Mine is not an argument having anything to do with gun ownership. It’s with your formulation “universal truth.” Here, you’re calling the second amendment a universal truth and bemoaning the fact that it doesn’t settle arguments. This is literal nonsense.
I guess you’re trying to say “If anything is a universal truth, the second amendment is and it still doesn’t settle political disputes.”
But it’s not a truth of any kind, universal or not. And there have been uncountable disputes over the bill of rights since its adoption (and before). So you’re setting up a strawman. No one thinks of the second amendment as “a truth.” Plenty use it to support their political views.
So what?
My personal view is that most people should be able to own (some) firearms by right but that this right is not established in the second amendment. But I’m not a supreme court justice and certainly am not five of them. It’s important to note that the constitution does not exist empirically. Any more than a novel does. It is important only because the ideas therein contained are accepted, by people who count, if not by many Republican congresmen at the moment, as foundational to our government. But the constitution has been viewed differently over time. Was gay marriage rights always in there somewhere? Presumably, but SCOTUS never quite saw it before.
see what i mean? you guys are fiddling around and that’s what’s making this so confusing. you gotta go on a case by case basis and watch your statements. tell em, faust.
that first sentence needs a quantifier or by default everyone will think you mean ‘all’ women… which clearly isn’t true, much less universally true.
the last statement has issues too. if most women are shorter than men, the statement ‘most women are shorter than men’ would be universally true… so long as there are no women taller than men unaccounted for on some other planet.
in this case, being true ‘as an average’ is just the condition of the universally true statement ‘most women are shorter than men’, so the statement ‘it is true as an average, not a universal truth’ is misleading.
This happens all the time, which is why I say that you cannot do philosophy until you have mastered a language. It’s why I say that philosophy is only a peculiar study of language.
Statements, claims, propositions, declarative sentences. These are where you look for something that is true. But many utterances that look like claims to truth are not.
“Universal” is a metaphysical modifier. To even us this kind of modifier catapults your thinking into metaphysics.
That is none of my concern. But you strike me as weaker than you sometimes seem when you comment on a theory you haven’t learned.
If you had stated your erroneous understanding after having made an attempt to understand, it would be a bit sad, but that you present assertions about a theory without even having made an attempt to learn it, is also a bit sad.
How would you respect someone who went around saying “Silhouette’s Experientalism says that experience isn’t real” or something completely contradictory to what you’re actually saying? Not very much, or?
Anyway, no harm done, feel free to study whenever you like and address me with an informed position. Also feel free to keep ignoring it.
To be honest Im proud of how difficult the valuator logic is to handle. It is, in the tradition Nietzsche set out, a selecting mechanism.
Yeah it’s sad that I’ve not made an attempt to learn ur stuff - I actually read ur link though, and I liked the statement “The I is thus always an activity.”
But I still don’t really know what VO does.
I try to bring up Experientialism only when it has a direct application and solves some previously seemingly paradoxical dilemma. On its own it’s probably pretty dry and like “so what?”, just like VO.
I’m no expert on VO, just like you’re no expert on Experientialism - I present my criticisms on what I think you’re talking about and you say that’s not what you’re saying. That’s fine, I accepted that. You’re still happy to throw out statements about how I’m “not much of an expert on Experience” - on that other thread you made, though. If there’s anything I’ve learned on these forums it’s that arguing past one another is truly empty.
There’s a lot of emotional baggage to get through to debate with you though, which makes me feel like I can’t really be bothered to talk with you. I don’t really care if you’re butthurt or you don’t like my politics - logic stands regardless.
Be proud of your mental creation by all means, I’ve never thought of you as unintelligent even if you’re a bit weird about some topics in a way that makes me doubt your sanity more than your logical capability.
“I’m no expert on VO, just like you’re no expert on Experientialism”
Nonsense. I am an quite well versed in Experientalism, as I have actually read endless posts of yours about it and discussed it with you and always arrived at disagreement in terms of falsifiability, and as I follow your arguments I accept that they can, when using an uninvestigated notion of “experience”, lead to such an assertions as you’re making, but I have countered with an argument you professed to simply not understand before you turned your back.
Ill rephrase the overture: can experience relate to itself without there being “a self”?
I slightly disagree with Faust on how philosophy is about language - A philosophical act was when Ape spoke the first deliberate reference to an object that wasn’t a fellow ape, gave birth to some objective realm, a metaphysics which drew the apes energy into his brain like a tree soaks up water with negative pressure from its crown, and erected ape and made this cosmos appear, as Stanley Kubrick visioned it. The cosmic wheel which the ape begins to propel after he raises a stick to a larger stick and begins to literally “beat down” - hammer - the first metaphysical act.
Philosophy is the active aspect of the human mind, that which engineers appearances before they manifest, for example that which produces syntactic solutions.
To use the tool because of the power of the tool is to begin the journey, the tools create the job so to speak, power engenders goals, but it is hard to keep these goals under control - that is a power mankind has not yet attained. Nietzsche produced the the Superman idea, but I find this to be too anthropocentric as a goal. So to me not language as such but its touching Earth are ultimately the criteria for sound philosophy; can you touch it. Does it ‘make sense’. Kant doesn’t, Machiavelli does. Rules are usually either iron or very cheap plastic.
I’m not exactly sure where we disagree, Jake. I do overstate things, deliberately. This is more journalism than philosophy for me, here on this board. Language is the medium, so the subject is language in the same way that paint is the medium of a painter, and therefore also the subject of his art. Girl with a Pearl Earring is always only about paint.
Few here keep their language under control. Someone has to do it.
Look, either you and I and Faust will at least make an attempt to bring “assessments” of this sort out into the world of human interactions or I’m left with stringing my own words together while we connect the dots between them and technical “statements” about “universal truth”.
First note a context. A context in which human interactions come into conflict over the assessment of particular things and relationships deemed to be or not to be true by different people for different reasons. For example, a context revolving around gun control. Then encompass what “it” means to you then and there.
And I will react to it.
In other words, anything other than example like this:
Come on, at least try something a bit more realistic, okay?
What does not make sense about philosophers taking their intellectual assessments of – technical statements about – “universal truth” and noting how they do in fact have both a use value and an exchange value in interacting with others in particular contexts. Otherwise [to me] you seem to be saying that philosophers have their own “thing” here and it’s not really relevant to human interactions at all. “Universal truth” becomes this epistemological contraption that serious philosophers are more intent on grappling with “technically”.
All I mean is that in order for them to be of interest to philosophers of my ilk, technical assessments of “universal truth” either can or cannot be made relevant to the point Durant makes…
He wanders farther and farther away from his time and place, and from the problems that absorb his people and his century. The vast concerns that properly belong to philosophy do not concern him…He retreats into a little corner, and insulates himself from the world under layer and layer of technical terminology.
Though clearly this has a meaning for me that will not resonate at all for others. The part I attribute to dasein.
Yes, that’s what I want. So, if he or you or others want/need something else, then by all means steer clear of me here.
Iam - the problem you have is that you don’t give a shit about the quality of your arguments. You’re getting plenty of context here. “Universal truth”, however, is nonsense in any context - it’s universally nonsensical. But you’re the one who brought it up. Despite that you cannot tell us what it means.
I mean “can experience relate to itself without there being a self” is a tautology - as you intended.
Such a phrase assumes a self in order to demand a self.
No.
Abandon all this shit.
Stop trying to formulate and prove your VO or whatever otherwise - who cares?
What is left?
Experience.
I rest my case.
Just let go.
What is left?
Yeah, exactly.
Just. Let. Go.
Agreed but you leave me questioning whether you have actually “mastered the language” in use.
Except for certain political proponents, those would be called “lies”.
It seems to me that is no more true than to say that “average value” catapults us into “metaphysics”. Science uses averages all the time, doesn’t it? How is that metaphysics?
Many proclamations seem to require modifiers or adjectives. The modifier restricts the range of the named category, the “noun”.
There are fruits called “small apples”, “red apples”, “juicy apples”, and many other limits to category. But among all of those modifiers is the qualifier of “all apples”. There is some quality that establishes the general category called “apples” that encompasses every other subcategory. That category qualifier or modifier is also called “universal”.
It is merely a part of the language. I don’t see the issue.
Nah, obsrvr, I’m not talking about lies. I’m talking about utterances that have the form of a statement but are not statements. “Unicorns love rainbows,” is not a claim to truth, but it looks like one. I’m not sure you could rightly call it a lie. It’s certainly a different sort of lie than “There was no quid pro quo.”
I can’t answer your question. You are the one making the claim that “average value” is metaphysics. You’d have to tell me how the use of average in science is metaphysics.
As to the apples, you have given us an example of what used to be called a problem - the problem of universals. Well, you have in a way. But “all” is not the same as “red”. There are apples that are red. There are no apples that are “all.” “All” does not restrict the range of “apple.” Of course, mathematics and logic use “all.” We all use “all” all the time.
Apples are universally… what? Good to eat? What is a “universal truth” about apples? “All apples are x and not so by definition, but empirically so, synthetically so.” Please solve for x.
It is in the same way that “universal” is, such as “universal constant”.
The word “all” reveals what the restriction is - that of the union of all subcategories.
A universal truth claim - “all, all the time”. And used to distinguish from “most, most of the time” and other subcategories.
A fruit. All apples, no matter where throughout the universe are fruit (assuming the use of the word was not intended as metaphor or euphemism). Or you could also simply say that it is universally true that all apples have mass. Or that they are universally organic.
The specific type of fruit is:
Whether it seems a good idea to use the word “universal” or not, there seems nothing “incoherent” about its use. And I think it helps communication by ensuring the intent of the noun being mentioned (as a universal rather then an unspoken, possibly intended subgroup).
A universal constant such as the speed of light in a vacuum. “In a vacuum” is the context. So sure, a universal, meaning universal within a context. I still don’t see how that is metaphysics. It is physics.
Every set is the union of all of its subsets. This is axiomatic and definitional. It’s not metaphysics.
“We use ‘all’ all the time” does not mean literally “all the time.” I was just trying to be droll. Still, it’s a claim to truth. As I have said, adding “universal” changes nothing. It’s either true or false.
To say that an apple is a fruit, or that all apples are fruit, is taxonomy. Taxonomy is very useful. Compare this to “All bachelors are unmarried men”. This is just definitional also. It says nothing. It’s a tautology.
It is undoubtedly true (in my view) that all apples have mass. But it’s still just true.
Your last point, I agree with, if I understand it. To add “it is true that” to a claim to truth is okay for emphasis, or to indicate agreement with the statement it modifies is perfectly okay. But it doesn’t add meaning to the statement. Likewise with “universal” I guess. That’s not what I’m arguing with. It’s that this is somehow metaphysics. It’s language.
There are people who think that mathematics is metaphysics. That’s okay if by metaphysics you mean “not of the empirical world.” It’s not okay if you think it produces a synthetic “truth”.
Analytic statements do produce “universal” truths in that 2+2 always equals 4. But this is a closed system, a definitional one. 2, the plus sign, the equal sign, and 4 are all defined by each other. the number 2 is defined by that equation and by all other mathematical equations, at least indirectly. 2=2=4 does not provide any inormation not already provided by the definition of the terms that are used.
Every apple is a fruit only because of the way inwhich we define these terms. That’s not metaphysics. It’s language.
“It’s certainly a different sort of lie than “There was no quid pro quo.””
okaaAAAY Faust, you’ve signaled your virtue, we know you’re one of the enlightened.
We know the enlightened masters don’t like to condescend to us red neck evil porr people, but would master please qualify, what is the true meaning of social justice?
We await master’s infinite wisdom with obedient pacience.