h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Bx4,

Just watched the Cleese. I did giggle.

'I thought that was my view and that you felt the problem with it was that it generated a 'vast' number of propositions'
I think it is my view, but I allow that, all things being equal, the details of contextualisation needn't be laboriously stated. However, I thought that you disturbed the equilibrium by waiving some natural language statements through on the nod but not others.

On Vast numbers of propositions, I think the issue is that there is a kind of division of labour between core principles and specifics. We perhaps choose different dividing lines.

'Surely both of your 'd'Anthès shot Pushkin' sentences are truth apt but not identical?'
I said 'in that regard'. I meant that all three have a simple natural language form which requires contextualisation or translation in order to be regarded as propositions in the strictest sense.

Fictionalism:
'How would one show that either was true? Of what relevance is truth or otherwise to utility? You seem to be shifting the basis of your argument again. Naughty that.'
I might have Zelig tendencies, but I'm not guilty this time. You could show that p was true with respect to system E, whereas ¬p was true with respect to system F. If you are after some system-independent overarching notion of truth then you'd better contact objectivists anonymous. Truth within the system is one thing, the utility of said system to the community that adopts it is another.

'Good to see that you concede that moral relativism is a non-cognitivist stance and that all moral stances are arbitrary fictions relative to social groups in a specific'
It isn't non-cognitivist, since I'm saying that truth values can be assigned in respect of a given system, and different systems can coexist. Again if you have some over-arching notion of truth going on then you are a closet objectivist.

Blackburn: the SEP says he's a noncognitivist too. But he says he's not a fictionalist, so where does that leave us?

ttfn

Oh, and...

'I've read 'the Language Instinct', 'How the Mind Works' and the 'Blank Slate' but not 'The Stuff of Thought' So I can't comment'
Whereas I've only read 'The Stuff Of Thought', so that might explain why I didn't gripe about it not adding much to his previous work. Having said that, I don't think he is as dogmatically reductionist as his critics make out.

Lakatos: My analogy needs no support as it was, well...superb.

ttfn

Hi jank,

I think it is better when you join in, I don't mind you being slapdash, it keeps me company

ttfn

Bx4,

By the way, my recommendation was actually Seven Days of Falling by EST, which I suspect you might prefer. But they are all good in my view.

ttfn

hi psi

EST: Unfortunately I had forgotten to write down your recommendation. So I just looked at what they had. This did not include 'Falling' but the reason I persuaded myself it was 'Snow' should be obvious. We are all obviously slapdash together

Mostly AFK until Sundayish apart from occasional hotspot moments in transit aerodromes so I'll catch up on outstanding replies as and when.

I see c has re-appeared. Roll supervenience!

bsy

Hi jank

The missing 'is'. More a joke than a 'no-no' though one should strive for precision in philosophickal discourse or someone will cut you off at the knees (especially those of ametaphysickal bent).

Bass lines: I so read it and thought it was a piece of musical cagoulery put in to confuse me.

Meat 101: I seem to recall that the thread was trashed because of trollery and virtual fisticuffs between extreme herbivores and rabid carnivores but that we three retained our at all times.

'Properly' is not a term I would used to describe what we do. Join in anyway.

bsy

g'day Bored, howdie psi,


p-nuts from the capitalist boss class; worse than that i'm afaraid, 3 days/week i work for satan. google my home town with "biggest employer" and you'll see just how bad this is....but as the horned one appears not to care about the interpretation of "business casual" in my dress code, is a 20 min walk from my front door, and is flexible enough to fit around my p-d obligations i am bound to stay.

glad that you continue to p-d for the 'gas'. i do believe that work can be the 3rd element of the Dury Trinity. btw that Stones clip is a perfect illustration of what a rubbish drummer Charlie Watts is. he is utterly bereft of groove. may sound harsh but have a listen to that clip and you may start to notice that his placement of hi-hat to kick drum to snare in the bar varies literally from bar to bar. i have always found that to spoil every great tune they have. wonder if you notice the same and don't care? do you know what i mean psi?

pls note it's not about drummers playing like metronomes (i mean purleaze, i know my own failings on that front) rather, this is about groove and feel...........


Pass the dutchie; and would you believe it all i can find now are guitar lessons and other songs. v odd as all i did was search with the song title you supplied, admittedly it was a different version number. sorry.

DID; i am just about finished though unsure how many tracks is considered a complete listing. am at 8 now but think i should whittle down to 6? and as you'd probably assume it is all pretty much filed under "in your face". anyhoo, am collecting the clips and will post soon.

it's all Greek to me; thanks for the encouragement etc, have been a bit too busy on the home front to get much reading done so hopefully today a few more chapters. i do feel a bit like a Yankee tourist 'doing' Europe though; "Today we're gonna do Cynics and Sceptics, The Epicureans, and after lunch we'll take in Stoicism. Aint that neat?".
still no chance of moving beyond lurking for the foreseeable future. i know my limitations, and as i have to look up what "supervenience" means it's probably for the best.....

quote unquote; thanks for those they made me smile.

the Feynman i was thinking of was; "Anyone who says that they understand Quantum Mechanics does not understand Quantum Mechanics"


hoi!

hi psi

I'm about the experience a period of severe time poverty and we appear to have opened up many 'fronts' here.

Easier perhaps to deal with one at a time perhaps starting with subjectivism and non-cognitivism.

We seem to be dealing with contextualisation on 'Objective' so it might be worth pursuing that there and see how much meat is left on the D'Anthes/Pushkin and Onegin bones

bsy

Hi jank

The 'inevitable post arrival social whirl' is about to start so briefly.

Global plastic: My hit was a 'furrin' purveyor of. Living near the job is always good. Here is the furthest I've lived from the job but I can cycle (under an hour going the more pleasant long way) or take the harbour ferry and U-Bahn door to door.

Gas: As I said we don't need the money, the family is taken care of unto the second generation (consistent with their doing a job, we already tithe (not in a religious sense) and you can only blow so much on 'stuff' (Never really 'got' status consumerism or the whole fashionista thing.)

As for the incompetence of Charlie the Drummer. Clearly his lack of technique is something you would find obtrusive in a way I might not. So I guess I just listen and enjoy it for what's there not for how much better it could be.

Something akin, perhaps to the different response I have to Pinker as compared to that of you and psi. Though the 'mapping' is very partial..

Trinity: I tend to classify anything that I enjoy that isn't sex or drugs as rock 'n roll.

DID: Is traditionally 8 though I am not persuaded we should accept this. 'Desert Islands Ipod Classic' might be better.

Pass: I came across the Track 4 version but lost it. I've a feeling it was on something other than Youtube

Tourism: A potted history so not an inappropriate metaphor. I hadn't really meant you to use it as tutorial more as background reading. As tutorial Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and Book 1,Part III, give Book II a miss on a first pass.

Book 3 Part 1. Just Chaps. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 13, 16, 17 with the ones on Hume, Locke, Descartes, Berkeley and Hobbes being the most significant.

Book 3. Part II. Just Chaps 22, 23, 26, 29, 30, 31 as a first pass.
CH 31 is fairly partial since the book was written in 1946. So this gets you to Passmore and/or Scruton for the modern stuff.

Quotes: Glad you like them though bear in mind that I'm very much of the minimalist tendency in philosophy regarding much epistemology, and most metaphysics, ontology and meta-ethics as at best problematic and at worst meaningless. Psi may, therefore, be a much better mentor than I****.

Supervenience: If it's any consolation I did too (OCP I think or possibly CDP)

Feynman: Indeed Slightly different version.


People are arriving. Must......y'know..

**** Given that my most likely response will be 'It's complete twaddle. Ignore it'.

bsy

Hi Jank,

I'm aiming for 8 tracks...I'm still struggling with which Hendrix to include, then I've got to whittle a list of about 15 down.

I know exactly what you mean about groove, and I agree about Watts.

ttfn

Hi Bx4,

Whenever you are ready on subjectivism and non-cognitivism then.

Supervenience hasn't been rolled out I notice. Perhaps c is finding it more complex than anticipated

ttfn

hi Bored,

see you've figured out my 'satan'.....


Gas 'n Roll; glad to hear it's for kicks alone as no wolves need feeding. some of my favourite money sayings seem apt here, not sure who said the 1st though;

"I've been unhappy when I was poor and I've been unhappy when I've been rich, and I know which I prefer."

"People who say that money doesn't buy you happiness just don't know where to shop." Dave Lee Roth


Charlie "hamfist"; delighted you can enjoy them tunes despite the fellow, as they did have some cracking tunes. as for this as an analogy for Pinker, it's just as well you put in that proviso...

it came to Pass; you're right! it wasn't youtube, it was on a thing called "Spotify".....can't link from here as I'm in p-nuts mode till later.....


Thinking allowed; thanks for the heads up on book II. i will concentrate more on those bits you've highlighted. much appreciated!!

guess you are in transit or arriving or somesuch hectic thang, take care speak soon.

hi psi,

ok, will go back to 8 tracks. as for Hendirx indeed that is the challenge, but as my favourite all time tune is Wind Cries Mary I will likely stick with that one.....


and as for Watts glad to hear that you hear what i hear!

ttfn





btw for love nor money can get your track #5 from quartet CD out of my brain. i keep 'playing' it round and round in my head, so next step is for me to figure it out. unless you have the TAB to hand.....? no worries if not, i'll have a go regardless but if it's not standard tuning then pls do tell.....

Hi Jank,

Wind Cries Mary is a great track. Still not decided on mine...

Funnily enough I was relearning my track 5 the other day because I've thought of some more for the ending. I suppose I could send you a scan if I get around to tabbing it, but for now I'll tell you it is played in drop D tuning. If you have any trouble let me know and I'll write some tab.

ttfn

hey psi,

drop D, thanks for that. will probably have a fiddle about tonight...

bye!

Morning psi


'Not unless we blur the definition of one or the other, but as the SEP points out there isn't exactly a harmonious consensus on terminology.'

I am not sure it is a matter of blurring but a distinction between cognitivist subjectivism and non-cognitivist subjectivism. The former would hold to the semantic and alethic thesis while the latter would not.

Blurring occurs when terms are used with insufficient precision. As for your SEP quote it accepts that the 'subjectvism' is 'not infrequently in other ways'.

In the following SEP article the more precise 'cognitivist subjectivist' is used

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/

It also defines non-cognitivism as having three theses that moral utterances:

1. Conventionally express non-cognitive attitudes

2. Don't express beliefs [ as propositional attitudes]

3. Are not truth apt.

However simple emotivism (Boo/Hurrah Theory) meets all these theses but the utterences are subjective so simple emotivism can be describe as as a form of non-cognitivist subjectivism.

'I reply: how is it difficult for a subjectivist to be a relativist?'.

Replying with a reverse question to a question is not an answer but more an attempt to shift the burden of proof. Your original statement was:

'But it is easy for them [subjectivists] to be relativist[s] also'.

and I am still not clear why you think this is so.

'I would have thought the difficulty would be to establish a limit on the relativism that is a hazard of subjectivism in order to prevent a collapse into ethical solipsism.'

That is a different issue and whatever the merits of the 'collapse into ethical solipsism' argument it cannot be 'a hazard of [cognitivist] subjectivism' until you have shown that 'it is easy for them to be relativist[s] also'.

"In that case, let's stick with 'truth-apt'."

Indeed nonsense is always best excluded so I would also want to exclude 'quasi-truth-apt'

bsy

Morning Bx4,

It seems to me to be a case of agreeing on terminology. One SEP article carves one way, another does so differently. I'm not sure what dimension you use to deem one more precise than another.

'However simple emotivism (Boo/Hurrah Theory) meets all these theses but the utterences are subjective so simple emotivism can be describe as as a form of non-cognitivist subjectivism.'
That something involves being subjective doesn't make it /subjectivist/ unless you define it that way. If, on the other hand, you define subjectivist as in the SEP article I quoted, then you are just carving differently. You seem to want to argue that your carving is closer to the joint, but that sounds like an objectivist tendancy to me

'Replying with a reverse question to a question is not an answer but more an attempt to shift the burden of proof.'
That's true. I'll have to think how to explain because it just seems obvious to me. For now I'll say, you could be subjectivist in the sense that you regard all moral statements as truth apt in a mind dependent way, but hold that minds were fundamentally so alike that no cultural relativity is relevant. But isn't the burden of proof debatable there?

I quite like 'quasi truth apt'

Morning Bx4,

Just thought I'd clarify, what I mean by saying 'it just seems obvious to me' is that it is often difficult to explain things that strike one as obvious and that might be why I'm not doing a good job. I didn't of course mean that what I was advocating was obviously correct.

bfn

dear both,

i could keep on keepin' on, but here goes. i have chosen the original versions so many are without moving images. my DID (incl random anecdote/background) essentially in the order in which i came across them;


1) The Sweet "Sweet F.A."; aged 10 i loved them for their glam pop sensibilities, but then imgine my jaw dropping to the floor when i bought an album instead of the usual singles and came across this track. changed me for ever (song ends at 6:12);
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hle-gRxI3nQ&feature=related

2) Van Halen "Running with the devil"; i was learning to windsurf as a 15 year old in Holland and this song had not yet reached the UK but was on the radio there(i think coz half the band were Dutch). i heard it down the dormatory corridor and raced over to see what on earth this music was. i hunted it down that week in the local record shop;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVGwi_AxOy8&feature=related

3) AC/DC "whole lotta Rosie"; my 1st real gigging band was an AC/DC covers band consisting of 4 other guys, 1 or 2 years above me at school. to realise that if everyone just played their simplistic parts that the sum would be enormous was an eyeopener. oh, and the 17 year old lead guitarist could play the solos note perfect! here's the live version that still blows my tiny mind;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsFIftPcvIs

4) Hendrix "Wind cries Mary"; that lead guitarist from the AC/DC covers band introduced me to Hendrix and he had some . suffice to say that 'doors' opened wide enough to drive the universe through. as psi said it is soooo hard to choose just 1, but this is mine;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKbf5xxfaVE

5) Black Sabbath "Sweetleaf"; for lovers everywhere my next band took a different approach and swapped hard rock for heavy metal. this old skool tune is a perfect example of riff upon riff upon riff;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj4xFZQqmHg

6) Motorhead "Overkill"; same time as Sabbath, this underpinned my band's approach to heavier than heavy and 'in your face'. note the way they make this a long song with the 'clever' tactic of repeating it over and over and over. as the lead singer/bass player Lemmy said "our music will kill the neighbours lawn" oh how we laughed aged 15......;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZTdfyaRHK4

7) ZZ Top "La Grange"; yep, another three piece, my favourite formula for guitar based music. this riff is just a joy to play. this version isn't exactly as per the album, sounds like a re-master where they've added reverb on the kit and other quackery (big mistake imho). still it's top drawer;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njwerVaLByk&feature=PlayList&p=16187B13C7FDA995&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6

8) Paco de Lucia "Impetu"; have posted this clip elsethread i think. anyway, after my A-levels i embarked on a year or so of intense classical guitar training. became a hermit, grew my nails and played as often as humanly possible. then one day io realised that i would have to sacrifice too much of the Trinity and reverted to drums (wise choice i reckon). but this guy is the god of classical guitar. apparently he's 21 in the 1st part. what's a fact is that it is absolute perfection. (also note him flying randomly through the studio?) it brings lump to my throat every single time i listen to this. enjoy!;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TmxfHbd-M0&feature=related



job done, phew..........

hi jank

Satan: I once had a Zippo with their logo on it.

Roth: I think anyone who likes shopping insane.

Hamfist: On reflection my metaphor may map better than I thought. Watts grasp of drumming paralleling Pinker grasp of genetics, molecular and developmental biology and so forth.

Spotify: Rings a bell. If so it was definitely the alternate take to mine

Heads up: Found a decent introductory book on ethics. Alasdair Macintyre's 'Short History of Ethics' which goes up to 1966 and is very readable. Also turned up a rather good one on modern meta-ethics, Alexander Miller's 'An Introduction the Contemporary Meta-ethics'

Departures and Arrivals. All accomplished last Friday. Personally and professionally distracted since then.

Saw your DID list but haven't chance to listen yet.

See Shabbat has sprung to life again with a massive misinterpretation of the Gibson et al papers by AH. Unfortunately in 'tunnel vision' mode which always happens at the stat of a project.

Also I see we are playing the qualifications game again though AH is curiously unspecific about his. He may be Dr Rosen.......

And so to bed
bsy