Philosophy
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Plato’s Legacy: Intellectual Curmudgeonry
Try this. When you step out of bed in the morning, open the curtains, take a big breath, and exclaim: What a wonderful day! I can’t believe how rational people are! It’s because somebody, like Plato, opened the curtains one morning, looked out at the world and said Oh… My… Gawd! What’s wrong with people?! Can’t… Continue reading
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‘Freedom’ is Not a Well-Formed Formula
Freedom! is a common rallying cry that some pledge to fight to the death to defend. And do. So it might be a tad unseemly to point out that ‘freedom’ is not a well-formed formula. By which is meant ‘freedom’ requires an indexical, as in freedom-to and freedom-from. And then to-what and from-what or from-whom,… Continue reading
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Thoughtlets .xviii.
Words such as ‘matters’, ‘dangerous’, and even ‘good’, require an indexical, by which is meant these words require a to or a for. Once you flesh in the indexical you open questions such as why, how, and so what? Some don’t think to ask these questions, others don’t want them asked. Continue reading
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Hobbes on Consensus
If ‘x’ is true, then ‘x’ is true independently of whether one man [sic] or all men believe ‘x’ is true. But no one man’s reason, or the reason of any one number of men makes the certainty, no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously… Continue reading
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On Judging Facts. Three Quotes Worth Comparing: Hobbes, Mill, Lippmann.
“And as in arithmetic, unpracticed men must, and professors themselves may often err and cast up false, so also in any other subject of reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may deceive themselves and infer false conclusions, not but that reason itself is always right reason, as well as arithmetic is a… Continue reading
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