I've been thinking about as this thread rolled along is that I don't feel any desire to be a "real man" as that phrase is used today, but I'...
Sure, but here's the thing. The simplest history of power seems to go like this: first comes patriarchy, then the state, then capital. We have some re...
All of that's true -- I also thought of the example of Henry Louis Gates who, even before he was arrested for trying to enter his own house, lived eve...
It's true, you are a tanky! For the sake of argument, someone might hold the view that the two sorts of oppression are related, and for evidence would...
There's something David Foster Wallace said about the appeal of fiction, and it's kinda heartbreaking since he ended up taking his own life: because w...
Well in this thread, yeah, and I feel bad about that. Which is fine by me. It's just hard to engage with you because every argument you present quickl...
I make a point about the form of the argument. Ansel Adams had a young photographer friend, and once a year they'd get together to talk (and maybe dri...
Philosophy's a big tent, so it gives the impression of open-mindedness. But it's a fact that the practice of philosophy does not much resemble the pra...
I could answer but I've already gone way over the line discussing the posting styles of members here. I allowed myself to start this thread for the wi...
My third time posting this! Enjoy. I won't say that institutional science doesn't have its shortcomings and its blindspots, but that's just the nature...
This is a thing. I could hunt up the name of the author -- believe I heard her interviewed on Intelligence Squared. Anyway, she wrote a book about par...
I agree with all of that, but would like an approach that doesn't require switching hats. Maybe that's a mistake, and being self-consciously multidisc...
It's a requirement for me that the approach I end up with is science-friendly. Narrative and metaphor have some traction, because you can do actual re...
In for a penny, in for a pound... A: We should take the car. B: Train. A: Why should we take the train? B: Trains have been carrying passengers travel...
It was an arbitrary choice. Good reasons: it is a position with no known current adherents; it is widely known to have no known current adherents; it ...
Thank you both for at least understanding what the hell I was talking about. (And you too, @"180 Proof" -- I saw that, but I'm trying to be polite for...
I'll address this. Let's say I believe we ought never to have given up belief in and worship of the Greek gods. That's my position. I believe, and I w...
I agree with a whole lot of that. But there is some tension here I don't think I've mentioned before, which makes it particularly odd in the cases tha...
Still no. First quote was me offering a couple of riffs on Clarky's response, drawing out ways of reading his response or extending it, not expressing...
Honestly, probably not. Okay as a theory of communication or of social interaction -- I mean, still preposterously reductionist! -- but not an account...
Thought I'd address the actual topic for a moment. But also apparently materialism, all of which just amounts to this: But I'm a little confused why h...
Cool. I don't anything about that stuff. Honestly, I'm probably over-fitting by suggesting it was even a communication-related selection. I've often f...
For a quick illustration. Grice tells the story of a guy that some college at Oxford wanted to offer a fellowship, but he had a dog, and the rules for...
One thing that's really tricky about the question of realism in language is that it's not just a question of theory; even if our best theory says that...
Another way I've looked at that is that we use language in place of the grunts and calls and mating dances and dominance rituals and grooming and all ...
But (1) language production and consumption is interaction with the world, social interaction, and (2) one of the things I wanted to get at -- and in ...
That was the idea, yes, but I'm not sure it excludes what we want out of realism. This is precisely a question about the cognitive capacities and beha...
Just realized there's another way to put this: just as DNA is in some sense instructions for physical growth, I'm using "framework" to mean something ...
Yeah, but it's not only other inmates of the zoo that matter, not by a long shot, especially if it's more like your that matters most. It's someone wh...
That's fair -- it was kind of a placeholder. I started to type out my old answer, but on second thought I'll say this: your framework is a description...
Because you've never been clear on the difference between analytic philosophy and ordinary language philosophy. We don't need to go into it here. But ...
Couple things: that's a question, not a proposal; also, it's hard to know what the proposal implied would amount to, since you follow Davidson in clai...
That's two votes for better understanding through history, which it's hard to argue with. I've often wished math and science were taught with more of ...
Sure, I mean, the history of ideas is really interesting. Love that stuff. My question was not whether it's worthwhile in general, but how does talk a...
"But -- but -- isn't it true that there are true statements?!" It can be hard to convince yourself -- hard even to see the possibility -- that the ans...
I can be more specific, at least, and we'll see whether it's any clearer. This is the end of what I quoted: That's quite a dichotomy there, but the in...
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