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May 21, when we are all raptured.
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A woman I've been spending time with. yes.
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Knowledge Quest!
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Cyber is named after the Afhgani "Kyber" Pass that connected the old silk road. It was a name suggested for internet by former Senator Ted Stevens, who thought it helped to distinguish it from other forms of roads.
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Dear Spambot: Feel free to admit it! It'll make you happy
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Lord, I've forgotten to answer this one. Sorry.
Well, let's leave aside the unhelpful and simply wrong complaints about Derrida being a charlatan, a sophist, a dangerous relativist, or holding that anything goes in interpretation.
These accusations, although common and made by otherwise respectable academics, are simply wrong, as any careful reading of even one of his texts would show. Whether these accusations are made in good faith or not, I won't speculate about.
Let's also leave aside the complaint, often made by --- let's say orthodox (or relatively Orthodox) Marxists that Derrida is some manner of crypto-conservative, or that his work somehow supports them. I don't think this claim is made in quite such bad faith, and it requires some actual scrutiny of his texts, but it still rather straightforwardly wrong.
To my mind, the most common interesting and genuinely philosophical objection to Derrida's philosophical project (if there is such a thing), comes out of his early work on phenomenology (although you could make an analogous argument through a structuralist or analytic lens). It has to do with the connection between Derrida's insistence on what I'll call for now the necessary underdetermination of meaning but what is often called Derrida's insistence on the priority of writing over speech, or absence over presence, or --- well, we could go on.
The most schematic form this argument takes is something like this: granted, Derrida may have pointed to some manner of aporia within a pair of opposed concepts, but that aporia isn't necessarily irresolvable. Because it can be resolved within a certain context, and because there is a reason to suppose that a certain context ought to be privileged from within a certain discursive regime, the conclusion of "undecideability" (to use a Godelian word Derrida actually only uses once to my knowledge) is wrong. Although a pair of concepts like writing and speech or meaning and significance or absence and presence or well . . . we could go on may depend by mutually determined, there is a reason to regard one (the historically "priveleged" one as necessary).
Now, this is very schematic and would require a more concrete example to fill out (the reason I situate this in phenomenology is that I think the best example is found in his early work on Husserl). But the crucial point in a short, informal, bit like this is to point out that Derrida has anticipated this objection. In fact, Derrida's argument depends on this objection.
The crucial point not to show that there are never finite "solutions" to the underdetermination of meaning, nor to show that such finite solutions are faulty, but to show that the solutions that the best philosophers have proposed are both a) contingent (uncloseable), and b) in some way self-defeating.
Now, there is no a priori argument for why this is the case. One must simply read Derrida's individual arguments and take them seriously.
Nor do I think there is a single reason why Derrida thinks it's important to show this, although we can speculate that it if there is, it has something to do with the way in which we conceptualize ideality depending on a static framework.
But what I mean by that, and why I think it's so important to Derrida --- that would take us too far afield. -
The real question is --- why are we so liable to be persuaded that the grass is greener on the other side --- must have something to do with the dialectic of desire.
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Hmm.. I'm not a big beer drinker. I like wheat beers.
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This has got to be a ringer question. It is well known that i think Reisling is perhaps the most underrated wine --- it's overall my favorite white. People think of it as very sweet, but in fact can be very sharp and acidic.
The high acid is analogous to the high tannins in popular, big, reds and makes it appropriate for aging.
I had a 2003 from the Rheinhessen in Germany (2003 was a fantastic year for European wines) in 2008, and the high acid coupled with a slight sweetness gave it a layered complexity.
So much sweetness in wine is cloying, indicative of an unfinished fermentation. That wasn't true here --- the sweetness was an integral part of the experience... -
I didn't watch this year. I think I'm over it.
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I wish I knew. I've found that when people who are out of school find out I'm a philosophy professor they are either really excited and tell me how much they love philosophy or else they tell me how boring it was and how much they hate it.
I had already read a lot of "philosophy" before I started studying philosophy in the classroom. I'm not sure what my sense of it would have been if I'd first encountered it in a required course.
Recently, I've been using the idea of hedonism as a "hook" into philosophy. Now, lest that sound too heterodox, I should note I stole the idea from Aristotle.
At the beginning of the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that everyone by nature desires to know and the proof is in the pleasure we take in what we see. I've started playing this idea with my students: let's say you just want to be happy. I'm not going to judge you or tell you that's stupid --- I agree --- what I'll do instead is help you see that we need to think about how best to be happy and to see that exploring our curiosity is an integral part of our happiness.
I remember asking my freshman "Why do you like going on the facebook." "To find out what my friends are doing." "Why do you want to know what your friends are doing?" "Because it's fun."
That's the point. -
I know just what you mean. This is why I maintain such rigorous standards of masculinity for myself. Just don't tell the lady's I got snipped earlier this week.
This message has been brought to you by SNAG's for male contraception. -
A good question --- I as in a similar boat, and I ended up staying around to the end. Now, there are parts of my education I really loved --- BYU did, and I think still does, have a very good philosophy department, and I was quite happy with the narrow range of classes I took in depts. like philosophy and comp. lit. But I regret not being somewhere where I was more comfortable and fit in better...I had a great grad school experience, but realize that really missed the normal college experience.
Can you get the education you want there? Are you okay living the lifestyle? Or willing to take the risk of getting caught? Do you have options at schools of comporable academic quality that are financially viable?
The thing that I would emphasize, that I didn't come to realize until much later, is that whatever you decide, it is okay. If you decide that financially and academically, your best option is to go, you shouldn't feel like a phony for faking it --- they're the ones who are placing unreasonable demands on you. On the other hand, you are allowed to go somewhere else if you think it'll make you happier...
This has been Ideas Man's daily affirmation -
Wow, I'm absent for a while and I get serious, interesting questions.
I'll throw this one out to my massive audience many of whom have been in similar situations or who are open minded active Mormons.
One thing that I'll say, to get the discussion rolling, is that I would wager that for many Mormons on their way out, some of the most marked differences are less ideological than social and/familial.
In my experience, the most difficult part of the transition was that the practices by which Mormons identify themselves as part of the group (following the Word of Wisdom, structuring their social life through the family and their family life through various religious and cultural practices --- from the formal things like Sacrament Meeting to Young Men's/Women, etc.)
To say nothing of life markers. I remember when one of my youngest cousins (I think she'd be about 9 now) was holding Ideas Girls' hand and telling her about how excited she was to be to be baptized and asking if Ideas Girl was excited. Ideas Girl looked around confusedly. She had no idea what my cousin was talking about.
These things can make communication quite difficult.
I'm not trying to minimize the ideological differences, because those are real and can be the source of a lot of conflict, but I think that they are often ancillary to the inability to connect.
The thing that Ideas Woman's mom emphasized was that she "just wanted us to be happy" but because she undestands eternal happiness to depend on belonging to the organization and temporal happiness to depend on the lifestyle choices that make up Mormon worship, it's hard for her to separate our happiness from Mormonism even if she accepts that we have different beliefs than she does. But the thing is, she really does want us to be happy, so it's been more important to show that we are happier by being non-Mormon than we'd be by being Mormon --- it's about more than health than truth.
So then it comes down to finding ways to participate in the parts of the culture of Mormon family life without being forced to participate in the narrative behind it. How easy this is depends on the style of observance of your family and loved ones and the extent to which there are parts of the story you embrace. Because Ideas Woman and I both come from Mormon backgrounds and because we were already married before we left the church, that component at least didn't put a huge strain on our relationship --- but for people whose romantic/sexual lives fall outside of the traditional heterosexual monogamous relationship, this might not be possible for you.
I wish you the best of luck and am curious about other peoples thoughts. -
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The answer to life, the universe and everything.
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All of it. Without knowing who this fella is, what his interests are, how much philosophy he's read in the past, here are some suggestions without commentary, justification or interpretation.
1) The Republic, Plato --- also the Symposium and the Sophist.
2) Nietzsche, anything really but esp: Genealogy of Morals, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, and the Anti-Christ.
3) Soren Kierkegaard: Either/Or.
4)Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
5)Derrida, Jacques: Memoirs of the Bling.
6) Foucault, Michel: Birth of the Clinic, the History of Sexuailty
7) Spinoza: Ethics.
Too many others, I'm sure. -
Because if you try it the other way around, your shoulders will really hurt.
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Ammon’s Bio
I'm a philosopher, writer and roustabout.
