/pragmatica/

Photo

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:45:16 -0400

confidentwreck: Tests, by The Long Count (with Matt Berninger)

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:43:18 -0400

Tests, by The Long Count (with Matt Berninger)

"Does philosophy not result in conceptual truths – and is that not a cognitive achievement? That..."

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:27:21 -0400

“Does philosophy not result in conceptual truths – and is that not a cognitive achievement? That would be misleading … these conceptual truths are not statements of fact. They are descriptions of normative connections within the web of concepts that constitute our form of representation. They are said to be true. Indeed, they are often said to be necessary truths. That, of course, is correct –- but misleading. Their truth is akin to that of the proposition that the king in chess moves one square at a time. What we realize when a philosophical insight dawns on us is a feature of our form of representation. We attain an understanding of the way in which our familiar modes of description of things hang together.”

- Paul Hacker, “Philosophy: A contribution not to human knowledge, but to human understanding”

"It is true to say that philosophy does not explain phenomena as the sciences do. By contrast with..."

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 05:22:01 -0400

“It is true to say that philosophy does not explain phenomena as the sciences do. By contrast with theories in the empirical sciences, there is nothing hypothetical about the conceptual clarifications and elucidations of philosophy. The empirical sciences may postulate entities in order to explain observed phenomena, and go on to validate such conjectures. Philosophy, by contrast, cannot legitimately postulate entities, such as simple natures, noumena, or universals, in order to explain the a priori natures of things, or the structure of our conceptual scheme, or our uses of language. Nor is there room in philosophy for deducing the existence of such entities, on the model of inferences to the best explanation in the sciences. Nevertheless, there is much that philosophy can and does explain. It explains, by description, how the various elements in the web of concepts are woven together. It explains why forms of words that at first blush appear to make sense do not, or why forms of words that appear to fulfil a given role actually fulfil an utterly different one. It explains the sources of conceptual puzzlement and confusion. And it explains how to eradicate such confusions. These explanations are logico-grammatical or conceptual.”

- Paul Hacker, “Philosophy: A contribution not to human knowledge, but to human understanding”

SUFFRAGETTE SURVEILLANCE, 1913

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:57:00 -0400

SUFFRAGETTE SURVEILLANCE, 1913 :

‘In 1912, Scotland Yard detectives bought their first camera, to covertly photograph suffragettes. The pictures were compiled into ID sheets for officers on the ground.’

"Philosophy is not an extension of science. It is not a kind of conceptual scullery maid for the..."

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:13:54 -0400

“Philosophy is not an extension of science. It is not a kind of conceptual scullery maid for the sciences, as Locke supposed. Nor is it superior to the sciences – a super-science of all possible worlds, to be investigated by means of ‘thought-experiments’ from the comfort of the armchair, as contemporary revisionists suppose. (Thought-experiments are no more experiments than monopoly money is money.) It is, as Kant intimated, the Tribunal of Sense. So: back to the linguistic turn. The aim of philosophy is the clarification of the forms of sense that, in one way or another, are conceptually puzzling – for they are legion. The charge of philosophy – a Sisyphean labour, to be sure – is the extirpation of nonsense. There is, Heaven knows, enough of it, both in philosophy and in the empirical and a priori sciences. The prize is not more knowledge about anything. Rather it is a proper understanding of the structure and articulations of our conceptual scheme, and the disentangling of conceptual confusions.”

- Paul Hacker, “Analytic Philosophy: Beyond the linguistic turn and back again”

"The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is absurd – they are in pursuit of a..."

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:11:00 -0400

“The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is absurd – they are in pursuit of a chimera. They misunderstand the nature of consciousness. The conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent. The questions they are asking don’t make sense. They have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again. I doubt whether this absurd misunderstanding is stoppable. It’s too entrenched now. But I think it is a kind of intellectual fraud. I’m not accusing paid-up members of the so-called consciousness studies community of bad faith – I’m sure they are just deluded – but the result of their confusion is that we’re bringing up a whole generation of people to think in a thoroughly muddled way, to have hopes and expectations which are totally absurd, and to concentrate on things which are just incoherent. It’s literally a total waste of time. But if anyone thinks that I am completely mistaken, I’d like them to explain to me why. If they cannot show that my arguments are wrong, they should admit the errors of their ways and withdraw from the field! That’s the challenge.”

- Paul Hacker - interview

"Our language-game only works, of course, when a certain agreement prevails, but the concept of..."

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 03:43:38 -0500

“Our language-game only works, of course, when a certain agreement prevails, but the concept of agreement does not enter into the language-game.”

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel 430

Photo

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:26:23 -0500

"Initiates into the Mysteries were forbidden to speak of their initiation. As expressed in the..."

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:57:32 -0500

“Initiates into the Mysteries were forbidden to speak of their initiation. As expressed in the seventh-century BCE Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the revelations of the goddess to the Eleusinians are “awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks their voice.”

- Luther Martin, Hellenistic Religions

The brass neck of Julian Assange

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:44:14 -0500

The brass neck of Julian Assange:

“Wikileaks was once an emancipatory project. I say this with feeling because there’s stuff of mine on the site the libel lawyers tried to ban. But it was corrupted by the infantile leftism of Assange and his creepy collaborators, who worked on the assumption that because Russia and Belarus were anti-western, it was legitimate to hand their secret services news they could use.”

Greece is being destroyed by 'respectable' fanatics

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:53:47 -0500

Greece is being destroyed by 'respectable' fanatics:

“The EU’s terms do not begin to match the altruism the United States showed to the defeated Germans after 1945. America did not pauperise West Germans as many in France and indeed Washington wanted. America guaranteed their security, then gave them loans from the Marshall Plan that allowed the West German economic miracle to begin. Greece has invaded no one and committed no crimes against humanity. Yet the EU, which boasts that solidarity is its founding principle, is forcing it into destitution and chaos.”

"And, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all..."

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 03:19:57 -0500

“And, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all countries and times except our own, as having spent their life in blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge! All generations of men were lost and wrong, only that this present little section of a generation might be saved and right. They all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning of the world, like the Russian soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill up the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might march over and take the place! It is an incredible hypothesis.”

- Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest..."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:49:00 -0500

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

- Karl Marx (via unitedworkers)

The context helps clarify the fact that he did not think it was necessary or wise to stamp it out. Marx himself used opium as a painkiller. Religion hinders the development of class consciousness, but it is also something that has helped the proletariat emotionally and spiritually survive the alienating nature of capitalism.

(via amoralasylum)

G.A. Cohen makes the same point very well in If You’re an Egalitarian…

"The poet is someone who is permanently involved with a language that is dying and which he..."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:44:51 -0500

“The poet is someone who is permanently involved with a language that is dying and which he resurrects, not by giving it back some triumphant aspect but by making it return sometimes, like a specter or a ghost: the poet wakes up language and in order to really make the ‘live’ experience of this waking up, of this return to life of language, one has to be very close to the corpse of the language.”

- Jacques Derrida (via sarahburgoyne)

"No, words are not made to designate things. They are there to situate us amongst things. If one sees..."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:44:34 -0500

“No, words are not made to designate things. They are there to situate us amongst things. If one sees them as designations, one demonstrates the most impoverished idea of language. And the most common. It is the combat, but as it always has been, of the poem against the sign. David against Goliath. Goliath, the sign.”

- Henri Meschonnic, The Rhythm Party Manifesto (via sonofapritch)

souleyes: Miles by David Redfern

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:43:49 -0500

souleyes:

Miles by David Redfern

E-books Can’t Burn

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:26:15 -0500

E-books Can’t Burn:

“Only the sequence of the words must remain inviolate. We can change everything about a text but the words themselves and the order they appear in. The literary experience does not lie in any one moment of perception, or any physical contact with a material object (even less in the “possession” of handsome masterpieces lined up on our bookshelves), but in the movement of the mind through a sequence of words from beginning to end. More than any other art form it is pure mental material, as close as one can get to thought itself. Memorized, a poem is as surely a piece of literature in our minds as it is on the page.”

"The old saying that a man finds what he looks for in a subject, is too true; or if he has not enough..."

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:35:00 -0500

“The old saying that a man finds what he looks for in a subject, is too true; or if he has not enough insight to ensure finding what he looks for, it is at least sadly true that he does not find anything that he does not look for.”

- Flinders Petrie

America's homeless resort to tent cities

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:10:33 -0500

America's homeless resort to tent cities:

Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities - they represent the bleak reality of America’s poverty crisis.