Deleteduserrc

Wasn't the point about visualizing abstract triangles that you'd have to visualize a particular triangle (with certan angles etc) ?

That's fair. a "thick" present feels in line with my feelings about this theme. I wonder though, if the present reaches a sufficient 'thickness' is 'p...

It's like music. The past is there as past, the future as future, the present as present. Both presentism and eternalism are fixated on the present. P...

If anything, things happen within rhythms, (which are nestled within bigger rhythms, which are nestled within bigger rhythms) - you have to understand...

so eternalism is straight up very bad at dealing with lived experience (which is a real thing, because you're doing it right now.) Presentism is dumb ...

Agreed

I don't have a horse in the presentism/eternalism race (I think they're both so stupid!) but I guess the obvious rejoinder would be that his decision ...

I'll provide a full response soon, but wanna note now that Mctaggart (from whom all this a series b series stuff derives) made it very clear that if t...

What do you mean by 'presence'?

@"noAxioms" Another way to look at this: I can say something like 'dodos once existed, but they don't any longer' 'But,' you would say, 'from a block-...

Right, and furthermore, any felicitous use of 'exist' will involve it being tensed in accordance to a reference point (a 'now'). From the reference po...

I agree with the criticism of the OP's letter, but do we agree with the spirit of the OP? Which I think is something like: 'To exist is to exist at a ...

I've always thought most of Hegel's pretty obvious once you get used to his prose. surprised to see him on your list - what seemed new to you? I think...

Have you ever encountered a thought or theory that didnt seem either stupid or else trite and obvious?

Ok, it may be envy, but It's just very surreal how many hard-won concepts are transparently obvious to you. Godel's theorems, Heisenbergian uncertaint...

Funnily enough, I read GEB in high school too (tho I was 17.) I liked it but I thought it was hard at that time. I guess I'm confused though, you said...

Trying to parse this. You were taught 'Godel's theories' at 15 in formal education setting? (what else would it mean to be 'granted' an 'good educatio...

tl:dr finite doesn't have to mean false & authentic doesn't have to mean infinite.

(forewarning: this is a rambly post) Yes, agreed. I've always struggled to understand the ethical import of the fact that we carve personas. Like, is ...

I think your diagnosis is exactly right, but that doesn't mean there's nothing of value in Marx (or Feuerbach, though I don't know with him. I never r...

Incidentally, I asked for The Essence of Christianity as a fuck-you-I'm-an-atheist xmas present in high school and my dad wrote on the inside front co...

I may have misframed you, but not quite as an angry young man (they talk more Schopenhauer, Zapffe & Cioran). You reminded me a bit of another poster ...

I like -and can relate to - a lot of what you've said but two quick things (1)It seems like 'dreaming of a better world' and 'dreaming of being the fo...

Don't forget how much the futurists (and other avant-gardists) loved italian fascism! Items 7-9 of the futurist manifesto:

Thanks for that breakdown, that makes a lot of sense. I suspected something like that, but you've spelled it out nicely. (re: the continental/analytic...

I'll check it out. I think I'm undergoing something like that kind of conversion myself right now, through Sellars. I've realized I've wasted a lot of...

I'm not familiar with either the literature on counterfactuals or Lewis, but I've heard the whispers, and isn't Lewis like the ne plus ultra of commit...

I want to be clear that I, personally, have very little knowledge of fascist-era Italy, but, according to Paxton, the answer is yes. All of which is t...

BUT: even though it's kind of operating on a general, law-type, level, the sentence, involving a particular individual, nevertheless IS true. That is,...

Also: part of the above is that it kind of uses particular individuals to illustrate general laws (i.e. if any individual a with power b does c, then ...

* hmm, I wasn't trying to suggest an actualist view. I think my intent may have been unclear because the example we were playing with (pierce, rock, g...

What about: "If Pierce had the power to see to it that the stone drops during a lecture, then, if Pierce had dropped the stone during a lecture, it wo...

Sure, but I also have a keen, personal, interest in people who argue in this way, because I've got a bit of that myself. It makes me want to stop and ...

I wasn't using "charity" in a moral sense, but in a argumentative-methodological sense. As in the "principle of charity." Both Pierre and apo engaged ...

That's fine but (1) neither pierrw nor apokrosis are anywhere close to being postmodernists (pierre's more in the analytic traditon and apo is peircei...

What do you find most irritating about the ways in which 'postmodernists' argue or discuss? Having witnessed your approach on this thread, I'm curious...

in short: the ideal state the fascists want only can exist as an mobilizing ideal. (so, yeah, a lot like permanent revolution.)

Yeah, that's legit. I was also very unclear in my post above, when I said Fascism wants to remain separate from the state despite being the state. It ...

Very interesting passage. But it does seem like a good opportunity to bring up one of Paxton's big talking points: the self-explanations offered by fa...

Having followed this thread from its inception, I think it's clear all he really wanted to do was take a potshot at POMO under the pretense that he wa...

I've been reading Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism with an old friend, largely in order to appraise contemporary sounds of alarm. I'm still less than halfw...

Obviously? Most scholars take Nazism to be an exemplary case of 'Fascism.' What do you mean when you say fascism?

Looked up the Latour essay that claim comes from...it's a little subtler than that allegation suggests, but not by much. It's pretty weak stuff.

What does reductionism have to do with the validity of DNA testing? What do you mean by 'reductionism'? Which 'postmodernists' do you think wouldn't a...

Foam (Spheres vol. 3) - Peter Sloterdijk Underworld - Don Delillo

Can you expand on that? I haven't encountered that argument before and it feels a little confusing prima facie

I stopped reading here, because here it became very clear you either haven't read Hume or you've utterly forgotten what you've read.

I like to think I have a non-kantian enough soul that I don't instinctively recoil from that kind of thing. But what's Hume's soul like? I think he's ...

I agree that he doesn't give a reasoned justification. But he does give a causal explanation which is presented as being true. People believe x becaus...

I think it would be fun to dig into Kant's second analogy (which, google has refreshed me, is where he deals with cause and effect most explicitly).