Philosophizing with a Screwdriver

I don’t come by this way much, anymore. But I can’t help but notice that there is very little discussion of Werklempter hereabouts. Probably the first true Neoplatonist, Pluralist, Pre-Postmodernist Povisitivist, as well as an accomplished philatelist, his Alphabetical Syllogism is here presented in its second iteration (The Hague, 1852):

“If A=B and B=C and C=D and so on… then why do we need so many letters?”

Clearly in a less pluralistic mood, this formulation has influenced logicians at least up until Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Every Random Thought That I Have. But is this taking Epistolic Minimalism too far? Is it merely self-deferential?

My view is that AS2 is viscously circular but in a completely linear way. Thusly avoiding the Paradox of the Parallax. (St Barniard’s version, at least).

Interpretation: Irregularly dumb people can’t admit to themselves that they are dumb, they reach their limit early, intelligence is no stimulus to them, they claim to believe people who have thought through more than them, and seen further and more clearly, are playing a joke. And yet, somehow they sense painfully that their lack of intelligence is a terrible and intransigent defect which has no remedy. They are inhuman monsters.

Are you calling St Barniard, or perhaps Schmaldyck, an inhuman monster?

Yourself. You’re dumb, and so a ghastly bore.

Because I have read Gottlieb Schmaldyck? Gott Schmaldyck was a giant.

Sort of.

Sayings of giants aren’t worth a cedilla when idiots are behind them. Mere words. You are an idiot.

Faust, Guide is special. He needs a lot for him to be able to understand things. In one of his posts above…he describes himself pretty well. But don’t think that he’s incapable of learning. It just might take time.

the Schmaldyck system was impressive for its time, but the doxastic structure he erected in logic was only a small contribution to the field. it was really the work of Holden Tudiks that proved to be a bit much for logicians of the time to handle. needless to say Holden Tudiks really had his hands full, but his persistence proved to reveal some penetrating insights into the field. i’m surprised you didn’t mention Tudiks, Faust. he did twice as much as schmaldyck and made much bigger contributions.

A thirty foot constrictor snake is on its way to where you both live. It is a philanthropic animal; killing the most practiced morons amongst us is beneficent.

K: all the philosophy I have done for years, has been done with Werklempter in mind…,
of course, I shall never even hope to match his brilliance, but at least
50% of being as good as Werklempter is 50% better of every single philosopher
since him… which is of course is 50% better then the average thinker and is 50%
better than anyone here…

I stand in awe of Ernst, if I could be so bold as to address the master
in such familiar terms, I can only hope to master his turnip phase
before death calls my name… my greatest regret of my life is never
meeting the master before he was gone… I am near tears for
my inability to be fully as great as Earnst… it is my shame…

Kropotkin

An additional 800 pound jungle cat has been loosed. People who deny outstanding talent, and correspondingly difficult science, exists, are almost always idiots. (Of course, a genius like Descartes, had some reason for making that failed experiment, considering the art of reason to be generally teachable, by method.)

“In order to practice greatness, one must, from time to time, smite someone.” - Ersnt Werklempter, from Smite as Well, Ch 6 sec 2, paragraph 3a, Thus Spake Sarah Schuster.

The argument for socialism is the same as for the beubonic plague, I think. Similar at least, in effect. It’s very hard to argue against.

ZZzzZzzzzzZzz

Russell’s thoughts on the virtue of smoking are interesting. Smoking, he says, is wise, because at one time he was on a plane, smoking in the smoking section, when the vessel went down outside of its planned course and crashed, and the smoking section was left relatively intact where the non smoking section was obliterated, leaving all nonsmokers dead.

I googled Werklempter and got two links, both to ilovephilosophy. YOu taking the piss out of us, Faust? If so, I love it. If not, why do you find any of the above so gripping? Perhaps one of them and why.

I think Faust is one of just a few people who have been working for years to translate Werklempter’s writings. Once they’re done you may see more of it online as the years pass by. It can take a really long time to do accurate translations of such complex works on such a broad array of subjects.

Well, that’s interesting. And I didn’t mind either way. I can enjoy a Sokal moment. But if it is a straight post, what does one do with it. I mean the OP. Do you make anything from the homage, Mr. Reasonable? I googled the terms and the guy to see if I could understand, you know, the gist. Maybe if I was better read on that kind of philosophy, I wouldn’t need the help. Do you need it? Or does the OP give you a sense of this philosopher’s greatness?

KT - Perhaps I can help. While Werklempter seems to inspire widely disparate analyses, it may be safe to say that the Alphabetical Syllogism, beyond being a seminal work of not-quite-classical logic, epitomizes Werklempter’s “Inequality Principle”. It short, he holds that there are no equivalents, or very few. He has likened Kant to a ham and cheese sandwich and Plato to a drunken whore. It is unsettled whether he is speaking of strict equivalence here, however.

The Parallax Paradox refers to the fact that we only know that we have a unique perspective if we all look at the same thing at once. Decades later, Throop questioned (and answered) this with his paper, Everything is Relative, Including Relativity (Harvard, 1971).

Again this view is questionable as well. Conceived of a thetic possibility, until proven otherwise, the argument is as uncertain as metaphsical correlation with quantum
mechanic uncertainty.
So it reduces to either this or that, all of the intervening variables coming up as categorically necessary facts that should/need to be arrived at.